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diff --git a/old/11395-8.txt b/old/11395-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cbb02c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11395-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10465 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cheerful--By Request, by Edna Ferber + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Cheerful--By Request + +Author: Edna Ferber + +Release Date: March 1, 2004 [EBook #11395] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +CHEERFUL +BY REQUEST + + +By + +EDNA FERBER + + +AUTHOR OF "DAWN O'HARA," "BUTTERED SIDE DOWN" +"ROAST BEEF MEDIUM," "FANNY HERSELF" + + +1918 + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER + I. CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST + II. THE GAY OLD DOG + III. THE TOUGH GUY + IV. THE ELDEST + V. THAT'S MARRIAGE + VI. THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD + VII. THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT + VIII. THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK + IX. THE GUIDING MISS GOWD + X. SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN + XI. THE THREE OF THEM + XII. SHORE LEAVE + + + +CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST + + + +I + + +CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST + +The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh +cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from +the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a +Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of +business. + +"Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate. Dear +me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express +that which is in his--ah--heart. But in the last year we've been swamped +with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know, +about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on +the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen +sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked +up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I'm not +demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could--that is--would +you--do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful +story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. +Not pink, but not all grey either. Say--mauve." ... + +That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink. +Which makes mauve. + +Unless you are connected (which you probably are not) with the great +firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have heard +of Josie Fifer. + +There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A +statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special +writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce +courts--what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss +Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies +have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats for +breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson; pictures +of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage +hands rewriting it--long before the opening night we know more about the +piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager to +see it. + +Josie Fifer's knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the +ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the +birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to +the closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of +inanition, old age, or--as was sometimes the case--before it was born, +it was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the +grave. + +Her notification of its demise would come thus: + +"Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe" (the property man of H. & L. at the +phone). + +"Well?" + +"A little waspish this morning, aren't you, Josephine?" + +"I've got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 'Ataboy' company to +mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I'm +going to stand here wasting my--" + +"All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that 'My Mistake' +closes Saturday. The stuff'll be up Monday morning early." + +A sardonic laugh from Josie. "And yet they say 'What's in a name!'" + +The unfortunate play had been all that its title implies. Its purpose +was to star an actress who hadn't a glint. Her second-act costume alone +had cost $700, but even Russian sable bands can't carry a bad play. The +critics had pounced on it with the savagery of their kind and hacked it, +limb from limb, leaving its carcass to rot under the pitiless white +glare of Broadway. The dress with the Russian sable bands went the way +of all Hahn & Lohman tragedies. Josie Fifer received it, if not +reverently, still appreciatively. + +"I should think Sid Hahn would know by this time," she observed +sniffily, as her expert fingers shook out the silken folds and smoothed +the fabulous fur, "that auburn hair and a gurgle and a Lucille dress +don't make a play. Besides, Fritzi Kirke wears the biggest shoe of any +actress I ever saw. A woman with feet like that"--she picked up a satin +slipper, size 7-1/2 C--"hasn't any business on the stage. She ought to +travel with a circus. Here, Etta. Hang this away in D, next to the +amethyst blue velvet, and be sure and lock the door." + +McCabe had been right. A waspish wit was Josie's. + +The question is whether to reveal to you now where it was that Josie +Fifer reigned thus, queen of the cast-offs; or to take you back to the +days that led up to her being there--the days when she was José Fyfer on +the programme. + +Her domain was the storage warehouse of Hahn & Lohman, as you may have +guessed. If your business lay Forty-third Street way, you might have +passed the building a hundred times without once giving it a seeing +glance. It was not Forty-third Street of the small shops, the smart +crowds, and the glittering motors. It was the Forty-third lying east of +the Grand Central sluice gates; east of fashion; east, in a word, of +Fifth Avenue--a great square brick building smoke-grimed, cobwebbed, and +having the look of a cold-storage plant or a car barn fallen into +disuse; dusty, neglected, almost eerie. Yet within it lurks Romance, and +her sombre sister Tragedy, and their antic brother Comedy, the cut-up. + +A worn flight of wooden steps leads up from the sidewalk to the dim +hallway; a musty-smelling passage wherein you are met by a genial sign +which reads: + +"No admittance. Keep out. This means you." + +To confirm this, the eye, penetrating the gloom, is confronted by a +great blank metal door that sheathes the elevator. To ride in that +elevator is to know adventure, so painfully, so protestingly, with such +creaks and jerks and lurchings does it pull itself from floor to floor, +like an octogenarian who, grunting and groaning, hoists himself from his +easy-chair by slow stages that wring a protest from ankle, knee, hip, +back and shoulder. The corkscrew stairway, broken and footworn though it +is, seems infinitely less perilous. + +First floor--second--third--fourth. Whew! And there you are in Josie +Fifer's kingdom--a great front room, unexpectedly bright and even cosy +with its whir of sewing machines: tables, and tables, and tables, piled +with orderly stacks of every sort of clothing, from shoes to hats, from +gloves to parasols; and in the room beyond this, and beyond that, and +again beyond that, row after row of high wooden cabinets stretching the +width of the room, and forming innumerable aisles. All of Bluebeard's +wives could have been tucked away in one corner of the remotest and +least of these, and no one the wiser. All grimly shut and locked, they +are, with the key in Josie's pocket. But when, at the behest of McCabe, +or sometimes even Sid Hahn himself, she unlocked and opened one of +these doors, what treasures hung revealed! What shimmer and sparkle and +perfume--and moth balls! The long-tailed electric light bulb held high +in one hand, Josie would stand at the door like a priestess before her +altar. + +There they swung, the ghosts and the skeletons, side by side. You +remember that slinking black satin snakelike sheath that Gita Morini +wore in "Little Eyolf"? There it dangles, limp, invertebrate, yet how +eloquent! No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with +its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin +collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it +she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a +long, long time. + +Dresses there are that have made stage history. Surely you remember the +beruffled, rose-strewn confection in which the beautiful Elsa Marriott +swam into our ken in "Mississipp'"? She used to say, wistfully, that she +always got a hand on her entrance in that dress. It was due to the sheer +shock of delight that thrilled audience after audience as it beheld her +loveliness enhanced by this floating, diaphanous tulle cloud. There it +hangs, time-yellowed, its pristine freshness vanished quite, yet as +fragrant with romance as is the sere and withered blossom of a dead +white rose pressed within the leaves of a book of love poems. Just next +it, incongruously enough, flaunt the wicked froufrou skirts and the +low-cut bodice and the wasp waist of the abbreviated costume in which +Cora Kassell used so generously to display her charms. A rich and portly +society matron of Pittsburgh now--she whose name had been a synonym for +pulchritude these thirty years; she who had had more cold creams, hats, +cigars, corsets, horses, and lotions named for her than any woman in +history! Her ample girth would have wrought sad havoc with that +eighteen-inch waist now. Gone are the chaste curves of the slim white +silk legs that used to kick so lithely from the swirl of lace and +chiffon. Yet there it hangs, pertly pathetic, mute evidence of her +vanished youth, her delectable beauty, and her unblushing confidence in +those same. + +Up one aisle and down the next--velvet, satin, lace and broadcloth--here +the costume the great Canfield had worn in Richard III; there the little +cocked hat and the slashed jerkin in which Maude Hammond, as Peterkins, +winged her way to fame up through the hearts of a million children whose +ages ranged from seven to seventy. Brocades and ginghams; tailor suits +and peignoirs; puffed sleeves and tight--dramatic history, all, they +spelled failure, success, hope, despair, vanity, pride, triumph, decay. +Tragic ghosts, over which Josie Fifer held grim sway! + +Have I told you that Josie Fifer, moving nimbly about the great +storehouse, limped as she went? The left leg swung as a normal leg +should. The right followed haltingly, sagging at hip and knee. And that +brings us back to the reason for her being where she was. And what. + +The story of how Josie Fifer came to be mistress of the cast-off robes +of the firm of Hahn & Lohman is one of those stage tragedies that never +have a public performance. Josie had been one of those little girls who +speak pieces at chicken-pie suppers held in the basement of the +Presbyterian church. Her mother had been a silly, idle woman addicted to +mother hubbards and paper-backed novels about the house. Her one passion +was the theatre, a passion that had very scant opportunity for feeding +in Wapello, Iowa. Josie's piece-speaking talent was evidently a direct +inheritance. Some might call it a taint. + +Two days before one of Josie's public appearances her mother would twist +the child's hair into innumerable rag curlers that stood out in +grotesque, Topsy-like bumps all over her fair head. On the eventful +evening each rag chrysalis would burst into a full-blown butterfly curl. +In a pale-blue, lace-fretted dress over a pale-blue slip, made in what +her mother called "Empire style," Josie would deliver herself of +"Entertaining Big Sister's Beau" and other sophisticated classics with +an incredible ease and absence of embarrassment. It wasn't a definite +boldness in her. She merely liked standing there before all those +people, in her blue dress and her toe slippers, speaking her pieces with +enhancing gestures taught her by her mother in innumerable rehearsals. + +Any one who has ever lived in Wapello, Iowa, or its equivalent, +remembers the old opera house on the corner of Main and Elm, with +Schroeder's drug store occupying the first floor. Opera never came +within three hundred miles of Wapello, unless it was the so-called +comic kind. It was before the day of the ubiquitous moving-picture +theatre that has since been the undoing of the one-night stand +and the ten-twenty-thirty stock company. The old red-brick opera +house furnished unlimited thrills for Josie and her mother. From +the time Josie was seven she was taken to see whatever Wapello was +offered in the way of the drama. That consisted mostly of plays of the +tell-me-more-about-me-mother type. + +By the time she was ten she knew the whole repertoire of the Maude La +Vergne Stock Company by heart. She was _blasé_ with "East Lynne" and +"The Two Orphans," and even "Camille" left her cold. She was as wise to +the trade tricks as is a New York first nighter. She would sit there in +the darkened auditorium of a Saturday afternoon, surveying the stage +with a judicious and undeceived eye, as she sucked indefatigably at a +lollipop extracted from the sticky bag clutched in one moist palm. (A +bag of candy to each and every girl; a ball or a top to each and every +boy!) Josie knew that the middle-aged _soubrette_ who came out between +the first and second acts to sing a gingham-and-sunbonnet song would +whisk off to reappear immediately in knee-length pink satin and curls. +When the heroine left home in a shawl and a sudden snowstorm that +followed her upstage and stopped when she went off, Josie was +interested, but undeceived. She knew that the surprised-looking white +horse used in the Civil War comedy-drama entitled "His Southern +Sweetheart" came from Joe Brink's livery stable in exchange for four +passes, and that the faithful old negro servitor in the white cotton wig +would save somebody from something before the afternoon was over. + +In was inevitable that as Josie grew older she should take part in +home-talent plays. It was one of these tinsel affairs that had made +clear to her just where her future lay. The Wapello _Daily Courier_ +helped her in her decision. She had taken the part of a gipsy queen, +appropriately costumed in slightly soiled white satin slippers with +four-inch heels, and a white satin dress enhanced by a red sash, a black +velvet bolero, and large hoop earrings. She had danced and sung with a +pert confidence, and the _Courier_ had pronounced her talents not +amateur, but professional, and had advised the managers (who, no doubt, +read the Wapello _Courier_ daily, along with their _Morning Telegraph_) +to seek her out, and speedily. + +Josie didn't wait for them to take the hint. She sought them out +instead. There followed seven tawdry, hard-working, heartbreaking years. +Supe, walk-on, stock, musical comedy--Josie went through them all. If +any illusions about the stage had survived her Wapello days, they would +have vanished in the first six months of her dramatic career. By the +time she was twenty-four she had acquired the wisdom of fifty, a +near-seal coat, a turquoise ring with a number of smoky-looking crushed +diamonds surrounding it, and a reputation for wit and for decency. The +last had cost the most. + +During all these years of cheap theatrical boarding houses (the most +soul-searing cheapness in the world), of one-night stands, of insult, +disappointment, rebuff, and something that often came perilously near to +want, Josie Fifer managed to retain a certain humorous outlook on life. +There was something whimsical about it. She could even see a joke on +herself. When she first signed her name José Fyfer, for example, she did +it with, an appreciative giggle and a glint in her eye as she formed the +accent mark over the e. + +"They'll never stop me now," she said. "I'm made. But I wish I knew if +that J was pronounced like H, in humbug. Are there any Spanish blondes?" + +It used to be the habit of the other women in the company to say to her: +"Jo, I'm blue as the devil to-day. Come on, give us a laugh." + +She always obliged. + +And then came a Sunday afternoon in late August when her laugh broke off +short in the middle, and was forever after a stunted thing. + +She was playing Atlantic City in a second-rate musical show. She had +never seen the ocean before, and she viewed it now with an appreciation +that still had in it something of a Wapello freshness. + +They all planned to go in bathing that hot August afternoon after +rehearsal. Josie had seen pictures of the beauteous bathing girl dashing +into the foaming breakers. She ran across the stretch of glistening +beach, paused and struck a pose, one toe pointed waterward, her arms +extended affectedly. + +"So!" she said mincingly. "So this is Paris!" + +It was a new line in those days, and they all laughed, as she had meant +they should. So she leaped into the water with bounds and shouts and +much waving of white arms. A great floating derelict of a log struck her +leg with its full weight, and with all the tremendous force of the +breaker behind it. She doubled up ridiculously, and went down like a +shot. Those on the beach laughed again. When she came up, and they saw +her distorted face they stopped laughing, and fished her out. Her leg +was broken in two places, and mashed in a dozen. + +José Fyfer's dramatic career was over. (This is not the cheery portion +of the story.) + +When she came out of the hospital, three months later, she did very +well indeed with her crutches. But the merry-eyed woman had +vanished--she of the Wapello colouring that had persisted during +all these years. In her place limped a wan, shrunken, tragic little +figure whose humour had soured to a caustic wit. The near-seal coat and +the turquoise-and-crushed-diamond ring had vanished too. + +During those agonized months she had received from the others in +the company such kindness and generosity as only stage folk can +show--flowers, candy, dainties, magazines, sent by every one from the +prima donna to the call boy. Then the show left town. There came a few +letters of kind inquiry, then an occasional post card, signed by half a +dozen members of the company. Then these ceased. Josie Fifer, in her +cast and splints and bandages and pain, dragged out long hospital days +and interminable hospital nights. She took a dreary pleasure in +following the tour of her erstwhile company via the pages of the +theatrical magazines. + +"They're playing Detroit this week," she would announce to the aloof and +spectacled nurse. Or: "One-night stands, and they're due in Muncie, +Ind., to-night. I don't know which is worse--playing Muncie for one +night or this moan factory for a three month's run." + +When she was able to crawl out as far as the long corridor she spoke to +every one she met. As she grew stronger she visited here and there, and +on the slightest provocation she would give a scene ranging all the way +from "Romeo and Juliet" to "The Black Crook." It was thus she first met +Sid Hahn, and felt the warming, healing glow of his friendship. + +Some said that Sid Hahn's brilliant success as a manager at thirty-five +was due to his ability to pick winners. Others thought it was his +refusal to be discouraged when he found he had picked a failure. Still +others, who knew him better, were likely to say: "Why, I don't know. +It's a sort of--well, you might call it charm--and yet--. Did you ever see +him smile? He's got a million-dollar grin. You can't resist it." + +None of them was right. Or all of them. Sid Hahn, erstwhile usher, call +boy, press agent, advance man, had a genius for things theatrical. It +was inborn. Dramatic, sensitive, artistic, intuitive, he was often +rendered inarticulate by the very force and variety of his feelings. A +little, rotund, ugly man, Sid Hahn, with the eyes of a dreamer, the +wide, mobile mouth of a humourist, the ears of a comic ol'-clo'es man. +His generosity was proverbial, and it amounted to a vice. + +In September he had come to Atlantic City to try out "Splendour." It was +a doubtful play, by a new author, starring Sarah Haddon for the first +time. No one dreamed the play would run for years, make a fortune for +Hahn, lift Haddon from obscurity to the dizziest heights of stardom, and +become a classic of the stage. + +Ten minutes before the curtain went up on the opening performance Hahn +was stricken with appendicitis. There was not even time to rush him to +New York. He was on the operating table before the second act was +begun. When he came out of the ether he said: "How did it go?" + +"Fine!" beamed the nurse. "You'll be out in two weeks." + +"Oh, hell! I don't mean the operation. I mean the play." + +He learned soon enough from the glowing, starry-eyed Sarah Haddon and +from every one connected with the play. He insisted on seeing them all +daily, against his doctor's orders, and succeeded in working up a +temperature that made his hospital stay a four weeks' affair. He refused +to take the tryout results as final. + +"Don't be too bubbly about this thing," he cautioned Sarah Haddon. "I've +seen too many plays that were skyrockets on the road come down like +sticks when they struck New York." + +The company stayed over in Atlantic City for a week, and Hahn held +scraps of rehearsals in his room when he had a temperature of 102. Sarah +Haddon worked like a slave. She seemed to realise that her great +opportunity had come--the opportunity for which hundreds of gifted +actresses wait a lifetime. Haddon was just twenty-eight then--a year +younger than Josie Fifer. She had not yet blossomed into the full +radiance of her beauty. She was too slender, and inclined to stoop a +bit, but her eyes were glorious, her skin petal-smooth, her whole face +reminding one, somehow, of an intelligent flower. Her voice was a +golden, liquid delight. + +Josie Fifer, dragging herself from bed to chair, and from chair to bed, +used to watch for her. Hahn's room was on her floor. Sarah Haddon, in +her youth and beauty and triumph, represented to Josie all that she had +dreamed of and never realised; all that she had hoped for and never +could know. She used to insist on having her door open, and she would +lie there for hours, her eyes fixed on that spot in the hall across +which Haddon would flash for one brief instant on her way to the room +down the corridor. There is about a successful actress a certain radiant +something--a glamour, a luxuriousness, an atmosphere that suggest a +mysterious mixture of silken things, of perfume, of adulation, of all +that is rare and costly and perishable and desirable. + +Josie Fifer's stage experience had included none of this. But she knew +they were there. She sensed that to this glorious artist would come all +those fairy gifts that Josie Fifer would never possess. All things about +her--her furs, her gloves, her walk, her hats, her voice, her very shoe +ties--were just what Josie would have wished for. As she lay there she +developed a certain grim philosophy. + +"She's got everything a woman could wish for. Me, I haven't got a thing. +Not a blamed thing! And yet they say everything works out in the end +according to some scheme or other. Well, what's the answer to this, I +wonder? I can't make it come out right. I guess one of the figures must +have got away from me." + +In the second week of Sid Hahn's convalescence he heard, somehow, of +Josie Fifer. It was characteristic of him that he sent for her. She put +a chiffon scarf about the neck of her skimpy little kimono, spent an +hour and ten minutes on her hair, made up outrageously with that sublime +unconsciousness that comes from too close familiarity with rouge pad and +grease jar, and went. She was trembling as though facing a first-night +audience in a part she wasn't up on. Between the crutches, the lameness, +and the trembling she presented to Sid Hahn, as she stood in the +doorway, a picture that stabbed his kindly, sensitive heart with a quick +pang of sympathy. + +He held out his hand. Josie's crept into it. At the feel of that +generous friendly clasp she stopped trembling. Said Hahn: + +"My nurse tells me that you can do a bedside burlesque of 'East Lynne' +that made even that Boston-looking interne with the thick glasses laugh. +Go on and do it for me, there's a good girl. I could use a laugh myself +just now." + +And Josie Fifer caught up a couch cover for a cloak, with the scarf that +was about her neck for a veil, and, using Hahn himself as the ailing +chee-ild, gave a biting burlesque of the famous bedside visit that +brought the tears of laughter to his eyes, and the nurse flying from +down the hall. "This won't do," said that austere person. + +"Won't, eh? Go on and stick your old thermometer in my mouth. What do I +care! A laugh like that is worth five degrees of temperature." + +When Josie rose to leave he eyed her keenly, and pointed to the dragging +leg. + +"How about that? Temporary or permanent?" + +"Permanent." + +"Oh, fudge! Who's telling you that? These days they can do--" + +"Not with this, though. That one bone was mashed into about twenty-nine +splinters, and when it came to putting 'em together again a couple of +pieces were missing. I must've mislaid 'em somewhere. Anyway, I make a +limping exit--for life." + +"Then no more stage for you--eh, my girl?" + +"No more stage." + +Hahn reached for a pad of paper on the table at his bedside, scrawled a +few words on it, signed it "S.H." in the fashion which became famous, +and held the paper out to her. + +"When you get out of here," he said, "you come to New York, and up to my +office; see? Give 'em this at the door. I've got a job for you--if you +want it." + +And that was how Josie Fifer came to take charge of the great Hahn & +Lohman storehouse. It was more than a storehouse. It was a museum. It +housed the archives of the American stage. If Hahn & Lohman prided +themselves on one thing more than on another, it was the lavish +generosity with which they invested a play, from costumes to carpets. A +period play was a period play when they presented it. You never saw a +French clock on a Dutch mantel in a Hahn & Lohman production. No hybrid +hangings marred their back drop. No matter what the play, the firm +provided its furnishings from the star's slippers to the chandeliers. +Did a play last a year or a week, at the end of its run furniture, +hangings, scenery, rugs, gowns, everything, went off in wagonloads to +the already crowded storehouse on East Forty-third Street. + +Sometimes a play proved so popular that its original costumes, outworn, +had to be renewed. Sometimes the public cried "Thumbs down!" at the +opening performance, and would have none of it thereafter. That meant +that costumes sometimes reached Josie Fifer while the wounds of the +dressmaker's needle still bled in them. And whether for a week or a year +fur on a Hahn & Lohman costume was real fur; its satin was silk-backed, +its lace real lace. No paste, or tinsel, or cardboard about H. & L.! +Josie Fifer could recall the scenes in a play, step by step from noting +with her keen eye the marks left on costume after costume by the ravages +of emotion. At the end of a play's run she would hold up a dress for +critical inspection, turning it this way and that. + +"This is the dress she wore in her big scene at the end of the second +act where she crawls on her knees to her wronged husband and pounds on +the door and weeps. She certainly did give it some hard wear. When +Marriott crawls she crawls, and when she bawls she bawls. I'll say that +for her. From the looks of this front breadth she must have worn a +groove in the stage at the York." + +No gently sentimental reason caused Hahn & Lohman to house these +hundreds of costumes, these tons of scenery, these forests of furniture. +Neither had Josie Fifer been hired to walk wistfully among them like a +spinster wandering in a dead rose garden. No, they were stored for a +much thriftier reason. They were stored, if you must know, for possible +future use. H. & L. were too clever not to use a last year's costume for +a this year's road show. They knew what a coat of enamel would do for a +bedroom set. It was Josie Fifer's duty not only to tabulate and care for +these relics, but to refurbish them when necessary. The sewing was done +by a little corps of assistants under Josie's direction. + +But all this came with the years. When Josie Fifer, white and weak, +first took charge of the H. & L. _lares et penates_, she told herself it +was only for a few months--a year or two at most. The end of sixteen +years found her still there. + +When she came to New York, "Splendour" was just beginning its phenomenal +three years' run. The city was mad about the play. People came to see +it again and again--a sure sign of a long run. The Sarah Haddon second-act +costume was photographed, copied (unsuccessfully), talked about, until +it became as familiar as a uniform. That costume had much to do +with the play's success, though Sarah Haddon would never admit it. +"Splendour" was what is known as a period play. The famous dress was of +black velvet, made with a quaint, full-gathered skirt that made Haddon's +slim waist seem fairylike and exquisitely supple. The black velvet +bodice outlined the delicate swell of the bust. A rope of pearls +enhanced the whiteness of her throat. Her hair, done in old-time +scallops about her forehead, was a gleaming marvel of simplicity, and +the despair of every woman who tried to copy it. The part was that of an +Italian opera singer. The play pulsated with romance and love, glamour +and tragedy. Sarah Haddon, in her flowing black velvet robe and her +pearls and her pallor, was an exotic, throbbing, exquisite realisation +of what every woman in the audience dreamed of being and every man +dreamed of loving. + +Josie Fifer saw the play for the first time from a balcony seat given +her by Sid Hahn. It left her trembling, red-eyed, shaken. After that she +used to see it, by hook or crook whenever possible. She used to come in +at the stage door and lurk back of the scenes and in the wings when she +had no business there. She invented absurd errands to take her to the +theatre where "Splendour" was playing. Sid Hahn always said that after +the big third-act scene he liked to watch the audience swim up the +aisle. Josie, hidden in the back-stage shadows, used to watch, +fascinated, breathless. Then, one night, she indiscreetly was led, by +her, absorbed interest, to venture too far into the wings. It was +during the scene where Haddon, hearing a broken-down street singer +cracking the golden notes of "Aïda" into a thousand mutilated fragments, +throws open her window and, leaning far out, pours a shower of Italian +and broken English and laughter and silver coin upon her amazed +compatriot below. + +When the curtain went down she came off raging. + +"What was that? Who was that standing in the wings? How dare any one +stand there! Everybody knows I can't have any one in the wings. Staring! +It ruined my scene to-night. Where's McCabe? Tell Mr. Hahn I want to see +him. Who was it? Staring at me like a ghost!" + +Josie had crept away, terrified, contrite, and yet resentful. But the +next week saw her back at the theatre, though she took care to stay in +the shadows. + +She was waiting for the black velvet dress. It was more than a dress to +her. It was infinitely more than a stage costume. It was the habit of +glory. It epitomised all that Josie Fifer had missed of beauty and +homage and success. + +The play ran on, and on, and on. Sarah Haddon was superstitious about +the black gown. She refused to give it up for a new one. She insisted +that if ever she discarded the old black velvet for a new the run of the +play would stop. She assured Hahn that its shabbiness did not show from +the front. She clung to it with that childish unreasonableness that is +so often found in people of the stage. + +But Josie waited patiently. Dozens of costumes passed through her +hands. She saw plays come and go. Dresses came to her whose lining bore +the mark of world-famous modistes. She hung them away, or refurbished +them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness. Sometimes her +caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the complacency of +the erstwhile wearers of the garments. Her knowledge of the stage, its +artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was widening and +deepening. No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening clothes was more +scathingly severe than she. She sewed on satin. She mended fine lace. +She polished stage jewels. And waited. She knew that one day her +patience would be rewarded. And then, at last came the familiar voice +over the phone: "Hello, Fifer! McCabe talking." + +"Well?" + +"'Splendour' closes Saturday. Haddon says she won't play in this heat. +They're taking it to London in the autumn. The stuff'll be up Monday, +early." + +Josie Fifer turned away from the telephone with a face so radiant that +one of her sewing women, looking up, was moved to comment. + +"Got some good news, Miss Fifer?" + +"'Splendour' closes this week." + +"Well, my land! To look at you a person would think you'd been losing +money at the box office every night it ran." + +The look was still on her face when Monday morning came. She was sewing +on a dress just discarded by Adelaide French, the tragédienne. +Adelaide's maid was said to be the hardest-worked woman in the +profession. When French finished with a costume it was useless as a +dress; but it was something historic, like a torn and tattered battle +flag--an emblem. + +McCabe, box under his arm, stood in the doorway. Josie Fifer stood up so +suddenly that the dress on her lap fell to the floor. She stepped over +it heedlessly, and went toward McCabe, her eyes on the pasteboard box. +Behind McCabe stood two more men, likewise box-laden. + +"Put them down here," said Josie. The men thumped the boxes down on the +long table. Josie's fingers were already at the strings. She opened the +first box, emptied its contents, tossed them aside, passed on to the +second. Her hands busied themselves among the silks and broadcloth of +this; then on to the third and last box. McCabe and his men, with +scenery and furniture still to unload and store, turned to go. Their +footsteps echoed hollowly as they clattered down the worn old stairway. +Josie snapped the cord that bound the third box. Her cheeks were +flushed, her eyes bright. She turned it upside down. Then she pawed it +over. Then she went back to the contents of the first two boxes, clawing +about among the limp garments with which the table was strewn. She was +breathing quickly. Suddenly: "It isn't here!" she cried. "It isn't +here!" She turned and flew to the stairway. The voices of the men came +up to her. She leaned far over the railing. "McCabe! McCabe!" + +"Yeh? What do you want?" + +"The black velvet dress! The black velvet dress! It isn't there." + +"Oh, yeh. That's all right. Haddon, she's got a bug about that dress, +and she says she wants to take it to London with her, to use on the +opening night. She says if she wears a new one that first night, the +play'll be a failure. Some temperament, that girl, since she's got to be +a star!" + +Josie stood clutching the railing of the stairway. Her disappointment +was so bitter that she could not weep. She felt cheated, outraged. She +was frightened at the intensity of her own sensations. "She might have +let me have it," she said aloud in the dim half light of the hallway. +"She's got everything else in the world. She might have let me have +that." + +Then she went back into the big, bright sewing room. "Splendour" ran +three years in London. + +During those three years she saw Sid Hahn only three or four times. He +spent much of his time abroad. Whenever opportunity presented itself she +would say: "Is 'Splendour' still playing in London?" + +"Still playing." + +The last time Hahn, intuitive as always, had eyed her curiously. "You +seem to be interested in that play." + +"Oh, well," Josie had replied with assumed carelessness, "it being in +Atlantic City just when I had my accident, and then meeting you through +that, and all, why, I always kind of felt a personal interest in it." ... + +At the end of three years Sarah Haddon returned to New York with an +English accent, a slight embonpoint, and a little foreign habit of +rushing up to her men friends with a delighted exclamation (preferably +French) and kissing them on both cheeks. When Josie Fifer, happening +back stage at a rehearsal of the star's new play, first saw her do this +a grim gleam came into her eyes. + +"Bernhardt's the only woman who can spring that and get away with it," +she said to her assistant. "Haddon's got herself sized up wrong. I'll +gamble her next play will be a failure." + +And it was. + +The scenery, props, and costumes of the London production of "Splendour" +were slow in coming back. But finally they did come. Josie received them +with the calmness that comes of hope deferred. It had been three years +since she last saw the play. She told herself, chidingly, that she had +been sort of foolish over that play and this costume. Her recent glimpse +of Haddon had been somewhat disillusioning. But now, when she finally +held the gown itself in her hand--the original "Splendour" second-act +gown, a limp, soft black mass: just a few yards of worn and shabby +velvet--she found her hands shaking. Here was where she had hugged the +toy dog to her breast. Here where she had fallen on her knees to pray +before the little shrine in her hotel room. Every worn spot had a +meaning for her. Every mark told a story. Her fingers smoothed it +tenderly. + +"Not much left of that," said one of the sewing girls, glancing up. "I +guess Sarah would have a hard time making the hooks and eyes meet now. +They say she's come home from London looking a little too prosperous." + +Josie did not answer. She folded the dress over her arm and carried it +to the wardrobe room. There she hung it away in an empty closet, quite +apart from the other historic treasures. And there it hung, untouched, +until the following Sunday. + +On Sunday morning East Forty-third Street bears no more resemblance to +the week-day Forty-third than does a stiffly starched and subdued +Sabbath-school scholar to his Monday morning self. Strangely quiet it +is, and unfrequented. Josie Fifer, scurrying along in the unwonted +stillness, was prompted to throw a furtive glance over her shoulder now +and then, as though afraid of being caught at some criminal act. She ran +up the little flight of steps with a rush, unlocked the door with +trembling fingers, and let herself into the cool, dank gloom of the +storehouse hall. The metal door of the elevator stared inquiringly after +her. She fled past it to the stairway. Every step of that ancient +structure squeaked and groaned. First floor, second, third, fourth. The +everyday hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be +holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the +worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to +see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, +wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast +room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous +little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a +near-by table and disappeared into the wardrobe room beyond. + +Minutes passed--an hour. She did not come back. From the room beyond +came strange sounds--a woman's voice; the thrill of a song; cries; the +anguish of tears; laughter, harsh and high, as a desperate and deceived +woman laughs--all this following in such rapid succession that Sid Hahn, +puffing laboriously up the four flights of stairs leading to the +wardrobe floor, entered the main room unheard. Unknown to any one, he +was indulging in one of his unsuspected visits to the old wareroom that +housed the evidence of past and gone successes--successes that had +brought him fortune and fame, but little real happiness, perhaps. No one +knew that he loved to browse among these pathetic rags of a forgotten +triumph. No one would have dreamed that this chubby little man could +glow and weep over the cast-off garment of a famous Cyrano, or the faded +finery of a Zaza. + +At the doorway he paused now, startled. He was listening with every +nerve of his taut body. What? Who? He tiptoed across the room with a +step incredibly light for one so stout, peered cautiously around the +side of the doorway, and leaned up against it weakly. Josie Fifer, in +the black velvet and mock pearls of "Splendour," with her grey-streaked +blonde hair hidden under the romantic scallops of a black wig, was +giving the big scene from the third act. And though it sounded like a +burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever +as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black +wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy +awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in +Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. He shrank back now. + +She was coming to the big speech at the close of the act--the big +renunciation speech that was the curtain. Sid Hahn turned and tiptoed +painfully, breathlessly, magnificently, out of the big front room, into +the hallway, down the creaking stairs, and so to the sunshine of +Forty-third Street, with its unaccustomed Sunday-morning quiet. And he +was smiling that rare and melting smile of his--the smile that was said +to make him look something like a kewpie, and something like a cupid, +and a bit like an imp, and very much like an angel. There was little of +the first three in it now, and very much of the last. And so he got +heavily into his very grand motor car and drove off. + +"Why, the poor little kid," said he--"the poor, lonely, stifled little +crippled-up kid." + +"I beg your pardon, sir?" inquired his chauffeur. + +"Speak when you're spoken to," snapped Sid Hahn. + +And here it must be revealed to you that Sid Hahn did not marry the +Cinderella of the storage warehouse. He did not marry anybody, and +neither did Josie. And yet there is a bit more to this story--ten years +more, if you must know--ten years, the end of which found Josie a +sparse, spectacled, and agile little cripple, as alert and caustic as +ever. It found Sid Hahn the most famous theatrical man of his day. It +found Sarah Haddon at the fag-end of a career that had blazed with +triumph and adulation. She had never had a success like "Splendour." +Indeed, there were those who said that all the plays that followed had +been failures, carried to semi-success on the strength of that play's +glorious past. She eschewed low-cut gowns now. She knew that it is the +telltale throat which first shows the marks of age. She knew, too, why +Bernhardt, in "Camille," always died in a high-necked nightgown. She +took to wearing high, ruffled things about her throat, and softening, +kindly chiffons. + +And then, in a mistaken moment, they planned a revival of "Splendour." +Sarah Haddon would again play the part that had become a classic. +Fathers had told their children of it--of her beauty, her golden voice, +the exquisite grace of her, the charm, the tenderness, the pathos. And +they told them of the famous black velvet dress, and how in it she had +moved like a splendid, buoyant bird. + +So they revived "Splendour." And men and women brought their sons and +daughters to see. And what they saw was a stout, middle-aged woman in a +too-tight black velvet dress that made her look like a dowager. And when +this woman flopped down on her knees in the big scene at the close of +the last act she had a rather dreadful time of it getting up again. +And the audience, resentful, bewildered, cheated of a precious memory, +laughed. That laugh sealed the career of Sarah Haddon. It is a +fickle thing, this public that wants to be amused; fickle and cruel +and--paradoxically enough--true to its superstitions. The Sarah Haddon +of eighteen years ago was one of these. They would have none of this +fat, puffy, ample-bosomed woman who was trying to blot her picture from +their memory. "Away with her!" cried the critics through the columns of +next morning's paper. And Sarah Haddon's day was done. + +"It's because I didn't wear the original black velvet dress!" cried she, +with the unreasoning rage for which she had always been famous. "If I +had worn it, everything would have been different. That dress had a +good-luck charm. Where is it? I want it. I don't care if they do take +off the play. I want it. I want it." + +"Why, child," Sid Hahn said soothingly, "that dress has probably fallen +into dust by this time." + +"Dust! What do you mean? How old do you think I am? That you should say +that to me! I've made millions for you, and now--" + +"Now, now, Sally, be a good girl. That's all rot about that dress being +lucky. You've grown out of this part; that's all. We'll find another +play--" + +"I want that dress." + +Sid Hahn flushed uncomfortably. "Well, if you must know, I gave it +away." + +"To whom?" + +"To--to Josie Fifer. She took a notion to it, and so I told her she +could have it." Then, as Sarah Haddon rose, dried her eyes, and began to +straighten her hat: "Where are you going?" He trailed her to the door +worriedly. "Now, Sally, don't do anything foolish. You're just tired and +overstrung. Where are you--" + +"I am going to see Josie Fifer." + +"Now, look here, Sarah!" + +But she was off, and Sid Hahn could only follow after, the showman in +him anticipating the scene that was to follow. When he reached the +fourth floor of the storehouse Sarah Haddon was there ahead of him. The +two women--one tall, imperious, magnificent in furs; the other shrunken, +deformed, shabby--stood staring at each other from opposites sides of +the worktable. And between them, in a crumpled, grey-black heap, lay the +velvet gown. + +"I don't care who says you can have it," Josie Fifer's shrill voice was +saying. "It's mine, and I'm going to keep it. Mr. Hahn himself gave it +to me. He said I could cut it up for a dress or something if I wanted +to. Long ago." Then, as Sid Hahn himself appeared, she appealed to him. +"There he is now. Didn't you, Mr. Hahn? Didn't you say I could have it? +Years ago?" + +"Yes, Jo," said Sid Hahn. "It's yours, to do with as you wish." + +Sarah Haddon, who never had been denied anything in all her pampered +life, turned to him now. Her bosom rose and fell. She was breathing +sharply. "But S.H.!" she cried, "S.H., I've got to have it. Don't you +see, I want it! It's all I've got left in the world of what I used to +be. I want it!" She began to cry, and it was not acting. + +Josie Fifer stood staring at her, her eyes wide with horror and +unbelief. + +"Why, say, listen! Listen! You can have it. I didn't know you wanted it +as bad as that. Why, you can have it. I want you to take it. Here." + +She shoved it across the table. Sarah reached out for it quickly. She +rolled it up in a tight bundle and whisked off with it without a +backward glance at Josie or at Hahn. She was still sobbing as she went +down the stairs. + +The two stood staring at each other ludicrously. Hahn spoke first. + +"I'm sorry, Josie. That was nice of you, giving it to her like that." + +But Josie did not seem to hear. At least she paid no attention to his +remark. She was staring at him with that dazed and wide-eyed look of +one upon whom a great truth has just dawned. Then, suddenly, she began +to laugh. She laughed a high, shrill laugh that was not so much an +expression of mirth as of relief. + +Sid Hahn put up a pudgy hand in protest. "Josie! Please! For the love of +Heaven don't _you_ go and get it. I've had to do with one hysterical +woman to-day. Stop that laughing! Stop it!" + +Josie stopped, not abruptly, but in a little series of recurring +giggles. Then these subsided and she was smiling. It wasn't at all her +usual smile. The bitterness was quite gone from it. She faced Sid Hahn +across the table. Her palms were outspread, as one who would make things +plain. "I wasn't hysterical. I was just laughing. I've been about +seventeen years earning that laugh. Don't grudge it to me." + +"Let's have the plot," said Hahn. + +"There isn't any. You see, it's just--well, I've just discovered how it +works out. After all these years! She's had everything she wanted all +her life. And me, I've never had anything. Not a thing. She's travelled +one way, and I've travelled in the opposite direction, and where has it +brought us? Here we are, both fighting over an old black velvet rag. +Don't you see? Both wanting the same--" She broke off, with the little +twisted smile on her lips again. "Life's a strange thing, Mr. Hahn." + +"I hope, Josie, you don't claim any originality for that remark," +replied Sid Hahn dryly. + +"But," argued the editor, "you don't call this a cheerful story, I +hope." + +"Well, perhaps not exactly boisterous. But it teaches a lesson, and all +that. And it's sort of philosophical and everything, don't you think?" + +The editor shuffled the sheets together decisively, so that they formed +a neat sheaf. "I'm afraid I didn't make myself quite clear. It's +entertaining, and all that, but--ah--in view of our present needs, I'm +sorry to say we--" + + + + +II + + +THE GAY OLD DOG + +Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago, Illinois +(this is not a humorous story), are familiar with the region known as +the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point +between New York and San Francisco there is presented this brief +explanation: + +The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron +arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would +be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from +Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete +circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels, +the theatres, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (diluted) and the +Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And he who frequents it by night in +search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound. + +Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights +granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third +row, aisle, left. When a new loop café was opened Jo's table always +commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing. On entering +he was wont to say, "Hello, Gus," with careless cordiality to the head +waiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to table as he +removed his gloves. He ordered things under glass, so that his table, at +midnight or thereabouts, resembled a hot-bed that favours the bell +system. The waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes his +own salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice, +lemon, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite +of it. People at near-by tables would lay down their knives and forks to +watch, fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie in using all the oil +in sight and calling for more. + +That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, +roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth +that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist +belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up +Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb +with a jaunty youthfulness against which every one of his fat-encased +muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending on one's +vision. + +The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz. He had +been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and harassed brother of +three unwed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of how Jo +Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be compressed within the +limits of a short story. It should be told as are the photo plays, with +frequent throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of +a man's life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal +economy amounting to parsimony. + +At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the +wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who +called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now +and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that +had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving +him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a +three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a +fixture. + +Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously +made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the +living. + +"Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls." + +"I will, Ma," Jo had choked. + +"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the +girls are all provided for." Then as Joe had hesitated, appalled: "Joey, +it's my dying wish. Promise!" + +"I promise, Ma," he had said. + +Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a +completely ruined life. + +They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too. +That is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over +on the West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way. +She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated +steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it--or +fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle +knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a +mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads +of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went +home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress. +Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't +really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like +Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of +its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she +affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with a rose stuck +through it. + +Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household +leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept +house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the family +beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her sleep until +ten. + +This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was +an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't +consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put +you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of three sisters, it +means that you must constantly be calling for, escorting, or dropping +one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's age were standing before their +mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while +they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon +for a shot-silk, and at the last moment decided against the shot-silk in +favor of a plain black-and-white, because she had once said she +preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his feathers +for conquest, was saying: + +"Well, my God, I _am_ hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I just got +home. You girls have been laying around the house all day. No wonder +you're ready." + +He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a time +when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and brilliant-hued +socks, according to the style of that day, and the inalienable right of +any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those rare occasions when +his business necessitated an out-of-town trip, he would spend half a day +floundering about the shops, selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, or +feathers, or fans, or gloves for the girls. They always turned out to be +the wrong kind, judging by their reception. + +From Carrie, "What in the world do I want of a fan!" + +"I thought you didn't have one," Jo would say. + +"I haven't. I never go to dances." + +Jo would pass a futile hand over the top of his head, as was his way +when disturbed. "I just thought you'd like one. I thought every girl +liked a fan. Just," feebly, "just to--to have." + +"Oh, for pity's sake!" + +And from Eva or Babe, "I've _got_ silk stockings, Jo." Or, "You brought +me handkerchiefs the last time." + +There was something selfish in his giving, as there always is in any +gift freely and joyfully made. They never suspected the exquisite +pleasure it gave him to select these things; these fine, soft, silken +things. There were many things about this slow-going, amiable brother of +theirs that they never suspected. If you had told them he was a dreamer +of dreams, for example, they would have been amused. Sometimes, +dead-tired by nine o'clock, after a hard day down town, he would doze +over the evening paper. At intervals he would wake, red-eyed, to a +snatch of conversation such as, "Yes, but if you get a blue you can wear +it anywhere. It's dressy, and at the same time it's quiet, too." Eva, +the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring +dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old +smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had +banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, +and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening +clothes. The kind of man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a +toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in +a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was +transformed into a brocaded and chandeliered rendezvous for the +brilliance of the city. Beauty was here, and wit. But none so beautiful +and witty as She. Mrs.--er--Jo Hertz. There was wine, of course; but no +vulgar display. There was music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter. And +he the gracious, tactful host, king of his own domain-- + +"Jo, for heaven's sake, if you're going to snore go to bed!" + +"Why--did I fall asleep?" + +"You haven't been doing anything else all evening. A person would think +you were fifty instead of thirty." + +And Jo Hertz was again just the dull, grey, commonplace brother of three +well-meaning sisters. + +Babe used to say petulantly, "Jo, why don't you ever bring home any of +your men friends? A girl might as well not have any brother, all the +good you do." + +Jo, conscience-stricken, did his best to make amends. But a man who +has been petticoat-ridden for years loses the knack, somehow, of +comradeship with men. He acquires, too, a knowledge of women, and +a distaste for them, equalled only, perhaps, by that of an +elevator-starter in a department store. + +Which brings us to one Sunday in May. Jo came home from a late Sunday +afternoon walk to find company for supper. Carrie often had in one of +her school-teacher friends, or Babe one of her frivolous intimates, or +even Eva a staid guest of the old-girl type. There was always a Sunday +night supper of potato salad, and cold meat, and coffee, and perhaps a +fresh cake. Jo rather enjoyed it, being a hospitable soul. But he +regarded the guests with the undazzled eyes of a man to whom they were +just so many petticoats, timid of the night streets and requiring escort +home. If you had suggested to him that some of his sisters' popularity +was due to his own presence, or if you had hinted that the more +kittenish of these visitors were probably making eyes at him, he would +have stared in amazement and unbelief. + +This Sunday night it turned out to be one of Carrie's friends. + +"Emily," said Carrie, "this is my brother, Jo." + +Jo had learned what to expect in Carrie's friends. Drab-looking women in +the late thirties, whose facial lines all slanted downward. + +"Happy to meet you," said Jo, and looked down at a different sort +altogether. A most surprisingly different sort, for one of Carrie's +friends. This Emily person was very small, and fluffy, and blue-eyed, +and sort of--well, crinkly looking. You know. The corners of her mouth +when she smiled, and her eyes when she looked up at you, and her hair, +which was brown, but had the miraculous effect, somehow, of being +golden. + +Jo shook hands with her. Her hand was incredibly small, and soft, so +that you were afraid of crushing it, until you discovered she had a firm +little grip all her own. It surprised and amused you, that grip, as does +a baby's unexpected clutch on your patronising forefinger. As Jo felt it +in his own big clasp, the strangest thing happened to him. Something +inside Jo Hertz stopped working for a moment, then lurched sickeningly, +then thumped like mad. It was his heart. He stood staring down at her, +and she up at him, until the others laughed. Then their hands fell +apart, lingeringly. + +"Are you a school-teacher, Emily?" he said. + +"Kindergarten. It's my first year. And don't call me Emily, please." + +"Why not? It's your name. I think it's the prettiest name in the world." +Which he hadn't meant to say at all. In fact, he was perfectly aghast to +find himself saying it. But he meant it. + +At supper he passed her things, and stared, until everybody laughed +again, and Eva said acidly, "Why don't you feed her?" + +It wasn't that Emily had an air of helplessness. She just made you feel +you wanted her to be helpless, so that you could help her. + +Jo took her home, and from that Sunday night he began to strain at the +leash. He took his sisters out, dutifully, but he would suggest, with a +carelessness that deceived no one, "Don't you want one of your girl +friends to come along? That little What's-her-name--Emily, or something. +So long's I've got three of you, I might as well have a full squad." + +For a long time he didn't know what was the matter with him. He only +knew he was miserable, and yet happy. Sometimes his heart seemed to ache +with an actual physical ache. He realised that he wanted to do things +for Emily. He wanted to buy things for Emily--useless, pretty, expensive +things that he couldn't afford. He wanted to buy everything that Emily +needed, and everything that Emily desired. He wanted to marry Emily. +That was it. He discovered that one day, with a shock, in the midst of a +transaction in the harness business. He stared at the man with whom he +was dealing until that startled person grew uncomfortable. + +"What's the matter, Hertz?" + +"Matter?" + +"You look as if you'd seen a ghost or found a gold mine. I don't know +which." + +"Gold mine," said Jo. And then, "No. Ghost." + +For he remembered that high, thin voice, and his promise. And the +harness business was slithering downhill with dreadful rapidity, as the +automobile business began its amazing climb. Jo tried to stop it. But he +was not that kind of business man. It never occurred to him to jump out +of the down-going vehicle and catch the up-going one. He stayed on, +vainly applying brakes that refused to work. + +"You know, Emily, I couldn't support two households now. Not the way +things are. But if you'll wait. If you'll only wait. The girls +might--that is, Babe and Carrie--" + +She was a sensible little thing, Emily. "Of course I'll wait. But we +mustn't just sit back and let the years go by. We've got to help." + +She went about it as if she were already a little match-making matron. +She corralled all the men she had ever known and introduced them to +Babe, Carrie, and Eva separately, in pairs, and _en masse_. She arranged +parties at which Babe could display the curl. She got up picnics. She +stayed home while Jo took the three about. When she was present she +tried to look as plain and obscure as possible, so that the sisters +should show up to advantage. She schemed, and planned, and contrived, +and hoped; and smiled into Jo's despairing eyes. + +And three years went by. Three precious years. Carrie still taught +school, and hated it. Eva kept house, more and more complainingly as +prices advanced and allowance retreated. Stell was still Babe, the +family beauty; but even she knew that the time was past for curls. +Emily's hair, somehow, lost its glint and began to look just plain +brown. Her crinkliness began to iron out. + +"Now, look here!" Jo argued, desperately, one night. "We could be happy, +anyway. There's plenty of room at the house. Lots of people begin that +way. Of course, I couldn't give you all I'd like to, at first. But +maybe, after a while--" + +No dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed servitors, and satin +damask now. Just two rooms, all their own, all alone, and Emily to work +for. That was his dream. But it seemed less possible than that other +absurd one had been. + +You know that Emily was as practical a little thing as she looked +fluffy. She knew women. Especially did she know Eva, and Carrie, and +Babe. She tried to imagine herself taking the household affairs and the +housekeeping pocketbook out of Eva's expert hands. Eva had once +displayed to her a sheaf of aigrettes she had bought with what she saved +out of the housekeeping money. So then she tried to picture herself +allowing the reins of Jo's house to remain in Eva's hands. And +everything feminine and normal in her rebelled. Emily knew she'd want to +put away her own freshly laundered linen, and smooth it, and pat it. She +was that kind of woman. She knew she'd want to do her own delightful +haggling with butcher and vegetable pedlar. She knew she'd want to muss +Jo's hair, and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with him, if necessary, +without the awareness of three ever-present pairs of maiden eyes and +ears. + +"No! No! We'd only be miserable. I know. Even if they didn't object. And +they would, Jo. Wouldn't they?" + +His silence was miserable assent. Then, "But you do love me, don't you, +Emily?" + +"I do, Jo. I love you--and love you--and love you. But, Jo, I--can't." + +"I know it, dear. I knew it all the time, really. I just thought, maybe, +somehow--" + +The two sat staring for a moment into space, their hands clasped. Then +they both shut their eyes, with a little shudder, as though what they +saw was terrible to look upon. Emily's hand, the tiny hand that was so +unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his, and his crushed the absurd +fingers until she winced with pain. + +That was the beginning of the end, and they knew it. + +Emily wasn't the kind of girl who would be left to pine. There are too +many Jo's in the world whose hearts are prone to lurch and then thump at +the feel of a soft, fluttering, incredibly small hand in their grip. One +year later Emily was married to a young man whose father owned a large, +pie-shaped slice of the prosperous state of Michigan. + +That being safely accomplished, there was something grimly humorous in +the trend taken by affairs in the old house on Calumet. For Eva +married. Of all people, Eva! Married well, too, though he was a great +deal older than she. She went off in a hat she had copied from a French +model at Field's, and a suit she had contrived with a home dressmaker, +aided by pressing on the part of the little tailor in the basement over +on Thirty-first Street. It was the last of that, though. The next time +they saw her, she had on a hat that even she would have despaired of +copying, and a suit that sort of melted into your gaze. She moved to the +North Side (trust Eva for that), and Babe assumed the management of the +household on Calumet Avenue. It was rather a pinched little household +now, for the harness business shrank and shrank. + +"I don't see how you can expect me to keep house decently on this!" Babe +would say contemptuously. Babe's nose, always a little inclined to +sharpness, had whittled down to a point of late. "If you knew what Ben +gives Eva." + +"It's the best I can do, Sis. Business is something rotten." + +"Ben says if you had the least bit of--" Ben was Eva's husband, and +quotable, as are all successful men. + +"I don't care what Ben says," shouted Jo, goaded into rage. "I'm sick of +your everlasting Ben. Go and get a Ben of your own, why don't you, if +you're so stuck on the way he does things." + +And Babe did. She made a last desperate drive, aided by Eva, and she +captured a rather surprised young man in the brokerage way, who had made +up his mind not to marry for years and years. Eva wanted to give her her +wedding things, but at that Jo broke into sudden rebellion. + +"No sir! No Ben is going to buy my sister's wedding clothes, understand? +I guess I'm not broke--yet. I'll furnish the money for her things, and +there'll be enough of them, too." + +Babe had as useless a trousseau, and as filled with extravagant +pink-and-blue and lacy and frilly things as any daughter of doting +parents. Jo seemed to find a grim pleasure in providing them. But it +left him pretty well pinched. After Babe's marriage (she insisted that +they call her Estelle now) Jo sold the house on Calumet. He and Carrie +took one of those little flats that were springing up, seemingly over +night, all through Chicago's South Side. + +There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She had given up teaching two +years before, and had gone into Social Service work on the West Side. +She had what is known as a legal mind--hard, clear, orderly--and she +made a great success of it. Her dream was to live at the Settlement +House and give all her time to the work. Upon the little household she +bestowed a certain amount of grim, capable attention. It was the same +kind of attention she would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling +and running had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't +hesitate to say so. + +Jo took to prowling about department store basements, and household +goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain in a ham, or a sack +of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a window clamp, or a new kind +of paring knife. He was forever doing odd little jobs that the janitor +should have done. It was the domestic in him claiming its own. + +Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery +cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she called a +plain talk. + +"Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant resident +worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know fifty other girls +who'd give their ears for it. I go in next month." + +They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then he glanced +around the little dining room, with its ugly tan walls and its heavy, +dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted cumbersomely into the +five-room flat). + +"Away? Away from here, you mean--to live?" Carrie laid down her fork. +"Well, really, Jo! After all that explanation." + +"But to go over there to live! Why, that neighbourhood's full of dirt, +and disease, and crime, and the Lord knows what all. I can't let you do +that, Carrie." + +Carrie's chin came up. She laughed a short little laugh. "Let me! +That's eighteenth-century talk, Jo. My life's my own to live. I'm +going." + +And she went. + +Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was up. Then he sold what +furniture he could, stored or gave away the rest, and took a room on +Michigan Avenue in one of the old stone mansions whose decayed splendour +was being put to such purpose. + +Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and go. And he +found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or +go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a +thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged +woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In +the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But +he grows flabby where she grows lean. + +Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva's, and on Sunday noon at +Stell's. He tucked his napkin under his chin and openly enjoyed the +home-made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner he tried to talk +business with Eva's husband, or Stell's. His business talks were the +old-fashioned kind, beginning: + +"Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance your raw hides and leathers." + +But Ben and George didn't want to "take, f'rinstance, your raw hides and +leathers." They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf, +or politics or stocks. They were the modern type of business man who +prefers to leave his work out of his play. Business, with them, was a +profession--a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's +clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great +criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would +listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first +chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at +their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with +good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by +almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who +is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and +one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a +bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and +unsatisfied. + +Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry. + +"It isn't natural," Eva told him. "I never saw a man who took so little +interest in women." + +"Me!" protested Jo, almost shyly. "Women!" + +"Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened schoolboy." + +So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting +age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between thirty-six and +forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, +and classes, and politics, and economics, and boards. They rather +terrified Jo. He didn't understand much that they talked about, and he +felt humbly inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had +passed him by. He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him +not to bother, and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not +only of going home quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture +to any highwayman or brawler who might molest them. + +The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her, Jo?" + +"Like who?" Jo would spar feebly. + +"Miss Matthews." + +"Who's she?" + +"Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean the girl who was +here for dinner. The one who talked so well on the emigration question. + +"Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to be a smart woman." + +"Smart! She's a perfectly splendid girl." + +"Sure," Jo would agree cheerfully. + +"But didn't you like her?" + +"I can't say I did, Eve. And I can't say I didn't. She made me think a +lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader. Name of Himes. As I recall +her, she must have been a fine woman. But I never thought of her as a +woman at all. She was just Teacher." + +"You make me tired," snapped Eva impatiently. "A man of your age. You +don't expect to marry a girl, do you? A child!" + +"I don't expect to marry anybody," Jo had answered. + +And that was the truth, lonely though he often was. + +The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. Any one who got the meaning +of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a north-shore suburb, +and a house. Eva's daughter, Ethel, was growing up, and her mother had +an eye on society. + +That did away with Jo's Thursday dinner. Then Stell's husband bought a +car. They went out into the country every Sunday. Stell said it was +getting so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway. Besides, they +were unhealthy, old-fashioned things. They always meant to ask Jo to +come along, but by the time their friends were placed, and the lunch, +and the boxes, and sweaters, and George's camera, and everything, there +seemed to be no room for a man of Jo's bulk. So that eliminated the +Sunday dinners. + +"Just drop in any time during the week," Stell said, "for dinner. Except +Wednesday--that's our bridge night--and Saturday. And, of course, +Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don't wait for me to phone." + +And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those +you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up +against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with +indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through the +brazen plate-glass window. + +And then came the War. The war that spelled death and destruction to +millions. The war that brought a fortune to Jo Hertz, and transformed +him, over night, from a baggy-kneed old bachelor, whose business was a +failure, to a prosperous manufacturer whose only trouble was the +shortage in hides for the making of his product--leather! The armies of +Europe called for it. Harnesses! More harnesses! Straps! Millions of +straps. More! More! + +The musty old harness business over on Lake Street was magically changed +from a dust-covered, dead-alive concern to an orderly hive that hummed +and glittered with success. Orders poured in. Jo Hertz had inside +information on the War. He knew about troops and horses. He talked +with French and English and Italian buyers--noblemen, many of +them--commissioned by their countries to get American-made supplies. And +now, when he said to Ben or George, "Take f'rinstance your raw hides and +leathers," they listened with respectful attention. + +And then began the gay-dog business in the life of Jo Hertz. He +developed into a Loop-hound, ever keen on the scent of fresh pleasure. +That side of Jo Hertz which had been repressed and crushed and ignored +began to bloom, unhealthily. At first he spent money on his rather +contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, +and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and +there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way +he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. +He explained it. + +"Just turn it on. Ice-water! Any hour of the day or night." + +He bought a car. Naturally. A glittering affair; in colour a bright +blue, with pale blue leather straps and a great deal of gold fittings, +and wire wheels. Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would +use, rather than an elderly business man. You saw him driving about in +it, red-faced and rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in +the Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when +doubtful and roving-eyed matrons in kolinsky capes are wont to +congregate to sip pale amber drinks. Actors grew to recognise the +semi-bald head and the shining, round, good-natured face looming out at +them from the dim well of the parquet, and sometimes, in a musical show, +they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could pick out the +critics as they came down the aisle, and even had a nodding acquaintance +with two of them. + +"Kelly, of the _Herald_," he would say carelessly. "Bean, of the _Trib_. +They're all afraid of him." + +So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he might have been called a +Man About Town. + +And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. So he searched about in his +mind and brought from the dim past the memory of the luxuriously +furnished establishment of which he used to dream in the evenings when +he dozed over his paper in the old house on Calumet. So he rented an +apartment, many-roomed and expensive, with a man-servant in charge, and +furnished it in styles and periods ranging through all the Louises. The +living room was mostly rose colour. It was like an unhealthy and bloated +boudoir. And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight +of this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury +of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naïve indulgence of +long-starved senses, and there was in it a great resemblance to the +rolling eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking his lips over an all-day +sucker. + +The War went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll in--a +flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on shopping bent, entered +a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on Michigan Avenue. Exclusive, +that is, in price. Eva's weakness, you may remember, was hats. She was +seeking a hat now. She described what she sought with a languid +conciseness, and stood looking about her after the saleswoman had +vanished in quest of it. The room was becomingly rose-illumined and +somewhat dim, so that some minutes had passed before she realised that a +man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five feet away--a man with +a walking stick, and yellow gloves, and tan spats, and a check suit--was +her brother Jo. From him Eva's wild-eyed glance leaped to the woman who +was trying on hats before one of the many long mirrors. She was seated, +and a saleswoman was exclaiming discreetly at her elbow. + +Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning, +hat-laden. "Not to-day," she gasped. "I'm feeling ill. Suddenly." And +almost ran from the room. + +That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone +pidgin-English devised by every family of married sisters as protection +against the neighbours and Central. Translated, it ran thus: + +"He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought I'd die! But at least he +had sense enough not to speak. She was one of those limp, willowy +creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a +baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to get her hands on those +hats. I saw it all in one awful minute. You know the way I do. I suppose +some people would call her pretty. I don't. And her colour! Well! And +the most expensive-looking hats. Aigrettes, and paradise, and feathers. +Not one of them under seventy-five. Isn't it disgusting! At his age! +Suppose Ethel had been with me!" + +The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a restaurant. She said it +spoiled her evening. And the third time it was Ethel. She was one of the +guests at a theatre party given by Nicky Overton II. You know. The North +Shore Overtons. Lake Forest. They came in late, and occupied the entire +third row at the opening performance of "Believe Me!" And Ethel was +Nicky's partner. She was glowing like a rose. When the lights went up +after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of +her with what she afterward described as a blonde. Then her uncle had +turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that +spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had turned +to face forward again, quickly. + +"Who's the old bird?" Nicky had asked. Ethel had pretended not to hear, +so he had asked again. + +"My Uncle," Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and +down to her throat. Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had +gone up ever so slightly. + +It spoiled Ethel's evening. More than that, as she told her mother of it +later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life. + +Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate, kimonoed hour that +precedes bedtime. She gesticulated heatedly with her hair brush. + +"It's disgusting, that's what it is. Perfectly disgusting. There's no +fool like an old fool. Imagine! A creature like that. At his time of +life." + +There exists a strange and loyal kinship among men. "Well, I don't +know," Ben said now, and even grinned a little. "I suppose a boy's got +to sow his wild oats some time." + +"Don't be any more vulgar than you can help," Eva retorted. "And I +think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy +interested in Ethel." + +"If he's interested in her," Ben blundered, "I guess the fact that +Ethel's uncle went to the theatre with some one who wasn't Ethel's aunt +won't cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will +it?" + +"All right," Eva had retorted. "If you're not man enough to stop it, +I'll have to, that's all. I'm going up there with Stell this week." + +They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his apartment +when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his +master home to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva arranged +to meet Stell in town. They would drive to Jo's apartment together, and +wait for him there. + +When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of the +American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard +was a billowing, surging mass: Flags, pennants, banners crowds. All the +elements that make for demonstration. And over the whole--quiet. No +holiday crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient +hours to see the khaki-clads go by. Three years of indefatigable reading +had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to. + +"Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped. + +"Nicky Overton's only nineteen, thank goodness." + +Their car was caught in the jam. When they moved at all it was by +inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, +nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they waited. + +No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the +relieved houseman. + +Jo's home has already been described to you. Stell and Eva, sunk in +rose-coloured cushions, viewed it with disgust, and some mirth. They +rather avoided each other's eyes. + +"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of +the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings, +and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, restlessly. She picked up +a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and +wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she +turned and passed into Jo's bedroom. And there you knew Jo for what he +was. + +This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the +clean-minded and simple-hearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury +with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any +house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual +furniture was panelled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been +the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that +stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a +pink tarleton _danseuse_ who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of +those wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be +hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military +brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly +stack of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and +gave a little gasp. One of them was on gardening. + +"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the War, by an +Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep. +His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe-tree in +every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked +so human. Eva shut the door on them, quickly. Some bottles on the +dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such as a man uses who is growing +bald and is panic-stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall. +Some rhubarb-and-soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a little +box of pepsin tablets. + +"Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night," Eva said, and +wandered out into the rose-coloured front room again with the air of one +who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell +followed her furtively. + +"Where do you suppose he can be?" she demanded. "It's"--she glanced at +her wrist--"why, it's after six!" + +And then there was a little click. The two women sat up, tense. The door +opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room +stood up. + +"Why--Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn't you let me know?" + +"We were just about to leave. We thought you weren't coming home." + +Joe came in, slowly. + +"I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys go by." He sat down, +heavily. The light from the window fell on him. And you saw that his +eyes were red. + +And you'll have to learn why. He had found himself one of the thousands +in the jam on Michigan Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb, +where his big frame shut off the view of the unfortunates behind him. He +waited with the placid interest of one who has subscribed to all the +funds and societies to which a prosperous, middle-aged business man is +called upon to subscribe in war time. Then, just as he was about to +leave, impatient at the delay, the crowd had cried, with a queer +dramatic, exultant note in its voice, "Here they come! Here come the +boys!" + +Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a +mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all +indignant resentment. "Say, looka here!" + +The little fists kept up their frantic beating and pushing. And a +voice--a choked, high little voice--cried, "Let me by! I can't see! You +man, you! You big fat man! My boy's going by--to war--and I can't see! +Let me by!" + +Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He looked down. And +upturned to him in agonised appeal was the face of little Emily. They +stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really +only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around +Emily's waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk +protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She was breathing +rapidly, as if she had been running. Her eyes were straining up the +street. + +"Why, Emily, how in the world!--" + +"I ran away. Fred didn't want me to come. He said it would excite me too +much." + +"Fred?" + +"My husband. He made me promise to say good-bye to Jo at home." + +"Jo?" + +"Jo's my boy. And he's going to war. So I ran away. I had to see him. I +had to see him go." + +She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up the street. + +"Why, sure," said Jo. "Of course you want to see him." And then the +crowd gave a great roar. There came over Jo a feeling of weakness. He +was trembling. The boys went marching by. + +"There he is," Emily shrilled, above the din. "There be is! There he is! +There he--" And waved a futile little hand. It wasn't so much a wave as +a clutching. A clutching after something beyond her reach. + +"Which one? Which one, Emily?" + +"The handsome one. The handsome one. There!" Her voice quavered and +died. + +Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. "Point him out," he commanded. +"Show me." And the next instant. "Never mind. I see him." + +Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from among the hundreds. Had +picked him as surely as his own father might have. It was Emily's boy. +He was marching by, rather stiffly. He was nineteen, and fun-loving, and +he had a girl, and he didn't particularly want to go to France and--to +go to France. But more than he had hated going, he had hated not to go. +So he marched by, looking straight ahead, his jaw set so that his chin +stuck out just a little. Emily's boy. + +Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His eyes, the hard-boiled +eyes of a Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he +was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay dog. He was Jo Hertz, +thirty, in love with life, in love with Emily, and with the stinging +blood of young manhood coursing through his veins. + +Another minute and the boy had passed on up the broad street--the fine, +flag-bedecked street--just one of a hundred service-hats bobbing in +rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore and flowing on. + +Then he disappeared altogether. + +Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling something, over and over. "I +can't. I can't. Don't ask me to. I can't let him go. Like that. I +can't." + +Jo said a queer thing. + +"Why, Emily! We wouldn't have him stay home, would we? We wouldn't want +him to do anything different, would we? Not our boy. I'm glad he +enlisted. I'm proud of him. So are you glad." + +Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the car that was +waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. They said good-bye, awkwardly. +Emily's face was a red, swollen mass. + +So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway half an hour later he +blinked, dazedly, and when the light from the window fell on him you saw +that his eyes were red. + +Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat forward in her chair, +clutching her bag rather nervously. + +"Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a reason. We're here to +tell you that this thing's got to stop." + +"Thing? Stop?" + +"You know very well what I mean. You saw me at the milliner's that day. +And night before last, Ethel. We're all disgusted. If you must go about +with people like that, please have some sense of decency." + +Something gathering in Jo's face should have warned her. But he was +slumped down in his chair in such a huddle, and he looked so old and fat +that she did not heed it. She went on. "You've got us to consider. Your +sisters. And your nieces. Not to speak of your own--" + +But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what she saw in his face +even Eva faltered and stopped. It wasn't at all the face of a fat, +middle-aged sport. It was a face Jovian, terrible. + +"You!" he began, low-voiced, ominous. "You!" He raised a great fist +high. "You two murderers! You didn't consider me, twenty years ago. You +come to me with talk like that. Where's my boy! You killed him, you two, +twenty years ago. And now he belongs to somebody else. Where's my son +that should have gone marching by to-day?" He flung his arms out in a +great gesture of longing. The red veins stood out on his forehead. +"Where's my son! Answer me that, you two selfish, miserable women. +Where's my son!" Then, as they huddled together, frightened, wild-eyed. +"Out of my house! Out of my house! Before I hurt you!" + +They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them. + +Jo stood, shaking, in the centre of the room. Then he reached for a +chair, gropingly, and sat down. He passed one moist, flabby hand over +his forehead and it came away wet. The telephone rang. He sat still. It +sounded far away and unimportant, like something forgotten. I think he +did not even hear it with his conscious ear. But it rang and rang +insistently. Jo liked to answer his telephone, when at home. + +"Hello!" He knew instantly the voice at the other end. + +"That you, Jo?" it said. + +"Yes." + +"How's my boy?" + +"I'm--all right." + +"Listen, Jo. The crowd's coming over to-night. I've fixed up a little +poker game for you. Just eight of us." + +"I can't come to-night, Gert." + +"Can't! Why not?" + +"I'm not feeling so good." + +"You just said you were all right." + +"I _am_ all right. Just kind of tired." + +The voice took on a cooing note. "Is my Joey tired? Then he shall be all +comfy on the sofa, and he doesn't need to play if he don't want to. No, +sir." + +Jo stood staring at the black mouth-piece of the telephone. He was +seeing a procession go marching by. Boys, hundreds of boys, in khaki. + +"Hello! Hello!" the voice took on an anxious note. "Are you there?" + +"Yes," wearily. + +"Jo, there's something the matter. You're sick. I'm coming right over." + +"No!" + +"Why not? You sound as if you'd been sleeping. Look here--" + +"Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked onto the +hook. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Long after the connection had +been broken. + +He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he turned +and walked into the front room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk +had come on. All the light had gone out of everything. The zest had gone +out of life. The game was over--the game he had been playing against +loneliness and disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A +lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous, rose-coloured room that had +grown, all of a sudden, drab. + + + + +III + + +THE TOUGH GUY + +You could not be so very tough in Chippewa, Wisconsin. But Buzz Werner +managed magnificently with the limited means at hand. Before he was +nineteen mothers were warning their sons against him, and brothers their +sisters. Buzz Werner not only was tough--he looked tough. When he +spoke--which was often--his speech slid sinisterly out of the extreme +left corner of his mouth. He had a trick of hitching himself up from the +belt--one palm on the stomach and a sort of heaving jerk from the waist, +as a prize fighter does it--that would have made a Van Bibber look +rough. + +His name was not really Buzz, but quotes are dispensed with because no +one but his mother remembered what it originally had been. His mother +called him Ernie and she alone, in all Chippewa, Wisconsin, was unaware +that her son was the town tough guy. But even she sometimes mildly +remonstrated with him for being what she called kind of wild. Buzz had +yellow hair with a glint in it, and it curled up into a bang at the +front. No amount of wetting or greasing could subdue that irrepressible +forelock. A boy with hair like that never grows up in his mother's +eyes. + +If Buzz's real name was lost in the dim mists of boyhood, the origin and +fitness of his nickname were apparent after two minutes' conversation +with him. Buzz Werner was called Buzz not only because he talked too +much, but because he was a braggart. His conversation bristled with the +perpendicular pronoun, and his pet phrase was, "I says to him--" + +He buzzed. + +By the time Buzz was fourteen he was stealing brass from the yards of +the big paper mills down in the Flats and selling it to the junk man. +How he escaped the reform school is a mystery. Perhaps it was the blond +forelock. At nineteen he was running with the Kearney girl. + +Twenty-five years hence Chippewa will have learned to treat the +Kearney-girl type as a disease, and a public menace. Which she was. The +Kearney girl ran wild in Chippewa, and Chippewa will be paying taxes on +the fruit of her liberty for a hundred years to come. The Kearney girl +was a beautiful idiot, with a lovely oval face, and limpid, rather +wistful blue eyes, and fair, fine hair, and a long slim neck. She looked +very much like those famous wantons of history, from Lucrezia Borgia to +Nell Gwyn, that you see pictured in the galleries of Europe--all very +mild and girlish, with moist red mouths, like a puppy's, so that you +wonder if they have not been basely defamed through all the centuries. + +The Kearney girl's father ran a saloon out on Second Avenue, and every +few days the Chippewa paper would come out with a story of a brawl, a +knifing, or a free-for-all fight following a Saturday night in +Kearney's. The Kearney girl herself was forever running up and down +Grand Avenue, which was the main business street. She would trail up and +down from the old Armory to the post-office and back again. When she +turned off into the homeward stretch on Outagamie Street there always +slunk after her some stoop-shouldered, furtive, loping youth. But he +never was seen with her on Grand Avenue. She had often been up before +old Judge Colt for some nasty business or other. At such times the +shabby office of the Justice of the Peace would be full of shawled +mothers and heavy-booted, work-worn fathers, and an aunt or two, and +some cousins, and always a slinking youth fumbling with the hat in his +hands, his glance darting hither and thither, from group to group, but +never resting for a moment within any one else's gaze. Of all these +present, the Kearney girl herself was always the calmest. Old Judge Colt +meted out justice according to his lights. Unfortunately, the wearing of +a yellow badge on the breast was a custom that had gone out some years +before. + +This nymph it was who had taken a fancy to Buzz Werner. It looked very +black for his future. + +The strange part of it was that the girl possessed little attraction for +Buzz. It was she who made all the advances. Buzz had sprung from very +decent stock, as you shall see. And something about the sultry +unwholesomeness of this girl repelled him, though he was hardly aware +that this was so. Buzz and his gang would meet down town of a Saturday +night, very moist as to hair and clean as to soft shirt. They would +lounge on the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's +brightly lighted drug store, watching the girls go by. They were, for +the most part, a pimply-faced lot. They would shuffle their feet in a +slow jig, hands in pockets. When a late comer joined them it was +considered _au fait_ to welcome him by assuming a fistic attitude, after +the style of the pugilists pictured in the barber-shop magazines, and +spar a good-natured and make-believe round with him, with much agile +dancing about in a circle, head held stiffly, body crouching, while +working a rapid and facetious right. + +This corner, or Donovan's pool-shack, was their club, their forum. Here +they recounted their exploits, bragged of their triumphs, boasted of +their girls, flexed their muscles to show their strength. And all +through their talk there occurred again and again a certain term whose +use is common to their kind. Their remarks were prefaced and interlarded +and concluded with it, so that it was no longer an oath or a blasphemy. + +"Je's, I was sore at 'm. I told him where to get off at. Nobody can talk +to me like that. Je's, I should say not." + +So accustomed had it grown that it was not even thought of as +profanity. + +If Buzz's family could have heard him in his talk with his street-corner +companions they would not have credited their ears. A mouthy braggart in +company is often silent in his own home, and Buzz was no exception to +this rule. Fortunately, Buzz's braggadocio carried with it a certain +conviction. He never kept a job more than a month, and his own account +of his leave-taking was always as vainglorious as it was dramatic. + +"'G'wan!' I says to him, 'Who you talkin' to? I don't have to take +nothin' from you nor nobody like you,' I says. 'I'm as good as you are +any day, and better. You can have your dirty job,' I says. And with that +I give him my time and walked out on 'm. Je's, he was sore!" + +They would listen to him, appreciatively, but with certain mental +reservations; reservations inevitable when a speaker's name is Buzz. One +by one they would melt away as their particular girl, after flaunting by +with a giggle and a sidelong glance for the dozenth time, would switch +her skirts around the corner of Outagamie Street past the Brill House, +homeward bound. + +"Well, s'long," they would say. And lounging after her, would overtake +her in the shadow of the row of trees in front of the Agassiz School. + +If the Werner family had been city folk they would, perforce, have +burrowed in one of those rabbit-warren tenements that line block after +block of city streets. But your small-town labouring man is likely to +own his two-story frame house with a garden patch in the back and a +cement walk leading up to the front porch, and pork roast on Sundays. +The Werners had all this, no thanks to Pa Werner; no thanks to Buzz, +surely; and little to Minnie Werner who clerked in the Sugar Bowl Candy +Store and tried to dress like Angie Hatton whose father owned the +biggest Pulp and Paper mill in the Fox River Valley. No, the house and +the garden, the porch and the cement sidewalk, and the pork roast all +had their origin in Ma Werner's tireless energy, in Ma Werner's thrift; +in her patience and unremitting toil, her nimble fingers and bent back, +her shapeless figure and unbounded and unexpressed (verbally, that +is) love for her children. Pa Werner--sullen, lazy, brooding, +tyrannical--she soothed and mollified for the children's sake, or +shouted down with a shrewish outburst, as the occasion required. An +expert stone-mason by trade, Pa Werner could be depended on only when he +was not drinking, or when he was not on strike, or when he had not +quarrelled with the foreman. An anarchist, Pa--dissatisfied with things +as they were, but with no plan for improving them. His evil-smelling +pipe between his lips, he would sit, stocking-footed, in silence, +smoking and thinking vague, formless, surly thoughts. This sullen unrest +and rebellion it was that, transmitted to his son, had made Buzz the +unruly braggart that he was, and which, twenty or thirty years hence, +would find him just such a one as his father--useless, evil-tempered, +half brutal, defiant of order. + +It was in May, a fine warm sunny day, that Ma Werner, looking up from +the garden patch where she was spading, a man's old battered felt hat +perched grotesquely atop her white head, saw Buzz lounging homeward, +cutting across lots from Bates Street, his dinner pail glinting in the +sun. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Ma Werner straightened +painfully and her over-flushed face took on a purplish tinge. She wiped +her moist chin with an apron-corner. + +As Buzz espied her his gait became a swagger. At sight of that swagger +Ma knew. She dropped her spade and plodded heavily through the freshly +turned earth to the back porch as Buzz turned in at the walk. She +shifted her weight ponderously as she wiped first one earth-crusted shoe +and then the other. + +"What's the matter, Ernie? You ain't sick, are you?" + +"Naw." + +"What you home so early for?" + +"Because I feel like it, that's why." + +He took the back steps at a bound and slammed the kitchen door behind +him. Ma Werner followed heavily after. Buzz was hanging his hat up +behind the kitchen door. He turned with a scowl as his mother entered. +She looked even more ludicrous in the house than she had outside, with +her skirts tucked up to make spading the easier, so that there was +displayed an unseemly length of thick ankle rising solidly above the old +pair of men's side-boots that encased her feet. The battered hat perched +rakishly atop her knob of gray-white hair gave her a jaunty, sporting +look, as of a ponderous, burlesque Watteau. + +She abandoned pretense. "Ernie, your pa'll be awful mad. You know the +way he carried on the last time." + +"Let him. He aint worked five days himself this month." Then, at a +sudden sound from the front of the house, "He ain't home, is he?" + +"That's the shade flapping." + +Buzz turned toward the inside wooden stairway that led to the half-story +above. But his mother followed, with surprising agility for so heavy a +woman. She put a hand on his arm. "Such a good-payin' job, Ernie. An' +you said only yesterday you liked it. Somethin' must've happened." + +There broke a grim little laugh from Buzz. "Believe _me_ something +happened good an' plenty." A little frightened look came into his eyes. +"I just had a run-in with young Hatton." + +The red faded from her face and a grey-white mask seemed to slip down +over it. "You don't mean Hatton! Not Hatton's son. Ernie, you ain't +done--" + +A dash of his street-corner bravado came back to him. "Aw, keep your +hair on, Ma. I didn't know it was young Hatton when I hit'm. An' anyway +nobody his age is gonna tell me where to get off at. Say, w'en a guy who +ain't twenty-three, hardly, and that never done a lick in his life +except go to college, the sissy, tries t'--" + +But the first sentence only had penetrated her brain. She grappled with +it, dizzily. "Hit him! Ernie, you don't mean you hit him! Not Hatton's +son! Ernie!" + +"Sure I did. You oughta seen his face." But there was very little +triumph or satisfaction in Buzz Werner's face or voice as he said it. +"Course, I didn't know it was him when I done it. I dunno would it have +made any difference if I had." + +She seemed so old and so shrunken, in spite of her bulk, as she looked +up at him. The look in her eyes was so strained. The way her hand +brought her apron-corner up to her mouth, as though to stifle the fear +that shook her, was so groping, somehow, so uncertain, that, +paradoxically, the pitifulness of it reacted to make him savage. + +When she quavered her next question, "What was he doin' in the mill?" he +turned toward the stairway again, flinging his answer over his shoulder. + +"Learnin' the business, that's what. From the ground up, see?" He turned +at the first stair and leaned forward and down, one hand on the +door-jamb. "Well, believe me he don't use me as no ground-dirt. An' when +I'm takin' the screen off the big roll--see?--he comes up to me an' +says I'm handlin' it rough an' it's a delicate piece of mechanism. +'Who're you?' I says. 'Never mind who I am' he says, 'I'm working' on +this job,' he says, 'an' this is a paper mill you're workin' in,' he +says, 'not a boiler factory. Treat the machinery accordin', like a real +workman,' he says. The simp! I just stepped down off the platform of the +big press, and I says, 'Well, you look like a kinda delicate piece of +mechanism yourself,' I says, 'an' need careful handlin', so take that +for a starter,' I says. An' with that I handed him one in the nose." +Buzz laughed, but there was little mirth in it. "I bet he seen enough +wheels an' delicate machinery that minute to set up a whole new plant." + +There was nothing of mirth in the woman's drawn face. "Oh, Ernie, f'r +God's sake! What they goin' to do to you!" + +He was half way up the narrow stairway, she at the foot of it, peering +up at him. "They won't do anything. I guess old Hatton ain't so stuck on +havin' his swell golf club crowd know his little boy was beat up by one +of the workmen." + +He was clumping about upstairs now. So she turned toward the kitchen, +dazedly. She glanced at the clock. Going on toward five. Still in +the absurd hat she got out a panful of potatoes and began to peel +them skilfuly, automatically. The seamed and hardened fingers +had come honestly by their deftness. They had twirled and peeled +pecks--bushels--tons of these brown balls in their time. + +At five-thirty Pa came in. At six, Minnie. She had to go back to the +Sugar Bowl until nine. Five minutes later the supper was steaming on +the table. + +"Ernie," called Ma, toward the ceiling. "Er-nie! Supper's on." The three +sat down at the table without waiting. Pa had slipped off his shoes, and +was in his stockinged feet. They ate in silence. It was a good meal. A +European family of the same class would have considered it a banquet. +There were meat and vegetables, butter and home-made bread, preserve and +cake, true to the standards of the extravagant American labouring-class +household. In the summer the garden supplied them with lettuce, beans, +peas, onions, radishes, beets, potatoes, corn, thanks to Ma's aching +back and blistered hands. They stored enough vegetables in the cellar to +last through the winter. + +Buzz usually cleaned up after supper. But to-night, when he came down, +he was already clean-shaven, clean-shirted, and his hair was wet from +the comb. He took his place in silence. His acid-stained work shoes had +been replaced by his good tan ones. Evidently he was going down town +after supper. Buzz never took any exercise for the sake of his body's +good. Sometimes he and the Lembke boys across the way played a game of +ball in the middle of the road, or in the vacant lot, but they did it +out of the game instinct, and with no thought of their muscles' gain. + +But to-night, evidently, there was to be no ball. Buzz ate little. His +mother, forever between the stove and the table, ate less. But that was +nothing unusual in her. She waited on the others, but mostly she hovered +about the boy. + +"Ernie, you ain't eaten your potatoes. Look how nice an' mealy they +are." + +"Don't want none." + +"Ernie, would you rather have a baked apple than the raspberry preserve? +I fixed a pan this morning." + +"Naw. Lemme alone. I ain't hungry." + +He slouched from the table. Minnie, teacup in hand, regarded him over +its rim with wide, malicious eyes. "I saw that Kearney girl go by here +before supper, and she rubbered in like everything." + +"You're a liar," said Buzz, unemotionally. + +"I did so! She went by and then she came back again. I saw her both +times. Say, I guess I ought to know her. Anybody in town'd know +Kearney." + +Buzz had been headed toward the front porch. He hesitated and turned, +now, and picked up the newspaper from the sitting-room sofa. Pa Werner, +in trousers, shirt and suspenders, was padding about the kitchen with +his pipe and tobacco. He came into the sitting room now and stood a +moment, his lips twisted about the pipe-stem. The pipe's putt-putting +gave warning that he was about to break into unaccustomed speech. He +regarded Buzz with beady, narrowed eyes. + +"You let me see you around with that Kearney girl and I'll break every +bone in your body, and hers too. The hussy!" + +"Oh, you will, will you?" + +Ma, who had been making countless trips from the kitchen to the back +garden with water pail and sprinkling can sagging from either arm, put +in a word to stay the threatening storm. "Now, Pa! Now, Ernie!" The two +men subsided into bristling silence. + +Suddenly, "There she is again!" shrilled Minnie, from her bedroom. Buzz +shrank back in his chair. Old man Werner, with a muttered oath, went to +the open doorway and stood there, puffing savage little spurts of smoke +streetward. The Kearney girl stared brazenly at him as she strolled +slowly by, a slim and sinister figure. Old man Werner watched her until +she passed out of sight. + +"You go gettin' mixed up with dirt like that," threatened he, "and I'll +learn you. She'll be hangin' around the mill yet, the brass-faced thing. +If I hear of it I'll get the foreman to put her off the place. You'll +stay home to-night. Carry a pail of water for your ma once." + +"Carry it yourself." + +Buzz, with a wary eye up the street, slouched out to the front porch, +into the twilight of the warm May evening. Charley Lembke, from his +porch across the street, called to him: "Goin' down town?" + +"Yeh, I guess so." + +"Ain't you afraid of bein' pinched?" Buzz turned his head quickly +toward the room just behind him. He turned to go in. Charley's voice +came again, clear and far-reaching. "I hear you had a run-in with +Hatton's son, and knocked him down. Some class t' you, Buzz, even if it +does cost you your job." + +From within the sound of a newspaper hurled to the floor. Pa Werner was +at the door. "What's that! What's that he's sayin'?" + +Buzz, cornered, jutted a threatening jaw at his father and brazened it +out. "Can't you hear good?" + +"Come on in here." + +Buzz hesitated a moment. Then he turned, slowly, and walked into the +little sitting room with an attempt at a swagger that failed to convince +even himself. He leaned against the side of the door, hands in pockets. +Pa Werner faced him, black-browed. "Is that right, what he said? Lembke? +Huh?" + +"Sure it's right. I had a run-in with Hatton, an' licked him, and give'm +my time. What you goin' to do about it?" + +Ma Werner was in the room, now. Minnie, passing through on her way to +work again, caught the electric current of the storm about to break and +escaped it with a parting: + +"Oh, for the land's sakes! You two. Always a-fighting." + +The two men faced each other. The one a sturdy man-boy nearing twenty, +with a great pair of shoulders and a clear eye, a long, quick arm and a +deft hand--these last his assets as a workman. The other, gnarled, +prematurely wrinkled, almost gnome-like. This one took his pipe from +between his lips and began to speak. The drink he had had at Wenzel's on +the way home sparked his speech. + +He began with a string of epithets. They flowed from his lips, an acid +stream. Pick and choose as I will, there is none that can be repeated +here. Old Man Werner had, perhaps, been something of a tough guy +himself, in his youth. As he reviled his son now you saw that son, at +fifty, just such another stocking-footed, bitter old man, smoking a glum +pipe on the back porch, summer evenings, and spitting into the fresh +young grass. + +I don't say that this thought came to Buzz as his father flayed him with +his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the +non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head. +Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a +little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensively. He had +paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had +said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again +and again. "Now, Pa!--" But he stopped now, fist raised in a last +profane period. Buzz stood regarding him with his unblinking stare. + +Finally: "You through?" said Buzz. + +"Ya-as," snarled Pa, "I'm through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be +hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get out o' +here!" + +"I'm gettin'," said Buzz. He took his hat off the hook and wiped it +carefully with the lower side of his sleeve, round and round. He placed +it on his head, jauntily. He stepped to the kitchen, took a tooth-pick +from the little red-and-white glass holder on the table, and--with this +emblem of insouciance, at an angle of ninety, between his +teeth--strolled indolently, nonchalantly down the front steps, along the +cement walk to the street and so toward town. The two old people, left +alone in the sudden silence of the house, stared after the swaggering +figure until the dim twilight blotted it out. And a sinister something +seemed to close its icy grip about the heart of one of them. A vague +premonition that she could only feel, not express, made her next words +seem futile. + +"Pa, you oughtn't to talked to him like that. He's just a little wild. +He looked so kind of funny when he went out. I don'no, he looked so kind +of--" + +"He looked like the bum he is, that's what. No respect for nothing. For +his pa, or ma, or nothing. Down on the corner with the rest of 'em, +that's where he's goin'. Hatton ain't goin' to let this go by. You see." + +But she, on her way to the kitchen, repeated, "I don'no, he looked so +kind of funny. He looked so kind of--" + +Considering all things--the happenings of the past few hours, at +least--Buzz, as he strolled on down toward Grand Avenue with his +sauntering, care-free gait, did undoubtedly look kind of funny. The +red-hot rage of the afternoon and the white-hot rage of the evening had +choked the furnace of brain and soul with clinkers so that he was +thinking unevenly and disconnectedly. On the surface he was cool and +unruffled. He stopped for a moment at the railroad tracks to talk with +Stumpy Gans, the one-legged gateman. The little bell above Stumpy's +shanty was ringing its warning, so he strolled leisurely over to the +depot platform to see the 7:15 come in from Chicago. When the train +pulled out Buzz went on down the street. His mind was darting here and +there, planning this revenge, discarding it; seizing on another, +abandoning that. He'd show'm. He'd show'm. Sick of the whole damn bunch, +anyway.... Wonder was Hatton going to raise a shindy.... Let'm. Who +cares?... The old man was a drunk, that's what.... Ma had looked kinda +sick.... + +He put that uncomfortable thought out of his mind and slammed the door +on it. Anyway, he'd show'm. + +Out of the shadows of the great trees in front of the Agassiz School +stepped the Kearney girl, like a lean and hungry cat. One hand clutched +his arm. + +Buzz jumped and said something under his breath. Then he laughed, +shortly. "Might as well kill a guy as scare him to death!" + +She thrust one hand through his arm and linked it with the other. "I've +been waiting for you, Buzz." + +"Yeh. Well, let me tell you something. You quit traipsing up and down in +front of my house, see?" + +"I wanted to see you. An' I didn't know whether you was coming down town +to-night or not." + +"Well, I am. So now you know." He pulled away from her, but she twined +her arm the tighter about his. + +"Ain't sore at me, are yuh, Buzz?" + +"No. Leggo my arm." + +"If you're sore because I been foolin' round with that little wart of a +Donahue--" She turned wise eyes up to him, trying to make them limpid in +the darkness. + +"What do I care who you run with?" + +"Don't you care, Buzz?" The words were soft but there was a steel edge +to her utterance. + +"No." + +"Oh, Buzz, I'm batty about you. I can't help it, can I? H'm? Look here, +you go on to Grand, and hang around for an hour, maybe, and I'll meet +you here an' we'll walk a ways. Will you? I got something to tell you." + +"Naw, I can't to-night. I'm busy." + +And then the steel edge cut. "Buzz, if you turn me down I'll have you +up." + +"Up?" + +"Before old Colt. I can fix up charges. He'll believe it. Say, he knows +me, Judge Colt does. I can name you an'--" + +"Me!" Sheer amazement rang in his voice. "Me? You must be crazy. I +ain't had anything to do with you. You make me sick." + +"That don't make any difference. You can't prove it. I told you I was +crazy about you. I told you--" + +He jerked loose from her then and was off. He ran one block. Then, after +a backward glance, fell into a quick walk that brought him past the +Brill House and to Schroeder's drug store corner. There was his +crowd--Spider, and Red, and Bing, and Casey. They took him literally +unto their breasts. They thumped him on the back. They bestowed on him +the low epithets with which they expressed admiration. Red worked at one +of the bleaching vats in the Hatton paper mill. The story of Buzz's +fistic triumph had spread through the big plant like a flame. + +"Go on, Buzz, tell 'em about it," Red urged, now. "Je's, I like to died +laughing when I heard it. He must of looked a sight, the poor boob. Go +on, Buzz, tell 'em how you says to him he must be a kind of delicate +piece of--you know; go on, tell 'em." + +Buzz hitched himself up with a characteristic gesture, and plunged into +his story. His audience listened entranced, interrupting him with an +occasional "Je's!" of awed admiration. But the thing seemed to lack a +certain something. Perhaps Casey put his finger on that something when, +at the recital's finish he asked: + +"Didn't he see you was goin' to hit him?" + +"No. He never see a thing." + +Casey ruminated a moment. "You could of give him a chanst to put up his +dukes," he said at last. A little silence fell upon the group. Honour +among thieves. + +Buzz shifted uncomfortably. "He's a bigger guy than I am. I bet he's +over six foot. The papers was always telling how he played football at +that college he went to." + +Casey spoke up again. "They say he didn't wait for this here draft. He's +goin' to Fort Sheridan, around Chicago somewhere, to be made a officer." + +"Yeh, them rich guys, they got it all their own way," Spider spoke up, +gloomily. "They--" + +From down the street came a dull, muffled thud-thud-thud-thud. Already +Chippewa, Wisconsin, had learned to recognise it. Grand Avenue, none too +crowded on this mid-week night, pressed to the curb to see. Down the +street they stared toward the moving mass that came steadily nearer. The +listless group on the corner stiffened into something like interest. + +"Company G," said Red. "I hear they're leavin' in a couple of days." + +And down the street they came, thud-thud-thud, Company G, headed for the +new red-brick Armory for the building of which they had engineered +everything from subscription dances and exhibition drills to turkey +raffles. Chippewa had never taken Company G very seriously until now. +How could it, when Company G was made up of Willie Kemp, who clerked in +Hassell's shoe store; Fred Garvey, the reporter on the Chippewa +_Eagle_; Hermie Knapp, the real-estate man, and Earl Hanson who came +around in the morning for your grocery order. + +Thud-thud-thud-thud. And to Chippewa, standing at the curb, quite +suddenly these every-day men and boys were transformed into something +remote and almost terrible. Something grim. Something sacrificial. +Something sacred. + +Thud-thud-thud-thud. Looking straight ahead. + +"The poor boobs," said Spider, and spat, and laughed. + +The company passed on down the street--vanished. Grand Avenue went its +way. + +A little silence fell upon the street-corner group. Bing was the first +to speak. + +"They won't git me in this draft. I got a mother an' two kid sisters to +support." + +"Yeh, a swell lot of supportin' you do!" + +"Who says I don't! I can prove it." + +"They'll get me all right," said Casey. "I ain't kickin'." + +"I'm under age," from Red. + +Spider said nothing. His furtive eyes darted here and there. Spider was +of age. And Spider had no family to support. But Spider had reason to +know that no examining board would pass him into the army of his +country. And it was a reason of which one did not speak. "You're only +twenty, ain't you, Buzz?" he asked, to cover the gap in the +conversation. + +"Yeh." Silence fell again. Then, "But I wouldn't mind goin'. Anything +for a change. This place makes me sick." + +Spider laughed. "You better be a hero and go and enlist." + +Buzz's head came up with a jerk. "Je's, I never thought of that!" + +Red struck an attitude, one hand on his breast. "Now's your chanct, +Buzz, to save your country an' your flag. Enlistment office's right over +the Golden Eagle clothing store. Step up. Don't crowd gents! This way!" + +Buzz was staring at him, open-mouthed. His gaze was fixed, tense. +Suddenly he seemed to gather all his muscles together as for a spring. +But he only threw his cigarette into the gutter, yawned elaborately, and +moved away. "S'long," he said; and lounged off. The others looked after +him a moment, puzzled, speculative. Buzz was not usually so laconic. But +evidently he was leaving with no further speech. + +"I guess maybe he ain't so dead sure that Hatton bunch won't git him for +this, anyway," Casey said. Then, raising his voice: "Goin' home, Buzz?" + +"Yeh." + +But he did not. If they had watched him they would have seen him change +his lounging gait when he reached the corner. They would have seen him +stand a moment, sending a quick glance this way and that, then turn, +retrace his steps almost at a run, and dart into the doorway that led +to the flight of wooden stairs at the side of the Golden Eagle clothing +store. + +A dingy room. A man at a bare table. Another seated at the window, his +chair tipped back, his feet on the sill, a pipe between his teeth. Buzz, +shambling, suddenly awkward, stood in the door. + +"This the place where you enlist?" + +The man at the table stood up. The chair in front of the open window +came down on all-fours. + +"Sure," said the first man. "What's your name?" + +Buzz told him. + +"Meet Sergeant Keith. He's a Canadian. Been through the whole game." + +Five minutes later Buzz's fine white torso rose above his trousers like +a great pillar. Unconsciously his sagging shoulders had straightened. +His stomach was held in. His chest jutted, shelf-like. His ribs showed +through the pink-white flesh. + +"Get some of that pork off of him," observed Sergeant Keith, "and he'll +do in a couple of Fritzes before he's through." + +"Me!" blurted Buzz, struggling now with his shirt. "A couple! Say, you +don't know me. Whaddyou mean, a couple? I can lick a whole regiment of +them beerheads with one hand tied behind me an' my feet in a sack." He +emerged from the struggle with his shirt, his face very red, his hair +rumpled. + +Sergeant Keith smiled a grim little smile. "Keep your shirt on, kid," +he said, "and remember, this isn't a fist fight you're going into. It's +war." + +Buzz, fumbling with his hat, put his question. "When--when do I go?" For +he had signed his name in his round, boyish, sixth-grade scrawl. + +"To-morrow. Now listen to these instructions." + +"T-to-morrow?" gasped Buzz. + +He was still gasping as he reached the street and struck out toward +home. To-morrow! When the Kearney girl again stepped out of the +tree-shadows he stared at her as at something remote and trivial. + +"I thought you tried to give me the slip, Buzz. Where you been?" + +"Never mind where I've been." + +She fell into step beside him, but had difficulty in matching his great +strides. She caught at his arm. At that Buzz turned and stopped. It was +too dark to see his face, but something in his voice--something new, and +hard, and resolute--reached even the choked and slimy cells of this +creature's consciousness. + +"Now looka here. You beat it. I got somethin' on my mind to-night and I +can't be bothered with no fool girl, see? Don't get me sore. I mean it." + +Her hand dropped away from his arm. "I didn't mean what I said about +havin' you up, Buzz; honest t' Gawd I didn't." + +"I don't care what you meant." + +'Will you meet me to-morrow night? Will you, Buzz?" + +"If I'm in this town to-morrow night I'll meet you. Is that good +enough?" + +He turned and strode away. But she was after him. "Where you goin' +to-morrow?" + +"I'm goin' to war, that's where." + +"Yes you are!" scoffed Miss Kearney. Then, at his silence: "You didn't +go and do a fool thing like that?" + +"I sure did." + +"When you goin'?" + +"To-morrow." + +"Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and +do that for?" + +"Search _me_," said Buzz, dully. "Search _me_." + +Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly, +empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been +called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any +emotion so dignified as scorn. + +The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The +Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly +_negligée_ as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis +Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his +chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono, +sewing. + +On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the +hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant +that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz +leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three +were on him. + +"Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma +Werner's head came up sharply at that. + +"What you done, Ernie?" + +"Enlisted." + +"Enlisted--for what?" + +"For the war; what do you suppose?" + +Ma Werner rose at that, heavily. "Ernie! You never!" + +Pa Werner was wide awake now. Out of his memory of the old country, and +soldier service there, he put his next question. "Did you sign to it?" + +"Yeh." + +"When you goin'?" + +"To-morrow." + +Even Pa Werner gasped at that. + +In families like the Werners emotion is rarely expressed. But now, +because of something in the stricken face and starting eyes of the +woman, and the open-mouthed dumbfoundedness of the old man, and the +sudden tender fearfulness in the face of the girl; and because, in that +moment, all these seemed very safe, and accustomed, and, somehow, dear, +Buzz curled his mouth into the sneer of the tough guy and spoke out of +the corner of that contorted feature. + +"What did you think I was goin' to do? Huh? Stick around here and take +dirt from the bunch of you! Nix! I'm through!" + +There was nothing dramatic about Buzz's going. He seemed to be whisked +away. One moment he was eating his breakfast at an unaccustomed hour, in +his best shirt and trousers, his mother, only half understanding even +now, standing over him with the coffee pot; the next he was standing +with his cheap shiny suitcase in his hand. Then he was waiting on the +depot platform, and Hefty Burke, the baggage man, was saying, "Where you +goin', Buzz?" + +"Goin' to fight the Germans." + +Hefty had hooted hoarsely: "Ya-a-as you are, you big bluff!" + +"Who you callin' a bluff, you baggage-smasher, you! I'm goin' to war, +I'm tellin' you." + +Hefty, still scoffing, turned away to his work. "Well, then, I guess +it's as good as over. Give old Willie a swipe for me, will you?" + +"You bet I will. Watch me!" + +I think he more than half meant it. + +And thus Buzz Werner went to war. He was vague about its locality. +Somewhere in Europe. He was pretty sure it was France. A line from his +Fourth Grade geography came back to him. "The French," it had said, "are +a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines." + +Well, that sounded all right. + +The things that happened to Buzz Werner in the next twelve months +cannot be detailed here. They would require the space of what the +publishers call a 12-mo volume. Buzz himself could never have told you. +Things happened too swiftly, too concentratedly. + +Chicago first. Buzz had never seen Chicago. Now that he saw it, he +hardly believed it. His first glimpse of it left him cowering, +terrified. The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness, +were like blows upon his defenceless head. They beat the braggadocio and +the self-confidence temporarily out of him. But only temporarily. + +Then came a camp. A rough, temporary camp compared to which the present +cantonments are luxurious. The United States Government took Buzz Werner +by the slack of the trousers and the slack of the mind, and, holding him +thus, shook him into shape--and into submission. And eventually--though +it required months--into an understanding of why that submission was +manly, courageous, and fine. But before he learned that he learned many +other things. He learned there was little good in saying, "Aw, g'wan!" +to a dapper young lieutenant if they clapped you into the guard-house +for saying it. There was little point to throwing down your shovel and +refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for +doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out. He +learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a +dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an +olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so +sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from +limb, during the night, and never put together again. He stood out with +a raw squad in the dirt of No Man's Land between barracks and went +through exercises that took hold of his great slack muscles and welded +them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim, +six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless, +merciless--a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between +thumb and finger--like that!--who made life a hell for Buzz Werner. +Until his muscles became used to it. + +"One--_two_!--three! One--_two_--three! One--_two_--three!" yelled this +person. And, "_In_hale! _Ex_hale! _In_hale! _Ex_hale!" till Buzz's lungs +were bursting, his eyes were starting from his head, his chest carried a +sledge hammer inside it, his thigh-muscles screamed, and his legs, arms, +neck, were no longer parts of him, but horrid useless burdens, detached, +yet clinging. He learned what this person meant when he shouted (always +with the rising inflection), "Comp'ny! Right! _Whup_!" Buzz whupped with +the best of 'em. The whipper-snapper seemed tireless. Long after Buzz +felt that another moment of it would kill him the lithe young lieutenant +would be leaping about like a faun, and pride kept Buzz going though he +wanted to drop with fatigue, and his shirt and hair and face were wet +with sweat. + +So much for his body. It soon became accustomed to the routine, then +hardened. His mind was less pliable. But that, too, was undergoing a +change. He found that the topics of conversation that used to interest +his little crowd on the street corner in Chippewa were not of much +interest, here. There were boys from every part of the great country. +And they talked of the places whence they had come and speculated about +the places to which they were going. And Buzz listened and learned. +There was strangely little talk about girls. There usually is when +muscles and mind are being driven to the utmost. But he heard men--men +as big as he--speak openly of things that he had always sneered at as +soft. After one of these conversations he wrote an awkward, but +significant scrawl home to his mother. + +"Well Ma," he wrote, "I guess maybe you would like to hear a few words +from me. Well I like it in the army it is the life for me you bet. I am +feeling great how are you all--" + +Ma Werner wasted an entire morning showing it around the neighbourhood, +and she read and reread it until it was almost pulp. + +Six months of this. Buzz Werner was an intelligent machine composed of +steel, cord, and iron. I think he had forgotten that the Kearney girl +had ever existed. One day, after three months of camp life, the man in +the next cot had thrown him a volume of Kipling. Buzz fingered it, +disinterestedly. Until that moment Kipling had not existed for Buzz +Werner. After that moment he dominated his leisure hours. The Y.M.C.A. +hut had many battered volumes of this writer. Buzz read them all. + +The week before Thanksgiving Buzz found himself on his way to New York. +For some reason unexplained to him he was separated from his company in +one of the great shake-ups performed for the good of the army. He never +saw them again. He was sent straight to a New York camp. When he beheld +his new lieutenant his limbs became fluid, and his heart leaped into his +throat, and his mouth stood open, and his eyes bulged. It was young +Hatton--Harry Hatton--whose aristocratic nose he had punched six months +before, in the Hatton Pulp and Paper Mill. + +And even as he stared young Hatton fixed him with his eye, and then came +over to him and said, "It's all right, Werner." + +Buzz Werner could only salute with awkward respect, while with one great +gulp his heart slid back into normal place. He had not thought that +Hatton was so tall, or so broad-shouldered, or so-- + +He no more thought of telling the other men that he had once knocked +this man down than he thought of knocking him down again. He would +almost as soon have thought of taking a punch at the President. + +The day before Thanksgiving Buzz was told he might have a holiday. Also +he was given an address and a telephone number in New York City and told +that if he so desired he might call at that address and receive a +bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. They were expecting him there. That the +telephone exchange was Murray Hill, and the street Madison Avenue meant +nothing to Buzz. He made the short trip to New York, floundered about +the city, found every one willing and eager to help him find the address +on the slip, and brought up, finally, in front of the house on Madison +Avenue. It was a large, five-story stone place, and Buzz supposed it was +a flat, of course. He stood off and surveyed it. Then he ascended the +steps and rang the bell. They must have been waiting for him. The door +was opened by a large amiable-looking, middle-aged man who said, "Well, +well! Come in, come in, my boy!" a great deal as the folks in Chippewa, +Wisconsin, might have said it. The stout old party also said he was glad +to see him and Buzz believed it. They went upstairs, much to Buzz's +surprise. In Buzz's experience upstairs always meant bedrooms. But in +this case it meant a great bright sitting room, with books in it, and a +fireplace, very cheerful. There were not a lot of people in the room. +Just a middle-aged woman in a soft kind of dress, who came to him +without any fuss and the first thing he knew he felt acquainted. Within +the next fifteen minutes or so some other members of the family seemed +to ooze in, unnoticeably. First thing you knew, there they were. They +didn't pay such an awful lot of attention to you. Just took you for +granted. A couple of young kids, a girl of fourteen, and a boy of +sixteen who asked you easy questions about the army till you found +yourself patronising him. And a tall black-haired girl who made you +think of the vamps in the movies, only her eyes were different. And +then, with a little rush, a girl about his own age, or maybe younger--he +couldn't tell--who came right up to him, and put out her hand, and gave +him a grip with her hard little fist, just like a boy, and said, "I'm +Joyce Ladd." + +"Pleased to meetcha," mumbled Buzz. And then he found himself talking to +her quite easily. She knew a surprising lot about the army. + +"I've two brothers over there," she said. "And all my friends, of +course." He found out later, quite by accident, that this boyish, but +strangely appealing person belonged to some sort of Motor Service +League, and drove an automobile, every day, from eight to six, up and +down and round and about New York, working like a man in the service of +the country. He never would have believed that the world held that kind +of girl. + +Then four other men in uniform came in, and it turned out that three of +them were privates like himself, and the other a sergeant. Their awkward +entrance made him feel more than ever at ease, and ten minutes later +they were all talking like mad, and laughing and joking as if they had +known these people for years. They all went in to dinner. Buzz got +panicky when he thought of the knives and forks, but that turned out all +right, too, because they brought these as you needed them. And besides, +the things they gave you to eat weren't much different from the things +you had for Sunday or Thanksgiving dinner at home, and it was cooked the +way his mother would have cooked it--even better, perhaps. And lots of +it. And paper snappers and caps and things, and much laughter and talk. +And Buzz Werner, who had never been shown any respect or deference in +his life, was asked, politely, his opinion of the war, and the army, and +when he thought it all would end; and he told them, politely, too. + +After dinner Mrs. Ladd said, "What would you boys like to do? Would you +like to drive around the city and see New York? Or would you like to go +to a matinée, or a picture show? Or do you want to stay here? Some of +Joyce's girl friends are coming in a little later." + +And Buzz found himself saying, stumblingly, "I--I'd kind of rather stay +and talk with the girls." Buzz, the tough guy, blushing like a shy +schoolboy. + +They did not even laugh at that. They just looked as if they understood +that you missed girls at camp. Mrs. Ladd came over to him and put her +hand on his arm and said, "That's splendid. We'll all go up to the +ballroom and dance." And they did. And Buzz, who had learned to dance at +places like Kearney's saloon, and at the mill shindigs, glided expertly +about with Joyce Ladd of Madison Avenue, and found himself seated in a +great cushioned window-seat, talking with her about Kipling. It was like +talking to another fellow, almost, only it had a thrill in it. She said +such comic things. And when she laughed she threw back her head and your +eyes were dazzled by her slender white throat. They all stayed for +supper. And when they left Mrs. Ladd and Joyce handed them packages +that, later, turned out to be cigarettes, and chocolate, and books, and +soap, and knitted things and a wallet. And when Buzz opened the wallet +and found, with relief, that there was no money in it he knew that he +had met and mingled with American royalty as its equal. + +Three days later he sailed for France. + +Buzz Werner, the Chippewa tough guy, in Paris! Buzz Werner at Napoleon's +tomb, that glorious white marble poem. Buzz Werner in the Place de la +Concorde. Eating at funny little Paris restaurants. + +Then a new life. Life in a drab, rain-soaked, mud-choked little French +village, sleeping in barns, or stables, or hen coops. If the French were +"a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," he'd like to know where +it came in! Nothing but drill and mud, mud and drill, and rain, rain, +rain! And old women with tragic faces, and young women with old eyes. +And unbelievable stories of courage and sacrifice. And more rain, and +more mud, and more drill. And then--into it! + +Into it with both feet. Living in the trenches. Back home, in camp, they +had refused to take the trenches seriously. They had played in them as +children play bear under the piano or table, and had refused to keep +their heads down. But Buzz learned to keep his down now, quickly enough. +A first terrifying stretch of this, then back to the rear again. More +mud and drill. Marches so long and arduous that walking was no longer +walking but a dreadful mechanical motion. He learned what thirst was, +did Buzz. He learned what it was to be obliged to keep your mind off the +thought of pails of water--pails that slopped and brimmed over, so that +you could put your head into them and lip around like a horse. + +Then back into the trenches. And finally, over the top! Very little +memory of what happened after that. A rush. Trampling over soft heaps +that writhed. Some one yelling like an Indian with a voice somehow like +his own. The German trench reached. At them with his bayonet! He +remembered, automatically, how his manual had taught him to jerk out the +steel, after you had driven it home. He did it. Into the very trench +itself. A great six-foot German struggling with a slim figure that Buzz +somehow recognised as his lieutenant, Hatton. A leap at him, like an +enraged dog: + +"G'wan! who you shovin', you big slob you" yelled Buzz (I regret to +say). And he thrust at him, and through him. The man released his +grappling hold of Hatton's throat, and grunted, and sat down. And Buzz +laughed. And the two went on, Buzz behind his lieutenant, and then +something smote his thigh, and he too sat down. The dying German had +thrown his last bomb, and it had struck home. + +Buzz Werner would never again do a double shuffle on Schroeder's +drug-store corner. + +Hospital days. Hospital nights. A wheel chair. Crutches. Home. + +It was May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little +red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his +uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at +his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one. +As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just before reaching +the town proper, there was old Bart Ochsner ringing the bell for dinner +at the Junction eating house. Well, for the love of Mike! Wouldn't that +make you laugh. Ringing that bell, just like always, as if nothing had +happened in the last year! Buzz leaned against the window, to see. There +was some commotion in the train and some one spoke his name. Buzz +turned, and there stood Old Man Hatton, and a lot of others, and he +seemed to be making a speech, and kind of crying, though that couldn't +be possible. And his father was there, very clean and shaved and queer. +Buzz caught words about bravery, and Chippewa's pride, and he was fussed +to death, and glad when the train pulled in at the Chippewa station. But +there the commotion was worse than ever. There was a band, playing away +like mad. Buzz's great hands grown very white, were fidgeting at his +uniform buttons, and at the stripe on his sleeve, and the medal on his +breast. They wouldn't let him carry a thing, and when he came out on the +car platform to descend there went up a great sound that was half roar +and half scream. Buzz Werner was the first of Chippewa's men to come +back. + +After that it was rather hazy. There was his mother. His sister Minnie, +too. He even saw the Kearney girl, with her loose red mouth, and her +silly eyes, and she was as a strange woman to him. He was in Hatton's +glittering automobile, being driven down Grand Avenue. There were +speeches, and a dinner, and, later, when he was allowed to go home, +rather white, a steady stream of people pouring in and out of the house +all day. That night, when he limped up the stairs to his hot little room +under the roof he was dazed, spent, and not so very happy. + +Next morning, though, he felt more himself, and inclined to joke. And +then there was a talk with old Man Hatton; a talk that left Buzz +somewhat numb, and the family breathless. + +Visitors again, all that afternoon. + +After supper he carried water for the garden, against his mother's +outraged protests. + +"What'll folks think!" she said, "you carryin' water for me?" + +Afterward he took his smart visored cap off the hook and limped down +town, his boots and leggings and uniform very spick and span from Ma +Werner's expert brushing and rubbing. She refused to let Buzz touch +them, although he tried to tell her that he had done that job for a +year. + +At the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's drug +store, stood what was left of the gang, and some new members who had +come during the year that had passed. Buzz knew them all. + +They greeted him at first with a mixture of shyness and resentment. They +eyed his leg, and his uniform, and the metal and ribbon thing that hung +at his breast. Bing and Red and Spider were there. Casey was gone. + +Finally Spider spat and said, "G'wan, Buzz, give us your spiel about how +you saved young Hatton--the simp!" + +"Who says he's a simp?" inquired Buzz, very quietly. But there was a +look about his jaw. + +"Well--anyway--the papers was full of how you was a hero. Say, is that +right that old Hatton's goin' to send you to college? Huh? Je's!" + +"Yeh," chorused the others, "go on, Buzz. Tell us." + +Red put his question. "Tell us about the fightin', Buzz. Is it like they +say?" + +It was Buzz Werner's great moment. He had pictured it a thousand times +in his mind as he lay in the wet trenches, as he plodded the muddy +French roads, as he reclined in his wheel chair in the hospital garden. +He had them in the hollow of his hand. His eyes brightened. He looked at +the faces so eagerly fixed on his utterance. + +"G'wan, Buzz," they urged. + +Buzz opened his lips and the words he used were the words he might have +used a year before, as to choice. "There's nothin' to tell. A guy didn't +have no time to be scairt. Everything kind of come at once, and you got +yours, or either you didn't. That's all there was to it. Je's, it was +fierce!" + +They waited. Nothing more. "Yeh, but tell us--" + +And suddenly Buzz turned away. The little group about him fell back, +respectfully. Something in his face, perhaps. A quietness, a new +dignity. + +"S'long, boys," he said. And limped off, toward home. + +And in that moment Buzz, the bully and braggart, vanished forever. And +in his place--head high, chest up, eyes clear--limped Ernest Werner, the +man. + + + + +IV + + +THE ELDEST + +The Self-Complacent Young Cub leaned an elbow against the mantel as +you've seen it done in English plays, and blew a practically perfect +smoke-ring. It hurtled toward me like a discus. + +"Trouble with your stuff," he began at once (we had just been +introduced), "is that it lacks plot. Been meaning to meet and tell you +that for a long time. Your characterization's all right, and your +dialogue. In fact, I think they're good. But your stuff lacks _raison +d'être_--if you know what I mean. + +"But"--in feeble self-defence--"people's insides are often so much more +interesting than their outsides; that which they think or feel so much +more thrilling than anything they actually do. Bennett--Wells--" + +"Rot!" remarked the young cub, briskly. "Plot's the thing." + + * * * * * + +There is no plot to this because there is no plot to Rose. There never +was. There never will be. Compared to the drab monotony of Rose's +existence a desert waste is as thrilling as a five-reel film. + +They had called her Rose, fatuously, as parents do their first-born +girl. No doubt she had been normally pink and white and velvety. It is a +risky thing to do, however. Think back hastily on the Roses you know. +Don't you find a startling majority still clinging, sere and withered, +to the family bush? + +In Chicago, Illinois, a city of two millions (or is it three?), there +are women whose lives are as remote, as grey, as unrelated to the world +about them as is the life of a Georgia cracker's woman-drudge. Rose was +one of these. An unwed woman, grown heavy about the hips and arms, as +houseworking women do, though they eat but little, moving dully about +the six-room flat on Sangamon Street, Rose was as much a slave as any +black wench of plantation days. + +There was the treadmill of endless dishes, dirtied as fast as cleansed; +there were beds, and beds, and beds; gravies and soups and stews. And +always the querulous voice of the sick woman in the front bedroom +demanding another hot water bag. Rose's day was punctuated by hot water +bags. They dotted her waking hours. She filled hot water bags +automatically, like a machine--water half-way to the top, then one hand +clutching the bag's slippery middle while the other, with a deft twist, +ejected the air within; a quick twirl of the metal stopper, the bag +released, squirming, and, finally, its plump and rufous cheeks wiped +dry. + +"Is that too hot for you, Ma? Where'd you want it--your head or your +feet?" + +A spinster nearing forty, living thus, must have her memories--one +precious memory, at least--or she dies. Rose had hers. She hugged it, +close. The L trains roared by, not thirty feet from her kitchen door. +Alley and yard and street sent up their noises to her. The life of +Chicago's millions yelped at her heels. On Rose's face was the vague, +mute look of the woman whose days are spent indoors, at sordid tasks. + +At six-thirty every night that look lifted, for an hour. At six-thirty +they came home--Floss, and Al, and Pa--their faces stamped with the +marks that come from a day spent in shop and factory. They brought with +them the crumbs and husks of the day's happenings, and these they flung +carelessly before the life-starved Rose and she ate them, gratefully. + +They came in with a rush, hungry, fagged, grimed, imperious, smelling of +the city. There was a slamming of doors, a banging of drawers, a clatter +of tongues, quarrelling, laughter. A brief visit to the sick woman's +room. The thin, complaining voice reciting its tale of the day's +discomfort and pain. Then supper. + +"Guess who I waited on to-day!" Floss might demand. + +Rose, dishing up, would pause, interested. "Who?" + +"Gladys Moraine! I knew her the minute she came down the aisle. I saw +her last year when she was playing in 'His Wives.' She's prettier off +than on, I think. I waited on her, and the other girls were wild. She +bought a dozen pairs of white kids, and made me give 'em to her huge, so +she could shove her hand right into 'em, like a man does. Two sizes too +big. All the swells wear 'em that way. And only one ring--an emerald the +size of a dime." + +"What'd she wear?" Rose's dull face was almost animated. + +"Ah yes!" in a dreamy falsetto from Al, "what _did_ she wear?" + +"Oh, shut up, Al! Just a suit, kind of plain, and yet you'd notice it. +And sables! And a Gladys Moraine hat. Everything quiet, and plain, and +dark; and yet she looked like a million dollars. I felt like a roach +while I was waiting on her, though she was awfully sweet to me." + +Or perhaps Al, the eel-like, would descend from his heights to mingle a +brief moment in the family talk. Al clerked in the National Cigar +Company's store at Clark and Madison. His was the wisdom of the snake, +the weasel, and the sphinx. A strangely silent young man, this Al, +thin-lipped, smooth-cheeked, perfumed. Slim of waist, flat of hip, +narrow of shoulder, his was the figure of the born fox-trotter. He +walked lightly, on the balls of his feet, like an Indian, but without +the Indian's dignity. + +"Some excitement ourselves, to-day, down at the store, believe me. The +Old Man's son started in to learn the retail selling end of the +business. Back of the showcase with the rest of us, waiting on trade, +and looking like a Yale yell." + +Pa would put down his paper to stare over his reading specs at Al. + +"Mannheim's son! The president!" + +"Yep! And I guess he loves it, huh? The Old Man wants him to learn the +business from the ground up. I'll bet he'll never get higher than the +first floor. To-day he went out to lunch at one and never shows up again +till four. Wears English collars, and smokes a brand of cigarettes we +don't carry." + +Thus was the world brought to Rose. Her sallow cheek would show a faint +hint of colour as she sipped her tea. + +At six-thirty on a Monday morning in late April (remember, nothing's +going to happen) Rose smothered her alarm clock at the first warning +snarl. She was wide-awake at once, as are those whose yesterdays, +to-days and to-morrows are all alike. Rose never opened her eyes to the +dim, tantalising half-consciousness of a something delightful or a +something harrowing in store for her that day. For one to whom the +wash-woman's Tuesday visitation is the event of the week, and in whose +bosom the delivery boy's hoarse "Groc-rees!" as he hurls soap and cabbage +on the kitchen table, arouses a wild flurry, there can be very little +thrill on awakening. + +Rose slept on the davenport-couch in the sitting-room. That fact in +itself rises her status in the family. This Monday morning she opened +her eyes with what might be called a start if Rose were any other sort +of heroine. Something had happened, or was happening. It wasn't the six +o'clock steam hissing in the radiator. She was accustomed to that. The +rattle of the L trains, and the milkman's artillery disturbed her as +little as does the chirping of the birds the farmer's daughter. A +sensation new, yet familiar; delicious, yet painful, held her. She +groped to define it, lying there. Her gaze, wandering over the expanse +of the grey woollen blanket, fixed upon a small black object trembling +there. The knowledge that came to her then had come, many weeks before, +in a hundred subtle and exquisite ways, to those who dwell in the open +places. Rose's eyes narrowed craftily. Craftily, stealthily, she sat up, +one hand raised. Her eyes still fixed on the quivering spot, the hand +descended, lightning-quick. But not quickly enough. The black spot +vanished. It sped toward the open window. Through that window there came +a balmy softness made up of Lake Michigan zephyr, and stockyards smell, +and distant budding things. Rose had failed to swat the first fly of the +season. Spring had come. + +As she got out of bed and thud-thudded across the room on her heels to +shut the window she glanced out into the quiet street. Her city eyes, +untrained to nature's hints, failed to notice that the scraggy, +smoke-dwarfed oak that sprang, somehow, miraculously, from the mangey +little dirt-plot in front of the building had developed surprising +things all over its scrawny branches overnight. But she did see that the +front windows of the flat building across the way were bare of the +Chicago-grey lace curtains that had hung there the day before. House +cleaning! Well, most decidedly spring had come. + +Rose was the household's Aurora. Following the donning of her limp and +obscure garments it was Rose's daily duty to tear the silent family from +its slumbers. Ma was always awake, her sick eyes fixed hopefully on the +door. For fourteen years it had been the same. + +"Sleeping?" + +"Sleeping! I haven't closed an eye all night." + +Rose had learned not to dispute that statement. + +"It's spring out! I'm going to clean the closets and the bureau drawers +to-day. I'll have your coffee in a jiffy. Do you feel like getting up +and sitting out on the back porch, toward noon, maybe?" + +On her way kitchenward she stopped for a sharp tattoo at the door of the +room in which Pa and Al slept. A sleepy grunt of remonstrance rewarded +her. She came to Floss's door, turned the knob softly, peered in. Floss +was sleeping as twenty sleeps, deeply, dreamlessly, one slim bare arm +outflung, the lashes resting ever so lightly on the delicate curve of +cheek. As she lay there asleep in her disordered bedroom, her clothes +strewing chair, dresser, floor, Floss's tastes, mental equipment, +spiritual make-up, innermost thoughts, were as plainly to be read by +the observer as though she had been scientifically charted by a +psycho-analyst, a metaphysician and her dearest girl friend. + +"Floss! Floss, honey! Quarter to seven!" Floss stirred, moaned faintly, +dropped into sleep again. + +Fifteen minutes later, the table set, the coffee simmering, the morning +paper brought from the back porch to Ma, Rose had heard none of the +sounds that proclaimed the family astir--the banging of drawers, the +rush of running water, the slap of slippered feet. A peep of enquiry +into the depths of the coffee pot, the gas turned to a circle of blue +beads, and she was down the hall to sound the second alarm. + +"Floss, you know if Al once gets into the bathroom!" Floss sat up in +bed, her eyes still closed. She made little clucking sounds with her +tongue and lips, as a baby does when it wakes. Drugged with sleep, hair +tousled, muscles sagging, at seven o'clock in the morning, the most +trying hour in the day for a woman, Floss was still triumphantly pretty. +She had on one of those absurd pink muslin nightgowns, artfully designed +to look like crêpe de chine. You've seen them rosily displayed in the +cheaper shop windows, marked ninety-eight cents, and you may have +wondered who might buy them, forgetting that there is an imitation mind +for every imitation article in the world. + +Rose stooped, picked up a pair of silk stockings from the floor, and +ran an investigating hand through to heel and toe. She plucked a soiled +pink blouse off the back of a chair, eyed it critically, and tucked it +under her arm with the stockings. + +"Did you have a good time last night?" + +Floss yawned elaborately, stretched her slim arms high above her head; +then, with a desperate effort, flung back the bed-clothes, swung her +legs over the side of the bed and slipped her toes into the shabby, +pomponed slippers that lay on the floor. + +"I say, did you have a g--" + +"Oh Lord, I don't know! I guess so," snapped Floss. Temperamentally, +Floss was not at her best at seven o'clock on Monday morning. Rose did +not pursue the subject. She tried another tack. + +"It's as mild as summer out. I see the Werners and the Burkes are +housecleaning. I thought I'd start to-day with the closets, and the +bureau drawers. You could wear your blue this morning, if it was +pressed." + +Floss yawned again, disinterestedly, and folded her kimono about her. + +"Go as far as you like. Only don't put things back in my closet so's I +can't ever find 'em again. I wish you'd press that blue skirt. And wash +out the Georgette crêpe waist. I might need it." + +The blouse, and skirt, and stockings under her arm, Rose went back to +the kitchen to prepare her mother's breakfast tray. Wafted back to her +came the acrid odour of Pa's matutinal pipe, and the accustomed +bickering between Al and Floss over the possession of the bathroom. + +"What do you think this is, anyway? A Turkish bath?" + +"Shave in your own room!" + +Between Floss and Al there existed a feud that lifted only when a third +member of the family turned against either of them. Immediately they +about-faced and stood united against the offender. + +Pa was the first to demand breakfast, as always. Very neat, was Pa, and +fussy, and strangely young looking to be the husband of the grey-haired, +parchment-skinned woman who lay in the front bedroom. Pa had two manias: +the movies, and a passion for purchasing new and complicated household +utensils--cream-whippers, egg-beaters, window-clamps, lemon-squeezers, +silver-polishers. He haunted department store basements in search of +them. + +He opened his paper now and glanced at the head-lines and at the Monday +morning ads. "I see the Fair's got a spring housecleaning sale. They +advertise a new kind of extension curtain rod. And Scouro, three cakes +for a dime." + +"If you waste one cent more on truck like that," Rose protested, placing +his breakfast before him, "when half the time I can't make the +housekeeping money last through the week!" + +"Your ma did it." + +"Fourteen years ago liver wasn't thirty-two cents a pound," retorted +Rose, "and besides--" + +"Scramble 'em!" yelled Al, from the bedroom, by way of warning. + +There was very little talk after that. The energies of three of them +were directed toward reaching the waiting desk or counter on time. The +energy of one toward making that accomplishment easy. The front door +slammed once--that was Pa, on his way; slammed again--Al. Floss rushed +into the dining-room fastening the waist-band of her skirt, her hat +already on. Rose always had a rather special breakfast for Floss. Floss +posed as being a rather special person. She always breakfasted last, and +late. Floss's was a fastidiousness which shrinks at badly served food, a +spotted table-cloth, or a last year's hat, while it overlooks a rent in +an undergarment or the accumulated dust in a hairbrush. Her blouse was +of the sheerest. Her hair shone in waves about her delicate checks. She +ate her orange, and sipped her very special coffee, and made a little +face over her egg that had been shirred in the oven or in some way +highly specialised. Then the front door slammed again--a semi-slam, this +time. Floss never did quite close a door. Rose followed her down the +hall, shut and bolted it, Chicago fashion. The sick woman in the front +bedroom had dropped into one of her fitful morning dozes. At eight +o'clock the little flat was very still. + +If you knew nothing about Rose; if you had not already been told that +she slept on the sitting-room davenport; that she was taken for granted +as the family drudge; that she was, in that household, merely an +intelligent machine that made beds, fried eggs, filled hot water bags, +you would get a characterization of her from this: She was the sort of +person who never has a closet or bureau drawer all her own. Her few and +negligible garments hung apologetically in obscure corners of closets +dedicated to her sister's wardrobe or her brother's, or her spruce and +fussy old father's. Vague personal belongings, such as combings, +handkerchiefs, a spectacle case, a hairbrush, were found tucked away in +a desk pigeon-hole, a table drawer, or on the top shelf in the bathroom. + +As she pulled the disfiguring blue gingham dust-cap over her hair now, +and rolled her sleeves to her elbows, you would never have dreamed that +Rose was embarking upon her great adventure. You would never have +guessed that the semi-yearly closet cleaning was to give to Rose a +thrill as delicious as it was exquisitely painful. But Rose knew. And so +she teased herself, and tried not to think of the pasteboard box on the +shelf in the hall closet, under the pile of reserve blankets, and told +herself that she would leave that closet until the last, when she would +have to hurry over it. + + * * * * * + +When you clean closets and bureau drawers thoroughly you have to carry +things out to the back porch and flap them, Rose was that sort of +housekeeper. She leaned over the porch railing and flapped things, so +that the dust motes spun and swirled in the sunshine. Rose's arms worked +up and down energetically, then less energetically, finally ceased their +motion altogether. She leaned idle elbows on the porch railing and gazed +down into the yard below with a look in her eyes such as no squalid +Chicago back yard, with its dusty débris, could summon, even in +spring-time. + +The woman next door came out on her back porch that adjoined Rose's. The +day seemed to have her in its spell, too, for in her hand was something +woolly and wintry, and she began to flap it about as Rose had done. She +had lived next door since October, had that woman, but the two had never +exchanged a word, true to the traditions of their city training. Rose +had her doubts of the woman next door. She kept a toy dog which she +aired afternoons, and her kimonos were florid and numerous. Now, as the +eyes of the two women met, Rose found herself saying, "Looks like +summer." + +The woman next door caught the scrap of conversation eagerly, hungrily. +"It certainly does! Makes me feel like new clothes, and housecleaning." + +"I started to-day!" said Rose, triumphantly. + +"Not already!" gasped the woman next door, with the chagrin that only a +woman knows who has let May steal upon her unawares. + +From far down the alley sounded a chant, drawing nearer and nearer, +until there shambled into view a decrepit horse drawing a dilapidated +huckster's cart. Perched on the seat was a Greek who turned his dusky +face up toward the two women leaning over the porch railings. "Rhubarb, +leddy. Fresh rhubarb!" + +"My folks don't care for rhubarb sauce," Rose told the woman next door. + +"It makes the worst pie in the world," the woman confided to Rose. + +Whereupon each bought a bunch of the succulent green and red stalks. It +was their offering at the season's shrine. + +Rose flung the rhubarb on the kitchen table, pulled her dust-cap more +firmly about her ears, and hurried back to the disorder of Floss's dim +little bedroom. After that it was dust-cloth, and soapsuds, and +scrub-brush in a race against recurrent water bags, insistent doorbells, +and the inevitable dinner hour. It was mid-afternoon when Rose, standing +a-tiptoe on a chair, came at last to the little box on the top shelf +under the bedding in the hall closet. Her hand touched the box, and +closed about it. A little electric thrill vibrated through her body. She +stepped down from the chair, heavily, listened until her acute ear +caught the sound of the sick woman's slumbrous breathing; then, box in +hand, walked down the dark hall to the kitchen. The rhubarb pie, still +steaming in its pan, was cooling on the kitchen table. The dishes from +the invalid's lunch-tray littered the sink. But Rose, seated on the +kitchen chair, her rumpled dust-cap pushed back from her flushed, +perspiring face, untied the rude bit of string that bound the old candy +box, removed the lid, slowly, and by that act was wafted magically out +of the world of rhubarb pies, and kitchen chairs, and dirty dishes, into +that place whose air is the breath of incense and myrrh, whose paths are +rose-strewn, whose dwellings are temples dedicated to but one small god. +The land is known as Love, and Rose travelled back to it on the magic +rug of memory. + +A family of five in a six-room Chicago flat must sacrifice sentiment to +necessity. There is precious little space for those pressed flowers, +time-yellowed gowns, and ribbon-bound packets that figured so +prominently in the days of attics. Into the garbage can with yesterday's +roses! The janitor's burlap sack yawns for this morning's mail; last +year's gown has long ago met its end at the hands of the ol'-clo'es man +or the wash-woman's daughter. That they had survived these fourteen +years, and the strictures of their owner's dwelling, tells more about +this boxful of letters than could be conveyed by a battalion of +adjectives. + +Rose began at the top of the pile, in her orderly fashion, and read +straight through to the last. It took one hour. Half of that time she +was not reading. She was staring straight ahead with what is mistakenly +called an unseeing look, but which actually pierces the veil of years +and beholds things far, far beyond the vision of the actual eye. They +were the letters of a commonplace man to a commonplace woman, written +when they loved each other, and so they were touched with something of +the divine. They must have been, else how could they have sustained this +woman through fifteen years of drudgery? They were the only tangible +foundation left of the structure of dreams she had built about this man. +All the rest of her house of love had tumbled about her ears fifteen +years before, but with these few remaining bricks she had erected many +times since castles and towers more exquisite and lofty and soaring than +the original humble structure had ever been. + +The story? Well, there really isn't any, as we've warned you. Rose had +been pretty then in much the same delicate way that Floss was pretty +now. They were to have been married. Rose's mother fell ill, Floss and +Al were little more than babies. The marriage was put off. The illness +lasted six months--a year--two years--became interminable. The breach +into which Rose had stepped closed about her and became a prison. The +man had waited, had grown impatient, finally rebelled. He had fled, +probably, to marry a less encumbered lady. Rose had gone dully on, +caring for the household, the children, the sick woman. In the years +that had gone by since then Rose had forgiven him his faithlessness. +She only remembered that he had been wont to call her his Röschen, +his Rosebud, his pretty flower (being a German gentleman). She only +recalled the wonder of having been first in some one's thoughts--she +who now was so hopelessly, so irrevocably last. + +As she sat there in her kitchen, wearing her soap-stained and faded blue +gingham, and the dust-cap pushed back at a rakish angle, a simpering +little smile about her lips, she was really very much like the +disappointed old maids you used to see so cruelly pictured in the comic +valentines. Had those letters obsessed her a little more strongly she +might have become quite mad, the Freudians would tell you. Had they held +less for her, or had she not been so completely the household's slave, +she might have found a certain solace and satisfaction in viewing the +Greek profile and marcel wave of the most-worshipped movie star. As it +was, they were her ballast, her refuge, the leavening yeast in the soggy +dough of her existence. This man had wanted her to be his wife. She had +found favour in his eyes. She was certain that he still thought of her, +sometimes, and tenderly, regretfully, as she thought of him. It helped +her to live. Not only that, it made living possible. + +A clock struck, a window slammed, or a street-noise smote her ear +sharply. Some sound started her out of her reverie. Rose jumped, stared +a moment at the letters in her lap, then hastily, almost shamefacedly, +sorted them (she knew each envelope by heart) tied them, placed them in +their box and bore them down the hail. There, mounting her chair, she +scrubbed the top shelf with her soapy rag, placed the box in its +corner, left the hall closet smelling of cleanliness, with never a hint +of lavender to betray its secret treasure. + +Were Rose to die and go to Heaven, there to spend her days thumbing a +golden harp, her hands, by force of habit, would, drop harp-strings at +quarter to six, to begin laying a celestial and unspotted table-cloth +for supper. Habits as deeply rooted as that must hold, even in +after-life. + +To-night's six-thirty stampede was noticeably subdued on the part of Pa +and Al. It had been a day of sudden and enervating heat, and the city +had done its worst to them. Pa's pink gills showed a hint of purple. +Al's flimsy silk shirt stuck to his back, and his glittering pompadour +was many degrees less submissive than was its wont. But Floss came in +late, breathless, and radiant, a large and significant paper bag in her +hand. Rose, in the kitchen, was transferring the smoking supper from pot +to platter. Pa, in the doorway of the sick woman's little room, had just +put his fourteen-year-old question with his usual assumption of +heartiness and cheer: "Well, well! And how's the old girl to-night? Feel +like you could get up and punish a little supper, eh?" Al engaged at the +telephone with some one whom he addressed proprietorially as Kid, was +deep in his plans for the evening's diversion. Upon this accustomed +scene Floss burst with havoc. + +"Rose! Rose, did you iron my Georgette crêpe? Listen! Guess what!" All +this as she was rushing down the hall, paper hat-bag still in hand. +"Guess who was in the store to-day!" + +Rose, at the oven, turned a flushed and interested face toward Floss. + +"Who? What's that? A hat?" + +"Yes. But listen--" + +"Let's see it." + +Floss whipped it out of its bag, defiantly. "There! But wait a minute! +Let me tell you--" + +"How much?" + +Floss hesitated just a second. Her wage was nine dollars a week. Then, +"Seven-fifty, trimmed." The hat was one of those tiny, head-hugging +absurdities that only the Flosses can wear. + +"Trimmed is right!" jeered Al, from the doorway. + +Rose, thin-lipped with disapproval, turned to her stove again. + +"Well, but I had to have it. I'm going to the theatre to-night. And +guess who with! Henry Selz!" + +Henry Selz was the unromantic name of the commonplace man over whose +fifteen-year-old letters Rose had glowed and dreamed an hour before. It +was a name that had become mythical in that household--to all but one. +Rose heard it spoken now with a sense of unreality. She smiled a little +uncertainly, and went on stirring the flour thickening for the gravy. +But she was dimly aware that something inside her had suspended action +for a moment, during which moment she felt strangely light and +disembodied, and that directly afterward the thing began to work madly, +so that there was a choked feeling in her chest and a hot pounding in +her head. + +"What's the joke?" she said, stirring the gravy in the pan. + +"Joke nothing! Honest to God! I was standing back of the counter at +about ten. The rush hadn't really begun yet. Glove trade usually starts +late. I was standing there kidding Herb, the stock boy, when down the +aisle comes a man in a big hat, like you see in the western pictures, +hair a little grey at the temples, and everything, just like a movie +actor. I said to Herb, 'Is it real?' I hadn't got the words out of my +mouth when the fellow sees me, stands stock still in the middle of the +aisle with his mouth open and his eyes sticking out. 'Register +surprise,' I said to Herb, and looked around for the camera. And that +minute he took two jumps over to where I was standing, grabbed my hands +and says, 'Rose! Rose!' kind of choky. 'Not by about twenty years,' I +said. 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!'" + +Rose--a transfigured Rose, glowing, trembling, radiant--repeated, +vibrantly, "You said, 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!' +And--?" + +"He looked kind of stunned, for just a minute. His face was a scream, +honestly. Then he said, 'But of course. Fifteen years. But I had always +thought of her as just the same.' And he kind of laughed, ashamed, like +a kid. And the whitest teeth!" + +"Yes, they were--white," said Rose. "Well?" + +"Well, I said, 'Won't I do instead?' 'You bet you'll do!' he said. And +then he told me his name, and how he was living out in Spokane, and his +wife was dead, and he had made a lot of money--fruit, or real estate, or +something. He talked a lot about it at lunch, but I didn't pay any +attention, as long as he really has it a lot I care how--" + +"At lunch?" + +"Everything from grape-fruit to coffee. I didn't know it could be done +in one hour. Believe me, he had those waiters jumping. It takes money. +He asked all about you, and ma, and everything. And he kept looking at +me and saying, 'It's wonderful!' I said, 'Isn't it!' but I meant the +lunch. He wanted me to go driving this afternoon--auto and everything. +Kept calling me Rose. It made me kind of mad, and I told him how you +look. He said, 'I suppose so,' and asked me to go to a show to-night. +Listen, did you press my Georgette? And the blue?" + +"I'll iron the waist while you're eating. I'm not hungry. It only takes +a minute. Did you say he was grey?" + +"Grey? Oh, you mean--why, just here, and here. Interesting, but not a +bit old. And he's got that money look that makes waiters and doormen and +taxi drivers just hump. I don't want any supper. Just a cup of tea. I +haven't got enough time to dress in, decently, as it is." + +Al, draped in the doorway, removed his cigarette to give greater force +to his speech. "Your story interests me strangely, little gell. But +there's a couple of other people that would like to eat, even if you +wouldn't. Come on with that supper, Ro. Nobody staked me to a lunch +to-day." + +Rose turned to her stove again. Two carmine spots had leaped suddenly to +her cheeks. She served the meal in silence, and ate nothing, but that +was not remarkable. For the cook there is little appeal in the meat that +she has tended from its moist and bloody entrance in the butcher's +paper, through the basting or broiling stage to its formal appearance on +the platter. She saw that Al and her father were served. Then she went +back to the kitchen, and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly +fluted the ruffles of the crêpe blouse. Floss appeared when the meal was +half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset +cover showing under her thin kimono. She poured herself a cup of tea and +drank it in little quick, nervous gulps. She looked deliriously young, +and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the +flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and anticipation lent a glow to her +eyes, colour to her cheeks. Al, glancing expertly at the ingenuousness +of her artfully simple coiffure, the slim limpness of her body, her +wide-eyed gaze, laughed a wise little laugh. + +"Every move a Pickford. And so girlish withal." + +Floss ignored him. "Hurry up with that waist, Rose!" + +"I'm on the collar now. In a second." There was a little silence. Then: +"Floss, is--is Henry going to call for you--here?" + +"Well, sure! Did you think I was going to meet him on the corner? He +said he wanted to see you, or something polite like that." + +She finished her tea and vanished again. Al, too, had disappeared to +begin that process from which he had always emerged incredibly sleek, +and dapper and perfumed. His progress with shaving brush, shirt, collar +and tie was marked by disjointed bars of the newest syncopation whistled +with an uncanny precision and fidelity to detail. He caught the broken +time, and tossed it lightly up again, and dropped it, and caught it +deftly like a juggler playing with frail crystal globes that seem +forever on the point of crashing to the ground. + +Pa stood up, yawning. "Well," he said, his manner very casual, "guess +I'll just drop around to the movie." + +From the kitchen, "Don't you want to sit with ma a minute, first?" + +"I will when I come back. They're showing the third installment of 'The +Adventures of Aline,' and I don't want to come in in the middle of it." + +He knew the selfishness of it, this furtive and sprightly old man. And +because he knew it he attempted to hide his guilt under a burst of +temper. + +"I've been slaving all day. I guess I've got the right to a little +amusement. A man works his fingers to the bone for his family, and then +his own daughter nags him." + +He stamped down the hall, righteously, and slammed the front door. + +Rose came from the kitchen, the pink blouse, warm from the iron, in one +hand. She prinked out its ruffles and pleatings as she went. Floss, +burnishing her nails somewhat frantically with a dilapidated and greasy +buffer, snatched the garment from her and slipped bare arms into it. The +front door bell rang, three big, determined rings. Panic fell upon the +household. + +"It's him!" whispered Floss, as if she could be heard in the entrance +three floors below. "You'll have to go." + +"I can't!" Every inch of her seemed to shrink and cower away from the +thought. "I can't!" Her eyes darted to and fro like a hunted thing +seeking to escape. She ran to the hall. "Al! Al, go to the door, will +you?" + +"Can't," came back in a thick mumble. "Shaving." + +The front door-bell rang again, three big, determined rings. "Rose!" +hissed Floss, her tone venomous. "I can't go with my waist open. For +heaven's sake! Go to the door!" + +"I can't," repeated Rose, in a kind of wail. "I--can't." And went. As +she went she passed one futile, work-worn hand over her hair, plucked +off her apron and tossed it into; a corner, first wiping her flushed +face with it. + +Henry Selz came up the shabby stairs springily as a man of forty should. +Rose stood at the door and waited for him. He stood in the doorway a +moment, uncertainly. + +"How-do, Henry." + +His uncertainty became incredulity. Then, "Why, how-do, Rose! Didn't +know you--for a minute. Well, well! It's been a long time. Let's +see--ten--fourteen--about fifteen years, isn't it?" + +His tone was cheerfully conversational. He really was interested, +mathematically. He was as sentimental in his reminiscence as if he had +been calculating the lapse of time between the Chicago fire and the +World's Fair. + +"Fifteen," said Rose, "in May. Won't you come in? Floss'll be here in a +minute." + +Henry Selz came in and sat down on the davenport couch and dabbed at his +forehead. The years had been very kind to him--those same years that had +treated Rose so ruthlessly. He had the look of an outdoor man; a man who +has met prosperity and walked with her, and followed her pleasant ways; +a man who has learned late in life of golf and caviar and tailors, but +who has adapted himself to these accessories of wealth with a minimum of +friction. + +"It certainly is warm, for this time of year." He leaned back and +regarded Rose tolerantly. "Well, and how've you been? Did little sister +tell you how flabbergasted I was when I saw her this morning? I'm darned +if it didn't take fifteen years off my age, just like that! I got kind +of balled up for one minute and thought it was you. She tell you?" + +"Yes, she told me," said Rose. + +"I hear your ma's still sick. That certainly is tough. And you've never +married, eh?" + +"Never married," echoed Rose. + +And so they made conversation, a little uncomfortably, until there came +quick, light young steps down the hallway, and Floss appeared in the +door, a radiant, glowing, girlish vision. Youth was in her eyes, her +cheeks, on her lips. She radiated it. She was miraculously well dressed, +in her knowingly simple blue serge suit, and her tiny hat, and her neat +shoes and gloves. + +"Ah! And how's the little girl to-night?" said Henry Selz. + +Floss dimpled, blushed, smiled, swayed. "Did I keep you waiting a +terribly long time?" + +"No, not a bit. Rose and I were chinning over old times, weren't we, +Rose?" A kindly, clumsy thought struck him. "Say, look here, Rose. We're +going to a show. Why don't you run and put on your hat and come along. +H'm? Come on!" + +Rose smiled as a mother smiles at a child that has unknowingly hurt her. +"No, thanks, Henry. Not to-night. You and Floss run along. Yes, I'll +remember you to Ma. I'm sorry you can't see her. But she don't see +anybody, poor Ma." + +Then they were off, in a little flurry of words and laughter. From force +of habit Rose's near-sighted eyes peered critically at the hang of +Floss's blue skirt and the angle of the pert new hat. She stood a +moment, uncertainly, after they had left. On her face was the queerest +look, as of one thinking, re-adjusting, struggling to arrive at a +conclusion in the midst of sudden bewilderment. She turned mechanically +and went into her mother's room. She picked up the tray on the table by +the bed. + +"Who was that?" asked the sick woman, in her ghostly, devitalised voice. + +"That was Henry Selz," said Rose. + +The sick woman grappled a moment with memory. "Henry Selz! Henry--oh, +yes. Did he go out with Rose?" + +"Yes," said Rose. + +"It's cold in here," whined the sick woman. + +"I'll get you a hot bag in a minute, Ma." Rose carried the tray down the +hall to the kitchen. At that Al emerged from his bedroom, shrugging +himself into his coat. He followed Rose down the hall and watched her as +she filled the bag and screwed it and wiped it dry. + +"I'll take that in to Ma," he volunteered. He was up the hall and back +in a flash. Rose had slumped into a chair at the dining-room table, and +was pouring herself a cup of cold and bitter tea. Al came over to her +and laid one white hand on her shoulder. + +"Ro, lend me a couple of dollars till Saturday, will you?" + +"I should say not." + +Al doused his cigarette in the dregs of a convenient teacup. He bent +down and laid his powdered and pale cheek against Rose's sallow one. One +arm was about her, and his hand patted her shoulder. + +"Oh, come on, kid," he coaxed. "Don't I always pay you back? Come on! Be +a sweet ol' sis. I wouldn't ask you only I've got a date to go to the +White City to-night, and dance, and I couldn't get out of it. I tried." +He kissed her, and his lips were moist, and he reeked of tobacco, and +though Rose shrugged impatiently away from him he knew that he had won. +Rose was not an eloquent woman; she was not even an articulate one, at +times. If she had been, she would have lifted up her voice to say now: + +"Oh, God! I am a woman! Why have you given me all the sorrows, and the +drudgery, and the bitterness and the thanklessness of motherhood, with +none of its joys! Give me back my youth! I'll drink the dregs at the +bottom of the cup, but first let me taste the sweet!" + +But Rose did not talk or think in such terms. She could not have put +into words the thing she was feeling even if she had been able to +diagnose it. So what she said was, "Don't you think I ever get sick and +tired of slaving for a thankless bunch like you? Well, I do! Sick and +tired of it. That's what! You make me tired, coming around asking for +money, as if I was a bank." + +But Al waited. And presently she said, grudgingly, wearily, "There's a +dollar bill and some small change in the can on the second shelf in the +china closet." + +Al was off like a terrier. From the pantry came the clink of metal +against metal. He was up the hall in a flash, without a look at Rose. +The front door slammed a third time. + +Rose stirred her cold tea slowly, leaning on the table's edge and gazing +down into the amber liquid that she did not mean to drink. For suddenly +and comically her face puckered up like a child's. Her head came down +among the supper things with a little crash that set the teacups, and +the greasy plates to jingling, and she sobbed as she lay there, with +great tearing, ugly sobs that would not be stilled, though she tried to +stifle them as does one who lives in a paper-thin Chicago flat. She was +not weeping for the Henry Selz whom she had just seen. She was not +weeping for envy of her selfish little sister, or for loneliness, or +weariness. She was weeping at the loss of a ghost who had become her +familiar. She was weeping because a packet of soiled and yellow old +letters on the top shelf in the hall closet was now only a packet of +soiled and yellow old letters, food for the ash can. She was weeping +because the urge of spring, that had expressed itself in her only this +morning pitifully enough in terms of rhubarb, and housecleaning and a +bundle of thumbed old love letters, had stirred in her for the last +time. + +But presently she did stop her sobbing and got up and cleared the table, +and washed the dishes and even glanced at the crumpled sheets of the +morning paper that she never found time to read until evening. By eight +o'clock the little flat was very still. + + + + +V + + +THAT'S MARRIAGE + +Theresa Platt (she that had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husband +across the breakfast table with eyes that smouldered. When a woman's +eyes smoulder at 7.30 a.m. the person seated opposite her had better +look out. But Orville Platt was quite unaware of any smouldering in +progress. He was occupied with his eggs. How could he know that these +very eggs were feeding the dull red menace in Terry Platt's eyes? + +When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it. He +treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts +of our daily life contain the element of chance that is to be found in a +three-minute breakfast egg. + +This was Orville Platt's method of attack: First, he chipped off the +top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a passionate and +relentless scrutiny. Straightening--preparatory to plunging his spoon +therein--he flapped his right elbow. It wasn't exactly a flap; it was a +pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a +mental state. Orville Platt always gave that little preliminary jerk +when he was contemplating a step, or when he was moved, or +argumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening. + +Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap--they had been married +four years--to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning +hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing Terry Platt's nerves into raw, +bleeding fragments. + +Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She was +breathing unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself, "if he +flaps again when he opens the second egg, I'll scream. I'll scream. I'll +scream! I'll sc--" + +He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up the second, +chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then--up went the elbow, and +down, with the accustomed little flap. + +The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early morning quiet of Wetona, +Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of Terry Platt's +hysteria. + +"Terry! For God's sake! What's the matter!" + +Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The egg yolk +trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and flung a gay spot +of yellow on the cloth. He started toward her. + +Terry, wild-eyed, pointed a shaking finger at him. She was laughing, +now, uncontrollably. "Your elbow! Your elbow!" + +"Elbow?" He looked down at it, bewildered; then up, fright in his face. +"What's the matter with it?" + +She mopped her eyes. Sobs shook her. "You f-f-flapped it." + +"F-f-f--" The bewilderment in Orville Platt's face gave way to anger. +"Do you mean to tell me that you screeched like that because my--because +I moved my elbow?" + +"Yes." + +His anger deepened and reddened to fury. He choked. He had started from +his chair with his napkin in his hand. He still clutched it. Now he +crumpled it into a wad and hurled it to the centre of the table, where +it struck a sugar bowl, dropped back, and uncrumpled slowly, +reprovingly. "You--you--" Then bewilderment closed down again like a fog +over his countenance. "But why? I can't see--" + +"Because it--because I can't stand it any longer. Flapping. This is what +you do. Like this." + +And she did it. Did it with insulting fidelity, being a clever mimic. + +"Well, all I can say is you're crazy, yelling like that, for nothing." + +"It isn't nothing." + +"Isn't, huh? If that isn't nothing, what is?" They were growing +incoherent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac? Like a wild +woman? The neighbours'll think I've killed you. What d'you mean, +anyway!" + +"I mean I'm tired of watching it, that's what. Sick and tired." + +"Y'are, huh? Well, young lady, just let me tell _you_ something--" + +He told her. There followed one of those incredible quarrels, as +sickening as they are human, which can take place only between two +people who love each other; who love each other so well that each knows +with cruel certainty the surest way to wound the other; and who stab, +and tear, and claw at these vulnerable spots in exact proportion to +their love. + +Ugly words. Bitter words. Words that neither knew they knew flew between +them like sparks between steel striking steel. + +From him--"Trouble with you is you haven't got enough to do. That's the +trouble with half you women. Just lay around the house, rotting. I'm a +fool, slaving on the road to keep a good-for-nothing--" + +"I suppose you call sitting around hotel lobbies slaving! I suppose the +house runs itself! How about my evenings? Sitting here alone, night +after night, when you're on the road." + +Finally, "Well, if you don't like it," he snarled, and lifted his chair +by the back and slammed it down, savagely, "if you don't like it, why +don't you get out, h'm? Why don't you get out?" + +And from her, her eyes narrowed to two slits, her cheeks scarlet: + +"Why, thanks. I guess I will." + +Ten minutes later he had flung out of the house to catch the 8.19 for +Manitowoc. He marched down the street, his shoulders swinging +rhythmically to the weight of the burden he carried--his black leather +hand-bag and the shiny tan sample case, battle-scarred, both, from many +encounters with ruthless porters and 'bus men and bell boys. For four +years, as he left for his semi-monthly trip, he and Terry had observed a +certain little ceremony (as had the neighbours). She would stand in the +doorway watching him down the street, the heavier sample-case banging +occasionally at his shin. The depot was only three blocks away. Terry +watched him with fond, but unillusioned eyes, which proves that she +really loved him. He was a dapper, well-dressed fat man, with a weakness +for pronounced patterns in suitings, and addicted to brown derbies. One +week on the road, one week at home. That was his routine. The wholesale +grocery trade liked Platt, and he had for his customers the fondness +that a travelling salesman has who is successful in his territory. +Before his marriage to Terry Sheehan his little red address book had +been overwhelming proof against the theory that nobody loves a fat man. + +Terry, standing in the doorway, always knew that when he reached the +corner, just where Schroeder's house threatened to hide him from view, +he would stop, drop the sample case, wave his hand just once, pick up +the sample case and go on, proceeding backward for a step or two, until +Schroeder's house made good its threat. It was a comic scene in the +eyes of the onlooker, perhaps because a chubby Romeo offends the sense +of fitness. The neighbours, lurking behind their parlour curtains, had +laughed at first. But after awhile they learned to look for that little +scene, and to take it unto themselves, as if it were a personal thing. +Fifteen-year wives whose husbands had long since abandoned flowery +farewells used to get a vicarious thrill out of it, and to eye Terry +with a sort of envy. + +This morning Orville Platt did not even falter when he reached +Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily ahead, the +heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had stopped--though she +knew he wouldn't--Terry Platt would not have seen him. She remained +seated at the disordered breakfast table, a dreadfully still figure, and +sinister; a figure of stone and fire; of ice and flame. Over and over in +her mind she was milling the things she might have said to him, and had +not. She brewed a hundred vitriolic cruelties that she might have flung +in his face. She would concoct one biting brutality, and dismiss it for +a second, and abandon that for a third. She was too angry to cry--a +dangerous state in a woman. She was what is known as cold mad, so that +her mind was working clearly and with amazing swiftness, and yet as +though it were a thing detached; a thing that was no part of her. + +She sat thus for the better part of an hour, motionless except for one +forefinger that was, quite unconsciously, tapping out a popular and +cheap little air that she had been strumming at the piano the evening +before, having bought it down town that same afternoon. It had struck +Orville's fancy, and she had played it over and over for him. Her right +forefinger was playing the entire tune, and something in the back of her +head was following it accurately, though the separate thinking process +was going on just the same. Her eyes were bright, and wide, and hot. +Suddenly she became conscious of the musical antics of her finger. She +folded it in with its mates, so that her hand became a fist. She stood +up and stared down at the clutter of the breakfast table. The egg--that +fateful second egg--had congealed to a mottled mess of yellow and white. +The spoon lay on the cloth. His coffee, only half consumed, showed tan +with a cold grey film over it. A slice of toast at the left of his plate +seemed to grin at her with the semi-circular wedge that he had bitten +out of it. + +Terry stared down at this congealing remnant. Then she laughed, a hard, +high little laugh, pushed a plate away contemptuously with her hand, and +walked into the sitting room. On the piano was the piece of music +(Bennie Gottschalk's great song hit, "Hicky Bloo") which she had been +playing the night before. She picked it up, tore it straight across, +once, placed the pieces back to back and tore it across again. Then she +dropped the pieces to the floor. + +"You bet I'm going," she said, as though concluding a train of thought. +"You just bet I'm going. Right now!" + +And Terry went. She went for much the same reason as that given by the +ladye of high degree in the old English song--she who had left her lord +and bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that +was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel +precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so much +deeper that if psychology had not become a cant word we might drag it +into the explanation. It went so deep that it's necessary to delve back +to the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real +significance of it, and of the things she did after she went. + +When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan she had played the piano, +afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the Bijou theatre, on Cass +street, Wetona, Wisconsin. Any one with a name like Terry Sheehan would, +perforce, do well anything she might set out to do. There was nothing of +genius in Terry, but there was something of fire, and much that was +Irish. The combination makes for what is known as imagination in +playing. Which meant that the Watson Team, Eccentric Song and Dance +Artists, never needed a rehearsal when they played the Bijou. Ruby +Watson used merely to approach Terry before the Monday performance, +sheet-music in hand, and say, "Listen, dearie. We've got some new +business I want to wise you to. Right here it goes '_Tum_ dee-dee _dum_ +dee-dee _tum dum dum_. See? Like that. And then Jim vamps. Get me?" + +Terry, at the piano, would pucker her pretty brow a moment. Then, "Like +this, you mean?" + +"That's it! You've got it." + +"All right. I'll tell the drum." + +She could play any tune by ear, once heard. She got the spirit of a +thing, and transmitted it. When Terry played a march number you tapped +the floor with your foot, and unconsciously straightened your shoulders. +When she played a home-and-mother song that was heavy on the minor wail +you hoped that the man next to you didn't know you were crying (which he +probably didn't, because he was weeping, too). + +At that time motion pictures had not attained their present virulence. +Vaudeville, polite or otherwise, had not yet been crowded out by the +ubiquitous film. The Bijou offered entertainment of the cigar-box tramp +variety, interspersed with trick bicyclists, soubrettes in slightly +soiled pink, trained seals, and Family Fours with lumpy legs who tossed +each other about and struck Goldbergian attitudes. + +Contact with these gave Terry Sheehan a semi-professional tone. The more +conservative of her townspeople looked at her askance. There never had +been an evil thing about Terry, but Wetona considered her rather fly. +Terry's hair was very black, and she had a fondness for those little, +close-fitting scarlet velvet turbans. A scarlet velvet turban would have +made Martha Washington look fly. Terry's mother had died when the girl +was eight, and Terry's father had been what is known as easy-going. A +good-natured, lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He +drove around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any +money because he did honest work and charged as little for it as men who +did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did not crumble, and his +lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired in the contracting +business in that way. Ed Sheehan and his daughter were great friends. +When he died (she was nineteen) they say she screamed once, like a +banshee, and dropped to the floor. + +After they had straightened out the muddle of books in Ed Sheehan's +gritty, dusty little office Terry turned her piano-playing talent to +practical account. At twenty-one she was still playing at the Bijou, and +into her face was creeping the first hint of that look of sophistication +which comes from daily contact with the artificial world of the +footlights. It is the look of those who must make believe as a business, +and are a-weary. You see it developed into its highest degree in the +face of a veteran comedian. It is the thing that gives the look of utter +pathos and tragedy to the relaxed expression of a circus clown. + +There are, in a small, Mid-West town like Wetona, just two kinds of +girls. Those who go down town Saturday nights, and those who don't. +Terry, if she had not been busy with her job at the Bijou, would have +come in the first group. She craved excitement. There was little chance +to satisfy such craving in Wetona, but she managed to find certain +means. The travelling men from the Burke House just across the street +used to drop in at the Bijou for an evening's entertainment. They +usually sat well toward the front, and Terry's expert playing, and the +gloss of her black hair, and her piquant profile as she sometimes looked +up toward the stage for a signal from one of the performers, caught +their fancy, and held it. + +Terry did not accept their attentions promiscuously. She was too decent +a girl for that. But she found herself, at the end of a year or two, +with a rather large acquaintance among these peripatetic gentlemen. You +occasionally saw one of them strolling home with her. Sometimes she went +driving with one of them of a Sunday afternoon. And she rather enjoyed +taking Sunday dinner at the Burke Hotel with a favoured friend. She +thought those small-town hotel Sunday dinners the last word in elegance. +The roast course was always accompanied by an aqueous, semi-frozen +concoction which the bill of fare revealed as Roman punch. It added a +royal touch to the repast, even when served with roast pork. I don't say +that any of these Lotharios snatched a kiss during a Sunday afternoon +drive. Or that Terry slapped him promptly. But either seems extremely +likely. + +Terry was twenty-two when Orville Platt, making his initial Wisconsin +trip for the wholesale grocery house he represented, first beheld +Terry's piquant Irish profile, and heard her deft manipulation of the +keys. Orville had the fat man's sense of rhythm and love of music. He +had a buttery tenor voice, too, of which he was rather proud. + +He spent three days in Wetona that first trip, and every evening saw him +at the Bijou, first row, centre. He stayed through two shows each time, +and before he had been there fifteen minutes Terry was conscious of him +through the back of her head. In fact I think that, in all innocence, +she rather played up to him. Orville Platt paid no more heed to the +stage, and what was occurring thereon, than if it had not been. He sat +looking at Terry, and waggling his head in time to the music. Not that +Terry was a beauty. But she was one of those immaculately clean types. +That look of fragrant cleanliness was her chief charm. Her clear, smooth +skin contributed to it, and the natural pencilling of her eyebrows. But +the thing that accented it, and gave it a last touch, was the way in +which her black hair came down in a little point just in the centre of +her forehead, where hair meets brow. It grew to form what is known as a +cow-lick. (A prettier name for it is widow's peak.) Your eye lighted on +it, pleased, and from it travelled its gratified way down her white +temples, past her little ears, to the smooth black coil at the nape of +her neck. It was a trip that rested you. + +At the end of the last performance on the second night of his visit to +the Bijou, Orville waited until the audience had begun to file out. Then +he leaned forward over the rail that separated orchestra from audience. + +"Could you," he said, his tones dulcet, "could you oblige me with the +name of that last piece you played?" + +Terry was stacking her music. "George!" she called, to the drum. +"Gentleman wants to know the name of that last piece." And prepared to +leave. + +"'My Georgia Crackerjack'," said the laconic drum. + +Orville Platt took a hasty side-step in the direction of the door toward +which Terry was headed. "It's a pretty thing," he said, fervently. "An +awful pretty thing. Thanks. It's beautiful." + +Terry flung a last insult at him over her shoulder: "Don't thank _me_ +for it. I didn't write it." + +Orville Platt did not go across the street to the hotel. He wandered up +Cass street, and into the ten-o'clock quiet of Main street, and down as +far as the park and back. "Pretty as a pink! And play!... And good, too. +Good." + +A fat man in love. + +At the end of six months they were married. Terry was surprised into it. +Not that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. +For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his +wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had +sent her large boxes of stale drug-store chocolates, and called her +endearing names as they made cautious declaration such as: + +"I've known a lot of girls, but you've got something different. I don't +know. You've got so much sense. A fellow can chum around with you. +Little pal." + +Orville's headquarters were Wetona. They rented a comfortable, +seven-room house in a comfortable, middle-class neighbourhood, and Terry +dropped the red velvet turbans and went in for picture hats and paradise +aigrettes. Orville bought her a piano whose tone was so good that to her +ear, accustomed to the metallic discords of the Bijou instrument, it +sounded out of tune. She played a great deal at first, but unconsciously +she missed the sharp spat of applause that used to follow her public +performance. She would play a piece, brilliantly, and then her hands +would drop to her lap. And the silence of her own sitting room would +fall flat on her ears. It was better on the evenings when Orville was +home. He sang, in his throaty, fat man's tenor, to Terry's expert +accompaniment. + +"This is better than playing for those bum actors, isn't it, hon?" And +he would pinch her ear. + +"Sure"--listlessly. + +But after the first year she became accustomed to what she termed +private life. She joined an afternoon sewing club, and was active in the +ladies' branch of the U.C.T. She developed a knack at cooking, too, and +Orville, after a week or ten days of hotel fare in small Wisconsin +towns, would come home to sea-foam biscuits, and real soup, and honest +pies and cake. Sometimes, in the midst of an appetising meal he would +lay down his knife and fork and lean back in his chair, and regard the +cool and unruffled Terry with a sort of reverence in his eyes. Then he +would get up, and come around to the other side of the table, and tip +her pretty face up to his. + +"I'll bet I'll wake up, some day, and find out it's all a dream. You +know this kind of thing doesn't really happen--not to a dub like me." + +One year; two; three; four. Routine. A little boredom. Some impatience. +She began to find fault with the very things she had liked in him: his +super-neatness; his fondness for dashing suit patterns; his throaty +tenor; his worship of her. And the flap. Oh, above all, that flap! That +little, innocent, meaningless mannerism that made her tremble with +nervousness. She hated it so that she could not trust herself to speak +of it to him. That was the trouble. Had she spoken of it, laughingly or +in earnest, before it became an obsession with her, that hideous +breakfast quarrel, with its taunts, and revilings, and open hate, might +never have come to pass. For that matter, any one of those foreign +fellows with the guttural names and the psychoanalytical minds could +have located her trouble in one _séance_. + +Terry Platt herself didn't know what was the matter with her. She would +have denied that anything was wrong. She didn't even throw her hands +above her head and shriek: "I want to live! I want to live! I want to +live!" like a lady in a play. She only knew she was sick of sewing at +the Wetona West-End Red Cross shop; sick of marketing, of home comforts, +of Orville, of the flap. + +Orville, you may remember, left at 8.19. The 11.23 bore Terry +Chicagoward. She had left the house as it was--beds unmade, rooms +unswept, breakfast table uncleared. She intended never to come back. + +Now and then a picture of the chaos she had left behind would flash +across her order-loving mind. The spoon on the table-cloth. Orville's +pajamas dangling over the bathroom chair. The coffee-pot on the gas +stove. + +"Pooh! What do I care?" + +In her pocketbook she had a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping +money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. +Her meals when Orville was on the road, had been those sketchy, +haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their +household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a +flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus, and Neapolitan +ice cream. The men in the dining car eyed her speculatively and with +appreciation. Then their glance dropped to the third finger of her left +hand, and wandered away. She had meant to remove it. In fact, she had +taken it off and dropped it into her bag. But her hand felt so queer, so +unaccustomed, so naked, that she had found herself slipping the narrow +band on again, and her thumb groped for it, gratefully. + +It was almost five o'clock when she reached Chicago. She felt no +uncertainty or bewilderment. She had been in Chicago three or four times +since her marriage. She went to a down town hotel. It was too late, she +told herself, to look for a more inexpensive room that night. When she +had tidied herself she went out. The things she did were the childish, +aimless things that one does who finds herself in possession of sudden +liberty. She walked up State Street, and stared in the windows; came +back, turned into Madison, passed a bright little shop in the window of +which taffy--white and gold--was being wound endlessly and fascinatingly +about a double-jointed machine. She went in and bought a sackful, and +wandered on down the street, munching. + +She had supper at one of those white-tiled sarcophagi that emblazon +Chicago's down town side streets. It had been her original intention to +dine in state in the rose-and-gold dining room of her hotel. She had +even thought daringly of lobster. But at the last moment she recoiled +from the idea of dining alone in that wilderness of tables so obviously +meant for two. + +After her supper she went to a picture show. She was amazed to find +there, instead of the accustomed orchestra, a pipe-organ that panted and +throbbed and rumbled over lugubrious classics. The picture was about a +faithless wife. Terry left in the middle of it. + +She awoke next morning at seven, as usual, started up wildly, looked +around, and dropped back. Nothing to get up for. The knowledge did not +fill her with a rush of relief. She would have her breakfast in bed! She +telephoned for it, languidly. But when it came she got up and ate it +from the table, after all. Terry was the kind of woman to whom a pink +gingham all-over apron, and a pink dust-cap are ravishingly becoming at +seven o'clock in the morning. That sort of woman congenitally cannot +enjoy her breakfast in bed. + +That morning she found a fairly comfortable room, more within her means, +on the north side in the boarding house district. She unpacked and hung +up her clothes and drifted down town again, idly. It was noon when she +came to the corner of State and Madison streets. It was a maelstrom that +caught her up, and buffeted her about, and tossed her helplessly this +way and that. The corner of Broadway and Forty-second streets has been +exploited in song and story as the world's most hazardous human +whirlpool. I've negotiated that corner. I've braved the square in front +of the American Express Company's office in Paris, June, before the War. +I've crossed the Strand at 11 p.m. when the theatre crowds are just out. +And to my mind the corner of State and Madison streets between twelve +and one, mid-day, makes any one of these dizzy spots look bosky, sylvan, +and deserted. + +The thousands jostled Terry, and knocked her hat awry, and dug her with +unheeding elbows, and stepped on her feet. + +"Say, look here!" she said, once futilely. They did not stop to listen. +State and Madison has no time for Terrys from Wetona. It goes its way, +pellmell. If it saw Terry at all it saw her only as a prettyish person, +in the wrong kind of suit and hat, with a bewildered, resentful look on +her face. + +Terry drifted on down the west side of State Street, with the hurrying +crowd. State and Monroe. A sound came to Terry's ears. A sound familiar, +beloved. To her ear, harassed with the roar and crash, with the shrill +scream of the crossing policemen's whistle, with the hiss of feet +shuffling on cement, it was a celestial strain. She looked up, toward +the sound. A great second-story window opened wide to the street. In it +a girl at a piano, and a man, red-faced, singing through a megaphone. +And on a flaring red and green sign: + + BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S MUSIC HOUSE! + + COME IN! HEAR BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S LATEST + HIT! THE HEART-THROB SONG THAT HAS GOT 'EM ALL! + THE SONG THAT MADE THE KAISER CRAWL! + + "_I COME FROM PARIS, ILLINOIS, BUT OH! + YOU PARIS, FRANCE! + + I USED TO WEAR BLUE OVERALLS BUT + NOW ITS KHAKI PANTS_." + + COME IN! COME IN! + +Terry accepted. + +She followed the sound of the music. Around the corner. Up a little +flight of stairs. She entered the realm of Euterpe; Euterpe with her +back hair frizzed; Euterpe with her flowing white robe replaced by +soiled white boots that failed to touch the hem of an empire-waisted +blue serge; Euterpe abandoning her lyre for jazz. She sat at the piano, +a red-haired young lady whose familiarity with the piano had bred +contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her +fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed grey and glistening nails, clawed the +keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of +music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. +The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by +request. A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of +one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, +"'Hicky Bloo!' Miss Ryan." And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a +hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which an +Indian tom-tom would have seemed as dulcet as the strumming of a lute in +a lady's boudoir. + +Terry joined the crowds about the counter. The girl at the piano was not +looking at the keys. Her head was screwed around over her left shoulder +and as she played she was holding forth animatedly to a girl friend who +had evidently dropped in from some store or office during the lunch +hour. Now and again the fat man paused in his vocal efforts to +reprimand her for her slackness. She paid no heed. There was something +gruesome, uncanny, about the way her fingers went their own way over the +defenceless keys. Her conversation with the frowzy little girl went on. + +"Wha'd he say?" (Over her shoulder). + +"Oh, he laffed." + +"Well, didja go?" + +"Me! Well, whutya think I yam, anyway?" + +"I woulda took a chanst." + +The fat man rebelled. + +"Look here! Get busy! What are you paid for? Talkin' or playin'? Huh?" + +The person at the piano, openly reproved thus before her friend, lifted +her uninspired hands from the keys and spake. When she had finished she +rose. + +"But you can't leave now," the megaphone man argued. "Right in the rush +hour." + +"I'm gone," said the girl. The fat man looked about, helplessly. He +gazed at the abandoned piano, as though it must go on of its own accord. +Then at the crowd. "Where's Miss Schwimmer?" he demanded of a clerk. + +"Out to lunch." + +Terry pushed her way to the edge of the counter and leaned over. "I can +play for you," she said. + +The man looked at her. "Sight?" + +"Yes." + +"Come on." + +Terry went around to the other side of the counter, took off her hat +and coat, rubbed her hands together briskly, sat down and began to play. +The crowd edged closer. + +It is a curious study, this noonday crowd that gathers to sate its +music-hunger on the scraps vouchsafed it by Bernie Gottschalk's Music +House. Loose-lipped, slope-shouldered young men with bad complexions and +slender hands. Girls whose clothes are an unconscious satire on +present-day fashions. On their faces, as they listen to the music, is a +look of peace and dreaming. They stand about, smiling a wistful half +smile. It is much the same expression that steals over the face of a +smoker who has lighted his after-dinner cigar, or of a drug victim who +is being lulled by his opiate. The music seems to satisfy a something +within them. Faces dull, eyes lustreless, they listen in a sort of +trance. + +Terry played on. She played as Terry Sheehan used to play. She played as +no music hack at Bernie Gottschalk's had ever played before. The crowd +swayed a little to the sound of it. Some kept time with little jerks of +the shoulder--the little hitching movement of the rag-time dancer whose +blood is filled with the fever of syncopation. Even the crowd flowing +down State Street must have caught the rhythm of it, for the room soon +filled. + +At two o'clock the crowd began to thin. Business would be slack, now, +until five, when it would again pick up until closing time at six. + +The fat vocalist put down his megaphone, wiped his forehead, and +regarded Terry with a warm blue eye. He had just finished singing "I've +Wandered Far from Dear Old Mother's Knee." (Bernie Gottschalk Inc. +Chicago. New York. You can't get bit with a Gottschalk hit. 15 cents +each.) + +"Girlie," he said, emphatically, "You sure--can--play!" He came over to +her at the piano and put a stubby hand on her shoulder. "Yessir! Those +little fingers--" + +Terry just turned her head to look down her nose at the moist hand +resting on her shoulder. "Those little fingers are going to meet your +face--suddenly--if you don't move on." + +"Who gave you your job?" demanded the fat man. + +"Nobody. I picked it myself. You can have it if you want it." + +"Can't you take a joke?" + +"Label yours." + +As the crowd dwindled she played less feverishly, but there was nothing +slipshod about her performance. The chubby songster found time to +proffer brief explanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It +used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose junk, and songs +about wanting to go back to every place from Dixie to Duluth. But now +seems it's all these here flag raisers. Honestly, I'm so sick of 'em I +got a notion to enlist to get away from it." + +Terry eyed him with, withering briefness. "A little training wouldn't +ruin your figure." + +She had never objected to Orville's _embonpoint_. But then, Orville was +a different sort of fat man; pink-cheeked, springy, immaculate. + +At four o'clock, as she was in the chorus of "Isn't There Another Joan +of Arc?" a melting masculine voice from the other side of the counter +said, "Pardon me. What's that you're playing?" + +Terry told him. She did not look up. + +"I wouldn't have known it. Played like that--a second Marseillaise. If +the words--what are the words? Let me see a--" + +"Show the gentleman a 'Joan'," Terry commanded briefly, over her +shoulder. The fat man laughed a wheezy laugh. Terry glanced around, +still playing, and encountered the gaze of two melting masculine eyes +that matched the melting masculine voice. The songster waved a hand +uniting Terry and the eyes in informal introduction. + +"Mr. Leon Sammett, the gentleman who sings the Gottschalk songs wherever +songs are heard. And Mrs.--that is--and Mrs. Sammett--" + +Terry turned. A sleek, swarthy world-old young man with the fashionable +concave torso, and alarmingly convex bone-rimmed glasses. Through them +his darkly luminous gaze glowed upon Terry. To escape their warmth she +sent her own gaze past him to encounter the arctic stare of the large +blonde person who had been included so lamely in the introduction. And +at that the frigidity of that stare softened, melted, dissolved. + +"Why Terry Sheehan! What in the world!" + +Terry's eyes bored beneath the layers of flabby fat. "It's--why, it's +Ruby Watson, isn't it? Eccentric Song and Dance--" + +She glanced at the concave young man and faltered. He was not Jim, of +the Bijou days. From him her eyes leaped back to the fur-bedecked +splendour of the woman. The plump face went so painfully red that the +makeup stood out on it, a distinct layer, like thin ice covering flowing +water. As she surveyed that bulk Terry realised that while Ruby might +still claim eccentricity, her song and dance days were over. "That's +ancient history, m'dear. I haven't been working for three years. What're +you doing in this joint? I'd heard you'd done well for yourself. That +you were married." + +"I am. That is I--well, I am. I--" + +At that the dark young man leaned over and patted Terry's hand that lay +on the counter. He smiled. His own hand was incredibly slender, long, +and tapering. + +"That's all right," he assured her, and smiled. "You two girls can have +a reunion later. What I want to know is can you play by ear?" + +"Yes, but--" + +He leaned far over the counter. "I knew it the minute I heard you play. +You've got the touch. Now listen. See if you can get this, and fake the +bass." + +He fixed his sombre and hypnotic eyes on Terry. His mouth screwed up +into a whistle. The tune--a tawdry but haunting little melody--came +through his lips. And Terry's quick ear sensed that every note was flat. +She turned back to the piano. "Of course you know you flatted every +note," she said. + +This time it was the blonde woman who laughed, and the man who flushed. +Terry cocked her head just a little to one side, like a knowing bird, +looked up into space beyond the piano top, and played the lilting little +melody with charm and fidelity. The dark young man followed her with a +wagging of the head and little jerks of both outspread hands. His +expression was beatific, enraptured. He hummed a little under his breath +and any one who was music wise would have known that he was just a +half-beat behind her all the way. + +When she had finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He bent his lean +frame over the counter and, despite his swart colouring, seemed to +glitter upon her--his eyes, his teeth, his very finger-nails. + +"Something led me here. I never come up on Tuesdays. But something--" + +"You was going to complain," put in his lady, heavily, "about that Teddy +Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the same songs this week that you +been boosting at the Inn." + +He put up a vibrant, peremptory hand. "Bah! What does that matter now! +What does anything matter now! Listen Miss--ah--Miss?--" + +"Pl--Sheehan. Terry Sheehan." + +He gazed off a moment into space. "H'm. 'Leon Sammett in Songs. Miss +Terry Sheehan at the Piano.' That doesn't sound bad. Now listen, Miss +Sheehan. I'm singing down at the University Inn. The Gottschalk song +hits. I guess you know my work. But I want to talk to you, private. It's +something to your interest. I go on down at the Inn at six. Will you +come and have a little something with Ruby and me? Now?" + +"Now?" faltered Terry, somewhat helplessly. Things seemed to be moving +rather swiftly for her, accustomed as she was to the peaceful routine of +the past four years. + +"Get your hat. It's your life chance. Wait till you see your name in +two-foot electrics over the front of every big-time house in the +country. You've got music in you. Tie to me and you're made." He turned +to the woman beside him. "Isn't that so, Rube?" + +"Sure. Look at _me_!" One would not have thought there could be so much +subtle vindictiveness in a fat blonde. + +Sammett whipped out a watch. "Just three-quarters of an hour. Come on, +girlie." + +His conversation had been conducted in an urgent undertone, with side +glances at the fat man with the megaphone. Terry approached him now. + +"I'm leaving now," she said. + +"Oh, no you're not. Six o'clock is your quitting time." + +In which he touched the Irish in Terry. "Any time I quit is my quitting +time." She went in quest of hat and coat much as the girl had done whose +place she had taken early in the day. The fat man followed her, +protesting. Terry, pinning on her hat tried to ignore him. But he laid +one plump hand on her arm and kept it there, though she tried to shake +him off. + +"Now, listen to me. That boy wouldn't mind putting his heel on your face +if he thought it would bring him up a step. I know'm. Y'see that walking +stick he's carrying? Well, compared to the yellow stripe that's in him, +that cane is a lead pencil. He's a song tout, that's all he is." Then, +more feverishly, as Terry tried to pull away: "Wait a minute. You're a +decent girl. I want to--Why, he can't even sing a note without you give +it to him first. He can put a song over, yes. But how? By flashin' that +toothy grin, of his and talkin' every word of it. Don't you--" + +But Terry freed herself with a final jerk and whipped around the +counter. The two, who had been talking together in an undertone, turned +to welcome her. "We've got a half hour. Come on. It's just over to Clark +and up a block or so." + +If you know Chicago at all, you know the University Inn, that gloriously +intercollegiate institution which welcomes any graduate of any school +of experience, and guarantees a post-graduate course in less time than +any similar haven of knowledge. Down a flight of stairs and into the +unwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality, between +five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at a table in an +obscure corner. A waiter brought them things in little glasses, though +no order had been given. The woman who had been Ruby Watson was so +silent as to be almost wordless. But the man talked rapidly. He talked +well, too. The same quality that enabled him, voiceless though he was, +to boost a song to success, was making his plea sound plausible in +Terry's ears now. + +"I've got to go and make up in a few minutes. So get this. I'm not going +to stick down in this basement eating house forever. I've got too much +talent. If I only had a voice--I mean a singing voice. But I haven't. +But then, neither has Georgie Cohan, and I can't see that it's wrecked +his life any. Look at Elsie Janis! But she sings. And they like it! Now +listen. I've got a song. It's my own. That bit you played for me up at +Gottschalk's is part of the chorus. But it's the words that'll go big. +They're great. It's an aviation song, see? Airship stuff. They're +yelling that it's the airyoplanes that're going to win this war. Well, +I'll help 'em. This song is going to put the aviator where he belongs. +It's going to be the big song of the war. It's going to make 'Tipperary' +sound like a Moody and Sankey hymn. It's the--" + +Ruby lifted her heavy-lidded eyes and sent him a meaning look. "Get +down to business, Leon. I'll tell her how good you are while you're +making up." + +He shot her a malignant glance, but took her advice. "Now what I've been +looking for for years is somebody who has got the music knack to give me +the accompaniment just a quarter of a jump ahead of my voice, see? I can +follow like a lamb, but I've got to have that feeler first. It's more +than a knack. It's a gift. And you've got it. I know it when I see it. I +want to get away from this cabaret thing. There's nothing in it for a +man of my talent. I'm gunning for vaudeville. But they won't book me +without a tryout. And when they hear my voice they--Well, if me and you +work together we can fool 'em. The song's great. And my makeup's one of +these av-iation costumes to go with the song, see? Pants tight in the +knee and baggy on the hips. And a coat with one of those full skirt +whaddyoucall'ems--" + +"Peplums," put in Ruby, placidly. + +"Sure. And the girls'll be wild about it. And the words!" he began to +sing, gratingly off-key: + + "Put on your sky clothes, + Put on your fly clothes + And take a trip with me. + We'll sail so high + Up in the sky + We'll drop a bomb from Mercury." + +"Why, that's awfully cute!" exclaimed Terry. Until now her opinion of +Mr. Sammett's talents had not been on a level with his. + +"Yeh, but wait till you hear the second verse. That's only part of the +chorus. You see, he's supposed to be talking to a French girl. He says: + + I'll parlez-vous in Français plain, + You'll answer, '_Cher Américain_, + We'll both. . . . . . . . . . ." + +The six o'clock lights blazed up, suddenly. A sad-looking group of men +trailed in and made for a corner where certain bulky, shapeless bundles +were soon revealed as those glittering and tortuous instruments which go +to make a jazz band. + +"You better go, Lee. The crowd comes in awful early now, with all those +buyers in town." + +Both hands on the table he half rose, reluctantly, still talking. "I've +got three other songs. They make Gottschalk's stuff look sick. All I +want's a chance. What I want you to do is accompaniment. On the stage, +see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my mind to +it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? And maybe you dressed as +Liberty. Anyway, it'll be new, and a knock-out. If only we can get away +with the voice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years never had a--" + +The band opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal, and thump of drum. +"Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he fled. Terry followed +his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of +the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a little +sigh. "Well! If he talks that way to the managers I don't see--" + +Ruby laughed a mirthless little laugh. "Talk doesn't get it over with +the managers, honey. You've got to deliver." + +"Well, but he's--that song _is_ a good one. I don't say it's as good as +he thinks it is, but it's good." + +"Yes," admitted the woman, grudgingly, "it's good." + +"Well, then?" + +The woman beckoned a waiter; he nodded and vanished, and reappeared with +a glass that was twin to the one she had just emptied. "Does he look +like he knew French? Or could make a rhyme?" + +"But didn't he? Doesn't he?" + +"The words were written by a little French girl who used to skate down +here last winter, when the craze was on. She was stuck on a Chicago kid +who went over to fly for the French." + +"But the music?" + +"There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret and she--" + +Terry's head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "I don't believe +it!" + +"Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was so different +from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so +nimbly in the Old Bijou days. "What'd you and your husband quarrel +about, Terry?" + +Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. He +just--I--it was--Say, how did you know we'd quarrelled?" + +And suddenly all the fat woman's apathy dropped from her like a garment +and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face. She +pushed her glass aside and leaned forward on her folded arms, so that +her face was close to Terry's. + +"Terry Sheehan, I know you've quarrelled, and I know just what it was +about. Oh, I don't mean the very thing it was about; but the kind of +thing. I'm going to do something for you, Terry, that I wouldn't take +the trouble to do for most women. But I guess I ain't had all the +softness knocked out of me yet, though it's a wonder. And I guess I +remember too plain the decent kid you was in the old days. What was the +name of that little small-time house me and Jim used to play? Bijou, +that's it; Bijou." + +The band struck up a new tune. Leon Sammett--slim, sleek, lithe in his +evening clothes--appeared with a little fair girl in pink chiffon. The +woman reached across the table and put one pudgy, jewelled hand on +Terry's arm. "He'll be through in ten minutes. Now listen to me. I left +Jim four years ago, and there hasn't been a minute since then, day or +night, when I wouldn't have crawled back to him on my hands and knees if +I could. But I couldn't. He wouldn't have me now. How could he? How do I +know you've quarrelled? I can see it in your eyes. They look just the +way mine have felt for four years, that's how. I met up with this boy, +and there wasn't anybody to do the turn for me that I'm trying to do for +you. Now get this. I left Jim because when he ate corn on the cob he +always closed his eyes and it drove me wild. Don't laugh." + +"I'm not laughing," said Terry. + +"Women are like that. One night--we was playing Fond du Lac; I remember +just as plain--we was eating supper and Jim reached for one of those big +yellow ears, and buttered and salted it, and me kind of hanging on to +the edge of the table with my nails. Seemed to me if he shut his eyes +when he put his teeth into that ear of corn I'd scream. And he did. And +I screamed. And that's all." + +Terry sat staring at her with a wide-eyed stare, like a sleep walker. +Then she wet her lips, slowly. "But that's almost the very--" + +"Kid, go on back home. I don't know whether it's too late or not, but go +anyway. If you've lost him I suppose it ain't any more than you deserve, +but I hope to God you don't get your desserts this time. He's almost +through. If he sees you going he can't quit in the middle of his song to +stop you. He'll know I put you wise, and he'll prob'ly half kill me for +it. But it's worth it. You get." + +And Terry--dazed, shaking, but grateful--fled. Down the noisy aisle, up +the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house. Out again, with +her suitcase, and into the right railroad station somehow, at last. Not +another Wetona train until midnight. She shrank into a remote corner of +the waiting room and there she huddled until midnight watching the +entrances like a child who is fearful of ghosts in the night. + +The hands of the station clock seemed fixed and immovable. The hour +between eleven and twelve was endless. She was on the train. It was +almost morning. It was morning. Dawn was breaking. She was home! She had +the house key clutched tightly in her hand long before she turned +Schroeder's corner. Suppose he had come home! Suppose he had jumped a +town and come home ahead of his schedule. They had quarrelled once +before, and he had done that. + +Up the front steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stood there a +moment in the early morning half-light. She peered into the dining room. +The table, with its breakfast débris, was as she had left it. In the +kitchen the coffee pot stood on the gas stove. She was home. She was +safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into crisp +gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Down-stairs +once more she plunged into an orgy of cleaning. Dishes, table, stove, +floor, rugs. She washed, scoured, flapped, swabbed, polished. By eight +o'clock she had done the work that would ordinarily have taken until +noon. The house was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds. + +During all this time she had been listening, listening, with her +sub-conscious ear. Listening for something she had refused to name +definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same; waiting. + +And then, at eight o'clock, it came. The rattle of a key in the lock. +The boom of the front door. Firm footsteps. + +He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him. They came +together and were in each other's arms. She was weeping. + +"Now, now, old girl. What's there to cry about? Don't, honey; don't. +It's all right." + +She raised her head then, to look at him. How fresh, and rosy, and big +he seemed, after that little sallow, yellow restaurant rat. + +"How did you get here? How did you happen--?" + +"Jumped all the way from Ashland. Couldn't get a sleeper, so I sat up +all night. I had to come back and square things with you, Terry. My mind +just wasn't on my work. I kept thinking how I'd talked--how I'd +talked--" + +"Oh, Orville, don't! I can't bear--Have you had your breakfast?" + +"Why, no. The train was an hour late. You know that Ashland train." + +But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You go and +clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and everything in fifteen minutes. You +poor boy. No breakfast!" + +She made good her promise. It could not have been more than twenty +minutes later when he was buttering his third feathery, golden brown +biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watched him, and listened, and +again her eyes were sombre, but for a different reason. He broke open +his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch. Then he +remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again, +carefully. And at that she gave a little tremulous cry, and rushed +around the table to him. + +"Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent +and kissed the rough coat sleeve. + +"Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!" + +"Oh, Orville, listen--" + +"Yes." + +"Listen, Orville--" + +"I'm listening, Terry." + +"I've got something to tell you. There's something you've got to know." + +"Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you'd out with it, pretty soon, if I just +waited." + +She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared at him. +"But how could you know? You couldn't! How could you?" + +He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. When you have +something on your mind you always take up a spoon of coffee, and look at +it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then dribble +it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used to get me +nervous when we were first married watching you. But now I know it just +means you're worried about something, and I wait, and pretty soon--" + +"Oh, Orville!" she cried, then. "Oh, Orville!" + +"Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to daddy. And you'll feel +better." + + + + +VI + + +THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD + +Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman--so +bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street, +from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a +man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the street +with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at--in +her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length sealskin +coat in our town, and Ganz' shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. +Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women. + +Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round +Christmas time, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, +dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out +of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set +with flashy imitation stones--or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow +hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her +appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in +the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and +paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She +owned the House With the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot--did +Blanche Devine. And beneath her silks and laces and furs there was a +scarlet letter on her breast. + +In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She did not +look like a bad woman. Of course she used too much perfumed white +powder, and as she passed you caught the oversweet breath of a certain +heavy scent. Then, too, her diamond eardrops would have made any woman's +features look hard; but her plump face, in spite of its heaviness, wore +an expression of good-humoured intelligence, and her eyeglasses gave +her somehow a look of respectability. We do not associate vice with +eyeglasses. So in a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed +prosperous, comfortable wife and mother, who was in danger of losing her +figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town +character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns +girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering +among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each +other and jest in undertones. + +So, knowing Blanche Devine as we did, there was something resembling a +riot in one of our most respectable neighbourhoods when it was learned +that she had given up her interest in the house near the freight depot +and was going to settle down in the white cottage on the corner and be +good. All the husbands in the block, urged on by righteously indignant +wives, dropped in on Alderman Mooney after supper to see if the thing +could not be stopped. The fourth of the protesting husbands to arrive +was the Very Young Husband, who lived next door to the corner cottage +that Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a Very Young +Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky was +three-going-on-four, and looked something like an angel--only healthier +and with grimier hands. The whole neighbourhood borrowed her and tried +to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil. + +Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar fooling with the furnace. He was +in his furnace overalls--a short black pipe in his mouth. Three +protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband, following +Mrs. Mooney's directions, cautiously descended the cellar stairs, +Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze +of pipe-smoke. + +"Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm. "Come on +down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since supper. She don't +draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a furnace always gets balky. +How many tons you used this winter?" + +"Oh--ten," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman Mooney +considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up against the side +of the cistern, his hands in his pockets. "Say, Mooney, is that right +about Blanche Devine's having bought the house on the corner?" + +"You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this evening. I'm +expecting the rest of the block before bedtime. She's bought it all +right." + +The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the toe of +his boot. + +"Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready to cry at +supper. This'll be a fine neighbourhood for Snooky to grow up in! What's +a woman like that want to come into a respectable street for anyway? I +own my home and pay my taxes--" + +Alderman Mooney looked up. + +"So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the place--paint +it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch, and lay a +cement walk all round." + +The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to +emphasize his remarks with gestures. + +"What's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in diamonds for +windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace with peacocks on it. +You're the alderman of this ward, aren't you? Well, it was up to you to +keep her out of this block! You could have fixed it with an injunction +or something. I'm going to get up a petition--that's what I'm going--" + +Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned the +rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed +his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a +profitless conversation. + +"She's bought the house," he said mildly, "and paid for it. And it's +hers. She's got a right to live in this neighbourhood as long as she +acts respectable." + +The Very Young Husband laughed. + +"She won't last! They never do." + +Alderman Mooney had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was rubbing his +thumb over the smooth bowl, looking down at it with unseeing eyes. On +his face was a queer look--the look of one who is embarrassed because he +is about to say something honest. + +"Look here! I want to tell you something: I happened to be up in the +mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She had to go +through a lot of red tape before she got it--had quite a time of it, she +did! And say, kid, that woman ain't so--bad." + +The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently: + +"Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town +character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got religion or +something, and wants to quit and be decent, why doesn't she go to +another town--Chicago or some place--where nobody knows her?" + +That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipebowl +stopped. He looked up slowly. + +"That's what I said--the mayor too. But Blanche Devine said she wanted +to try it here. She said this was home to her. Funny--ain't it? Said +she wouldn't be fooling anybody here. They know her. And if she moved +away, she said, it'd leak out some way sooner or later. It does, she +said. Always! Seems she wants to live like--well, like other women. She +put it like this: She says she hasn't got religion, or any of that. She +says she's no different than she was when she was twenty. She says that +for the last ten years the ambition of her life has been to be able to +go into a grocery store and ask the price of, say, celery; and, if the +clerk charged her ten when it ought to be seven, to be able to sass +him with a regular piece of her mind--and then sail out and trade +somewhere else until he saw that she didn't have to stand anything from +storekeepers, any more than any other woman that did her own marketing. +She's a smart woman, Blanche is! She's saved her money. God knows I +ain't taking her part--exactly; but she talked a little, and the mayor +and me got a little of her history." + +A sneer appeared on the face of the Very Young Husband. He had been +known before he met Jen as a rather industrious sower of that seed known +as wild oats. He knew a thing or two, did the Very Young Husband, in +spite of his youth! He always fussed when Jen wore even a V-necked +summer gown on the street. + +"Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," west on Alderman Mooney in +answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and always +expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent when she was +eighteen--with a baby. She worked for four dollars a week in a cheap +eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on that. Then the baby--" + +"Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs. Mooney's +going to call?" + +"Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me down to +monkey with the furnace. She's wild--Minnie is." He peeled off his +overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young Husband started to ascend +the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney laid a detaining finger on his +sleeve. "Don't say anything in front of Minnie! She's boiling! Minnie +and the kids are going to visit her folks out West this summer; so I +wouldn't so much as dare to say 'Good morning!' to the Devine woman. +Anyway a person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind of thought +I'd tell you about her." + +"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly. + +In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came +stonemasons, who began to build something. It was a great stone +fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of the little +white cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a home for herself. We +no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth--we build them for the +warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by. + +Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the work +progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house, looking +up at it pridefully and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or +fingertip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He spaded up +a neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long ridge near +the fence that separated her yard from that of the very young couple +next door. The ridge spelled sweet peas and nasturtiums to our +small-town eyes. + +On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation among +the white-ruffled bedroom curtains of the neighbourhood. Later on +certain odours, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere. Blanche +Devine, flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her diamond +eardrops flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great fur +coat; but on the third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, +carrying a little household ladder, a pail of steaming water and sundry +voluminous white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side +of the house mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows: with +housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a grey sweater +and on her head was a battered felt hat--the sort of window-washing +costume that has been worn by women from time immemorial. We noticed +that she used plenty of hot water and clean rags, and that she rubbed +the glass until it sparkled, leaning perilously sideways on the ladder +to detect elusive streaks. Our keenest housekeeping eye could find no +fault with the way Blanche Devine washed windows. + +By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops--perhaps it was +their absence that gave her face a new expression. When she went down +town we noticed that her hats were more like the hats the other women in +our town wore; but she still affected extravagant footgear, as is right +and proper for a stout woman who has cause to be vain of her feet. We +noticed that her trips down town were rare that spring and summer. She +used to come home laden with little bundles; and before supper she would +change her street clothes for a neat, washable housedress, as is our +thrifty custom. Through her bright windows we could see her moving +briskly about from kitchen to sitting room; and from the smells that +floated out from her kitchen door, she seemed to be preparing for her +solitary supper the same homely viands that were frying or stewing or +baking in our kitchens. Sometimes you could detect the delectable scent +of browning hot tea biscuit. It takes a brave, courageous, determined +woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself. + +Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning she came +to the service there was a little flurry among the ushers at the +vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear. The second Sunday +morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman next to whom they seated +her turned, regarded her stonily for a moment, then rose agitatedly and +moved to a pew across the aisle. Blanche Devine's face went a dull red +beneath her white powder. She never came again--though we saw the +minister visit her once or twice. She always accompanied him to the door +pleasantly, holding it well open until he was down the little flight of +steps and on the sidewalk. The minister's wife did not call--but, then, +there are limits to the duties of a minister's wife. + +She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we used to +see her moving about in her little garden patch in the dewy, golden +morning. She wore absurd pale-blue kimonos that made her stout figure +loom immense against the greenery of garden and apple tree. The +neighbourhood women viewed these negligées with Puritan disapproval as +they smoothed down their own prim, starched gingham skirts. They said it +was disgusting--and perhaps it was; but the habit of years is not easily +overcome. Blanche Devine--snipping her sweet peas; peering anxiously at +the Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile fingers to the +trellis; watering the flower baskets that hung from her porch--was +blissfully unconscious of the disapproving eyes. I wish one of us had +just stopped to call good morning to her over the fence, and to say in +our neighbourly, small town way: "My, ain't this a scorcher! So early +too! It'll be fierce by noon!" But we did not. + +I think perhaps the evenings must have been the loneliest for her. The +summer evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human, +neighbourly sounds. After the heat of the day it is infinitely pleasant +to relax in the cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the +town eddying about us. We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. We +call across-lots to our next-door neighbour. The men water the lawns and +the flower boxes and get together in little quiet groups to discuss the +new street paving. I have even known Mrs. Hines to bring her cherries +out there when she had canning to do, and pit them there on the front +porch partially shielded by her porch vine, but not so effectually that +she was deprived of the sights and sounds about her. The kettle in her +lap and the dishpan full of great ripe cherries on the porch floor by +her chair, she would pit and chat and peer out through the vines, the +red juice staining her plump bare arms. + +I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those lonesome +evenings--those evenings filled with little friendly sights and sounds. +It is lonely, uphill business at best--this being good. It must have +been difficult for her, who had dwelt behind closed shutters so long, to +seat herself on the new front porch for all the world to stare at; but +she did sit there--resolutely--watching us in silence. + +She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that fell to +her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used to hold daily +conversation with her. They--sociable gentlemen--would stand on her +doorstep, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost, +exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway--a tea towel in +one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a +miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her +knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of +us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen +the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering, +nostril-pricking smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, +tantalising, divinely sticky odour that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, +from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, +gazing in the direction of the enticing smells next door. Early one +September morning there floated out from Blanche Devine's kitchen that +clean, fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies--cookies with butter +in them, and spice, and with nuts on top. Just by the smell of them your +mind's eye pictured them coming from the oven--crisp brown circlets, +crumbly, toothsome, delectable. Snooky, in her scarlet sweater and cap, +sniffed them from afar and straightway deserted her sandpile to take her +stand at the fence. She peered through the restraining bars, standing on +tiptoe. Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and rolling-pin, saw +the eager golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her heart, raised one +fat, dimpled hand above the fence and waved it friendlily. Blanche +Devine waved back. Thus encouraged, Snooky's two hands wigwagged +frantically above the pickets. Blanche Devine hesitated a moment, her +floury hand on her hip. Then she went to the pantry shelf and took out a +clean white saucer. She selected from the brown jar on the table three +of the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with a walnut meat +perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the saucer and, +descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the triumphant +Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips smiling, her eyes +tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white arm. + +"Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of horror and of +wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't you dare to touch those!" +Snooky hesitated rebelliously, one pink finger in her pouting mouth. +"Snooky! Do you hear me?" + +And the Very Young Wife began to descend the steps of her back porch. +Snooky, regretful eyes on the toothsome dainties, turned away aggrieved. +The Very Young Wife, her lips set, her eyes flashing, advanced and +seized the shrieking Snooky by one writhing arm and dragged her away +toward home and safety. + +Blanche Devine stood there at the fence, holding the saucer in her hand. +The saucer tipped slowly, and the three cookies slipped off and fell to +the grass. Blanche Devine followed them with her eyes and stood staring +at them a moment. Then she turned quickly, went into the house and shut +the door. + +It was about this time we noticed that Blanche Devine was away much of +the time. The little white cottage would be empty for a week. We knew +she was out of town because the expressman would come for her trunk. We +used to lift our eyebrows significantly. The newspapers and handbills +would accumulate in a dusty little heap on the porch; but when she +returned there was always a grand cleaning, with the windows open, and +Blanche--her head bound turbanwise in a towel--appearing at a window +every few minutes to shake out a dustcloth. She seemed to put an +enormous amount of energy into those cleanings--as if they were a sort +of safety valve. + +As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long, long +after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to pull down the +shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire dancing gnomelike on the +wall. + +There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling hail--one of +those blustering, wild nights that are followed by morning-paper reports +of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed, telephone and telegraph wires +down. It must have been midnight or past when there came a hammering at +Blanche Devine's door--a persistent, clamorous rapping. Blanche Devine, +sitting before her dying fire half asleep, started and cringed when she +heard it; then jumped to her feet, her hand at her breast--her eyes +darting this way and that, as though seeking escape. + +She had heard a rapping like that before. It had meant bluecoats +swarming up the stairway, and frightened cries and pleadings, and wild +confusion. So she started forward now, quivering. And then she +remembered, being wholly awake now--she remembered, and threw up her +head and smiled a little bitterly and walked toward the door. The +hammering continued, louder than ever. Blanche Devine flicked on the +porch light and opened the door. The half-clad figure of the Very Young +Wife next door staggered into the room. She seized Blanche Devine's arm +with both her frenzied hands and shook her, the wind and snow beating in +upon both of them. + +"The baby!" she screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "The baby! The +baby--" + +Blanche Devine shut the door and shook the Young Wife smartly by the +shoulders. + +"Stop screaming," she said quietly. "Is she sick?" + +The Young Wife told her, her teeth chattering: + +"Come quick! She's dying! Will's out of town. I tried to get the doctor. +The telephone wouldn't--I saw your light! For God's sake--" + +Blanche Devine grasped the Young Wife's arm, opened the door, and +together they sped across the little space that separated the two +houses. Blanche Devine was a big woman, but she took the stairs like a +girl and found the right bedroom by some miraculous woman instinct. A +dreadful choking, rattling sound was coming from Snooky's bed. + +"Croup," said Blanche Devine, and began her fight. + +It was a good fight. She marshalled her little inadequate forces, made +up of the half-fainting Young Wife and the terrified and awkward hired +girl. + +"Get the hot water on--lots of it!" Blanche Devine pinned up her +sleeves. "Hot cloths! Tear up a sheet--or anything! Got an oilstove? I +want a teakettle boiling in the room. She's got to have the steam. If +that don't do it we'll raise an umbrella over her and throw a sheet +over, and hold the kettle under till the steam gets to her that way. Got +any ipecac?" + +The Young Wife obeyed orders, whitefaced and shaking. Once Blanche +Devine glanced up at her sharply. + +"Don't you dare faint!" she commanded. + +And the fight went on. Gradually the breathing that had been so +frightful became softer, easier. Blanche Devine did not relax. It was +not until the little figure breathed gently in sleep that Blanche Devine +sat back satisfied. Then she tucked a cover ever so gently at the side +of the bed, took a last satisfied look at the face on the pillow, and +turned to look at the wan, dishevelled Young Wife. + +"She's all right now. We can get the doctor when morning comes--though I +don't know's you'll need him." + +The Young Wife came round to Blanche Devine's side of the bed and stood +looking up at her. + +"My baby died," said Blanche Devine simply. The Young Wife gave a little +inarticulate cry, put her two hands on Blanche Devine's broad shoulders +and laid her tired head on her breast. + +"I guess I'd better be going," said Blanche Devine. + +The Young Wife raised her head. Her eyes were round with fright. + +"Going! Oh, please stay! I'm so afraid. Suppose she should take sick +again! That awful--awful breathing--" + +"I'll stay if you want me to." + +"Oh, please! I'll make up your bed and you can rest--" + +"I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll sit up +here in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed. I'll watch and +see that everything's all right. Have you got something I can read out +here--something kind of lively--with a love story in it?" + +So the night went by. Snooky slept in her little white bed. The Very +Young Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the hall, +her stout figure looming grotesque in wall-shadows, sat Blanche Devine +pretending to read. Now and then she rose and tiptoed into the bedroom +with miraculous quiet, and stooped over the little bed and listened and +looked--and tiptoed away again, satisfied. + +The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with tales +of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed a sigh of +relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She watched the house +now with a sort of proprietary eye. She wondered about Snooky; but she +knew better than to ask. So she waited. The Young Wife next door had +told her husband all about that awful night--had told him with tears and +sobs. The Very Young Husband had been very, very angry with her--angry +and hurt, he said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been so sick! +Look at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a woman! Well, +really he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that she +must never speak to the woman again. Never! + +So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the Young +Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room window, and she +made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in order to go to the door. +She stood in the doorway and the Very Young Wife went by on the arm of +her husband. She went by--rather white-faced--without a look or a word +or a sign! + +And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a look +that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly, +narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It was +the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled--if having one's lips +curl away from one's teeth can be called smiling. + +Two days later there was great news of the white cottage on the corner. +The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the rugs were rolled. +The wagons came and backed up to the house and took those things that +had made a home for Blanche Devine. And when we heard that she had +bought back her interest in the House With the Closed Shutters, near the +freight depot, we sniffed. + +"I knew she wouldn't last!" we said. + +"They never do!" said we. + + + + +VII + + +THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT + +There is a story--Kipling, I think--that tells of a spirited horse +galloping in the dark suddenly drawing up tense, hoofs bunched, slim +flanks quivering, nostrils dilated, ears pricked. Urging being of no +avail the rider dismounts, strikes a match, advances a cautious step or +so, and finds himself at the precipitous brink of a newly formed +crevasse. + +So it is with your trained editor. A miraculous sixth sense guides him. +A mysterious something warns him of danger lurking within the seemingly +innocent oblong white envelope. Without slitting the flap, without +pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed glasses, without clearing his +throat, without lighting his cigarette--he knows. + +The deadly newspaper story he scents in the dark. Cub reporter. Crusty +city editor. Cub fired. Stumbles on to a big story. Staggers into +newspaper office wild-eyed. Last edition. "Hold the presses!" Crusty +C.E. stands over cub's typewriter grabbing story line by line. Even +foreman of pressroom moved to tears by tale. "Boys, this ain't just a +story this kid's writin'. This is history!" Story finished. Cub faints. +C.E. makes him star reporter. + +The athletic story: "I could never marry a mollycoddle like you, Harold +Hammond!" Big game of the year. Team crippled. Second half. Halfback +hurt. Harold Hammond, scrub, into the game. Touchdown! Broken leg. Five +to nothing. "Harold, can you ever, ever forgive me?" + +The pseudo-psychological story: She had been sitting before the fire for +a long, long time. The flame had flickered and died down to a +smouldering ash. The sound of his departing footsteps echoed and +re-echoed through her brain. But the little room was very, very still. + +The shop-girl story: Torn boots and temptation, tears and snears, pathos +and bathos, all the way from Zola to the vice inquiry. + +Having thus attempted to hide the deadly commonplaceness of this story +with a thin layer of cynicism, perhaps even the wily editor may be +tricked into taking the leap. + + * * * * * + +Four weeks before the completion of the new twelve-story addition the +store advertised for two hundred experienced saleswomen. Rachel +Wiletzky, entering the superintendent's office after a wait of three +hours, was Applicant No. 179. The superintendent did not look up as +Rachel came in. He scribbled busily on a pad of paper at his desk, thus +observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of superintendents +when interviewing applicants. Rachel Wiletzky, standing by his desk, +did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one hip. A sense +of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's subconsciousness. He +glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his +pencil and sat up slowly. His mind was working quickly enough though. In +the twelve seconds that intervened between the laying down of the pencil +and the sitting up in his chair he had hastily readjusted all his +well-founded preconceived ideas on the appearance of shop-girl +applicants. + +Rachel Wiletzky had the colouring and physique of a dairymaid. It was +the sort of colouring that you associate in your mind with lush green +fields, and Jersey cows, and village maids, in Watteau frocks, balancing +brimming pails aloft in the protecting curve of one rounded upraised +arm, with perhaps a Maypole dance or so in the background. Altogether, +had the superintendent been given to figures of speech, he might have +said that Rachel was as much out of place among the preceding one +hundred and seventy-eight bloodless, hollow-chested, stoop-shouldered +applicants as a sunflower would be in a patch of dank white fungi. + +He himself was one of those bleached men that you find on the office +floor of department stores. Grey skin, grey eyes, greying hair, careful +grey clothes--seemingly as void of pigment as one of those sunless +things you disclose when you turn over a board that has long lain on the +mouldy floor of a damp cellar. It was only when you looked closely that +you noticed a fleck of golden brown in the cold grey of each eye, and a +streak of warm brown forming an unquenchable forelock that the +conquering grey had not been able to vanquish. It may have been a +something within him corresponding to those outward bits of human +colouring that tempted him to yield to a queer impulse. He whipped from +his breast-pocket the grey-bordered handkerchief, reached up swiftly and +passed one white corner of it down the length of Rachel Wiletzky's +Killarney-rose left cheek. The rude path down which the handkerchief had +travelled deepened to red for a moment before both rose-pink cheeks +bloomed into scarlet. The superintendent gazed rather ruefully from +unblemished handkerchief to cheek and back again. + +"Why--it--it's real!" he stammered. + +Rachel Wiletzky smiled a good-natured little smile that had in it a dash +of superiority. + +"If I was putting it on," she said, "I hope I'd have sense enough to +leave something to the imagination. This colour out of a box would take +a spiderweb veil to tone it down." + +Not much more than a score of words. And yet before the half were spoken +you were certain that Rachel Wiletzky's knowledge of lush green fields +and bucolic scenes was that gleaned from the condensed-milk ads that +glare down at one from billboards and street-car chromos. Hers was the +ghetto voice--harsh, metallic, yet fraught with the resonant music of +tragedy. + +"H'm--name?" asked the grey superintendent. He knew that vocal quality. + +A queer look stole into Rachel Wiletzky's face, a look of cunning and +determination and shrewdness. + +"Ray Willets," she replied composedly. "Double l." + +"Clerked before, of course. Our advertisement stated--" + +"Oh yes," interrupted Ray Willets hastily, eagerly. "I can sell goods. +My customers like me. And I don't get tired. I don't know why, but I +don't." + +The superintendent glanced up again at the red that glowed higher with +the girl's suppressed excitement. He took a printed slip from the little +pile of paper that lay on his desk. + +"Well, anyway, you're the first clerk I ever saw who had so much red +blood that she could afford to use it for decorative purposes. Step into +the next room, answer the questions on this card and turn it in. You'll +be notified." + +Ray Willets took the searching, telltale blank that put its questions so +pertinently. "Where last employed?" it demanded. "Why did you leave? Do +you live at home?" + +Ray Willets moved slowly away toward the door opposite. The +superintendent reached forward to press the button that would summon +Applicant No. 180. But before his finger touched it Ray Willets turned +and came back swiftly. She held the card out before his surprised eyes. + +"I can't fill this out. If I do I won't get the job. I work over at the +Halsted Street Bazaar. You know--the Cheap Store. I lied and sent word I +was sick so I could come over here this morning. And they dock you for +time off whether you're sick or not." + +The superintendent drummed impatiently with his fingers. "I can't listen +to all this. Haven't time. Fill out your blank, and if--" + +All that latent dramatic force which is a heritage of her race came to +the girl's aid now. + +"The blank! How can I say on a blank that I'm leaving because I want to +be where real people are? What chance has a girl got over there on the +West Side? I'm different. I don't know why, but I am. Look at my face! +Where should I get red cheeks from? From not having enough to eat half +the time and sleeping three in a bed?" + +She snatched off her shabby glove and held one hand out before the man's +face. + +"From where do I get such hands? Not from selling hardware over at +Twelfth and Halsted. Look at it! Say, couldn't that hand sell silk and +lace?" + +Some one has said that to make fingers and wrists like those which Ray +Willets held out for inspection it is necessary to have had at least +five generations of ancestors who have sat with their hands folded in +their laps. Slender, tapering, sensitive hands they were, pink-tipped, +temperamental. Wistful hands they were, speaking hands, an inheritance, +perhaps, from some dreamer ancestor within the old-world ghetto, some +long-haired, velvet-eyed student of the Talmud dwelling within the pale +with its squalor and noise, and dreaming of unseen things beyond the +confining gates--things rare and exquisite and fine. + +"Ashamed of your folks?" snapped the superintendent. + +"N-no--No! But I want to be different. I am different! Give me a chance, +will you? I'm straight. And I'll work. And I can sell goods. Try me." + +That all-pervading greyness seemed to have lifted from the man at the +desk. The brown flecks in the eyes seemed to spread and engulf the +surrounding colourlessness. His face, too, took on a glow that seemed to +come from within. It was like the lifting of a thick grey mist on a +foggy morning, so that the sun shines bright and clear for a brief +moment before the damp curtain rolls down again and effaces it. + +He leaned forward in his chair, a queer half-smile on his face. + +"I'll give you your chance," he said, "for one month. At the end of that +time I'll send for you. I'm not going to watch you. I'm not going to +have you watched. Of course your sale slips will show the office whether +you're selling goods or not. If you're not they'll discharge you. But +that's routine. What do you want to sell?" + +"What do I want to--Do you mean--Why, I want to sell the lacy +things." + +"The lacy--" + +Ray, very red-cheeked, made the plunge. "The--the lawnjeree, you know. +The things with ribbon and handwork and yards and yards of real lace. +I've seen 'em in the glass case in the French Room. Seventy-nine dollars +marked down from one hundred." + +The superintendent scribbled on a card. "Show this Monday morning. Miss +Jevne is the head of your department. You'll spend two hours a day in +the store school of instruction for clerks. Here, you're forgetting your +glove." + +The grey look had settled down on him again as he reached out to press +the desk button. Ray Willets passed out at the door opposite the one +through which Rachel Wiletzky had entered. + +Some one in the department nick-named her Chubbs before she had spent +half a day in the underwear and imported lingerie. At the store school +she listened and learned. She learned how important were things of which +Halsted Street took no cognisance. She learned to make out a sale slip +as complicated as an engineering blueprint. She learned that a clerk +must develop suavity and patience in the same degree as a customer waxes +waspish and insulting, and that the spectrum's colours do not exist in +the costume of the girl-behind-the-counter. For her there are only black +and white. These things she learned and many more, and remembered them, +for behind the rosy cheeks and the terrier-bright eyes burned the +indomitable desire to get on. And the finished embodiment of all of Ray +Willets' desires and ambitions was daily before her eyes in the presence +of Miss Jevne, head of the lingerie and negligées. + +Of Miss Jevne it might be said that she was real where Ray was +artificial, and artificial where Ray was real. Everything that Miss +Jevne wore was real. She was as modish as Ray was shabby, as slim as Ray +was stocky, as artificially tinted and tinctured as Ray was naturally +rosy-cheeked and buxom. It takes real money to buy clothes as real as +those worn by Miss Jevne. The soft charmeuse in her graceful gown was +real and miraculously draped. The cobweb-lace collar that so delicately +traced its pattern against the black background of her gown was real. So +was the ripple of lace that cascaded down the front of her blouse. The +straight, correct, hideously modern lines of her figure bespoke a real +eighteen-dollar corset. Realest of all, there reposed on Miss Jevne's +bosom a bar pin of platinum and diamonds--very real diamonds set in a +severely plain but very real bar of precious platinum. So if you except +Miss Jevne's changeless colour, her artificial smile, her glittering +hair and her undulating head-of-the-department walk, you can see that +everything about Miss Jevne was as real as money can make one. + +Miss Jevne, when she deigned to notice Ray Willets at all, called her +"girl," thus: "Girl, get down one of those Number Seventeens for +me--with the pink ribbons." Ray did not resent the tone. She thought +about Miss Jevne as she worked. She thought about her at night when she +was washing and ironing her other shirtwaist for next day's wear. In the +Halsted Street Bazaar the girls had been on terms of dreadful intimacy +with those affairs in each other's lives which popularly are supposed to +be private knowledge. They knew the sum which each earned per week; how +much they turned in to help swell the family coffers and how much they +were allowed to keep for their own use. They knew each time a girl spent +a quarter for a cheap sailor collar or a pair of near-silk stockings. +Ray Willets, who wanted passionately to be different, whose hands so +loved the touch of the lacy, silky garments that made up the lingerie +and negligee departments, recognised the perfection of Miss Jevne's +faultless realness--recognised it, appreciated it, envied it. It worried +her too. How did she do it? How did one go about attaining the same +degree of realness? + +Meanwhile she worked. She learned quickly. She took care always to be +cheerful, interested, polite. After a short week's handling of lacy +silken garments she ceased to feel a shock when she saw Miss Jevne +displaying a _robe-de-nuit_ made up of white cloud and sea-foam and +languidly assuring the customer that of course it wasn't to be expected +that you could get a fine handmade lace at that price--only +twenty-seven-fifty. Now if she cared to look at something really +fine--made entirely by hand--why-- + +The end of the first ten days found so much knowledge crammed into Ray +Willets' clever, ambitious little head that the pink of her cheeks had +deepened to carmine, as a child grows flushed and too bright-eyed when +overstimulated and overtired. + +Miss Myrtle, the store beauty, strolled up to Ray, who was straightening +a pile of corset covers and _brassieres_. Miss Myrtle was the store's +star cloak-and-suit model. Tall, svelte, graceful, lovely in line and +contour, she was remarkably like one of those exquisite imbeciles that +Rossetti used to love to paint. Hers were the great cowlike eyes, the +wonderful oval face, the marvellous little nose, the perfect lips and +chin. Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before a +possible purchaser, and make it look like an imported model at one +hundred and twenty-five. When Miss Myrtle opened those exquisite lips +and spoke you got a shock that hurt. She laid one cool slim finger on +Ray's ruddy cheek. + +"Sure enough!" she drawled nasally. "Whereja get it anyway, kid? You +must of been brought up on peaches 'n' cream and slept in a pink cloud +somewheres." + +"Me!" laughed Ray, her deft fingers busy straightening a bow here, a +ruffle of lace there. "Me! The L-train runs so near my bed that if it +was ever to get a notion to take a short cut it would slice off my legs +to the knees." + +"Live at home?" Miss Myrtle's grasshopper mind never dwelt long on one +subject. + +"Well, sure," replied Ray. "Did you think I had a flat up on the Drive?" + +"I live at home too," Miss Myrtle announced impressively. She was +leaning indolently against the table. Her eyes followed the deft, quick +movements of Ray's slender, capable hands. Miss Myrtle always leaned +when there was anything to lean on. Involuntarily she fell into melting +poses. One shoulder always drooped slightly, one toe always trailed a +bit like the picture on the cover of the fashion magazines, one hand and +arm always followed the line of her draperies while the other was raised +to hip or breast or head. + +Ray's busy hands paused a moment. She looked up at the picturesque +Myrtle. "All the girls do, don't they?" + +"Huh?" said Myrtle blankly. + +"Live at home, I mean? The application blank says--" + +"Say, you've got clever hands, ain't you?" put in Miss Myrtle +irrelevantly. She looked ruefully at her own short, stubby, +unintelligent hands, that so perfectly reflected her character in that +marvellous way hands have. "Mine are stupid-looking. I'll bet you'll get +on." She sagged to the other hip with a weary gracefulness. "I ain't +got no brains," she complained. + +"Where do they live then?" persisted Ray. + +"Who? Oh, I live at home"--again virtuously--"but I've got some heart if +I am dumb. My folks couldn't get along without what I bring home every +week. A lot of the girls have flats. But that don't last. Now Jevne--" + +"Yes?" said Ray eagerly. Her plump face with its intelligent eyes was +all aglow. + +Miss Myrtle lowered her voice discreetly. "Her own folks don't know +where she lives. They says she sends 'em money every month, but with the +understanding that they don't try to come to see her. They live way over +on the West Side somewhere. She makes her buying trip to Europe every +year. Speaks French and everything. They say when she started to earn +real money she just cut loose from her folks. They was a drag on her and +she wanted to get to the top." + +"Say, that pin's real, ain't it?" + +"Real? Well, I should say it is! Catch Jevne wearing anything that's +phony. I saw her at the theatre one night. Dressed! Well, you'd have +thought that birds of paradise were national pests, like English +sparrows. Not that she looked loud. But that quiet, rich elegance, you +know, that just smells of money. Say, but I'll bet she has her lonesome +evenings!" + +Ray Willets' eyes darted across the long room and rested upon the +shining black-clad figure of Miss Jevne moving about against the +luxurious ivory-and-rose background of the French Room. + +"She--she left her folks, h'm?" she mused aloud. + +Miss Myrtle, the brainless, regarded the tips of her shabby boots. + +"What did it get her?" she asked as though to herself. "I know what it +does to a girl, seeing and handling stuff that's made for millionaires, +you get a taste for it yourself. Take it from me, it ain't the +six-dollar girl that needs looking after. She's taking her little pay +envelope home to her mother that's a widow and it goes to buy milk for +the kids. Sometimes I think the more you get the more you want. +Somebody ought to turn that vice inquiry on to the tracks of that +thirty-dollar-a-week girl in the Irish crochet waist and the diamond bar +pin. She'd make swell readin'." + +There fell a little silence between the two--a silence of which neither +was conscious. Both were thinking, Myrtle disjointedly, purposelessly, +all unconscious that her slow, untrained mind had groped for a great and +vital truth and found it; Ray quickly, eagerly, connectedly, a new and +daring resolve growing with lightning rapidity. + +"There's another new baby at our house," she said aloud suddenly. "It +cries all night pretty near." + +"Ain't they fierce?" laughed Myrtle. "And yet I dunno--" + +She fell silent again. Then with the half-sign with which we waken from +day dreams she moved away in response to the beckoning finger of a +saleswoman in the evening-coat section. Ten minutes later her exquisite +face rose above the soft folds of a black charmeuse coat that rippled +away from her slender, supple body in lines that a sculptor dreams of +and never achieves. + +Ray Willets finished straightening her counter. Trade was slow. She +moved idly in the direction of the black-garbed figure that flitted +about in the costly atmosphere of the French section. It must be a very +special customer to claim Miss Jevne's expert services. Ray glanced in +through the half-opened glass and ivory-enamel doors. + +"Here, girl," called Miss Jevne. Ray paused and entered. Miss Jevne was +frowning. "Miss Myrtle's busy. Just slip this on. Careful now. Keep your +arms close to your head." + +She slipped a marvellously wrought garment over Ray's sleek head. Fluffy +drifts of equally exquisite lingerie lay scattered about on chairs, over +mirrors, across showtables. On one of the fragile little ivory-and-rose +chairs, in the centre of the costly little room, sat a large, blonde, +perfumed woman who clanked and rustled and swished as she moved. Her +eyes were white-lidded and heavy, but strangely bright. One ungloved +hand was very white too, but pudgy and covered so thickly with gems that +your eye could get no clear picture of any single stone or setting. + +Ray, clad in the diaphanous folds of the _robe-de-nuit_ that was so +beautifully adorned with delicate embroideries wrought by the patient, +needle-scarred fingers of some silent, white-faced nun in a far-away +convent, paced slowly up and down the short length of the room that the +critical eye of this coarse, unlettered creature might behold the +wonders woven by this weary French nun, and, beholding, approve. + +"It ain't bad," spake the blonde woman grudgingly. "How much did you +say?" + +"Ninety-five," Miss Jevne made answer smoothly. "I selected it myself +when I was in France my last trip. A bargain." + +She slid the robe carefully over Ray's head. The frown came once more to +her brow. She bent close to Ray's ear. "Your waist's ripped under the +left arm. Disgraceful!" + +The blonde woman moved and jangled a bit in her chair. "Well, I'll take +it," she sighed. "Look at the colour on that girl! And it's real too." +She rose heavily and came over to Ray, reached up and pinched her cheek +appraisingly with perfumed white thumb and forefinger. + +"That'll do, girl," said Miss Jevne sweetly. "Take this along and change +these ribbons from blue to pink." + +Ray Willets bore the fairy garment away with her. She bore it tenderly, +almost reverently. It was more than a garment. It represented in her +mind a new standard of all that was beautiful and exquisite and +desirable. + +Ten days before the formal opening of the new twelve-story addition +there was issued from the superintendent's office an order that made a +little flurry among the clerks in the sections devoted to women's dress. +The new store when thrown open would mark an epoch in the retail +drygoods business of the city, the order began. Thousands were to be +spent on perishable decorations alone. The highest type of patronage was +to be catered to. Therefore the women in the lingerie, negligée, +millinery, dress, suit and corset sections were requested to wear during +opening week a modest but modish black one-piece gown that would blend +with the air of elegance which those departments were to maintain. + +Ray Willets of the lingerie and negligée sections read her order slip +slowly. Then she reread it. Then she did a mental sum in simple +arithmetic. A childish sum it was. And yet before she got her answer the +solving of it had stamped on her face a certain hard, set, resolute +look. + +The store management had chosen Wednesday to be the opening day. By +eight-thirty o'clock Wednesday morning the French lingerie, millinery +and dress sections, with their women clerks garbed in modest but modish +black one-piece gowns, looked like a levee at Buckingham when the court +is in mourning. But the ladies-in-waiting, grouped about here and +there, fell back in respectful silence when there paced down the aisle +the queen royal in the person of Miss Jevne. There is a certain sort of +black gown that is more startling and daring than scarlet. Miss Jevne's +was that style. Fast black you might term it. Miss Jevne was aware of +the flurry and flutter that followed her majestic progress down the +aisle to her own section. She knew that each eye was caught in the tip +of the little dog-eared train that slipped and slunk and wriggled along +the ground, thence up to the soft drapery caught so cunningly just below +the knee, up higher to the marvelously simple sash that swayed with each +step, to the soft folds of black against which rested the very real +diamond and platinum bar pin, up to the lace at her throat, and then +stopping, blinking and staring again gazed fixedly at the string of +pearls that lay about her throat, pearls rosily pink, mistily grey. An +aura of self-satisfaction enveloping her, Miss Jevne disappeared behind +the rose-garlanded portals of the new cream-and-mauve French section. +And there the aura vanished, quivering. For standing before one of the +plate-glass cases and patting into place with deft fingers the satin bow +of a hand-wrought chemise was Ray Willets, in her shiny little black +serge skirt and the braver of her two white shirtwaists. + +Miss Jevne quickened her pace. Ray turned. Her bright brown eyes grew +brighter at sight of Miss Jevne's wondrous black. Miss Jevne, her train +wound round her feet like an actress' photograph, lifted her eyebrows +to an unbelievable height. + +"Explain that costume!" she said. + +"Costume?" repeated Ray, fencing. + +Miss Jevne's thin lips grew thinner. "You understood that women in this +department were to wear black one-piece gowns this week!" + +Ray smiled a little twisted smile. "Yes, I understood." + +"Then what--" + +Ray's little smile grew a trifle more uncertain. "--I had the +money--last week--I was going to--The baby took sick--the heat I guess, +coming so sudden. We had the doctor--and medicine--I--Say, your own +folks come before black one-piece dresses!" + +Miss Jevne's cold eyes saw the careful patch under Ray's left arm where +a few days before the torn place had won her a reproof. It was the last +straw. + +"You can't stay in this department in that rig!" + +"Who says so?" snapped Ray with a flash of Halsted Street bravado. "If +my customers want a peek at Paquin I'll send 'em to you." + +"I'll show you who says so!" retorted Miss Jevne, quite losing sight of +the queen business. The stately form of the floor manager was visible +among the glass showcases beyond. Miss Jevne sought him agitatedly. All +the little sagging lines about her mouth showed up sharply, defying +years of careful massage. + +The floor manager bent his stately head and listened. Then, led by Miss +Jevne, he approached Ray Willets, whose deft fingers, trembling a very +little now, were still pretending to adjust the perfect pink-satin bow. + +The manager touched her on the arm not unkindly. "Report for work in the +kitchen utensils, fifth floor," he said. Then at sight of the girl's +face: "We can't have one disobeying orders, you know. The rest of the +clerks would raise a row in no time." + +Down in the kitchen utensils and household goods there was no rule +demanding modest but modish one-piece gowns. In the kitchenware one +could don black sateen sleevelets to protect one's clean white waist +without breaking the department's tenets of fashion. You could even pin +a handkerchief across the front of your waist, if your job was that of +dusting the granite ware. + +At first Ray's delicate fingers, accustomed to the touch of soft, sheer +white stuff and ribbon and lace and silk, shrank from contact with meat +grinders, and aluminum stewpans, and egg beaters, and waffle irons, and +pie tins. She handled them contemptuously. She sold them listlessly. +After weeks of expatiating to customers on the beauties and excellencies +of gossamer lingerie she found it difficult to work up enthusiasm over +the virtues of dishpans and spice boxes. By noon she was less resentful. +By two o'clock she was saying to a fellow clerk: + +"Well, anyway, in this section you don't have to tell a woman how +graceful and charming she's going to look while she's working the +washing machine." + +She was a born saleswoman. In spite of herself she became interested +in the buying problems of the practical and plain-visaged housewives +who patronised this section. By three o'clock she was looking +thoughtful--thoughtful and contented. + +Then came the summons. The lingerie section was swamped! Report to Miss +Jevne at once! Almost regretfully Ray gave her customer over to an idle +clerk and sought out Miss Jevne. Some of that lady's statuesqueness was +gone. The bar pin on her bosom rose and fell rapidly. She espied Ray and +met her halfway. In her hand she carried a soft black something which +she thrust at Ray. + +"Here, put that on in one of the fitting rooms. Be quick about it. It's +your size. The department's swamped. Hurry now!" + +Ray took from Miss Jevne the black silk gown, modest but modish. There +was no joy in Ray's face. Ten minutes later she emerged in the limp and +clinging little frock that toned down her colour and made her plumpness +seem but rounded charm. + +The big store will talk for many a day of that afternoon and the three +afternoons that followed, until Sunday brought pause to the thousands of +feet beating a ceaseless tattoo up and down the thronged aisles. On the +Monday following thousands swarmed down upon the store again, but not in +such overwhelming numbers. There were breathing spaces. It was during +one of these that Miss Myrtle, the beauty, found time for a brief +moment's chat with Ray Willets. + +Ray was straightening her counter again. She had a passion for order. +Myrtle eyed her wearily. Her slender shoulders had carried an endless +number and variety of garments during those four days and her feet had +paced weary miles that those garments might the better be displayed. + +"Black's grand on you," observed Myrtle. "Tones you down." She glanced +sharply at the gown. "Looks just like one of our eighteen-dollar models. +Copy it?" + +"No," said Ray, still straightening petticoats and corset covers. Myrtle +reached out a weary, graceful arm and touched one of the lacy piles +adorned with cunning bows of pink and blue to catch the shopping eye. + +"Ain't that sweet!" she exclaimed. "I'm crazy about that shadow lace. +It's swell under voiles. I wonder if I could take one of them home to +copy it." + +Ray glanced up. "Oh, that!" she said contemptuously. "That's just a +cheap skirt. Only twelve-fifty. Machine-made lace. Imitation +embroidery--" + +She stopped. She stared a moment at Myrtle with the fixed and wide-eyed +gaze of one who does not see. + +"What'd I just say to you?" + +"Huh?" ejaculated Myrtle, mystified. + +"What'd I just say?" repeated Ray. + +Myrtle laughed, half understanding. "You said that was a cheap junk +skirt at only twelve-fifty, with machine lace and imitation--" + +But Ray Willets did not wait to hear the rest. She was off down the +aisle toward the elevator marked "Employées." The superintendent's +office was on the ninth floor. She stopped there. The grey +superintendent was writing at his desk. He did not look up as Ray +entered, thus observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of +superintendents when interviewing employees. Ray Willets, standing by +his desk, did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one +hip. A consciousness of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's mind. +He glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his +pencil and sat up slowly. + +"Oh, it's you!" he said. + +"Yes, it's me," replied Ray Willets simply. "I've been here a month +to-day." + +"Oh, yes." He ran his fingers through his hair so that the brown +forelock stood away from the grey. "You've lost some of your roses," he +said, and tapped his cheek. "What's the trouble?" + +"I guess it's the dress," explained Ray, and glanced down at the folds +of her gown. She hesitated a moment awkwardly. "You said you'd send for +me at the end of the month. You didn't." + +"That's all right," said the grey superintendent. "I was pretty sure I +hadn't made a mistake. I can gauge applicants pretty fairly. Let's +see--you're in the lingerie, aren't you?" + +"Yes." + +Then with a rush: "That's what I want to talk to you about. I've changed +my mind. I don't want to stay in the lingeries. I'd like to be +transferred to the kitchen utensils and household goods." + +"Transferred! Well, I'll see what I can do. What was the name now? I +forget." + +A queer look stole into Ray Willets' face, a look of determination and +shrewdness. + +"Name?" she said. "My name is Rachel Wiletzky." + + + + +VIII + + +THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK + +Miss Sadie Corn was not a charmer, but when you handed your room-key to +her you found yourself stopping to chat a moment. If you were the right +kind you showed her your wife's picture in the front of your watch. If +you were the wrong kind, with your scant hair carefully combed to hide +the bald spot, you showed her the newspaper clipping that you carried in +your vest pocket. Following inspection of the first, Sadie Corn would +say: "Now that's what I call a sweet face! How old is the youngest?" +Upon perusal the second was returned with dignity and: "Is that supposed +to be funny?" In each case Sadie Corn had you placed for life. + +She possessed the invaluable gift of the floor clerk, did Sadie +Corn--that of remembering names and faces. Though you had registered at +the Hotel Magnifique but the night before, for the first time, Sadie +Corn would look up at you over her glasses as she laid your key in its +proper row, and say: "Good morning, Mr. Schultz! Sleep well?" + +"Me!" you would stammer, surprised and gratified. "Me! Fine! +H'm--Thanks!" Whereupon you would cross your right foot over your left +nonchalantly and enjoy that brief moment's chat with Floor Clerk Number +Two. You went back to Ishpeming, Michigan, with three new impressions: +The first was that you were becoming a personage of considerable +importance. The second was that the Magnifique realised this great truth +and was grateful for your patronage. The third was that New York was a +friendly little hole after all! + +Miss Sadie Corn was dean of the Hotel Magnifique's floor clerks. The +primary requisite in successful floor clerkship is homeliness. The +second is discreet age. The third is tact. And for the benefit of those +who think the duties of a floor clerk end when she takes your key when +you leave your room, and hands it back as you return, it may be +mentioned that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh requisites are +diplomacy, ingenuity, unlimited patience and a comprehensive knowledge +of human nature. Ambassadors have been known to keep their jobs on less +than that. + +She had come to the Magnifique at thirty-three, a plain, spare, sallow +woman, with a quiet, capable manner, a pungent trick of the tongue on +occasion, a sparse fluff of pale-coloured hair, and big, bony-knuckled +hands, such as you see on women who have the gift of humanness. She was +forty-eight now--still plain, still spare, still sallow. Those bony, +big-knuckled fingers had handed keys to potentates, and pork-packers, +and millinery buyers from Seattle; and to princes incognito, and paupers +much the same--the difference being that the princes dressed down to +the part, while the paupers dressed up to it. + +Time, experience, understanding and the daily dealing with ever-changing +humanity had brought certain lines into Sadie Corn's face. So skilfully +were they placed that the unobservant put them down as wrinkles on the +countenance of a homely, middle-aged woman; but he who read as he ran +saw that the lines about the eyes were quizzical, shrewd lines, which +come from the practice of gauging character at a glance; that the +mouth-markings meant tolerance and sympathy and humour; that the +forehead furrows had been carved there by those master chisellers, +suffering and sacrifice. + +In the last three or four years Sadie Corn had taken to wearing a little +lavender-and-white crocheted shawl about her shoulders on cool days, and +when Two-fifty-seven, who was a regular, caught his annual heavy cold +late in the fall, Sadie would ask him sharply whether he had on his +winter flannels. On his replying in the negative she would rebuke him +scathingly and demand a bill of sizable denomination; and when her watch +was over she would sally forth to purchase four sets of men's winter +underwear. As captain of the Magnifique's thirty-four floor clerks Sadie +Corn's authority extended from the parlours to the roof, but her +especial domain was floor two. Ensconced behind her little desk in a +corner, blocked in by mailracks, pantry signals, pneumatic-tube chutes +and telephone, with a clear view of the elevators and stairway, Sadie +Corn was mistress of the moods, manners and morals of the Magnifique's +second floor. + +It was six thirty p.m. on Monday of Automobile Show Week when Sadie Corn +came on watch. She came on with a lively, well-developed case of +neuralgia over her right eye and extending down into her back teeth. +With its usual spitefulness the attack had chosen to make its appearance +during her long watch. It never selected her short-watch days, when she +was on duty only from eleven a.m. until six-thirty p.m. + +Now with a peppermint bottle held close to alternately sniffing nostrils +Sadie Corn was running her eye over the complex report sheet of the +floor clerk who had just gone off watch. The report was even more +detailed and lengthy than usual. Automobile Show Week meant that the +always prosperous Magnifique was filled to the eaves and turning them +away. It meant twice the usual number of inside telephone calls anent +rooms too hot, rooms too cold, radiators hammering, radiators hissing, +windows that refused to open, windows that refused to shut, packages +undelivered, hot water not forthcoming. As the human buffers between +guests and hotel management, it was the duty of Sadie Corn and her +diplomatic squad to pacify the peevish, to smooth the path of the +paying. + +Down the hall strolled Donahue, the house detective--Donahue the +leisurely. Donahue the keen-eyed, Donahue the guileless--looking in his +evening clothes for all the world like a prosperous diner-out. He smiled +benignly upon Sadie Corn, and Sadie Corn had the bravery to smile back +in spite of her neuralgia, knowing well that men have no sympathy with +that anguishing ailment and no understanding of it. + +"Everything serene, Miss Corn?" inquired Donahue. + +"Everything's serene," said Sadie Corn. "Though Two-thirty-three +telephoned a minute ago to say that if the valet didn't bring his pants +from the presser in the next two seconds he'd come down the hall as he +is and get 'em. Perhaps you'd better stay round." + +Donahue chuckled and passed on. Half way down the hall he retraced his +steps, and stopped again before Sadie Corn's busy desk. He balanced a +moment thoughtfully from toe to heel, his chin lifted inquiringly: "Keep +your eye on Two-eighteen and Two-twenty-three this morning?" + +"Like a lynx!" answered Sadie. + +"Anything?" + +"Not a thing. I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after +dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always +speaks to any woman alone who isn't pockmarked and toothless. Two +minutes after he's met a girl his voice takes on the 'cello note. I know +his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me +first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I'm so homely that +pretty soon I'll be ripe for bachelor floor thirteen. You know as well +as I that to qualify for that job a floor clerk's got to look like a +gargoyle." + +"Maybe they're all right," said Donahue thoughtfully. "If it's just a +flirtation, why--anyway, watch 'em this evening. The day watch listened +in and says they've made some date for to-night." + +He was off down the hall again with his light, quick step that still had +the appearance of leisureliness. + +The telephone at Sadie's right buzzed warningly. Sadie picked up the +receiver and plunged into the busiest half hour of the evening. From +that moment until seven o'clock her nimble fingers and eyes and brain +and tongue directed the steps of her little world. She held the +telephone receiver at one ear and listened to the demands of incoming +and outgoing guests with the other. She jotted down reports, dealt out +mail and room-keys, kept her neuralgic eye on stairs and elevators and +halls, her sound orb on tube and pantry signals, while through and +between and above all she guided the stream of humanity that trickled +past her desk--bellhops, Polish chambermaids, messenger boys, guests, +waiters, parlour maids. + +Just before seven there disembarked at floor two out of the +cream-and-gold elevator one of those visions that have helped to make +Fifth Avenue a street of the worst-dressed women in the world. The +vision was Two-eighteen, and her clothes were of the kind that prepared +you for the shock that you got when you looked at her face. Plume met +fur, and fur met silk, and silk met lace, and lace met gold--and the +whole met and ran into a riot of colour, and perfume--and little +jangling, swishing sounds. Just by glancing at Two-eighteen's feet in +their inadequate openwork silk and soft kid you knew that Two-eighteen's +lips would be carmined. + +She came down the corridor and stopped at Sadie Corn's desk. Sadie Corn +had her key ready for her. Two-eighteen took it daintily between +white-gloved fingers. + +"I'll want a maid in fifteen minutes," she said. "Tell them to send me +the one I had yesterday. The pretty one. She isn't so clumsy as some." + +Sadie Corn jotted down a note without looking up. + +"Oh, Julia? Sorry--Julia's busy," she lied. + +Two-eighteen knew she lied, because at that moment there came round the +bend in the broad, marble stairway that led up from the parlour floor +the trim, slim figure of Julia herself. + +Two-eighteen took a quick step forward. "Here, girl! I'll want you to +hook me in fifteen minutes," she said. + +"Very well, ma'am," replied Julia softly. + +There passed between Sadie Corn and Two-eighteen a--well, you could +hardly call it a look, it was so fleeting, so ephemeral; that electric, +pregnant, meaning something that flashes between two women who dislike +and understand each other. Then Two-eighteen was off down the hall to +her room. + +Julia stood at the head of the stairway just next to Sadie's desk +and watched Two-eighteen until the bend in the corridor hid her. +Julia, of the lady's-maid staff, could never have qualified for the +position of floor clerk, even if she had chosen to bury herself in +lavender-and-white crocheted shawls to the tip of her marvellous little +Greek nose. In her frilly white cap, her trim black gown, her immaculate +collar and cuffs and apron, Julia looked distractingly like the young +person who, in the old days of the furniture-dusting drama, was wont to +inform you that it was two years since young master went away--all but +her feet. The feather-duster person was addicted to French-heeled, +beaded slippers. Not so Julia. Julia was on her feet for ten hours or so +a day. When you subject your feet to ten-hour tortures you are apt to +pass by French-heeled effects in favour of something flat-heeled, laced, +with an easy, comfortable crack here and there at the sides, and +stockings with white cotton soles. + +Julia, at the head of the stairway, stood looking after Two-eighteen +until the tail of her silken draperies had whisked round the corner. +Then, still staring, Julia spoke resentfully: + +"Life for her is just one darned pair of long white kid gloves after +another! Look at her! Why is it that kind of a face is always wearing +the sables and diamonds?" + +"Sables and diamonds," replied Sadie Corn, sniffing essence of +peppermint, "seem a small enough reward for having to carry round a mug +like that!" + +Julia came round to the front of Sadie Corn's desk. Her eyes were +brooding, her lips sullen. + +"Oh, I don't know!" she said bitterly. "Being pretty don't get you +anything--just being pretty! When I first came I used to wonder at those +women that paint their faces and colour their hair, and wear skirts that +are too tight and waists that are too low. But--I don't know! This +town's so big and so--so kind of uninterested. When you see everybody +wearing clothes that are more gorgeous than yours, and diamonds bigger, +and limousines longer and blacker and quieter, it gives you a kind of +fever. You--you want to make people look at you too." + +Sadie Corn leaned back in her chair. The peppermint bottle was held at +her nose. It may have been that which caused her eyes to narrow to mere +slits as she gazed at the drooping Julia. She said nothing. Suddenly +Julia seemed to feel the silence. She looked down at Sadie Corn. As by a +miracle all the harsh, sullen lines in the girl's face vanished, to be +replaced by a lovely compassion. + +"Your neuralgy again, dearie?" she asked in pretty concern. + +Sadie sniffed long and audibly at the peppermint bottle. + +"If you ask me I think there's some imp inside of my head trying to push +my right eye out with his thumb. Anyway it feels like that." + +"Poor old dear!" breathed Julia. "It's the weather. Have them send you +up a pot of black tea." + +"When you've got neuralgy over your right eye," observed Sadie Corn +grimly, "there's just one thing helps--that is to crawl into bed in a +flannel nightgown, with the side of your face resting on the red rubber +bosom of a hot-water bottle. And I can't do it; so let's talk about +something cheerful. Seen Jo to-day?" + +There crept into Julia's face a wave of colour--not the pink of +pleasure, but the dull red of pain. She looked away from Sadie's eyes +and down at her shabby boots. The sullen look was in her face once more. + +"No; I ain't seen him," she said. + +"What's the trouble?" Sadie asked. + +"I've been busy," replied Julia airily. Then, with a forced vivacity: +"Though it's nothing to Auto Show Week last year. I remember that week I +hooked up until my fingers were stiff. You know the way the dresses +fastened last winter. Some of 'em ought to have had a map to go by, they +were that complicated. And now, just when I've got so's I can hook any +dress that was ever intended for the human form--" + +"Wasn't it Jo who said they ought to give away an engineering blueprint +with every dress, when you told him about the way they hooked?" put in +Sadie. "What's the trouble between you and--" + +Julia rattled on, unheeding: + +"You wouldn't believe what a difference there's been since these new +peasant styles have come in! And the Oriental craze! Hook down the side, +most of 'em--and they can do 'em themselves if they ain't too fat." + +"Remember Jo saying they ought to have a hydraulic press for some of +those skintight dames, when your fingers were sore from trying to +squeeze them into their casings? By the way, what's the trouble between +you and--" + +"Makes an awful difference in my tips!" cut in Julia deftly. "I don't +believe I've hooked up six this evening, and two of them sprung the +haven't-anything-but-a-five-dollar-bill-see-you-to-morrow! Women are +devils! I wish--" + +Sadie Corn leaned forward, placed her hand on Julia's arm, and turned +the girl about so that she faced her. Julia tried miserably to escape +her keen eyes and failed. + +"What's the trouble between you and Jo?" she demanded for the fourth +time. "Out with it or I'll telephone down to the engine room and ask him +myself." + +"Oh, well, if you want to know--" She paused, her eyelids drooping +again; then, with a rush: "Me and Jo have quarrelled again--for good, +this time. I'm through!" + +"What about?" + +"I s'pose you'll say I'm to blame. Jo's mother's sick again. She's got +to go to the hospital and have another operation. You know what that +means--putting off the wedding again until God knows when! I'm sick of +it--putting off and putting off! I told him we might as well quit and be +done with it. We'll never get married at this rate. Soon's Jo gets +enough put by to start us on, something happens. Last three times it's +been his ma. Pretty soon I'll be as old and wrinkled and homely as--" + +"As me!" put in Sadie calmly. "Well, I don't know's that's the worst +thing that can happen to you. I'm happy. I had my plans, too, when I was +a girl like you--not that I was ever pretty; but I had my trials. Funny +how the thing that's easy and the thing that's right never seem to be +the same!" + +"Oh, I'm fond of Jo's ma," said Julia, a little shamefacedly. "We get +along all right. She knows how it is, I guess; and feels--well, in the +way. But when Jo told me, I was tired I guess. We had words. I told him +there were plenty waiting for me if he was through. I told him I could +have gone out with a real swell only last Saturday if I'd wanted to. +What's a girl got her looks for if not to have a good time?" + +"Who's this you were invited out by?" asked Sadie Corn. + +"You must have noticed him," said Julia, dimpling. "He's as handsome as +an actor. Name's Venner. He's in two-twenty-three." + +There came the look of steel into Sadie Corn's eyes. + +"Look here, Julia! You've been here long enough to know that you're not +to listen to the talk of the men guests round here. Two-twenty-three +isn't your kind--and you know it! If I catch you talking to him again +I'll--" + +The telephone at her elbow sounded sharply. She answered it absently, +her eyes, with their expression of pain and remonstrance, still +unshrinking before the onslaught of Julia's glare. Then her expression +changed. A look of consternation came into her face. + +"Right away, madam!" she said, at the telephone. "Right away! You won't +have to wait another minute." She hung up the receiver and waved Julia +away with a gesture. "It's Two-eighteen. You promised to be there in +fifteen minutes. She's been waiting and her voice sounds like a saw. +Better be careful how you handle her." + +Julia's head, with its sleek, satiny coils of black hair that waved away +so bewitchingly from the cream of her skin, came up with a jerk. + +"I'm tired of being careful of other people's feelings. Let somebody be +careful of mine for a change." She walked off down the hall, the little +head still held high. A half dozen paces and she turned. "What was it +you said you'd do to me if you caught me talking to him again?" she +sneered. + +A miserable twinge of pain shot through Sadie Corn's eye, to be followed +by a wave of nausea that swept over her. They alone were responsible for +her answer. + +"I'll report you!" she snapped, and was sorry at once. + +Julia turned again, walked down the corridor and round the corner in the +direction of two-eighteen. + +Long after Julia had disappeared Sadie Corn stared after +her--miserable, regretful. + +Julia knocked once at the door of two-eighteen and turned the knob +before a high, shrill voice cried: + +"Come!" + +Two-eighteen was standing in the centre of the floor in scant satin +knickerbockers and tight brassière. The blazing folds of a cerise satin +gown held in her hands made a great, crude patch of colour in the +neutral-tinted bedroom. The air was heavy with scent. Hair, teeth, eyes, +fingernails--Two-eighteen glowed and glistened. Chairs and bed held odds +and ends. + +"Where've you been, girl?" shrilled Two-eighteen. "I've been waiting +like a fool! I told you to be here in fifteen minutes." + +"My stop-watch isn't working right," replied Julia impudently and took +the cerise satin gown in her two hands. + +She made a ring of the gown's opening, and through that cerise frame her +eyes met those of Two-eighteen. + +"Careful of my hair!" Two-eighteen warned her, and ducked her head to +the practised movement of Julia's arms. The cerise gown dropped to her +shoulders without grazing a hair. Two-eighteen breathed a sigh of +relief. She turned to face the mirror. + +"It starts at the left, three hooks; then to the centre; then back +four--under the arm and down the middle again. That chiffon comes over +like a drape." + +She picked up a buffer from the litter of ivory and silver on the +dresser and began to polish her already glittering nails, turning her +head this way and that, preening her neck, biting her scarlet lips to +deepen their crimson, opening her eyes wide and half closing them +languorously. Julia, down on her knees in combat with the trickiest of +the hooks, glanced up and saw. Two-eighteen caught the glance in the +mirror. She stopped her idle polishing and preening to study the glowing +and lovely little face that looked up at her. A certain queer expression +grew in her eyes--a speculative, eager look. + +"Tell me, little girl," she said, "What do you do round here?" + +Julia turned from the mirror to the last of the hooks, her fingers +working nimbly. + +"Me? My regular job is working. Don't jerk, please. I've fastened this +one three times." + +"Working!" laughed Two-eighteen, fingering the diamonds at her throat. +"What does a pretty girl like you want to do that for?" + +"Hook off here," said Julia. "Shall I sew it?" + +"Pin it!" snapped Two-eighteen. + +Julia's tidy nature revolted. + +"It'll take just a minute to catch it with thread--" + +Two-eighteen whirled about in one of the sudden hot rages of her kind: + +"Pin it, you fool! Pin it! I told you I was late!" + +Julia paused a moment, the red surging into her face. Then in silence +she knelt and wove a pin deftly in and out. When she rose from her +knees her face was quite white. + +"There, that's the girl!" said Two-eighteen blithely, her rage +forgotten. "Just pat this over my shoulders." + +She handed a powder-puff to Julia and turned her back to the broad +mirror, holding a hand-glass high as she watched the powder-laden puff +leaving a snowy coat on the neck and shoulders and back so generously +displayed in the cherry-coloured gown. Julia's face was set and hard. + +"Oh, now, don't sulk!" coaxed Two-eighteen good-naturedly, all of a +sudden. "I hate sulky girls. I like people to be cheerful round me." + +"I'm not used to being yelled at," Julia said resentfully. + +Two-eighteen patted her cheek lightly. "You come out with me to-morrow +and I'll buy you something pretty. Don't you like pretty clothes?" + +"Yes; but--" + +"Of course you do. Every girl does--especially pretty ones like you. How +do you like this dress? Don't you think it smart?" + +She turned squarely to face Julia, trying on her the tricks she had +practised in the mirror. A little cruel look came into Julia's face. + +"Last year's, isn't it?" she asked coolly. + +"This!" cried Two-eighteen, stiffening. "Last year's! I got it yesterday +on Fifth Avenue, and paid two hundred and fifty for it. What do you--" + +"Oh, I believe you," drawled Julia. "They can tell a New Yorker from an +out-of-towner every time. You know the really new thing is the Bulgarian +effect!" + +"Well, of all the nerve!" began Two-eighteen, turning to the mirror in a +sort of fright. "Of all the--" + +What she saw there seemed to reassure. She raised one hand to push the +gown a little more off the left shoulder. + +"Will there be anything else?" inquired Julia, standing aloof. + +Two-eighteen turned reluctantly from the mirror and picked up a jewelled +gold-mesh bag that lay on the bed. From it she extracted a coin and held +it out to Julia. It was a generous coin. Julia looked at it. Her +smouldering wrath burst into flame. + +"Keep it!" she said savagely, and was out of the room and down the hall. + +Sadie Corn, at her desk, looked up quickly as Julia turned the corner. +Julia, her head held high, kept her eyes resolutely away from Sadie. + +"Oh, Julia, I want to talk to you!" said Sadie Corn as Julia reached the +stairway. Julia began to descend the stairs, unheeding. Sadie Corn rose +and leaned over the railing, her face puckered with anxiety. "Now, +Julia, girl, don't hold that up against me! I didn't mean it. You know +that. You wouldn't be mad at a poor old woman that's half crazy with +neuralgy!" Julia hesitated, one foot poised to take the next step. "Come +on up," coaxed Sadie Corn, "and tell me what Two-eighteen's wearing +this evening. I'm that lonesome, with nothing to do but sit here and +watch the letter-ghosts go flippering down the mailchute! Come on!" + +"What made you say you'd report me?" demanded Julia bitterly. + +"I'd have said the same thing to my own daughter if I had one. You know +yourself I'd bite my tongue out first!" + +"Well!" said Julia slowly, and relented. She came up the stairs almost +shyly. "Neuralgy any better?" + +"Worse!" said Sadie Corn cheerfully. + +Julia leaned against the desk sociably and glanced down the hall. + +"Would you believe it," she snickered, "she's wearing red! With that +hair! She asked me if I didn't think she looked too pale. I wanted to +tell her that if she had any more colour, with that dress, they'd be +likely to use the chemical sprinklers on her when she struck the Alley." + +"Sh-sh-sh!" breathed Sadie in warning. Two-eighteen, in her shimmering, +flame-coloured costume, was coming down the hall toward the elevators. +She walked with the absurd and stumbling step that her scant skirt +necessitated. With each pace the slashed silken skirt parted to reveal a +shameless glimpse of cerise silk stocking. In her wake came Venner, of +Two-twenty-three--a strange contrast in his black and white. + +Sadie and Julia watched them from the corner nook. Opposite the desk +Two-eighteen stopped and turned to Julia. + +"Just run into my room and pick things up and hang them away, will you?" +she said. "I didn't have time--and I hate things all about when I come +in dead tired." + +The little formula of service rose automatically to Julia's lips. + +"Very well, madam," she said. + +Her eyes and Sadie's followed the two figures until they had stepped +into the cream-and-gold elevator and had vanished. Sadie, peppermint +bottle at nose, spoke first: + +"She makes one of those sandwich men with a bell, on Sixth Avenue, look +like a shrinking violet!" + +Julia's lower lip was caught between her teeth. The scent that had +enveloped Two-eighteen as she passed was still in the air. Julia's +nostrils dilated as she sniffed it. Her breath came a little quickly. +Sadie Corn sat very still, watching her. + +"Look at her!" said Julia, her voice vibrant. "Look at her! Old and +homely, and all made up! I powdered her neck. Her skin's like tripe. + +"Now Julia--" remonstrated Sadie Corn soothingly. + +"I don't care," went on Julia with a rush. "I'm young. And I'm pretty +too. And I like pretty things. It ain't fair! That was one reason why I +broke with Jo. It wasn't only his mother. I told him he couldn't ever +give me the things I want anyway. You can't help wanting 'em--seeing +them all round every day on women that aren't half as good-looking as +you are! I want low-cut dresses too. My neck's like milk. I want silk +underneath, and fur coming up on my coat collar to make my cheeks look +pink. I'm sick of hooking other women up. I want to stand in front of a +mirror, looking at myself, polishing my pink nails with a silver thing +and having somebody else hook me up!" + +In Sadie Corn's eyes there was a mist that could not be traced to +neuralgia or peppermint. + +"Julia, girl," said Sadie Corn, "ever since the world began there's been +hookers and hooked. And there always will be. I was born a hooker. So +were you. Time was when I used to cry out against it too. But shucks! I +know better now. I wouldn't change places. Being a hooker gives you such +an all-round experience like of mankind. The hooked only get a front +view. They only see faces and arms and chests. But the hookers--they see +the necks and shoulderblades of this world, as well as faces. It's +mighty broadening--being a hooker. It's the hookers that keep this world +together, Julia, and fastened up right. It wouldn't amount to much if it +had to depend on such as that!" She nodded her head in the direction the +cerise figure had taken. "The height of her ambition is to get the +cuticle of her nails trained back so perfectly that it won't have to be +cut; and she don't feel decently dressed to be seen in public unless +she's wearing one of those breastplates of orchids. Envy her! Why, +Julia, don't you know that as you were standing here in your black dress +as she passed she was envying you!" + +"Envying me!" said Julia, and laughed a short laugh that had little of +mirth in it. "You don't understand, Sadie!" + +Sadie Corn smiled a rather sad little smile. + +"Oh, yes, I do understand. Don't think because a woman's homely, and +always has been, that she doesn't have the same heartaches that a pretty +woman has. She's built just the same inside." + +Julia turned her head to stare at her wide-eyed. It was a long and +trying stare, as though she now saw Sadie Corn for the first time. + +Sadie, smiling up at the girl, stood it bravely. Then, with a sudden +little gesture, Julia patted the wrinkled, sallow cheek and was off down +the hall and round the corner to two-eighteen. + +The lights still blazed in the bedroom. Julia closed the door and stood +with her back to it, looking about the disordered chamber. In that +marvellous way a room has of reflecting the very personality of its +absent owner, room two-eighteen bore silent testimony to the manner of +woman who had just left it. The air was close and overpoweringly sweet +with perfume--sachet, powder--the scent of a bedroom after a vain and +selfish woman has left it. The litter of toilet articles lay scattered +about on the dresser. Chairs and bed held garments of lace and silk. A +bewildering negligée hung limply over a couch; and next it stood a +patent-leather slipper, its mate on the floor. + +Julia saw these things in one accustomed glance. Then she advanced to +the middle of the room and stooped to pick up a pink wadded bedroom +slipper from where it lay under the bed. And her hand touched a coat of +velvet and fur that had been flung across the counterpane--touched it +and rested there. + +The coat was of stamped velvet and fur. Great cuffs of fur there were, +and a sumptuous collar that rolled from neck to waist. There was a +lining of vivid orange. Julia straightened up and stood regarding the +garment, her hands on her hips. + +"I wonder if it's draped in the back," she said to herself, and picked +it up. It was draped in the back--bewitchingly. She held it at arm's +length, turning it this way and that. Then, as though obeying some +powerful force she could not resist, Julia plunged her arms into the +satin of the sleeves and brought the great soft revers up about her +throat. The great, gorgeous, shimmering thing completely hid her grubby +little black gown. She stepped to the mirror and stood surveying herself +in a sort of ecstasy. Her cheeks glowed rose-pink against the dark fur, +as she had known they would. Her lovely little head, with its coils of +black hair, rose flowerlike from the clinging garment. She was still +standing there, lips parted, eyes wide with delight, when the door +opened and closed--and Venner, of two-twenty-three, strode into the +room. + +"You little beauty!" exclaimed Two-twenty-three. + +Julia had wheeled about. She stood staring at him, eyes and lips wide +with fright now. One hand clutched the fur at her breast. + +"Why, what--" she gasped. + +Two-twenty-three laughed. + +"I knew I'd find you here. I made an excuse to come up. Old Nutcracker +Face in the hall thinks I went to my own room." He took two quick steps +forward. "You raving little Cinderella beauty, you!"--And he gathered +Julia, coat and all, into his arms. + +"Let me go!" panted Julia, fighting with all the strength of her young +arms. "Let me go!" + +"You'll have coats like this," Two-twenty-three was saying in her +ear--"a dozen of them! And dresses too; and laces and furs! You'll be +ten times the beauty you are now! And that's saying something. Listen! +You meet me to-morrow--" + +There came a ring--sudden and startling--from the telephone on the wall +near the door. The man uttered something and turned. Julia pushed him +away, loosened the coat with fingers that shook and dropped it to the +floor. It lay in a shimmering circle about the tired feet in their worn, +cracked boots. And one foot was raised suddenly and kicked the silken +garment into a heap. + +The telephone bell sounded again. Venner, of two-twenty-three, plunged +his hand into his pocket, took out something and pressed it in Julia's +palm, shutting her fingers over it. Julia did not need to open them and +look to see--she knew by the feel of the crumpled paper, stiff and +crackling. He was making for the door, with some last instructions that +she did not hear, before she spoke. The telephone bell had stopped its +insistent ringing. + +Julia raised her arm and hurled at him with all her might the +yellow-backed paper he had thrust in her hand. + +"I'll--I'll get my man to whip you for this!" she panted. "Jo'll pull +those eyelashes of yours out and use 'em for couplings. You miserable +little--" + +The outside door opened again, striking Two-twenty-three squarely in the +back. He crumpled up against the wall with an oath. + +Sadie Corn, in the doorway, gave no heed to him. Her eyes searched +Julia's flushed face. What she saw there seemed to satisfy her. She +turned to him then grimly. + +"What are you doing here?" Sadie asked briskly. + +Two-twenty-three muttered something about the wrong room by mistake. +Julia laughed. + +"He lies!" she said, and pointed to the floor. "That bill belongs to +him." + +Sadie Corn motioned to him. + +"Pick it up!" she said. + +"I don't--want it!" snarled Two-twenty-three. + +"Pick--it--up!" articulated Sadie Corn very carefully. He came forward, +stooped, put the bill in his pocket. "You check out to-night!" said +Sadie Corn. Then, at a muttered remonstrance from him: "Oh, yes, you +will! So will Two-eighteen. Huh? Oh, I guess she will! Say, what do you +think a floor clerk's for? A human keyrack? I'll give you until twelve. +I'm off watch at twelve-thirty." Then, to Julia, as he slunk off: "Why +didn't you answer the phone? That was me ringing!" + +A sob caught Julia in the throat, but she turned it into a laugh. + +"I didn't hardly hear it. I was busy promising him a licking from Jo." + +Sadie Corn opened the door. + +"Come on down the hall. I've left no one at the desk. It was Jo I was +telephoning you for." + +Julia grasped her arm with gripping fingers. + +"Jo! He ain't--" + +Sadie Corn took the girl's hand in hers. + +"Jo's all right! But Jo's mother won't bother you any more, Sadie. +You'll never need to give up your housekeeping nest-egg for her again. +Jo told me to tell you." + +Julia stared at her for one dreadful moment, her fist, with the knuckles +showing white, pressed against her mouth. A little moan came from her +that, repeated over and over, took the form of words: + +"Oh, Sadie, if I could only take back what I said to Jo! If I could only +take back what I said to Jo! He'll never forgive me now! And I'll never +forgive myself!" + +"He'll forgive you," said Sadie Corn; "but you'll never forgive +yourself. That's as it should be. That, you know, is our punishment for +what we say in thoughtlessness and anger." + +They turned the corridor corner. Standing before the desk near the +stairway was the tall figure of Donahue, house detective. Donahue had +always said that Julia was too pretty to be a hotel employé. + +"Straighten up, Julia!" whispered Sadie Corn. "And smile if it kills +you--unless you want to make me tell the whole of it to Donahue." + +Donahue, the keen-eyed, balancing, as was his wont, from toe to heel and +back again, his chin thrust out inquiringly, surveyed the pair. + +"Off watch?" inquired Donahue pleasantly, staring at Julia's eyes. +"What's wrong with Julia?" + +"Neuralgy!" said Sadie Corn crisply. "I've just told her to quit rubbing +her head with peppermint. She's got the stuff into her eyes." + +She picked up the bottle on her desk and studied its label, frowning. +"Run along downstairs, Julia. I'll see if they won't send you some hot +tea." + +Donahue, hands clasped behind him, was walking off in his leisurely, +light-footed way. + +"Everything serene?" he called back over his big shoulder. + +The neuralgic eye closed and opened, perhaps with another twinge. + +"Everything's serene!" said Sadie Corn. + + + + +IX + + +THE GUIDING MISS GOWD + +It has long been the canny custom of writers on travel bent to defray +the expense of their journeyings by dashing off tales filled with +foreign flavour. Dickens did it, and Dante. It has been tried all the +way from Tasso to Twain; from Raskin to Roosevelt. A pleasing custom it +is and thrifty withal, and one that has saved many a one but poorly +prepared for the European robber in uniform the moist and unpleasant +task of swimming home. + +Your writer spends seven days, say, in Paris. Result? The Latin Quarter +story. _Oh, mes enfants!_ That Parisian student-life story! There is the +beautiful young American girl--beautiful, but as earnest and good as she +is beautiful, and as talented as she is earnest and good. And wedded, be +it understood, to her art--preferably painting or singing. From New +York! Her name must be something prim, yet winsome. Lois will do--Lois, +_la belle Américaine_. Then the hero--American too. Madly in love with +Lois. Tall he is and always clean-limbed--not handsome, but with one of +those strong, rugged faces. His name, too, must be strong and plain, yet +snappy. David is always good. The villain is French, fascinating, and +wears a tiny black moustache to hide his mouth, which is cruel. + +The rest is simple. A little French restaurant--Henri's. Know you not +Henri's? _Tiens!_ But Henri's is not for the tourist. A dim little shop +and shabby, modestly tucked away in the shadows of the Rue Brie. But the +food! Ah, the--whadd'you-call'ems--in the savoury sauce, that is Henri's +secret! The tender, broiled _poularde_, done to a turn! The bottle of +red wine! _Mais oui_; there one can dine under the watchful glare of +Rosa, the plump, black-eyed wife of the _concierge_. With a snowy apron +about her buxom waist, and a pot of red geraniums somewhere, and a +sleek, lazy cat contentedly purring in the sunny window! + +Then Lois starving in a garret. Temptation! _Sacré bleu! Zut!_ Also _nom +d'un nom!_ Enter David. _Bon!_ Oh, David, take me away! Take me back to +dear old Schenectady. Love is more than all else, especially when no one +will buy your pictures. + +The Italian story recipe is even simpler. A pearl necklace; a low, clear +whistle. Was it the call of a bird or a signal? His-s-s-st! Again! A +black cape; the flash of steel in the moonlight; the sound of a splash +in the water; a sickening gurgle; a stifled cry! Silence! His-st! +_Vendetta!_ + +There is the story made in Germany, filled with students and steins and +scars; with beer and blonde, blue-eyed _Mädchen_ garbed--the _Mädchen_, +that is--in black velvet bodice, white chemisette, scarlet skirt with +two rows of black ribbon at the bottom, and one yellow braid over the +shoulder. Especially is this easily accomplished if actually written in +the _Vaterland_, German typewriting machines being equipped with +_umlauts_. + +And yet not one of these formulas would seem to fit the story of Mary +Gowd. Mary Gowd, with her frumpy English hat and her dreadful English +fringe, and her brick-red English cheeks, which not even the enervating +Italian sun, the years of bad Italian food or the damp and dim little +Roman room had been able to sallow. Mary Gowd, with her shabby blue suit +and her mangy bit of fur, and the glint of humour in her pale blue eyes. +Many, many times that same glint of humour had saved English Mary Gowd +from seeking peace in the muddy old Tiber. + +Her card read imposingly thus: Mary M. Gowd, Cicerone. Certificated and +Licensed Lecturer on Art and Archaeology. Via del Babbuino, Roma. + +In plain language Mary Gowd was a guide. Now, Rome is swarming with +guides; but they are men guides. They besiege you in front of Cook's. +They perch at the top of the Capitoline Hill, ready to pounce on you +when you arrive panting from your climb up the shallow steps. They lie +in wait in the doorway of St. Peter's. Bland, suave, smiling, quiet, but +insistent, they dog you from the Vatican to the Catacombs. + +Hundreds there are of these little men--undersized, even in this land +of small men--dapper, agile, low-voiced, crafty. In his inner coat +pocket each carries his credentials, greasy, thumb-worn documents, but +precious. He glances at your shoes--this insinuating one--or at your +hat, or at any of those myriad signs by which he marks you for his own. +Then up he steps and speaks to you in the language of your country, be +you French, German, English, Spanish or American. + +And each one of this clan--each slim, feline little man in blue serge, +white-toothed, gimlet-eyed, smooth-tongued, brisk--hated Mary Gowd. They +hated her with the hate of an Italian for an outlander--with the hate of +an Italian for a woman who works with her brain--with the hate of an +Italian who sees another taking the bread out of his mouth. All this, +coupled with the fact that your Italian is a natural-born hater, may +indicate that the life of Mary Gowd had not the lyric lilt that life is +commonly reputed to have in sunny Italy. + +Oh, there is no formula for Mary Gowd's story. In the first place, the +tale of how Mary Gowd came to be the one woman guide in Rome runs like +melodrama. And Mary herself, from her white cotton gloves, darned at the +fingers, to her figure, which mysteriously remained the same in spite of +fifteen years of scant Italian fare, does not fit gracefully into the +rôle of heroine. + +Perhaps that story, scraped to bedrock, shorn of all floral features, +may gain in force what it loses in artistry. + +She was twenty-two when she came to Rome--twenty-two and art-mad. She +had been pretty, with that pink-cheesecloth prettiness of the provincial +English girl, who degenerates into blowsiness at thirty. Since seventeen +she had saved and scrimped and contrived for this modest Roman holiday. +She had given painting lessons--even painted on loathsome china--that +the little hoard might grow. And when at last there was enough she had +come to this Rome against the protests of the fussy English father and +the spinster English sister. + +The man she met quite casually one morning in the Sistine +Chapel--perhaps he bumped her elbow as they stood staring up at the +glorious ceiling. A thousand pardons! Ah, an artist too? In five minutes +they were chattering like mad--she in bad French and exquisite English; +he in bad English and exquisite French. He knew Rome--its pictures, its +glories, its history--as only an Italian can. And he taught her art, and +he taught her Italian, and he taught her love. + +And so they were married, or ostensibly married, though Mary did not +know the truth until three months later when he left her quite as +casually as he had met her, taking with him the little hoard, and Mary's +English trinkets, and Mary's English roses, and Mary's broken pride. + +So! There was no going back to the fussy father or the spinster sister. +She came very near resting her head on Father Tiber's breast in those +days. She would sit in the great galleries for hours, staring at the +wonder-works. Then, one day, again in the Sistine Chapel, a fussy little +American woman had approached her, her eyes snapping. Mary was +sketching, or trying to. + +"Do you speak English?" + +"I am English," said Mary. + +The feathers in the hat of the fussy little woman quivered. + +"Then tell me, is this ceiling by Raphael?" + +"Ceiling!" gasped Mary Gowd. "Raphael!" + +Then, very gently, she gave the master's name. + +"Of course!" snapped the excited little American. "I'm one of a party of +eight. We're all school-teachers And this guide"--she waved a hand in +the direction of a rapt little group standing in the agonising position +the ceiling demands--"just informed us that the ceiling is by Raphael. +And we're paying him ten lire!" + +"Won't you sit here?" Mary Gowd made a place for her. "I'll tell you." + +And she did tell her, finding a certain relief from her pain in +unfolding to this commonplace little woman the glory of the masterpiece +among masterpieces. + +"Why--why," gasped her listener, who had long since beckoned the other +seven with frantic finger, "how beautifully you explain it! How much you +know! Oh, why can't they talk as you do?" she wailed, her eyes full of +contempt for the despised guide. + +"I am happy to have helped you," said Mary Gowd. + +"Helped! Why, there are hundreds of Americans who would give anything to +have some one like you to be with them in Rome." + +Mary Gowd's whole body stiffened. She stared fixedly at the grateful +little American school-teacher. + +"Some one like me--" + +The little teacher blushed very red. + +"I beg your pardon. I wasn't thinking. Of course you don't need to do +any such work, but I just couldn't help saying--" + +"But I do need work," interrupted Mary Gowd. She stood up, her cheeks +pink again for the moment, her eyes bright. "I thank you. Oh, I thank +you!" + +"You thank me!" faltered the American. + +But Mary Gowd had folded her sketchbook and was off, through the +vestibule, down the splendid corridor, past the giant Swiss guard, to +the noisy, sunny Piazza di San Pietro. + +That had been fifteen years ago. She had taken her guide's examinations +and passed them. She knew her Rome from the crypt of St. Peter's to the +top of the Janiculum Hill; from the Campagna to Tivoli. She read and +studied and learned. She delved into the past and brought up strange and +interesting truths. She could tell you weird stories of those white +marble men who lay so peacefully beneath St. Peter's dome, their ringed +hands crossed on their breasts. She learned to juggle dates with an ease +that brought gasps from her American clients, with their history that +went back little more than one hundred years. + +She learned to designate as new anything that failed to have its origin +stamped B.C.; and the Magnificent Augustus, he who boasted of finding +Rome brick and leaving it marble, was a mere _nouveau riche_ with his +miserable A.D. 14. + +She was as much at home in the Thermae of Caracalla as you in your +white-and-blue-tiled bath. She could juggle the history of emperors with +one hand and the scandals of half a dozen kings with the other. No ruin +was too unimportant for her attention--no picture too faded for her +research. She had the centuries at her tongue's end. Michelangelo and +Canova were her brothers in art, and Rome was to her as your back-garden +patch is to you. + +Mary Gowd hated this Rome as only an English woman can who has spent +fifteen years in that nest of intrigue. She fought the whole race of +Roman guides day after day. She no longer turned sick and faint when +they hissed after her vile Italian epithets that her American or English +clients quite failed to understand. Quite unconcernedly she would jam +down the lever of the taximeter the wily Italian cabby had pulled only +halfway so that the meter might register double. And when that +foul-mouthed one crowned his heap of abuse by screaming "_Camorrista! +Camor-r-rista!_" at her, she would merely shrug her shoulders and say +"_Andate presto!_" to show him she was above quarrelling with a cabman. + +She ate eggs and bread, and drank the red wine, never having conquered +her disgust for Italian meat since first she saw the filthy carcasses, +fly-infested, dust-covered, loathsome, being carted through the swarming +streets. + +It was six o'clock of an evening early in March when Mary Gowd went home +to the murky little room in the Via Babbuino. She was too tired to +notice the sunset. She was too tired to smile at the red-eyed baby of +the cobbler's wife, who lived in the rear. She was too tired to ask Tina +for the letters that seldom came. It had been a particularly trying day, +spent with a party of twenty Germans, who had said "_Herrlich!_" when +she showed them the marvels of the Vatican and "_Kolossal!_" at the +grandeur of the Colosseum and, for the rest, had kept their noses buried +in their Baedekers. + +She groped her way cautiously down the black hall. Tina had a habit of +leaving sundry brushes, pans or babies lying about. After the warmth of +the March sun outdoors the house was cold with that clammy, penetrating, +tomblike chill of the Italian home. + +"Tina!" she called. + +From the rear of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping. +There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient +shoulders. Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the +white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy +Via Babbuino, closed the massive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy +windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut. +In that little room the roar of Rome was tamed to a dull humming. Mary +Gowd, born and bred amid the green of Northern England, had never become +hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and +clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; +the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns +that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the +electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping +women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the +cabman's whip--that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one +part whip and nine parts crack. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Gowd that +her brain was seared and welted by the pistol-shot reports of those +eternal whips. + +She came forward now and lighted a candle that stood on the table and +another on the dresser. Their dim light seemed to make dimmer the dark +little room. She looked about with a little shiver. Then she sank into +the chintz-covered chair that was the one bit of England in the sombre +chamber. She took off the dusty black velvet hat, passed a hand over her +hair with a gesture that was more tired than tidy, and sat back, her +eyes shut, her body inert, her head sagging on her breast. + +The voices in the back of the house had ceased. From the kitchen came +the slipslop of Tina's slovenly feet. Mary Gowd opened her eyes and sat +up very straight as Tina stood in the doorway. There was nothing +picturesque about Tina. Tina was not one of those olive-tinted, +melting-eyed daughters of Italy that one meets in fiction. Looking at +her yellow skin and her wrinkles and her coarse hands, one wondered +whether she was fifty, or sixty, or one hundred, as is the way with +Italian women of Tina's class at thirty-five. + +Ah, the signora was tired! She smiled pityingly. Tired! Not at all, Mary +Gowd assured her briskly. She knew that Tina despised her because she +worked like a man. + +"Something fine for supper?" Mary Gowd asked mockingly. Her Italian was +like that of the Romans themselves, so soft, so liquid, so perfect. + +Tina nodded vigorously, her long earrings shaking. + +"_Vitello_"--she began, her tongue clinging lovingly to the double _l_ +sound--"_Vee-tail-loh_--" + +"Ugh!" shuddered Mary Gowd. That eternal veal and mutton, pinkish, +flabby, sickening! + +"What then?" demanded the outraged Tina. + +Mary Gowd stood up, making gestures, hat in hand. + +"Clotted cream, with strawberries," she said in English, an unknown +language, which always roused Tina to fury. "And a steak--a real steak +of real beef, three inches thick and covered with onions fried in +butter. And creamed chicken, and English hothouse tomatoes, and fresh +peaches and little hot rolls, and coffee that isn't licorice and ink, +and--and--" + +Tina's dangling earrings disappeared in her shoulders. Her outspread +palms were eloquent. + +"Crazy, these English!" said the shoulders and palms. "Mad!" + +Mary Gowd threw her hat on the bed, pushed aside a screen and busied +herself with a little alcohol stove. + +"I shall prepare an omelet," she said over her shoulder in Italian. +"Also, I have here bread and wine." + +"Ugh!" granted Tina. + +"Ugh, veal!" grunted Mary Gowd. Then, as Tina's flapping feet turned +away: "Oh, Tina! Letters?" + +Tina fumbled at the bosom of her gown, thought deeply and drew out a +crumpled envelope. It had been opened and clumsily closed again. Fifteen +years ago Mary Gowd would have raged. Now she shrugged philosophic +shoulders. Tina stole hairpins, opened letters that she could not hope +to decipher, rummaged bureau drawers, rifled cupboards and fingered +books; but then, so did most of the other Tinas in Rome. What use to +complain? + +Mary Gowd opened the thumb-marked letter, bringing it close to the +candlelight. As she read, a smile appeared. + +"Huh! Gregg," she said, "Americans!" She glanced again at the hotel +letterhead on the stationery--the best hotel in Naples. "Americans--and +rich!" + +The pleased little smile lingered as she beat the omelet briskly for her +supper. + +The Henry D. Greggs arrived in Rome on the two o'clock train from +Naples. And all the Roman knights of the waving palm espied them from +afar and hailed them with whoops of joy. The season was still young and +the Henry D. Greggs looked like money--not Italian money, which is +reckoned in lire, but American money, which mounts grandly to dollars. +The postcard men in the Piazza delle Terme sped after their motor taxi. +The swarthy brigand, with his wooden box of tawdry souvenirs, marked +them as they rode past. The cripple who lurked behind a pillar in the +colonnade threw aside his coat with a practised hitch of his shoulder to +reveal the sickeningly maimed arm that was his stock in trade. + +Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Gregg had left their comfortable home in Batavia, +Illinois, with its sleeping porch, veranda and lawn, and seven-passenger +car; with its two glistening bathrooms, and its Oriental rugs, and its +laundry in the basement, and its Sunday fried chicken and ice cream, +because they felt that Miss Eleanora Gregg ought to have the benefit of +foreign travel. Miss Eleanora Gregg thought so too: in fact, she had +thought so first. + +Her name was Eleanora, but her parents called her Tweetie, which really +did not sound so bad as it might if Tweetie had been one whit less +pretty. Tweetie was so amazingly, Americanly pretty that she could have +triumphed over a pet name twice as absurd. + +The Greggs came to Rome, as has been stated, at two P.M. Wednesday. By +two P.M. Thursday Tweetie had bought a pair of long, dangling earrings, +a costume with a Roman striped collar and sash, and had learned to loll +back in her cab in imitation of the dashing, black-eyed, sallow women +she had seen driving on the Pincio. By Thursday evening she was teasing +Papa Gregg for a spray of white aigrets, such as those same languorous +ladies wore in feathery mists atop their hats. + +"But, Tweet," argued Papa Gregg, "what's the use? You can't take them +back with you. Custom-house regulations forbid it." + +The rather faded but smartly dressed Mrs. Gregg asserted herself: + +"They're barbarous! We had moving pictures at the club showing how +they're torn from the mother birds. No daughter of mine--" + +"I don't care!" retorted Tweetie. "They're perfectly stunning; and I'm +going to have them." + +And she had them--not that the aigret incident is important; but it may +serve to place the Greggs in their respective niches. + +At eleven o'clock Friday morning Mary Gowd called at the Gregg's hotel, +according to appointment. In far-away Batavia, Illinois, Mrs. Gregg had +heard of Mary Gowd. And Mary Gowd, with her knowledge of everything +Roman--from the Forum to the best place at which to buy pearls--was to +be the staff on which the Greggs were to lean. + +"My husband," said Mrs. Gregg; "my daughter Twee--er--Eleanora. We've +heard such wonderful things of you from my dear friend Mrs. Melville +Peters, of Batavia." + +"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Mary Gowd. "A most charming person, Mrs. Peters." + +"After she came home from Europe she read the most wonderful paper on +Rome before the Women's West End Culture Club, of Batavia. We're +affiliated with the National Federation of Women's Clubs, as you +probably know; and--" + +"Now, Mother," interrupted Henry Gregg, "the lady can't be interested in +your club." + +"Oh, but I am!" exclaimed Mary Gowd very vivaciously. "Enormously!" + +Henry Gregg eyed her through his cigar smoke with suddenly narrowed +lids. + +"M-m-m! Well, let's get to the point anyway. I know Tweetie here is +dying to see St. Peter's, and all that." + +Tweetie had settled back inscrutably after one comprehensive, disdainful +look at Mary Gowd's suit, hat, gloves and shoes. Now she sat up, her +bewitching face glowing with interest. + +"Tell me," she said, "what do they call those officers with the long +pale-blue capes and the silver helmets and the swords? And the ones in +dark-blue uniform with the maroon stripe at the side of the trousers? +And do they ever mingle with the--that is, there was one of the blue +capes here at tea yesterday--" + +Papa Gregg laughed a great, comfortable laugh. + +"Oh, so that's where you were staring yesterday, young lady! I thought +you acted kind of absent-minded." He got up to walk over and pinch +Tweetie's blushing cheek. + +So it was that Mary Gowd began the process of pouring the bloody, +religious, wanton, pious, thrilling, dreadful history of Rome into the +pretty and unheeding ear of Tweetie Gregg. + +On the fourth morning after that introductory meeting Mary Gowd arrived +at the hotel at ten, as usual, to take charge of her party for the day. +She encountered them in the hotel foyer, an animated little group +centred about a very tall, very dashing, very black-mustachioed figure +who wore a long pale blue cape thrown gracefully over one shoulder as +only an Italian officer can wear such a garment. He was looking down +into the brilliantly glowing face of the pretty Eleanora, and the pretty +Eleanora was looking up at him; and Pa and Ma Gregg were standing by, +placidly pleased. + +A grim little line appeared about Miss Gowd's mouth. Blue Cape's black +eyes saw it, even as he bent low over Mary Gowd's hand at the words of +introduction. + +"Oh, Miss Gowd," pouted Tweetie, "it's too bad you haven't a telephone. +You see, we shan't need you to-day." + +"No?" said Miss Gowd, and glanced at Blue Cape. + +"No; Signor Caldini says it's much too perfect a day to go poking about +among old ruins and things." + +Henry D. Gregg cleared his throat and took up the explanation. "Seems +the--er--Signor thinks it would be just the thing to take a touring car +and drive to Tivoli, and have a bite of lunch there." + +"And come back in time to see the Colosseum by moonlight!" put in +Tweetie ecstatically. + +"Oh, yes!" said Mary Gowd. + +Pa Gregg looked at his watch. + +"Well, I'll be running along," he said. Then, in answer to something in +Mary Gowd's eyes: "I'm not going to Tivoli, you see. I met a man from +Chicago here at the hotel. He and I are going to chin awhile this +morning. And Mrs. Gregg and his wife are going on a shopping spree. Say, +ma, if you need any more money speak up now, because I'm--" + +Mary Gowd caught his coat sleeve. + +"One moment!" + +Her voice was very low. "You mean--you mean Miss Eleanora will go to +Tivoli and to the Colosseum alone--with--with Signor Caldini?" + +Henry Gregg smiled indulgently. + +"The young folks always run round alone at home. We've got our own car +at home in Batavia, but Tweetie's beaus are always driving up for her +in--" + +Mary Gowd turned her head so that only Henry Gregg could hear what she +said. + +"Step aside for just one moment. I must talk to you." + +"Well, what?" + +"Do as I say," whispered Mary Gowd. + +Something of her earnestness seemed to convey a meaning to Henry Gregg. + +"Just wait a minute, folks," he said to the group of three, and joined +Mary Gowd, who had chosen a seat a dozen paces away. "What's the +trouble?" he asked jocularly. "Hope you're not offended because Tweet +said we didn't need you to-day. You know young folks--" + +"They must not go alone," said Mary Gowd. + +"But--" + +"This is not America. This is Italy--this Caldini is an Italian." + +"Why, look here; Signor Caldini was introduced to us last night. His +folks really belong to the nobility." + +"I know; I know," interrupted Mary Gowd. "I tell you they cannot go +alone. Please believe me! I have been fifteen years in Rome. Noble or +not, Caldini is an Italian. I ask you"--she had clasped her hands and +was looking pleadingly up into his face--"I beg of you, let me go with +them. You need not pay me to-day. You--" + +Henry Gregg looked at her very thoughtfully and a little puzzled. Then +he glanced over at the group again, with Blue Cape looking down so +eagerly into Tweetie's exquisite face and Tweetie looking up so raptly +into Blue Cape's melting eyes and Ma Gregg standing so placidly by. He +turned again to Mary Gowd's earnest face. + +"Well, maybe you're right. They do seem to use chaperons in +Europe--duennas, or whatever you call 'em. Seems a nice kind of chap, +though." + +He strolled back to the waiting group. From her seat Mary Gowd heard +Mrs. Gregg's surprised exclamation, saw Tweetie's pout, understood +Caldini's shrug and sneer. There followed a little burst of +conversation. Then, with a little frown which melted into a smile for +Blue Cape, Tweetie went to her room for motor coat and trifles that the +long day's outing demanded. Mrs. Gregg, still voluble, followed. + +Blue Cape, with a long look at Mary Gowd, went out to confer with the +porter about the motor. Papa Gregg, hand in pockets, cigar tilted, eyes +narrowed, stood irresolutely in the centre of the great, gaudy foyer. +Then, with a decisive little hunch of his shoulders, he came back to +where Mary Gowd sat. + +"Did you say you've been fifteen years in Rome?" + +"Fifteen years," answered Mary Gowd. + +Henry D. Gregg took his cigar from his mouth and regarded it +thoughtfully. + +"Well, that's quite a spell. Must like it here." Mary Gowd said nothing. +"Can't say I'm crazy about it--that is, as a place to live. I said to +Mother last night: 'Little old Batavia's good enough for Henry D.' Of +course it's a grand education, travelling, especially for Tweetie. +Funny, I always thought the fruit in Italy was regular hothouse +stuff--thought the streets would just be lined with trees all hung with +big, luscious oranges. But, Lord! Here we are at the best hotel in Rome, +and the fruit is worse than the stuff the pushcart men at home feed to +their families--little wizened bananas and oranges. Still, it's grand +here in Rome for Tweetie. I can't stay long--just ran away from business +to bring 'em over; but I'd like Tweetie to stay in Italy until she +learns the lingo. Sings, too--Tweetie does; and she and Ma think they'll +have her voice cultivated over here. They'll stay here quite a while, I +guess." + +"Then you will not be here with them?" asked Mary Gowd. + +"Me? No." + +They sat silent for a moment. + +"I suppose you're crazy about Rome," said Henry Gregg again. "There's a +lot of culture here, and history, and all that; and--" + +"I hate Rome!" said Mary Gowd. + +Henry Gregg stared at her in bewilderment. + +"Then why in Sam Hill don't you go back to England?" + +"I'm thirty-seven years old. That's one reason why. And I look older. +Oh, yes, I do. Thanks just the same. There are too many women in England +already--too many half-starving shabby genteel. I earn enough to live on +here--that is, I call it living. You couldn't. In the bad season, when +there are no tourists, I live on a lire a day, including my rent." + +Henry Gregg stood up. + +"My land! Why don't you come to America?" He waved his arms. "America!" + +Mary Gowd's brick-red cheeks grew redder. + +"America!" she echoed. "When I see American tourists here throwing +pennies in the Fountain of Trevi, so that they'll come back to Rome, I +want to scream. By the time I save enough money to go to America I'll be +an old woman and it will be too late. And if I did contrive to scrape +together enough for my passage over I couldn't go to the United States +in these clothes. I've seen thousands of American women here. If they +look like that when they're just travelling about, what do they wear at +home!" + +"Clothes?" inquired Henry Gregg, mystified. "What's wrong with your +clothes?" + +"Everything! I've seen them look at my suit, which hunches in the back +and strains across the front, and is shiny at the seams. And my gloves! +And my hat! Well, even though I am English I know how frightful my hat +is." + +"You're a smart woman," said Henry D. Gregg. + +"Not smart enough," retorted Mary Gowd, "or I shouldn't be here." + +The two stood up as Tweetie came toward them from the lift. Tweetie +pouted again at sight of Mary Gowd, but the pout cleared as Blue Cape, +his arrangements completed, stood in the doorway, splendid hat in hand. + +It was ten o'clock when the three returned from Tivoli and the +Colosseum--Mary Gowd silent and shabbier than ever from the dust of the +road; Blue Cape smiling; Tweetie frankly pettish. Pa and Ma Gregg were +listening to the after-dinner concert in the foyer. + +"Was it romantic--the Colosseum, I mean--by moonlight?" asked Ma Gregg, +patting Tweetie's cheek and trying not to look uncomfortable as Blue +Cape kissed her hand. + +"Romantic!" snapped Tweetie. "It was as romantic as Main Street on +Circus Day. Hordes of people tramping about like buffaloes. Simply +swarming with tourists--German ones. One couldn't find a single ruin to +sit on. Romantic!" She glared at the silent Mary Gowd. + +There was a strange little glint in Mary Gowd's eyes, and the grim line +was there about the mouth again, grimmer than it had been in the +morning. + +"You will excuse me?" she said. "I am very tired. I will say good +night." + +"And I," announced Caldini. + +Mary Gowd turned swiftly to look at him. + +"You!" said Tweetie Gregg. + +"I trust that I may have the very great happiness to see you in the +morning," went on Caldini in his careful English. "I cannot permit +Signora Gowd to return home alone through the streets of Rome." He bowed +low and elaborately over the hands of the two women. + +"Oh, well; for that matter--" began Henry Gregg gallantly. + +Caldini raised a protesting, white-gloved hand. + +"I cannot permit it." + +He bowed again and looked hard at Mary Gowd. Mary Gowd returned the +look. The brick-red had quite faded from her cheeks. Then, with a nod, +she turned and walked toward the door. Blue Cape, sword clanking, +followed her. + +In silence he handed her into the _fiacre_. In silence he seated himself +beside her. Then he leaned very close. + +"I will talk in this damned English," he began, "that the pig of a +_fiaccheraio_ may not understand. This--this Gregg, he is very rich, +like all Americans. And the little Eleanora! _Bellissima!_ You must not +stand in my way. It is not good." Mary Dowd sat silent. "You will help +me. To-day you were not kind. There will be much money--money for me; +also for you." + +Fifteen years before--ten years before--she would have died sooner than +listen to a plan such as he proposed; but fifteen years of Rome blunts +one's English sensibilities. Fifteen years of privation dulls one's +moral sense. And money meant America. And little Tweetie Gregg had not +lowered her voice or her laugh when she spoke that afternoon of Mary +Gowd's absurd English fringe and her red wrists above her too-short +gloves. + +"How much?" asked Mary Gowd. He named a figure. She laughed. + +"More--much more!" + +He named another figure; then another. + +"You will put it down on paper," said Mary Gowd, "and sign your +name--to-morrow." + +They drove the remainder of the way in silence. At her door in the Via +Babbuino: + +"You mean to marry her?" asked Mary Gowd. + +Blue Cape shrugged eloquent shoulders: + +"I think not," he said quite simply. + + * * * * * + +It was to be the Appian Way the next morning, with a stop at the +Catacombs. Mary Gowd reached the hotel very early, but not so early as +Caldini. + +"Think the five of us can pile into one carriage?" boomed Henry Gregg +cheerily. + +"A little crowded, I think," said Mary Gowd, "for such a long drive. +May I suggest that we three"--she smiled on Henry Gregg and his +wife--"take this larger carriage, while Miss Eleanora and Signor Caldini +follow in the single cab?" + +A lightning message from Blue Cape's eyes. + +"Yes; that would be nice!" cooed Tweetie. + +So it was arranged. Mary Gowd rather outdid herself as a guide that +morning. She had a hundred little intimate tales at her tongue's end. +She seemed fairly to people those old ruins again with the men and women +of a thousand years ago. Even Tweetie--little frivolous, indifferent +Tweetie--was impressed and interested. + +As they were returning to the carriages after inspecting the Baths of +Caracalla, Tweetie even skipped ahead and slipped her hand for a moment +into Mary Gowd's. + +"You're simply wonderful!" she said almost shyly. "You make things sound +so real. And--and I'm sorry I was so nasty to you yesterday at Tivoli." + +Mary Dowd looked down at the glowing little face. A foolish little face +it was, but very, very pretty, and exquisitely young and fresh and +sweet. Tweetie dropped her voice to a whisper: + +"You should hear him pronounce my name. It is like music when he says +it--El-e-a-no-ra; like that. And aren't his kid gloves always +beautifully white? Why, the boys back home--" + +Mary Gowd was still staring down at her. She lifted the slim, ringed +little hand which lay within her white-cotton paw and stared at that +too. + +Then with a jerk she dropped the girl's hand and squared her shoulders +like a soldier, so that the dowdy blue suit strained more than ever at +its seams; and the line that had settled about her mouth the night +before faded slowly, as though a muscle too tightly drawn had relaxed. + +In the carriages they were seated as before. The horses started up, with +the smaller cab but a dozen paces behind. Mary Gowd leaned forward. She +began to speak--her voice very low, her accent clearly English, her +brevity wonderfully American. + +"Listen to me!" she said. "You must leave Rome to-night!" + +"Leave Rome to-night!" echoed the Greggs as though rehearsing a duet. + +"Be quiet! You must not shout like that. I say you must go away." + +Mamma Gregg opened her lips and shut them, wordless for once. Henry +Gregg laid one big hand on his wife's shaking knees and eyed Mary Gowd +very quietly. + +"I don't get you," he said. + +Mary Gowd looked straight at him as she said what she had to say: + +"There are things in Rome you cannot understand. You could not +understand unless you lived here many years. I lived here many months +before I learned to step meekly off into the gutter to allow a man to +pass on the narrow sidewalk. You must take your pretty daughter and go +away. To-night! No--let me finish. I will tell you what happened to me +fifteen years ago, and I will tell you what this Caldini has in his +mind. You will believe me and forgive me; and promise me that you will +go quietly away." + +When she finished Mrs. Gregg was white-faced and luckily too frightened +to weep. Henry Gregg started up in the carriage, his fists +white-knuckled, his lean face turned toward the carriage crawling +behind. + +"Sit down!" commanded Mary Gowd. She jerked his sleeve. "Sit down!" + +Henry Gregg sat down slowly. Then he wet his lips slightly and smiled. + +"Oh, bosh!" he said. "This--this is the twentieth century and we're +Americans, and it's broad daylight. Why, I'll lick the--" + +"This is Rome," interrupted Mary Gowd quietly, "and you will do nothing +of the kind, because he would make you pay for that too, and it would be +in all the papers; and your pretty daughter would hang her head in shame +forever." She put one hand on Henry Gregg's sleeve. "You do not know! +You do not! Promise me you will go." The tears sprang suddenly to her +English blue eyes. "Promise me! Promise me!" + +"Henry!" cried Mamma Gregg, very grey-faced. "Promise, Henry!" + +"I promise," said Henry Gregg, and he turned away. + +Mary Gowd sank back in her seat and shut her eyes for a moment. + +"_Presto!_" she said to the half-sleeping driver. Then she waved a gay +hand at the carriage in the rear. "_Presto!_" she called, smiling. +"_Presto!_" + + * * * * * + +At six o'clock Mary Gowd entered the little room in the Via Babbuino. +She went first to the window, drew the heavy curtains. The roar of Rome +was hushed to a humming. She lighted a candle that stood on the table. +Its dim light emphasized the gloom. She took off the battered black +velvet hat and sank into the chintz-covered English chair. Tina stood in +the doorway. Mary Gowd sat up with a jerk. + +"Letters, Tina?" + +Tina thought deeply, fumbled at the bosom of her gown and drew out a +sealed envelope grudgingly. + +Mary Gowd broke the seal, glanced at the letter. Then, under Tina's +startled gaze, she held it to the flaming candle and watched it burn. + +"What is it that you do?" demanded Tina. + +Mary Gowd smiled. + +"You have heard of America?" + +"America! A thousand--a million time! My brother Luigi--" + +"Naturally! This, then"--Mary Gowd deliberately gathered up the ashes +into a neat pile and held them in her hand, a crumpled heap--"this then, +Tina, is my trip to America." + + + + +X + + +SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN + +The key to the heart of Paris is love. He whose key-ring lacks that open +sesame never really sees the city, even though he dwell in the shadow of +the Sorbonne and comprehend the _fiacre_ French of the Paris cabman. +Some there are who craftily open the door with a skeleton key; some who +ruthlessly batter the panels; some who achieve only a wax impression, +which proves to be useless. There are many who travel no farther than +the outer gates. You will find them staring blankly at the stone walls; +and their plaint is: + +"What do they find to rave about in this town?" + +Sophy Gold had been eight days in Paris and she had not so much as +peeked through the key-hole. In a vague way she realised that she was +seeing Paris as a blind man sees the sun--feeling its warmth, conscious +of its white light beating on the eyeballs, but never actually beholding +its golden glory. + +This was Sophy Gold's first trip to Paris, and her heart and soul and +business brain were intent on buying the shrewdest possible bill of +lingerie and infants' wear for her department at Schiff Brothers', +Chicago; but Sophy under-estimated the powers of those three guiding +parts. While heart, soul, and brain were bent dutifully and +indefatigably on the lingerie and infants'-wear job they also were +registering a series of kaleidoscopic outside impressions. + +As she drove from her hotel to the wholesale district, and from the +wholesale district to her hotel, there had flashed across her +consciousness the picture of the chic little modistes' models and +_ouvrières_ slipping out at noon to meet their lovers on the corner, to +sit over their _sirop_ or wine at some little near-by café, hands +clasped, eyes glowing. + +Stepping out of the lift to ask for her room key, she had come on the +black-gowned floor clerk, deep in murmured conversation with the valet, +and she had seemed not to see Sophy at all as she groped subconsciously +for the key along the rows of keyboxes. She had seen the workmen in +their absurdly baggy corduroy trousers and grimy shirts strolling along +arm in arm with the women of their class--those untidy women with the +tidy hair. Bareheaded and happy, they strolled along, a strange contrast +to the glitter of the fashionable boulevard, stopping now and then to +gaze wide-eyed at a million-franc necklace in a jeweller's window; then +on again with a laugh and a shrug and a caress. She had seen the silent +couples in the Tuileries Gardens at twilight. + +Once, in the Bois de Boulogne, a slim, sallow _élégant_ had bent for +what seemed an interminable time over a white hand that was stretched +from the window of a motor car. He was standing at the curb; in either +greeting or parting, and his eyes were fastened on other eyes within the +car even while his lips pressed the white hand. + +Then one evening--Sophy reddened now at memory of it--she had turned a +quiet corner and come on a boy and a girl. The girl was shabby and +sixteen; the boy pale, voluble, smiling. + +Evidently they were just parting. Suddenly, as she passed, the boy had +caught the girl in his arms there on the street corner in the daylight, +and had kissed her--not the quick, resounding smack of casual +leave-taking, but a long, silent kiss that left the girl limp. + +Sophy stood rooted to the spot, between horror and fascination. The +boy's arm brought the girl upright and set her on her feet. + +She took a long breath, straightened her hat, and ran on to rejoin her +girl friend awaiting her calmly up the street. She was not even flushed; +but Sophy was. Sophy was blushing hotly and burning uncomfortably, so +that her eyes smarted. + +Just after her late dinner on the eighth day of her Paris stay, Sophy +Gold was seated in the hotel lobby. Paris thronged with American +business buyers--those clever, capable, shrewd-eyed women who swarm on +the city in June and strip it of its choicest flowers, from ball gowns +to back combs. Sophy tried to pick them from the multitude that swept +past her. It was not difficult. The women visitors to Paris in June +drop easily into their proper slots. + +There were the pretty American girls and their marvellously +young-looking mammas, both out-Frenching the French in their efforts to +look Parisian; there were rows of fat, placid, jewel-laden Argentine +mothers, each with a watchful eye on her black-eyed, volcanically calm, +be-powdered daughter; and there were the buyers, miraculously dressy in +next week's styles in suits and hats--of the old-girl type most of them, +alert, self-confident, capable. + +They usually returned to their hotels at six, limping a little, +dog-tired; but at sight of the brightly lighted, gay hotel foyer they +would straighten up like war-horses scenting battle and achieve an +effective entrance from the doorway to the lift. + +In all that big, busy foyer Sophy Gold herself was the one person +distinctly out of the picture. One did not know where to place her. To +begin with, a woman as irrevocably, irredeemably ugly as Sophy was an +anachronism in Paris. She belonged to the gargoyle period. You found +yourself speculating on whether it was her mouth or her nose that made +her so devastatingly plain, only to bring up at her eyes and find that +they alone were enough to wreck any ambitions toward beauty. You knew +before you saw it that her hair would be limp and straggling. + +You sensed without a glance at them that her hands would be bony, with +unlovely knuckles. + +The Fates, grinning, had done all that. Her Chicago tailor and milliner +had completed the work. Sophy had not been in Paris ten minutes before +she noticed that they were wearing 'em long and full. Her coat was short +and her skirt scant. Her hat was small. The Paris windows were full of +large and graceful black velvets of the Lillian Russell school. + +"May I sit here?" + +Sophy looked up into the plump, pink, smiling face of one of those very +women of the buyer type on whom she had speculated ten minutes before--a +good-natured face with shrewd, twinkling eyes. At sight of it you +forgave her her skittish white-kid-topped shoes. + +"Certainly," smiled Sophy, and moved over a bit on the little French +settee. + +The plump woman sat down heavily. In five minutes Sophy was conscious +she was being stared at surreptitiously. In ten minutes she was +uncomfortably conscious of it. In eleven minutes she turned her head +suddenly and caught the stout woman's eyes fixed on her, with just the +baffled, speculative expression she had expected to find in them. Sophy +Gold had caught that look in many women's eyes. She smiled grimly now. + +"Don't try it," she said, "It's no use." + +The pink, plump face flushed pinker. + +"Don't try--" + +"Don't try to convince yourself that if I wore my hair differently, or +my collar tighter, or my hat larger, it would make a difference in my +looks. It wouldn't. It's hard to believe that I'm as homely as I look, +but I am. I've watched women try to dress me in as many as eleven mental +changes of costume before they gave me up." + +"But I didn't mean--I beg your pardon--you mustn't think--" + +"Oh, that's all right! I used to struggle, but I'm used to it now. It +took me a long time to realise that this was my real face and the only +kind I could ever expect to have." + +The plump woman's kindly face grew kinder. + +"But you're really not so--" + +"Oh, yes, I am. Upholstering can't change me. There are various kinds of +homely women--some who are hideous in blue maybe, but who soften up in +pink. Then there's the one you read about, whose features are lighted up +now and then by one of those rare, sweet smiles that make her plain face +almost beautiful. But once in a while you find a woman who is ugly in +any colour of the rainbow; who is ugly smiling or serious, talking or in +repose, hair down low or hair done high--just plain dyed-in-the-wool, +sewed-in-the-seam homely. I'm that kind. Here for a visit?" + +"I'm a buyer," said the plump woman. + +"Yes; I thought so. I'm the lingerie and infants'-wear buyer for Schiff, +Chicago." + +"A buyer!" The plump woman's eyes jumped uncontrollably again to Sophy +Gold's scrambled features. "Well! My name's Miss Morrissey--Ella +Morrissey. Millinery for Abelman's, Pittsburgh. And it's no snap this +year, with the shops showing postage-stamp hats one day and cart-wheels +the next. I said this morning that I envied the head of the tinware +department. Been over often?" + +Sophy made the shamefaced confession of the novice: "My first trip." + +The inevitable answer came: + +"Your first! Really! This is my twentieth crossing. Been coming over +twice a year for ten years. If there's anything I can tell you, just +ask. The first buying trip to Paris is hard until you know the ropes. Of +course you love this town?" + +Sophy Gold sat silent a moment, hesitating. Then she turned a puzzled +face toward Miss Morrissey. + +"What do people mean when they say they love Paris?" + +Ella Morrissey stared. Then a queer look came into her face--a pitying +sort of look. The shrewd eyes softened. She groped for words. + +"When I first came over here, ten years ago, I--well, it would have been +easier to tell you then. I don't know--there's something about +Paris--something in the atmosphere--something in the air. It--it makes +you do foolish things. It makes you feel queer and light and happy. It's +nothing you can put your finger on and say 'That's it!' But it's there." + +"Huh!" grunted Sophy Gold. "I suppose I could save myself a lot of +trouble by saying that I feel it; but I don't. I simply don't react to +this town. The only things I really like in Paris are the Tomb of +Napoleon, the Seine at night, and the strawberry tart you get at Vian's. +Of course the parks and boulevards are a marvel, but you can't expect me +to love a town for that. I'm no landscape gardener." + +That pitying look deepened in Miss Morrissey's eyes. + +"Have you been out in the evening? The restaurants! The French women! +The life!" + +Sophy Gold caught the pitying look and interpreted it without +resentment; but there was perhaps an added acid in her tone when she +spoke. + +"I'm here to buy--not to play. I'm thirty years old, and it's taken me +ten years to work my way up to foreign buyer. I've worked. And I wasn't +handicapped any by my beauty. I've made up my mind that I'm going to buy +the smoothest-moving line of French lingerie and infants' wear that +Schiff Brothers ever had." + +Miss Morrissey checked her. + +"But, my dear girl, haven't you been round at all?" + +"Oh, a little; as much as a woman can go round alone in Paris--even a +homely woman. But I've been disappointed every time. The noise drives me +wild, to begin with. Not that I'm not used to noise. I am. I can stand +for a town that roars, like Chicago. But this city yelps. I've been +going round to the restaurants a little. At noon I always picked the +restaurant I wanted, so long as I had to pay for the lunch of the +_commissionnaire_ who was with me anyway. Can you imagine any man at +home letting a woman pay for his meals the way those shrimpy Frenchmen +do? + +"Well, the restaurants were always jammed full of Americans. The men of +the party would look over the French menu in a helpless sort of way, and +then they'd say: 'What do you say to a nice big steak with French-fried +potatoes?' The waiter would give them a disgusted look and put in the +order. They might just as well have been eating at a quick lunch place. +As for the French women, every time I picked what I took to be a real +Parisienne coming toward me I'd hear her say as she passed: 'Henry, I'm +going over to the Galerie Lafayette. I'll meet you at the American +Express at twelve. And, Henry, I think I'll need some more money.'" + +Miss Ella Morrissey's twinkling eyes almost disappeared in wrinkles of +laughter; but Sophy Gold was not laughing. As she talked she gazed +grimly ahead at the throng that shifted and glittered and laughed and +chattered all about her. + +"I stopped work early one afternoon and went over across the river. +Well! They may be artistic, but they all looked as though they needed a +shave and a hair-cut and a square meal. And the girls!" + +Ella Morrissey raised a plump, protesting palm. + +"Now look here, child, Paris isn't so much a city as a state of mind. To +enjoy it you've got to forget you're an American. Don't look at it from +a Chicago, Illinois, viewpoint. Just try to imagine you're a mixture of +Montmartre girl, Latin Quarter model and duchess from the Champs +Élysées. Then you'll get it." + +"Get it!" retorted Sophy Gold. "If I could do that I wouldn't be buying +lingerie and infants' wear for Schiffs'. I'd be crowding Duse and +Bernhardt and Mrs. Fiske off the boards." + +Miss Morrissey sat silent and thoughtful, rubbing one fat forefinger +slowly up and down her knee. Suddenly she turned. + +"Don't be angry--but have you ever been in love?" + +"Look at me!" replied Sophy Gold simply. Miss Morrissey reddened a +little. "As head of the lingerie section I've selected trousseaus for I +don't know how many Chicago brides; but I'll never have to decide +whether I'll have pink or blue ribbons for my own." + +With a little impulsive gesture Ella Morrissey laid one hand on the +shoulder of her new acquaintance. + +"Come on up and visit me, will you? I made them give me an inside room, +away from the noise. Too many people down here. Besides, I'd like to +take off this armour-plate of mine and get comfortable. When a girl gets +as old and fat as I am--" + +"There are some letters I ought to get out," Sophy Gold protested +feebly. + +"Yes; I know. We all have; but there's such a thing as overdoing this +duty to the firm. You get up at six to-morrow morning and slap off +those letters. They'll come easier and sound less tired." + +They made for the lift; but at its very gates: + +"Hello, little girl!" cried a masculine voice; and a detaining hand was +laid on Ella Morrissey's plump shoulder. + +That lady recognised the voice and the greeting before she turned to +face their source. Max Tack, junior partner in the firm of Tack +Brothers, Lingerie and Infants' Wear, New York, held out an eager hand. + +"Hello, Max!" said Miss Morrissey not too cordially. "My, aren't you +dressy!" + +He was undeniably dressy--not that only, but radiant with the +self-confidence born of good looks, of well-fitting evening clothes, of +a fresh shave, of glistening nails. Max Tack, of the hard eye and the +soft smile, of the slim figure and the semi-bald head, of the flattering +tongue and the business brain, bent his attention full on the very plain +Miss Sophy Gold. + +"Aren't you going to introduce me?" he demanded. + +Miss Morrissey introduced them, buyer fashion--names, business +connection, and firms. + +"I knew you were Miss Gold," began Max Tack, the honey-tongued. "Some +one pointed you out to me yesterday. I've been trying to meet you ever +since." + +"I hope you haven't neglected your business," said Miss Gold without +enthusiasm. + +Max Tack leaned closer, his tone lowered. + +"I'd neglect it any day for you. Listen, little one: aren't you going +to take dinner with me some evening?" + +Max Tack always called a woman "Little one." It was part of his business +formula. He was only one of the wholesalers who go to Paris yearly +ostensibly to buy models, but really to pay heavy diplomatic court to +those hundreds of women buyers who flock to that city in the interests +of their firms. To entertain those buyers who were interested in goods +such as he manufactured in America; to win their friendship; to make +them feel under obligation at least to inspect his line when they came +to New York--that was Max Tack's mission in Paris. He performed it +admirably. + +"What evening?" he said now. "How about to-morrow?" Sophy Gold shook her +head. "Wednesday then? You stick to me and you'll see Paris. Thursday?" + +"I'm buying my own dinners," said Sophy Gold. + +Max Tack wagged a chiding forefinger at her. + +"You little rascal!" No one had ever called Sophy Gold a little rascal +before. "You stingy little rascal! Won't give a poor lonesome fellow an +evening's pleasure, eh! The theatre? Want to go slumming?" + +He was feeling his way now, a trifle puzzled. Usually he landed a buyer +at the first shot. Of course you had to use tact and discrimination. +Some you took to supper and to the naughty _revues_. + +Occasionally you found a highbrow one who preferred the opera. Had he +not sat through Parsifal the week before? And nearly died! Some wanted +to begin at Tod Sloan's bar and work their way up through Montmartre, +ending with breakfast at the Pré Catalan. Those were the greedy ones. +But this one! + +"What's she stalling for--with that face?" he asked himself. + +Sophy Gold was moving toward the lift, the twinkling-eyed Miss Morrissey +with her. + +"I'm working too hard to play. Thanks, just the same. Good-night." + +Max Tack, his face blank, stood staring up at them as the lift began to +ascend. + +"_Trazyem_," said Miss Morrissey grandly to the lift man. + +"Third," replied that linguistic person, unimpressed. + +It turned out to be soothingly quiet and cool in Ella Morrissey's room. +She flicked on the light and turned an admiring glance on Sophy Gold. + +"Is that your usual method?" + +"I haven't any method," Miss Gold seated herself by the window. "But +I've worked too hard for this job of mine to risk it by putting myself +under obligations to any New York firm. It simply means that you've got +to buy their goods. It isn't fair to your firm." + +Miss Morrissey was busy with hooks and eyes and strings. Her utterance +was jerky but concise. At one stage of her disrobing she breathed a +great sigh of relief as she flung a heavy garment from her. + +"There! That's comfort! Nights like this I wish I had that back porch of +our flat to sit on for just an hour. Ma has flower boxes all round it, +and I bought one of those hammock couches last year. When I come home +from the store summer evenings I peel and get into my old blue-and-white +kimono and lie there, listening to the girl stirring the iced tea for +supper, and knowing that Ma has a platter of her swell cold fish with +egg sauce!" She relaxed into an armchair. "Tell me, do you always talk +to men that way?" + +Sophy Gold was still staring out the open window. + +"They don't bother me much, as a rule." + +"Max Tack isn't a bad boy. He never wastes much time on me. I don't buy +his line. Max is all business. Of course he's something of a smarty, and +he does think he's the first verse and chorus of Paris-by-night; but you +can't help liking him." + +"Well, I can," said Sophy Gold, and her voice was a little bitter, "and +without half trying." + +"Oh, I don't say you weren't right. I've always made it a rule to steer +clear of the ax-grinders myself. There are plenty of girls who take +everything they can get. I know that Max Tack is just padded with +letters from old girls, beginning 'Dear Kid,' and ending, 'Yours with a +world of love!' I don't believe in that kind of thing, or in accepting +things. Julia Harris, who buys for three departments in our store, +drives up every morning in the French car that Parmentier's gave her +when she was here last year. That's bad principle and poor taste. +But--Well, you're young; and there ought to be something besides +business in your life." + +Sophy Gold turned her face from the window toward Miss Morrissey. It +served to put a stamp of finality on what she said: + +"There never will be. I don't know anything but business. It's the only +thing I care about. I'll be earning my ten thousand a year pretty soon." + +"Ten thousand a year is a lot; but it isn't everything. Oh, no, it +isn't. Look here, dear; nobody knows better than I how this working and +being independent and earning your own good money puts the stopper on +any sentiment a girl might have in her; but don't let it sour you. You +lose your illusions soon enough, goodness knows! There's no use in +smashing 'em out of pure meanness." + +"I don't see what illusions have got to do with Max Tack," interrupted +Sophy Gold. + +Miss Morrissey laughed her fat, comfortable chuckle. + +"I suppose you're right, and I guess I've been getting a lee-tle bit +nosey; but I'm pretty nearly old enough to be your mother. The girls +kind of come to me and I talk to 'em. I guess they've spoiled me. +They--" + +There came a smart rapping at the door, followed by certain giggling and +swishing. Miss Morrissey smiled. + +"That'll be some of 'em now. Just run and open the door, will you, like +a nice little thing? I'm too beat out to move." + +The swishing swelled to a mighty rustle as the door opened. Taffeta was +good this year, and the three who entered were the last in the world to +leave you in ignorance of that fact. Ella Morrissey presented her new +friend to the three, giving the department each represented as one would +mention a title or order. + +"The little plump one in black?--Ladies' and Misses' Ready-to-wear, +Gates Company, Portland.... That's a pretty hat, Carrie. Get it to-day? +Give me a big black velvet every time. You can wear 'em with anything, +and yet they're dressy too. Just now small hats are distinctly passy. + +"The handsome one who's dressed the way you always imagined the +Parisiennes would dress, but don't?--Fancy Goods, Stein & Stack, San +Francisco. Listen, Fan: don't go back to San Francisco with that stuff +on your lips. It's all right in Paris, where all the women do it; but +you know as well as I do that Morry Stein would take one look at you and +then tell you to go upstairs and wash your face. Well, I'm just telling +you as a friend. + +"That little trick is the biggest lace buyer in the country.... No, you +wouldn't, would you? Such a mite! Even if she does wear a twenty-eight +blouse she's got a forty-two brain--haven't you, Belle? You didn't make +a mistake with that blue crêpe de chine, child. It's chic and yet it's +girlish. And you can wear it on the floor, too, when you get home. It's +quiet if it is stunning." + +These five, as they sat there that June evening, knew what your wife and +your sister and your mother would wear on Fifth Avenue or Michigan +Avenue next October. On their shrewd, unerring judgment rested the +success or failure of many hundreds of feminine garments. The lace for +Miss Minnesota's lingerie; the jewelled comb in Miss Colorado's hair; +the hat that would grace Miss New Hampshire; the dress for Madam +Delaware--all were the results of their farsighted selection. They were +foragers of feminine fal-lals, and their booty would be distributed from +oyster cove to orange grove. + +They were marcelled and manicured within an inch of their lives. They +rustled and a pleasant perfume clung about them. Their hats were so +smart that they gave you a shock. Their shoes were correct. Their skirts +bunched where skirts should bunch that year or lay smooth where +smoothness was decreed. They looked like the essence of frivolity--until +you saw their eyes; and then you noticed that that which is liquid in +sheltered women's eyes was crystallised in theirs. + +Sophy Gold, listening to them, felt strangely out of it and plainer than +ever. + +"I'm taking tango lessons, Ella," chirped Miss Laces. "Every time I went +to New York last year I sat and twiddled my thumbs while every one else +was dancing. I've made up my mind I'll be in it this year." + +"You girls are wonders!" Miss Morrissey marvelled. "I can't do it any +more. If I was to work as hard as I have to during the day and then run +round the way you do in the evening they'd have to hold services for me +at sea. I'm getting old." + +"You--old!" This from Miss Ready-to-Wear. "You're younger now than I'll +ever be. Oh, Ella, I got six stunning models at Estelle Mornet's. +There's a business woman for you! Her place is smart from the ground +floor up--not like the shabby old junk shops the others have. And she +greets you herself. The personal touch! Let me tell you, it counts in +business!" + +"I'd go slow on those cape blouses if I were you; I don't think they're +going to take at home. They look like regular Third Avenue style to me." + +"Don't worry. I've hardly touched them." + +They talked very directly, like men, when they discussed clothes; for to +them a clothes talk meant a business talk. + +The telephone buzzed. The three sprang up, rustling. + +"That'll be for us, Ella," said Miss Fancy Goods. "We told the office to +call us here. The boys are probably downstairs." She answered the call, +turned, nodded, smoothed her gloves and preened her laces. + +Ella Morrissey, in kimonoed comfort, waved a good-bye from her armchair. +"Have a good time! You all look lovely. Oh, we met Max Tack downstairs, +looking like a grand duke!" + +Pert Miss Laces turned at the door, giggling. + +"He says the French aristocracy has nothing on him, because his +grandfather was one of the original Ten Ikes of New York." + +A final crescendo of laughter, a last swishing of silks, a breath of +perfume from the doorway and they were gone. + +Within the room the two women sat looking at the closed door for a +moment. Then Ella Morrissey turned to look at Sophy Gold just as Sophy +Gold turned to look at Ella Morrissey. + +"Well?" smiled Ella. + +Sophy Gold smiled too--a mirthless, one-sided smile. + +"I felt just like this once when I was a little girl. I went to a party, +and all the other little girls had yellow curls. Maybe some of them had +brown ones; but I only remember a maze of golden hair, and pink and blue +sashes, and rosy cheeks, and ardent little boys, and the sureness of +those little girls--their absolute faith in their power to enthrall, and +in the perfection of their curls and sashes. I went home before the ice +cream. And I love ice cream!" + +Ella Morrissey's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. + +"Then the next time you're invited to a party you wait for the ice +cream, girlie." + +"Maybe I will," said Sophy Gold. + +The party came two nights later. It was such a very modest affair that +one would hardly call it that--least of all Max Tack, who had spent +seventy-five dollars the night before in entertaining an important +prospective buyer. + +On her way to her room that sultry June night Sophy had encountered the +persistent Tack. Ella Morrissey, up in her room, was fathoms deep in +work. It was barely eight o'clock and there was a wonderful opal sky--a +June twilight sky, of which Paris makes a specialty--all grey and rose +and mauve and faint orange. + +"Somebody's looking mighty sweet to-night in her new Paris duds!" + +Max Tack's method of approach never varied in its simplicity. + +"They're not Paris--they're Chicago." + +His soul was in his eyes. + +"They certainly don't look it!" Then, with a little hurt look in those +same expressive features: "I suppose, after the way you threw me down +hard the other night, you wouldn't come out and play somewhere, would +you--if I sat up and begged and jumped through this?" + +"It's too warm for most things," Sophy faltered. + +"Anywhere your little heart dictates," interrupted Max Tack ardently. +"Just name it." + +Sophy looked up. + +"Well, then, I'd like to take one of those boats and go down the river +to St.-Cloud. The station's just back of the Louvre. We've just time to +catch the eight-fifteen boat." + +"Boat!" echoed Max Tack stupidly. Then, in revolt: "Why, say, girlie, +you don't want to do that! What is there in taking an old tub and +flopping down that dinky stream? Tell you what we'll do: we'll--" + +"No, thanks," said Sophy. "And it really doesn't matter. You simply +asked me what I'd like to do and I told you. Thanks. Good-night." + +"Now, now!" pleaded Max Tack in a panic. "Of course we'll go. I just +thought you'd rather do something fussier--that's all. I've never gone +down the river; but I think that's a classy little idea--yes, I do. Now +you run and get your hat and we'll jump into a taxi and--" + +"You don't need to jump into a taxi; it's only two blocks. We'll walk." + +There was a little crowd down at the landing station. Max Tack noticed, +with immense relief, that they were not half-bad-looking people either. +He had been rather afraid of workmen in red sashes and with lime on +their clothes, especially after Sophy had told him that a trip cost +twenty centimes each. + +"Twenty centimes! That's about four cents! Well, my gad!" + +They got seats in the prow. Sophy took off her hat and turned her face +gratefully to the cool breeze as they swung out into the river. The +Paris of the rumbling, roaring auto buses, and the honking horns, and +the shrill cries, and the mad confusion faded away. There was the +palely glowing sky ahead, and on each side the black reflection of the +tree-laden banks, mistily mysterious now and very lovely. There was not +a ripple on the water and the Pont Alexandre III and the golden glory of +the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides were ahead. + +"Say, this is Venice!" exclaimed Max Tack. + +A soft and magic light covered the shore, the river, the sky, and a soft +and magic something seemed to steal over the little boat and work its +wonders. The shabby student-looking chap and his equally shabby and +merry little companion, both Americans, closed the bag of fruit from +which they had been munching and sat looking into each other's eyes. + +The long-haired artist, who looked miraculously like pictures of Robert +Louis Stevenson, smiled down at his queer, slender-legged little +daughter in the curious Cubist frock; and she smiled back and snuggled +up and rested her cheek on his arm. There seemed to be a deep and silent +understanding between them. You knew, somehow, that the little Cubist +daughter had no mother, and that the father's artist friends made much +of her and that she poured tea for them prettily on special days. + +The bepowdered French girl who got on at the second station sat frankly +and contentedly in the embrace of her sweetheart. The stolid married +couple across the way smiled and the man's arm rested on his wife's +plump shoulder. + +So the love boat glided down the river into the night. And the shore +faded and became grey, and then black. And the lights came out and cast +slender pillars of gold and green and scarlet on the water. + +Max Tack's hand moved restlessly, sought Sophy's, found it, clasped it. +Sophy's hand had never been clasped like that before. She did not know +what to do with it, so she did nothing--which was just what she should +have done. + +"Warm enough?" asked Max Tack tenderly. + +"Just right," murmured Sophy. + +The dream trip ended at St.-Cloud. They learned to their dismay that the +boat did not return to Paris. But how to get back? They asked questions, +sought direction--always a frantic struggle in Paris. Sophy, in the +glare of the street light, looked uglier than ever. + +"Just a minute," said Max Tack. "I'll find a taxi." + +"Nonsense! That man said the street car passed right here, and that we +should get off at the Bois. Here it is now! Come on!" + +Max Tack looked about helplessly, shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. + +"You certainly make a fellow hump," he said, not without a note of +admiration. "And why are you so afraid that I'll spend some money?" as +he handed the conductor the tiny fare. + +"I don't know--unless it's because I've had to work so hard all my life +for mine." + +At Porte Maillot they took one of the flock of waiting _fiacres_. + +"But you don't want to go home yet!" protested Max Tack. + +"I--I think I should like to drive in the Bois Park--if you don't +mind--that is--" + +"Mind!" cried the gallant and game Max Tack. + +Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might +drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven +with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her +tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and +because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy's extreme plainness, +he took her unaccustomed hand again in his. + +"This little hand was never meant for work," he murmured. + +Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a +mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that +particular _fiacre_ wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to +the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near +by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they +saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris +moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the +lips. + +Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would +have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as +well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy's mother, +and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother had been +kissed before her. So they told her to say: + +"You shouldn't have done that." + +And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries: + +"I know it; but I couldn't help it. Don't be angry!" + +"You know," said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, "I'm very, very +ugly--when it isn't moonlight." + +"Paris," spake Max Tack, diplomat, "is so full of medium-lookers who +think they're pretty, and of pretty ones who think they're beauties, +that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn't any +fake notions to feed. They're all right; but give me a woman with brains +every time." Which was a lie! + +They drove home down the Bois--the cool, spacious, tree-bordered +Bois--and through the Champs Élysées. Because he was an artist in his +way, and because every passing _fiacre_ revealed the same picture, Max +Tack sat very near her and looked very tender and held her hand in his. +It would have raised a laugh at Broadway and Forty-second. It was quite, +quite sane and very comforting in Paris. + +At the door of the hotel: + +"I'm sailing Wednesday," said Max Tack. "You--you won't forget me?" + +"Oh, no--no!" + +"You'll call me up or run into the office when you get to New York?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +He walked with her to the lift, said good-bye and returned to the +_fiacre_ with the tinkling bell. There was a stunned sort of look in his +face. The _fiacre_ meter registered two francs seventy. Max Tack did a +lightning mental calculation. The expression on his face deepened. He +looked up at the cabby--the red-faced, bottle-nosed cabby, with his +absurd scarlet vest, his mustard-coloured trousers and his glazed top +hat. + +"Well, can you beat that? Three francs thirty for the evening's +entertainment! Why--why, all she wanted was just a little love!" + +To the bottle-nosed one all conversation in a foreign language meant +dissatisfaction with the meter. He tapped that glass-covered contrivance +impatiently with his whip. A flood of French bubbled at his lips. + +"It's all right, boy! It's all right! You don't get me!" And Max Tacked +pressed a five-franc piece into the outstretched palm. Then to the hotel +porter: "Just grab a taxi for me, will you? These tubs make me nervous." + +Sophy, on her way to her room, hesitated, turned, then ran up the stairs +to the next floor and knocked gently at Miss Morrissey's door. A moment +later that lady's kimonoed figure loomed large in the doorway. + +"Who is--oh, it's you! Well, I was just going to have them drag the +Seine for you. Come in!" + +She went back to the table. Sheets of paper, rough sketches of hat +models done from memory, notes and letters lay scattered all about. +Sophy leaned against the door dreamily. + +"I've been working this whole mortal evening," went on Ella Morrissey, +holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her +working spectacles, "and I'm so tired that one eye's shut and the +other's running on first. Where've you been, child?" + +"Oh, driving!" Sophy's limp hair was a shade limper than usual, and a +strand of it had become loosened and straggled untidily down over her +ear. Her eyes looked large and strangely luminous. "Do you know, I love +Paris!" + +Ella Morrissey laid down her pencil sketch and turned slowly. She +surveyed Sophy Gold, her shrewd eyes twinkling. + +"That so? What made you change your mind?" + +The dreamy look in Sophy's eyes deepened. + +"Why--I don't know. There's something in the atmosphere--something in +the air. It makes you do and say foolish things. It makes you feel queer +and light and happy." + +Ella Morrissey's bright twinkle softened to a glow. She stared for +another brief moment. Then she trundled over to where Sophy stood and +patted her leathery cheek. "Welcome to our city!" said Miss Ella +Morrissey. + + + + +XI + + +THE THREE OF THEM + +For eleven years Martha Foote, head housekeeper at the Senate Hotel, +Chicago, had catered, unseen, and ministered, unknown, to that great, +careless, shifting, conglomerate mass known as the Travelling Public. +Wholesale hostessing was Martha Foote's job. Senators and suffragists, +ambassadors and first families had found ease and comfort under Martha +Foote's régime. Her carpets had bent their nap to the tread of kings, +and show girls, and buyers from Montana. Her sheets had soothed the +tired limbs of presidents, and princesses, and prima donnas. For the +Senate Hotel is more than a hostelry; it is a Chicago institution. The +whole world is churned in at its revolving front door. + +For eleven years Martha Foote, then, had beheld humanity throwing its +grimy suitcases on her immaculate white bedspreads; wiping its muddy +boots on her bath towels; scratching its matches on her wall paper; +scrawling its pencil marks on her cream woodwork; spilling its greasy +crumbs on her carpet; carrying away her dresser scarfs and pincushions. +There is no supremer test of character. Eleven years of hotel +housekeepership guarantees a knowledge of human nature that includes +some things no living being ought to know about her fellow men. And +inevitably one of two results must follow. You degenerate into a bitter, +waspish, and fault-finding shrew; or you develop into a patient, +tolerant, and infinitely understanding woman. Martha Foote dealt daily +with Polack scrub girls, and Irish porters, and Swedish chambermaids, +and Swiss waiters, and Halsted Street bell-boys. Italian tenors fried +onions in her Louis-Quinze suite. College boys burned cigarette holes in +her best linen sheets. Yet any one connected with the Senate Hotel, from +Pete the pastry cook to H.G. Featherstone, lessee-director, could vouch +for Martha Foote's serene unacidulation. + + * * * * * + +Don't gather from this that Martha Foote was a beaming, motherly person +who called you dearie. Neither was she one of those managerial and +magnificent blonde beings occasionally encountered in hotel corridors, +engaged in addressing strident remarks to a damp and crawling huddle of +calico that is doing something sloppy to the woodwork. Perhaps the +shortest cut to Martha Foote's character is through Martha Foote's +bedroom. (Twelfth floor. Turn to your left. That's it; 1246. Come in!) + +In the long years of its growth and success the Senate Hotel had known +the usual growing pains. Starting with walnut and red plush it had, in +its adolescence, broken out all over into brass beds and birds'-eye +maple. This, in turn, had vanished before mahogany veneer and brocade. +Hardly had the white scratches on these ruddy surfaces been doctored by +the house painter when--whisk! Away with that sombre stuff! And in +minced a whole troupe of near-French furnishings; cream enamel beds, +cane-backed; spindle-legged dressing tables before which it was +impossible to dress; perilous chairs with raspberry complexions. Through +all these changes Martha Foote, in her big, bright twelfth floor room, +had clung to her old black walnut set. + +The bed, to begin with, was a massive, towering edifice with a headboard +that scraped the lofty ceiling. Head and foot-board were fretted and +carved with great blobs representing grapes, and cornucopias, and +tendrils, and knobs and other bedevilments of the cabinet-maker's craft. +It had been polished and rubbed until now it shone like soft brown +satin. There was a monumental dresser too, with a liver-coloured marble +top. Along the wall, near the windows, was a couch; a heavy, wheezing, +fat-armed couch decked out in white ruffled cushions. I suppose the mere +statement that, in Chicago, Illinois, Martha Foote kept these cushions +always crisply white, would make any further characterization +superfluous. The couch made you think of a plump grandmother of bygone +days, a beruffled white fichu across her ample, comfortable bosom. Then +there was the writing desk; a substantial structure that bore no +relation to the pindling rose-and-cream affairs that graced the guest +rooms. It was the solid sort of desk at which an English novelist of the +three-volume school might have written a whole row of books without +losing his dignity or cramping his style. Martha Foote used it for +making out reports and instruction sheets, for keeping accounts, and for +her small private correspondence. + +Such was Martha Foote's room. In a modern and successful hotel, whose +foyer was rose-shaded, brass-grilled, peacock-alleyed and tessellated, +that bed-sitting-room of hers was as wholesome, and satisfying, and real +as a piece of home-made rye bread on a tray of French pastry; and as +incongruous. + +It was to the orderly comfort of these accustomed surroundings that the +housekeeper of the Senate Hotel opened her eyes this Tuesday morning. +Opened them, and lay a moment, bridging the morphean chasm that lay +between last night and this morning. It was 6:30 A.M. It is bad enough +to open one's eyes at 6:30 on Monday morning. But to open them at 6:30 +on Tuesday morning, after an indigo Monday.... The taste of yesterday +lingered, brackish, in Martha's mouth. + +"Oh, well, it won't be as bad as yesterday, anyway. It can't." So she +assured herself, as she lay there. "There never were _two_ days like +that, hand running. Not even in the hotel business." + +For yesterday had been what is known as a muddy Monday. Thick, murky, +and oozy with trouble. Two conventions, three banquets, the lobby so +full of khaki that it looked like a sand-storm, a threatened strike in +the laundry, a travelling man in two-twelve who had the grippe and +thought he was dying, a shortage of towels (that bugaboo of the hotel +housekeeper) due to the laundry trouble that had kept the linen-room +telephone jangling to the tune of a hundred damp and irate guests. And +weaving in and out, and above, and about and through it all, like a +neuralgic toothache that can't be located, persisted the constant, +nagging, maddening complaints of the Chronic Kicker in six-eighteen. + +Six-eighteen was a woman. She had arrived Monday morning, early. By +Monday night every girl on the switchboard had the nervous jumps when +they plugged in at her signal. She had changed her rooms, and back +again. She had quarrelled with the room clerk. She had complained to the +office about the service, the food, the linen, the lights, the noise, +the chambermaid, all the bell-boys, and the colour of the furnishings in +her suite. She said she couldn't live with that colour. It made her +sick. Between 8:30 and 10:30 that night, there had come a lull. +Six-eighteen was doing her turn at the Majestic. + +Martha Foote knew that. She knew, too, that her name was Geisha McCoy, +and she knew what that name meant, just as you do. She had even laughed +and quickened and responded to Geisha McCoy's manipulation of her +audience, just as you have. Martha Foote knew the value of the personal +note, and it had been her idea that had resulted in the rule which +obliged elevator boys, chambermaids, floor clerks, doormen and waiters +if possible, to learn the names of Senate Hotel guests, no matter how +brief their stay. + +"They like it," she had said, to Manager Brant. "You know that better +than I do. They'll be flattered, and surprised, and tickled to death, +and they'll go back to Burlington, Iowa, and tell how well known they +are at the Senate." + +When the suggestion was met with the argument that no human being could +be expected to perform such daily feats of memory Martha Foote battered +it down with: + +"That's just where you're mistaken. The first few days are bad. After +that it's easier every day, until it becomes mechanical. I remember when +I first started waiting on table in my mother's quick lunch eating house +in Sorghum, Minnesota. I'd bring 'em wheat cakes when they'd ordered +pork and beans, but it wasn't two weeks before I could take six orders, +from soup to pie, without so much as forgetting the catsup. Habit, +that's all." + +So she, as well as the minor hotel employés, knew six-eighteen as Geisha +McCoy. Geisha McCoy, who got a thousand a week for singing a few songs +and chatting informally with the delighted hundreds on the other side of +the footlights. Geisha McCoy made nothing of those same footlights. She +reached out, so to speak, and shook hands with you across their amber +glare. Neither lovely nor alluring, this woman. And as for her +voice!--And yet for ten years or more this rather plain person, somewhat +dumpy, no longer young, had been singing her every-day, human songs +about every-day, human people. And invariably (and figuratively) her +audience clambered up over the footlights, and sat in her lap. She had +never resorted to cheap music-hall tricks. She had never invited the +gallery to join in the chorus. She descended to no finger-snapping. But +when she sang a song about a waitress she was a waitress. She never +hesitated to twist up her hair, and pull down her mouth, to get an +effect. She didn't seem to be thinking about herself, at all, or about +her clothes, or her method, or her effort, or anything but the audience +that was plastic to her deft and magic manipulation. + +Until very recently. Six months had wrought a subtle change in Geisha +McCoy. She still sang her every-day, human songs about every-day, human +people. But you failed, somehow, to recognise them as such. They sounded +sawdust-stuffed. And you were likely to hear the man behind you say, +"Yeh, but you ought to have heard her five years ago. She's about +through." + +Such was six-eighteen. Martha Foote, luxuriating in that one delicious +moment between her 6:30 awakening, and her 6:31 arising, mused on these +things. She thought of how, at eleven o'clock the night before, her +telephone had rung with the sharp zing! of trouble. The voice of Irish +Nellie, on night duty on the sixth floor, had sounded thick-brogued, +sure sign of distress with her. + +"I'm sorry to be a-botherin' ye, Mis' Phut. It's Nellie speakin'--Irish +Nellie on the sixt'." + +"What's the trouble, Nellie?" + +"It's that six-eighteen again. She's goin' on like mad. She's carryin' +on something fierce." + +"What about?" + +"Th'--th' blankets, Mis' Phut." + +"Blankets?--" + +"She says--it's her wurruds, not mine--she says they're vile. Vile, she +says." + +Martha Foote's spine had stiffened. "In this house! Vile!" + +If there was one thing more than another upon which Martha Foote prided +herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy, +they were her especial fad. "Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold +snake-work are all well and good," she was wont to say, "and so are +American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys. +But it's the blankets on the beds that stamp a hotel first or second +class." And now this, from Nellie. + +"I know how ye feel, an' all. I sez to 'er, I sez: 'There never was a +blanket in this _house_,' I sez, 'that didn't look as if it cud be +sarved up wit' whipped cr-ream,' I sez, 'an' et,' I sez to her; 'an' +fu'thermore,' I sez--" + +"Never mind, Nellie. I know. But we never argue with guests. You know +that rule as well as I. The guest is right--always. I'll send up the +linen-room keys. You get fresh blankets; new ones. And no arguments. But +I want to see those--those vile--" + +"Listen, Mis' Phut." Irish Nellie's voice, until now shrill with +righteous anger, dropped a discreet octave. "I seen 'em. An' they _are_ +vile. Wait a minnit! But why? Becus that there maid of hers--that yella' +hussy--give her a body massage, wit' cold cream an' all, usin' th' +blankets f'r coverin', an' smearin' 'em right _an'_ lift. This was +afther they come back from th' theayter. Th' crust of thim people, using +the iligent blankets off'n the beds t'--" + +"Good night, Nellie. And thank you." + +"Sure, ye know I'm that upset f'r distarbin' yuh, an' all, but--" + +Martha Foote cast an eye toward the great walnut bed. "That's all right. +Only, Nellie--" + +"Yesm'm." + +"If I'm disturbed again on that woman's account for anything less than +murder--" + +"Yesm'm?" + +"Well, there'll _be_ one, that's all. Good night." + +Such had been Monday's cheerful close. + +Martha Foote sat up in bed, now, preparatory to the heroic flinging +aside of the covers. "No," she assured herself, "it can't be as bad as +yesterday." She reached round and about her pillow, groping for the +recalcitrant hairpin that always slipped out during the night; found it, +and twisted her hair into a hard bathtub bun. + +With a jangle that tore through her half-wakened senses the telephone at +her bedside shrilled into life. Martha Foote, hairpin in mouth, turned +and eyed it, speculatively, fearfully. It shrilled on in her very face, +and there seemed something taunting and vindictive about it. One long +ring, followed by a short one; a long ring, a short. "Ca-a-an't it? +Ca-a-an't it?" + +"Something tells me I'm wrong," Martha Foote told herself, ruefully, and +reached for the blatant, snarling thing. + +"Yes?" + +"Mrs. Foote? This is Healy, the night clerk. Say, Mrs. Foote, I think +you'd better step down to six-eighteen and see what's--" + +"I _am_ wrong," said Martha Foote. + +"What's that?" + +"Nothing. Go on. Will I step down to six-eighteen and--?" + +"She's sick, or something. Hysterics, I'd say. As far as I could make +out it was something about a noise, or a sound or--Anyway, she can't +locate it, and her maid says if we don't stop it right away--" + +"I'll go down. Maybe it's the plumbing. Or the radiator. Did you ask?" + +"No, nothing like that. She kept talking about a wail." + +"A what!" + +"A wail. A kind of groaning, you know. And then dull raps on the wall, +behind the bed." + +"Now look here, Ed Healy; I get up at 6:30, but I can't see a joke +before ten. If you're trying to be funny!--" + +"Funny! Why, say, listen, Mrs. Foote. I may be a night clerk, but I'm +not so low as to get you out at half past six to spring a thing like +that in fun. I mean it. So did she." + +"But a kind of moaning! And then dull raps!" + +"Those are her words. A kind of m--" + +"Let's not make a chant of it. I think I get you. I'll be down there in +ten minutes. Telephone her, will you?" + +"Can't you make it five?" + +"Not without skipping something vital." + +Still, it couldn't have been a second over ten, including shoes, hair, +and hooks-and-eyes. And a fresh white blouse. It was Martha Foote's +theory that a hotel housekeeper, dressed for work, ought to be as +inconspicuous as a steel engraving. She would have been, too, if it +hadn't been for her eyes. + +She paused a moment before the door of six-eighteen and took a deep +breath. At the first brisk rat-tat of her knuckles on the door there had +sounded a shrill "Come in!" But before she could turn the knob the door +was flung open by a kimonoed mulatto girl, her eyes all whites. The girl +began to jabber, incoherently but Martha Foote passed on through the +little hall to the door of the bedroom. + +Six-eighteen was in bed. At sight of her Martha Foote knew that she had +to deal with an over-wrought woman. Her hair was pushed back wildly from +her forehead. Her arms were clasped about her knees. At the left her +nightgown had slipped down so that one plump white shoulder gleamed +against the background of her streaming hair. The room was in almost +comic disorder. It was a room in which a struggle has taken place +between its occupant and that burning-eyed hag, Sleeplessness. The hag, +it was plain, had won. A half-emptied glass of milk was on the table by +the bed. Warmed, and sipped slowly, it had evidently failed to soothe. A +tray of dishes littered another table. Yesterday's dishes, their +contents congealed. Books and magazines, their covers spread wide as if +they had been flung, sprawled where they lay. A little heap of +grey-black cigarette stubs. The window curtain awry where she had stood +there during a feverish moment of the sleepless night, looking down upon +the lights of Grant Park and the sombre black void beyond that was Lake +Michigan. A tiny satin bedroom slipper on a chair, its mate, sole up, +peeping out from under the bed. A pair of satin slippers alone, +distributed thus, would make a nun's cell look disreputable. Over all +this disorder the ceiling lights, the wall lights, and the light from +two rosy lamps, beat mercilessly down; and upon the white-faced woman in +the bed. + +She stared, hollow-eyed, at Martha Foote. Martha Foote, in the doorway, +gazed serenely back upon her. And Geisha McCoy's quick intelligence and +drama-sense responded to the picture of this calm and capable figure in +the midst of the feverish, over-lighted, over-heated room. In that +moment the nervous pucker between her eyes ironed out ever so little, +and something resembling a wan smile crept into her face. And what she +said was: + +"I wouldn't have believed it." + +"Believed what?" inquired Martha Foote, pleasantly. + +"That there was anybody left in the world who could look like that in a +white shirtwaist at 6:30 A.M. Is that all your own hair?" + +"Strictly." + +"Some people have all the luck," sighed Geisha McCoy, and dropped +listlessly back on her pillows. Martha Foote came forward into the room. +At that instant the woman in the bed sat up again, tense, every nerve +strained in an attitude of listening. The mulatto girl had come swiftly +to the foot of the bed and was clutching the footboard, her knuckles +showing white. + +"Listen!" A hissing whisper from the haggard woman in the bed. "What's +that?" + +"Wha' dat!" breathed the coloured girl, all her elegance gone, her +every look and motion a hundred-year throwback to her voodoo-haunted +ancestors. + +The three women remained rigid, listening. From the wall somewhere +behind the bed came a low, weird monotonous sound, half wail, half +croaking moan, like a banshee with a cold. A clanking, then, as of +chains. A s-s-swish. Then three dull raps, seemingly from within the +very wall itself. + +The coloured girl was trembling. Her lips were moving, soundlessly. But +Geisha McCoy's emotion was made of different stuff. + +"Now look here," she said, desperately, "I don't mind a sleepless night. +I'm used to 'em. But usually I can drop off at five, for a little while. +And that's been going on--well, I don't know how long. It's driving me +crazy. Blanche, you fool, stop that hand wringing! I tell you there's no +such thing as ghosts. Now you"--she turned to Martha Foote again--"you +tell me, for God's sake, what _is_ that!" + +And into Martha Foote's face there came such a look of mingled +compassion and mirth as to bring a quick flame of fury into Geisha +McCoy's eyes. + +"Look here, you may think it's funny but--" + +"I don't. I don't. Wait a minute." Martha Foote turned and was gone. An +instant later the weird sounds ceased. The two women in the room looked +toward the door, expectantly. And through it came Martha Foote, smiling. +She turned and beckoned to some one without. "Come on," she said. "Come +on." She put out a hand, encouragingly, and brought forward the +shrinking, cowering, timorous figure of Anna Czarnik, scrub-woman on the +sixth floor. Her hand still on her shoulder Martha Foote led her to the +centre of the room, where she stood, gazing dumbly about. She was the +scrub-woman you've seen in every hotel from San Francisco to Scituate. A +shapeless, moist, blue calico mass. Her shoes turned up ludicrously at +the toes, as do the shoes of one who crawls her way backward, crab-like, +on hands and knees. Her hands were the shrivelled, unlovely members that +bespeak long and daily immersion in dirty water. But even had these +invariable marks of her trade been lacking, you could not have failed to +recognise her type by the large and glittering mock-diamond comb which +failed to catch up her dank and stringy hair in the back. + +One kindly hand on the woman's arm, Martha Foote performed the +introduction. + +"This is Mrs. Anna Czarnik, late of Poland. Widowed. Likewise childless. +Also brotherless. Also many other uncomfortable things. But the life of +the crowd in the scrub-girls' quarters on the top floor. Aren't you, +Anna? Mrs. Anna Czarnik, I'm sorry to say, is the source of the +blood-curdling moan, and the swishing, and the clanking, and the +ghost-raps. There is a service stairway just on the other side of this +wall. Anna Czarnik was performing her morning job of scrubbing it. The +swishing was her wet rag. The clanking was her pail. The dull raps her +scrubbing brush striking the stair corner just behind your wall." + +"You're forgetting the wail," Geisha McCoy suggested, icily. + +"No, I'm not. The wail, I'm afraid, was Anna Czarnik, singing." + +"Singing?" + +Martha Foote turned and spoke a gibberish of Polish and English to the +bewildered woman at her side. Anna Czarnik's dull face lighted up ever +so little. + +"She says the thing she was singing is a Polish folk-song about death +and sorrow, and it's called a--what was that, Anna?" + +"Dumka." + +"It's called a dumka. It's a song of mourning, you see? Of grief. And of +bitterness against the invaders who have laid her country bare." + +"Well, what's the idea!" demanded Geisha McCoy. "What kind of a hotel is +this, anyway? Scrub-girls waking people up in the middle of the night +with a Polish cabaret. If she wants to sing her hymn of hate why does +she have to pick on me!" + +"I'm sorry. You can go, Anna. No sing, remember! Sh-sh-sh!" + +Anna Czarnik nodded and made her unwieldy escape. + +Geisha McCoy waved a hand at the mulatto maid. "Go to your room, +Blanche. I'll ring when I need you." The girl vanished, gratefully, +without a backward glance at the disorderly room. Martha Foote felt +herself dismissed, too. And yet she made no move to go. She stood there, +in the middle of the room, and every housekeeper inch of her yearned to +tidy the chaos all about her, and every sympathetic impulse urged her +to comfort the nerve-tortured woman before her. Something of this must +have shone in her face, for Geisha McCoy's tone was half-pettish, +half-apologetic as she spoke. + +"You've no business allowing things like that, you know. My nerves are +all shot to pieces anyway. But even if they weren't, who could stand +that kind of torture? A woman like that ought to lose her job for that. +One word from me at the office and she--" + +"Don't say it, then," interrupted Martha Foote, and came over to the +bed. Mechanically her fingers straightened the tumbled covers, removed a +jumble of magazines, flicked away the crumbs. "I'm sorry you were +disturbed. The scrubbing can't be helped, of course, but there is a +rule against unnecessary noise, and she shouldn't have been singing. +But--well, I suppose she's got to find relief, somehow. Would you +believe that woman is the cut-up of the top floor? She's a natural +comedian, and she does more for me in the way of keeping the other girls +happy and satisfied than--" + +"What about me? Where do I come in? Instead of sleeping until eleven +I'm kept awake by this Polish dirge. I go on at the Majestic at four, +and again at 9.45 and I'm sick, I tell you! Sick!" + +She looked it, too. Suddenly she twisted about and flung herself, face +downward, on the pillow. "Oh, God!" she cried, without any particular +expression. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" + +That decided Martha Foote. + +She crossed over to the other side of the bed, first flicking off the +glaring top lights, sat down beside the shaken woman on the pillows, and +laid a cool, light hand on her shoulder. + +"It isn't as bad as that. Or it won't be, anyway, after you've told me +about it." + +She waited. Geisha McCoy remained as she was, face down. But she did not +openly resent the hand on her shoulder. So Martha Foote waited. And as +suddenly as Six-eighteen had flung herself prone she twisted about and +sat up, breathing quickly. She passed a hand over her eyes and pushed +back her streaming hair with an oddly desperate little gesture. Her lips +were parted, her eyes wide. + +"They've got away from me," she cried, and Martha Foote knew what she +meant. "I can't hold 'em any more. I work as hard as ever--harder. +That's it. It seems the harder I work the colder they get. Last week, in +Indianapolis, they couldn't have been more indifferent if I'd been the +educational film that closes the show. And, oh my God! They sit and +knit." + +"Knit!" echoed Martha Foote. "But everybody's knitting nowadays." + +"Not when I'm on. They can't. But they do. There were three of them in +the third row yesterday afternoon. One of 'em was doing a grey sock with +four shiny needles. Four! I couldn't keep my eyes off of them. And the +second was doing a sweater, and the third a helmet. I could tell by +the shape. And you can't be funny, can you, when you're hypnotised by +three stony-faced females all doubled up over a bunch of olive-drab? +Olive-drab! I'm scared of it. It sticks out all over the house. Last +night there were two young kids in uniform right down in the first row, +centre, right. I'll bet the oldest wasn't twenty-three. There they sat, +looking up at me with their baby faces. That's all they are. Kids. The +house seems to be peppered with 'em. You wouldn't think olive-drab could +stick out the way it does. I can see it farther than red. I can see it +day and night. I can't seem to see anything else. I can't--" + +Her head came down on her arms, that rested on her tight-hugged knees. + +"Somebody of yours in it?" Martha Foote asked, quietly. She waited. Then +she made a wild guess--an intuitive guess. "Son?" + +"How did you know?" Geisha McCoy's head came up. + +"I didn't." + +"Well, you're right. There aren't fifty people in the world, outside my +own friends, who know I've got a grown-up son. It's bad business to have +them think you're middle-aged. And besides, there's nothing of the stage +about Fred. He's one of those square-jawed kids that are just cut out to +be engineers. Third year at Boston Tech." + +"Is he still there, then?" + +"There! He's in France, that's where he is. Somewhere--in France. And +I've worked for twenty-two years with everything in me just set, like an +alarm-clock, for the time when that kid would step off on his own. He +always hated to take money from me, and I loved him for it. I never went +on that I didn't think of him. I never came off with a half dozen +encores that I didn't wish he could hear it. Why, when I played a +college town it used to be a riot, because I loved every fresh-faced boy +in the house, and they knew it. And now--and now--what's there in it? +What's there in it? I can't even hold 'em any more. I'm through, I tell +you. I'm through!" + +And waited to be disputed. Martha Foote did not disappoint her. + +"There's just this in it. It's up to you to make those three women in +the third row forget what they're knitting for, even if they don't +forget their knitting. Let 'em go on knitting with their hands, but keep +their heads off it. That's your job. You're lucky to have it." + +"Lucky?" + +"Yes _ma'am_! You can do all the dumka stuff in private, the way Anna +Czarnik does, but it's up to you to make them laugh twice a day for +twenty minutes." + +"It's all very well for you to talk that cheer-o stuff. It hasn't come +home to you, I can see that." + +Martha Foote smiled. "If you don't mind my saying it, Miss McCoy, you're +too worn out from lack of sleep to see anything clearly. You don't know +me, but I do know you, you see. I know that a year ago Anna Czarnik +would have been the most interesting thing in this town, for you. You'd +have copied her clothes, and got a translation of her sob song, and made +her as real to a thousand audiences as she was to us this morning; +tragic history, patient animal face, comic shoes and all. And that's the +trouble with you, my dear. When we begin to brood about our own troubles +we lose what they call the human touch. And that's your business asset." + +Geisha McCoy was looking up at her with a whimsical half-smile. "Look +here. You know too much. You're not really the hotel housekeeper, are +you?" + +"I am." + +"Well, then, you weren't always--" + +"Yes I was. So far as I know I'm the only hotel housekeeper in history +who can't look back to the time when she had three servants of her own, +and her private carriage. I'm no decayed black-silk gentlewoman. Not me. +My father drove a hack in Sorgham, Minnesota, and my mother took in +boarders and I helped wait on table. I married when I was twenty, my man +died two years later, and I've been earning my living ever since." + +"Happy?" + +"I must be, because I don't stop to think about it. It's part of my job +to know everything that concerns the comfort of the guests in this +hotel." + +"Including hysterics in six-eighteen?" + +"Including. And that reminds me. Up on the twelfth floor of this hotel +there's a big, old-fashioned bedroom. In half an hour I can have that +room made up with the softest linen sheets, and the curtains pulled +down, and not a sound. That room's so restful it would put old Insomnia +himself to sleep. Will you let me tuck you away in it?" + +Geisha McCoy slid down among her rumpled covers, and nestled her head in +the lumpy, tortured pillows. "Me! I'm going to stay right here." + +"But this room's--why, it's as stale as a Pullman sleeper. Let me have +the chambermaid in to freshen it up while you're gone." + +"I'm used to it. I've got to have a room mussed up, to feel at home in +it. Thanks just the same." + +Martha Foote rose, "I'm sorry. I just thought if I could help--" + +Geisha McCoy leaned forward with one of her quick movements and caught +Martha Foote's hand in both her own, "You have! And I don't mean to be +rude when I tell you I haven't felt so much like sleeping in weeks. +Just turn out those lights, will you? And sort of tiptoe out, to give +the effect." Then, as Martha Foote reached the door, "And oh, say! D'you +think she'd sell me those shoes?" + +Martha Foote didn't get her dinner that night until almost eight, what +with one thing and another. Still as days go, it wasn't so bad as +Monday; she and Irish Nellie, who had come in to turn down her bed, +agreed on that. The Senate Hotel housekeeper was having her dinner in +her room. Tony, the waiter, had just brought it on and had set it out +for her, a gleaming island of white linen, and dome-shaped metal tops. +Irish Nellie, a privileged person always, waxed conversational as she +folded back the bed covers in a neat triangular wedge. + +"Six-eighteen kinda ca'med down, didn't she? High toime, the divil. She +had us jumpin' yist'iddy. I loike t' went off me head wid her, and th' +day girl th' same. Some folks ain't got no feelin', I dunno." + +Martha Foote unfolded her napkin with a little tired gesture. "You can't +always judge, Nellie. That woman's got a son who has gone to war, and +she couldn't see her way clear to living without him. She's better now. +I talked to her this evening at six. She said she had a fine afternoon." + +"Shure, she ain't the only wan. An' what do you be hearin' from your +boy, Mis' Phut, that's in France?" + +"He's well, and happy. His arm's all healed, and he says he'll be in it +again by the time I get his letter." + +"Humph," said Irish Nellie. And prepared to leave. She cast an +inquisitive eye over the little table as she made for the +door--inquisitive, but kindly. Her wide Irish nostrils sniffed a +familiar smell. "Well, fur th' land, Mis' Phut! If I was housekeeper +here, an' cud have hothouse strawberries, an' swatebreads undher +glass, an' sparrowgrass, an' chicken, _an'_ ice crame, the way you +can, whiniver yuh loike, I wouldn't be a-eatin' cornbeef an' cabbage. +Not me." + +"Oh, yes you would, Nellie," replied Martha Foote, quietly, and spooned +up the thin amber gravy. "Oh, yes you would." + + + + +XII + + +SHORE LEAVE + +Tyler Kamps was a tired boy. He was tired from his left great toe to +that topmost spot at the crown of his head where six unruly hairs always +persisted in sticking straight out in defiance of patient brushing, +wetting, and greasing. Tyler Kamps was as tired as only a boy can be at +9.30 P.M. who has risen at 5.30 A.M. Yet he lay wide awake in his +hammock eight feet above the ground, like a giant silk-worm in an +incredible cocoon and listened to the sleep-sounds that came from the +depths of two hundred similar cocoons suspended at regular intervals +down the long dark room. A chorus of deep regular breathing, with an +occasional grunt or sigh, denoting complete relaxation. Tyler Kamps +should have been part of this chorus, himself. Instead he lay staring +into the darkness, thinking mad thoughts of which this is a sample: + +"Gosh! Wouldn't I like to sit up in my hammock and give one yell! The +kind of a yell a movie cowboy gives on a Saturday night. Wake 'em up and +stop that--darned old breathing." + +Nerves. He breathed deeply himself, once or twice, because it seemed, +somehow to relieve his feeling of irritation. And in that unguarded +moment of unconscious relaxation Sleep, that had been lying in wait for +him just around the corner, pounced on him and claimed him for its own. +From his hammock came the deep, regular inhalation, exhalation, with an +occasional grunt or sigh. The normal sleep-sounds of a very tired boy. + +The trouble with Tyler Kamps was that he missed two things he hadn't +expected to miss at all. And he missed not at all the things he had been +prepared to miss most hideously. + +First of all, he had expected to miss his mother. If you had known +Stella Kamps you could readily have understood that. Stella Kamps was +the kind of mother they sing about in the sentimental ballads; mother, +pal, and sweetheart. Which was where she had made her big mistake. When +one mother tries to be all those things to one son that son has a very +fair chance of turning out a mollycoddle. The war was probably all that +saved Tyler Kamps from such a fate. + +In the way she handled this son of hers Stella Kamps had been as crafty +and skilful and velvet-gloved as a girl with her beau. The proof of it +is that Tyler had never known he was being handled. Some folks in +Marvin, Texas, said she actually flirted with him, and they were almost +justified. Certainly the way she glanced up at him from beneath her +lashes was excused only by the way she scolded him if he tracked up the +kitchen floor. But then, Stella Kamps and her boy were different, +anyway. Marvin folks all agreed about that. Flowers on the table at +meals. Sitting over the supper things talking and laughing for an hour +after they'd finished eating, as if they hadn't seen each other in +years. Reading out loud to each other, out of books and then going on +like mad about what they'd just read, and getting all het up about it. +And sometimes chasing each other around the yard, spring evenings, like +a couple of fool kids. Honestly, if a body didn't know Stella Kamps so +well, and what a fight she had put up to earn a living for herself and +the boy after that good-for-nothing Kamps up and left her, and what a +housekeeper she was, and all, a person'd think--well-- + +So, then, Tyler had expected to miss her first of all. The way she +talked. The way she fussed around him without in the least seeming to +fuss. Her special way of cooking things. Her laugh which drew laughter +in its wake. The funny way she had of saying things, vitalising +commonplaces with the spark of her own electricity. + +And now he missed her only as the average boy of twenty-one misses the +mother he has been used to all his life. No more and no less. Which +would indicate that Stella Kamps, in her protean endeavours, had +overplayed the parts just a trifle. + +He had expected to miss the boys at the bank. He had expected to miss +the Mandolin Club. The Mandolin Club met, officially, every Thursday and +spangled the Texas night with their tinkling. Five rather dreamy-eyed +adolescents slumped in stoop-shouldered comfort over the instruments +cradled in their arms, each right leg crossed limply over the left, each +great foot that dangled from the bony ankle, keeping rhythmic time to +the plunketty-plink-tinketty-plunk. + +He had expected to miss the familiar faces on Main Street. He had even +expected to miss the neighbours with whom he and his mother had so +rarely mingled. All the hundred little, intimate, trivial, everyday +things that had gone to make up his life back home in Marvin, +Texas--these he had expected to miss. + +And he didn't. + +After ten weeks at the Great Central Naval Training Station so near +Chicago, Illinois, and so far from Marvin, Texas, there were two things +he missed. + +He wanted the decent privacy of his small quiet bedroom back home. + +He wanted to talk to a girl. + +He knew he wanted the first, definitely. He didn't know he wanted the +second. The fact that he didn't know it was Stella Kamps' fault. She had +kept his boyhood girlless, year and year, by sheer force of her own love +for him, and need of him, and by the charm and magnetism that were hers. +She had been deprived of a more legitimate outlet for these emotions. +Concentrated on the boy, they had sufficed for him. The Marvin girls had +long ago given him up as hopeless. They fell back, baffled, their +keenest weapons dulled by the impenetrable armour of his impersonal +gaze. + +The room? It hadn't been much of a room, as rooms go. Bare, clean, +asceptic, with a narrow, hard white bed and a maple dresser whose second +drawer always stuck and came out zig-zag when you pulled it; and a +swimmy mirror that made one side of your face look sort of lumpy, and +higher than the other side. In one corner a bookshelf. He had made it +himself at manual training. When he had finished it--the planing, the +staining, the polishing--Chippendale himself, after he had designed and +executed his first gracious, wide-seated, back-fitting chair, could have +felt no finer creative glow. As for the books it held, just to run your +eye over them was like watching Tyler Kamps grow up. Stella Kamps had +been a Kansas school teacher in the days before she met and married +Clint Kamps. And she had never quite got over it. So the book case +contained certain things that a fond mother (with a teaching past) would +think her small son ought to enjoy. Things like "Tom Brown At Rugby" and +"Hans Brinker, Or the Silver Skates." He had read them, dutifully, but +they were as good as new. No thumbed pages, no ragged edges, no creases +and tatters where eager boy hands had turned a page over--hastily. No, +the thumb-marked, dog's-eared, grimy ones were, as always, "Tom Sawyer" +and "Huckleberry Finn" and "Marching Against the Iroquois." + +A hot enough little room in the Texas summers. A cold enough little +room in the Texas winters. But his own. And quiet. He used to lie there +at night, relaxed, just before sleep claimed him, and he could almost +feel the soft Texas night enfold him like a great, velvety, invisible +blanket, soothing him, lulling him. In the morning it had been pleasant +to wake up to its bare, clean whiteness, and to the tantalising +breakfast smells coming up from the kitchen below. His mother calling +from the foot of the narrow wooden stairway: + +"Ty-_ler_!," rising inflection. "_Ty_-ler," falling inflection. "Get up, +son! Breakfast'll be ready." + +It was always a terrific struggle between a last delicious stolen five +minutes between the covers, and the scent of the coffee and bacon. + +"Ty-_ler_! You'll be late!" + +A mighty stretch. A gathering of his will forces. A swing of his long +legs over the side of the bed so that they described an arc in the air. + +"Been up years." + +Breakfast had won. + +Until he came to the Great Central Naval Training Station Tyler's +nearest approach to the nautical life had been when, at the age of six, +he had sailed chips in the wash tub in the back yard. Marvin, Texas, is +five hundred miles inland. And yet he had enlisted in the navy as +inevitably as though he had sprung from a long line of Vikings. In his +boyhood his choice of games had always been pirate. You saw him, a red +handkerchief binding his brow, one foot advanced, knee bent, scanning +the horizon for the treasure island from the vantage point of the +woodshed roof, while the crew, gone mad with thirst, snarled and +shrieked all about him, and the dirt yard below became a hungry, roaring +sea. His twelve-year-old vocabulary boasted such compound difficulties +as mizzentopsail-yard and main-topgallantmast. He knew the intricate +parts of a full-rigged ship from the mainsail to the deck, from the +jib-boom to the chart-house. All this from pictures and books. It was +the roving, restless spirit of his father in him, I suppose. Clint Kamps +had never been meant for marriage. When the baby Tyler was one year old +Clint had walked over to where his wife sat, the child in her lap, and +had tilted her head back, kissed her on the lips, and had gently pinched +the boy's roseleaf cheek with a quizzical forefinger and thumb. Then, +indolently, negligently, gracefully, he had strolled out of the house, +down the steps, into the hot and dusty street and so on and on and out +of their lives. Stella Kamps had never seen him again. Her letters back +home to her folks in Kansas were triumphs of bravery and bare-faced +lying. The kind of bravery, and the kind of lying that only a woman +could understand. She managed to make out, somehow, at first. And later, +very well indeed. As the years went on she and the boy lived together in +a sort of closed corporation paradise of their own. At twenty-one Tyler, +who had gone through grammar school, high school and business college +had never kissed a girl or felt a love-pang. Stella Kamps kept her age +as a woman does whose brain and body are alert and busy. When Tyler +first went to work in the Texas State Savings Bank of Marvin the girls +would come in on various pretexts just for a glimpse of his charming +blondeur behind the little cage at the rear. It is difficult for a +small-town girl to think of reasons for going into a bank. You have to +be moneyed to do it. They say that the Davies girl saved up nickels +until she had a dollar's worth and then came into the bank and asked to +have a bill in exchange for it. They gave her one--a crisp, new, crackly +dollar bill. She reached for it, gropingly, her eyes fixed on a point at +the rear of the bank. Two days later she came in and brazenly asked to +have it changed into nickels again. She might have gone on indefinitely +thus if Tyler's country hadn't given him something more important to do +than to change dollars into nickels and back again. + +On the day he left for the faraway naval training station Stella Kamps +for the second time in her life had a chance to show the stuff she was +made of, and showed it. Not a whimper. Down at the train, standing at +the car window, looking up at him and smiling, and saying futile, +foolish, final things, and seeing only his blond head among the many +thrust out of the open window. + +"... and Tyler, remember what I said about your feet. You know. Dry.... +And I'll send a box every week, only don't eat too many of the nut +cookies. They're so rich. Give some to the other--yes, I know you will. +I was just ... Won't it be grand to be right there on the water all the +time! My!... I'll write every night and then send it twice a week.... +I don't suppose you ... Well once a week, won't you, dear?... +You're--you're moving. The train's going! Good-b--" she ran along with +it for a few feet, awkwardly, as a woman runs. Stumblingly. + +And suddenly, as she ran, his head always just ahead of her, she +thought, with a great pang: + +"O my God, how young he is! How young he is, and he doesn't know +anything. I should have told him.... Things.... He doesn't know anything +about ... and all those other men--" + +She ran on, one arm outstretched as though to hold him a moment longer +while the train gathered speed. "Tyler!" she called, through the din and +shouting. "Tyler, be good! Be good!" He only saw her lips moving, and +could not hear, so he nodded his head, and smiled, and waved, and was +gone. + +So Tyler Kamps had travelled up to Chicago. Whenever they passed a +sizable town they had thrown open the windows and yelled, "Youp! Who-ee! +Yow!" + +People had rushed to the streets and had stood there gazing after the +train. Tyler hadn't done much youping at first, but in the later stages +of the journey he joined in to keep his spirits up. He, who had never +been more than a two-hours' ride from home was flashing past villages, +towns, cities--hundreds of them. + +The first few days had been unbelievably bad, what with typhoid +inoculations, smallpox vaccinations, and loneliness. The very first day, +when he had entered his barracks one of the other boys, older in +experience, misled by Tyler's pink and white and gold colouring, had +leaned forward from amongst a group and had called in glad surprise, at +the top of a leathery pair of lungs: + +"Why, hello, sweetheart!" The others had taken it up with cruelty of +their age. "Hello, sweetheart!" It had stuck. Sweetheart. In the hard +years that followed--years in which the blood-thirsty and piratical +games of his boyhood paled to the mildest of imaginings--the nickname +still clung, long after he had ceased to resent it; long after he had +stripes and braid to refute it. + +But in that Tyler Kamps we are not interested. It is the boy Tyler Kamps +with whom we have to do. Bewildered, lonely, and a little resentful. +Wondering where the sea part of it came in. Learning to say "on the +station" instead of "at the station," the idea being that the great +stretch of land on which the station was located was not really land, +but water; and the long wooden barracks not really barracks at all, but +ships. Learning to sleep in a hammock (it took him a full week). +Learning to pin back his sailor collar to save soiling the white braid +on it (that meant scrubbing). Learning--but why go into detail? One +sentence covers it. + +Tyler met Gunner Moran. Moran, tattooed, hairy-armed, hairy-chested as a +gorilla and with something of the sadness and humour of the gorilla in +his long upper lip and short forehead. But his eyes did not bear out the +resemblance. An Irish blue; bright, unravaged; clear beacon lights in a +rough and storm-battered countenance. Gunner Moran wasn't a gunner at +all, or even a gunner's mate, but just a seaman who knew the sea from +Shanghai to New Orleans; from Liverpool to Barcelona. His knowledge of +knots and sails and rifles and bayonets and fists was a thing to strike +you dumb. He wasn't the stuff of which officers are made. But you should +have seen him with a Springfield! Or a bayonet! A bare twenty-five, +Moran, but with ten years' sea experience. Into those ten years he had +jammed a lifetime of adventure. And he could do expertly all the things +that Tyler Kamps did amateurishly. In a barrack, or in a company street, +the man who talks the loudest is the man who has the most influence. In +Tyler's barrack Gunner Moran was that man. + +Because of what he knew they gave him two hundred men at a time and made +him company commander, without insignia or official position. In rank, +he was only a "gob" like the rest of them. In influence a captain. Moran +knew how to put the weight lunge behind the bayonet. It was a matter of +balance, of poise, more than of muscle. + +Up in the front of his men, "G'wan," he would yell. "Whatddye think +you're doin'! Tickling 'em with a straw! That's a bayonet you got there, +not a tennis rackit. You couldn't scratch your initials on a Fritz that +way. Put a little guts into it. Now then!" + +He had been used to the old Krag, with a cam that jerked out, and threw +back, and fed one shell at a time. The new Springfield, that was a +gloriously functioning thing in its simplicity, he regarded with a sort +of reverence and ecstasy mingled. As his fingers slid lightly, +caressingly along the shining barrel they were like a man's fingers +lingering on the soft curves of a woman's throat. The sight of a rookie +handling this metal sweetheart clumsily filled him with fury. + +"Whatcha think you got there, you lubber, you! A section o' lead pipe! +You ought t' be back carryin' a shovel, where you belong. Here. Just a +touch. Like that. See? Easy now." + +He could box like a professional. They put him up against Slovatsky, the +giant Russian, one day. Slovatsky put up his two huge hands, like hams, +and his great arms, like iron beams and looked down on this lithe, agile +bantam that was hopping about at his feet. Suddenly the bantam crouched, +sprang, and recoiled like a steel trap. Something had crashed up against +Slovatsky's chin. Red rage shook him. He raised his sledge-hammer right +for a slashing blow. Moran was directly in the path of it. It seemed +that he could no more dodge it than he could hope to escape an onrushing +locomotive, but it landed on empty air, with Moran around in back of the +Russian, and peering impishly up under his arm. It was like an elephant +worried by a mosquito. Then Moran's lightning right shot out again, +smartly, and seemed just to tap the great hulk on the side of the chin. +A ludicrous look of surprise on Slovatsky's face before he crumpled and +crashed. + +This man it was who had Tyler Kamps' admiration. It was more than +admiration. It was nearer adoration. But there was nothing unnatural or +unwholesome about the boy's worship of this man. It was a legitimate +thing, born of all his fatherless years; years in which there had been +no big man around the house who could throw farther than Tyler, and eat +more, and wear larger shoes and offer more expert opinion. Moran +accepted the boy's homage with a sort of surly graciousness. + +In Tyler's third week at the Naval Station mumps developed in his +barracks and they were quarantined. Tyler escaped the epidemic but he +had to endure the boredom of weeks of quarantine. At first they took it +as a lark, like schoolboys. Moran's hammock was just next Tyler's. On +his other side was a young Kentuckian named Dabney Courtney. The +barracks had dubbed him Monicker the very first day. Monicker had a +rather surprising tenor voice. Moran a salty bass. And Tyler his +mandolin. The trio did much to make life bearable, or unbearable, +depending on one's musical knowledge and views. The boys all sang a +great deal. They bawled everything they knew, from "Oh, You Beautiful +Doll" and "Over There" to "The End of a Perfect Day." The latter, _ad +nauseum_. They even revived "Just Break the News to Mother" and seemed +to take a sort of awful joy in singing its dreary words and mournful +measures. They played everything from a saxophone to a harmonica. They +read. They talked. And they grew so sick of the sight of one another +that they began to snap and snarl. + +Sometimes they gathered round Moran and he told them tales they only +half believed. He had been in places whose very names were exotic and +oriental, breathing of sandalwood, and myrrh, and spices and aloes. They +were places over which a boy dreams in books of travel. Moran bared the +vivid tattooing on hairy arms and chest--tattooing representing anchors, +and serpents, and girls' heads, and hearts with arrows stuck through +them. Each mark had its story. A broad-swathed gentleman indeed, Gunner +Moran. He had an easy way with him that made you feel provincial and +ashamed. It made you ashamed of not knowing the sort of thing you used +to be ashamed of knowing. + +Visiting day was the worst. They grew savage, somehow, watching the +mothers and sisters and cousins and sweethearts go streaming by to the +various barracks. One of the boys to whom Tyler had never even spoken +suddenly took a picture out of his blouse pocket and showed it to Tyler. +It was a cheap little picture--one of the kind they sell two for a +quarter if one sitter; two for thirty-five if two. This was a twosome. +The boy, and a girl. A healthy, wide-awake wholesome looking small-town +girl, who has gone through high school and cuts out her own shirtwaists. + +"She's vice-president of the Silver Star Pleasure Club back home," the +boy confided to Tyler. "I'm president. We meet every other Saturday." + +Tyler looked at the picture seriously and approvingly. Suddenly he +wished that he had, tucked away in his blouse, a picture of a +clear-eyed, round-cheeked vice-president of a pleasure club. He took out +his mother's picture and showed it. + +"Oh, yeh," said the boy, disinterestedly. + +The dragging weeks came to an end. The night of Tyler's restlessness was +the last night of quarantine. To-morrow morning they would be free. At +the end of the week they were to be given shore leave. Tyler had made up +his mind to go to Chicago. He had never been there. + +Five thirty. Reveille. + +Tyler awoke with the feeling that something was going to happen. +Something pleasant. Then he remembered, and smiled. Dabney Courtney, in +the next hammock, was leaning far over the side of his perilous perch +and delivering himself of his morning speech. Tyler did not quite +understand this young southern elegant. Monicker had two moods, both of +which puzzled Tyler. When he awoke feeling gay he would lean over the +extreme edge of his hammock and drawl, with an affected English accent: + +"If this is Venice, where are the canals?" + +In his less cheerful moments he would groan, heavily, "There ain't no +Gawd!" + +This last had been his morning observation during their many weeks of +durance vile. But this morning he was, for the first time in many days, +enquiring about Venetian waterways. + +Tyler had no pal. His years of companionship with his mother had bred in +him a sort of shyness, a diffidence. He heard the other boys making +plans for shore leave. They all scorned Waukegan, which was the first +sizable town beyond the Station. Chicago was their goal. They were like +a horde of play-hungry devils after their confinement. Six weeks of +restricted freedom, six weeks of stored-up energy made them restive as +colts. + +"Goin' to Chicago, kid?" Moran asked him, carelessly. It was Saturday +morning. + +"Yes. Are you?" eagerly. + +"Kin a duck swim?" + +At the Y.M.C.A. they had given him tickets to various free amusements +and entertainments. They told him about free canteens, and about other +places where you could get a good meal, cheap. One of the tickets was +for a dance. Tyler knew nothing of dancing. This dance was to be given +at some kind of woman's club on Michigan Boulevard. Tyler read the card, +glumly. A dance meant girls. He knew that. Why hadn't he learned to +dance? + +Tyler walked down to the station and waited for the train that would +bring him to Chicago at about one o'clock. The other boys, in little +groups, or in pairs, were smoking and talking. Tyler wanted to join +them, but he did not. They seemed so sufficient unto themselves, +with their plans, and their glib knowledge of places, and amusements, +and girls. On the train they all bought sweets from the train +butcher--chocolate maraschinos, and nut bars, and molasses kisses--and +ate them as greedily as children, until their hunger for sweets was +surfeited. + +Tyler found himself in the same car with Moran. He edged over to a +seat near him, watching him narrowly. Moran was not mingling with the +other boys. He kept aloof, his sea-blue eyes gazing out at the flat +Illinois prairie. All about him swept and eddied the currents and +counter-currents of talk. + +"They say there's a swell supper in the Tower Building for fifty cents." + +"Fifty nothing. Get all you want in the Library canteen for nix." + +"Where's this dance, huh?" + +"Search _me_." + +"Heh, Murph! I'll shoot you a game of pool at the club." + +"Naw, I gotta date." + +Tyler's glance encountered Moran's, and rested there. Scorn curled the +Irishman's broad upper lip. "Navy! This ain't no navy no more. It's a +Sunday school, that's what! Phonographs, an' church suppers, an' pool +an' dances! It's enough t' turn a fella's stomick. Lot of Sunday school +kids don't know a sail from a tablecloth when they see it." + +He relapsed into contemptuous silence. + +Tyler, who but a moment before had been envying them their familiarity +with these very things now nodded and smiled understanding at Moran. +"That's right," he said. Moran regarded him a moment, curiously. Then he +resumed his staring out of the window. You would never have guessed that +in that bullet head there was bewilderment and resentment almost +equalling Tyler's, but for a much different reason. Gunner Moran was of +the old navy--the navy that had been despised and spat upon. In those +days his uniform alone had barred him from decent theatres, decent +halls, decent dances, contact with decent people. They had forced him to +a knowledge of the burlesque houses, the cheap theatres, the shooting +galleries, the saloons, the dives. And now, bewilderingly, the public +had right-about faced. It opened its doors to him. It closed its saloons +to him. It sought him out. It offered him amusement. It invited him to +its home, and sat him down at its table, and introduced him to its +daughter. + +"Nix!" said Gunner Moran, and spat between his teeth. "Not f'r me. I +pick me own lady friends." + +Gunner Moran was used to picking his own lady friends. He had picked +them in wicked Port Said, and in Fiume; in Yokohama and Naples. He had +picked them unerringly, and to his taste, in Cardiff, and Hamburg, and +Vladivostok. + +When the train drew in at the great Northwestern station shed he was +down the steps and up the long platform before the wheels had ceased +revolving. + +Tyler came down the steps slowly. Blue uniforms were streaming past +him--a flood of them. White leggings twinkled with the haste of their +wearers. Caps, white or blue, flowed like a succession of rippling waves +and broke against the great doorway, and were gone. + +In Tyler's town, back home in Marvin, Texas, you knew the train numbers +and their schedules, and you spoke of them by name, familiarly and +affectionately, as Number Eleven and Number Fifty-five. "I reckon +Fifty-five'll be late to-day, on account of the storm." + +Now he saw half a dozen trains lined up at once, and a dozen more tracks +waiting, empty. The great train shed awed him. The vast columned waiting +room, the hurrying people, the uniformed guards gave him a feeling of +personal unimportance. He felt very negligible, and useless, and alone. +He stood, a rather dazed blue figure, in the vastness of that shining +place. A voice--the soft, cadenced voice of the negro--addressed him. + +"Lookin' fo' de sailors' club rooms?" + +Tyler turned. A toothy, middle-aged, kindly negro in a uniform and red +cap. Tyler smiled friendlily. Here was a human he could feel at ease +with. Texas was full of just such faithful, friendly types of negro. + +"Reckon I am, uncle. Show me the way?" + +Red Cap chuckled and led the way. "Knew you was f'om de south minute Ah +see yo'. Cain't fool me. Le'ssee now. You-all f'om--?" + +"I'm from the finest state in the Union. The most glorious state in +the--" + +"H'm--Texas," grinned Red Cap. + +"How did you know!" + +"Ah done heah 'em talk befoh, son. Ah done heah 'em talk be-foh." + +It was a long journey through the great building to the section that had +been set aside for Tyler and boys like him. Tyler wondered how any one +could ever find it alone. When the Red Cap left him, after showing him +the wash rooms, the tubs for scrubbing clothes, the steam dryers, the +bath-tubs, the lunch room, Tyler looked after him regretfully. Then he +sped after him and touched him on the arm. + +"Listen. Could I--would they--do you mean I could clean up in there--as +much as I wanted? And wash my things? And take a bath in a bathtub, with +all the hot water I want?" + +"Yo' sho' kin. On'y things look mighty grabby now. Always is Sat'days. +Jes' wait aroun' an' grab yo' tu'n." + +Tyler waited. And while he waited he watched to see how the other boys +did things. He saw how they scrubbed their uniforms with scrubbing +brushes, and plenty of hot water and soap. He saw how they hung them +carefully, so that they might not wrinkle, in the dryers. He saw them +emerge, glowing, from the tub rooms. And he waited, the fever of +cleanliness burning in his eye. + +His turn came. He had waited more than an hour, reading, listening to +the phonograph and the electric piano, and watching. + +Now he saw his chance and seized it. And then he went through a ceremony +that was almost a ritual. Stella Kamps, could she have seen it, would +have felt repaid for all her years of soap-and-water insistence. + +First he washed out the stationary tub with soap, and brush, and +scalding water. Then he scalded the brush. Then the tub again. Then, +deliberately, and with the utter unconcern of the male biped he divested +himself, piece by piece, of every stitch of covering wherewith his body +was clothed. And he scrubbed them all. He took off his white leggings +and his white cap and scrubbed those, first. He had seen the other boys +follow that order of procedure. Then his flapping blue flannel trousers, +and his blouse. Then his underclothes, and his socks. And finally he +stood there, naked and unabashed, slim, and pink and silver as a +mountain trout. His face, as he bent over the steamy tub, was very red, +and moist and earnest. His yellow hair curled in little damp ringlets +about his brow. Then he hung his trousers and blouse in the dryers +without wringing them (wringing, he had been told, wrinkled them). He +rinsed and wrung, and flapped the underclothes, though, and shaped his +cap carefully, and spread his leggings, and hung those in the dryer, +too. And finally, with a deep sigh of accomplishment, he filled one of +the bathtubs in the adjoining room--filled it to the slopping-over point +with the luxurious hot water, and he splashed about in this, and +reclined in it, gloriously, until the waiting ones threatened to pull +him out. Then he dried himself and issued forth all flushed and rosy. He +wrapped himself in a clean coarse sheet, for his clothes would not be +dry for another half hour. Swathed in the sheet like a Roman senator he +lay down on one of the green velvet couches, relics of past Pullman +glories, and there, with the rumble and roar of steel trains overhead, +with the smart click of the billiard balls sounding in his ears, with +the phonograph and the electric piano going full blast, with the boys +dancing and larking all about the big room, he fell sound asleep as only +a boy cub can sleep. + +When he awoke an hour later his clothes were folded in a neat pile by +the deft hand of some jackie impatient to use the drying space for his +own garments. Tyler put them on. He stood before a mirror and brushed +his hair until it glittered. He drew himself up with the instinctive +pride and self respect that comes of fresh clean clothes against the +skin. Then he placed his absurd round hat on his head at what he +considered a fetching angle, though precarious, and sallied forth on the +streets of Chicago in search of amusement and adventure. + +He found them. + +Madison and Canal streets, west, had little to offer him. He sensed that +the centre of things lay to the east, so he struck out along Madison, +trying not to show the terror with which the grim, roaring, clamorous +city filled him. He jingled the small coins in his pocket and strode +along, on the surface a blithe and carefree jackie on shore leave; a +forlorn and lonely Texas boy, beneath. + +It was late afternoon. His laundering, his ablutions and his nap had +taken more time than he had realised. It was a mild spring day, with +just a Lake Michigan evening snap in the air. Tyler, glancing about +alertly, nevertheless felt dreamy, and restless, and sort of melting, +like a snow-heap in the sun. He wished he had some one to talk to. He +thought of the man on the train who had said, with such easy confidence, +"I got a date." Tyler wished that he too had a date--he who had never +had a rendezvous in his life. He loitered a moment on the bridge. Then +he went on, looking about him interestedly, and comparing Chicago, +Illinois, with Marvin, Texas, and finding the former sadly lacking. He +passed LaSalle, Clark. The streets were packed. The noise and rush +tired him, and bewildered him. He came to a moving picture theatre--one +of the many that dot the district. A girl occupied the little ticket +kiosk. She was rather a frowsy girl, not too young, and with a certain +look about the jaw. Tyler walked up to the window and shoved his money +through the little aperture. The girl fed him a pink ticket without +looking up. He stood there looking at her. Then he asked her a question. +"How long does the show take?" He wanted to see the colour of her eyes. +He wanted her to talk to him. + +"'Bout a hour," said the girl, and raised wise eyes to his. + +"Thanks," said Tyler, fervently, and smiled. No answering smile curved +the lady's lips. Tyler turned and went in. There was an alleged comic +film. Tyler was not amused. It was followed by a war picture. He left +before the show was over. He was very hungry by now. In his blouse +pocket were the various information and entertainment tickets with which +the Y.M.C.A. man had provided him. He had taken them out, carefully, +before he had done his washing. Now he looked them over. But a dairy +lunch room invited him, with its white tiling, and its pans of baked +apples, and browned beans and its coffee tank. He went in and ate a +solitary supper that was heavy on pie and cake. + +When he came out to the street again it was evening. He walked over to +State Street (the wrong side). He took the dance card out of his pocket +and looked at it again. If only he had learned to dance. There'd be +girls. There'd have to be girls at a dance. He stood staring into the +red and tin-foil window display of a cigar store, turning the ticket +over in his fingers, and the problem over in his mind. + +Suddenly, in his ear, a woman's voice, very soft and low. "Hello, +Sweetheart!" the voice said. His nickname! He whirled around, eagerly. + +The girl was a stranger to him. But she was smiling, friendlily, and she +was pretty, too, sort of. "Hello, Sweetheart!" she said, again. + +"Why, how-do, ma'am," said Tyler, Texas fashion. + +"Where you going, kid?" she asked. + +Tyler blushed a little. "Well, nowhere in particular, ma'am. Just kind +of milling around." + +"Come on along with me," she said, and linked her arm in his. + +"Why--why--thanks, but--" + +And yet Texas people were always saying easterners weren't friendly. He +felt a little uneasy, though, as he looked down into her smiling face. +Something-- + +"Hello, Sweetheart!" said a voice, again. A man's voice, this time. Out +of the cigar store came Gunner Moran, the yellow string of a tobacco bag +sticking out of his blouse pocket, a freshly rolled cigarette between +his lips. + +A queer feeling of relief and gladness swept over Tyler. And then Moran +looked sharply at the girl and said, "Why, hello, Blanche!" + +"Hello yourself," answered the girl, sullenly. + +"Thought you was in 'Frisco." + +"Well, I ain't." + +Moran shifted his attention from the girl to Tyler. "Friend o' yours?" + +Before Tyler could open his lips to answer the girl put in, "Sure he is. +Sure I am. We been around together all afternoon." + +Tyler jerked. "Why, ma'am, I guess you've made a mistake. I never saw +you before in my life. I kind of thought when you up and spoke to me you +must be taking me for somebody else. Well, now, isn't that funny--" + +The smile faded from the girl's face, and it became twisted with fury. +She glared at Moran, her lips drawn back in a snarl. "Who're you to go +buttin' into my business! This guy's a friend of mine, I tell yuh!" + +"Yeh? Well, he's a friend of mine, too. Me an' him had a date to meet +here right now and we're goin' over to a swell little dance on Michigan +Avenoo. So it's you who's buttin' in, Blanche, me girl." + +The girl stood twisting her handkerchief savagely. She was panting a +little. "I'll get you for this." + +"Beat it!" said Moran. He tucked his arm through Tyler's, with a little +impelling movement, and Tyler found himself walking up the street at a +smart gait, leaving the girl staring after them. + +Tyler Kamps was an innocent, but he was not a fool. At what he had +vaguely guessed a moment before, he now knew. They walked along in +silence, the most ill-sorted pair that you might hope to find in all +that higgledy-piggledy city. And yet with a new, strong bond between +them. It was more than fraternal. It had something of the character of +the feeling that exists between a father and son who understand each +other. + +Man-like, they did not talk of that which they were thinking. + +Tyler broke the silence. + +"Do you dance?" + +"Me! Dance! Well, I've mixed with everything from hula dancers to geisha +girls, not forgettin' the Barbary Coast in the old days, but--well, I +ain't what you'd rightly call a dancer. Why you askin'?" + +"Because I can't dance, either. But we'll just go up and see what it's +like, anyway." + +"See wot wot's like?" + +Tyler took out his card again, patiently. "This dance we're going to." + +They had reached the Michigan Avenue address given on the card, and +Tyler stopped to look up at the great, brightly lighted building. Moran +stopped too, but for a different reason. He was staring, open-mouthed, +at Tyler Kamps. + +"You mean t' say you thought I was goin'--" + +He choked. "Oh, my Gawd!" + +Tyler smiled at him, sweetly. "I'm kind of scared, too. But Monicker +goes to these dances and he says they're right nice. And lots of--of +pretty girls. Nice girls. I wouldn't go alone. But you--you're used to +dancing, and parties and--girls." + +He linked his arm through the other man's. Moran allowed himself to be +propelled along, dazedly. Still protesting, he found himself in the +elevator with a dozen red-cheeked, scrubbed-looking jackies. At which +point Moran, game in the face of horror, accepted the inevitable. He +gave a characteristic jerk from the belt. + +"Me, I'll try anything oncet. Lead me to it." + +The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. "Out here for the jackies' +dance," said the elevator boy. + +The two stepped out with the others. Stepped out gingerly, caps in hand. +A corridor full of women. A corridor a-flutter with girls. Talk. +Laughter. Animation. In another moment the two would have turned and +fled, terrified. But in that half-moment of hesitation and bewilderment +they were lost. + +A woman approached them hand outstretched. A tall, slim, friendly +looking woman, low-voiced, silk-gowned, inquiring. + +"Good-evening!" she said, as if she had been haunting the halls in the +hope of their coming. "I'm glad to see you. You can check your caps +right there. Do you dance?" + +Two scarlet faces. Four great hands twisting at white caps in an agony +of embarrassment. "Why, no ma'am." + +"That's fine. We'll teach you. Then you'll go into the ball room and +have a wonderful time." + +"But--" in choked accents from Moran. + +"Just a minute. Miss Hall!" She beckoned a diminutive blonde in blue. +"Miss Hall, this is Mr.--ah--Mr. Moran. Thanks. And Mr.?--yes--Mr. +Kamps. Tyler Kamps. They want to learn to dance. I'll turn them right +over to you. When does your class begin?" + +Miss Hall glanced at a toy watch on the tiny wrist. Instinctively and +helplessly Moran and Tyler focused their gaze on the dials that bound +their red wrists. "Starting right now," said Miss Hall, crisply. She +eyed the two men with calm appraising gaze. "I'm sure you'll both make +wonderful dancers. Follow me." + +She turned. There was something confident, dauntless, irresistible about +the straight little back. The two men stared at it. Then at each other. +Panic was writ large on the face of each. Panic, and mutiny. Flight was +in the mind of both. Miss Hall turned, smiled, held out a small white +hand. "Come on," she said. "Follow me." + +And the two, as though hypnotised, followed. + +A fair-sized room, with a piano in one corner and groups of fidgeting +jackies in every other corner. Moran and Tyler sighed with relief at +sight of them. At least they were not to be alone in their agony. + +Miss Hall wasted no time. Slim ankles close together, head held high, +she stood in the centre of the room. "Now then, form a circle please!" + +Twenty six-foot, well-built specimens of manhood suddenly became +shambling hulks. They clumped forward, breathing hard, and smiling +mirthlessly, with an assumption of ease that deceived no one, least of +all, themselves. "A little lively, please. Don't look so scared. I'm not +a bit vicious. Now then, Miss Weeks! A fox trot." + +Miss Weeks, at the piano, broke into spirited strains. The first +faltering steps in the social career of Gunner Moran and Tyler Kamps had +begun. + +To an onlooker, it might have been mirth-provoking if it hadn't been, +somehow, tear-compelling. The thing that little Miss Hall was doing +might have seemed trivial to one who did not know that it was +magnificent. It wasn't dancing merely that she was teaching these +awkward, serious, frightened boys. She was handing them a key that would +unlock the social graces. She was presenting them with a magic something +that would later act as an open sesame to a hundred legitimate delights. + +She was strictly business, was Miss Hall. No nonsense about her. +"One-two-three-four! And a _one_-two _three_-four. One-two-three-four! +And a _turn_-two, _turn_-four. Now then, all together. Just four +straight steps as if you were walking down the street. That's it! +One-two-three-four! Don't look at me. Look at my feet. And a _one_-two +_three_-four." + +Red-faced, they were. Very earnest. Pathetically eager and docile. Weeks +of drilling had taught them to obey commands. To them the little +dancing teacher whose white spats twinkled so expertly in the tangle of +their own clumsy clumping boots was more than a pretty girl. She was +knowledge. She was power. She was the commanding officer. And like +children they obeyed. + +Moran's Barbary Coast experience stood him in good stead now, though the +stern and watchful Miss Hall put a quick stop to a certain tendency +toward shoulder work. Tyler possessed what is known as a rhythm sense. +An expert whistler is generally a natural dancer. Stella Kamps had +always waited for the sound of his cheerful whistle as he turned the +corner of Vernon Street. High, clear, sweet, true, he would approach his +top note like a Tettrazini until, just when you thought he could not +possibly reach that dizzy eminence he did reach it, and held it, and +trilled it, bird-like, in defiance of the laws of vocal equilibrium. + +His dancing was much like that. Never a half-beat behind the +indefatigable Miss Weeks. It was a bit laboured, at first, but it was +true. Little Miss Hall, with the skilled eye of the specialist, picked +him at a glance. + +"You've danced before?" + +"No ma'am." + +"Take the head of the line, please. Watch Mr. Kamps. Now then, all +together, please." + +And they were off again. + +At 9.45 Tyler Kamps and Gunner Moran were standing in the crowded +doorway of the ballroom upstairs, in a panic lest some girl should ask +them to dance; fearful lest they be passed by. Little Miss Hall had +brought them to the very door, had left them there with a stern +injunction not to move, and had sped away in search of partners for +them. + +Gunner Moran's great scarlet hands were knotted into fists. His Adam's +apple worked convulsively. + +"Le's duck," he whispered hoarsely. The jackie band in the corner +crashed into the opening bars of a fox trot. + +"Oh, it don't seem--" But it was plain that Tyler was weakening. Another +moment and they would have turned and fled. But coming toward them was +little Miss Hall, her blonde head bobbing in and out among the swaying +couples. At her right and left was a girl. Her bright eyes held her two +victims in the doorway. They watched her approach, and were helpless to +flee. They seemed to be gripped by a horrible fascination. Their limbs +were fluid. + +A sort of groan rent Moran. Miss Hall and the two girls stood before +them, cool, smiling, unruffled. + +"Miss Cunningham, this is Mr. Tyler Kamps. Mr. Moran, Miss Cunningham. +Miss Drew--Mr. Moran, Mr. Kamps." + +The boy and the man gulped, bowed, mumbled something. + +"Would you like to dance?" said Miss Cunningham, and raised limpid eyes +to Tyler's. + +"Why--I--you see I don't know how. I just started to--" + +"Oh, _that's_ all right," Miss Cunningham interrupted, cheerfully. +"We'll try it." She stood in position and there seemed to radiate from +her a certain friendliness, a certain assurance and understanding that +was as calming as it was stimulating. In a sort of daze Tyler found +himself moving over the floor in time to the music. He didn't know that +he was being led, but he was. She didn't try to talk. He breathed a +prayer of thanks for that. She seemed to know, somehow, about those four +straight steps and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, +and turn-two, turn-four. He didn't know that he was counting aloud, +desperately. He didn't even know, just then, that this was a girl he was +dancing with. He seemed to move automatically, like a marionette. He +never was quite clear about those first ten minutes of his ballroom +experience. + +The music ceased. A spat of applause. Tyler mopped his head, and his +hands, and applauded too, like one in a dream. They were off again for +the encore. + +Five minutes later he found himself seated next Miss Cunningham in a +chair against the wall. And for the first time since their meeting the +mists of agony cleared before his gaze and he saw Miss Cunningham as a +tall, slim, dark-haired girl, with a glint of mischief in her eye, and a +mouth that looked as if she were trying to keep from smiling. + +"Why don't you?" Tyler asked, and was aghast. + +"Why don't I what?" + +"Smile if you want to." + +At which the glint in her eye and the hidden smile on her lips sort of +met and sparked and she laughed. Tyler laughed, too, and then they +laughed together and were friends. + +Miss Cunningham's conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice +girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met +at a war recreation dance. Nothing could have been more commonplace or +unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would +have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison. + +"Where are you from?" + +"Why, I'm from Texas, ma'am. Marvin, Texas." + +"Is that so? So many of the boys are from Texas. Are you out at the +station or on one of the boats?" + +"I'm on the Station. Yes ma'am." + +"Do you like the navy?" + +"Yes ma'am, I do. I sure do. You know there isn't a drafted man in the +navy. No ma'am! We're all enlisted men." + +"When do you think the war will end, Mr. Kamps?" + +He told her, gravely. He told her many other things. He told her about +Texas, at length and in detail, being a true son of that Brobdingnagian +state. Your Texan born is a walking mass of statistics. Miss Cunningham +made a sympathetic and interested listener. Her brown eyes were round +and bright with interest. He told her that the distance from Texas to +Chicago was only half as far as from here to there in the state of Texas +itself. Yes _ma'am_! He had figures about tons of grain, and heads of +horses and herds of cattle. Why, say, you could take little ol' meachin' +Germany and tuck it away in a corner of Texas and you wouldn't any more +know it was there than if it was somebody's poor no-'count ranch. Why, +Big Y ranch alone would make the whole country of Germany look like a +cattle grazin' patch. It was bigger than all those countries in Europe +strung together, and every man in Texas would rather fight than eat. Yes +ma'am. Why, you couldn't hold 'em. + +"My!" breathed Miss Cunningham. + +They danced again. Miss Cunningham introduced him to some other girls, +and he danced with them, and they in turn asked him about the station, +and Texas, and when he thought the war would end. And altogether he had +a beautiful time of it, and forgot completely and entirely about Gunner +Moran. It was not until he gallantly escorted Miss Cunningham downstairs +for refreshments that he remembered his friend. He had procured hot +chocolate for himself and Miss Cunningham; and sandwiches, and +delectable chunks of caramel cake. And they were talking, and eating, +and laughing and enjoying themselves hugely, and Tyler had gone back for +more cake at the urgent invitation of the white-haired, pink-cheeked +woman presiding at the white-clothed table in the centre of the +charming room. And then he had remembered. A look of horror settled down +over his face. He gasped. + +"W-what's the matter?" demanded Miss Cunningham. + +"My--my friend. I forgot all about him." He regarded her with stricken +eyes. + +"Oh, that's all right," Miss Cunningham assured him for the second time +that evening. "We'll just go and find him. He's probably forgotten all +about you, too." + +And for the second time she was right. They started on their quest. It +was a short one. Off the refreshment room was a great, gracious +comfortable room all deep chairs, and soft rugs, and hangings, and +pictures and shaded lights. All about sat pairs and groups of sailors +and girls, talking, and laughing and consuming vast quantities of cake. +And in the centre of just such a group sat Gunner Moran, lolling at his +ease in a rosy velvet-upholstered chair. His little finger was crookt +elegantly over his cup. A large and imposing square of chocolate cake in +the other hand did not seem to cramp his gestures as he talked. Neither +did the huge bites with which he was rapidly demolishing it seem in the +least to stifle his conversation. Four particularly pretty girls, and +two matrons surrounded him. And as Tyler and Miss Cunningham approached +him he was saying, "Well, it's got so I can't sleep in anything _but_ a +hammick. Yessir! Why, when I was fifteen years old I was--" He caught +Tyler's eye. "Hello!" he called, genially. "Meet me friend." This to the +bevy surrounding him. "I was just tellin' these ladies here--" + +And he was off again. All the tales that he told were not necessarily +true. But that did not detract from their thrill. Moran's audience grew +as he talked. And he talked until he and Tyler had to run all the way to +the Northwestern station for the last train that would get them on the +Station before shore leave expired. Moran, on leaving, shook hands like +a presidential candidate. + +"I never met up with a finer bunch of ladies," he assured them, again +and again. "Sure I'm comin' back again. Ask me. I've had a elegant time. +Elegant. I never met a finer bunch of ladies." + +They did not talk much in the train, he and Tyler. It was a sleepy lot +of boys that that train carried back to the Great Central Naval Station. +Tyler was undressed and in his hammock even before Moran, the expert. He +would not have to woo sleep to-night. Finally Moran, too, had swung +himself up to his precarious nest and relaxed with a tired, happy grunt. + +Quiet again brooded over the great dim barracks. Tyler felt himself +slipping off to sleep, deliciously. She would be there next Saturday. +Her first name, she had said, was Myrtle. An awful pretty name for a +girl. Just about the prettiest he had ever heard. Her folks invited +jackies to dinner at the house nearly every Sunday. Maybe, if they gave +him thirty-six hours' leave next time-- + +"Hey, Sweetheart!" sounded in a hissing whisper from Moran's hammock. + +"What?" + +"Say, was that four steps and then turn-turn, or four and two steps t' +the side? I kinda forgot." + +"O, shut up!" growled Monicker, from the other side. "Let a fellow +sleep, can't you! What do you think this is? A boarding school!" + +"Shut up yourself!" retorted Tyler, happily. "It's four steps, and two +to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn two, turn +two." + +"I was pretty sure," said Moran, humbly. And relaxed again. + +Quiet settled down upon the great room. There were only the sounds of +deep regular breathing, with an occasional grunt or sigh. The normal +sleep sounds of very tired boys. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cheerful--By Request, by Edna Ferber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST *** + +***** This file should be named 11395-8.txt or 11395-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/3/9/11395/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Cheerful--By Request + +Author: Edna Ferber + +Release Date: March 1, 2004 [EBook #11395] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<hr> +<p> </p> +<h1> + CHEERFUL ~<br> + <I>BY REQUEST</I> +</h1> + <p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<center> + <b>BY</b> +</center> + +<h2> + EDNA FERBER +</h2> +<p> </p> +<center> + AUTHOR OF "DAWN O'HARA," "BUTTERED SIDE DOWN"<br> + "ROAST BEEF MEDIUM," "FANNY HERSELF" +</center> +<p> </p> +<center> + 1918 +</center> + +<hr> +<a name="2H_TOC"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + CONTENTS +</h2> +<p> </p> + + + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_1"> +I. CHEERFUL—BY REQUEST +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_2"> +II. THE GAY OLD DOG +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_3"> +III. THE TOUGH GUY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_4"> +IV. THE ELDEST +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_5"> +V. THAT'S MARRIAGE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_6"> +VI. THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_7"> +VII. THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_8"> +VIII. THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_9"> +IX. THE GUIDING MISS GOWD +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_10"> +X. SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_11"> +XI. THE THREE OF THEM +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_12"> +XII. SHORE LEAVE +</a></p> +<p> </p> + + <hr> + + + + + + + + +<a name="2H_4_1"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + I +</h2> +<h2> + CHEERFUL—BY REQUEST +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh + cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from + the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a + Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of + business. +</p> +<p> + "Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate. Dear + me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express + that which is in his—ah—heart. But in the last year we've been swamped + with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know, + about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on + the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen + sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked + up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I'm not + demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could—that is—would + you—do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful + story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. + Not pink, but not all grey either. Say—mauve." ... +</p> +<p> + That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink. + Which makes mauve. +</p> +<p> + Unless you are connected (which you probably are not) with the great + firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have heard + of Josie Fifer. +</p> +<p> + There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A + statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special + writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce + courts—what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss + Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies + have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats for + breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson; pictures + of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage + hands rewriting it—long before the opening night we know more about the + piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager to + see it. +</p> +<p> + Josie Fifer's knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the + ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the + birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to + the closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of + inanition, old age, or—as was sometimes the case—before it was born, + it was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the + grave. +</p> +<p> + Her notification of its demise would come thus: +</p> +<p> + "Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe" (the property man of H. & L. at the + phone). +</p> +<p> + "Well?" +</p> +<p> + "A little waspish this morning, aren't you, Josephine?" +</p> +<p> + "I've got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 'Ataboy' company to + mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I'm + going to stand here wasting my—" +</p> +<p> + "All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that 'My Mistake' + closes Saturday. The stuff'll be up Monday morning early." +</p> +<p> + A sardonic laugh from Josie. "And yet they say 'What's in a name!'" +</p> +<p> + The unfortunate play had been all that its title implies. Its purpose + was to star an actress who hadn't a glint. Her second-act costume alone + had cost $700, but even Russian sable bands can't carry a bad play. The + critics had pounced on it with the savagery of their kind and hacked it, + limb from limb, leaving its carcass to rot under the pitiless white + glare of Broadway. The dress with the Russian sable bands went the way + of all Hahn & Lohman tragedies. Josie Fifer received it, if not + reverently, still appreciatively. +</p> +<p> + "I should think Sid Hahn would know by this time," she observed + sniffily, as her expert fingers shook out the silken folds and smoothed + the fabulous fur, "that auburn hair and a gurgle and a Lucille dress + don't make a play. Besides, Fritzi Kirke wears the biggest shoe of any + actress I ever saw. A woman with feet like that"—she picked up a satin + slipper, size 7½ C—"hasn't any business on the stage. She ought to + travel with a circus. Here, Etta. Hang this away in D, next to the + amethyst blue velvet, and be sure and lock the door." +</p> +<p> + McCabe had been right. A waspish wit was Josie's. +</p> +<p> + The question is whether to reveal to you now where it was that Josie + Fifer reigned thus, queen of the cast-offs; or to take you back to the + days that led up to her being there—the days when she was José Fyfer on + the programme. +</p> +<p> + Her domain was the storage warehouse of Hahn & Lohman, as you may have + guessed. If your business lay Forty-third Street way, you might have + passed the building a hundred times without once giving it a seeing + glance. It was not Forty-third Street of the small shops, the smart + crowds, and the glittering motors. It was the Forty-third lying east of + the Grand Central sluice gates; east of fashion; east, in a word, of + Fifth Avenue—a great square brick building smoke-grimed, cobwebbed, and + having the look of a cold-storage plant or a car barn fallen into + disuse; dusty, neglected, almost eerie. Yet within it lurks Romance, and + her sombre sister Tragedy, and their antic brother Comedy, the cut-up. +</p> +<p> + A worn flight of wooden steps leads up from the sidewalk to the dim + hallway; a musty-smelling passage wherein you are met by a genial sign + which reads: +</p> +<p> + "No admittance. Keep out. This means you." +</p> +<p> + To confirm this, the eye, penetrating the gloom, is confronted by a + great blank metal door that sheathes the elevator. To ride in that + elevator is to know adventure, so painfully, so protestingly, with such + creaks and jerks and lurchings does it pull itself from floor to floor, + like an octogenarian who, grunting and groaning, hoists himself from his + easy-chair by slow stages that wring a protest from ankle, knee, hip, + back and shoulder. The corkscrew stairway, broken and footworn though it + is, seems infinitely less perilous. +</p> +<p> + First floor—second—third—fourth. Whew! And there you are in Josie + Fifer's kingdom—a great front room, unexpectedly bright and even cosy + with its whir of sewing machines: tables, and tables, and tables, piled + with orderly stacks of every sort of clothing, from shoes to hats, from + gloves to parasols; and in the room beyond this, and beyond that, and + again beyond that, row after row of high wooden cabinets stretching the + width of the room, and forming innumerable aisles. All of Bluebeard's + wives could have been tucked away in one corner of the remotest and + least of these, and no one the wiser. All grimly shut and locked, they + are, with the key in Josie's pocket. But when, at the behest of McCabe, + or sometimes even Sid Hahn himself, she unlocked and opened one of + these doors, what treasures hung revealed! What shimmer and sparkle and + perfume—and moth balls! The long-tailed electric light bulb held high + in one hand, Josie would stand at the door like a priestess before her + altar. +</p> +<p> + There they swung, the ghosts and the skeletons, side by side. You + remember that slinking black satin snakelike sheath that Gita Morini + wore in "Little Eyolf"? There it dangles, limp, invertebrate, yet how + eloquent! No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with + its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin + collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it + she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a + long, long time. +</p> +<p> + Dresses there are that have made stage history. Surely you remember the + beruffled, rose-strewn confection in which the beautiful Elsa Marriott + swam into our ken in "Mississipp'"? She used to say, wistfully, that she + always got a hand on her entrance in that dress. It was due to the sheer + shock of delight that thrilled audience after audience as it beheld her + loveliness enhanced by this floating, diaphanous tulle cloud. There it + hangs, time-yellowed, its pristine freshness vanished quite, yet as + fragrant with romance as is the sere and withered blossom of a dead + white rose pressed within the leaves of a book of love poems. Just next + it, incongruously enough, flaunt the wicked froufrou skirts and the + low-cut bodice and the wasp waist of the abbreviated costume in which + Cora Kassell used so generously to display her charms. A rich and portly + society matron of Pittsburgh now—she whose name had been a synonym for + pulchritude these thirty years; she who had had more cold creams, hats, + cigars, corsets, horses, and lotions named for her than any woman in + history! Her ample girth would have wrought sad havoc with that + eighteen-inch waist now. Gone are the chaste curves of the slim white + silk legs that used to kick so lithely from the swirl of lace and + chiffon. Yet there it hangs, pertly pathetic, mute evidence of her + vanished youth, her delectable beauty, and her unblushing confidence in + those same. +</p> +<p> + Up one aisle and down the next—velvet, satin, lace and broadcloth—here + the costume the great Canfield had worn in Richard III; there the little + cocked hat and the slashed jerkin in which Maude Hammond, as Peterkins, + winged her way to fame up through the hearts of a million children whose + ages ranged from seven to seventy. Brocades and ginghams; tailor suits + and peignoirs; puffed sleeves and tight—dramatic history, all, they + spelled failure, success, hope, despair, vanity, pride, triumph, decay. + Tragic ghosts, over which Josie Fifer held grim sway! +</p> +<p> + Have I told you that Josie Fifer, moving nimbly about the great + storehouse, limped as she went? The left leg swung as a normal leg + should. The right followed haltingly, sagging at hip and knee. And that + brings us back to the reason for her being where she was. And what. +</p> +<p> + The story of how Josie Fifer came to be mistress of the cast-off robes + of the firm of Hahn & Lohman is one of those stage tragedies that never + have a public performance. Josie had been one of those little girls who + speak pieces at chicken-pie suppers held in the basement of the + Presbyterian church. Her mother had been a silly, idle woman addicted to + mother hubbards and paper-backed novels about the house. Her one passion + was the theatre, a passion that had very scant opportunity for feeding + in Wapello, Iowa. Josie's piece-speaking talent was evidently a direct + inheritance. Some might call it a taint. +</p> +<p> + Two days before one of Josie's public appearances her mother would twist + the child's hair into innumerable rag curlers that stood out in + grotesque, Topsy-like bumps all over her fair head. On the eventful + evening each rag chrysalis would burst into a full-blown butterfly curl. + In a pale-blue, lace-fretted dress over a pale-blue slip, made in what + her mother called "Empire style," Josie would deliver herself of + "Entertaining Big Sister's Beau" and other sophisticated classics with + an incredible ease and absence of embarrassment. It wasn't a definite + boldness in her. She merely liked standing there before all those + people, in her blue dress and her toe slippers, speaking her pieces with + enhancing gestures taught her by her mother in innumerable rehearsals. +</p> +<p> + Any one who has ever lived in Wapello, Iowa, or its equivalent, + remembers the old opera house on the corner of Main and Elm, with + Schroeder's drug store occupying the first floor. Opera never came + within three hundred miles of Wapello, unless it was the so-called + comic kind. It was before the day of the ubiquitous moving-picture + theatre that has since been the undoing of the one-night stand + and the ten-twenty-thirty stock company. The old red-brick opera + house furnished unlimited thrills for Josie and her mother. From + the time Josie was seven she was taken to see whatever Wapello was + offered in the way of the drama. That consisted mostly of plays of the + tell-me-more-about-me-mother type. +</p> +<p> + By the time she was ten she knew the whole repertoire of the Maude La + Vergne Stock Company by heart. She was <i>blasé</i> with "East Lynne" and + "The Two Orphans," and even "Camille" left her cold. She was as wise to + the trade tricks as is a New York first nighter. She would sit there in + the darkened auditorium of a Saturday afternoon, surveying the stage + with a judicious and undeceived eye, as she sucked indefatigably at a + lollipop extracted from the sticky bag clutched in one moist palm. (A + bag of candy to each and every girl; a ball or a top to each and every + boy!) Josie knew that the middle-aged <i>soubrette</i> who came out between + the first and second acts to sing a gingham-and-sunbonnet song would + whisk off to reappear immediately in knee-length pink satin and curls. + When the heroine left home in a shawl and a sudden snowstorm that + followed her upstage and stopped when she went off, Josie was + interested, but undeceived. She knew that the surprised-looking white + horse used in the Civil War comedy-drama entitled "His Southern + Sweetheart" came from Joe Brink's livery stable in exchange for four + passes, and that the faithful old negro servitor in the white cotton wig + would save somebody from something before the afternoon was over. +</p> +<p> + In was inevitable that as Josie grew older she should take part in + home-talent plays. It was one of these tinsel affairs that had made + clear to her just where her future lay. The Wapello <i>Daily Courier</i> + helped her in her decision. She had taken the part of a gipsy queen, + appropriately costumed in slightly soiled white satin slippers with + four-inch heels, and a white satin dress enhanced by a red sash, a black + velvet bolero, and large hoop earrings. She had danced and sung with a + pert confidence, and the <i>Courier</i> had pronounced her talents not + amateur, but professional, and had advised the managers (who, no doubt, + read the Wapello <i>Courier</i> daily, along with their <i>Morning Telegraph</i>) + to seek her out, and speedily. +</p> +<p> + Josie didn't wait for them to take the hint. She sought them out + instead. There followed seven tawdry, hard-working, heartbreaking years. + Supe, walk-on, stock, musical comedy—Josie went through them all. If + any illusions about the stage had survived her Wapello days, they would + have vanished in the first six months of her dramatic career. By the + time she was twenty-four she had acquired the wisdom of fifty, a + near-seal coat, a turquoise ring with a number of smoky-looking crushed + diamonds surrounding it, and a reputation for wit and for decency. The + last had cost the most. +</p> +<p> + During all these years of cheap theatrical boarding houses (the most + soul-searing cheapness in the world), of one-night stands, of insult, + disappointment, rebuff, and something that often came perilously near to + want, Josie Fifer managed to retain a certain humorous outlook on life. + There was something whimsical about it. She could even see a joke on + herself. When she first signed her name José Fyfer, for example, she did + it with, an appreciative giggle and a glint in her eye as she formed the + accent mark over the e. +</p> +<p> + "They'll never stop me now," she said. "I'm made. But I wish I knew if + that J was pronounced like H, in humbug. Are there any Spanish blondes?" +</p> +<p> + It used to be the habit of the other women in the company to say to her: + "Jo, I'm blue as the devil to-day. Come on, give us a laugh." +</p> +<p> + She always obliged. +</p> +<p> + And then came a Sunday afternoon in late August when her laugh broke off + short in the middle, and was forever after a stunted thing. +</p> +<p> + She was playing Atlantic City in a second-rate musical show. She had + never seen the ocean before, and she viewed it now with an appreciation + that still had in it something of a Wapello freshness. +</p> +<p> + They all planned to go in bathing that hot August afternoon after + rehearsal. Josie had seen pictures of the beauteous bathing girl dashing + into the foaming breakers. She ran across the stretch of glistening + beach, paused and struck a pose, one toe pointed waterward, her arms + extended affectedly. +</p> +<p> + "So!" she said mincingly. "So this is Paris!" +</p> +<p> + It was a new line in those days, and they all laughed, as she had meant + they should. So she leaped into the water with bounds and shouts and + much waving of white arms. A great floating derelict of a log struck her + leg with its full weight, and with all the tremendous force of the + breaker behind it. She doubled up ridiculously, and went down like a + shot. Those on the beach laughed again. When she came up, and they saw + her distorted face they stopped laughing, and fished her out. Her leg + was broken in two places, and mashed in a dozen. +</p> +<p> + José Fyfer's dramatic career was over. (This is not the cheery portion + of the story.) +</p> +<p> + When she came out of the hospital, three months later, she did very + well indeed with her crutches. But the merry-eyed woman had + vanished—she of the Wapello colouring that had persisted during + all these years. In her place limped a wan, shrunken, tragic little + figure whose humour had soured to a caustic wit. The near-seal coat and + the turquoise-and-crushed-diamond ring had vanished too. +</p> +<p> + During those agonized months she had received from the others in + the company such kindness and generosity as only stage folk can + show—flowers, candy, dainties, magazines, sent by every one from the + prima donna to the call boy. Then the show left town. There came a few + letters of kind inquiry, then an occasional post card, signed by half a + dozen members of the company. Then these ceased. Josie Fifer, in her + cast and splints and bandages and pain, dragged out long hospital days + and interminable hospital nights. She took a dreary pleasure in + following the tour of her erstwhile company via the pages of the + theatrical magazines. +</p> +<p> + "They're playing Detroit this week," she would announce to the aloof and + spectacled nurse. Or: "One-night stands, and they're due in Muncie, + Ind., to-night. I don't know which is worse—playing Muncie for one + night or this moan factory for a three month's run." +</p> +<p> + When she was able to crawl out as far as the long corridor she spoke to + every one she met. As she grew stronger she visited here and there, and + on the slightest provocation she would give a scene ranging all the way + from "Romeo and Juliet" to "The Black Crook." It was thus she first met + Sid Hahn, and felt the warming, healing glow of his friendship. +</p> +<p> + Some said that Sid Hahn's brilliant success as a manager at thirty-five + was due to his ability to pick winners. Others thought it was his + refusal to be discouraged when he found he had picked a failure. Still + others, who knew him better, were likely to say: "Why, I don't know. + It's a sort of—well, you might call it charm—and yet—. Did you ever see + him smile? He's got a million-dollar grin. You can't resist it." +</p> +<p> + None of them was right. Or all of them. Sid Hahn, erstwhile usher, call + boy, press agent, advance man, had a genius for things theatrical. It + was inborn. Dramatic, sensitive, artistic, intuitive, he was often + rendered inarticulate by the very force and variety of his feelings. A + little, rotund, ugly man, Sid Hahn, with the eyes of a dreamer, the + wide, mobile mouth of a humourist, the ears of a comic ol'-clo'es man. + His generosity was proverbial, and it amounted to a vice. +</p> +<p> + In September he had come to Atlantic City to try out "Splendour." It was + a doubtful play, by a new author, starring Sarah Haddon for the first + time. No one dreamed the play would run for years, make a fortune for + Hahn, lift Haddon from obscurity to the dizziest heights of stardom, and + become a classic of the stage. +</p> +<p> + Ten minutes before the curtain went up on the opening performance Hahn + was stricken with appendicitis. There was not even time to rush him to + New York. He was on the operating table before the second act was + begun. When he came out of the ether he said: "How did it go?" +</p> +<p> + "Fine!" beamed the nurse. "You'll be out in two weeks." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, hell! I don't mean the operation. I mean the play." +</p> +<p> + He learned soon enough from the glowing, starry-eyed Sarah Haddon and + from every one connected with the play. He insisted on seeing them all + daily, against his doctor's orders, and succeeded in working up a + temperature that made his hospital stay a four weeks' affair. He refused + to take the tryout results as final. +</p> +<p> + "Don't be too bubbly about this thing," he cautioned Sarah Haddon. "I've + seen too many plays that were skyrockets on the road come down like + sticks when they struck New York." +</p> +<p> + The company stayed over in Atlantic City for a week, and Hahn held + scraps of rehearsals in his room when he had a temperature of 102. Sarah + Haddon worked like a slave. She seemed to realise that her great + opportunity had come—the opportunity for which hundreds of gifted + actresses wait a lifetime. Haddon was just twenty-eight then—a year + younger than Josie Fifer. She had not yet blossomed into the full + radiance of her beauty. She was too slender, and inclined to stoop a + bit, but her eyes were glorious, her skin petal-smooth, her whole face + reminding one, somehow, of an intelligent flower. Her voice was a + golden, liquid delight. +</p> +<p> + Josie Fifer, dragging herself from bed to chair, and from chair to bed, + used to watch for her. Hahn's room was on her floor. Sarah Haddon, in + her youth and beauty and triumph, represented to Josie all that she had + dreamed of and never realised; all that she had hoped for and never + could know. She used to insist on having her door open, and she would + lie there for hours, her eyes fixed on that spot in the hall across + which Haddon would flash for one brief instant on her way to the room + down the corridor. There is about a successful actress a certain radiant + something—a glamour, a luxuriousness, an atmosphere that suggest a + mysterious mixture of silken things, of perfume, of adulation, of all + that is rare and costly and perishable and desirable. +</p> +<p> + Josie Fifer's stage experience had included none of this. But she knew + they were there. She sensed that to this glorious artist would come all + those fairy gifts that Josie Fifer would never possess. All things about + her—her furs, her gloves, her walk, her hats, her voice, her very shoe + ties—were just what Josie would have wished for. As she lay there she + developed a certain grim philosophy. +</p> +<p> + "She's got everything a woman could wish for. Me, I haven't got a thing. + Not a blamed thing! And yet they say everything works out in the end + according to some scheme or other. Well, what's the answer to this, I + wonder? I can't make it come out right. I guess one of the figures must + have got away from me." +</p> +<p> + In the second week of Sid Hahn's convalescence he heard, somehow, of + Josie Fifer. It was characteristic of him that he sent for her. She put + a chiffon scarf about the neck of her skimpy little kimono, spent an + hour and ten minutes on her hair, made up outrageously with that sublime + unconsciousness that comes from too close familiarity with rouge pad and + grease jar, and went. She was trembling as though facing a first-night + audience in a part she wasn't up on. Between the crutches, the lameness, + and the trembling she presented to Sid Hahn, as she stood in the + doorway, a picture that stabbed his kindly, sensitive heart with a quick + pang of sympathy. +</p> +<p> + He held out his hand. Josie's crept into it. At the feel of that + generous friendly clasp she stopped trembling. Said Hahn: +</p> +<p> + "My nurse tells me that you can do a bedside burlesque of 'East Lynne' + that made even that Boston-looking interne with the thick glasses laugh. + Go on and do it for me, there's a good girl. I could use a laugh myself + just now." +</p> +<p> + And Josie Fifer caught up a couch cover for a cloak, with the scarf that + was about her neck for a veil, and, using Hahn himself as the ailing + chee-ild, gave a biting burlesque of the famous bedside visit that + brought the tears of laughter to his eyes, and the nurse flying from + down the hall. "This won't do," said that austere person. +</p> +<p> + "Won't, eh? Go on and stick your old thermometer in my mouth. What do I + care! A laugh like that is worth five degrees of temperature." +</p> +<p> + When Josie rose to leave he eyed her keenly, and pointed to the dragging + leg. +</p> +<p> + "How about that? Temporary or permanent?" +</p> +<p> + "Permanent." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, fudge! Who's telling you that? These days they can do—" +</p> +<p> + "Not with this, though. That one bone was mashed into about twenty-nine + splinters, and when it came to putting 'em together again a couple of + pieces were missing. I must've mislaid 'em somewhere. Anyway, I make a + limping exit—for life." +</p> +<p> + "Then no more stage for you—eh, my girl?" +</p> +<p> + "No more stage." +</p> +<p> + Hahn reached for a pad of paper on the table at his bedside, scrawled a + few words on it, signed it "S.H." in the fashion which became famous, + and held the paper out to her. +</p> +<p> + "When you get out of here," he said, "you come to New York, and up to my + office; see? Give 'em this at the door. I've got a job for you—if you + want it." +</p> +<p> + And that was how Josie Fifer came to take charge of the great Hahn & + Lohman storehouse. It was more than a storehouse. It was a museum. It + housed the archives of the American stage. If Hahn & Lohman prided + themselves on one thing more than on another, it was the lavish + generosity with which they invested a play, from costumes to carpets. A + period play was a period play when they presented it. You never saw a + French clock on a Dutch mantel in a Hahn & Lohman production. No hybrid + hangings marred their back drop. No matter what the play, the firm + provided its furnishings from the star's slippers to the chandeliers. + Did a play last a year or a week, at the end of its run furniture, + hangings, scenery, rugs, gowns, everything, went off in wagonloads to + the already crowded storehouse on East Forty-third Street. +</p> +<p> + Sometimes a play proved so popular that its original costumes, outworn, + had to be renewed. Sometimes the public cried "Thumbs down!" at the + opening performance, and would have none of it thereafter. That meant + that costumes sometimes reached Josie Fifer while the wounds of the + dressmaker's needle still bled in them. And whether for a week or a year + fur on a Hahn & Lohman costume was real fur; its satin was silk-backed, + its lace real lace. No paste, or tinsel, or cardboard about H. & L.! + Josie Fifer could recall the scenes in a play, step by step from noting + with her keen eye the marks left on costume after costume by the ravages + of emotion. At the end of a play's run she would hold up a dress for + critical inspection, turning it this way and that. +</p> +<p> + "This is the dress she wore in her big scene at the end of the second + act where she crawls on her knees to her wronged husband and pounds on + the door and weeps. She certainly did give it some hard wear. When + Marriott crawls she crawls, and when she bawls she bawls. I'll say that + for her. From the looks of this front breadth she must have worn a + groove in the stage at the York." +</p> +<p> + No gently sentimental reason caused Hahn & Lohman to house these + hundreds of costumes, these tons of scenery, these forests of furniture. + Neither had Josie Fifer been hired to walk wistfully among them like a + spinster wandering in a dead rose garden. No, they were stored for a + much thriftier reason. They were stored, if you must know, for possible + future use. H. & L. were too clever not to use a last year's costume for + a this year's road show. They knew what a coat of enamel would do for a + bedroom set. It was Josie Fifer's duty not only to tabulate and care for + these relics, but to refurbish them when necessary. The sewing was done + by a little corps of assistants under Josie's direction. +</p> +<p> + But all this came with the years. When Josie Fifer, white and weak, + first took charge of the H. & L. <i>lares et penates</i>, she told herself it + was only for a few months—a year or two at most. The end of sixteen + years found her still there. +</p> +<p> + When she came to New York, "Splendour" was just beginning its phenomenal + three years' run. The city was mad about the play. People came to see + it again and again—a sure sign of a long run. The Sarah Haddon second-act + costume was photographed, copied (unsuccessfully), talked about, until + it became as familiar as a uniform. That costume had much to do + with the play's success, though Sarah Haddon would never admit it. + "Splendour" was what is known as a period play. The famous dress was of + black velvet, made with a quaint, full-gathered skirt that made Haddon's + slim waist seem fairylike and exquisitely supple. The black velvet + bodice outlined the delicate swell of the bust. A rope of pearls + enhanced the whiteness of her throat. Her hair, done in old-time + scallops about her forehead, was a gleaming marvel of simplicity, and + the despair of every woman who tried to copy it. The part was that of an + Italian opera singer. The play pulsated with romance and love, glamour + and tragedy. Sarah Haddon, in her flowing black velvet robe and her + pearls and her pallor, was an exotic, throbbing, exquisite realisation + of what every woman in the audience dreamed of being and every man + dreamed of loving. +</p> +<p> + Josie Fifer saw the play for the first time from a balcony seat given + her by Sid Hahn. It left her trembling, red-eyed, shaken. After that she + used to see it, by hook or crook whenever possible. She used to come in + at the stage door and lurk back of the scenes and in the wings when she + had no business there. She invented absurd errands to take her to the + theatre where "Splendour" was playing. Sid Hahn always said that after + the big third-act scene he liked to watch the audience swim up the + aisle. Josie, hidden in the back-stage shadows, used to watch, + fascinated, breathless. Then, one night, she indiscreetly was led, by + her, absorbed interest, to venture too far into the wings. It was + during the scene where Haddon, hearing a broken-down street singer + cracking the golden notes of "Aïda" into a thousand mutilated fragments, + throws open her window and, leaning far out, pours a shower of Italian + and broken English and laughter and silver coin upon her amazed + compatriot below. +</p> +<p> + When the curtain went down she came off raging. +</p> +<p> + "What was that? Who was that standing in the wings? How dare any one + stand there! Everybody knows I can't have any one in the wings. Staring! + It ruined my scene to-night. Where's McCabe? Tell Mr. Hahn I want to see + him. Who was it? Staring at me like a ghost!" +</p> +<p> + Josie had crept away, terrified, contrite, and yet resentful. But the + next week saw her back at the theatre, though she took care to stay in + the shadows. +</p> +<p> + She was waiting for the black velvet dress. It was more than a dress to + her. It was infinitely more than a stage costume. It was the habit of + glory. It epitomised all that Josie Fifer had missed of beauty and + homage and success. +</p> +<p> + The play ran on, and on, and on. Sarah Haddon was superstitious about + the black gown. She refused to give it up for a new one. She insisted + that if ever she discarded the old black velvet for a new the run of the + play would stop. She assured Hahn that its shabbiness did not show from + the front. She clung to it with that childish unreasonableness that is + so often found in people of the stage. +</p> +<p> + But Josie waited patiently. Dozens of costumes passed through her + hands. She saw plays come and go. Dresses came to her whose lining bore + the mark of world-famous modistes. She hung them away, or refurbished + them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness. Sometimes her + caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the complacency of + the erstwhile wearers of the garments. Her knowledge of the stage, its + artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was widening and + deepening. No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening clothes was more + scathingly severe than she. She sewed on satin. She mended fine lace. + She polished stage jewels. And waited. She knew that one day her + patience would be rewarded. And then, at last came the familiar voice + over the phone: "Hello, Fifer! McCabe talking." +</p> +<p> + "Well?" +</p> +<p> + "'Splendour' closes Saturday. Haddon says she won't play in this heat. + They're taking it to London in the autumn. The stuff'll be up Monday, + early." +</p> +<p> + Josie Fifer turned away from the telephone with a face so radiant that + one of her sewing women, looking up, was moved to comment. +</p> +<p> + "Got some good news, Miss Fifer?" +</p> +<p> + "'Splendour' closes this week." +</p> +<p> + "Well, my land! To look at you a person would think you'd been losing + money at the box office every night it ran." +</p> +<p> + The look was still on her face when Monday morning came. She was sewing + on a dress just discarded by Adelaide French, the tragédienne. + Adelaide's maid was said to be the hardest-worked woman in the + profession. When French finished with a costume it was useless as a + dress; but it was something historic, like a torn and tattered battle + flag—an emblem. +</p> +<p> + McCabe, box under his arm, stood in the doorway. Josie Fifer stood up so + suddenly that the dress on her lap fell to the floor. She stepped over + it heedlessly, and went toward McCabe, her eyes on the pasteboard box. + Behind McCabe stood two more men, likewise box-laden. +</p> +<p> + "Put them down here," said Josie. The men thumped the boxes down on the + long table. Josie's fingers were already at the strings. She opened the + first box, emptied its contents, tossed them aside, passed on to the + second. Her hands busied themselves among the silks and broadcloth of + this; then on to the third and last box. McCabe and his men, with + scenery and furniture still to unload and store, turned to go. Their + footsteps echoed hollowly as they clattered down the worn old stairway. + Josie snapped the cord that bound the third box. Her cheeks were + flushed, her eyes bright. She turned it upside down. Then she pawed it + over. Then she went back to the contents of the first two boxes, clawing + about among the limp garments with which the table was strewn. She was + breathing quickly. Suddenly: "It isn't here!" she cried. "It isn't + here!" She turned and flew to the stairway. The voices of the men came + up to her. She leaned far over the railing. "McCabe! McCabe!" +</p> +<p> + "Yeh? What do you want?" +</p> +<p> + "The black velvet dress! The black velvet dress! It isn't there." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yeh. That's all right. Haddon, she's got a bug about that dress, + and she says she wants to take it to London with her, to use on the + opening night. She says if she wears a new one that first night, the + play'll be a failure. Some temperament, that girl, since she's got to be + a star!" +</p> +<p> + Josie stood clutching the railing of the stairway. Her disappointment + was so bitter that she could not weep. She felt cheated, outraged. She + was frightened at the intensity of her own sensations. "She might have + let me have it," she said aloud in the dim half light of the hallway. + "She's got everything else in the world. She might have let me have + that." +</p> +<p> + Then she went back into the big, bright sewing room. "Splendour" ran + three years in London. +</p> +<p> + During those three years she saw Sid Hahn only three or four times. He + spent much of his time abroad. Whenever opportunity presented itself she + would say: "Is 'Splendour' still playing in London?" +</p> +<p> + "Still playing." +</p> +<p> + The last time Hahn, intuitive as always, had eyed her curiously. "You + seem to be interested in that play." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, well," Josie had replied with assumed carelessness, "it being in + Atlantic City just when I had my accident, and then meeting you through + that, and all, why, I always kind of felt a personal interest in it." ... +</p> +<p> + At the end of three years Sarah Haddon returned to New York with an + English accent, a slight embonpoint, and a little foreign habit of + rushing up to her men friends with a delighted exclamation (preferably + French) and kissing them on both cheeks. When Josie Fifer, happening + back stage at a rehearsal of the star's new play, first saw her do this + a grim gleam came into her eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Bernhardt's the only woman who can spring that and get away with it," + she said to her assistant. "Haddon's got herself sized up wrong. I'll + gamble her next play will be a failure." +</p> +<p> + And it was. +</p> +<p> + The scenery, props, and costumes of the London production of "Splendour" + were slow in coming back. But finally they did come. Josie received them + with the calmness that comes of hope deferred. It had been three years + since she last saw the play. She told herself, chidingly, that she had + been sort of foolish over that play and this costume. Her recent glimpse + of Haddon had been somewhat disillusioning. But now, when she finally + held the gown itself in her hand—the original "Splendour" second-act + gown, a limp, soft black mass: just a few yards of worn and shabby + velvet—she found her hands shaking. Here was where she had hugged the + toy dog to her breast. Here where she had fallen on her knees to pray + before the little shrine in her hotel room. Every worn spot had a + meaning for her. Every mark told a story. Her fingers smoothed it + tenderly. +</p> +<p> + "Not much left of that," said one of the sewing girls, glancing up. "I + guess Sarah would have a hard time making the hooks and eyes meet now. + They say she's come home from London looking a little too prosperous." +</p> +<p> + Josie did not answer. She folded the dress over her arm and carried it + to the wardrobe room. There she hung it away in an empty closet, quite + apart from the other historic treasures. And there it hung, untouched, + until the following Sunday. +</p> +<p> + On Sunday morning East Forty-third Street bears no more resemblance to + the week-day Forty-third than does a stiffly starched and subdued + Sabbath-school scholar to his Monday morning self. Strangely quiet it + is, and unfrequented. Josie Fifer, scurrying along in the unwonted + stillness, was prompted to throw a furtive glance over her shoulder now + and then, as though afraid of being caught at some criminal act. She ran + up the little flight of steps with a rush, unlocked the door with + trembling fingers, and let herself into the cool, dank gloom of the + storehouse hall. The metal door of the elevator stared inquiringly after + her. She fled past it to the stairway. Every step of that ancient + structure squeaked and groaned. First floor, second, third, fourth. The + everyday hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be + holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the + worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to + see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, + wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast + room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous + little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a + near-by table and disappeared into the wardrobe room beyond. +</p> +<p> + Minutes passed—an hour. She did not come back. From the room beyond + came strange sounds—a woman's voice; the thrill of a song; cries; the + anguish of tears; laughter, harsh and high, as a desperate and deceived + woman laughs—all this following in such rapid succession that Sid Hahn, + puffing laboriously up the four flights of stairs leading to the + wardrobe floor, entered the main room unheard. Unknown to any one, he + was indulging in one of his unsuspected visits to the old wareroom that + housed the evidence of past and gone successes—successes that had + brought him fortune and fame, but little real happiness, perhaps. No one + knew that he loved to browse among these pathetic rags of a forgotten + triumph. No one would have dreamed that this chubby little man could + glow and weep over the cast-off garment of a famous Cyrano, or the faded + finery of a Zaza. +</p> +<p> + At the doorway he paused now, startled. He was listening with every + nerve of his taut body. What? Who? He tiptoed across the room with a + step incredibly light for one so stout, peered cautiously around the + side of the doorway, and leaned up against it weakly. Josie Fifer, in + the black velvet and mock pearls of "Splendour," with her grey-streaked + blonde hair hidden under the romantic scallops of a black wig, was + giving the big scene from the third act. And though it sounded like a + burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever + as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black + wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy + awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in + Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. He shrank back now. +</p> +<p> + She was coming to the big speech at the close of the act—the big + renunciation speech that was the curtain. Sid Hahn turned and tiptoed + painfully, breathlessly, magnificently, out of the big front room, into + the hallway, down the creaking stairs, and so to the sunshine of + Forty-third Street, with its unaccustomed Sunday-morning quiet. And he + was smiling that rare and melting smile of his—the smile that was said + to make him look something like a kewpie, and something like a cupid, + and a bit like an imp, and very much like an angel. There was little of + the first three in it now, and very much of the last. And so he got + heavily into his very grand motor car and drove off. +</p> +<p> + "Why, the poor little kid," said he—"the poor, lonely, stifled little + crippled-up kid." +</p> +<p> + "I beg your pardon, sir?" inquired his chauffeur. +</p> +<p> + "Speak when you're spoken to," snapped Sid Hahn. +</p> +<p> + And here it must be revealed to you that Sid Hahn did not marry the + Cinderella of the storage warehouse. He did not marry anybody, and + neither did Josie. And yet there is a bit more to this story—ten years + more, if you must know—ten years, the end of which found Josie a + sparse, spectacled, and agile little cripple, as alert and caustic as + ever. It found Sid Hahn the most famous theatrical man of his day. It + found Sarah Haddon at the fag-end of a career that had blazed with + triumph and adulation. She had never had a success like "Splendour." + Indeed, there were those who said that all the plays that followed had + been failures, carried to semi-success on the strength of that play's + glorious past. She eschewed low-cut gowns now. She knew that it is the + telltale throat which first shows the marks of age. She knew, too, why + Bernhardt, in "Camille," always died in a high-necked nightgown. She + took to wearing high, ruffled things about her throat, and softening, + kindly chiffons. +</p> +<p> + And then, in a mistaken moment, they planned a revival of "Splendour." + Sarah Haddon would again play the part that had become a classic. + Fathers had told their children of it—of her beauty, her golden voice, + the exquisite grace of her, the charm, the tenderness, the pathos. And + they told them of the famous black velvet dress, and how in it she had + moved like a splendid, buoyant bird. +</p> +<p> + So they revived "Splendour." And men and women brought their sons and + daughters to see. And what they saw was a stout, middle-aged woman in a + too-tight black velvet dress that made her look like a dowager. And when + this woman flopped down on her knees in the big scene at the close of + the last act she had a rather dreadful time of it getting up again. + And the audience, resentful, bewildered, cheated of a precious memory, + laughed. That laugh sealed the career of Sarah Haddon. It is a + fickle thing, this public that wants to be amused; fickle and cruel + and—paradoxically enough—true to its superstitions. The Sarah Haddon + of eighteen years ago was one of these. They would have none of this + fat, puffy, ample-bosomed woman who was trying to blot her picture from + their memory. "Away with her!" cried the critics through the columns of + next morning's paper. And Sarah Haddon's day was done. +</p> +<p> + "It's because I didn't wear the original black velvet dress!" cried she, + with the unreasoning rage for which she had always been famous. "If I + had worn it, everything would have been different. That dress had a + good-luck charm. Where is it? I want it. I don't care if they do take + off the play. I want it. I want it." +</p> +<p> + "Why, child," Sid Hahn said soothingly, "that dress has probably fallen + into dust by this time." +</p> +<p> + "Dust! What do you mean? How old do you think I am? That you should say + that to me! I've made millions for you, and now—" +</p> +<p> + "Now, now, Sally, be a good girl. That's all rot about that dress being + lucky. You've grown out of this part; that's all. We'll find another + play—" +</p> +<p> + "I want that dress." +</p> +<p> + Sid Hahn flushed uncomfortably. "Well, if you must know, I gave it + away." +</p> +<p> + "To whom?" +</p> +<p> + "To—to Josie Fifer. She took a notion to it, and so I told her she + could have it." Then, as Sarah Haddon rose, dried her eyes, and began to + straighten her hat: "Where are you going?" He trailed her to the door + worriedly. "Now, Sally, don't do anything foolish. You're just tired and + overstrung. Where are you—" +</p> +<p> + "I am going to see Josie Fifer." +</p> +<p> + "Now, look here, Sarah!" +</p> +<p> + But she was off, and Sid Hahn could only follow after, the showman in + him anticipating the scene that was to follow. When he reached the + fourth floor of the storehouse Sarah Haddon was there ahead of him. The + two women—one tall, imperious, magnificent in furs; the other shrunken, + deformed, shabby—stood staring at each other from opposites sides of + the worktable. And between them, in a crumpled, grey-black heap, lay the + velvet gown. +</p> +<p> + "I don't care who says you can have it," Josie Fifer's shrill voice was + saying. "It's mine, and I'm going to keep it. Mr. Hahn himself gave it + to me. He said I could cut it up for a dress or something if I wanted + to. Long ago." Then, as Sid Hahn himself appeared, she appealed to him. + "There he is now. Didn't you, Mr. Hahn? Didn't you say I could have it? + Years ago?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, Jo," said Sid Hahn. "It's yours, to do with as you wish." +</p> +<p> + Sarah Haddon, who never had been denied anything in all her pampered + life, turned to him now. Her bosom rose and fell. She was breathing + sharply. "But S.H.!" she cried, "S.H., I've got to have it. Don't you + see, I want it! It's all I've got left in the world of what I used to + be. I want it!" She began to cry, and it was not acting. +</p> +<p> + Josie Fifer stood staring at her, her eyes wide with horror and + unbelief. +</p> +<p> + "Why, say, listen! Listen! You can have it. I didn't know you wanted it + as bad as that. Why, you can have it. I want you to take it. Here." +</p> +<p> + She shoved it across the table. Sarah reached out for it quickly. She + rolled it up in a tight bundle and whisked off with it without a + backward glance at Josie or at Hahn. She was still sobbing as she went + down the stairs. +</p> +<p> + The two stood staring at each other ludicrously. Hahn spoke first. +</p> +<p> + "I'm sorry, Josie. That was nice of you, giving it to her like that." +</p> +<p> + But Josie did not seem to hear. At least she paid no attention to his + remark. She was staring at him with that dazed and wide-eyed look of + one upon whom a great truth has just dawned. Then, suddenly, she began + to laugh. She laughed a high, shrill laugh that was not so much an + expression of mirth as of relief. +</p> +<p> + Sid Hahn put up a pudgy hand in protest. "Josie! Please! For the love of + Heaven don't <i>you</i> go and get it. I've had to do with one hysterical + woman to-day. Stop that laughing! Stop it!" +</p> +<p> + Josie stopped, not abruptly, but in a little series of recurring + giggles. Then these subsided and she was smiling. It wasn't at all her + usual smile. The bitterness was quite gone from it. She faced Sid Hahn + across the table. Her palms were outspread, as one who would make things + plain. "I wasn't hysterical. I was just laughing. I've been about + seventeen years earning that laugh. Don't grudge it to me." +</p> +<p> + "Let's have the plot," said Hahn. +</p> +<p> + "There isn't any. You see, it's just—well, I've just discovered how it + works out. After all these years! She's had everything she wanted all + her life. And me, I've never had anything. Not a thing. She's travelled + one way, and I've travelled in the opposite direction, and where has it + brought us? Here we are, both fighting over an old black velvet rag. + Don't you see? Both wanting the same—" She broke off, with the little + twisted smile on her lips again. "Life's a strange thing, Mr. Hahn." +</p> +<p> + "I hope, Josie, you don't claim any originality for that remark," + replied Sid Hahn dryly. +</p> +<p> + "But," argued the editor, "you don't call this a cheerful story, I + hope." +</p> +<p> + "Well, perhaps not exactly boisterous. But it teaches a lesson, and all + that. And it's sort of philosophical and everything, don't you think?" +</p> +<p> + The editor shuffled the sheets together decisively, so that they formed + a neat sheaf. "I'm afraid I didn't make myself quite clear. It's + entertaining, and all that, but—ah—in view of our present needs, I'm + sorry to say we—" +</p> +<a name="2H_4_2"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + II +</h2> +<h2> + THE GAY OLD DOG +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + Those of you who have dwelt—or even lingered—in Chicago, Illinois + (this is not a humorous story), are familiar with the region known as + the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point + between New York and San Francisco there is presented this brief + explanation: +</p> +<p> + The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron + arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would + be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from + Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete + circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels, + the theatres, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (diluted) and the + Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And he who frequents it by night in + search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound. +</p> +<p> + Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights + granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third + row, aisle, left. When a new loop café was opened Jo's table always + commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing. On entering + he was wont to say, "Hello, Gus," with careless cordiality to the head + waiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to table as he + removed his gloves. He ordered things under glass, so that his table, at + midnight or thereabouts, resembled a hot-bed that favours the bell + system. The waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes his + own salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice, + lemon, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite + of it. People at near-by tables would lay down their knives and forks to + watch, fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie in using all the oil + in sight and calling for more. +</p> +<p> + That was Jo—a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, + roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth + that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist + belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up + Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb + with a jaunty youthfulness against which every one of his fat-encased + muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending on one's + vision. +</p> +<p> + The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz. He had + been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and harassed brother of + three unwed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of how Jo + Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be compressed within the + limits of a short story. It should be told as are the photo plays, with + frequent throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of + a man's life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal + economy amounting to parsimony. +</p> +<p> + At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the + wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who + called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now + and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes—a wrinkle that + had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving + him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a + three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a + fixture. +</p> +<p> + Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously + made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the + living. +</p> +<p> + "Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls." +</p> +<p> + "I will, Ma," Jo had choked. +</p> +<p> + "Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the + girls are all provided for." Then as Joe had hesitated, appalled: "Joey, + it's my dying wish. Promise!" +</p> +<p> + "I promise, Ma," he had said. +</p> +<p> + Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a + completely ruined life. +</p> +<p> + They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too. + That is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over + on the West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way. + She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated + steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it—or + fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle + knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a + mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads + of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went + home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress. + Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't + really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like + Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of + its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she + affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with a rose stuck + through it. +</p> +<p> + Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household + leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept + house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the family + beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her sleep until + ten. +</p> +<p> + This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was + an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't + consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put + you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of three sisters, it + means that you must constantly be calling for, escorting, or dropping + one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's age were standing before their + mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while + they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon + for a shot-silk, and at the last moment decided against the shot-silk in + favor of a plain black-and-white, because she had once said she + preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his feathers + for conquest, was saying: +</p> +<p> + "Well, my God, I <i>am</i> hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I just got + home. You girls have been laying around the house all day. No wonder + you're ready." +</p> +<p> + He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a time + when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and brilliant-hued + socks, according to the style of that day, and the inalienable right of + any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those rare occasions when + his business necessitated an out-of-town trip, he would spend half a day + floundering about the shops, selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, or + feathers, or fans, or gloves for the girls. They always turned out to be + the wrong kind, judging by their reception. +</p> +<p> + From Carrie, "What in the world do I want of a fan!" +</p> +<p> + "I thought you didn't have one," Jo would say. +</p> +<p> + "I haven't. I never go to dances." +</p> +<p> + Jo would pass a futile hand over the top of his head, as was his way + when disturbed. "I just thought you'd like one. I thought every girl + liked a fan. Just," feebly, "just to—to have." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, for pity's sake!" +</p> +<p> + And from Eva or Babe, "I've <i>got</i> silk stockings, Jo." Or, "You brought + me handkerchiefs the last time." +</p> +<p> + There was something selfish in his giving, as there always is in any + gift freely and joyfully made. They never suspected the exquisite + pleasure it gave him to select these things; these fine, soft, silken + things. There were many things about this slow-going, amiable brother of + theirs that they never suspected. If you had told them he was a dreamer + of dreams, for example, they would have been amused. Sometimes, + dead-tired by nine o'clock, after a hard day down town, he would doze + over the evening paper. At intervals he would wake, red-eyed, to a + snatch of conversation such as, "Yes, but if you get a blue you can wear + it anywhere. It's dressy, and at the same time it's quiet, too." Eva, + the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring + dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old + smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had + banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, + and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening + clothes. The kind of man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a + toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in + a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was + transformed into a brocaded and chandeliered rendezvous for the + brilliance of the city. Beauty was here, and wit. But none so beautiful + and witty as She. Mrs.—er—Jo Hertz. There was wine, of course; but no + vulgar display. There was music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter. And + he the gracious, tactful host, king of his own domain— +</p> +<p> + "Jo, for heaven's sake, if you're going to snore go to bed!" +</p> +<p> + "Why—did I fall asleep?" +</p> +<p> + "You haven't been doing anything else all evening. A person would think + you were fifty instead of thirty." +</p> +<p> + And Jo Hertz was again just the dull, grey, commonplace brother of three + well-meaning sisters. +</p> +<p> + Babe used to say petulantly, "Jo, why don't you ever bring home any of + your men friends? A girl might as well not have any brother, all the + good you do." +</p> +<p> + Jo, conscience-stricken, did his best to make amends. But a man who + has been petticoat-ridden for years loses the knack, somehow, of + comradeship with men. He acquires, too, a knowledge of women, and + a distaste for them, equalled only, perhaps, by that of an + elevator-starter in a department store. +</p> +<p> + Which brings us to one Sunday in May. Jo came home from a late Sunday + afternoon walk to find company for supper. Carrie often had in one of + her school-teacher friends, or Babe one of her frivolous intimates, or + even Eva a staid guest of the old-girl type. There was always a Sunday + night supper of potato salad, and cold meat, and coffee, and perhaps a + fresh cake. Jo rather enjoyed it, being a hospitable soul. But he + regarded the guests with the undazzled eyes of a man to whom they were + just so many petticoats, timid of the night streets and requiring escort + home. If you had suggested to him that some of his sisters' popularity + was due to his own presence, or if you had hinted that the more + kittenish of these visitors were probably making eyes at him, he would + have stared in amazement and unbelief. +</p> +<p> + This Sunday night it turned out to be one of Carrie's friends. +</p> +<p> + "Emily," said Carrie, "this is my brother, Jo." +</p> +<p> + Jo had learned what to expect in Carrie's friends. Drab-looking women in + the late thirties, whose facial lines all slanted downward. +</p> +<p> + "Happy to meet you," said Jo, and looked down at a different sort + altogether. A most surprisingly different sort, for one of Carrie's + friends. This Emily person was very small, and fluffy, and blue-eyed, + and sort of—well, crinkly looking. You know. The corners of her mouth + when she smiled, and her eyes when she looked up at you, and her hair, + which was brown, but had the miraculous effect, somehow, of being + golden. +</p> +<p> + Jo shook hands with her. Her hand was incredibly small, and soft, so + that you were afraid of crushing it, until you discovered she had a firm + little grip all her own. It surprised and amused you, that grip, as does + a baby's unexpected clutch on your patronising forefinger. As Jo felt it + in his own big clasp, the strangest thing happened to him. Something + inside Jo Hertz stopped working for a moment, then lurched sickeningly, + then thumped like mad. It was his heart. He stood staring down at her, + and she up at him, until the others laughed. Then their hands fell + apart, lingeringly. +</p> +<p> + "Are you a school-teacher, Emily?" he said. +</p> +<p> + "Kindergarten. It's my first year. And don't call me Emily, please." +</p> +<p> + "Why not? It's your name. I think it's the prettiest name in the world." + Which he hadn't meant to say at all. In fact, he was perfectly aghast to + find himself saying it. But he meant it. +</p> +<p> + At supper he passed her things, and stared, until everybody laughed + again, and Eva said acidly, "Why don't you feed her?" +</p> +<p> + It wasn't that Emily had an air of helplessness. She just made you feel + you wanted her to be helpless, so that you could help her. +</p> +<p> + Jo took her home, and from that Sunday night he began to strain at the + leash. He took his sisters out, dutifully, but he would suggest, with a + carelessness that deceived no one, "Don't you want one of your girl + friends to come along? That little What's-her-name—Emily, or something. + So long's I've got three of you, I might as well have a full squad." +</p> +<p> + For a long time he didn't know what was the matter with him. He only + knew he was miserable, and yet happy. Sometimes his heart seemed to ache + with an actual physical ache. He realised that he wanted to do things + for Emily. He wanted to buy things for Emily—useless, pretty, expensive + things that he couldn't afford. He wanted to buy everything that Emily + needed, and everything that Emily desired. He wanted to marry Emily. + That was it. He discovered that one day, with a shock, in the midst of a + transaction in the harness business. He stared at the man with whom he + was dealing until that startled person grew uncomfortable. +</p> +<p> + "What's the matter, Hertz?" +</p> +<p> + "Matter?" +</p> +<p> + "You look as if you'd seen a ghost or found a gold mine. I don't know + which." +</p> +<p> + "Gold mine," said Jo. And then, "No. Ghost." +</p> +<p> + For he remembered that high, thin voice, and his promise. And the + harness business was slithering downhill with dreadful rapidity, as the + automobile business began its amazing climb. Jo tried to stop it. But he + was not that kind of business man. It never occurred to him to jump out + of the down-going vehicle and catch the up-going one. He stayed on, + vainly applying brakes that refused to work. +</p> +<p> + "You know, Emily, I couldn't support two households now. Not the way + things are. But if you'll wait. If you'll only wait. The girls + might—that is, Babe and Carrie—" +</p> +<p> + She was a sensible little thing, Emily. "Of course I'll wait. But we + mustn't just sit back and let the years go by. We've got to help." +</p> +<p> + She went about it as if she were already a little match-making matron. + She corralled all the men she had ever known and introduced them to + Babe, Carrie, and Eva separately, in pairs, and <i>en masse</i>. She arranged + parties at which Babe could display the curl. She got up picnics. She + stayed home while Jo took the three about. When she was present she + tried to look as plain and obscure as possible, so that the sisters + should show up to advantage. She schemed, and planned, and contrived, + and hoped; and smiled into Jo's despairing eyes. +</p> +<p> + And three years went by. Three precious years. Carrie still taught + school, and hated it. Eva kept house, more and more complainingly as + prices advanced and allowance retreated. Stell was still Babe, the + family beauty; but even she knew that the time was past for curls. + Emily's hair, somehow, lost its glint and began to look just plain + brown. Her crinkliness began to iron out. +</p> +<p> + "Now, look here!" Jo argued, desperately, one night. "We could be happy, + anyway. There's plenty of room at the house. Lots of people begin that + way. Of course, I couldn't give you all I'd like to, at first. But + maybe, after a while—" +</p> +<p> + No dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed servitors, and satin + damask now. Just two rooms, all their own, all alone, and Emily to work + for. That was his dream. But it seemed less possible than that other + absurd one had been. +</p> +<p> + You know that Emily was as practical a little thing as she looked + fluffy. She knew women. Especially did she know Eva, and Carrie, and + Babe. She tried to imagine herself taking the household affairs and the + housekeeping pocketbook out of Eva's expert hands. Eva had once + displayed to her a sheaf of aigrettes she had bought with what she saved + out of the housekeeping money. So then she tried to picture herself + allowing the reins of Jo's house to remain in Eva's hands. And + everything feminine and normal in her rebelled. Emily knew she'd want to + put away her own freshly laundered linen, and smooth it, and pat it. She + was that kind of woman. She knew she'd want to do her own delightful + haggling with butcher and vegetable pedlar. She knew she'd want to muss + Jo's hair, and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with him, if necessary, + without the awareness of three ever-present pairs of maiden eyes and + ears. +</p> +<p> + "No! No! We'd only be miserable. I know. Even if they didn't object. And + they would, Jo. Wouldn't they?" +</p> +<p> + His silence was miserable assent. Then, "But you do love me, don't you, + Emily?" +</p> +<p> + "I do, Jo. I love you—and love you—and love you. But, Jo, I—can't." +</p> +<p> + "I know it, dear. I knew it all the time, really. I just thought, maybe, + somehow—" +</p> +<p> + The two sat staring for a moment into space, their hands clasped. Then + they both shut their eyes, with a little shudder, as though what they + saw was terrible to look upon. Emily's hand, the tiny hand that was so + unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his, and his crushed the absurd + fingers until she winced with pain. +</p> +<p> + That was the beginning of the end, and they knew it. +</p> +<p> + Emily wasn't the kind of girl who would be left to pine. There are too + many Jo's in the world whose hearts are prone to lurch and then thump at + the feel of a soft, fluttering, incredibly small hand in their grip. One + year later Emily was married to a young man whose father owned a large, + pie-shaped slice of the prosperous state of Michigan. +</p> +<p> + That being safely accomplished, there was something grimly humorous in + the trend taken by affairs in the old house on Calumet. For Eva + married. Of all people, Eva! Married well, too, though he was a great + deal older than she. She went off in a hat she had copied from a French + model at Field's, and a suit she had contrived with a home dressmaker, + aided by pressing on the part of the little tailor in the basement over + on Thirty-first Street. It was the last of that, though. The next time + they saw her, she had on a hat that even she would have despaired of + copying, and a suit that sort of melted into your gaze. She moved to the + North Side (trust Eva for that), and Babe assumed the management of the + household on Calumet Avenue. It was rather a pinched little household + now, for the harness business shrank and shrank. +</p> +<p> + "I don't see how you can expect me to keep house decently on this!" Babe + would say contemptuously. Babe's nose, always a little inclined to + sharpness, had whittled down to a point of late. "If you knew what Ben + gives Eva." +</p> +<p> + "It's the best I can do, Sis. Business is something rotten." +</p> +<p> + "Ben says if you had the least bit of—" Ben was Eva's husband, and + quotable, as are all successful men. +</p> +<p> + "I don't care what Ben says," shouted Jo, goaded into rage. "I'm sick of + your everlasting Ben. Go and get a Ben of your own, why don't you, if + you're so stuck on the way he does things." +</p> +<p> + And Babe did. She made a last desperate drive, aided by Eva, and she + captured a rather surprised young man in the brokerage way, who had made + up his mind not to marry for years and years. Eva wanted to give her her + wedding things, but at that Jo broke into sudden rebellion. +</p> +<p> + "No sir! No Ben is going to buy my sister's wedding clothes, understand? + I guess I'm not broke—yet. I'll furnish the money for her things, and + there'll be enough of them, too." +</p> +<p> + Babe had as useless a trousseau, and as filled with extravagant + pink-and-blue and lacy and frilly things as any daughter of doting + parents. Jo seemed to find a grim pleasure in providing them. But it + left him pretty well pinched. After Babe's marriage (she insisted that + they call her Estelle now) Jo sold the house on Calumet. He and Carrie + took one of those little flats that were springing up, seemingly over + night, all through Chicago's South Side. +</p> +<p> + There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She had given up teaching two + years before, and had gone into Social Service work on the West Side. + She had what is known as a legal mind—hard, clear, orderly—and she + made a great success of it. Her dream was to live at the Settlement + House and give all her time to the work. Upon the little household she + bestowed a certain amount of grim, capable attention. It was the same + kind of attention she would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling + and running had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't + hesitate to say so. +</p> +<p> + Jo took to prowling about department store basements, and household + goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain in a ham, or a sack + of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a window clamp, or a new kind + of paring knife. He was forever doing odd little jobs that the janitor + should have done. It was the domestic in him claiming its own. +</p> +<p> + Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery + cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she called a + plain talk. +</p> +<p> + "Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant resident + worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know fifty other girls + who'd give their ears for it. I go in next month." +</p> +<p> + They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then he glanced + around the little dining room, with its ugly tan walls and its heavy, + dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted cumbersomely into the + five-room flat). +</p> +<p> + "Away? Away from here, you mean—to live?" Carrie laid down her fork. + "Well, really, Jo! After all that explanation." +</p> +<p> + "But to go over there to live! Why, that neighbourhood's full of dirt, + and disease, and crime, and the Lord knows what all. I can't let you do + that, Carrie." +</p> +<p> + Carrie's chin came up. She laughed a short little laugh. "Let me! + That's eighteenth-century talk, Jo. My life's my own to live. I'm + going." +</p> +<p> + And she went. +</p> +<p> + Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was up. Then he sold what + furniture he could, stored or gave away the rest, and took a room on + Michigan Avenue in one of the old stone mansions whose decayed splendour + was being put to such purpose. +</p> +<p> + Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and go. And he + found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or + go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a + thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged + woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In + the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But + he grows flabby where she grows lean. +</p> +<p> + Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva's, and on Sunday noon at + Stell's. He tucked his napkin under his chin and openly enjoyed the + home-made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner he tried to talk + business with Eva's husband, or Stell's. His business talks were the + old-fashioned kind, beginning: +</p> +<p> + "Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance your raw hides and leathers." +</p> +<p> + But Ben and George didn't want to "take, f'rinstance, your raw hides and + leathers." They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf, + or politics or stocks. They were the modern type of business man who + prefers to leave his work out of his play. Business, with them, was a + profession—a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's + clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great + criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would + listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first + chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at + their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with + good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by + almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who + is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and + one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a + bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and + unsatisfied. +</p> +<p> + Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry. +</p> +<p> + "It isn't natural," Eva told him. "I never saw a man who took so little + interest in women." +</p> +<p> + "Me!" protested Jo, almost shyly. "Women!" +</p> +<p> + "Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened schoolboy." +</p> +<p> + So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting + age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between thirty-six and + forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, + and classes, and politics, and economics, and boards. They rather + terrified Jo. He didn't understand much that they talked about, and he + felt humbly inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had + passed him by. He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him + not to bother, and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not + only of going home quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture + to any highwayman or brawler who might molest them. +</p> +<p> + The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her, Jo?" +</p> +<p> + "Like who?" Jo would spar feebly. +</p> +<p> + "Miss Matthews." +</p> +<p> + "Who's she?" +</p> +<p> + "Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean the girl who was + here for dinner. The one who talked so well on the emigration question. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to be a smart woman." +</p> +<p> + "Smart! She's a perfectly splendid girl." +</p> +<p> + "Sure," Jo would agree cheerfully. +</p> +<p> + "But didn't you like her?" +</p> +<p> + "I can't say I did, Eve. And I can't say I didn't. She made me think a + lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader. Name of Himes. As I recall + her, she must have been a fine woman. But I never thought of her as a + woman at all. She was just Teacher." +</p> +<p> + "You make me tired," snapped Eva impatiently. "A man of your age. You + don't expect to marry a girl, do you? A child!" +</p> +<p> + "I don't expect to marry anybody," Jo had answered. +</p> +<p> + And that was the truth, lonely though he often was. +</p> +<p> + The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. Any one who got the meaning + of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a north-shore suburb, + and a house. Eva's daughter, Ethel, was growing up, and her mother had + an eye on society. +</p> +<p> + That did away with Jo's Thursday dinner. Then Stell's husband bought a + car. They went out into the country every Sunday. Stell said it was + getting so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway. Besides, they + were unhealthy, old-fashioned things. They always meant to ask Jo to + come along, but by the time their friends were placed, and the lunch, + and the boxes, and sweaters, and George's camera, and everything, there + seemed to be no room for a man of Jo's bulk. So that eliminated the + Sunday dinners. +</p> +<p> + "Just drop in any time during the week," Stell said, "for dinner. Except + Wednesday—that's our bridge night—and Saturday. And, of course, + Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don't wait for me to phone." +</p> +<p> + And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those + you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up + against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with + indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through the + brazen plate-glass window. +</p> +<p> + And then came the War. The war that spelled death and destruction to + millions. The war that brought a fortune to Jo Hertz, and transformed + him, over night, from a baggy-kneed old bachelor, whose business was a + failure, to a prosperous manufacturer whose only trouble was the + shortage in hides for the making of his product—leather! The armies of + Europe called for it. Harnesses! More harnesses! Straps! Millions of + straps. More! More! +</p> +<p> + The musty old harness business over on Lake Street was magically changed + from a dust-covered, dead-alive concern to an orderly hive that hummed + and glittered with success. Orders poured in. Jo Hertz had inside + information on the War. He knew about troops and horses. He talked + with French and English and Italian buyers—noblemen, many of + them—commissioned by their countries to get American-made supplies. And + now, when he said to Ben or George, "Take f'rinstance your raw hides and + leathers," they listened with respectful attention. +</p> +<p> + And then began the gay-dog business in the life of Jo Hertz. He + developed into a Loop-hound, ever keen on the scent of fresh pleasure. + That side of Jo Hertz which had been repressed and crushed and ignored + began to bloom, unhealthily. At first he spent money on his rather + contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, + and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and + there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way + he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. + He explained it. +</p> +<p> + "Just turn it on. Ice-water! Any hour of the day or night." +</p> +<p> + He bought a car. Naturally. A glittering affair; in colour a bright + blue, with pale blue leather straps and a great deal of gold fittings, + and wire wheels. Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would + use, rather than an elderly business man. You saw him driving about in + it, red-faced and rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in + the Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when + doubtful and roving-eyed matrons in kolinsky capes are wont to + congregate to sip pale amber drinks. Actors grew to recognise the + semi-bald head and the shining, round, good-natured face looming out at + them from the dim well of the parquet, and sometimes, in a musical show, + they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could pick out the + critics as they came down the aisle, and even had a nodding acquaintance + with two of them. +</p> +<p> + "Kelly, of the <i>Herald</i>," he would say carelessly. "Bean, of the <i>Trib</i>. + They're all afraid of him." +</p> +<p> + So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he might have been called a + Man About Town. +</p> +<p> + And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. So he searched about in his + mind and brought from the dim past the memory of the luxuriously + furnished establishment of which he used to dream in the evenings when + he dozed over his paper in the old house on Calumet. So he rented an + apartment, many-roomed and expensive, with a man-servant in charge, and + furnished it in styles and periods ranging through all the Louises. The + living room was mostly rose colour. It was like an unhealthy and bloated + boudoir. And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight + of this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury + of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naïve indulgence of + long-starved senses, and there was in it a great resemblance to the + rolling eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking his lips over an all-day + sucker. +</p> +<p> + The War went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll in—a + flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on shopping bent, entered + a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on Michigan Avenue. Exclusive, + that is, in price. Eva's weakness, you may remember, was hats. She was + seeking a hat now. She described what she sought with a languid + conciseness, and stood looking about her after the saleswoman had + vanished in quest of it. The room was becomingly rose-illumined and + somewhat dim, so that some minutes had passed before she realised that a + man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five feet away—a man with + a walking stick, and yellow gloves, and tan spats, and a check suit—was + her brother Jo. From him Eva's wild-eyed glance leaped to the woman who + was trying on hats before one of the many long mirrors. She was seated, + and a saleswoman was exclaiming discreetly at her elbow. +</p> +<p> + Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning, + hat-laden. "Not to-day," she gasped. "I'm feeling ill. Suddenly." And + almost ran from the room. +</p> +<p> + That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone + pidgin-English devised by every family of married sisters as protection + against the neighbours and Central. Translated, it ran thus: +</p> +<p> + "He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought I'd die! But at least he + had sense enough not to speak. She was one of those limp, willowy + creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a + baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to get her hands on those + hats. I saw it all in one awful minute. You know the way I do. I suppose + some people would call her pretty. I don't. And her colour! Well! And + the most expensive-looking hats. Aigrettes, and paradise, and feathers. + Not one of them under seventy-five. Isn't it disgusting! At his age! + Suppose Ethel had been with me!" +</p> +<p> + The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a restaurant. She said it + spoiled her evening. And the third time it was Ethel. She was one of the + guests at a theatre party given by Nicky Overton II. You know. The North + Shore Overtons. Lake Forest. They came in late, and occupied the entire + third row at the opening performance of "Believe Me!" And Ethel was + Nicky's partner. She was glowing like a rose. When the lights went up + after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of + her with what she afterward described as a blonde. Then her uncle had + turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that + spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had turned + to face forward again, quickly. +</p> +<p> + "Who's the old bird?" Nicky had asked. Ethel had pretended not to hear, + so he had asked again. +</p> +<p> + "My Uncle," Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and + down to her throat. Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had + gone up ever so slightly. +</p> +<p> + It spoiled Ethel's evening. More than that, as she told her mother of it + later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life. +</p> +<p> + Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate, kimonoed hour that + precedes bedtime. She gesticulated heatedly with her hair brush. +</p> +<p> + "It's disgusting, that's what it is. Perfectly disgusting. There's no + fool like an old fool. Imagine! A creature like that. At his time of + life." +</p> +<p> + There exists a strange and loyal kinship among men. "Well, I don't + know," Ben said now, and even grinned a little. "I suppose a boy's got + to sow his wild oats some time." +</p> +<p> + "Don't be any more vulgar than you can help," Eva retorted. "And I + think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy + interested in Ethel." +</p> +<p> + "If he's interested in her," Ben blundered, "I guess the fact that + Ethel's uncle went to the theatre with some one who wasn't Ethel's aunt + won't cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will + it?" +</p> +<p> + "All right," Eva had retorted. "If you're not man enough to stop it, + I'll have to, that's all. I'm going up there with Stell this week." +</p> +<p> + They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his apartment + when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his + master home to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva arranged + to meet Stell in town. They would drive to Jo's apartment together, and + wait for him there. +</p> +<p> + When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of the + American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard + was a billowing, surging mass: Flags, pennants, banners crowds. All the + elements that make for demonstration. And over the whole—quiet. No + holiday crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient + hours to see the khaki-clads go by. Three years of indefatigable reading + had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to. +</p> +<p> + "Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped. +</p> +<p> + "Nicky Overton's only nineteen, thank goodness." +</p> +<p> + Their car was caught in the jam. When they moved at all it was by + inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, + nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they waited. +</p> +<p> + No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the + relieved houseman. +</p> +<p> + Jo's home has already been described to you. Stell and Eva, sunk in + rose-coloured cushions, viewed it with disgust, and some mirth. They + rather avoided each other's eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of + the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings, + and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, restlessly. She picked up + a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and + wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she + turned and passed into Jo's bedroom. And there you knew Jo for what he + was. +</p> +<p> + This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the + clean-minded and simple-hearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury + with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any + house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual + furniture was panelled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been + the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that + stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a + pink tarleton <i>danseuse</i> who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of + those wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be + hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military + brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly + stack of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and + gave a little gasp. One of them was on gardening. +</p> +<p> + "Well, of all things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the War, by an + Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep. + His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe-tree in + every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked + so human. Eva shut the door on them, quickly. Some bottles on the + dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such as a man uses who is growing + bald and is panic-stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall. + Some rhubarb-and-soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a little + box of pepsin tablets. +</p> +<p> + "Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night," Eva said, and + wandered out into the rose-coloured front room again with the air of one + who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell + followed her furtively. +</p> +<p> + "Where do you suppose he can be?" she demanded. "It's"—she glanced at + her wrist—"why, it's after six!" +</p> +<p> + And then there was a little click. The two women sat up, tense. The door + opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room + stood up. +</p> +<p> + "Why—Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn't you let me know?" +</p> +<p> + "We were just about to leave. We thought you weren't coming home." +</p> +<p> + Joe came in, slowly. +</p> +<p> + "I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys go by." He sat down, + heavily. The light from the window fell on him. And you saw that his + eyes were red. +</p> +<p> + And you'll have to learn why. He had found himself one of the thousands + in the jam on Michigan Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb, + where his big frame shut off the view of the unfortunates behind him. He + waited with the placid interest of one who has subscribed to all the + funds and societies to which a prosperous, middle-aged business man is + called upon to subscribe in war time. Then, just as he was about to + leave, impatient at the delay, the crowd had cried, with a queer + dramatic, exultant note in its voice, "Here they come! Here come the + boys!" +</p> +<p> + Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a + mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all + indignant resentment. "Say, looka here!" +</p> +<p> + The little fists kept up their frantic beating and pushing. And a + voice—a choked, high little voice—cried, "Let me by! I can't see! You + man, you! You big fat man! My boy's going by—to war—and I can't see! + Let me by!" +</p> +<p> + Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He looked down. And + upturned to him in agonised appeal was the face of little Emily. They + stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really + only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around + Emily's waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk + protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She was breathing + rapidly, as if she had been running. Her eyes were straining up the + street. +</p> +<p> + "Why, Emily, how in the world!—" +</p> +<p> + "I ran away. Fred didn't want me to come. He said it would excite me too + much." +</p> +<p> + "Fred?" +</p> +<p> + "My husband. He made me promise to say good-bye to Jo at home." +</p> +<p> + "Jo?" +</p> +<p> + "Jo's my boy. And he's going to war. So I ran away. I had to see him. I + had to see him go." +</p> +<p> + She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up the street. +</p> +<p> + "Why, sure," said Jo. "Of course you want to see him." And then the + crowd gave a great roar. There came over Jo a feeling of weakness. He + was trembling. The boys went marching by. +</p> +<p> + "There he is," Emily shrilled, above the din. "There be is! There he is! + There he—" And waved a futile little hand. It wasn't so much a wave as + a clutching. A clutching after something beyond her reach. +</p> +<p> + "Which one? Which one, Emily?" +</p> +<p> + "The handsome one. The handsome one. There!" Her voice quavered and + died. +</p> +<p> + Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. "Point him out," he commanded. + "Show me." And the next instant. "Never mind. I see him." +</p> +<p> + Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from among the hundreds. Had + picked him as surely as his own father might have. It was Emily's boy. + He was marching by, rather stiffly. He was nineteen, and fun-loving, and + he had a girl, and he didn't particularly want to go to France and—to + go to France. But more than he had hated going, he had hated not to go. + So he marched by, looking straight ahead, his jaw set so that his chin + stuck out just a little. Emily's boy. +</p> +<p> + Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His eyes, the hard-boiled + eyes of a Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he + was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay dog. He was Jo Hertz, + thirty, in love with life, in love with Emily, and with the stinging + blood of young manhood coursing through his veins. +</p> +<p> + Another minute and the boy had passed on up the broad street—the fine, + flag-bedecked street—just one of a hundred service-hats bobbing in + rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore and flowing on. +</p> +<p> + Then he disappeared altogether. +</p> +<p> + Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling something, over and over. "I + can't. I can't. Don't ask me to. I can't let him go. Like that. I + can't." +</p> +<p> + Jo said a queer thing. +</p> +<p> + "Why, Emily! We wouldn't have him stay home, would we? We wouldn't want + him to do anything different, would we? Not our boy. I'm glad he + enlisted. I'm proud of him. So are you glad." +</p> +<p> + Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the car that was + waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. They said good-bye, awkwardly. + Emily's face was a red, swollen mass. +</p> +<p> + So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway half an hour later he + blinked, dazedly, and when the light from the window fell on him you saw + that his eyes were red. +</p> +<p> + Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat forward in her chair, + clutching her bag rather nervously. +</p> +<p> + "Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a reason. We're here to + tell you that this thing's got to stop." +</p> +<p> + "Thing? Stop?" +</p> +<p> + "You know very well what I mean. You saw me at the milliner's that day. + And night before last, Ethel. We're all disgusted. If you must go about + with people like that, please have some sense of decency." +</p> +<p> + Something gathering in Jo's face should have warned her. But he was + slumped down in his chair in such a huddle, and he looked so old and fat + that she did not heed it. She went on. "You've got us to consider. Your + sisters. And your nieces. Not to speak of your own—" +</p> +<p> + But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what she saw in his face + even Eva faltered and stopped. It wasn't at all the face of a fat, + middle-aged sport. It was a face Jovian, terrible. +</p> +<p> + "You!" he began, low-voiced, ominous. "You!" He raised a great fist + high. "You two murderers! You didn't consider me, twenty years ago. You + come to me with talk like that. Where's my boy! You killed him, you two, + twenty years ago. And now he belongs to somebody else. Where's my son + that should have gone marching by to-day?" He flung his arms out in a + great gesture of longing. The red veins stood out on his forehead. + "Where's my son! Answer me that, you two selfish, miserable women. + Where's my son!" Then, as they huddled together, frightened, wild-eyed. + "Out of my house! Out of my house! Before I hurt you!" +</p> +<p> + They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them. +</p> +<p> + Jo stood, shaking, in the centre of the room. Then he reached for a + chair, gropingly, and sat down. He passed one moist, flabby hand over + his forehead and it came away wet. The telephone rang. He sat still. It + sounded far away and unimportant, like something forgotten. I think he + did not even hear it with his conscious ear. But it rang and rang + insistently. Jo liked to answer his telephone, when at home. +</p> +<p> + "Hello!" He knew instantly the voice at the other end. +</p> +<p> + "That you, Jo?" it said. +</p> +<p> + "Yes." +</p> +<p> + "How's my boy?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm—all right." +</p> +<p> + "Listen, Jo. The crowd's coming over to-night. I've fixed up a little + poker game for you. Just eight of us." +</p> +<p> + "I can't come to-night, Gert." +</p> +<p> + "Can't! Why not?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm not feeling so good." +</p> +<p> + "You just said you were all right." +</p> +<p> + "I <i>am</i> all right. Just kind of tired." +</p> +<p> + The voice took on a cooing note. "Is my Joey tired? Then he shall be all + comfy on the sofa, and he doesn't need to play if he don't want to. No, + sir." +</p> +<p> + Jo stood staring at the black mouth-piece of the telephone. He was + seeing a procession go marching by. Boys, hundreds of boys, in khaki. +</p> +<p> + "Hello! Hello!" the voice took on an anxious note. "Are you there?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes," wearily. +</p> +<p> + "Jo, there's something the matter. You're sick. I'm coming right over." +</p> +<p> + "No!" +</p> +<p> + "Why not? You sound as if you'd been sleeping. Look here—" +</p> +<p> + "Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked onto the + hook. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Long after the connection had + been broken. +</p> +<p> + He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he turned + and walked into the front room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk + had come on. All the light had gone out of everything. The zest had gone + out of life. The game was over—the game he had been playing against + loneliness and disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A + lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous, rose-coloured room that had + grown, all of a sudden, drab. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_3"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + III +</h2> +<h2> + THE TOUGH GUY +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + You could not be so very tough in Chippewa, Wisconsin. But Buzz Werner + managed magnificently with the limited means at hand. Before he was + nineteen mothers were warning their sons against him, and brothers their + sisters. Buzz Werner not only was tough—he looked tough. When he + spoke—which was often—his speech slid sinisterly out of the extreme + left corner of his mouth. He had a trick of hitching himself up from the + belt—one palm on the stomach and a sort of heaving jerk from the waist, + as a prize fighter does it—that would have made a Van Bibber look + rough. +</p> +<p> + His name was not really Buzz, but quotes are dispensed with because no + one but his mother remembered what it originally had been. His mother + called him Ernie and she alone, in all Chippewa, Wisconsin, was unaware + that her son was the town tough guy. But even she sometimes mildly + remonstrated with him for being what she called kind of wild. Buzz had + yellow hair with a glint in it, and it curled up into a bang at the + front. No amount of wetting or greasing could subdue that irrepressible + forelock. A boy with hair like that never grows up in his mother's + eyes. +</p> +<p> + If Buzz's real name was lost in the dim mists of boyhood, the origin and + fitness of his nickname were apparent after two minutes' conversation + with him. Buzz Werner was called Buzz not only because he talked too + much, but because he was a braggart. His conversation bristled with the + perpendicular pronoun, and his pet phrase was, "I says to him—" +</p> +<p> + He buzzed. +</p> +<p> + By the time Buzz was fourteen he was stealing brass from the yards of + the big paper mills down in the Flats and selling it to the junk man. + How he escaped the reform school is a mystery. Perhaps it was the blond + forelock. At nineteen he was running with the Kearney girl. +</p> +<p> + Twenty-five years hence Chippewa will have learned to treat the + Kearney-girl type as a disease, and a public menace. Which she was. The + Kearney girl ran wild in Chippewa, and Chippewa will be paying taxes on + the fruit of her liberty for a hundred years to come. The Kearney girl + was a beautiful idiot, with a lovely oval face, and limpid, rather + wistful blue eyes, and fair, fine hair, and a long slim neck. She looked + very much like those famous wantons of history, from Lucrezia Borgia to + Nell Gwyn, that you see pictured in the galleries of Europe—all very + mild and girlish, with moist red mouths, like a puppy's, so that you + wonder if they have not been basely defamed through all the centuries. +</p> +<p> + The Kearney girl's father ran a saloon out on Second Avenue, and every + few days the Chippewa paper would come out with a story of a brawl, a + knifing, or a free-for-all fight following a Saturday night in + Kearney's. The Kearney girl herself was forever running up and down + Grand Avenue, which was the main business street. She would trail up and + down from the old Armory to the post-office and back again. When she + turned off into the homeward stretch on Outagamie Street there always + slunk after her some stoop-shouldered, furtive, loping youth. But he + never was seen with her on Grand Avenue. She had often been up before + old Judge Colt for some nasty business or other. At such times the + shabby office of the Justice of the Peace would be full of shawled + mothers and heavy-booted, work-worn fathers, and an aunt or two, and + some cousins, and always a slinking youth fumbling with the hat in his + hands, his glance darting hither and thither, from group to group, but + never resting for a moment within any one else's gaze. Of all these + present, the Kearney girl herself was always the calmest. Old Judge Colt + meted out justice according to his lights. Unfortunately, the wearing of + a yellow badge on the breast was a custom that had gone out some years + before. +</p> +<p> + This nymph it was who had taken a fancy to Buzz Werner. It looked very + black for his future. +</p> +<p> + The strange part of it was that the girl possessed little attraction for + Buzz. It was she who made all the advances. Buzz had sprung from very + decent stock, as you shall see. And something about the sultry + unwholesomeness of this girl repelled him, though he was hardly aware + that this was so. Buzz and his gang would meet down town of a Saturday + night, very moist as to hair and clean as to soft shirt. They would + lounge on the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's + brightly lighted drug store, watching the girls go by. They were, for + the most part, a pimply-faced lot. They would shuffle their feet in a + slow jig, hands in pockets. When a late comer joined them it was + considered <i>au fait</i> to welcome him by assuming a fistic attitude, after + the style of the pugilists pictured in the barber-shop magazines, and + spar a good-natured and make-believe round with him, with much agile + dancing about in a circle, head held stiffly, body crouching, while + working a rapid and facetious right. +</p> +<p> + This corner, or Donovan's pool-shack, was their club, their forum. Here + they recounted their exploits, bragged of their triumphs, boasted of + their girls, flexed their muscles to show their strength. And all + through their talk there occurred again and again a certain term whose + use is common to their kind. Their remarks were prefaced and interlarded + and concluded with it, so that it was no longer an oath or a blasphemy. +</p> +<p> + "Je's, I was sore at 'm. I told him where to get off at. Nobody can talk + to me like that. Je's, I should say not." +</p> +<p> + So accustomed had it grown that it was not even thought of as + profanity. +</p> +<p> + If Buzz's family could have heard him in his talk with his street-corner + companions they would not have credited their ears. A mouthy braggart in + company is often silent in his own home, and Buzz was no exception to + this rule. Fortunately, Buzz's braggadocio carried with it a certain + conviction. He never kept a job more than a month, and his own account + of his leave-taking was always as vainglorious as it was dramatic. +</p> +<p> + "'G'wan!' I says to him, 'Who you talkin' to? I don't have to take + nothin' from you nor nobody like you,' I says. 'I'm as good as you are + any day, and better. You can have your dirty job,' I says. And with that + I give him my time and walked out on 'm. Je's, he was sore!" +</p> +<p> + They would listen to him, appreciatively, but with certain mental + reservations; reservations inevitable when a speaker's name is Buzz. One + by one they would melt away as their particular girl, after flaunting by + with a giggle and a sidelong glance for the dozenth time, would switch + her skirts around the corner of Outagamie Street past the Brill House, + homeward bound. +</p> +<p> + "Well, s'long," they would say. And lounging after her, would overtake + her in the shadow of the row of trees in front of the Agassiz School. +</p> +<p> + If the Werner family had been city folk they would, perforce, have + burrowed in one of those rabbit-warren tenements that line block after + block of city streets. But your small-town labouring man is likely to + own his two-story frame house with a garden patch in the back and a + cement walk leading up to the front porch, and pork roast on Sundays. + The Werners had all this, no thanks to Pa Werner; no thanks to Buzz, + surely; and little to Minnie Werner who clerked in the Sugar Bowl Candy + Store and tried to dress like Angie Hatton whose father owned the + biggest Pulp and Paper mill in the Fox River Valley. No, the house and + the garden, the porch and the cement sidewalk, and the pork roast all + had their origin in Ma Werner's tireless energy, in Ma Werner's thrift; + in her patience and unremitting toil, her nimble fingers and bent back, + her shapeless figure and unbounded and unexpressed (verbally, that + is) love for her children. Pa Werner—sullen, lazy, brooding, + tyrannical—she soothed and mollified for the children's sake, or + shouted down with a shrewish outburst, as the occasion required. An + expert stone-mason by trade, Pa Werner could be depended on only when he + was not drinking, or when he was not on strike, or when he had not + quarrelled with the foreman. An anarchist, Pa—dissatisfied with things + as they were, but with no plan for improving them. His evil-smelling + pipe between his lips, he would sit, stocking-footed, in silence, + smoking and thinking vague, formless, surly thoughts. This sullen unrest + and rebellion it was that, transmitted to his son, had made Buzz the + unruly braggart that he was, and which, twenty or thirty years hence, + would find him just such a one as his father—useless, evil-tempered, + half brutal, defiant of order. +</p> +<p> + It was in May, a fine warm sunny day, that Ma Werner, looking up from + the garden patch where she was spading, a man's old battered felt hat + perched grotesquely atop her white head, saw Buzz lounging homeward, + cutting across lots from Bates Street, his dinner pail glinting in the + sun. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Ma Werner straightened + painfully and her over-flushed face took on a purplish tinge. She wiped + her moist chin with an apron-corner. +</p> +<p> + As Buzz espied her his gait became a swagger. At sight of that swagger + Ma knew. She dropped her spade and plodded heavily through the freshly + turned earth to the back porch as Buzz turned in at the walk. She + shifted her weight ponderously as she wiped first one earth-crusted shoe + and then the other. +</p> +<p> + "What's the matter, Ernie? You ain't sick, are you?" +</p> +<p> + "Naw." +</p> +<p> + "What you home so early for?" +</p> +<p> + "Because I feel like it, that's why." +</p> +<p> + He took the back steps at a bound and slammed the kitchen door behind + him. Ma Werner followed heavily after. Buzz was hanging his hat up + behind the kitchen door. He turned with a scowl as his mother entered. + She looked even more ludicrous in the house than she had outside, with + her skirts tucked up to make spading the easier, so that there was + displayed an unseemly length of thick ankle rising solidly above the old + pair of men's side-boots that encased her feet. The battered hat perched + rakishly atop her knob of gray-white hair gave her a jaunty, sporting + look, as of a ponderous, burlesque Watteau. +</p> +<p> + She abandoned pretense. "Ernie, your pa'll be awful mad. You know the + way he carried on the last time." +</p> +<p> + "Let him. He aint worked five days himself this month." Then, at a + sudden sound from the front of the house, "He ain't home, is he?" +</p> +<p> + "That's the shade flapping." +</p> +<p> + Buzz turned toward the inside wooden stairway that led to the half-story + above. But his mother followed, with surprising agility for so heavy a + woman. She put a hand on his arm. "Such a good-payin' job, Ernie. An' + you said only yesterday you liked it. Somethin' must've happened." +</p> +<p> + There broke a grim little laugh from Buzz. "Believe <i>me</i> something + happened good an' plenty." A little frightened look came into his eyes. + "I just had a run-in with young Hatton." +</p> +<p> + The red faded from her face and a grey-white mask seemed to slip down + over it. "You don't mean Hatton! Not Hatton's son. Ernie, you ain't + done—" +</p> +<p> + A dash of his street-corner bravado came back to him. "Aw, keep your + hair on, Ma. I didn't know it was young Hatton when I hit'm. An' anyway + nobody his age is gonna tell me where to get off at. Say, w'en a guy who + ain't twenty-three, hardly, and that never done a lick in his life + except go to college, the sissy, tries t'—" +</p> +<p> + But the first sentence only had penetrated her brain. She grappled with + it, dizzily. "Hit him! Ernie, you don't mean you hit him! Not Hatton's + son! Ernie!" +</p> +<p> + "Sure I did. You oughta seen his face." But there was very little + triumph or satisfaction in Buzz Werner's face or voice as he said it. + "Course, I didn't know it was him when I done it. I dunno would it have + made any difference if I had." +</p> +<p> + She seemed so old and so shrunken, in spite of her bulk, as she looked + up at him. The look in her eyes was so strained. The way her hand + brought her apron-corner up to her mouth, as though to stifle the fear + that shook her, was so groping, somehow, so uncertain, that, + paradoxically, the pitifulness of it reacted to make him savage. +</p> +<p> + When she quavered her next question, "What was he doin' in the mill?" he + turned toward the stairway again, flinging his answer over his shoulder. +</p> +<p> + "Learnin' the business, that's what. From the ground up, see?" He turned + at the first stair and leaned forward and down, one hand on the + door-jamb. "Well, believe me he don't use me as no ground-dirt. An' when + I'm takin' the screen off the big roll—see?—he comes up to me an' + says I'm handlin' it rough an' it's a delicate piece of mechanism. + 'Who're you?' I says. 'Never mind who I am' he says, 'I'm working' on + this job,' he says, 'an' this is a paper mill you're workin' in,' he + says, 'not a boiler factory. Treat the machinery accordin', like a real + workman,' he says. The simp! I just stepped down off the platform of the + big press, and I says, 'Well, you look like a kinda delicate piece of + mechanism yourself,' I says, 'an' need careful handlin', so take that + for a starter,' I says. An' with that I handed him one in the nose." + Buzz laughed, but there was little mirth in it. "I bet he seen enough + wheels an' delicate machinery that minute to set up a whole new plant." +</p> +<p> + There was nothing of mirth in the woman's drawn face. "Oh, Ernie, f'r + God's sake! What they goin' to do to you!" +</p> +<p> + He was half way up the narrow stairway, she at the foot of it, peering + up at him. "They won't do anything. I guess old Hatton ain't so stuck on + havin' his swell golf club crowd know his little boy was beat up by one + of the workmen." +</p> +<p> + He was clumping about upstairs now. So she turned toward the kitchen, + dazedly. She glanced at the clock. Going on toward five. Still in + the absurd hat she got out a panful of potatoes and began to peel + them skilfuly, automatically. The seamed and hardened fingers + had come honestly by their deftness. They had twirled and peeled + pecks—bushels—tons of these brown balls in their time. +</p> +<p> + At five-thirty Pa came in. At six, Minnie. She had to go back to the + Sugar Bowl until nine. Five minutes later the supper was steaming on + the table. +</p> +<p> + "Ernie," called Ma, toward the ceiling. "Er-nie! Supper's on." The three + sat down at the table without waiting. Pa had slipped off his shoes, and + was in his stockinged feet. They ate in silence. It was a good meal. A + European family of the same class would have considered it a banquet. + There were meat and vegetables, butter and home-made bread, preserve and + cake, true to the standards of the extravagant American labouring-class + household. In the summer the garden supplied them with lettuce, beans, + peas, onions, radishes, beets, potatoes, corn, thanks to Ma's aching + back and blistered hands. They stored enough vegetables in the cellar to + last through the winter. +</p> +<p> + Buzz usually cleaned up after supper. But to-night, when he came down, + he was already clean-shaven, clean-shirted, and his hair was wet from + the comb. He took his place in silence. His acid-stained work shoes had + been replaced by his good tan ones. Evidently he was going down town + after supper. Buzz never took any exercise for the sake of his body's + good. Sometimes he and the Lembke boys across the way played a game of + ball in the middle of the road, or in the vacant lot, but they did it + out of the game instinct, and with no thought of their muscles' gain. +</p> +<p> + But to-night, evidently, there was to be no ball. Buzz ate little. His + mother, forever between the stove and the table, ate less. But that was + nothing unusual in her. She waited on the others, but mostly she hovered + about the boy. +</p> +<p> + "Ernie, you ain't eaten your potatoes. Look how nice an' mealy they + are." +</p> +<p> + "Don't want none." +</p> +<p> + "Ernie, would you rather have a baked apple than the raspberry preserve? + I fixed a pan this morning." +</p> +<p> + "Naw. Lemme alone. I ain't hungry." +</p> +<p> + He slouched from the table. Minnie, teacup in hand, regarded him over + its rim with wide, malicious eyes. "I saw that Kearney girl go by here + before supper, and she rubbered in like everything." +</p> +<p> + "You're a liar," said Buzz, unemotionally. +</p> +<p> + "I did so! She went by and then she came back again. I saw her both + times. Say, I guess I ought to know her. Anybody in town'd know + Kearney." +</p> +<p> + Buzz had been headed toward the front porch. He hesitated and turned, + now, and picked up the newspaper from the sitting-room sofa. Pa Werner, + in trousers, shirt and suspenders, was padding about the kitchen with + his pipe and tobacco. He came into the sitting room now and stood a + moment, his lips twisted about the pipe-stem. The pipe's putt-putting + gave warning that he was about to break into unaccustomed speech. He + regarded Buzz with beady, narrowed eyes. +</p> +<p> + "You let me see you around with that Kearney girl and I'll break every + bone in your body, and hers too. The hussy!" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, you will, will you?" +</p> +<p> + Ma, who had been making countless trips from the kitchen to the back + garden with water pail and sprinkling can sagging from either arm, put + in a word to stay the threatening storm. "Now, Pa! Now, Ernie!" The two + men subsided into bristling silence. +</p> +<p> + Suddenly, "There she is again!" shrilled Minnie, from her bedroom. Buzz + shrank back in his chair. Old man Werner, with a muttered oath, went to + the open doorway and stood there, puffing savage little spurts of smoke + streetward. The Kearney girl stared brazenly at him as she strolled + slowly by, a slim and sinister figure. Old man Werner watched her until + she passed out of sight. +</p> +<p> + "You go gettin' mixed up with dirt like that," threatened he, "and I'll + learn you. She'll be hangin' around the mill yet, the brass-faced thing. + If I hear of it I'll get the foreman to put her off the place. You'll + stay home to-night. Carry a pail of water for your ma once." +</p> +<p> + "Carry it yourself." +</p> +<p> + Buzz, with a wary eye up the street, slouched out to the front porch, + into the twilight of the warm May evening. Charley Lembke, from his + porch across the street, called to him: "Goin' down town?" +</p> +<p> + "Yeh, I guess so." +</p> +<p> + "Ain't you afraid of bein' pinched?" Buzz turned his head quickly + toward the room just behind him. He turned to go in. Charley's voice + came again, clear and far-reaching. "I hear you had a run-in with + Hatton's son, and knocked him down. Some class t' you, Buzz, even if it + does cost you your job." +</p> +<p> + From within the sound of a newspaper hurled to the floor. Pa Werner was + at the door. "What's that! What's that he's sayin'?" +</p> +<p> + Buzz, cornered, jutted a threatening jaw at his father and brazened it + out. "Can't you hear good?" +</p> +<p> + "Come on in here." +</p> +<p> + Buzz hesitated a moment. Then he turned, slowly, and walked into the + little sitting room with an attempt at a swagger that failed to convince + even himself. He leaned against the side of the door, hands in pockets. + Pa Werner faced him, black-browed. "Is that right, what he said? Lembke? + Huh?" +</p> +<p> + "Sure it's right. I had a run-in with Hatton, an' licked him, and give'm + my time. What you goin' to do about it?" +</p> +<p> + Ma Werner was in the room, now. Minnie, passing through on her way to + work again, caught the electric current of the storm about to break and + escaped it with a parting: +</p> +<p> + "Oh, for the land's sakes! You two. Always a-fighting." +</p> +<p> + The two men faced each other. The one a sturdy man-boy nearing twenty, + with a great pair of shoulders and a clear eye, a long, quick arm and a + deft hand—these last his assets as a workman. The other, gnarled, + prematurely wrinkled, almost gnome-like. This one took his pipe from + between his lips and began to speak. The drink he had had at Wenzel's on + the way home sparked his speech. +</p> +<p> + He began with a string of epithets. They flowed from his lips, an acid + stream. Pick and choose as I will, there is none that can be repeated + here. Old Man Werner had, perhaps, been something of a tough guy + himself, in his youth. As he reviled his son now you saw that son, at + fifty, just such another stocking-footed, bitter old man, smoking a glum + pipe on the back porch, summer evenings, and spitting into the fresh + young grass. +</p> +<p> + I don't say that this thought came to Buzz as his father flayed him with + his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the + non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head. + Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a + little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensively. He had + paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had + said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again + and again. "Now, Pa!—" But he stopped now, fist raised in a last + profane period. Buzz stood regarding him with his unblinking stare. +</p> +<p> + Finally: "You through?" said Buzz. +</p> +<p> + "Ya-as," snarled Pa, "I'm through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be + hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get out o' + here!" +</p> +<p> + "I'm gettin'," said Buzz. He took his hat off the hook and wiped it + carefully with the lower side of his sleeve, round and round. He placed + it on his head, jauntily. He stepped to the kitchen, took a tooth-pick + from the little red-and-white glass holder on the table, and—with this + emblem of insouciance, at an angle of ninety, between his + teeth—strolled indolently, nonchalantly down the front steps, along the + cement walk to the street and so toward town. The two old people, left + alone in the sudden silence of the house, stared after the swaggering + figure until the dim twilight blotted it out. And a sinister something + seemed to close its icy grip about the heart of one of them. A vague + premonition that she could only feel, not express, made her next words + seem futile. +</p> +<p> + "Pa, you oughtn't to talked to him like that. He's just a little wild. + He looked so kind of funny when he went out. I don'no, he looked so kind + of—" +</p> +<p> + "He looked like the bum he is, that's what. No respect for nothing. For + his pa, or ma, or nothing. Down on the corner with the rest of 'em, + that's where he's goin'. Hatton ain't goin' to let this go by. You see." +</p> +<p> + But she, on her way to the kitchen, repeated, "I don'no, he looked so + kind of funny. He looked so kind of—" +</p> +<p> + Considering all things—the happenings of the past few hours, at + least—Buzz, as he strolled on down toward Grand Avenue with his + sauntering, care-free gait, did undoubtedly look kind of funny. The + red-hot rage of the afternoon and the white-hot rage of the evening had + choked the furnace of brain and soul with clinkers so that he was + thinking unevenly and disconnectedly. On the surface he was cool and + unruffled. He stopped for a moment at the railroad tracks to talk with + Stumpy Gans, the one-legged gateman. The little bell above Stumpy's + shanty was ringing its warning, so he strolled leisurely over to the + depot platform to see the 7:15 come in from Chicago. When the train + pulled out Buzz went on down the street. His mind was darting here and + there, planning this revenge, discarding it; seizing on another, + abandoning that. He'd show'm. He'd show'm. Sick of the whole damn bunch, + anyway.... Wonder was Hatton going to raise a shindy.... Let'm. Who + cares?... The old man was a drunk, that's what.... Ma had looked kinda + sick.... +</p> +<p> + He put that uncomfortable thought out of his mind and slammed the door + on it. Anyway, he'd show'm. +</p> +<p> + Out of the shadows of the great trees in front of the Agassiz School + stepped the Kearney girl, like a lean and hungry cat. One hand clutched + his arm. +</p> +<p> + Buzz jumped and said something under his breath. Then he laughed, + shortly. "Might as well kill a guy as scare him to death!" +</p> +<p> + She thrust one hand through his arm and linked it with the other. "I've + been waiting for you, Buzz." +</p> +<p> + "Yeh. Well, let me tell you something. You quit traipsing up and down in + front of my house, see?" +</p> +<p> + "I wanted to see you. An' I didn't know whether you was coming down town + to-night or not." +</p> +<p> + "Well, I am. So now you know." He pulled away from her, but she twined + her arm the tighter about his. +</p> +<p> + "Ain't sore at me, are yuh, Buzz?" +</p> +<p> + "No. Leggo my arm." +</p> +<p> + "If you're sore because I been foolin' round with that little wart of a + Donahue—" She turned wise eyes up to him, trying to make them limpid in + the darkness. +</p> +<p> + "What do I care who you run with?" +</p> +<p> + "Don't you care, Buzz?" The words were soft but there was a steel edge + to her utterance. +</p> +<p> + "No." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Buzz, I'm batty about you. I can't help it, can I? H'm? Look here, + you go on to Grand, and hang around for an hour, maybe, and I'll meet + you here an' we'll walk a ways. Will you? I got something to tell you." +</p> +<p> + "Naw, I can't to-night. I'm busy." +</p> +<p> + And then the steel edge cut. "Buzz, if you turn me down I'll have you + up." +</p> +<p> + "Up?" +</p> +<p> + "Before old Colt. I can fix up charges. He'll believe it. Say, he knows + me, Judge Colt does. I can name you an'—" +</p> +<p> + "Me!" Sheer amazement rang in his voice. "Me? You must be crazy. I + ain't had anything to do with you. You make me sick." +</p> +<p> + "That don't make any difference. You can't prove it. I told you I was + crazy about you. I told you—" +</p> +<p> + He jerked loose from her then and was off. He ran one block. Then, after + a backward glance, fell into a quick walk that brought him past the + Brill House and to Schroeder's drug store corner. There was his + crowd—Spider, and Red, and Bing, and Casey. They took him literally + unto their breasts. They thumped him on the back. They bestowed on him + the low epithets with which they expressed admiration. Red worked at one + of the bleaching vats in the Hatton paper mill. The story of Buzz's + fistic triumph had spread through the big plant like a flame. +</p> +<p> + "Go on, Buzz, tell 'em about it," Red urged, now. "Je's, I like to died + laughing when I heard it. He must of looked a sight, the poor boob. Go + on, Buzz, tell 'em how you says to him he must be a kind of delicate + piece of—you know; go on, tell 'em." +</p> +<p> + Buzz hitched himself up with a characteristic gesture, and plunged into + his story. His audience listened entranced, interrupting him with an + occasional "Je's!" of awed admiration. But the thing seemed to lack a + certain something. Perhaps Casey put his finger on that something when, + at the recital's finish he asked: +</p> +<p> + "Didn't he see you was goin' to hit him?" +</p> +<p> + "No. He never see a thing." +</p> +<p> + Casey ruminated a moment. "You could of give him a chanst to put up his + dukes," he said at last. A little silence fell upon the group. Honour + among thieves. +</p> +<p> + Buzz shifted uncomfortably. "He's a bigger guy than I am. I bet he's + over six foot. The papers was always telling how he played football at + that college he went to." +</p> +<p> + Casey spoke up again. "They say he didn't wait for this here draft. He's + goin' to Fort Sheridan, around Chicago somewhere, to be made a officer." +</p> +<p> + "Yeh, them rich guys, they got it all their own way," Spider spoke up, + gloomily. "They—" +</p> +<p> + From down the street came a dull, muffled thud-thud-thud-thud. Already + Chippewa, Wisconsin, had learned to recognise it. Grand Avenue, none too + crowded on this mid-week night, pressed to the curb to see. Down the + street they stared toward the moving mass that came steadily nearer. The + listless group on the corner stiffened into something like interest. +</p> +<p> + "Company G," said Red. "I hear they're leavin' in a couple of days." +</p> +<p> + And down the street they came, thud-thud-thud, Company G, headed for the + new red-brick Armory for the building of which they had engineered + everything from subscription dances and exhibition drills to turkey + raffles. Chippewa had never taken Company G very seriously until now. + How could it, when Company G was made up of Willie Kemp, who clerked in + Hassell's shoe store; Fred Garvey, the reporter on the Chippewa + <i>Eagle</i>; Hermie Knapp, the real-estate man, and Earl Hanson who came + around in the morning for your grocery order. +</p> +<p> + Thud-thud-thud-thud. And to Chippewa, standing at the curb, quite + suddenly these every-day men and boys were transformed into something + remote and almost terrible. Something grim. Something sacrificial. + Something sacred. +</p> +<p> + Thud-thud-thud-thud. Looking straight ahead. +</p> +<p> + "The poor boobs," said Spider, and spat, and laughed. +</p> +<p> + The company passed on down the street—vanished. Grand Avenue went its + way. +</p> +<p> + A little silence fell upon the street-corner group. Bing was the first + to speak. +</p> +<p> + "They won't git me in this draft. I got a mother an' two kid sisters to + support." +</p> +<p> + "Yeh, a swell lot of supportin' you do!" +</p> +<p> + "Who says I don't! I can prove it." +</p> +<p> + "They'll get me all right," said Casey. "I ain't kickin'." +</p> +<p> + "I'm under age," from Red. +</p> +<p> + Spider said nothing. His furtive eyes darted here and there. Spider was + of age. And Spider had no family to support. But Spider had reason to + know that no examining board would pass him into the army of his + country. And it was a reason of which one did not speak. "You're only + twenty, ain't you, Buzz?" he asked, to cover the gap in the + conversation. +</p> +<p> + "Yeh." Silence fell again. Then, "But I wouldn't mind goin'. Anything + for a change. This place makes me sick." +</p> +<p> + Spider laughed. "You better be a hero and go and enlist." +</p> +<p> + Buzz's head came up with a jerk. "Je's, I never thought of that!" +</p> +<p> + Red struck an attitude, one hand on his breast. "Now's your chanct, + Buzz, to save your country an' your flag. Enlistment office's right over + the Golden Eagle clothing store. Step up. Don't crowd gents! This way!" +</p> +<p> + Buzz was staring at him, open-mouthed. His gaze was fixed, tense. + Suddenly he seemed to gather all his muscles together as for a spring. + But he only threw his cigarette into the gutter, yawned elaborately, and + moved away. "S'long," he said; and lounged off. The others looked after + him a moment, puzzled, speculative. Buzz was not usually so laconic. But + evidently he was leaving with no further speech. +</p> +<p> + "I guess maybe he ain't so dead sure that Hatton bunch won't git him for + this, anyway," Casey said. Then, raising his voice: "Goin' home, Buzz?" +</p> +<p> + "Yeh." +</p> +<p> + But he did not. If they had watched him they would have seen him change + his lounging gait when he reached the corner. They would have seen him + stand a moment, sending a quick glance this way and that, then turn, + retrace his steps almost at a run, and dart into the doorway that led + to the flight of wooden stairs at the side of the Golden Eagle clothing + store. +</p> +<p> + A dingy room. A man at a bare table. Another seated at the window, his + chair tipped back, his feet on the sill, a pipe between his teeth. Buzz, + shambling, suddenly awkward, stood in the door. +</p> +<p> + "This the place where you enlist?" +</p> +<p> + The man at the table stood up. The chair in front of the open window + came down on all-fours. +</p> +<p> + "Sure," said the first man. "What's your name?" +</p> +<p> + Buzz told him. +</p> +<p> + "Meet Sergeant Keith. He's a Canadian. Been through the whole game." +</p> +<p> + Five minutes later Buzz's fine white torso rose above his trousers like + a great pillar. Unconsciously his sagging shoulders had straightened. + His stomach was held in. His chest jutted, shelf-like. His ribs showed + through the pink-white flesh. +</p> +<p> + "Get some of that pork off of him," observed Sergeant Keith, "and he'll + do in a couple of Fritzes before he's through." +</p> +<p> + "Me!" blurted Buzz, struggling now with his shirt. "A couple! Say, you + don't know me. Whaddyou mean, a couple? I can lick a whole regiment of + them beerheads with one hand tied behind me an' my feet in a sack." He + emerged from the struggle with his shirt, his face very red, his hair + rumpled. +</p> +<p> + Sergeant Keith smiled a grim little smile. "Keep your shirt on, kid," + he said, "and remember, this isn't a fist fight you're going into. It's + war." +</p> +<p> + Buzz, fumbling with his hat, put his question. "When—when do I go?" For + he had signed his name in his round, boyish, sixth-grade scrawl. +</p> +<p> + "To-morrow. Now listen to these instructions." +</p> +<p> + "T-to-morrow?" gasped Buzz. +</p> +<p> + He was still gasping as he reached the street and struck out toward + home. To-morrow! When the Kearney girl again stepped out of the + tree-shadows he stared at her as at something remote and trivial. +</p> +<p> + "I thought you tried to give me the slip, Buzz. Where you been?" +</p> +<p> + "Never mind where I've been." +</p> +<p> + She fell into step beside him, but had difficulty in matching his great + strides. She caught at his arm. At that Buzz turned and stopped. It was + too dark to see his face, but something in his voice—something new, and + hard, and resolute—reached even the choked and slimy cells of this + creature's consciousness. +</p> +<p> + "Now looka here. You beat it. I got somethin' on my mind to-night and I + can't be bothered with no fool girl, see? Don't get me sore. I mean it." +</p> +<p> + Her hand dropped away from his arm. "I didn't mean what I said about + havin' you up, Buzz; honest t' Gawd I didn't." +</p> +<p> + "I don't care what you meant." +</p> +<p> + 'Will you meet me to-morrow night? Will you, Buzz?" +</p> +<p> + "If I'm in this town to-morrow night I'll meet you. Is that good + enough?" +</p> +<p> + He turned and strode away. But she was after him. "Where you goin' + to-morrow?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm goin' to war, that's where." +</p> +<p> + "Yes you are!" scoffed Miss Kearney. Then, at his silence: "You didn't + go and do a fool thing like that?" +</p> +<p> + "I sure did." +</p> +<p> + "When you goin'?" +</p> +<p> + "To-morrow." +</p> +<p> + "Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and + do that for?" +</p> +<p> + "Search <i>me</i>," said Buzz, dully. "Search <i>me</i>." +</p> +<p> + Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly, + empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been + called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any + emotion so dignified as scorn. +</p> +<p> + The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The + Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly + <i>negligée</i> as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis + Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his + chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono, + sewing. +</p> +<p> + On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the + hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant + that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz + leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three + were on him. +</p> +<p> + "Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma + Werner's head came up sharply at that. +</p> +<p> + "What you done, Ernie?" +</p> +<p> + "Enlisted." +</p> +<p> + "Enlisted—for what?" +</p> +<p> + "For the war; what do you suppose?" +</p> +<p> + Ma Werner rose at that, heavily. "Ernie! You never!" +</p> +<p> + Pa Werner was wide awake now. Out of his memory of the old country, and + soldier service there, he put his next question. "Did you sign to it?" +</p> +<p> + "Yeh." +</p> +<p> + "When you goin'?" +</p> +<p> + "To-morrow." +</p> +<p> + Even Pa Werner gasped at that. +</p> +<p> + In families like the Werners emotion is rarely expressed. But now, + because of something in the stricken face and starting eyes of the + woman, and the open-mouthed dumbfoundedness of the old man, and the + sudden tender fearfulness in the face of the girl; and because, in that + moment, all these seemed very safe, and accustomed, and, somehow, dear, + Buzz curled his mouth into the sneer of the tough guy and spoke out of + the corner of that contorted feature. +</p> +<p> + "What did you think I was goin' to do? Huh? Stick around here and take + dirt from the bunch of you! Nix! I'm through!" +</p> +<p> + There was nothing dramatic about Buzz's going. He seemed to be whisked + away. One moment he was eating his breakfast at an unaccustomed hour, in + his best shirt and trousers, his mother, only half understanding even + now, standing over him with the coffee pot; the next he was standing + with his cheap shiny suitcase in his hand. Then he was waiting on the + depot platform, and Hefty Burke, the baggage man, was saying, "Where you + goin', Buzz?" +</p> +<p> + "Goin' to fight the Germans." +</p> +<p> + Hefty had hooted hoarsely: "Ya-a-as you are, you big bluff!" +</p> +<p> + "Who you callin' a bluff, you baggage-smasher, you! I'm goin' to war, + I'm tellin' you." +</p> +<p> + Hefty, still scoffing, turned away to his work. "Well, then, I guess + it's as good as over. Give old Willie a swipe for me, will you?" +</p> +<p> + "You bet I will. Watch me!" +</p> +<p> + I think he more than half meant it. +</p> +<p> + And thus Buzz Werner went to war. He was vague about its locality. + Somewhere in Europe. He was pretty sure it was France. A line from his + Fourth Grade geography came back to him. "The French," it had said, "are + a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines." +</p> +<p> + Well, that sounded all right. +</p> +<p> + The things that happened to Buzz Werner in the next twelve months + cannot be detailed here. They would require the space of what the + publishers call a 12-mo volume. Buzz himself could never have told you. + Things happened too swiftly, too concentratedly. +</p> +<p> + Chicago first. Buzz had never seen Chicago. Now that he saw it, he + hardly believed it. His first glimpse of it left him cowering, + terrified. The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness, + were like blows upon his defenceless head. They beat the braggadocio and + the self-confidence temporarily out of him. But only temporarily. +</p> +<p> + Then came a camp. A rough, temporary camp compared to which the present + cantonments are luxurious. The United States Government took Buzz Werner + by the slack of the trousers and the slack of the mind, and, holding him + thus, shook him into shape—and into submission. And eventually—though + it required months—into an understanding of why that submission was + manly, courageous, and fine. But before he learned that he learned many + other things. He learned there was little good in saying, "Aw, g'wan!" + to a dapper young lieutenant if they clapped you into the guard-house + for saying it. There was little point to throwing down your shovel and + refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for + doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out. He + learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a + dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an + olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so + sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from + limb, during the night, and never put together again. He stood out with + a raw squad in the dirt of No Man's Land between barracks and went + through exercises that took hold of his great slack muscles and welded + them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim, + six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless, + merciless—a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between + thumb and finger—like that!—who made life a hell for Buzz Werner. + Until his muscles became used to it. +</p> +<p> + "One—<i>two</i>!—three! One—<i>two</i>—three! One—<i>two</i>—three!" yelled this + person. And, "<i>In</i>hale! <i>Ex</i>hale! <i>In</i>hale! <i>Ex</i>hale!" till Buzz's lungs + were bursting, his eyes were starting from his head, his chest carried a + sledge hammer inside it, his thigh-muscles screamed, and his legs, arms, + neck, were no longer parts of him, but horrid useless burdens, detached, + yet clinging. He learned what this person meant when he shouted (always + with the rising inflection), "Comp'ny! Right! <i>Whup</i>!" Buzz whupped with + the best of 'em. The whipper-snapper seemed tireless. Long after Buzz + felt that another moment of it would kill him the lithe young lieutenant + would be leaping about like a faun, and pride kept Buzz going though he + wanted to drop with fatigue, and his shirt and hair and face were wet + with sweat. +</p> +<p> + So much for his body. It soon became accustomed to the routine, then + hardened. His mind was less pliable. But that, too, was undergoing a + change. He found that the topics of conversation that used to interest + his little crowd on the street corner in Chippewa were not of much + interest, here. There were boys from every part of the great country. + And they talked of the places whence they had come and speculated about + the places to which they were going. And Buzz listened and learned. + There was strangely little talk about girls. There usually is when + muscles and mind are being driven to the utmost. But he heard men—men + as big as he—speak openly of things that he had always sneered at as + soft. After one of these conversations he wrote an awkward, but + significant scrawl home to his mother. +</p> +<p> + "Well Ma," he wrote, "I guess maybe you would like to hear a few words + from me. Well I like it in the army it is the life for me you bet. I am + feeling great how are you all—" +</p> +<p> + Ma Werner wasted an entire morning showing it around the neighbourhood, + and she read and reread it until it was almost pulp. +</p> +<p> + Six months of this. Buzz Werner was an intelligent machine composed of + steel, cord, and iron. I think he had forgotten that the Kearney girl + had ever existed. One day, after three months of camp life, the man in + the next cot had thrown him a volume of Kipling. Buzz fingered it, + disinterestedly. Until that moment Kipling had not existed for Buzz + Werner. After that moment he dominated his leisure hours. The Y.M.C.A. + hut had many battered volumes of this writer. Buzz read them all. +</p> +<p> + The week before Thanksgiving Buzz found himself on his way to New York. + For some reason unexplained to him he was separated from his company in + one of the great shake-ups performed for the good of the army. He never + saw them again. He was sent straight to a New York camp. When he beheld + his new lieutenant his limbs became fluid, and his heart leaped into his + throat, and his mouth stood open, and his eyes bulged. It was young + Hatton—Harry Hatton—whose aristocratic nose he had punched six months + before, in the Hatton Pulp and Paper Mill. +</p> +<p> + And even as he stared young Hatton fixed him with his eye, and then came + over to him and said, "It's all right, Werner." +</p> +<p> + Buzz Werner could only salute with awkward respect, while with one great + gulp his heart slid back into normal place. He had not thought that + Hatton was so tall, or so broad-shouldered, or so— +</p> +<p> + He no more thought of telling the other men that he had once knocked + this man down than he thought of knocking him down again. He would + almost as soon have thought of taking a punch at the President. +</p> +<p> + The day before Thanksgiving Buzz was told he might have a holiday. Also + he was given an address and a telephone number in New York City and told + that if he so desired he might call at that address and receive a + bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. They were expecting him there. That the + telephone exchange was Murray Hill, and the street Madison Avenue meant + nothing to Buzz. He made the short trip to New York, floundered about + the city, found every one willing and eager to help him find the address + on the slip, and brought up, finally, in front of the house on Madison + Avenue. It was a large, five-story stone place, and Buzz supposed it was + a flat, of course. He stood off and surveyed it. Then he ascended the + steps and rang the bell. They must have been waiting for him. The door + was opened by a large amiable-looking, middle-aged man who said, "Well, + well! Come in, come in, my boy!" a great deal as the folks in Chippewa, + Wisconsin, might have said it. The stout old party also said he was glad + to see him and Buzz believed it. They went upstairs, much to Buzz's + surprise. In Buzz's experience upstairs always meant bedrooms. But in + this case it meant a great bright sitting room, with books in it, and a + fireplace, very cheerful. There were not a lot of people in the room. + Just a middle-aged woman in a soft kind of dress, who came to him + without any fuss and the first thing he knew he felt acquainted. Within + the next fifteen minutes or so some other members of the family seemed + to ooze in, unnoticeably. First thing you knew, there they were. They + didn't pay such an awful lot of attention to you. Just took you for + granted. A couple of young kids, a girl of fourteen, and a boy of + sixteen who asked you easy questions about the army till you found + yourself patronising him. And a tall black-haired girl who made you + think of the vamps in the movies, only her eyes were different. And + then, with a little rush, a girl about his own age, or maybe younger—he + couldn't tell—who came right up to him, and put out her hand, and gave + him a grip with her hard little fist, just like a boy, and said, "I'm + Joyce Ladd." +</p> +<p> + "Pleased to meetcha," mumbled Buzz. And then he found himself talking to + her quite easily. She knew a surprising lot about the army. +</p> +<p> + "I've two brothers over there," she said. "And all my friends, of + course." He found out later, quite by accident, that this boyish, but + strangely appealing person belonged to some sort of Motor Service + League, and drove an automobile, every day, from eight to six, up and + down and round and about New York, working like a man in the service of + the country. He never would have believed that the world held that kind + of girl. +</p> +<p> + Then four other men in uniform came in, and it turned out that three of + them were privates like himself, and the other a sergeant. Their awkward + entrance made him feel more than ever at ease, and ten minutes later + they were all talking like mad, and laughing and joking as if they had + known these people for years. They all went in to dinner. Buzz got + panicky when he thought of the knives and forks, but that turned out all + right, too, because they brought these as you needed them. And besides, + the things they gave you to eat weren't much different from the things + you had for Sunday or Thanksgiving dinner at home, and it was cooked the + way his mother would have cooked it—even better, perhaps. And lots of + it. And paper snappers and caps and things, and much laughter and talk. + And Buzz Werner, who had never been shown any respect or deference in + his life, was asked, politely, his opinion of the war, and the army, and + when he thought it all would end; and he told them, politely, too. +</p> +<p> + After dinner Mrs. Ladd said, "What would you boys like to do? Would you + like to drive around the city and see New York? Or would you like to go + to a matinée, or a picture show? Or do you want to stay here? Some of + Joyce's girl friends are coming in a little later." +</p> +<p> + And Buzz found himself saying, stumblingly, "I—I'd kind of rather stay + and talk with the girls." Buzz, the tough guy, blushing like a shy + schoolboy. +</p> +<p> + They did not even laugh at that. They just looked as if they understood + that you missed girls at camp. Mrs. Ladd came over to him and put her + hand on his arm and said, "That's splendid. We'll all go up to the + ballroom and dance." And they did. And Buzz, who had learned to dance at + places like Kearney's saloon, and at the mill shindigs, glided expertly + about with Joyce Ladd of Madison Avenue, and found himself seated in a + great cushioned window-seat, talking with her about Kipling. It was like + talking to another fellow, almost, only it had a thrill in it. She said + such comic things. And when she laughed she threw back her head and your + eyes were dazzled by her slender white throat. They all stayed for + supper. And when they left Mrs. Ladd and Joyce handed them packages + that, later, turned out to be cigarettes, and chocolate, and books, and + soap, and knitted things and a wallet. And when Buzz opened the wallet + and found, with relief, that there was no money in it he knew that he + had met and mingled with American royalty as its equal. +</p> +<p> + Three days later he sailed for France. +</p> +<p> + Buzz Werner, the Chippewa tough guy, in Paris! Buzz Werner at Napoleon's + tomb, that glorious white marble poem. Buzz Werner in the Place de la + Concorde. Eating at funny little Paris restaurants. +</p> +<p> + Then a new life. Life in a drab, rain-soaked, mud-choked little French + village, sleeping in barns, or stables, or hen coops. If the French were + "a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," he'd like to know where + it came in! Nothing but drill and mud, mud and drill, and rain, rain, + rain! And old women with tragic faces, and young women with old eyes. + And unbelievable stories of courage and sacrifice. And more rain, and + more mud, and more drill. And then—into it! +</p> +<p> + Into it with both feet. Living in the trenches. Back home, in camp, they + had refused to take the trenches seriously. They had played in them as + children play bear under the piano or table, and had refused to keep + their heads down. But Buzz learned to keep his down now, quickly enough. + A first terrifying stretch of this, then back to the rear again. More + mud and drill. Marches so long and arduous that walking was no longer + walking but a dreadful mechanical motion. He learned what thirst was, + did Buzz. He learned what it was to be obliged to keep your mind off the + thought of pails of water—pails that slopped and brimmed over, so that + you could put your head into them and lip around like a horse. +</p> +<p> + Then back into the trenches. And finally, over the top! Very little + memory of what happened after that. A rush. Trampling over soft heaps + that writhed. Some one yelling like an Indian with a voice somehow like + his own. The German trench reached. At them with his bayonet! He + remembered, automatically, how his manual had taught him to jerk out the + steel, after you had driven it home. He did it. Into the very trench + itself. A great six-foot German struggling with a slim figure that Buzz + somehow recognised as his lieutenant, Hatton. A leap at him, like an + enraged dog: +</p> +<p> + "G'wan! who you shovin', you big slob you" yelled Buzz (I regret to + say). And he thrust at him, and through him. The man released his + grappling hold of Hatton's throat, and grunted, and sat down. And Buzz + laughed. And the two went on, Buzz behind his lieutenant, and then + something smote his thigh, and he too sat down. The dying German had + thrown his last bomb, and it had struck home. +</p> +<p> + Buzz Werner would never again do a double shuffle on Schroeder's + drug-store corner. +</p> +<p> + Hospital days. Hospital nights. A wheel chair. Crutches. Home. +</p> +<p> + It was May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little + red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his + uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at + his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one. + As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just before reaching + the town proper, there was old Bart Ochsner ringing the bell for dinner + at the Junction eating house. Well, for the love of Mike! Wouldn't that + make you laugh. Ringing that bell, just like always, as if nothing had + happened in the last year! Buzz leaned against the window, to see. There + was some commotion in the train and some one spoke his name. Buzz + turned, and there stood Old Man Hatton, and a lot of others, and he + seemed to be making a speech, and kind of crying, though that couldn't + be possible. And his father was there, very clean and shaved and queer. + Buzz caught words about bravery, and Chippewa's pride, and he was fussed + to death, and glad when the train pulled in at the Chippewa station. But + there the commotion was worse than ever. There was a band, playing away + like mad. Buzz's great hands grown very white, were fidgeting at his + uniform buttons, and at the stripe on his sleeve, and the medal on his + breast. They wouldn't let him carry a thing, and when he came out on the + car platform to descend there went up a great sound that was half roar + and half scream. Buzz Werner was the first of Chippewa's men to come + back. +</p> +<p> + After that it was rather hazy. There was his mother. His sister Minnie, + too. He even saw the Kearney girl, with her loose red mouth, and her + silly eyes, and she was as a strange woman to him. He was in Hatton's + glittering automobile, being driven down Grand Avenue. There were + speeches, and a dinner, and, later, when he was allowed to go home, + rather white, a steady stream of people pouring in and out of the house + all day. That night, when he limped up the stairs to his hot little room + under the roof he was dazed, spent, and not so very happy. +</p> +<p> + Next morning, though, he felt more himself, and inclined to joke. And + then there was a talk with old Man Hatton; a talk that left Buzz + somewhat numb, and the family breathless. +</p> +<p> + Visitors again, all that afternoon. +</p> +<p> + After supper he carried water for the garden, against his mother's + outraged protests. +</p> +<p> + "What'll folks think!" she said, "you carryin' water for me?" +</p> +<p> + Afterward he took his smart visored cap off the hook and limped down + town, his boots and leggings and uniform very spick and span from Ma + Werner's expert brushing and rubbing. She refused to let Buzz touch + them, although he tried to tell her that he had done that job for a + year. +</p> +<p> + At the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's drug + store, stood what was left of the gang, and some new members who had + come during the year that had passed. Buzz knew them all. +</p> +<p> + They greeted him at first with a mixture of shyness and resentment. They + eyed his leg, and his uniform, and the metal and ribbon thing that hung + at his breast. Bing and Red and Spider were there. Casey was gone. +</p> +<p> + Finally Spider spat and said, "G'wan, Buzz, give us your spiel about how + you saved young Hatton—the simp!" +</p> +<p> + "Who says he's a simp?" inquired Buzz, very quietly. But there was a + look about his jaw. +</p> +<p> + "Well—anyway—the papers was full of how you was a hero. Say, is that + right that old Hatton's goin' to send you to college? Huh? Je's!" +</p> +<p> + "Yeh," chorused the others, "go on, Buzz. Tell us." +</p> +<p> + Red put his question. "Tell us about the fightin', Buzz. Is it like they + say?" +</p> +<p> + It was Buzz Werner's great moment. He had pictured it a thousand times + in his mind as he lay in the wet trenches, as he plodded the muddy + French roads, as he reclined in his wheel chair in the hospital garden. + He had them in the hollow of his hand. His eyes brightened. He looked at + the faces so eagerly fixed on his utterance. +</p> +<p> + "G'wan, Buzz," they urged. +</p> +<p> + Buzz opened his lips and the words he used were the words he might have + used a year before, as to choice. "There's nothin' to tell. A guy didn't + have no time to be scairt. Everything kind of come at once, and you got + yours, or either you didn't. That's all there was to it. Je's, it was + fierce!" +</p> +<p> + They waited. Nothing more. "Yeh, but tell us—" +</p> +<p> + And suddenly Buzz turned away. The little group about him fell back, + respectfully. Something in his face, perhaps. A quietness, a new + dignity. +</p> +<p> + "S'long, boys," he said. And limped off, toward home. +</p> +<p> + And in that moment Buzz, the bully and braggart, vanished forever. And + in his place—head high, chest up, eyes clear—limped Ernest Werner, the + man. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_4"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + IV +</h2> +<h2> + THE ELDEST +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + The Self-Complacent Young Cub leaned an elbow against the mantel as + you've seen it done in English plays, and blew a practically perfect + smoke-ring. It hurtled toward me like a discus. +</p> +<p> + "Trouble with your stuff," he began at once (we had just been + introduced), "is that it lacks plot. Been meaning to meet and tell you + that for a long time. Your characterization's all right, and your + dialogue. In fact, I think they're good. But your stuff lacks <i>raison + d'être</i>—if you know what I mean. +</p> +<p> + "But"—in feeble self-defence—"people's insides are often so much more + interesting than their outsides; that which they think or feel so much + more thrilling than anything they actually do. Bennett—Wells—" +</p> +<p> + "Rot!" remarked the young cub, briskly. "Plot's the thing." +</p> +<p> </p> + +<p> + There is no plot to this because there is no plot to Rose. There never + was. There never will be. Compared to the drab monotony of Rose's + existence a desert waste is as thrilling as a five-reel film. +</p> +<p> + They had called her Rose, fatuously, as parents do their first-born + girl. No doubt she had been normally pink and white and velvety. It is a + risky thing to do, however. Think back hastily on the Roses you know. + Don't you find a startling majority still clinging, sere and withered, + to the family bush? +</p> +<p> + In Chicago, Illinois, a city of two millions (or is it three?), there + are women whose lives are as remote, as grey, as unrelated to the world + about them as is the life of a Georgia cracker's woman-drudge. Rose was + one of these. An unwed woman, grown heavy about the hips and arms, as + houseworking women do, though they eat but little, moving dully about + the six-room flat on Sangamon Street, Rose was as much a slave as any + black wench of plantation days. +</p> +<p> + There was the treadmill of endless dishes, dirtied as fast as cleansed; + there were beds, and beds, and beds; gravies and soups and stews. And + always the querulous voice of the sick woman in the front bedroom + demanding another hot water bag. Rose's day was punctuated by hot water + bags. They dotted her waking hours. She filled hot water bags + automatically, like a machine—water half-way to the top, then one hand + clutching the bag's slippery middle while the other, with a deft twist, + ejected the air within; a quick twirl of the metal stopper, the bag + released, squirming, and, finally, its plump and rufous cheeks wiped + dry. +</p> +<p> + "Is that too hot for you, Ma? Where'd you want it—your head or your + feet?" +</p> +<p> + A spinster nearing forty, living thus, must have her memories—one + precious memory, at least—or she dies. Rose had hers. She hugged it, + close. The L trains roared by, not thirty feet from her kitchen door. + Alley and yard and street sent up their noises to her. The life of + Chicago's millions yelped at her heels. On Rose's face was the vague, + mute look of the woman whose days are spent indoors, at sordid tasks. +</p> +<p> + At six-thirty every night that look lifted, for an hour. At six-thirty + they came home—Floss, and Al, and Pa—their faces stamped with the + marks that come from a day spent in shop and factory. They brought with + them the crumbs and husks of the day's happenings, and these they flung + carelessly before the life-starved Rose and she ate them, gratefully. +</p> +<p> + They came in with a rush, hungry, fagged, grimed, imperious, smelling of + the city. There was a slamming of doors, a banging of drawers, a clatter + of tongues, quarrelling, laughter. A brief visit to the sick woman's + room. The thin, complaining voice reciting its tale of the day's + discomfort and pain. Then supper. +</p> +<p> + "Guess who I waited on to-day!" Floss might demand. +</p> +<p> + Rose, dishing up, would pause, interested. "Who?" +</p> +<p> + "Gladys Moraine! I knew her the minute she came down the aisle. I saw + her last year when she was playing in 'His Wives.' She's prettier off + than on, I think. I waited on her, and the other girls were wild. She + bought a dozen pairs of white kids, and made me give 'em to her huge, so + she could shove her hand right into 'em, like a man does. Two sizes too + big. All the swells wear 'em that way. And only one ring—an emerald the + size of a dime." +</p> +<p> + "What'd she wear?" Rose's dull face was almost animated. +</p> +<p> + "Ah yes!" in a dreamy falsetto from Al, "what <i>did</i> she wear?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, shut up, Al! Just a suit, kind of plain, and yet you'd notice it. + And sables! And a Gladys Moraine hat. Everything quiet, and plain, and + dark; and yet she looked like a million dollars. I felt like a roach + while I was waiting on her, though she was awfully sweet to me." +</p> +<p> + Or perhaps Al, the eel-like, would descend from his heights to mingle a + brief moment in the family talk. Al clerked in the National Cigar + Company's store at Clark and Madison. His was the wisdom of the snake, + the weasel, and the sphinx. A strangely silent young man, this Al, + thin-lipped, smooth-cheeked, perfumed. Slim of waist, flat of hip, + narrow of shoulder, his was the figure of the born fox-trotter. He + walked lightly, on the balls of his feet, like an Indian, but without + the Indian's dignity. +</p> +<p> + "Some excitement ourselves, to-day, down at the store, believe me. The + Old Man's son started in to learn the retail selling end of the + business. Back of the showcase with the rest of us, waiting on trade, + and looking like a Yale yell." +</p> +<p> + Pa would put down his paper to stare over his reading specs at Al. +</p> +<p> + "Mannheim's son! The president!" +</p> +<p> + "Yep! And I guess he loves it, huh? The Old Man wants him to learn the + business from the ground up. I'll bet he'll never get higher than the + first floor. To-day he went out to lunch at one and never shows up again + till four. Wears English collars, and smokes a brand of cigarettes we + don't carry." +</p> +<p> + Thus was the world brought to Rose. Her sallow cheek would show a faint + hint of colour as she sipped her tea. +</p> +<p> + At six-thirty on a Monday morning in late April (remember, nothing's + going to happen) Rose smothered her alarm clock at the first warning + snarl. She was wide-awake at once, as are those whose yesterdays, + to-days and to-morrows are all alike. Rose never opened her eyes to the + dim, tantalising half-consciousness of a something delightful or a + something harrowing in store for her that day. For one to whom the + wash-woman's Tuesday visitation is the event of the week, and in whose + bosom the delivery boy's hoarse "Groc-rees!" as he hurls soap and cabbage + on the kitchen table, arouses a wild flurry, there can be very little + thrill on awakening. +</p> +<p> + Rose slept on the davenport-couch in the sitting-room. That fact in + itself rises her status in the family. This Monday morning she opened + her eyes with what might be called a start if Rose were any other sort + of heroine. Something had happened, or was happening. It wasn't the six + o'clock steam hissing in the radiator. She was accustomed to that. The + rattle of the L trains, and the milkman's artillery disturbed her as + little as does the chirping of the birds the farmer's daughter. A + sensation new, yet familiar; delicious, yet painful, held her. She + groped to define it, lying there. Her gaze, wandering over the expanse + of the grey woollen blanket, fixed upon a small black object trembling + there. The knowledge that came to her then had come, many weeks before, + in a hundred subtle and exquisite ways, to those who dwell in the open + places. Rose's eyes narrowed craftily. Craftily, stealthily, she sat up, + one hand raised. Her eyes still fixed on the quivering spot, the hand + descended, lightning-quick. But not quickly enough. The black spot + vanished. It sped toward the open window. Through that window there came + a balmy softness made up of Lake Michigan zephyr, and stockyards smell, + and distant budding things. Rose had failed to swat the first fly of the + season. Spring had come. +</p> +<p> + As she got out of bed and thud-thudded across the room on her heels to + shut the window she glanced out into the quiet street. Her city eyes, + untrained to nature's hints, failed to notice that the scraggy, + smoke-dwarfed oak that sprang, somehow, miraculously, from the mangey + little dirt-plot in front of the building had developed surprising + things all over its scrawny branches overnight. But she did see that the + front windows of the flat building across the way were bare of the + Chicago-grey lace curtains that had hung there the day before. House + cleaning! Well, most decidedly spring had come. +</p> +<p> + Rose was the household's Aurora. Following the donning of her limp and + obscure garments it was Rose's daily duty to tear the silent family from + its slumbers. Ma was always awake, her sick eyes fixed hopefully on the + door. For fourteen years it had been the same. +</p> +<p> + "Sleeping?" +</p> +<p> + "Sleeping! I haven't closed an eye all night." +</p> +<p> + Rose had learned not to dispute that statement. +</p> +<p> + "It's spring out! I'm going to clean the closets and the bureau drawers + to-day. I'll have your coffee in a jiffy. Do you feel like getting up + and sitting out on the back porch, toward noon, maybe?" +</p> +<p> + On her way kitchenward she stopped for a sharp tattoo at the door of the + room in which Pa and Al slept. A sleepy grunt of remonstrance rewarded + her. She came to Floss's door, turned the knob softly, peered in. Floss + was sleeping as twenty sleeps, deeply, dreamlessly, one slim bare arm + outflung, the lashes resting ever so lightly on the delicate curve of + cheek. As she lay there asleep in her disordered bedroom, her clothes + strewing chair, dresser, floor, Floss's tastes, mental equipment, + spiritual make-up, innermost thoughts, were as plainly to be read by + the observer as though she had been scientifically charted by a + psycho-analyst, a metaphysician and her dearest girl friend. +</p> +<p> + "Floss! Floss, honey! Quarter to seven!" Floss stirred, moaned faintly, + dropped into sleep again. +</p> +<p> + Fifteen minutes later, the table set, the coffee simmering, the morning + paper brought from the back porch to Ma, Rose had heard none of the + sounds that proclaimed the family astir—the banging of drawers, the + rush of running water, the slap of slippered feet. A peep of enquiry + into the depths of the coffee pot, the gas turned to a circle of blue + beads, and she was down the hall to sound the second alarm. +</p> +<p> + "Floss, you know if Al once gets into the bathroom!" Floss sat up in + bed, her eyes still closed. She made little clucking sounds with her + tongue and lips, as a baby does when it wakes. Drugged with sleep, hair + tousled, muscles sagging, at seven o'clock in the morning, the most + trying hour in the day for a woman, Floss was still triumphantly pretty. + She had on one of those absurd pink muslin nightgowns, artfully designed + to look like crêpe de chine. You've seen them rosily displayed in the + cheaper shop windows, marked ninety-eight cents, and you may have + wondered who might buy them, forgetting that there is an imitation mind + for every imitation article in the world. +</p> +<p> + Rose stooped, picked up a pair of silk stockings from the floor, and + ran an investigating hand through to heel and toe. She plucked a soiled + pink blouse off the back of a chair, eyed it critically, and tucked it + under her arm with the stockings. +</p> +<p> + "Did you have a good time last night?" +</p> +<p> + Floss yawned elaborately, stretched her slim arms high above her head; + then, with a desperate effort, flung back the bed-clothes, swung her + legs over the side of the bed and slipped her toes into the shabby, + pomponed slippers that lay on the floor. +</p> +<p> + "I say, did you have a g—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh Lord, I don't know! I guess so," snapped Floss. Temperamentally, + Floss was not at her best at seven o'clock on Monday morning. Rose did + not pursue the subject. She tried another tack. +</p> +<p> + "It's as mild as summer out. I see the Werners and the Burkes are + housecleaning. I thought I'd start to-day with the closets, and the + bureau drawers. You could wear your blue this morning, if it was + pressed." +</p> +<p> + Floss yawned again, disinterestedly, and folded her kimono about her. +</p> +<p> + "Go as far as you like. Only don't put things back in my closet so's I + can't ever find 'em again. I wish you'd press that blue skirt. And wash + out the Georgette crêpe waist. I might need it." +</p> +<p> + The blouse, and skirt, and stockings under her arm, Rose went back to + the kitchen to prepare her mother's breakfast tray. Wafted back to her + came the acrid odour of Pa's matutinal pipe, and the accustomed + bickering between Al and Floss over the possession of the bathroom. +</p> +<p> + "What do you think this is, anyway? A Turkish bath?" +</p> +<p> + "Shave in your own room!" +</p> +<p> + Between Floss and Al there existed a feud that lifted only when a third + member of the family turned against either of them. Immediately they + about-faced and stood united against the offender. +</p> +<p> + Pa was the first to demand breakfast, as always. Very neat, was Pa, and + fussy, and strangely young looking to be the husband of the grey-haired, + parchment-skinned woman who lay in the front bedroom. Pa had two manias: + the movies, and a passion for purchasing new and complicated household + utensils—cream-whippers, egg-beaters, window-clamps, lemon-squeezers, + silver-polishers. He haunted department store basements in search of + them. +</p> +<p> + He opened his paper now and glanced at the head-lines and at the Monday + morning ads. "I see the Fair's got a spring housecleaning sale. They + advertise a new kind of extension curtain rod. And Scouro, three cakes + for a dime." +</p> +<p> + "If you waste one cent more on truck like that," Rose protested, placing + his breakfast before him, "when half the time I can't make the + housekeeping money last through the week!" +</p> +<p> + "Your ma did it." +</p> +<p> + "Fourteen years ago liver wasn't thirty-two cents a pound," retorted + Rose, "and besides—" +</p> +<p> + "Scramble 'em!" yelled Al, from the bedroom, by way of warning. +</p> +<p> + There was very little talk after that. The energies of three of them + were directed toward reaching the waiting desk or counter on time. The + energy of one toward making that accomplishment easy. The front door + slammed once—that was Pa, on his way; slammed again—Al. Floss rushed + into the dining-room fastening the waist-band of her skirt, her hat + already on. Rose always had a rather special breakfast for Floss. Floss + posed as being a rather special person. She always breakfasted last, and + late. Floss's was a fastidiousness which shrinks at badly served food, a + spotted table-cloth, or a last year's hat, while it overlooks a rent in + an undergarment or the accumulated dust in a hairbrush. Her blouse was + of the sheerest. Her hair shone in waves about her delicate checks. She + ate her orange, and sipped her very special coffee, and made a little + face over her egg that had been shirred in the oven or in some way + highly specialised. Then the front door slammed again—a semi-slam, this + time. Floss never did quite close a door. Rose followed her down the + hall, shut and bolted it, Chicago fashion. The sick woman in the front + bedroom had dropped into one of her fitful morning dozes. At eight + o'clock the little flat was very still. +</p> +<p> + If you knew nothing about Rose; if you had not already been told that + she slept on the sitting-room davenport; that she was taken for granted + as the family drudge; that she was, in that household, merely an + intelligent machine that made beds, fried eggs, filled hot water bags, + you would get a characterization of her from this: She was the sort of + person who never has a closet or bureau drawer all her own. Her few and + negligible garments hung apologetically in obscure corners of closets + dedicated to her sister's wardrobe or her brother's, or her spruce and + fussy old father's. Vague personal belongings, such as combings, + handkerchiefs, a spectacle case, a hairbrush, were found tucked away in + a desk pigeon-hole, a table drawer, or on the top shelf in the bathroom. +</p> +<p> + As she pulled the disfiguring blue gingham dust-cap over her hair now, + and rolled her sleeves to her elbows, you would never have dreamed that + Rose was embarking upon her great adventure. You would never have + guessed that the semi-yearly closet cleaning was to give to Rose a + thrill as delicious as it was exquisitely painful. But Rose knew. And so + she teased herself, and tried not to think of the pasteboard box on the + shelf in the hall closet, under the pile of reserve blankets, and told + herself that she would leave that closet until the last, when she would + have to hurry over it. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<p> + When you clean closets and bureau drawers thoroughly you have to carry + things out to the back porch and flap them, Rose was that sort of + housekeeper. She leaned over the porch railing and flapped things, so + that the dust motes spun and swirled in the sunshine. Rose's arms worked + up and down energetically, then less energetically, finally ceased their + motion altogether. She leaned idle elbows on the porch railing and gazed + down into the yard below with a look in her eyes such as no squalid + Chicago back yard, with its dusty débris, could summon, even in + spring-time. +</p> +<p> + The woman next door came out on her back porch that adjoined Rose's. The + day seemed to have her in its spell, too, for in her hand was something + woolly and wintry, and she began to flap it about as Rose had done. She + had lived next door since October, had that woman, but the two had never + exchanged a word, true to the traditions of their city training. Rose + had her doubts of the woman next door. She kept a toy dog which she + aired afternoons, and her kimonos were florid and numerous. Now, as the + eyes of the two women met, Rose found herself saying, "Looks like + summer." +</p> +<p> + The woman next door caught the scrap of conversation eagerly, hungrily. + "It certainly does! Makes me feel like new clothes, and housecleaning." +</p> +<p> + "I started to-day!" said Rose, triumphantly. +</p> +<p> + "Not already!" gasped the woman next door, with the chagrin that only a + woman knows who has let May steal upon her unawares. +</p> +<p> + From far down the alley sounded a chant, drawing nearer and nearer, + until there shambled into view a decrepit horse drawing a dilapidated + huckster's cart. Perched on the seat was a Greek who turned his dusky + face up toward the two women leaning over the porch railings. "Rhubarb, + leddy. Fresh rhubarb!" +</p> +<p> + "My folks don't care for rhubarb sauce," Rose told the woman next door. +</p> +<p> + "It makes the worst pie in the world," the woman confided to Rose. +</p> +<p> + Whereupon each bought a bunch of the succulent green and red stalks. It + was their offering at the season's shrine. +</p> +<p> + Rose flung the rhubarb on the kitchen table, pulled her dust-cap more + firmly about her ears, and hurried back to the disorder of Floss's dim + little bedroom. After that it was dust-cloth, and soapsuds, and + scrub-brush in a race against recurrent water bags, insistent doorbells, + and the inevitable dinner hour. It was mid-afternoon when Rose, standing + a-tiptoe on a chair, came at last to the little box on the top shelf + under the bedding in the hall closet. Her hand touched the box, and + closed about it. A little electric thrill vibrated through her body. She + stepped down from the chair, heavily, listened until her acute ear + caught the sound of the sick woman's slumbrous breathing; then, box in + hand, walked down the dark hall to the kitchen. The rhubarb pie, still + steaming in its pan, was cooling on the kitchen table. The dishes from + the invalid's lunch-tray littered the sink. But Rose, seated on the + kitchen chair, her rumpled dust-cap pushed back from her flushed, + perspiring face, untied the rude bit of string that bound the old candy + box, removed the lid, slowly, and by that act was wafted magically out + of the world of rhubarb pies, and kitchen chairs, and dirty dishes, into + that place whose air is the breath of incense and myrrh, whose paths are + rose-strewn, whose dwellings are temples dedicated to but one small god. + The land is known as Love, and Rose travelled back to it on the magic + rug of memory. +</p> +<p> + A family of five in a six-room Chicago flat must sacrifice sentiment to + necessity. There is precious little space for those pressed flowers, + time-yellowed gowns, and ribbon-bound packets that figured so + prominently in the days of attics. Into the garbage can with yesterday's + roses! The janitor's burlap sack yawns for this morning's mail; last + year's gown has long ago met its end at the hands of the ol'-clo'es man + or the wash-woman's daughter. That they had survived these fourteen + years, and the strictures of their owner's dwelling, tells more about + this boxful of letters than could be conveyed by a battalion of + adjectives. +</p> +<p> + Rose began at the top of the pile, in her orderly fashion, and read + straight through to the last. It took one hour. Half of that time she + was not reading. She was staring straight ahead with what is mistakenly + called an unseeing look, but which actually pierces the veil of years + and beholds things far, far beyond the vision of the actual eye. They + were the letters of a commonplace man to a commonplace woman, written + when they loved each other, and so they were touched with something of + the divine. They must have been, else how could they have sustained this + woman through fifteen years of drudgery? They were the only tangible + foundation left of the structure of dreams she had built about this man. + All the rest of her house of love had tumbled about her ears fifteen + years before, but with these few remaining bricks she had erected many + times since castles and towers more exquisite and lofty and soaring than + the original humble structure had ever been. +</p> +<p> + The story? Well, there really isn't any, as we've warned you. Rose had + been pretty then in much the same delicate way that Floss was pretty + now. They were to have been married. Rose's mother fell ill, Floss and + Al were little more than babies. The marriage was put off. The illness + lasted six months—a year—two years—became interminable. The breach + into which Rose had stepped closed about her and became a prison. The + man had waited, had grown impatient, finally rebelled. He had fled, + probably, to marry a less encumbered lady. Rose had gone dully on, + caring for the household, the children, the sick woman. In the years + that had gone by since then Rose had forgiven him his faithlessness. + She only remembered that he had been wont to call her his Röschen, + his Rosebud, his pretty flower (being a German gentleman). She only + recalled the wonder of having been first in some one's thoughts—she + who now was so hopelessly, so irrevocably last. +</p> +<p> + As she sat there in her kitchen, wearing her soap-stained and faded blue + gingham, and the dust-cap pushed back at a rakish angle, a simpering + little smile about her lips, she was really very much like the + disappointed old maids you used to see so cruelly pictured in the comic + valentines. Had those letters obsessed her a little more strongly she + might have become quite mad, the Freudians would tell you. Had they held + less for her, or had she not been so completely the household's slave, + she might have found a certain solace and satisfaction in viewing the + Greek profile and marcel wave of the most-worshipped movie star. As it + was, they were her ballast, her refuge, the leavening yeast in the soggy + dough of her existence. This man had wanted her to be his wife. She had + found favour in his eyes. She was certain that he still thought of her, + sometimes, and tenderly, regretfully, as she thought of him. It helped + her to live. Not only that, it made living possible. +</p> +<p> + A clock struck, a window slammed, or a street-noise smote her ear + sharply. Some sound started her out of her reverie. Rose jumped, stared + a moment at the letters in her lap, then hastily, almost shamefacedly, + sorted them (she knew each envelope by heart) tied them, placed them in + their box and bore them down the hail. There, mounting her chair, she + scrubbed the top shelf with her soapy rag, placed the box in its + corner, left the hall closet smelling of cleanliness, with never a hint + of lavender to betray its secret treasure. +</p> +<p> + Were Rose to die and go to Heaven, there to spend her days thumbing a + golden harp, her hands, by force of habit, would, drop harp-strings at + quarter to six, to begin laying a celestial and unspotted table-cloth + for supper. Habits as deeply rooted as that must hold, even in + after-life. +</p> +<p> + To-night's six-thirty stampede was noticeably subdued on the part of Pa + and Al. It had been a day of sudden and enervating heat, and the city + had done its worst to them. Pa's pink gills showed a hint of purple. + Al's flimsy silk shirt stuck to his back, and his glittering pompadour + was many degrees less submissive than was its wont. But Floss came in + late, breathless, and radiant, a large and significant paper bag in her + hand. Rose, in the kitchen, was transferring the smoking supper from pot + to platter. Pa, in the doorway of the sick woman's little room, had just + put his fourteen-year-old question with his usual assumption of + heartiness and cheer: "Well, well! And how's the old girl to-night? Feel + like you could get up and punish a little supper, eh?" Al engaged at the + telephone with some one whom he addressed proprietorially as Kid, was + deep in his plans for the evening's diversion. Upon this accustomed + scene Floss burst with havoc. +</p> +<p> + "Rose! Rose, did you iron my Georgette crêpe? Listen! Guess what!" All + this as she was rushing down the hall, paper hat-bag still in hand. + "Guess who was in the store to-day!" +</p> +<p> + Rose, at the oven, turned a flushed and interested face toward Floss. +</p> +<p> + "Who? What's that? A hat?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes. But listen—" +</p> +<p> + "Let's see it." +</p> +<p> + Floss whipped it out of its bag, defiantly. "There! But wait a minute! + Let me tell you—" +</p> +<p> + "How much?" +</p> +<p> + Floss hesitated just a second. Her wage was nine dollars a week. Then, + "Seven-fifty, trimmed." The hat was one of those tiny, head-hugging + absurdities that only the Flosses can wear. +</p> +<p> + "Trimmed is right!" jeered Al, from the doorway. +</p> +<p> + Rose, thin-lipped with disapproval, turned to her stove again. +</p> +<p> + "Well, but I had to have it. I'm going to the theatre to-night. And + guess who with! Henry Selz!" +</p> +<p> + Henry Selz was the unromantic name of the commonplace man over whose + fifteen-year-old letters Rose had glowed and dreamed an hour before. It + was a name that had become mythical in that household—to all but one. + Rose heard it spoken now with a sense of unreality. She smiled a little + uncertainly, and went on stirring the flour thickening for the gravy. + But she was dimly aware that something inside her had suspended action + for a moment, during which moment she felt strangely light and + disembodied, and that directly afterward the thing began to work madly, + so that there was a choked feeling in her chest and a hot pounding in + her head. +</p> +<p> + "What's the joke?" she said, stirring the gravy in the pan. +</p> +<p> + "Joke nothing! Honest to God! I was standing back of the counter at + about ten. The rush hadn't really begun yet. Glove trade usually starts + late. I was standing there kidding Herb, the stock boy, when down the + aisle comes a man in a big hat, like you see in the western pictures, + hair a little grey at the temples, and everything, just like a movie + actor. I said to Herb, 'Is it real?' I hadn't got the words out of my + mouth when the fellow sees me, stands stock still in the middle of the + aisle with his mouth open and his eyes sticking out. 'Register + surprise,' I said to Herb, and looked around for the camera. And that + minute he took two jumps over to where I was standing, grabbed my hands + and says, 'Rose! Rose!' kind of choky. 'Not by about twenty years,' I + said. 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!'" +</p> +<p> + Rose—a transfigured Rose, glowing, trembling, radiant—repeated, + vibrantly, "You said, 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!' + And—?" +</p> +<p> + "He looked kind of stunned, for just a minute. His face was a scream, + honestly. Then he said, 'But of course. Fifteen years. But I had always + thought of her as just the same.' And he kind of laughed, ashamed, like + a kid. And the whitest teeth!" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, they were—white," said Rose. "Well?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, I said, 'Won't I do instead?' 'You bet you'll do!' he said. And + then he told me his name, and how he was living out in Spokane, and his + wife was dead, and he had made a lot of money—fruit, or real estate, or + something. He talked a lot about it at lunch, but I didn't pay any + attention, as long as he really has it a lot I care how—" +</p> +<p> + "At lunch?" +</p> +<p> + "Everything from grape-fruit to coffee. I didn't know it could be done + in one hour. Believe me, he had those waiters jumping. It takes money. + He asked all about you, and ma, and everything. And he kept looking at + me and saying, 'It's wonderful!' I said, 'Isn't it!' but I meant the + lunch. He wanted me to go driving this afternoon—auto and everything. + Kept calling me Rose. It made me kind of mad, and I told him how you + look. He said, 'I suppose so,' and asked me to go to a show to-night. + Listen, did you press my Georgette? And the blue?" +</p> +<p> + "I'll iron the waist while you're eating. I'm not hungry. It only takes + a minute. Did you say he was grey?" +</p> +<p> + "Grey? Oh, you mean—why, just here, and here. Interesting, but not a + bit old. And he's got that money look that makes waiters and doormen and + taxi drivers just hump. I don't want any supper. Just a cup of tea. I + haven't got enough time to dress in, decently, as it is." +</p> +<p> + Al, draped in the doorway, removed his cigarette to give greater force + to his speech. "Your story interests me strangely, little gell. But + there's a couple of other people that would like to eat, even if you + wouldn't. Come on with that supper, Ro. Nobody staked me to a lunch + to-day." +</p> +<p> + Rose turned to her stove again. Two carmine spots had leaped suddenly to + her cheeks. She served the meal in silence, and ate nothing, but that + was not remarkable. For the cook there is little appeal in the meat that + she has tended from its moist and bloody entrance in the butcher's + paper, through the basting or broiling stage to its formal appearance on + the platter. She saw that Al and her father were served. Then she went + back to the kitchen, and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly + fluted the ruffles of the crêpe blouse. Floss appeared when the meal was + half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset + cover showing under her thin kimono. She poured herself a cup of tea and + drank it in little quick, nervous gulps. She looked deliriously young, + and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the + flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and anticipation lent a glow to her + eyes, colour to her cheeks. Al, glancing expertly at the ingenuousness + of her artfully simple coiffure, the slim limpness of her body, her + wide-eyed gaze, laughed a wise little laugh. +</p> +<p> + "Every move a Pickford. And so girlish withal." +</p> +<p> + Floss ignored him. "Hurry up with that waist, Rose!" +</p> +<p> + "I'm on the collar now. In a second." There was a little silence. Then: + "Floss, is—is Henry going to call for you—here?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, sure! Did you think I was going to meet him on the corner? He + said he wanted to see you, or something polite like that." +</p> +<p> + She finished her tea and vanished again. Al, too, had disappeared to + begin that process from which he had always emerged incredibly sleek, + and dapper and perfumed. His progress with shaving brush, shirt, collar + and tie was marked by disjointed bars of the newest syncopation whistled + with an uncanny precision and fidelity to detail. He caught the broken + time, and tossed it lightly up again, and dropped it, and caught it + deftly like a juggler playing with frail crystal globes that seem + forever on the point of crashing to the ground. +</p> +<p> + Pa stood up, yawning. "Well," he said, his manner very casual, "guess + I'll just drop around to the movie." +</p> +<p> + From the kitchen, "Don't you want to sit with ma a minute, first?" +</p> +<p> + "I will when I come back. They're showing the third installment of 'The + Adventures of Aline,' and I don't want to come in in the middle of it." +</p> +<p> + He knew the selfishness of it, this furtive and sprightly old man. And + because he knew it he attempted to hide his guilt under a burst of + temper. +</p> +<p> + "I've been slaving all day. I guess I've got the right to a little + amusement. A man works his fingers to the bone for his family, and then + his own daughter nags him." +</p> +<p> + He stamped down the hall, righteously, and slammed the front door. +</p> +<p> + Rose came from the kitchen, the pink blouse, warm from the iron, in one + hand. She prinked out its ruffles and pleatings as she went. Floss, + burnishing her nails somewhat frantically with a dilapidated and greasy + buffer, snatched the garment from her and slipped bare arms into it. The + front door bell rang, three big, determined rings. Panic fell upon the + household. +</p> +<p> + "It's him!" whispered Floss, as if she could be heard in the entrance + three floors below. "You'll have to go." +</p> +<p> + "I can't!" Every inch of her seemed to shrink and cower away from the + thought. "I can't!" Her eyes darted to and fro like a hunted thing + seeking to escape. She ran to the hall. "Al! Al, go to the door, will + you?" +</p> +<p> + "Can't," came back in a thick mumble. "Shaving." +</p> +<p> + The front door-bell rang again, three big, determined rings. "Rose!" + hissed Floss, her tone venomous. "I can't go with my waist open. For + heaven's sake! Go to the door!" +</p> +<p> + "I can't," repeated Rose, in a kind of wail. "I—can't." And went. As + she went she passed one futile, work-worn hand over her hair, plucked + off her apron and tossed it into; a corner, first wiping her flushed + face with it. +</p> +<p> + Henry Selz came up the shabby stairs springily as a man of forty should. + Rose stood at the door and waited for him. He stood in the doorway a + moment, uncertainly. +</p> +<p> + "How-do, Henry." +</p> +<p> + His uncertainty became incredulity. Then, "Why, how-do, Rose! Didn't + know you—for a minute. Well, well! It's been a long time. Let's + see—ten—fourteen—about fifteen years, isn't it?" +</p> +<p> + His tone was cheerfully conversational. He really was interested, + mathematically. He was as sentimental in his reminiscence as if he had + been calculating the lapse of time between the Chicago fire and the + World's Fair. +</p> +<p> + "Fifteen," said Rose, "in May. Won't you come in? Floss'll be here in a + minute." +</p> +<p> + Henry Selz came in and sat down on the davenport couch and dabbed at his + forehead. The years had been very kind to him—those same years that had + treated Rose so ruthlessly. He had the look of an outdoor man; a man who + has met prosperity and walked with her, and followed her pleasant ways; + a man who has learned late in life of golf and caviar and tailors, but + who has adapted himself to these accessories of wealth with a minimum of + friction. +</p> +<p> + "It certainly is warm, for this time of year." He leaned back and + regarded Rose tolerantly. "Well, and how've you been? Did little sister + tell you how flabbergasted I was when I saw her this morning? I'm darned + if it didn't take fifteen years off my age, just like that! I got kind + of balled up for one minute and thought it was you. She tell you?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, she told me," said Rose. +</p> +<p> + "I hear your ma's still sick. That certainly is tough. And you've never + married, eh?" +</p> +<p> + "Never married," echoed Rose. +</p> +<p> + And so they made conversation, a little uncomfortably, until there came + quick, light young steps down the hallway, and Floss appeared in the + door, a radiant, glowing, girlish vision. Youth was in her eyes, her + cheeks, on her lips. She radiated it. She was miraculously well dressed, + in her knowingly simple blue serge suit, and her tiny hat, and her neat + shoes and gloves. +</p> +<p> + "Ah! And how's the little girl to-night?" said Henry Selz. +</p> +<p> + Floss dimpled, blushed, smiled, swayed. "Did I keep you waiting a + terribly long time?" +</p> +<p> + "No, not a bit. Rose and I were chinning over old times, weren't we, + Rose?" A kindly, clumsy thought struck him. "Say, look here, Rose. We're + going to a show. Why don't you run and put on your hat and come along. + H'm? Come on!" +</p> +<p> + Rose smiled as a mother smiles at a child that has unknowingly hurt her. + "No, thanks, Henry. Not to-night. You and Floss run along. Yes, I'll + remember you to Ma. I'm sorry you can't see her. But she don't see + anybody, poor Ma." +</p> +<p> + Then they were off, in a little flurry of words and laughter. From force + of habit Rose's near-sighted eyes peered critically at the hang of + Floss's blue skirt and the angle of the pert new hat. She stood a + moment, uncertainly, after they had left. On her face was the queerest + look, as of one thinking, re-adjusting, struggling to arrive at a + conclusion in the midst of sudden bewilderment. She turned mechanically + and went into her mother's room. She picked up the tray on the table by + the bed. +</p> +<p> + "Who was that?" asked the sick woman, in her ghostly, devitalised voice. +</p> +<p> + "That was Henry Selz," said Rose. +</p> +<p> + The sick woman grappled a moment with memory. "Henry Selz! Henry—oh, + yes. Did he go out with Rose?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes," said Rose. +</p> +<p> + "It's cold in here," whined the sick woman. +</p> +<p> + "I'll get you a hot bag in a minute, Ma." Rose carried the tray down the + hall to the kitchen. At that Al emerged from his bedroom, shrugging + himself into his coat. He followed Rose down the hall and watched her as + she filled the bag and screwed it and wiped it dry. +</p> +<p> + "I'll take that in to Ma," he volunteered. He was up the hall and back + in a flash. Rose had slumped into a chair at the dining-room table, and + was pouring herself a cup of cold and bitter tea. Al came over to her + and laid one white hand on her shoulder. +</p> +<p> + "Ro, lend me a couple of dollars till Saturday, will you?" +</p> +<p> + "I should say not." +</p> +<p> + Al doused his cigarette in the dregs of a convenient teacup. He bent + down and laid his powdered and pale cheek against Rose's sallow one. One + arm was about her, and his hand patted her shoulder. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, come on, kid," he coaxed. "Don't I always pay you back? Come on! Be + a sweet ol' sis. I wouldn't ask you only I've got a date to go to the + White City to-night, and dance, and I couldn't get out of it. I tried." + He kissed her, and his lips were moist, and he reeked of tobacco, and + though Rose shrugged impatiently away from him he knew that he had won. + Rose was not an eloquent woman; she was not even an articulate one, at + times. If she had been, she would have lifted up her voice to say now: +</p> +<p> + "Oh, God! I am a woman! Why have you given me all the sorrows, and the + drudgery, and the bitterness and the thanklessness of motherhood, with + none of its joys! Give me back my youth! I'll drink the dregs at the + bottom of the cup, but first let me taste the sweet!" +</p> +<p> + But Rose did not talk or think in such terms. She could not have put + into words the thing she was feeling even if she had been able to + diagnose it. So what she said was, "Don't you think I ever get sick and + tired of slaving for a thankless bunch like you? Well, I do! Sick and + tired of it. That's what! You make me tired, coming around asking for + money, as if I was a bank." +</p> +<p> + But Al waited. And presently she said, grudgingly, wearily, "There's a + dollar bill and some small change in the can on the second shelf in the + china closet." +</p> +<p> + Al was off like a terrier. From the pantry came the clink of metal + against metal. He was up the hall in a flash, without a look at Rose. + The front door slammed a third time. +</p> +<p> + Rose stirred her cold tea slowly, leaning on the table's edge and gazing + down into the amber liquid that she did not mean to drink. For suddenly + and comically her face puckered up like a child's. Her head came down + among the supper things with a little crash that set the teacups, and + the greasy plates to jingling, and she sobbed as she lay there, with + great tearing, ugly sobs that would not be stilled, though she tried to + stifle them as does one who lives in a paper-thin Chicago flat. She was + not weeping for the Henry Selz whom she had just seen. She was not + weeping for envy of her selfish little sister, or for loneliness, or + weariness. She was weeping at the loss of a ghost who had become her + familiar. She was weeping because a packet of soiled and yellow old + letters on the top shelf in the hall closet was now only a packet of + soiled and yellow old letters, food for the ash can. She was weeping + because the urge of spring, that had expressed itself in her only this + morning pitifully enough in terms of rhubarb, and housecleaning and a + bundle of thumbed old love letters, had stirred in her for the last + time. +</p> +<p> + But presently she did stop her sobbing and got up and cleared the table, + and washed the dishes and even glanced at the crumpled sheets of the + morning paper that she never found time to read until evening. By eight + o'clock the little flat was very still. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_5"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + V +</h2> +<h2> + THAT'S MARRIAGE +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + Theresa Platt (she that had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husband + across the breakfast table with eyes that smouldered. When a woman's + eyes smoulder at 7.30 a.m. the person seated opposite her had better + look out. But Orville Platt was quite unaware of any smouldering in + progress. He was occupied with his eggs. How could he know that these + very eggs were feeding the dull red menace in Terry Platt's eyes? +</p> +<p> + When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it. He + treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts + of our daily life contain the element of chance that is to be found in a + three-minute breakfast egg. +</p> +<p> + This was Orville Platt's method of attack: First, he chipped off the + top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a passionate and + relentless scrutiny. Straightening—preparatory to plunging his spoon + therein—he flapped his right elbow. It wasn't exactly a flap; it was a + pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a + mental state. Orville Platt always gave that little preliminary jerk + when he was contemplating a step, or when he was moved, or + argumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening. +</p> +<p> + Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap—they had been married + four years—to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning + hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing Terry Platt's nerves into raw, + bleeding fragments. +</p> +<p> + Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She was + breathing unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself, "if he + flaps again when he opens the second egg, I'll scream. I'll scream. I'll + scream! I'll sc—" +</p> +<p> + He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up the second, + chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then—up went the elbow, and + down, with the accustomed little flap. +</p> +<p> + The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early morning quiet of Wetona, + Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of Terry Platt's + hysteria. +</p> +<p> + "Terry! For God's sake! What's the matter!" +</p> +<p> + Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The egg yolk + trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and flung a gay spot + of yellow on the cloth. He started toward her. +</p> +<p> + Terry, wild-eyed, pointed a shaking finger at him. She was laughing, + now, uncontrollably. "Your elbow! Your elbow!" +</p> +<p> + "Elbow?" He looked down at it, bewildered; then up, fright in his face. + "What's the matter with it?" +</p> +<p> + She mopped her eyes. Sobs shook her. "You f-f-flapped it." +</p> +<p> + "F-f-f—" The bewilderment in Orville Platt's face gave way to anger. + "Do you mean to tell me that you screeched like that because my—because + I moved my elbow?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes." +</p> +<p> + His anger deepened and reddened to fury. He choked. He had started from + his chair with his napkin in his hand. He still clutched it. Now he + crumpled it into a wad and hurled it to the centre of the table, where + it struck a sugar bowl, dropped back, and uncrumpled slowly, + reprovingly. "You—you—" Then bewilderment closed down again like a fog + over his countenance. "But why? I can't see—" +</p> +<p> + "Because it—because I can't stand it any longer. Flapping. This is what + you do. Like this." +</p> +<p> + And she did it. Did it with insulting fidelity, being a clever mimic. +</p> +<p> + "Well, all I can say is you're crazy, yelling like that, for nothing." +</p> +<p> + "It isn't nothing." +</p> +<p> + "Isn't, huh? If that isn't nothing, what is?" They were growing + incoherent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac? Like a wild + woman? The neighbours'll think I've killed you. What d'you mean, + anyway!" +</p> +<p> + "I mean I'm tired of watching it, that's what. Sick and tired." +</p> +<p> + "Y'are, huh? Well, young lady, just let me tell <i>you</i> something—" +</p> +<p> + He told her. There followed one of those incredible quarrels, as + sickening as they are human, which can take place only between two + people who love each other; who love each other so well that each knows + with cruel certainty the surest way to wound the other; and who stab, + and tear, and claw at these vulnerable spots in exact proportion to + their love. +</p> +<p> + Ugly words. Bitter words. Words that neither knew they knew flew between + them like sparks between steel striking steel. +</p> +<p> + From him—"Trouble with you is you haven't got enough to do. That's the + trouble with half you women. Just lay around the house, rotting. I'm a + fool, slaving on the road to keep a good-for-nothing—" +</p> +<p> + "I suppose you call sitting around hotel lobbies slaving! I suppose the + house runs itself! How about my evenings? Sitting here alone, night + after night, when you're on the road." +</p> +<p> + Finally, "Well, if you don't like it," he snarled, and lifted his chair + by the back and slammed it down, savagely, "if you don't like it, why + don't you get out, h'm? Why don't you get out?" +</p> +<p> + And from her, her eyes narrowed to two slits, her cheeks scarlet: +</p> +<p> + "Why, thanks. I guess I will." +</p> +<p> + Ten minutes later he had flung out of the house to catch the 8.19 for + Manitowoc. He marched down the street, his shoulders swinging + rhythmically to the weight of the burden he carried—his black leather + hand-bag and the shiny tan sample case, battle-scarred, both, from many + encounters with ruthless porters and 'bus men and bell boys. For four + years, as he left for his semi-monthly trip, he and Terry had observed a + certain little ceremony (as had the neighbours). She would stand in the + doorway watching him down the street, the heavier sample-case banging + occasionally at his shin. The depot was only three blocks away. Terry + watched him with fond, but unillusioned eyes, which proves that she + really loved him. He was a dapper, well-dressed fat man, with a weakness + for pronounced patterns in suitings, and addicted to brown derbies. One + week on the road, one week at home. That was his routine. The wholesale + grocery trade liked Platt, and he had for his customers the fondness + that a travelling salesman has who is successful in his territory. + Before his marriage to Terry Sheehan his little red address book had + been overwhelming proof against the theory that nobody loves a fat man. +</p> +<p> + Terry, standing in the doorway, always knew that when he reached the + corner, just where Schroeder's house threatened to hide him from view, + he would stop, drop the sample case, wave his hand just once, pick up + the sample case and go on, proceeding backward for a step or two, until + Schroeder's house made good its threat. It was a comic scene in the + eyes of the onlooker, perhaps because a chubby Romeo offends the sense + of fitness. The neighbours, lurking behind their parlour curtains, had + laughed at first. But after awhile they learned to look for that little + scene, and to take it unto themselves, as if it were a personal thing. + Fifteen-year wives whose husbands had long since abandoned flowery + farewells used to get a vicarious thrill out of it, and to eye Terry + with a sort of envy. +</p> +<p> + This morning Orville Platt did not even falter when he reached + Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily ahead, the + heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had stopped—though she + knew he wouldn't—Terry Platt would not have seen him. She remained + seated at the disordered breakfast table, a dreadfully still figure, and + sinister; a figure of stone and fire; of ice and flame. Over and over in + her mind she was milling the things she might have said to him, and had + not. She brewed a hundred vitriolic cruelties that she might have flung + in his face. She would concoct one biting brutality, and dismiss it for + a second, and abandon that for a third. She was too angry to cry—a + dangerous state in a woman. She was what is known as cold mad, so that + her mind was working clearly and with amazing swiftness, and yet as + though it were a thing detached; a thing that was no part of her. +</p> +<p> + She sat thus for the better part of an hour, motionless except for one + forefinger that was, quite unconsciously, tapping out a popular and + cheap little air that she had been strumming at the piano the evening + before, having bought it down town that same afternoon. It had struck + Orville's fancy, and she had played it over and over for him. Her right + forefinger was playing the entire tune, and something in the back of her + head was following it accurately, though the separate thinking process + was going on just the same. Her eyes were bright, and wide, and hot. + Suddenly she became conscious of the musical antics of her finger. She + folded it in with its mates, so that her hand became a fist. She stood + up and stared down at the clutter of the breakfast table. The egg—that + fateful second egg—had congealed to a mottled mess of yellow and white. + The spoon lay on the cloth. His coffee, only half consumed, showed tan + with a cold grey film over it. A slice of toast at the left of his plate + seemed to grin at her with the semi-circular wedge that he had bitten + out of it. +</p> +<p> + Terry stared down at this congealing remnant. Then she laughed, a hard, + high little laugh, pushed a plate away contemptuously with her hand, and + walked into the sitting room. On the piano was the piece of music + (Bennie Gottschalk's great song hit, "Hicky Bloo") which she had been + playing the night before. She picked it up, tore it straight across, + once, placed the pieces back to back and tore it across again. Then she + dropped the pieces to the floor. +</p> +<p> + "You bet I'm going," she said, as though concluding a train of thought. + "You just bet I'm going. Right now!" +</p> +<p> + And Terry went. She went for much the same reason as that given by the + ladye of high degree in the old English song—she who had left her lord + and bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that + was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel + precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so much + deeper that if psychology had not become a cant word we might drag it + into the explanation. It went so deep that it's necessary to delve back + to the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real + significance of it, and of the things she did after she went. +</p> +<p> + When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan she had played the piano, + afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the Bijou theatre, on Cass + street, Wetona, Wisconsin. Any one with a name like Terry Sheehan would, + perforce, do well anything she might set out to do. There was nothing of + genius in Terry, but there was something of fire, and much that was + Irish. The combination makes for what is known as imagination in + playing. Which meant that the Watson Team, Eccentric Song and Dance + Artists, never needed a rehearsal when they played the Bijou. Ruby + Watson used merely to approach Terry before the Monday performance, + sheet-music in hand, and say, "Listen, dearie. We've got some new + business I want to wise you to. Right here it goes '<i>Tum</i> dee-dee <i>dum</i> + dee-dee <i>tum dum dum</i>. See? Like that. And then Jim vamps. Get me?" +</p> +<p> + Terry, at the piano, would pucker her pretty brow a moment. Then, "Like + this, you mean?" +</p> +<p> + "That's it! You've got it." +</p> +<p> + "All right. I'll tell the drum." +</p> +<p> + She could play any tune by ear, once heard. She got the spirit of a + thing, and transmitted it. When Terry played a march number you tapped + the floor with your foot, and unconsciously straightened your shoulders. + When she played a home-and-mother song that was heavy on the minor wail + you hoped that the man next to you didn't know you were crying (which he + probably didn't, because he was weeping, too). +</p> +<p> + At that time motion pictures had not attained their present virulence. + Vaudeville, polite or otherwise, had not yet been crowded out by the + ubiquitous film. The Bijou offered entertainment of the cigar-box tramp + variety, interspersed with trick bicyclists, soubrettes in slightly + soiled pink, trained seals, and Family Fours with lumpy legs who tossed + each other about and struck Goldbergian attitudes. +</p> +<p> + Contact with these gave Terry Sheehan a semi-professional tone. The more + conservative of her townspeople looked at her askance. There never had + been an evil thing about Terry, but Wetona considered her rather fly. + Terry's hair was very black, and she had a fondness for those little, + close-fitting scarlet velvet turbans. A scarlet velvet turban would have + made Martha Washington look fly. Terry's mother had died when the girl + was eight, and Terry's father had been what is known as easy-going. A + good-natured, lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He + drove around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any + money because he did honest work and charged as little for it as men who + did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did not crumble, and his + lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired in the contracting + business in that way. Ed Sheehan and his daughter were great friends. + When he died (she was nineteen) they say she screamed once, like a + banshee, and dropped to the floor. +</p> +<p> + After they had straightened out the muddle of books in Ed Sheehan's + gritty, dusty little office Terry turned her piano-playing talent to + practical account. At twenty-one she was still playing at the Bijou, and + into her face was creeping the first hint of that look of sophistication + which comes from daily contact with the artificial world of the + footlights. It is the look of those who must make believe as a business, + and are a-weary. You see it developed into its highest degree in the + face of a veteran comedian. It is the thing that gives the look of utter + pathos and tragedy to the relaxed expression of a circus clown. +</p> +<p> + There are, in a small, Mid-West town like Wetona, just two kinds of + girls. Those who go down town Saturday nights, and those who don't. + Terry, if she had not been busy with her job at the Bijou, would have + come in the first group. She craved excitement. There was little chance + to satisfy such craving in Wetona, but she managed to find certain + means. The travelling men from the Burke House just across the street + used to drop in at the Bijou for an evening's entertainment. They + usually sat well toward the front, and Terry's expert playing, and the + gloss of her black hair, and her piquant profile as she sometimes looked + up toward the stage for a signal from one of the performers, caught + their fancy, and held it. +</p> +<p> + Terry did not accept their attentions promiscuously. She was too decent + a girl for that. But she found herself, at the end of a year or two, + with a rather large acquaintance among these peripatetic gentlemen. You + occasionally saw one of them strolling home with her. Sometimes she went + driving with one of them of a Sunday afternoon. And she rather enjoyed + taking Sunday dinner at the Burke Hotel with a favoured friend. She + thought those small-town hotel Sunday dinners the last word in elegance. + The roast course was always accompanied by an aqueous, semi-frozen + concoction which the bill of fare revealed as Roman punch. It added a + royal touch to the repast, even when served with roast pork. I don't say + that any of these Lotharios snatched a kiss during a Sunday afternoon + drive. Or that Terry slapped him promptly. But either seems extremely + likely. +</p> +<p> + Terry was twenty-two when Orville Platt, making his initial Wisconsin + trip for the wholesale grocery house he represented, first beheld + Terry's piquant Irish profile, and heard her deft manipulation of the + keys. Orville had the fat man's sense of rhythm and love of music. He + had a buttery tenor voice, too, of which he was rather proud. +</p> +<p> + He spent three days in Wetona that first trip, and every evening saw him + at the Bijou, first row, centre. He stayed through two shows each time, + and before he had been there fifteen minutes Terry was conscious of him + through the back of her head. In fact I think that, in all innocence, + she rather played up to him. Orville Platt paid no more heed to the + stage, and what was occurring thereon, than if it had not been. He sat + looking at Terry, and waggling his head in time to the music. Not that + Terry was a beauty. But she was one of those immaculately clean types. + That look of fragrant cleanliness was her chief charm. Her clear, smooth + skin contributed to it, and the natural pencilling of her eyebrows. But + the thing that accented it, and gave it a last touch, was the way in + which her black hair came down in a little point just in the centre of + her forehead, where hair meets brow. It grew to form what is known as a + cow-lick. (A prettier name for it is widow's peak.) Your eye lighted on + it, pleased, and from it travelled its gratified way down her white + temples, past her little ears, to the smooth black coil at the nape of + her neck. It was a trip that rested you. +</p> +<p> + At the end of the last performance on the second night of his visit to + the Bijou, Orville waited until the audience had begun to file out. Then + he leaned forward over the rail that separated orchestra from audience. +</p> +<p> + "Could you," he said, his tones dulcet, "could you oblige me with the + name of that last piece you played?" +</p> +<p> + Terry was stacking her music. "George!" she called, to the drum. + "Gentleman wants to know the name of that last piece." And prepared to + leave. +</p> +<p> + "'My Georgia Crackerjack'," said the laconic drum. +</p> +<p> + Orville Platt took a hasty side-step in the direction of the door toward + which Terry was headed. "It's a pretty thing," he said, fervently. "An + awful pretty thing. Thanks. It's beautiful." +</p> +<p> + Terry flung a last insult at him over her shoulder: "Don't thank <i>me</i> + for it. I didn't write it." +</p> +<p> + Orville Platt did not go across the street to the hotel. He wandered up + Cass street, and into the ten-o'clock quiet of Main street, and down as + far as the park and back. "Pretty as a pink! And play!... And good, too. + Good." +</p> +<p> + A fat man in love. +</p> +<p> + At the end of six months they were married. Terry was surprised into it. + Not that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. + For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his + wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had + sent her large boxes of stale drug-store chocolates, and called her + endearing names as they made cautious declaration such as: +</p> +<p> + "I've known a lot of girls, but you've got something different. I don't + know. You've got so much sense. A fellow can chum around with you. + Little pal." +</p> +<p> + Orville's headquarters were Wetona. They rented a comfortable, + seven-room house in a comfortable, middle-class neighbourhood, and Terry + dropped the red velvet turbans and went in for picture hats and paradise + aigrettes. Orville bought her a piano whose tone was so good that to her + ear, accustomed to the metallic discords of the Bijou instrument, it + sounded out of tune. She played a great deal at first, but unconsciously + she missed the sharp spat of applause that used to follow her public + performance. She would play a piece, brilliantly, and then her hands + would drop to her lap. And the silence of her own sitting room would + fall flat on her ears. It was better on the evenings when Orville was + home. He sang, in his throaty, fat man's tenor, to Terry's expert + accompaniment. +</p> +<p> + "This is better than playing for those bum actors, isn't it, hon?" And + he would pinch her ear. +</p> +<p> + "Sure"—listlessly. +</p> +<p> + But after the first year she became accustomed to what she termed + private life. She joined an afternoon sewing club, and was active in the + ladies' branch of the U.C.T. She developed a knack at cooking, too, and + Orville, after a week or ten days of hotel fare in small Wisconsin + towns, would come home to sea-foam biscuits, and real soup, and honest + pies and cake. Sometimes, in the midst of an appetising meal he would + lay down his knife and fork and lean back in his chair, and regard the + cool and unruffled Terry with a sort of reverence in his eyes. Then he + would get up, and come around to the other side of the table, and tip + her pretty face up to his. +</p> +<p> + "I'll bet I'll wake up, some day, and find out it's all a dream. You + know this kind of thing doesn't really happen—not to a dub like me." +</p> +<p> + One year; two; three; four. Routine. A little boredom. Some impatience. + She began to find fault with the very things she had liked in him: his + super-neatness; his fondness for dashing suit patterns; his throaty + tenor; his worship of her. And the flap. Oh, above all, that flap! That + little, innocent, meaningless mannerism that made her tremble with + nervousness. She hated it so that she could not trust herself to speak + of it to him. That was the trouble. Had she spoken of it, laughingly or + in earnest, before it became an obsession with her, that hideous + breakfast quarrel, with its taunts, and revilings, and open hate, might + never have come to pass. For that matter, any one of those foreign + fellows with the guttural names and the psychoanalytical minds could + have located her trouble in one <i>séance</i>. +</p> +<p> + Terry Platt herself didn't know what was the matter with her. She would + have denied that anything was wrong. She didn't even throw her hands + above her head and shriek: "I want to live! I want to live! I want to + live!" like a lady in a play. She only knew she was sick of sewing at + the Wetona West-End Red Cross shop; sick of marketing, of home comforts, + of Orville, of the flap. +</p> +<p> + Orville, you may remember, left at 8.19. The 11.23 bore Terry + Chicagoward. She had left the house as it was—beds unmade, rooms + unswept, breakfast table uncleared. She intended never to come back. +</p> +<p> + Now and then a picture of the chaos she had left behind would flash + across her order-loving mind. The spoon on the table-cloth. Orville's + pajamas dangling over the bathroom chair. The coffee-pot on the gas + stove. +</p> +<p> + "Pooh! What do I care?" +</p> +<p> + In her pocketbook she had a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping + money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. + Her meals when Orville was on the road, had been those sketchy, + haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their + household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a + flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus, and Neapolitan + ice cream. The men in the dining car eyed her speculatively and with + appreciation. Then their glance dropped to the third finger of her left + hand, and wandered away. She had meant to remove it. In fact, she had + taken it off and dropped it into her bag. But her hand felt so queer, so + unaccustomed, so naked, that she had found herself slipping the narrow + band on again, and her thumb groped for it, gratefully. +</p> +<p> + It was almost five o'clock when she reached Chicago. She felt no + uncertainty or bewilderment. She had been in Chicago three or four times + since her marriage. She went to a down town hotel. It was too late, she + told herself, to look for a more inexpensive room that night. When she + had tidied herself she went out. The things she did were the childish, + aimless things that one does who finds herself in possession of sudden + liberty. She walked up State Street, and stared in the windows; came + back, turned into Madison, passed a bright little shop in the window of + which taffy—white and gold—was being wound endlessly and fascinatingly + about a double-jointed machine. She went in and bought a sackful, and + wandered on down the street, munching. +</p> +<p> + She had supper at one of those white-tiled sarcophagi that emblazon + Chicago's down town side streets. It had been her original intention to + dine in state in the rose-and-gold dining room of her hotel. She had + even thought daringly of lobster. But at the last moment she recoiled + from the idea of dining alone in that wilderness of tables so obviously + meant for two. +</p> +<p> + After her supper she went to a picture show. She was amazed to find + there, instead of the accustomed orchestra, a pipe-organ that panted and + throbbed and rumbled over lugubrious classics. The picture was about a + faithless wife. Terry left in the middle of it. +</p> +<p> + She awoke next morning at seven, as usual, started up wildly, looked + around, and dropped back. Nothing to get up for. The knowledge did not + fill her with a rush of relief. She would have her breakfast in bed! She + telephoned for it, languidly. But when it came she got up and ate it + from the table, after all. Terry was the kind of woman to whom a pink + gingham all-over apron, and a pink dust-cap are ravishingly becoming at + seven o'clock in the morning. That sort of woman congenitally cannot + enjoy her breakfast in bed. +</p> +<p> + That morning she found a fairly comfortable room, more within her means, + on the north side in the boarding house district. She unpacked and hung + up her clothes and drifted down town again, idly. It was noon when she + came to the corner of State and Madison streets. It was a maelstrom that + caught her up, and buffeted her about, and tossed her helplessly this + way and that. The corner of Broadway and Forty-second streets has been + exploited in song and story as the world's most hazardous human + whirlpool. I've negotiated that corner. I've braved the square in front + of the American Express Company's office in Paris, June, before the War. + I've crossed the Strand at 11 p.m. when the theatre crowds are just out. + And to my mind the corner of State and Madison streets between twelve + and one, mid-day, makes any one of these dizzy spots look bosky, sylvan, + and deserted. +</p> +<p> + The thousands jostled Terry, and knocked her hat awry, and dug her with + unheeding elbows, and stepped on her feet. +</p> +<p> + "Say, look here!" she said, once futilely. They did not stop to listen. + State and Madison has no time for Terrys from Wetona. It goes its way, + pellmell. If it saw Terry at all it saw her only as a prettyish person, + in the wrong kind of suit and hat, with a bewildered, resentful look on + her face. +</p> +<p> + Terry drifted on down the west side of State Street, with the hurrying + crowd. State and Monroe. A sound came to Terry's ears. A sound familiar, + beloved. To her ear, harassed with the roar and crash, with the shrill + scream of the crossing policemen's whistle, with the hiss of feet + shuffling on cement, it was a celestial strain. She looked up, toward + the sound. A great second-story window opened wide to the street. In it + a girl at a piano, and a man, red-faced, singing through a megaphone. + And on a flaring red and green sign: +</p> +<blockquote> + <big>BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S MUSIC HOUSE!</big><br><br> + + COME IN! HEAR BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S LATEST<br> + HIT! THE HEART-THROB SONG THAT HAS GOT 'EM ALL!<br> + THE SONG THAT MADE THE KAISER CRAWL!<br><br> + + <big> "<i>I COME FROM PARIS, ILLINOIS, BUT OH!<br> + YOU PARIS, FRANCE!<br> + + I USED TO WEAR BLUE OVERALLS BUT<br> + NOW ITS KHAKI PANTS</i>."</big><br><br> + + COME IN! COME IN! +</blockquote> +<p> + Terry accepted. +</p> +<p> + She followed the sound of the music. Around the corner. Up a little + flight of stairs. She entered the realm of Euterpe; Euterpe with her + back hair frizzed; Euterpe with her flowing white robe replaced by + soiled white boots that failed to touch the hem of an empire-waisted + blue serge; Euterpe abandoning her lyre for jazz. She sat at the piano, + a red-haired young lady whose familiarity with the piano had bred + contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her + fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed grey and glistening nails, clawed the + keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of + music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. + The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by + request. A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of + one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, + "'Hicky Bloo!' Miss Ryan." And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a + hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which an + Indian tom-tom would have seemed as dulcet as the strumming of a lute in + a lady's boudoir. +</p> +<p> + Terry joined the crowds about the counter. The girl at the piano was not + looking at the keys. Her head was screwed around over her left shoulder + and as she played she was holding forth animatedly to a girl friend who + had evidently dropped in from some store or office during the lunch + hour. Now and again the fat man paused in his vocal efforts to + reprimand her for her slackness. She paid no heed. There was something + gruesome, uncanny, about the way her fingers went their own way over the + defenceless keys. Her conversation with the frowzy little girl went on. +</p> +<p> + "Wha'd he say?" (Over her shoulder). +</p> +<p> + "Oh, he laffed." +</p> +<p> + "Well, didja go?" +</p> +<p> + "Me! Well, whutya think I yam, anyway?" +</p> +<p> + "I woulda took a chanst." +</p> +<p> + The fat man rebelled. +</p> +<p> + "Look here! Get busy! What are you paid for? Talkin' or playin'? Huh?" +</p> +<p> + The person at the piano, openly reproved thus before her friend, lifted + her uninspired hands from the keys and spake. When she had finished she + rose. +</p> +<p> + "But you can't leave now," the megaphone man argued. "Right in the rush + hour." +</p> +<p> + "I'm gone," said the girl. The fat man looked about, helplessly. He + gazed at the abandoned piano, as though it must go on of its own accord. + Then at the crowd. "Where's Miss Schwimmer?" he demanded of a clerk. +</p> +<p> + "Out to lunch." +</p> +<p> + Terry pushed her way to the edge of the counter and leaned over. "I can + play for you," she said. +</p> +<p> + The man looked at her. "Sight?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes." +</p> +<p> + "Come on." +</p> +<p> + Terry went around to the other side of the counter, took off her hat + and coat, rubbed her hands together briskly, sat down and began to play. + The crowd edged closer. +</p> +<p> + It is a curious study, this noonday crowd that gathers to sate its + music-hunger on the scraps vouchsafed it by Bernie Gottschalk's Music + House. Loose-lipped, slope-shouldered young men with bad complexions and + slender hands. Girls whose clothes are an unconscious satire on + present-day fashions. On their faces, as they listen to the music, is a + look of peace and dreaming. They stand about, smiling a wistful half + smile. It is much the same expression that steals over the face of a + smoker who has lighted his after-dinner cigar, or of a drug victim who + is being lulled by his opiate. The music seems to satisfy a something + within them. Faces dull, eyes lustreless, they listen in a sort of + trance. +</p> +<p> + Terry played on. She played as Terry Sheehan used to play. She played as + no music hack at Bernie Gottschalk's had ever played before. The crowd + swayed a little to the sound of it. Some kept time with little jerks of + the shoulder—the little hitching movement of the rag-time dancer whose + blood is filled with the fever of syncopation. Even the crowd flowing + down State Street must have caught the rhythm of it, for the room soon + filled. +</p> +<p> + At two o'clock the crowd began to thin. Business would be slack, now, + until five, when it would again pick up until closing time at six. +</p> +<p> + The fat vocalist put down his megaphone, wiped his forehead, and + regarded Terry with a warm blue eye. He had just finished singing "I've + Wandered Far from Dear Old Mother's Knee." (Bernie Gottschalk Inc. + Chicago. New York. You can't get bit with a Gottschalk hit. 15 cents + each.) +</p> +<p> + "Girlie," he said, emphatically, "You sure—can—play!" He came over to + her at the piano and put a stubby hand on her shoulder. "Yessir! Those + little fingers—" +</p> +<p> + Terry just turned her head to look down her nose at the moist hand + resting on her shoulder. "Those little fingers are going to meet your + face—suddenly—if you don't move on." +</p> +<p> + "Who gave you your job?" demanded the fat man. +</p> +<p> + "Nobody. I picked it myself. You can have it if you want it." +</p> +<p> + "Can't you take a joke?" +</p> +<p> + "Label yours." +</p> +<p> + As the crowd dwindled she played less feverishly, but there was nothing + slipshod about her performance. The chubby songster found time to + proffer brief explanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It + used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose junk, and songs + about wanting to go back to every place from Dixie to Duluth. But now + seems it's all these here flag raisers. Honestly, I'm so sick of 'em I + got a notion to enlist to get away from it." +</p> +<p> + Terry eyed him with, withering briefness. "A little training wouldn't + ruin your figure." +</p> +<p> + She had never objected to Orville's <i>embonpoint</i>. But then, Orville was + a different sort of fat man; pink-cheeked, springy, immaculate. +</p> +<p> + At four o'clock, as she was in the chorus of "Isn't There Another Joan + of Arc?" a melting masculine voice from the other side of the counter + said, "Pardon me. What's that you're playing?" +</p> +<p> + Terry told him. She did not look up. +</p> +<p> + "I wouldn't have known it. Played like that—a second Marseillaise. If + the words—what are the words? Let me see a—" +</p> +<p> + "Show the gentleman a 'Joan'," Terry commanded briefly, over her + shoulder. The fat man laughed a wheezy laugh. Terry glanced around, + still playing, and encountered the gaze of two melting masculine eyes + that matched the melting masculine voice. The songster waved a hand + uniting Terry and the eyes in informal introduction. +</p> +<p> + "Mr. Leon Sammett, the gentleman who sings the Gottschalk songs wherever + songs are heard. And Mrs.—that is—and Mrs. Sammett—" +</p> +<p> + Terry turned. A sleek, swarthy world-old young man with the fashionable + concave torso, and alarmingly convex bone-rimmed glasses. Through them + his darkly luminous gaze glowed upon Terry. To escape their warmth she + sent her own gaze past him to encounter the arctic stare of the large + blonde person who had been included so lamely in the introduction. And + at that the frigidity of that stare softened, melted, dissolved. +</p> +<p> + "Why Terry Sheehan! What in the world!" +</p> +<p> + Terry's eyes bored beneath the layers of flabby fat. "It's—why, it's + Ruby Watson, isn't it? Eccentric Song and Dance—" +</p> +<p> + She glanced at the concave young man and faltered. He was not Jim, of + the Bijou days. From him her eyes leaped back to the fur-bedecked + splendour of the woman. The plump face went so painfully red that the + makeup stood out on it, a distinct layer, like thin ice covering flowing + water. As she surveyed that bulk Terry realised that while Ruby might + still claim eccentricity, her song and dance days were over. "That's + ancient history, m'dear. I haven't been working for three years. What're + you doing in this joint? I'd heard you'd done well for yourself. That + you were married." +</p> +<p> + "I am. That is I—well, I am. I—" +</p> +<p> + At that the dark young man leaned over and patted Terry's hand that lay + on the counter. He smiled. His own hand was incredibly slender, long, + and tapering. +</p> +<p> + "That's all right," he assured her, and smiled. "You two girls can have + a reunion later. What I want to know is can you play by ear?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, but—" +</p> +<p> + He leaned far over the counter. "I knew it the minute I heard you play. + You've got the touch. Now listen. See if you can get this, and fake the + bass." +</p> +<p> + He fixed his sombre and hypnotic eyes on Terry. His mouth screwed up + into a whistle. The tune—a tawdry but haunting little melody—came + through his lips. And Terry's quick ear sensed that every note was flat. + She turned back to the piano. "Of course you know you flatted every + note," she said. +</p> +<p> + This time it was the blonde woman who laughed, and the man who flushed. + Terry cocked her head just a little to one side, like a knowing bird, + looked up into space beyond the piano top, and played the lilting little + melody with charm and fidelity. The dark young man followed her with a + wagging of the head and little jerks of both outspread hands. His + expression was beatific, enraptured. He hummed a little under his breath + and any one who was music wise would have known that he was just a + half-beat behind her all the way. +</p> +<p> + When she had finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He bent his lean + frame over the counter and, despite his swart colouring, seemed to + glitter upon her—his eyes, his teeth, his very finger-nails. +</p> +<p> + "Something led me here. I never come up on Tuesdays. But something—" +</p> +<p> + "You was going to complain," put in his lady, heavily, "about that Teddy + Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the same songs this week that you + been boosting at the Inn." +</p> +<p> + He put up a vibrant, peremptory hand. "Bah! What does that matter now! + What does anything matter now! Listen Miss—ah—Miss?—" +</p> +<p> + "Pl—Sheehan. Terry Sheehan." +</p> +<p> + He gazed off a moment into space. "H'm. 'Leon Sammett in Songs. Miss + Terry Sheehan at the Piano.' That doesn't sound bad. Now listen, Miss + Sheehan. I'm singing down at the University Inn. The Gottschalk song + hits. I guess you know my work. But I want to talk to you, private. It's + something to your interest. I go on down at the Inn at six. Will you + come and have a little something with Ruby and me? Now?" +</p> +<p> + "Now?" faltered Terry, somewhat helplessly. Things seemed to be moving + rather swiftly for her, accustomed as she was to the peaceful routine of + the past four years. +</p> +<p> + "Get your hat. It's your life chance. Wait till you see your name in + two-foot electrics over the front of every big-time house in the + country. You've got music in you. Tie to me and you're made." He turned + to the woman beside him. "Isn't that so, Rube?" +</p> +<p> + "Sure. Look at <i>me</i>!" One would not have thought there could be so much + subtle vindictiveness in a fat blonde. +</p> +<p> + Sammett whipped out a watch. "Just three-quarters of an hour. Come on, + girlie." +</p> +<p> + His conversation had been conducted in an urgent undertone, with side + glances at the fat man with the megaphone. Terry approached him now. +</p> +<p> + "I'm leaving now," she said. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, no you're not. Six o'clock is your quitting time." +</p> +<p> + In which he touched the Irish in Terry. "Any time I quit is my quitting + time." She went in quest of hat and coat much as the girl had done whose + place she had taken early in the day. The fat man followed her, + protesting. Terry, pinning on her hat tried to ignore him. But he laid + one plump hand on her arm and kept it there, though she tried to shake + him off. +</p> +<p> + "Now, listen to me. That boy wouldn't mind putting his heel on your face + if he thought it would bring him up a step. I know'm. Y'see that walking + stick he's carrying? Well, compared to the yellow stripe that's in him, + that cane is a lead pencil. He's a song tout, that's all he is." Then, + more feverishly, as Terry tried to pull away: "Wait a minute. You're a + decent girl. I want to—Why, he can't even sing a note without you give + it to him first. He can put a song over, yes. But how? By flashin' that + toothy grin, of his and talkin' every word of it. Don't you—" +</p> +<p> + But Terry freed herself with a final jerk and whipped around the + counter. The two, who had been talking together in an undertone, turned + to welcome her. "We've got a half hour. Come on. It's just over to Clark + and up a block or so." +</p> +<p> + If you know Chicago at all, you know the University Inn, that gloriously + intercollegiate institution which welcomes any graduate of any school + of experience, and guarantees a post-graduate course in less time than + any similar haven of knowledge. Down a flight of stairs and into the + unwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality, between + five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at a table in an + obscure corner. A waiter brought them things in little glasses, though + no order had been given. The woman who had been Ruby Watson was so + silent as to be almost wordless. But the man talked rapidly. He talked + well, too. The same quality that enabled him, voiceless though he was, + to boost a song to success, was making his plea sound plausible in + Terry's ears now. +</p> +<p> + "I've got to go and make up in a few minutes. So get this. I'm not going + to stick down in this basement eating house forever. I've got too much + talent. If I only had a voice—I mean a singing voice. But I haven't. + But then, neither has Georgie Cohan, and I can't see that it's wrecked + his life any. Look at Elsie Janis! But she sings. And they like it! Now + listen. I've got a song. It's my own. That bit you played for me up at + Gottschalk's is part of the chorus. But it's the words that'll go big. + They're great. It's an aviation song, see? Airship stuff. They're + yelling that it's the airyoplanes that're going to win this war. Well, + I'll help 'em. This song is going to put the aviator where he belongs. + It's going to be the big song of the war. It's going to make 'Tipperary' + sound like a Moody and Sankey hymn. It's the—" +</p> +<p> + Ruby lifted her heavy-lidded eyes and sent him a meaning look. "Get + down to business, Leon. I'll tell her how good you are while you're + making up." +</p> +<p> + He shot her a malignant glance, but took her advice. "Now what I've been + looking for for years is somebody who has got the music knack to give me + the accompaniment just a quarter of a jump ahead of my voice, see? I can + follow like a lamb, but I've got to have that feeler first. It's more + than a knack. It's a gift. And you've got it. I know it when I see it. I + want to get away from this cabaret thing. There's nothing in it for a + man of my talent. I'm gunning for vaudeville. But they won't book me + without a tryout. And when they hear my voice they—Well, if me and you + work together we can fool 'em. The song's great. And my makeup's one of + these av-iation costumes to go with the song, see? Pants tight in the + knee and baggy on the hips. And a coat with one of those full skirt + whaddyoucall'ems—" +</p> +<p> + "Peplums," put in Ruby, placidly. +</p> +<p> + "Sure. And the girls'll be wild about it. And the words!" he began to + sing, gratingly off-key: +</p> +<pre> + "Put on your sky clothes, + Put on your fly clothes + And take a trip with me. + We'll sail so high + Up in the sky + We'll drop a bomb from Mercury." +</pre> +<p> + "Why, that's awfully cute!" exclaimed Terry. Until now her opinion of + Mr. Sammett's talents had not been on a level with his. +</p> +<p> + "Yeh, but wait till you hear the second verse. That's only part of the + chorus. You see, he's supposed to be talking to a French girl. He says: +</p> +<pre> + I'll parlez-vous in Français plain, + You'll answer, '<i>Cher Américain</i>, + We'll both. . . . . . . . . . ." +</pre> +<p> + The six o'clock lights blazed up, suddenly. A sad-looking group of men + trailed in and made for a corner where certain bulky, shapeless bundles + were soon revealed as those glittering and tortuous instruments which go + to make a jazz band. +</p> +<p> + "You better go, Lee. The crowd comes in awful early now, with all those + buyers in town." +</p> +<p> + Both hands on the table he half rose, reluctantly, still talking. "I've + got three other songs. They make Gottschalk's stuff look sick. All I + want's a chance. What I want you to do is accompaniment. On the stage, + see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my mind to + it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? And maybe you dressed as + Liberty. Anyway, it'll be new, and a knock-out. If only we can get away + with the voice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years never had a—" +</p> +<p> + The band opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal, and thump of drum. + "Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he fled. Terry followed + his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of + the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a little + sigh. "Well! If he talks that way to the managers I don't see—" +</p> +<p> + Ruby laughed a mirthless little laugh. "Talk doesn't get it over with + the managers, honey. You've got to deliver." +</p> +<p> + "Well, but he's—that song <i>is</i> a good one. I don't say it's as good as + he thinks it is, but it's good." +</p> +<p> + "Yes," admitted the woman, grudgingly, "it's good." +</p> +<p> + "Well, then?" +</p> +<p> + The woman beckoned a waiter; he nodded and vanished, and reappeared with + a glass that was twin to the one she had just emptied. "Does he look + like he knew French? Or could make a rhyme?" +</p> +<p> + "But didn't he? Doesn't he?" +</p> +<p> + "The words were written by a little French girl who used to skate down + here last winter, when the craze was on. She was stuck on a Chicago kid + who went over to fly for the French." +</p> +<p> + "But the music?" +</p> +<p> + "There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret and she—" +</p> +<p> + Terry's head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "I don't believe + it!" +</p> +<p> + "Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was so different + from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so + nimbly in the Old Bijou days. "What'd you and your husband quarrel + about, Terry?" +</p> +<p> + Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. He + just—I—it was—Say, how did you know we'd quarrelled?" +</p> +<p> + And suddenly all the fat woman's apathy dropped from her like a garment + and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face. She + pushed her glass aside and leaned forward on her folded arms, so that + her face was close to Terry's. +</p> +<p> + "Terry Sheehan, I know you've quarrelled, and I know just what it was + about. Oh, I don't mean the very thing it was about; but the kind of + thing. I'm going to do something for you, Terry, that I wouldn't take + the trouble to do for most women. But I guess I ain't had all the + softness knocked out of me yet, though it's a wonder. And I guess I + remember too plain the decent kid you was in the old days. What was the + name of that little small-time house me and Jim used to play? Bijou, + that's it; Bijou." +</p> +<p> + The band struck up a new tune. Leon Sammett—slim, sleek, lithe in his + evening clothes—appeared with a little fair girl in pink chiffon. The + woman reached across the table and put one pudgy, jewelled hand on + Terry's arm. "He'll be through in ten minutes. Now listen to me. I left + Jim four years ago, and there hasn't been a minute since then, day or + night, when I wouldn't have crawled back to him on my hands and knees if + I could. But I couldn't. He wouldn't have me now. How could he? How do I + know you've quarrelled? I can see it in your eyes. They look just the + way mine have felt for four years, that's how. I met up with this boy, + and there wasn't anybody to do the turn for me that I'm trying to do for + you. Now get this. I left Jim because when he ate corn on the cob he + always closed his eyes and it drove me wild. Don't laugh." +</p> +<p> + "I'm not laughing," said Terry. +</p> +<p> + "Women are like that. One night—we was playing Fond du Lac; I remember + just as plain—we was eating supper and Jim reached for one of those big + yellow ears, and buttered and salted it, and me kind of hanging on to + the edge of the table with my nails. Seemed to me if he shut his eyes + when he put his teeth into that ear of corn I'd scream. And he did. And + I screamed. And that's all." +</p> +<p> + Terry sat staring at her with a wide-eyed stare, like a sleep walker. + Then she wet her lips, slowly. "But that's almost the very—" +</p> +<p> + "Kid, go on back home. I don't know whether it's too late or not, but go + anyway. If you've lost him I suppose it ain't any more than you deserve, + but I hope to God you don't get your desserts this time. He's almost + through. If he sees you going he can't quit in the middle of his song to + stop you. He'll know I put you wise, and he'll prob'ly half kill me for + it. But it's worth it. You get." +</p> +<p> + And Terry—dazed, shaking, but grateful—fled. Down the noisy aisle, up + the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house. Out again, with + her suitcase, and into the right railroad station somehow, at last. Not + another Wetona train until midnight. She shrank into a remote corner of + the waiting room and there she huddled until midnight watching the + entrances like a child who is fearful of ghosts in the night. +</p> +<p> + The hands of the station clock seemed fixed and immovable. The hour + between eleven and twelve was endless. She was on the train. It was + almost morning. It was morning. Dawn was breaking. She was home! She had + the house key clutched tightly in her hand long before she turned + Schroeder's corner. Suppose he had come home! Suppose he had jumped a + town and come home ahead of his schedule. They had quarrelled once + before, and he had done that. +</p> +<p> + Up the front steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stood there a + moment in the early morning half-light. She peered into the dining room. + The table, with its breakfast débris, was as she had left it. In the + kitchen the coffee pot stood on the gas stove. She was home. She was + safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into crisp + gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Down-stairs + once more she plunged into an orgy of cleaning. Dishes, table, stove, + floor, rugs. She washed, scoured, flapped, swabbed, polished. By eight + o'clock she had done the work that would ordinarily have taken until + noon. The house was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds. +</p> +<p> + During all this time she had been listening, listening, with her + sub-conscious ear. Listening for something she had refused to name + definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same; waiting. +</p> +<p> + And then, at eight o'clock, it came. The rattle of a key in the lock. + The boom of the front door. Firm footsteps. +</p> +<p> + He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him. They came + together and were in each other's arms. She was weeping. +</p> +<p> + "Now, now, old girl. What's there to cry about? Don't, honey; don't. + It's all right." +</p> +<p> + She raised her head then, to look at him. How fresh, and rosy, and big + he seemed, after that little sallow, yellow restaurant rat. +</p> +<p> + "How did you get here? How did you happen—?" +</p> +<p> + "Jumped all the way from Ashland. Couldn't get a sleeper, so I sat up + all night. I had to come back and square things with you, Terry. My mind + just wasn't on my work. I kept thinking how I'd talked—how I'd + talked—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Orville, don't! I can't bear—Have you had your breakfast?" +</p> +<p> + "Why, no. The train was an hour late. You know that Ashland train." +</p> +<p> + But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You go and + clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and everything in fifteen minutes. You + poor boy. No breakfast!" +</p> +<p> + She made good her promise. It could not have been more than twenty + minutes later when he was buttering his third feathery, golden brown + biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watched him, and listened, and + again her eyes were sombre, but for a different reason. He broke open + his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch. Then he + remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again, + carefully. And at that she gave a little tremulous cry, and rushed + around the table to him. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent + and kissed the rough coat sleeve. +</p> +<p> + "Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Orville, listen—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes." +</p> +<p> + "Listen, Orville—" +</p> +<p> + "I'm listening, Terry." +</p> +<p> + "I've got something to tell you. There's something you've got to know." +</p> +<p> + "Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you'd out with it, pretty soon, if I just + waited." +</p> +<p> + She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared at him. + "But how could you know? You couldn't! How could you?" +</p> +<p> + He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. When you have + something on your mind you always take up a spoon of coffee, and look at + it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then dribble + it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used to get me + nervous when we were first married watching you. But now I know it just + means you're worried about something, and I wait, and pretty soon—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Orville!" she cried, then. "Oh, Orville!" +</p> +<p> + "Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to daddy. And you'll feel + better." +</p> +<a name="2H_4_6"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + VI +</h2> +<h2> + THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman—so + bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street, + from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a + man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the street + with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at—in + her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length sealskin + coat in our town, and Ganz' shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. + Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women. +</p> +<p> + Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round + Christmas time, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, + dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out + of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set + with flashy imitation stones—or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow + hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her + appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in + the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and + paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She + owned the House With the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot—did + Blanche Devine. And beneath her silks and laces and furs there was a + scarlet letter on her breast. +</p> +<p> + In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She did not + look like a bad woman. Of course she used too much perfumed white + powder, and as she passed you caught the oversweet breath of a certain + heavy scent. Then, too, her diamond eardrops would have made any woman's + features look hard; but her plump face, in spite of its heaviness, wore + an expression of good-humoured intelligence, and her eyeglasses gave + her somehow a look of respectability. We do not associate vice with + eyeglasses. So in a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed + prosperous, comfortable wife and mother, who was in danger of losing her + figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town + character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns + girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering + among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each + other and jest in undertones. +</p> +<p> + So, knowing Blanche Devine as we did, there was something resembling a + riot in one of our most respectable neighbourhoods when it was learned + that she had given up her interest in the house near the freight depot + and was going to settle down in the white cottage on the corner and be + good. All the husbands in the block, urged on by righteously indignant + wives, dropped in on Alderman Mooney after supper to see if the thing + could not be stopped. The fourth of the protesting husbands to arrive + was the Very Young Husband, who lived next door to the corner cottage + that Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a Very Young + Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky was + three-going-on-four, and looked something like an angel—only healthier + and with grimier hands. The whole neighbourhood borrowed her and tried + to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil. +</p> +<p> + Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar fooling with the furnace. He was + in his furnace overalls—a short black pipe in his mouth. Three + protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband, following + Mrs. Mooney's directions, cautiously descended the cellar stairs, + Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze + of pipe-smoke. +</p> +<p> + "Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm. "Come on + down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since supper. She don't + draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a furnace always gets balky. + How many tons you used this winter?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh—ten," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman Mooney + considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up against the side + of the cistern, his hands in his pockets. "Say, Mooney, is that right + about Blanche Devine's having bought the house on the corner?" +</p> +<p> + "You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this evening. I'm + expecting the rest of the block before bedtime. She's bought it all + right." +</p> +<p> + The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the toe of + his boot. +</p> +<p> + "Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready to cry at + supper. This'll be a fine neighbourhood for Snooky to grow up in! What's + a woman like that want to come into a respectable street for anyway? I + own my home and pay my taxes—" +</p> +<p> + Alderman Mooney looked up. +</p> +<p> + "So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the place—paint + it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch, and lay a + cement walk all round." +</p> +<p> + The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to + emphasize his remarks with gestures. +</p> +<p> + "What's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in diamonds for + windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace with peacocks on it. + You're the alderman of this ward, aren't you? Well, it was up to you to + keep her out of this block! You could have fixed it with an injunction + or something. I'm going to get up a petition—that's what I'm going—" +</p> +<p> + Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned the + rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed + his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a + profitless conversation. +</p> +<p> + "She's bought the house," he said mildly, "and paid for it. And it's + hers. She's got a right to live in this neighbourhood as long as she + acts respectable." +</p> +<p> + The Very Young Husband laughed. +</p> +<p> + "She won't last! They never do." +</p> +<p> + Alderman Mooney had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was rubbing his + thumb over the smooth bowl, looking down at it with unseeing eyes. On + his face was a queer look—the look of one who is embarrassed because he + is about to say something honest. +</p> +<p> + "Look here! I want to tell you something: I happened to be up in the + mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She had to go + through a lot of red tape before she got it—had quite a time of it, she + did! And say, kid, that woman ain't so—bad." +</p> +<p> + The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently: +</p> +<p> + "Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town + character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got religion or + something, and wants to quit and be decent, why doesn't she go to + another town—Chicago or some place—where nobody knows her?" +</p> +<p> + That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipebowl + stopped. He looked up slowly. +</p> +<p> + "That's what I said—the mayor too. But Blanche Devine said she wanted + to try it here. She said this was home to her. Funny—ain't it? Said + she wouldn't be fooling anybody here. They know her. And if she moved + away, she said, it'd leak out some way sooner or later. It does, she + said. Always! Seems she wants to live like—well, like other women. She + put it like this: She says she hasn't got religion, or any of that. She + says she's no different than she was when she was twenty. She says that + for the last ten years the ambition of her life has been to be able to + go into a grocery store and ask the price of, say, celery; and, if the + clerk charged her ten when it ought to be seven, to be able to sass + him with a regular piece of her mind—and then sail out and trade + somewhere else until he saw that she didn't have to stand anything from + storekeepers, any more than any other woman that did her own marketing. + She's a smart woman, Blanche is! She's saved her money. God knows I + ain't taking her part—exactly; but she talked a little, and the mayor + and me got a little of her history." +</p> +<p> + A sneer appeared on the face of the Very Young Husband. He had been + known before he met Jen as a rather industrious sower of that seed known + as wild oats. He knew a thing or two, did the Very Young Husband, in + spite of his youth! He always fussed when Jen wore even a V-necked + summer gown on the street. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," west on Alderman Mooney in + answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and always + expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent when she was + eighteen—with a baby. She worked for four dollars a week in a cheap + eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on that. Then the baby—" +</p> +<p> + "Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs. Mooney's + going to call?" +</p> +<p> + "Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me down to + monkey with the furnace. She's wild—Minnie is." He peeled off his + overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young Husband started to ascend + the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney laid a detaining finger on his + sleeve. "Don't say anything in front of Minnie! She's boiling! Minnie + and the kids are going to visit her folks out West this summer; so I + wouldn't so much as dare to say 'Good morning!' to the Devine woman. + Anyway a person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind of thought + I'd tell you about her." +</p> +<p> + "Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly. +</p> +<p> + In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came + stonemasons, who began to build something. It was a great stone + fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of the little + white cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a home for herself. We + no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth—we build them for the + warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by. +</p> +<p> + Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the work + progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house, looking + up at it pridefully and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or + fingertip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He spaded up + a neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long ridge near + the fence that separated her yard from that of the very young couple + next door. The ridge spelled sweet peas and nasturtiums to our + small-town eyes. +</p> +<p> + On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation among + the white-ruffled bedroom curtains of the neighbourhood. Later on + certain odours, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere. Blanche + Devine, flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her diamond + eardrops flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great fur + coat; but on the third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, + carrying a little household ladder, a pail of steaming water and sundry + voluminous white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side + of the house mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows: with + housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a grey sweater + and on her head was a battered felt hat—the sort of window-washing + costume that has been worn by women from time immemorial. We noticed + that she used plenty of hot water and clean rags, and that she rubbed + the glass until it sparkled, leaning perilously sideways on the ladder + to detect elusive streaks. Our keenest housekeeping eye could find no + fault with the way Blanche Devine washed windows. +</p> +<p> + By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops—perhaps it was + their absence that gave her face a new expression. When she went down + town we noticed that her hats were more like the hats the other women in + our town wore; but she still affected extravagant footgear, as is right + and proper for a stout woman who has cause to be vain of her feet. We + noticed that her trips down town were rare that spring and summer. She + used to come home laden with little bundles; and before supper she would + change her street clothes for a neat, washable housedress, as is our + thrifty custom. Through her bright windows we could see her moving + briskly about from kitchen to sitting room; and from the smells that + floated out from her kitchen door, she seemed to be preparing for her + solitary supper the same homely viands that were frying or stewing or + baking in our kitchens. Sometimes you could detect the delectable scent + of browning hot tea biscuit. It takes a brave, courageous, determined + woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself. +</p> +<p> + Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning she came + to the service there was a little flurry among the ushers at the + vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear. The second Sunday + morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman next to whom they seated + her turned, regarded her stonily for a moment, then rose agitatedly and + moved to a pew across the aisle. Blanche Devine's face went a dull red + beneath her white powder. She never came again—though we saw the + minister visit her once or twice. She always accompanied him to the door + pleasantly, holding it well open until he was down the little flight of + steps and on the sidewalk. The minister's wife did not call—but, then, + there are limits to the duties of a minister's wife. +</p> +<p> + She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we used to + see her moving about in her little garden patch in the dewy, golden + morning. She wore absurd pale-blue kimonos that made her stout figure + loom immense against the greenery of garden and apple tree. The + neighbourhood women viewed these negligées with Puritan disapproval as + they smoothed down their own prim, starched gingham skirts. They said it + was disgusting—and perhaps it was; but the habit of years is not easily + overcome. Blanche Devine—snipping her sweet peas; peering anxiously at + the Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile fingers to the + trellis; watering the flower baskets that hung from her porch—was + blissfully unconscious of the disapproving eyes. I wish one of us had + just stopped to call good morning to her over the fence, and to say in + our neighbourly, small town way: "My, ain't this a scorcher! So early + too! It'll be fierce by noon!" But we did not. +</p> +<p> + I think perhaps the evenings must have been the loneliest for her. The + summer evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human, + neighbourly sounds. After the heat of the day it is infinitely pleasant + to relax in the cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the + town eddying about us. We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. We + call across-lots to our next-door neighbour. The men water the lawns and + the flower boxes and get together in little quiet groups to discuss the + new street paving. I have even known Mrs. Hines to bring her cherries + out there when she had canning to do, and pit them there on the front + porch partially shielded by her porch vine, but not so effectually that + she was deprived of the sights and sounds about her. The kettle in her + lap and the dishpan full of great ripe cherries on the porch floor by + her chair, she would pit and chat and peer out through the vines, the + red juice staining her plump bare arms. +</p> +<p> + I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those lonesome + evenings—those evenings filled with little friendly sights and sounds. + It is lonely, uphill business at best—this being good. It must have + been difficult for her, who had dwelt behind closed shutters so long, to + seat herself on the new front porch for all the world to stare at; but + she did sit there—resolutely—watching us in silence. +</p> +<p> + She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that fell to + her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used to hold daily + conversation with her. They—sociable gentlemen—would stand on her + doorstep, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost, + exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway—a tea towel in + one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a + miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her + knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of + us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen + the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering, + nostril-pricking smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, + tantalising, divinely sticky odour that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, + from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, + gazing in the direction of the enticing smells next door. Early one + September morning there floated out from Blanche Devine's kitchen that + clean, fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies—cookies with butter + in them, and spice, and with nuts on top. Just by the smell of them your + mind's eye pictured them coming from the oven—crisp brown circlets, + crumbly, toothsome, delectable. Snooky, in her scarlet sweater and cap, + sniffed them from afar and straightway deserted her sandpile to take her + stand at the fence. She peered through the restraining bars, standing on + tiptoe. Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and rolling-pin, saw + the eager golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her heart, raised one + fat, dimpled hand above the fence and waved it friendlily. Blanche + Devine waved back. Thus encouraged, Snooky's two hands wigwagged + frantically above the pickets. Blanche Devine hesitated a moment, her + floury hand on her hip. Then she went to the pantry shelf and took out a + clean white saucer. She selected from the brown jar on the table three + of the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with a walnut meat + perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the saucer and, + descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the triumphant + Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips smiling, her eyes + tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white arm. +</p> +<p> + "Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of horror and of + wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't you dare to touch those!" + Snooky hesitated rebelliously, one pink finger in her pouting mouth. + "Snooky! Do you hear me?" +</p> +<p> + And the Very Young Wife began to descend the steps of her back porch. + Snooky, regretful eyes on the toothsome dainties, turned away aggrieved. + The Very Young Wife, her lips set, her eyes flashing, advanced and + seized the shrieking Snooky by one writhing arm and dragged her away + toward home and safety. +</p> +<p> + Blanche Devine stood there at the fence, holding the saucer in her hand. + The saucer tipped slowly, and the three cookies slipped off and fell to + the grass. Blanche Devine followed them with her eyes and stood staring + at them a moment. Then she turned quickly, went into the house and shut + the door. +</p> +<p> + It was about this time we noticed that Blanche Devine was away much of + the time. The little white cottage would be empty for a week. We knew + she was out of town because the expressman would come for her trunk. We + used to lift our eyebrows significantly. The newspapers and handbills + would accumulate in a dusty little heap on the porch; but when she + returned there was always a grand cleaning, with the windows open, and + Blanche—her head bound turbanwise in a towel—appearing at a window + every few minutes to shake out a dustcloth. She seemed to put an + enormous amount of energy into those cleanings—as if they were a sort + of safety valve. +</p> +<p> + As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long, long + after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to pull down the + shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire dancing gnomelike on the + wall. +</p> +<p> + There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling hail—one of + those blustering, wild nights that are followed by morning-paper reports + of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed, telephone and telegraph wires + down. It must have been midnight or past when there came a hammering at + Blanche Devine's door—a persistent, clamorous rapping. Blanche Devine, + sitting before her dying fire half asleep, started and cringed when she + heard it; then jumped to her feet, her hand at her breast—her eyes + darting this way and that, as though seeking escape. +</p> +<p> + She had heard a rapping like that before. It had meant bluecoats + swarming up the stairway, and frightened cries and pleadings, and wild + confusion. So she started forward now, quivering. And then she + remembered, being wholly awake now—she remembered, and threw up her + head and smiled a little bitterly and walked toward the door. The + hammering continued, louder than ever. Blanche Devine flicked on the + porch light and opened the door. The half-clad figure of the Very Young + Wife next door staggered into the room. She seized Blanche Devine's arm + with both her frenzied hands and shook her, the wind and snow beating in + upon both of them. +</p> +<p> + "The baby!" she screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "The baby! The + baby—" +</p> +<p> + Blanche Devine shut the door and shook the Young Wife smartly by the + shoulders. +</p> +<p> + "Stop screaming," she said quietly. "Is she sick?" +</p> +<p> + The Young Wife told her, her teeth chattering: +</p> +<p> + "Come quick! She's dying! Will's out of town. I tried to get the doctor. + The telephone wouldn't—I saw your light! For God's sake—" +</p> +<p> + Blanche Devine grasped the Young Wife's arm, opened the door, and + together they sped across the little space that separated the two + houses. Blanche Devine was a big woman, but she took the stairs like a + girl and found the right bedroom by some miraculous woman instinct. A + dreadful choking, rattling sound was coming from Snooky's bed. +</p> +<p> + "Croup," said Blanche Devine, and began her fight. +</p> +<p> + It was a good fight. She marshalled her little inadequate forces, made + up of the half-fainting Young Wife and the terrified and awkward hired + girl. +</p> +<p> + "Get the hot water on—lots of it!" Blanche Devine pinned up her + sleeves. "Hot cloths! Tear up a sheet—or anything! Got an oilstove? I + want a teakettle boiling in the room. She's got to have the steam. If + that don't do it we'll raise an umbrella over her and throw a sheet + over, and hold the kettle under till the steam gets to her that way. Got + any ipecac?" +</p> +<p> + The Young Wife obeyed orders, whitefaced and shaking. Once Blanche + Devine glanced up at her sharply. +</p> +<p> + "Don't you dare faint!" she commanded. +</p> +<p> + And the fight went on. Gradually the breathing that had been so + frightful became softer, easier. Blanche Devine did not relax. It was + not until the little figure breathed gently in sleep that Blanche Devine + sat back satisfied. Then she tucked a cover ever so gently at the side + of the bed, took a last satisfied look at the face on the pillow, and + turned to look at the wan, dishevelled Young Wife. +</p> +<p> + "She's all right now. We can get the doctor when morning comes—though I + don't know's you'll need him." +</p> +<p> + The Young Wife came round to Blanche Devine's side of the bed and stood + looking up at her. +</p> +<p> + "My baby died," said Blanche Devine simply. The Young Wife gave a little + inarticulate cry, put her two hands on Blanche Devine's broad shoulders + and laid her tired head on her breast. +</p> +<p> + "I guess I'd better be going," said Blanche Devine. +</p> +<p> + The Young Wife raised her head. Her eyes were round with fright. +</p> +<p> + "Going! Oh, please stay! I'm so afraid. Suppose she should take sick + again! That awful—awful breathing—" +</p> +<p> + "I'll stay if you want me to." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, please! I'll make up your bed and you can rest—" +</p> +<p> + "I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll sit up + here in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed. I'll watch and + see that every-thing's all right. Have you got something I can read out + here—something kind of lively—with a love story in it?" +</p> +<p> + So the night went by. Snooky slept in her little white bed. The Very + Young Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the hall, + her stout figure looming grotesque in wall-shadows, sat Blanche Devine + pretending to read. Now and then she rose and tiptoed into the bedroom + with miraculous quiet, and stooped over the little bed and listened and + looked—and tiptoed away again, satisfied. +</p> +<p> + The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with tales + of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed a sigh of + relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She watched the house + now with a sort of proprietary eye. She wondered about Snooky; but she + knew better than to ask. So she waited. The Young Wife next door had + told her husband all about that awful night—had told him with tears and + sobs. The Very Young Husband had been very, very angry with her—angry + and hurt, he said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been so sick! + Look at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a woman! Well, + really he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that she + must never speak to the woman again. Never! +</p> +<p> + So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the Young + Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room window, and she + made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in order to go to the door. + She stood in the doorway and the Very Young Wife went by on the arm of + her husband. She went by—rather white-faced—without a look or a word + or a sign! +</p> +<p> + And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a look + that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly, + narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It was + the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled—if having one's lips + curl away from one's teeth can be called smiling. +</p> +<p> + Two days later there was great news of the white cottage on the corner. + The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the rugs were rolled. + The wagons came and backed up to the house and took those things that + had made a home for Blanche Devine. And when we heard that she had + bought back her interest in the House With the Closed Shutters, near the + freight depot, we sniffed. +</p> +<p> + "I knew she wouldn't last!" we said. +</p> +<p> + "They never do!" said we. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_7"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + VII +</h2> +<h2> + THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + There is a story—Kipling, I think—that tells of a spirited horse + galloping in the dark suddenly drawing up tense, hoofs bunched, slim + flanks quivering, nostrils dilated, ears pricked. Urging being of no + avail the rider dismounts, strikes a match, advances a cautious step or + so, and finds himself at the precipitous brink of a newly formed + crevasse. +</p> +<p> + So it is with your trained editor. A miraculous sixth sense guides him. + A mysterious something warns him of danger lurking within the seemingly + innocent oblong white envelope. Without slitting the flap, without + pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed glasses, without clearing his + throat, without lighting his cigarette—he knows. +</p> +<p> + The deadly newspaper story he scents in the dark. Cub reporter. Crusty + city editor. Cub fired. Stumbles on to a big story. Staggers into + newspaper office wild-eyed. Last edition. "Hold the presses!" Crusty + C.E. stands over cub's typewriter grabbing story line by line. Even + foreman of pressroom moved to tears by tale. "Boys, this ain't just a + story this kid's writin'. This is history!" Story finished. Cub faints. + C.E. makes him star reporter. +</p> +<p> + The athletic story: "I could never marry a mollycoddle like you, Harold + Hammond!" Big game of the year. Team crippled. Second half. Halfback + hurt. Harold Hammond, scrub, into the game. Touchdown! Broken leg. Five + to nothing. "Harold, can you ever, ever forgive me?" +</p> +<p> + The pseudo-psychological story: She had been sitting before the fire for + a long, long time. The flame had flickered and died down to a + smouldering ash. The sound of his departing footsteps echoed and + re-echoed through her brain. But the little room was very, very still. +</p> +<p> + The shop-girl story: Torn boots and temptation, tears and snears, pathos + and bathos, all the way from Zola to the vice inquiry. +</p> +<p> + Having thus attempted to hide the deadly commonplaceness of this story + with a thin layer of cynicism, perhaps even the wily editor may be + tricked into taking the leap. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Four weeks before the completion of the new twelve-story addition the + store advertised for two hundred experienced saleswomen. Rachel + Wiletzky, entering the superintendent's office after a wait of three + hours, was Applicant No. 179. The superintendent did not look up as + Rachel came in. He scribbled busily on a pad of paper at his desk, thus + observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of superintendents + when interviewing applicants. Rachel Wiletzky, standing by his desk, + did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one hip. A sense + of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's subconsciousness. He + glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his + pencil and sat up slowly. His mind was working quickly enough though. In + the twelve seconds that intervened between the laying down of the pencil + and the sitting up in his chair he had hastily readjusted all his + well-founded preconceived ideas on the appearance of shop-girl + applicants. +</p> +<p> + Rachel Wiletzky had the colouring and physique of a dairymaid. It was + the sort of colouring that you associate in your mind with lush green + fields, and Jersey cows, and village maids, in Watteau frocks, balancing + brimming pails aloft in the protecting curve of one rounded upraised + arm, with perhaps a Maypole dance or so in the background. Altogether, + had the superintendent been given to figures of speech, he might have + said that Rachel was as much out of place among the preceding one + hundred and seventy-eight bloodless, hollow-chested, stoop-shouldered + applicants as a sunflower would be in a patch of dank white fungi. +</p> +<p> + He himself was one of those bleached men that you find on the office + floor of department stores. Grey skin, grey eyes, greying hair, careful + grey clothes—seemingly as void of pigment as one of those sunless + things you disclose when you turn over a board that has long lain on the + mouldy floor of a damp cellar. It was only when you looked closely that + you noticed a fleck of golden brown in the cold grey of each eye, and a + streak of warm brown forming an unquenchable forelock that the + conquering grey had not been able to vanquish. It may have been a + something within him corresponding to those outward bits of human + colouring that tempted him to yield to a queer impulse. He whipped from + his breast-pocket the grey-bordered handkerchief, reached up swiftly and + passed one white corner of it down the length of Rachel Wiletzky's + Killarney-rose left cheek. The rude path down which the handkerchief had + travelled deepened to red for a moment before both rose-pink cheeks + bloomed into scarlet. The superintendent gazed rather ruefully from + unblemished handkerchief to cheek and back again. +</p> +<p> + "Why—it—it's real!" he stammered. +</p> +<p> + Rachel Wiletzky smiled a good-natured little smile that had in it a dash + of superiority. +</p> +<p> + "If I was putting it on," she said, "I hope I'd have sense enough to + leave something to the imagination. This colour out of a box would take + a spiderweb veil to tone it down." +</p> +<p> + Not much more than a score of words. And yet before the half were spoken + you were certain that Rachel Wiletzky's knowledge of lush green fields + and bucolic scenes was that gleaned from the condensed-milk ads that + glare down at one from billboards and street-car chromos. Hers was the + ghetto voice—harsh, metallic, yet fraught with the resonant music of + tragedy. +</p> +<p> + "H'm—name?" asked the grey superintendent. He knew that vocal quality. +</p> +<p> + A queer look stole into Rachel Wiletzky's face, a look of cunning and + determination and shrewdness. +</p> +<p> + "Ray Willets," she replied composedly. "Double l." +</p> +<p> + "Clerked before, of course. Our advertisement stated—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh yes," interrupted Ray Willets hastily, eagerly. "I can sell goods. + My customers like me. And I don't get tired. I don't know why, but I + don't." +</p> +<p> + The superintendent glanced up again at the red that glowed higher with + the girl's suppressed excitement. He took a printed slip from the little + pile of paper that lay on his desk. +</p> +<p> + "Well, anyway, you're the first clerk I ever saw who had so much red + blood that she could afford to use it for decorative purposes. Step into + the next room, answer the questions on this card and turn it in. You'll + be notified." +</p> +<p> + Ray Willets took the searching, telltale blank that put its questions so + pertinently. "Where last employed?" it demanded. "Why did you leave? Do + you live at home?" +</p> +<p> + Ray Willets moved slowly away toward the door opposite. The + superintendent reached forward to press the button that would summon + Applicant No. 180. But before his finger touched it Ray Willets turned + and came back swiftly. She held the card out before his surprised eyes. +</p> +<p> + "I can't fill this out. If I do I won't get the job. I work over at the + Halsted Street Bazaar. You know—the Cheap Store. I lied and sent word I + was sick so I could come over here this morning. And they dock you for + time off whether you're sick or not." +</p> +<p> + The superintendent drummed impatiently with his fingers. "I can't listen + to all this. Haven't time. Fill out your blank, and if—" +</p> +<p> + All that latent dramatic force which is a heritage of her race came to + the girl's aid now. +</p> +<p> + "The blank! How can I say on a blank that I'm leaving because I want to + be where real people are? What chance has a girl got over there on the + West Side? I'm different. I don't know why, but I am. Look at my face! + Where should I get red cheeks from? From not having enough to eat half + the time and sleeping three in a bed?" +</p> +<p> + She snatched off her shabby glove and held one hand out before the man's + face. +</p> +<p> + "From where do I get such hands? Not from selling hardware over at + Twelfth and Halsted. Look at it! Say, couldn't that hand sell silk and + lace?" +</p> +<p> + Some one has said that to make fingers and wrists like those which Ray + Willets held out for inspection it is necessary to have had at least + five generations of ancestors who have sat with their hands folded in + their laps. Slender, tapering, sensitive hands they were, pink-tipped, + temperamental. Wistful hands they were, speaking hands, an inheritance, + perhaps, from some dreamer ancestor within the old-world ghetto, some + long-haired, velvet-eyed student of the Talmud dwelling within the pale + with its squalor and noise, and dreaming of unseen things beyond the + confining gates—things rare and exquisite and fine. +</p> +<p> + "Ashamed of your folks?" snapped the superintendent. +</p> +<p> + "N-no—No! But I want to be different. I am different! Give me a chance, + will you? I'm straight. And I'll work. And I can sell goods. Try me." +</p> +<p> + That all-pervading greyness seemed to have lifted from the man at the + desk. The brown flecks in the eyes seemed to spread and engulf the + surrounding colourlessness. His face, too, took on a glow that seemed to + come from within. It was like the lifting of a thick grey mist on a + foggy morning, so that the sun shines bright and clear for a brief + moment before the damp curtain rolls down again and effaces it. +</p> +<p> + He leaned forward in his chair, a queer half-smile on his face. +</p> +<p> + "I'll give you your chance," he said, "for one month. At the end of that + time I'll send for you. I'm not going to watch you. I'm not going to + have you watched. Of course your sale slips will show the office whether + you're selling goods or not. If you're not they'll discharge you. But + that's routine. What do you want to sell?" +</p> +<p> + "What do I want to—Do you mean—Why, I want to sell the lacy + things." +</p> +<p> + "The lacy—" +</p> +<p> + Ray, very red-cheeked, made the plunge. "The—the lawnjeree, you know. + The things with ribbon and handwork and yards and yards of real lace. + I've seen 'em in the glass case in the French Room. Seventy-nine dollars + marked down from one hundred." +</p> +<p> + The superintendent scribbled on a card. "Show this Monday morning. Miss + Jevne is the head of your department. You'll spend two hours a day in + the store school of instruction for clerks. Here, you're forgetting your + glove." +</p> +<p> + The grey look had settled down on him again as he reached out to press + the desk button. Ray Willets passed out at the door opposite the one + through which Rachel Wiletzky had entered. +</p> +<p> + Some one in the department nick-named her Chubbs before she had spent + half a day in the underwear and imported lingerie. At the store school + she listened and learned. She learned how important were things of which + Halsted Street took no cognisance. She learned to make out a sale slip + as complicated as an engineering blueprint. She learned that a clerk + must develop suavity and patience in the same degree as a customer waxes + waspish and insulting, and that the spectrum's colours do not exist in + the costume of the girl-behind-the-counter. For her there are only black + and white. These things she learned and many more, and remembered them, + for behind the rosy cheeks and the terrier-bright eyes burned the + indomitable desire to get on. And the finished embodiment of all of Ray + Willets' desires and ambitions was daily before her eyes in the presence + of Miss Jevne, head of the lingerie and negligées. +</p> +<p> + Of Miss Jevne it might be said that she was real where Ray was + artificial, and artificial where Ray was real. Everything that Miss + Jevne wore was real. She was as modish as Ray was shabby, as slim as Ray + was stocky, as artificially tinted and tinctured as Ray was naturally + rosy-cheeked and buxom. It takes real money to buy clothes as real as + those worn by Miss Jevne. The soft charmeuse in her graceful gown was + real and miraculously draped. The cobweb-lace collar that so delicately + traced its pattern against the black background of her gown was real. So + was the ripple of lace that cascaded down the front of her blouse. The + straight, correct, hideously modern lines of her figure bespoke a real + eighteen-dollar corset. Realest of all, there reposed on Miss Jevne's + bosom a bar pin of platinum and diamonds—very real diamonds set in a + severely plain but very real bar of precious platinum. So if you except + Miss Jevne's changeless colour, her artificial smile, her glittering + hair and her undulating head-of-the-department walk, you can see that + everything about Miss Jevne was as real as money can make one. +</p> +<p> + Miss Jevne, when she deigned to notice Ray Willets at all, called her + "girl," thus: "Girl, get down one of those Number Seventeens for + me—with the pink ribbons." Ray did not resent the tone. She thought + about Miss Jevne as she worked. She thought about her at night when she + was washing and ironing her other shirtwaist for next day's wear. In the + Halsted Street Bazaar the girls had been on terms of dreadful intimacy + with those affairs in each other's lives which popularly are supposed to + be private knowledge. They knew the sum which each earned per week; how + much they turned in to help swell the family coffers and how much they + were allowed to keep for their own use. They knew each time a girl spent + a quarter for a cheap sailor collar or a pair of near-silk stockings. + Ray Willets, who wanted passionately to be different, whose hands so + loved the touch of the lacy, silky garments that made up the lingerie + and negligee departments, recognised the perfection of Miss Jevne's + faultless realness—recognised it, appreciated it, envied it. It worried + her too. How did she do it? How did one go about attaining the same + degree of realness? +</p> +<p> + Meanwhile she worked. She learned quickly. She took care always to be + cheerful, interested, polite. After a short week's handling of lacy + silken garments she ceased to feel a shock when she saw Miss Jevne + displaying a <i>robe-de-nuit</i> made up of white cloud and sea-foam and + languidly assuring the customer that of course it wasn't to be expected + that you could get a fine handmade lace at that price—only + twenty-seven-fifty. Now if she cared to look at something really + fine—made entirely by hand—why— +</p> +<p> + The end of the first ten days found so much knowledge crammed into Ray + Willets' clever, ambitious little head that the pink of her cheeks had + deepened to carmine, as a child grows flushed and too bright-eyed when + overstimulated and overtired. +</p> +<p> + Miss Myrtle, the store beauty, strolled up to Ray, who was straightening + a pile of corset covers and <i>brassieres</i>. Miss Myrtle was the store's + star cloak-and-suit model. Tall, svelte, graceful, lovely in line and + contour, she was remarkably like one of those exquisite imbeciles that + Rossetti used to love to paint. Hers were the great cowlike eyes, the + wonderful oval face, the marvellous little nose, the perfect lips and + chin. Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before a + possible purchaser, and make it look like an imported model at one + hundred and twenty-five. When Miss Myrtle opened those exquisite lips + and spoke you got a shock that hurt. She laid one cool slim finger on + Ray's ruddy cheek. +</p> +<p> + "Sure enough!" she drawled nasally. "Whereja get it anyway, kid? You + must of been brought up on peaches 'n' cream and slept in a pink cloud + somewheres." +</p> +<p> + "Me!" laughed Ray, her deft fingers busy straightening a bow here, a + ruffle of lace there. "Me! The L-train runs so near my bed that if it + was ever to get a notion to take a short cut it would slice off my legs + to the knees." +</p> +<p> + "Live at home?" Miss Myrtle's grasshopper mind never dwelt long on one + subject. +</p> +<p> + "Well, sure," replied Ray. "Did you think I had a flat up on the Drive?" +</p> +<p> + "I live at home too," Miss Myrtle announced impressively. She was + leaning indolently against the table. Her eyes followed the deft, quick + movements of Ray's slender, capable hands. Miss Myrtle always leaned + when there was anything to lean on. Involuntarily she fell into melting + poses. One shoulder always drooped slightly, one toe always trailed a + bit like the picture on the cover of the fashion magazines, one hand and + arm always followed the line of her draperies while the other was raised + to hip or breast or head. +</p> +<p> + Ray's busy hands paused a moment. She looked up at the picturesque + Myrtle. "All the girls do, don't they?" +</p> +<p> + "Huh?" said Myrtle blankly. +</p> +<p> + "Live at home, I mean? The application blank says—" +</p> +<p> + "Say, you've got clever hands, ain't you?" put in Miss Myrtle + irrelevantly. She looked ruefully at her own short, stubby, + unintelligent hands, that so perfectly reflected her character in that + marvellous way hands have. "Mine are stupid-looking. I'll bet you'll get + on." She sagged to the other hip with a weary gracefulness. "I ain't + got no brains," she complained. +</p> +<p> + "Where do they live then?" persisted Ray. +</p> +<p> + "Who? Oh, I live at home"—again virtuously—"but I've got some heart if + I am dumb. My folks couldn't get along without what I bring home every + week. A lot of the girls have flats. But that don't last. Now Jevne—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes?" said Ray eagerly. Her plump face with its intelligent eyes was + all aglow. +</p> +<p> + Miss Myrtle lowered her voice discreetly. "Her own folks don't know + where she lives. They says she sends 'em money every month, but with the + understanding that they don't try to come to see her. They live way over + on the West Side somewhere. She makes her buying trip to Europe every + year. Speaks French and everything. They say when she started to earn + real money she just cut loose from her folks. They was a drag on her and + she wanted to get to the top." +</p> +<p> + "Say, that pin's real, ain't it?" +</p> +<p> + "Real? Well, I should say it is! Catch Jevne wearing anything that's + phony. I saw her at the theatre one night. Dressed! Well, you'd have + thought that birds of paradise were national pests, like English + sparrows. Not that she looked loud. But that quiet, rich elegance, you + know, that just smells of money. Say, but I'll bet she has her lonesome + evenings!" +</p> +<p> + Ray Willets' eyes darted across the long room and rested upon the + shining black-clad figure of Miss Jevne moving about against the + luxurious ivory-and-rose background of the French Room. +</p> +<p> + "She—she left her folks, h'm?" she mused aloud. +</p> +<p> + Miss Myrtle, the brainless, regarded the tips of her shabby boots. +</p> +<p> + "What did it get her?" she asked as though to herself. "I know what it + does to a girl, seeing and handling stuff that's made for millionaires, + you get a taste for it yourself. Take it from me, it ain't the + six-dollar girl that needs looking after. She's taking her little pay + envelope home to her mother that's a widow and it goes to buy milk for + the kids. Sometimes I think the more you get the more you want. + Somebody ought to turn that vice inquiry on to the tracks of that + thirty-dollar-a-week girl in the Irish crochet waist and the diamond bar + pin. She'd make swell readin'." +</p> +<p> + There fell a little silence between the two—a silence of which neither + was conscious. Both were thinking, Myrtle disjointedly, purposelessly, + all unconscious that her slow, untrained mind had groped for a great and + vital truth and found it; Ray quickly, eagerly, connectedly, a new and + daring resolve growing with lightning rapidity. +</p> +<p> + "There's another new baby at our house," she said aloud suddenly. "It + cries all night pretty near." +</p> +<p> + "Ain't they fierce?" laughed Myrtle. "And yet I dunno—" +</p> +<p> + She fell silent again. Then with the half-sign with which we waken from + day dreams she moved away in response to the beckoning finger of a + saleswoman in the evening-coat section. Ten minutes later her exquisite + face rose above the soft folds of a black charmeuse coat that rippled + away from her slender, supple body in lines that a sculptor dreams of + and never achieves. +</p> +<p> + Ray Willets finished straightening her counter. Trade was slow. She + moved idly in the direction of the black-garbed figure that flitted + about in the costly atmosphere of the French section. It must be a very + special customer to claim Miss Jevne's expert services. Ray glanced in + through the half-opened glass and ivory-enamel doors. +</p> +<p> + "Here, girl," called Miss Jevne. Ray paused and entered. Miss Jevne was + frowning. "Miss Myrtle's busy. Just slip this on. Careful now. Keep your + arms close to your head." +</p> +<p> + She slipped a marvellously wrought garment over Ray's sleek head. Fluffy + drifts of equally exquisite lingerie lay scattered about on chairs, over + mirrors, across showtables. On one of the fragile little ivory-and-rose + chairs, in the centre of the costly little room, sat a large, blonde, + perfumed woman who clanked and rustled and swished as she moved. Her + eyes were white-lidded and heavy, but strangely bright. One ungloved + hand was very white too, but pudgy and covered so thickly with gems that + your eye could get no clear picture of any single stone or setting. +</p> +<p> + Ray, clad in the diaphanous folds of the <i>robe-de-nuit</i> that was so + beautifully adorned with delicate embroideries wrought by the patient, + needle-scarred fingers of some silent, white-faced nun in a far-away + convent, paced slowly up and down the short length of the room that the + critical eye of this coarse, unlettered creature might behold the + wonders woven by this weary French nun, and, beholding, approve. +</p> +<p> + "It ain't bad," spake the blonde woman grudgingly. "How much did you + say?" +</p> +<p> + "Ninety-five," Miss Jevne made answer smoothly. "I selected it myself + when I was in France my last trip. A bargain." +</p> +<p> + She slid the robe carefully over Ray's head. The frown came once more to + her brow. She bent close to Ray's ear. "Your waist's ripped under the + left arm. Disgraceful!" +</p> +<p> + The blonde woman moved and jangled a bit in her chair. "Well, I'll take + it," she sighed. "Look at the colour on that girl! And it's real too." + She rose heavily and came over to Ray, reached up and pinched her cheek + appraisingly with perfumed white thumb and forefinger. +</p> +<p> + "That'll do, girl," said Miss Jevne sweetly. "Take this along and change + these ribbons from blue to pink." +</p> +<p> + Ray Willets bore the fairy garment away with her. She bore it tenderly, + almost reverently. It was more than a garment. It represented in her + mind a new standard of all that was beautiful and exquisite and + desirable. +</p> +<p> + Ten days before the formal opening of the new twelve-story addition + there was issued from the superintendent's office an order that made a + little flurry among the clerks in the sections devoted to women's dress. + The new store when thrown open would mark an epoch in the retail + drygoods business of the city, the order began. Thousands were to be + spent on perishable decorations alone. The highest type of patronage was + to be catered to. Therefore the women in the lingerie, negligée, + millinery, dress, suit and corset sections were requested to wear during + opening week a modest but modish black one-piece gown that would blend + with the air of elegance which those departments were to maintain. +</p> +<p> + Ray Willets of the lingerie and negligée sections read her order slip + slowly. Then she reread it. Then she did a mental sum in simple + arithmetic. A childish sum it was. And yet before she got her answer the + solving of it had stamped on her face a certain hard, set, resolute + look. +</p> +<p> + The store management had chosen Wednesday to be the opening day. By + eight-thirty o'clock Wednesday morning the French lingerie, millinery + and dress sections, with their women clerks garbed in modest but modish + black one-piece gowns, looked like a levee at Buckingham when the court + is in mourning. But the ladies-in-waiting, grouped about here and + there, fell back in respectful silence when there paced down the aisle + the queen royal in the person of Miss Jevne. There is a certain sort of + black gown that is more startling and daring than scarlet. Miss Jevne's + was that style. Fast black you might term it. Miss Jevne was aware of + the flurry and flutter that followed her majestic progress down the + aisle to her own section. She knew that each eye was caught in the tip + of the little dog-eared train that slipped and slunk and wriggled along + the ground, thence up to the soft drapery caught so cunningly just below + the knee, up higher to the marvelously simple sash that swayed with each + step, to the soft folds of black against which rested the very real + diamond and platinum bar pin, up to the lace at her throat, and then + stopping, blinking and staring again gazed fixedly at the string of + pearls that lay about her throat, pearls rosily pink, mistily grey. An + aura of self-satisfaction enveloping her, Miss Jevne disappeared behind + the rose-garlanded portals of the new cream-and-mauve French section. + And there the aura vanished, quivering. For standing before one of the + plate-glass cases and patting into place with deft fingers the satin bow + of a hand-wrought chemise was Ray Willets, in her shiny little black + serge skirt and the braver of her two white shirtwaists. +</p> +<p> + Miss Jevne quickened her pace. Ray turned. Her bright brown eyes grew + brighter at sight of Miss Jevne's wondrous black. Miss Jevne, her train + wound round her feet like an actress' photograph, lifted her eyebrows + to an unbelievable height. +</p> +<p> + "Explain that costume!" she said. +</p> +<p> + "Costume?" repeated Ray, fencing. +</p> +<p> + Miss Jevne's thin lips grew thinner. "You understood that women in this + department were to wear black one-piece gowns this week!" +</p> +<p> + Ray smiled a little twisted smile. "Yes, I understood." +</p> +<p> + "Then what—" +</p> +<p> + Ray's little smile grew a trifle more uncertain. "—I had the + money—last week—I was going to—The baby took sick—the heat I guess, + coming so sudden. We had the doctor—and medicine—I—Say, your own + folks come before black one-piece dresses!" +</p> +<p> + Miss Jevne's cold eyes saw the careful patch under Ray's left arm where + a few days before the torn place had won her a reproof. It was the last + straw. +</p> +<p> + "You can't stay in this department in that rig!" +</p> +<p> + "Who says so?" snapped Ray with a flash of Halsted Street bravado. "If + my customers want a peek at Paquin I'll send 'em to you." +</p> +<p> + "I'll show you who says so!" retorted Miss Jevne, quite losing sight of + the queen business. The stately form of the floor manager was visible + among the glass showcases beyond. Miss Jevne sought him agitatedly. All + the little sagging lines about her mouth showed up sharply, defying + years of careful massage. +</p> +<p> + The floor manager bent his stately head and listened. Then, led by Miss + Jevne, he approached Ray Willets, whose deft fingers, trembling a very + little now, were still pretending to adjust the perfect pink-satin bow. +</p> +<p> + The manager touched her on the arm not unkindly. "Report for work in the + kitchen utensils, fifth floor," he said. Then at sight of the girl's + face: "We can't have one disobeying orders, you know. The rest of the + clerks would raise a row in no time." +</p> +<p> + Down in the kitchen utensils and household goods there was no rule + demanding modest but modish one-piece gowns. In the kitchenware one + could don black sateen sleevelets to protect one's clean white waist + without breaking the department's tenets of fashion. You could even pin + a handkerchief across the front of your waist, if your job was that of + dusting the granite ware. +</p> +<p> + At first Ray's delicate fingers, accustomed to the touch of soft, sheer + white stuff and ribbon and lace and silk, shrank from contact with meat + grinders, and aluminum stewpans, and egg beaters, and waffle irons, and + pie tins. She handled them contemptuously. She sold them listlessly. + After weeks of expatiating to customers on the beauties and excellencies + of gossamer lingerie she found it difficult to work up enthusiasm over + the virtues of dishpans and spice boxes. By noon she was less resentful. + By two o'clock she was saying to a fellow clerk: +</p> +<p> + "Well, anyway, in this section you don't have to tell a woman how + graceful and charming she's going to look while she's working the + washing machine." +</p> +<p> + She was a born saleswoman. In spite of herself she became interested + in the buying problems of the practical and plain-visaged housewives + who patronised this section. By three o'clock she was looking + thoughtful—thoughtful and contented. +</p> +<p> + Then came the summons. The lingerie section was swamped! Report to Miss + Jevne at once! Almost regretfully Ray gave her customer over to an idle + clerk and sought out Miss Jevne. Some of that lady's statuesqueness was + gone. The bar pin on her bosom rose and fell rapidly. She espied Ray and + met her halfway. In her hand she carried a soft black something which + she thrust at Ray. +</p> +<p> + "Here, put that on in one of the fitting rooms. Be quick about it. It's + your size. The department's swamped. Hurry now!" +</p> +<p> + Ray took from Miss Jevne the black silk gown, modest but modish. There + was no joy in Ray's face. Ten minutes later she emerged in the limp and + clinging little frock that toned down her colour and made her plumpness + seem but rounded charm. +</p> +<p> + The big store will talk for many a day of that afternoon and the three + afternoons that followed, until Sunday brought pause to the thousands of + feet beating a ceaseless tattoo up and down the thronged aisles. On the + Monday following thousands swarmed down upon the store again, but not in + such overwhelming numbers. There were breathing spaces. It was during + one of these that Miss Myrtle, the beauty, found time for a brief + moment's chat with Ray Willets. +</p> +<p> + Ray was straightening her counter again. She had a passion for order. + Myrtle eyed her wearily. Her slender shoulders had carried an endless + number and variety of garments during those four days and her feet had + paced weary miles that those garments might the better be displayed. +</p> +<p> + "Black's grand on you," observed Myrtle. "Tones you down." She glanced + sharply at the gown. "Looks just like one of our eighteen-dollar models. + Copy it?" +</p> +<p> + "No," said Ray, still straightening petticoats and corset covers. Myrtle + reached out a weary, graceful arm and touched one of the lacy piles + adorned with cunning bows of pink and blue to catch the shopping eye. +</p> +<p> + "Ain't that sweet!" she exclaimed. "I'm crazy about that shadow lace. + It's swell under voiles. I wonder if I could take one of them home to + copy it." +</p> +<p> + Ray glanced up. "Oh, that!" she said contemptuously. "That's just a + cheap skirt. Only twelve-fifty. Machine-made lace. Imitation + embroidery—" +</p> +<p> + She stopped. She stared a moment at Myrtle with the fixed and wide-eyed + gaze of one who does not see. +</p> +<p> + "What'd I just say to you?" +</p> +<p> + "Huh?" ejaculated Myrtle, mystified. +</p> +<p> + "What'd I just say?" repeated Ray. +</p> +<p> + Myrtle laughed, half understanding. "You said that was a cheap junk + skirt at only twelve-fifty, with machine lace and imitation—" +</p> +<p> + But Ray Willets did not wait to hear the rest. She was off down the + aisle toward the elevator marked "Employées." The superintendent's + office was on the ninth floor. She stopped there. The grey + superintendent was writing at his desk. He did not look up as Ray + entered, thus observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of + superintendents when interviewing employees. Ray Willets, standing by + his desk, did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one + hip. A consciousness of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's mind. + He glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his + pencil and sat up slowly. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, it's you!" he said. +</p> +<p> + "Yes, it's me," replied Ray Willets simply. "I've been here a month + to-day." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes." He ran his fingers through his hair so that the brown + forelock stood away from the grey. "You've lost some of your roses," he + said, and tapped his cheek. "What's the trouble?" +</p> +<p> + "I guess it's the dress," explained Ray, and glanced down at the folds + of her gown. She hesitated a moment awkwardly. "You said you'd send for + me at the end of the month. You didn't." +</p> +<p> + "That's all right," said the grey superintendent. "I was pretty sure I + hadn't made a mistake. I can gauge applicants pretty fairly. Let's + see—you're in the lingerie, aren't you?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes." +</p> +<p> + Then with a rush: "That's what I want to talk to you about. I've changed + my mind. I don't want to stay in the lingeries. I'd like to be + transferred to the kitchen utensils and household goods." +</p> +<p> + "Transferred! Well, I'll see what I can do. What was the name now? I + forget." +</p> +<p> + A queer look stole into Ray Willets' face, a look of determination and + shrewdness. +</p> +<p> + "Name?" she said. "My name is Rachel Wiletzky." +</p> +<a name="2H_4_8"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + VIII +</h2> +<h2> + THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + Miss Sadie Corn was not a charmer, but when you handed your room-key to + her you found yourself stopping to chat a moment. If you were the right + kind you showed her your wife's picture in the front of your watch. If + you were the wrong kind, with your scant hair carefully combed to hide + the bald spot, you showed her the newspaper clipping that you carried in + your vest pocket. Following inspection of the first, Sadie Corn would + say: "Now that's what I call a sweet face! How old is the youngest?" + Upon perusal the second was returned with dignity and: "Is that supposed + to be funny?" In each case Sadie Corn had you placed for life. +</p> +<p> + She possessed the invaluable gift of the floor clerk, did Sadie + Corn—that of remembering names and faces. Though you had registered at + the Hotel Magnifique but the night before, for the first time, Sadie + Corn would look up at you over her glasses as she laid your key in its + proper row, and say: "Good morning, Mr. Schultz! Sleep well?" +</p> +<p> + "Me!" you would stammer, surprised and gratified. "Me! Fine! + H'm—Thanks!" Whereupon you would cross your right foot over your left + nonchalantly and enjoy that brief moment's chat with Floor Clerk Number + Two. You went back to Ishpeming, Michigan, with three new impressions: + The first was that you were becoming a personage of considerable + importance. The second was that the Magnifique realised this great truth + and was grateful for your patronage. The third was that New York was a + friendly little hole after all! +</p> +<p> + Miss Sadie Corn was dean of the Hotel Magnifique's floor clerks. The + primary requisite in successful floor clerkship is homeliness. The + second is discreet age. The third is tact. And for the benefit of those + who think the duties of a floor clerk end when she takes your key when + you leave your room, and hands it back as you return, it may be + mentioned that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh requisites are + diplomacy, ingenuity, unlimited patience and a comprehensive knowledge + of human nature. Ambassadors have been known to keep their jobs on less + than that. +</p> +<p> + She had come to the Magnifique at thirty-three, a plain, spare, sallow + woman, with a quiet, capable manner, a pungent trick of the tongue on + occasion, a sparse fluff of pale-coloured hair, and big, bony-knuckled + hands, such as you see on women who have the gift of humanness. She was + forty-eight now—still plain, still spare, still sallow. Those bony, + big-knuckled fingers had handed keys to potentates, and pork-packers, + and millinery buyers from Seattle; and to princes incognito, and paupers + much the same—the difference being that the princes dressed down to + the part, while the paupers dressed up to it. +</p> +<p> + Time, experience, understanding and the daily dealing with ever-changing + humanity had brought certain lines into Sadie Corn's face. So skilfully + were they placed that the unobservant put them down as wrinkles on the + countenance of a homely, middle-aged woman; but he who read as he ran + saw that the lines about the eyes were quizzical, shrewd lines, which + come from the practice of gauging character at a glance; that the + mouth-markings meant tolerance and sympathy and humour; that the + forehead furrows had been carved there by those master chisellers, + suffering and sacrifice. +</p> +<p> + In the last three or four years Sadie Corn had taken to wearing a little + lavender-and-white crocheted shawl about her shoulders on cool days, and + when Two-fifty-seven, who was a regular, caught his annual heavy cold + late in the fall, Sadie would ask him sharply whether he had on his + winter flannels. On his replying in the negative she would rebuke him + scathingly and demand a bill of sizable denomination; and when her watch + was over she would sally forth to purchase four sets of men's winter + underwear. As captain of the Magnifique's thirty-four floor clerks Sadie + Corn's authority extended from the parlours to the roof, but her + especial domain was floor two. Ensconced behind her little desk in a + corner, blocked in by mailracks, pantry signals, pneumatic-tube chutes + and telephone, with a clear view of the elevators and stairway, Sadie + Corn was mistress of the moods, manners and morals of the Magnifique's + second floor. +</p> +<p> + It was six thirty p.m. on Monday of Automobile Show Week when Sadie Corn + came on watch. She came on with a lively, well-developed case of + neuralgia over her right eye and extending down into her back teeth. + With its usual spitefulness the attack had chosen to make its appearance + during her long watch. It never selected her short-watch days, when she + was on duty only from eleven a.m. until six-thirty p.m. +</p> +<p> + Now with a peppermint bottle held close to alternately sniffing nostrils + Sadie Corn was running her eye over the complex report sheet of the + floor clerk who had just gone off watch. The report was even more + detailed and lengthy than usual. Automobile Show Week meant that the + always prosperous Magnifique was filled to the eaves and turning them + away. It meant twice the usual number of inside telephone calls anent + rooms too hot, rooms too cold, radiators hammering, radiators hissing, + windows that refused to open, windows that refused to shut, packages + undelivered, hot water not forthcoming. As the human buffers between + guests and hotel management, it was the duty of Sadie Corn and her + diplomatic squad to pacify the peevish, to smooth the path of the + paying. +</p> +<p> + Down the hall strolled Donahue, the house detective—Donahue the + leisurely. Donahue the keen-eyed, Donahue the guileless—looking in his + evening clothes for all the world like a prosperous diner-out. He smiled + benignly upon Sadie Corn, and Sadie Corn had the bravery to smile back + in spite of her neuralgia, knowing well that men have no sympathy with + that anguishing ailment and no understanding of it. +</p> +<p> + "Everything serene, Miss Corn?" inquired Donahue. +</p> +<p> + "Everything's serene," said Sadie Corn. "Though Two-thirty-three + telephoned a minute ago to say that if the valet didn't bring his pants + from the presser in the next two seconds he'd come down the hall as he + is and get 'em. Perhaps you'd better stay round." +</p> +<p> + Donahue chuckled and passed on. Half way down the hall he retraced his + steps, and stopped again before Sadie Corn's busy desk. He balanced a + moment thoughtfully from toe to heel, his chin lifted inquiringly: "Keep + your eye on Two-eighteen and Two-twenty-three this morning?" +</p> +<p> + "Like a lynx!" answered Sadie. +</p> +<p> + "Anything?" +</p> +<p> + "Not a thing. I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after + dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always + speaks to any woman alone who isn't pockmarked and toothless. Two + minutes after he's met a girl his voice takes on the 'cello note. I know + his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me + first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I'm so homely that + pretty soon I'll be ripe for bachelor floor thirteen. You know as well + as I that to qualify for that job a floor clerk's got to look like a + gargoyle." +</p> +<p> + "Maybe they're all right," said Donahue thoughtfully. "If it's just a + flirtation, why—anyway, watch 'em this evening. The day watch listened + in and says they've made some date for to-night." +</p> +<p> + He was off down the hall again with his light, quick step that still had + the appearance of leisureliness. +</p> +<p> + The telephone at Sadie's right buzzed warningly. Sadie picked up the + receiver and plunged into the busiest half hour of the evening. From + that moment until seven o'clock her nimble fingers and eyes and brain + and tongue directed the steps of her little world. She held the + telephone receiver at one ear and listened to the demands of incoming + and outgoing guests with the other. She jotted down reports, dealt out + mail and room-keys, kept her neuralgic eye on stairs and elevators and + halls, her sound orb on tube and pantry signals, while through and + between and above all she guided the stream of humanity that trickled + past her desk—bellhops, Polish chambermaids, messenger boys, guests, + waiters, parlour maids. +</p> +<p> + Just before seven there disembarked at floor two out of the + cream-and-gold elevator one of those visions that have helped to make + Fifth Avenue a street of the worst-dressed women in the world. The + vision was Two-eighteen, and her clothes were of the kind that prepared + you for the shock that you got when you looked at her face. Plume met + fur, and fur met silk, and silk met lace, and lace met gold—and the + whole met and ran into a riot of colour, and perfume—and little + jangling, swishing sounds. Just by glancing at Two-eighteen's feet in + their inadequate openwork silk and soft kid you knew that Two-eighteen's + lips would be carmined. +</p> +<p> + She came down the corridor and stopped at Sadie Corn's desk. Sadie Corn + had her key ready for her. Two-eighteen took it daintily between + white-gloved fingers. +</p> +<p> + "I'll want a maid in fifteen minutes," she said. "Tell them to send me + the one I had yesterday. The pretty one. She isn't so clumsy as some." +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn jotted down a note without looking up. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Julia? Sorry—Julia's busy," she lied. +</p> +<p> + Two-eighteen knew she lied, because at that moment there came round the + bend in the broad, marble stairway that led up from the parlour floor + the trim, slim figure of Julia herself. +</p> +<p> + Two-eighteen took a quick step forward. "Here, girl! I'll want you to + hook me in fifteen minutes," she said. +</p> +<p> + "Very well, ma'am," replied Julia softly. +</p> +<p> + There passed between Sadie Corn and Two-eighteen a—well, you could + hardly call it a look, it was so fleeting, so ephemeral; that electric, + pregnant, meaning something that flashes between two women who dislike + and understand each other. Then Two-eighteen was off down the hall to + her room. +</p> +<p> + Julia stood at the head of the stairway just next to Sadie's desk + and watched Two-eighteen until the bend in the corridor hid her. + Julia, of the lady's-maid staff, could never have qualified for the + position of floor clerk, even if she had chosen to bury herself in + lavender-and-white crocheted shawls to the tip of her marvellous little + Greek nose. In her frilly white cap, her trim black gown, her immaculate + collar and cuffs and apron, Julia looked distractingly like the young + person who, in the old days of the furniture-dusting drama, was wont to + inform you that it was two years since young master went away—all but + her feet. The feather-duster person was addicted to French-heeled, + beaded slippers. Not so Julia. Julia was on her feet for ten hours or so + a day. When you subject your feet to ten-hour tortures you are apt to + pass by French-heeled effects in favour of something flat-heeled, laced, + with an easy, comfortable crack here and there at the sides, and + stockings with white cotton soles. +</p> +<p> + Julia, at the head of the stairway, stood looking after Two-eighteen + until the tail of her silken draperies had whisked round the corner. + Then, still staring, Julia spoke resentfully: +</p> +<p> + "Life for her is just one darned pair of long white kid gloves after + another! Look at her! Why is it that kind of a face is always wearing + the sables and diamonds?" +</p> +<p> + "Sables and diamonds," replied Sadie Corn, sniffing essence of + peppermint, "seem a small enough reward for having to carry round a mug + like that!" +</p> +<p> + Julia came round to the front of Sadie Corn's desk. Her eyes were + brooding, her lips sullen. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I don't know!" she said bitterly. "Being pretty don't get you + anything—just being pretty! When I first came I used to wonder at those + women that paint their faces and colour their hair, and wear skirts that + are too tight and waists that are too low. But—I don't know! This + town's so big and so—so kind of uninterested. When you see everybody + wearing clothes that are more gorgeous than yours, and diamonds bigger, + and limousines longer and blacker and quieter, it gives you a kind of + fever. You—you want to make people look at you too." +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn leaned back in her chair. The peppermint bottle was held at + her nose. It may have been that which caused her eyes to narrow to mere + slits as she gazed at the drooping Julia. She said nothing. Suddenly + Julia seemed to feel the silence. She looked down at Sadie Corn. As by a + miracle all the harsh, sullen lines in the girl's face vanished, to be + replaced by a lovely compassion. +</p> +<p> + "Your neuralgy again, dearie?" she asked in pretty concern. +</p> +<p> + Sadie sniffed long and audibly at the peppermint bottle. +</p> +<p> + "If you ask me I think there's some imp inside of my head trying to push + my right eye out with his thumb. Anyway it feels like that." +</p> +<p> + "Poor old dear!" breathed Julia. "It's the weather. Have them send you + up a pot of black tea." +</p> +<p> + "When you've got neuralgy over your right eye," observed Sadie Corn + grimly, "there's just one thing helps—that is to crawl into bed in a + flannel nightgown, with the side of your face resting on the red rubber + bosom of a hot-water bottle. And I can't do it; so let's talk about + something cheerful. Seen Jo to-day?" +</p> +<p> + There crept into Julia's face a wave of colour—not the pink of + pleasure, but the dull red of pain. She looked away from Sadie's eyes + and down at her shabby boots. The sullen look was in her face once more. +</p> +<p> + "No; I ain't seen him," she said. +</p> +<p> + "What's the trouble?" Sadie asked. +</p> +<p> + "I've been busy," replied Julia airily. Then, with a forced vivacity: + "Though it's nothing to Auto Show Week last year. I remember that week I + hooked up until my fingers were stiff. You know the way the dresses + fastened last winter. Some of 'em ought to have had a map to go by, they + were that complicated. And now, just when I've got so's I can hook any + dress that was ever intended for the human form—" +</p> +<p> + "Wasn't it Jo who said they ought to give away an engineering blueprint + with every dress, when you told him about the way they hooked?" put in + Sadie. "What's the trouble between you and—" +</p> +<p> + Julia rattled on, unheeding: +</p> +<p> + "You wouldn't believe what a difference there's been since these new + peasant styles have come in! And the Oriental craze! Hook down the side, + most of 'em—and they can do 'em themselves if they ain't too fat." +</p> +<p> + "Remember Jo saying they ought to have a hydraulic press for some of + those skintight dames, when your fingers were sore from trying to + squeeze them into their casings? By the way, what's the trouble between + you and—" +</p> +<p> + "Makes an awful difference in my tips!" cut in Julia deftly. "I don't + believe I've hooked up six this evening, and two of them sprung the + haven't-anything-but-a-five-dollar-bill-see-you-to-morrow! Women are + devils! I wish—" +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn leaned forward, placed her hand on Julia's arm, and turned + the girl about so that she faced her. Julia tried miserably to escape + her keen eyes and failed. +</p> +<p> + "What's the trouble between you and Jo?" she demanded for the fourth + time. "Out with it or I'll telephone down to the engine room and ask him + myself." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, well, if you want to know—" She paused, her eyelids drooping + again; then, with a rush: "Me and Jo have quarrelled again—for good, + this time. I'm through!" +</p> +<p> + "What about?" +</p> +<p> + "I s'pose you'll say I'm to blame. Jo's mother's sick again. She's got + to go to the hospital and have another operation. You know what that + means—putting off the wedding again until God knows when! I'm sick of + it—putting off and putting off! I told him we might as well quit and be + done with it. We'll never get married at this rate. Soon's Jo gets + enough put by to start us on, something happens. Last three times it's + been his ma. Pretty soon I'll be as old and wrinkled and homely as—" +</p> +<p> + "As me!" put in Sadie calmly. "Well, I don't know's that's the worst + thing that can happen to you. I'm happy. I had my plans, too, when I was + a girl like you—not that I was ever pretty; but I had my trials. Funny + how the thing that's easy and the thing that's right never seem to be + the same!" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I'm fond of Jo's ma," said Julia, a little shamefacedly. "We get + along all right. She knows how it is, I guess; and feels—well, in the + way. But when Jo told me, I was tired I guess. We had words. I told him + there were plenty waiting for me if he was through. I told him I could + have gone out with a real swell only last Saturday if I'd wanted to. + What's a girl got her looks for if not to have a good time?" +</p> +<p> + "Who's this you were invited out by?" asked Sadie Corn. +</p> +<p> + "You must have noticed him," said Julia, dimpling. "He's as handsome as + an actor. Name's Venner. He's in two-twenty-three." +</p> +<p> + There came the look of steel into Sadie Corn's eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Look here, Julia! You've been here long enough to know that you're not + to listen to the talk of the men guests round here. Two-twenty-three + isn't your kind—and you know it! If I catch you talking to him again + I'll—" +</p> +<p> + The telephone at her elbow sounded sharply. She answered it absently, + her eyes, with their expression of pain and remonstrance, still + unshrinking before the onslaught of Julia's glare. Then her expression + changed. A look of consternation came into her face. +</p> +<p> + "Right away, madam!" she said, at the telephone. "Right away! You won't + have to wait another minute." She hung up the receiver and waved Julia + away with a gesture. "It's Two-eighteen. You promised to be there in + fifteen minutes. She's been waiting and her voice sounds like a saw. + Better be careful how you handle her." +</p> +<p> + Julia's head, with its sleek, satiny coils of black hair that waved away + so bewitchingly from the cream of her skin, came up with a jerk. +</p> +<p> + "I'm tired of being careful of other people's feelings. Let somebody be + careful of mine for a change." She walked off down the hall, the little + head still held high. A half dozen paces and she turned. "What was it + you said you'd do to me if you caught me talking to him again?" she + sneered. +</p> +<p> + A miserable twinge of pain shot through Sadie Corn's eye, to be followed + by a wave of nausea that swept over her. They alone were responsible for + her answer. +</p> +<p> + "I'll report you!" she snapped, and was sorry at once. +</p> +<p> + Julia turned again, walked down the corridor and round the corner in the + direction of two-eighteen. +</p> +<p> + Long after Julia had disappeared Sadie Corn stared after + her—miserable, regretful. +</p> +<p> + Julia knocked once at the door of two-eighteen and turned the knob + before a high, shrill voice cried: +</p> +<p> + "Come!" +</p> +<p> + Two-eighteen was standing in the centre of the floor in scant satin + knickerbockers and tight brassière. The blazing folds of a cerise satin + gown held in her hands made a great, crude patch of colour in the + neutral-tinted bedroom. The air was heavy with scent. Hair, teeth, eyes, + fingernails—Two-eighteen glowed and glistened. Chairs and bed held odds + and ends. +</p> +<p> + "Where've you been, girl?" shrilled Two-eighteen. "I've been waiting + like a fool! I told you to be here in fifteen minutes." +</p> +<p> + "My stop-watch isn't working right," replied Julia impudently and took + the cerise satin gown in her two hands. +</p> +<p> + She made a ring of the gown's opening, and through that cerise frame her + eyes met those of Two-eighteen. +</p> +<p> + "Careful of my hair!" Two-eighteen warned her, and ducked her head to + the practised movement of Julia's arms. The cerise gown dropped to her + shoulders without grazing a hair. Two-eighteen breathed a sigh of + relief. She turned to face the mirror. +</p> +<p> + "It starts at the left, three hooks; then to the centre; then back + four—under the arm and down the middle again. That chiffon comes over + like a drape." +</p> +<p> + She picked up a buffer from the litter of ivory and silver on the + dresser and began to polish her already glittering nails, turning her + head this way and that, preening her neck, biting her scarlet lips to + deepen their crimson, opening her eyes wide and half closing them + languorously. Julia, down on her knees in combat with the trickiest of + the hooks, glanced up and saw. Two-eighteen caught the glance in the + mirror. She stopped her idle polishing and preening to study the glowing + and lovely little face that looked up at her. A certain queer expression + grew in her eyes—a speculative, eager look. +</p> +<p> + "Tell me, little girl," she said, "What do you do round here?" +</p> +<p> + Julia turned from the mirror to the last of the hooks, her fingers + working nimbly. +</p> +<p> + "Me? My regular job is working. Don't jerk, please. I've fastened this + one three times." +</p> +<p> + "Working!" laughed Two-eighteen, fingering the diamonds at her throat. + "What does a pretty girl like you want to do that for?" +</p> +<p> + "Hook off here," said Julia. "Shall I sew it?" +</p> +<p> + "Pin it!" snapped Two-eighteen. +</p> +<p> + Julia's tidy nature revolted. +</p> +<p> + "It'll take just a minute to catch it with thread—" +</p> +<p> + Two-eighteen whirled about in one of the sudden hot rages of her kind: +</p> +<p> + "Pin it, you fool! Pin it! I told you I was late!" +</p> +<p> + Julia paused a moment, the red surging into her face. Then in silence + she knelt and wove a pin deftly in and out. When she rose from her + knees her face was quite white. +</p> +<p> + "There, that's the girl!" said Two-eighteen blithely, her rage + forgotten. "Just pat this over my shoulders." +</p> +<p> + She handed a powder-puff to Julia and turned her back to the broad + mirror, holding a hand-glass high as she watched the powder-laden puff + leaving a snowy coat on the neck and shoulders and back so generously + displayed in the cherry-coloured gown. Julia's face was set and hard. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, now, don't sulk!" coaxed Two-eighteen good-naturedly, all of a + sudden. "I hate sulky girls. I like people to be cheerful round me." +</p> +<p> + "I'm not used to being yelled at," Julia said resentfully. +</p> +<p> + Two-eighteen patted her cheek lightly. "You come out with me to-morrow + and I'll buy you something pretty. Don't you like pretty clothes?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes; but—" +</p> +<p> + "Of course you do. Every girl does—especially pretty ones like you. How + do you like this dress? Don't you think it smart?" +</p> +<p> + She turned squarely to face Julia, trying on her the tricks she had + practised in the mirror. A little cruel look came into Julia's face. +</p> +<p> + "Last year's, isn't it?" she asked coolly. +</p> +<p> + "This!" cried Two-eighteen, stiffening. "Last year's! I got it yesterday + on Fifth Avenue, and paid two hundred and fifty for it. What do you—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I believe you," drawled Julia. "They can tell a New Yorker from an + out-of-towner every time. You know the really new thing is the Bulgarian + effect!" +</p> +<p> + "Well, of all the nerve!" began Two-eighteen, turning to the mirror in a + sort of fright. "Of all the—" +</p> +<p> + What she saw there seemed to reassure. She raised one hand to push the + gown a little more off the left shoulder. +</p> +<p> + "Will there be anything else?" inquired Julia, standing aloof. +</p> +<p> + Two-eighteen turned reluctantly from the mirror and picked up a jewelled + gold-mesh bag that lay on the bed. From it she extracted a coin and held + it out to Julia. It was a generous coin. Julia looked at it. Her + smouldering wrath burst into flame. +</p> +<p> + "Keep it!" she said savagely, and was out of the room and down the hall. +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn, at her desk, looked up quickly as Julia turned the corner. + Julia, her head held high, kept her eyes resolutely away from Sadie. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Julia, I want to talk to you!" said Sadie Corn as Julia reached the + stairway. Julia began to descend the stairs, unheeding. Sadie Corn rose + and leaned over the railing, her face puckered with anxiety. "Now, + Julia, girl, don't hold that up against me! I didn't mean it. You know + that. You wouldn't be mad at a poor old woman that's half crazy with + neuralgy!" Julia hesitated, one foot poised to take the next step. "Come + on up," coaxed Sadie Corn, "and tell me what Two-eighteen's wearing + this evening. I'm that lonesome, with nothing to do but sit here and + watch the letter-ghosts go flippering down the mailchute! Come on!" +</p> +<p> + "What made you say you'd report me?" demanded Julia bitterly. +</p> +<p> + "I'd have said the same thing to my own daughter if I had one. You know + yourself I'd bite my tongue out first!" +</p> +<p> + "Well!" said Julia slowly, and relented. She came up the stairs almost + shyly. "Neuralgy any better?" +</p> +<p> + "Worse!" said Sadie Corn cheerfully. +</p> +<p> + Julia leaned against the desk sociably and glanced down the hall. +</p> +<p> + "Would you believe it," she snickered, "she's wearing red! With that + hair! She asked me if I didn't think she looked too pale. I wanted to + tell her that if she had any more colour, with that dress, they'd be + likely to use the chemical sprinklers on her when she struck the Alley." +</p> +<p> + "Sh-sh-sh!" breathed Sadie in warning. Two-eighteen, in her shimmering, + flame-coloured costume, was coming down the hall toward the elevators. + She walked with the absurd and stumbling step that her scant skirt + necessitated. With each pace the slashed silken skirt parted to reveal a + shameless glimpse of cerise silk stocking. In her wake came Venner, of + Two-twenty-three—a strange contrast in his black and white. +</p> +<p> + Sadie and Julia watched them from the corner nook. Opposite the desk + Two-eighteen stopped and turned to Julia. +</p> +<p> + "Just run into my room and pick things up and hang them away, will you?" + she said. "I didn't have time—and I hate things all about when I come + in dead tired." +</p> +<p> + The little formula of service rose automatically to Julia's lips. +</p> +<p> + "Very well, madam," she said. +</p> +<p> + Her eyes and Sadie's followed the two figures until they had stepped + into the cream-and-gold elevator and had vanished. Sadie, peppermint + bottle at nose, spoke first: +</p> +<p> + "She makes one of those sandwich men with a bell, on Sixth Avenue, look + like a shrinking violet!" +</p> +<p> + Julia's lower lip was caught between her teeth. The scent that had + enveloped Two-eighteen as she passed was still in the air. Julia's + nostrils dilated as she sniffed it. Her breath came a little quickly. + Sadie Corn sat very still, watching her. +</p> +<p> + "Look at her!" said Julia, her voice vibrant. "Look at her! Old and + homely, and all made up! I powdered her neck. Her skin's like tripe. +</p> +<p> + "Now Julia—" remonstrated Sadie Corn soothingly. +</p> +<p> + "I don't care," went on Julia with a rush. "I'm young. And I'm pretty + too. And I like pretty things. It ain't fair! That was one reason why I + broke with Jo. It wasn't only his mother. I told him he couldn't ever + give me the things I want anyway. You can't help wanting 'em—seeing + them all round every day on women that aren't half as good-looking as + you are! I want low-cut dresses too. My neck's like milk. I want silk + underneath, and fur coming up on my coat collar to make my cheeks look + pink. I'm sick of hooking other women up. I want to stand in front of a + mirror, looking at myself, polishing my pink nails with a silver thing + and having somebody else hook me up!" +</p> +<p> + In Sadie Corn's eyes there was a mist that could not be traced to + neuralgia or peppermint. +</p> +<p> + "Julia, girl," said Sadie Corn, "ever since the world began there's been + hookers and hooked. And there always will be. I was born a hooker. So + were you. Time was when I used to cry out against it too. But shucks! I + know better now. I wouldn't change places. Being a hooker gives you such + an all-round experience like of mankind. The hooked only get a front + view. They only see faces and arms and chests. But the hookers—they see + the necks and shoulderblades of this world, as well as faces. It's + mighty broadening—being a hooker. It's the hookers that keep this world + together, Julia, and fastened up right. It wouldn't amount to much if it + had to depend on such as that!" She nodded her head in the direction the + cerise figure had taken. "The height of her ambition is to get the + cuticle of her nails trained back so perfectly that it won't have to be + cut; and she don't feel decently dressed to be seen in public unless + she's wearing one of those breastplates of orchids. Envy her! Why, + Julia, don't you know that as you were standing here in your black dress + as she passed she was envying you!" +</p> +<p> + "Envying me!" said Julia, and laughed a short laugh that had little of + mirth in it. "You don't understand, Sadie!" +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn smiled a rather sad little smile. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes, I do understand. Don't think because a woman's homely, and + always has been, that she doesn't have the same heartaches that a pretty + woman has. She's built just the same inside." +</p> +<p> + Julia turned her head to stare at her wide-eyed. It was a long and + trying stare, as though she now saw Sadie Corn for the first time. +</p> +<p> + Sadie, smiling up at the girl, stood it bravely. Then, with a sudden + little gesture, Julia patted the wrinkled, sallow cheek and was off down + the hall and round the corner to two-eighteen. +</p> +<p> + The lights still blazed in the bedroom. Julia closed the door and stood + with her back to it, looking about the disordered chamber. In that + marvellous way a room has of reflecting the very personality of its + absent owner, room two-eighteen bore silent testimony to the manner of + woman who had just left it. The air was close and overpoweringly sweet + with perfume—sachet, powder—the scent of a bedroom after a vain and + selfish woman has left it. The litter of toilet articles lay scattered + about on the dresser. Chairs and bed held garments of lace and silk. A + bewildering negligée hung limply over a couch; and next it stood a + patent-leather slipper, its mate on the floor. +</p> +<p> + Julia saw these things in one accustomed glance. Then she advanced to + the middle of the room and stooped to pick up a pink wadded bedroom + slipper from where it lay under the bed. And her hand touched a coat of + velvet and fur that had been flung across the counterpane—touched it + and rested there. +</p> +<p> + The coat was of stamped velvet and fur. Great cuffs of fur there were, + and a sumptuous collar that rolled from neck to waist. There was a + lining of vivid orange. Julia straightened up and stood regarding the + garment, her hands on her hips. +</p> +<p> + "I wonder if it's draped in the back," she said to herself, and picked + it up. It was draped in the back—bewitchingly. She held it at arm's + length, turning it this way and that. Then, as though obeying some + powerful force she could not resist, Julia plunged her arms into the + satin of the sleeves and brought the great soft revers up about her + throat. The great, gorgeous, shimmering thing completely hid her grubby + little black gown. She stepped to the mirror and stood surveying herself + in a sort of ecstasy. Her cheeks glowed rose-pink against the dark fur, + as she had known they would. Her lovely little head, with its coils of + black hair, rose flowerlike from the clinging garment. She was still + standing there, lips parted, eyes wide with delight, when the door + opened and closed—and Venner, of two-twenty-three, strode into the + room. +</p> +<p> + "You little beauty!" exclaimed Two-twenty-three. +</p> +<p> + Julia had wheeled about. She stood staring at him, eyes and lips wide + with fright now. One hand clutched the fur at her breast. +</p> +<p> + "Why, what—" she gasped. +</p> +<p> + Two-twenty-three laughed. +</p> +<p> + "I knew I'd find you here. I made an excuse to come up. Old Nutcracker + Face in the hall thinks I went to my own room." He took two quick steps + forward. "You raving little Cinderella beauty, you!"—And he gathered + Julia, coat and all, into his arms. +</p> +<p> + "Let me go!" panted Julia, fighting with all the strength of her young + arms. "Let me go!" +</p> +<p> + "You'll have coats like this," Two-twenty-three was saying in her + ear—"a dozen of them! And dresses too; and laces and furs! You'll be + ten times the beauty you are now! And that's saying something. Listen! + You meet me to-morrow—" +</p> +<p> + There came a ring—sudden and startling—from the telephone on the wall + near the door. The man uttered something and turned. Julia pushed him + away, loosened the coat with fingers that shook and dropped it to the + floor. It lay in a shimmering circle about the tired feet in their worn, + cracked boots. And one foot was raised suddenly and kicked the silken + garment into a heap. +</p> +<p> + The telephone bell sounded again. Venner, of two-twenty-three, plunged + his hand into his pocket, took out something and pressed it in Julia's + palm, shutting her fingers over it. Julia did not need to open them and + look to see—she knew by the feel of the crumpled paper, stiff and + crackling. He was making for the door, with some last instructions that + she did not hear, before she spoke. The telephone bell had stopped its + insistent ringing. +</p> +<p> + Julia raised her arm and hurled at him with all her might the + yellow-backed paper he had thrust in her hand. +</p> +<p> + "I'll—I'll get my man to whip you for this!" she panted. "Jo'll pull + those eyelashes of yours out and use 'em for couplings. You miserable + little—" +</p> +<p> + The outside door opened again, striking Two-twenty-three squarely in the + back. He crumpled up against the wall with an oath. +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn, in the doorway, gave no heed to him. Her eyes searched + Julia's flushed face. What she saw there seemed to satisfy her. She + turned to him then grimly. +</p> +<p> + "What are you doing here?" Sadie asked briskly. +</p> +<p> + Two-twenty-three muttered something about the wrong room by mistake. + Julia laughed. +</p> +<p> + "He lies!" she said, and pointed to the floor. "That bill belongs to + him." +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn motioned to him. +</p> +<p> + "Pick it up!" she said. +</p> +<p> + "I don't—want it!" snarled Two-twenty-three. +</p> +<p> + "Pick—it—up!" articulated Sadie Corn very carefully. He came forward, + stooped, put the bill in his pocket. "You check out to-night!" said + Sadie Corn. Then, at a muttered remonstrance from him: "Oh, yes, you + will! So will Two-eighteen. Huh? Oh, I guess she will! Say, what do you + think a floor clerk's for? A human keyrack? I'll give you until twelve. + I'm off watch at twelve-thirty." Then, to Julia, as he slunk off: "Why + didn't you answer the phone? That was me ringing!" +</p> +<p> + A sob caught Julia in the throat, but she turned it into a laugh. +</p> +<p> + "I didn't hardly hear it. I was busy promising him a licking from Jo." +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn opened the door. +</p> +<p> + "Come on down the hall. I've left no one at the desk. It was Jo I was + telephoning you for." +</p> +<p> + Julia grasped her arm with gripping fingers. +</p> +<p> + "Jo! He ain't—" +</p> +<p> + Sadie Corn took the girl's hand in hers. +</p> +<p> + "Jo's all right! But Jo's mother won't bother you any more, Sadie. + You'll never need to give up your housekeeping nest-egg for her again. + Jo told me to tell you." +</p> +<p> + Julia stared at her for one dreadful moment, her fist, with the knuckles + showing white, pressed against her mouth. A little moan came from her + that, repeated over and over, took the form of words: +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Sadie, if I could only take back what I said to Jo! If I could only + take back what I said to Jo! He'll never forgive me now! And I'll never + forgive myself!" +</p> +<p> + "He'll forgive you," said Sadie Corn; "but you'll never forgive + yourself. That's as it should be. That, you know, is our punishment for + what we say in thoughtlessness and anger." +</p> +<p> + They turned the corridor corner. Standing before the desk near the + stairway was the tall figure of Donahue, house detective. Donahue had + always said that Julia was too pretty to be a hotel employé. +</p> +<p> + "Straighten up, Julia!" whispered Sadie Corn. "And smile if it kills + you—unless you want to make me tell the whole of it to Donahue." +</p> +<p> + Donahue, the keen-eyed, balancing, as was his wont, from toe to heel and + back again, his chin thrust out inquiringly, surveyed the pair. +</p> +<p> + "Off watch?" inquired Donahue pleasantly, staring at Julia's eyes. + "What's wrong with Julia?" +</p> +<p> + "Neuralgy!" said Sadie Corn crisply. "I've just told her to quit rubbing + her head with peppermint. She's got the stuff into her eyes." +</p> +<p> + She picked up the bottle on her desk and studied its label, frowning. + "Run along downstairs, Julia. I'll see if they won't send you some hot + tea." +</p> +<p> + Donahue, hands clasped behind him, was walking off in his leisurely, + light-footed way. +</p> +<p> + "Everything serene?" he called back over his big shoulder. +</p> +<p> + The neuralgic eye closed and opened, perhaps with another twinge. +</p> +<p> + "Everything's serene!" said Sadie Corn. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_9"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + IX +</h2> +<h2> + THE GUIDING MISS GOWD +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + It has long been the canny custom of writers on travel bent to defray + the expense of their journeyings by dashing off tales filled with + foreign flavour. Dickens did it, and Dante. It has been tried all the + way from Tasso to Twain; from Raskin to Roosevelt. A pleasing custom it + is and thrifty withal, and one that has saved many a one but poorly + prepared for the European robber in uniform the moist and unpleasant + task of swimming home. +</p> +<p> + Your writer spends seven days, say, in Paris. Result? The Latin Quarter + story. <i>Oh, mes enfants!</i> That Parisian student-life story! There is the + beautiful young American girl—beautiful, but as earnest and good as she + is beautiful, and as talented as she is earnest and good. And wedded, be + it understood, to her art—preferably painting or singing. From New + York! Her name must be something prim, yet winsome. Lois will do—Lois, + <i>la belle Américaine</i>. Then the hero—American too. Madly in love with + Lois. Tall he is and always clean-limbed—not handsome, but with one of + those strong, rugged faces. His name, too, must be strong and plain, yet + snappy. David is always good. The villain is French, fascinating, and + wears a tiny black moustache to hide his mouth, which is cruel. +</p> +<p> + The rest is simple. A little French restaurant—Henri's. Know you not + Henri's? <i>Tiens!</i> But Henri's is not for the tourist. A dim little shop + and shabby, modestly tucked away in the shadows of the Rue Brie. But the + food! Ah, the—whadd'you-call'ems—in the savoury sauce, that is Henri's + secret! The tender, broiled <i>poularde</i>, done to a turn! The bottle of + red wine! <i>Mais oui</i>; there one can dine under the watchful glare of + Rosa, the plump, black-eyed wife of the <i>concierge</i>. With a snowy apron + about her buxom waist, and a pot of red geraniums somewhere, and a + sleek, lazy cat contentedly purring in the sunny window! +</p> +<p> + Then Lois starving in a garret. Temptation! <i>Sacré bleu! Zut!</i> Also <i>nom + d'un nom!</i> Enter David. <i>Bon!</i> Oh, David, take me away! Take me back to + dear old Schenectady. Love is more than all else, especially when no one + will buy your pictures. +</p> +<p> + The Italian story recipe is even simpler. A pearl necklace; a low, clear + whistle. Was it the call of a bird or a signal? His-s-s-st! Again! A + black cape; the flash of steel in the moonlight; the sound of a splash + in the water; a sickening gurgle; a stifled cry! Silence! His-st! + <i>Vendetta!</i> +</p> +<p> + There is the story made in Germany, filled with students and steins and + scars; with beer and blonde, blue-eyed <i>Mädchen</i> garbed—the <i>Mädchen</i>, + that is—in black velvet bodice, white chemisette, scarlet skirt with + two rows of black ribbon at the bottom, and one yellow braid over the + shoulder. Especially is this easily accomplished if actually written in + the <i>Vaterland</i>, German typewriting machines being equipped with + <i>umlauts</i>. +</p> +<p> + And yet not one of these formulas would seem to fit the story of Mary + Gowd. Mary Gowd, with her frumpy English hat and her dreadful English + fringe, and her brick-red English cheeks, which not even the enervating + Italian sun, the years of bad Italian food or the damp and dim little + Roman room had been able to sallow. Mary Gowd, with her shabby blue suit + and her mangy bit of fur, and the glint of humour in her pale blue eyes. + Many, many times that same glint of humour had saved English Mary Gowd + from seeking peace in the muddy old Tiber. +</p> +<p> + Her card read imposingly thus: Mary M. Gowd, Cicerone. Certificated and + Licensed Lecturer on Art and Archaeology. Via del Babbuino, Roma. +</p> +<p> + In plain language Mary Gowd was a guide. Now, Rome is swarming with + guides; but they are men guides. They besiege you in front of Cook's. + They perch at the top of the Capitoline Hill, ready to pounce on you + when you arrive panting from your climb up the shallow steps. They lie + in wait in the doorway of St. Peter's. Bland, suave, smiling, quiet, but + insistent, they dog you from the Vatican to the Catacombs. +</p> +<p> + Hundreds there are of these little men—undersized, even in this land + of small men—dapper, agile, low-voiced, crafty. In his inner coat + pocket each carries his credentials, greasy, thumb-worn documents, but + precious. He glances at your shoes—this insinuating one—or at your + hat, or at any of those myriad signs by which he marks you for his own. + Then up he steps and speaks to you in the language of your country, be + you French, German, English, Spanish or American. +</p> +<p> + And each one of this clan—each slim, feline little man in blue serge, + white-toothed, gimlet-eyed, smooth-tongued, brisk—hated Mary Gowd. They + hated her with the hate of an Italian for an outlander—with the hate of + an Italian for a woman who works with her brain—with the hate of an + Italian who sees another taking the bread out of his mouth. All this, + coupled with the fact that your Italian is a natural-born hater, may + indicate that the life of Mary Gowd had not the lyric lilt that life is + commonly reputed to have in sunny Italy. +</p> +<p> + Oh, there is no formula for Mary Gowd's story. In the first place, the + tale of how Mary Gowd came to be the one woman guide in Rome runs like + melodrama. And Mary herself, from her white cotton gloves, darned at the + fingers, to her figure, which mysteriously remained the same in spite of + fifteen years of scant Italian fare, does not fit gracefully into the + rôle of heroine. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps that story, scraped to bedrock, shorn of all floral features, + may gain in force what it loses in artistry. +</p> +<p> + She was twenty-two when she came to Rome—twenty-two and art-mad. She + had been pretty, with that pink-cheesecloth prettiness of the provincial + English girl, who degenerates into blowsiness at thirty. Since seventeen + she had saved and scrimped and contrived for this modest Roman holiday. + She had given painting lessons—even painted on loathsome china—that + the little hoard might grow. And when at last there was enough she had + come to this Rome against the protests of the fussy English father and + the spinster English sister. +</p> +<p> + The man she met quite casually one morning in the Sistine + Chapel—perhaps he bumped her elbow as they stood staring up at the + glorious ceiling. A thousand pardons! Ah, an artist too? In five minutes + they were chattering like mad—she in bad French and exquisite English; + he in bad English and exquisite French. He knew Rome—its pictures, its + glories, its history—as only an Italian can. And he taught her art, and + he taught her Italian, and he taught her love. +</p> +<p> + And so they were married, or ostensibly married, though Mary did not + know the truth until three months later when he left her quite as + casually as he had met her, taking with him the little hoard, and Mary's + English trinkets, and Mary's English roses, and Mary's broken pride. +</p> +<p> + So! There was no going back to the fussy father or the spinster sister. + She came very near resting her head on Father Tiber's breast in those + days. She would sit in the great galleries for hours, staring at the + wonder-works. Then, one day, again in the Sistine Chapel, a fussy little + American woman had approached her, her eyes snapping. Mary was + sketching, or trying to. +</p> +<p> + "Do you speak English?" +</p> +<p> + "I am English," said Mary. +</p> +<p> + The feathers in the hat of the fussy little woman quivered. +</p> +<p> + "Then tell me, is this ceiling by Raphael?" +</p> +<p> + "Ceiling!" gasped Mary Gowd. "Raphael!" +</p> +<p> + Then, very gently, she gave the master's name. +</p> +<p> + "Of course!" snapped the excited little American. "I'm one of a party of + eight. We're all school-teachers And this guide"—she waved a hand in + the direction of a rapt little group standing in the agonising position + the ceiling demands—"just informed us that the ceiling is by Raphael. + And we're paying him ten lire!" +</p> +<p> + "Won't you sit here?" Mary Gowd made a place for her. "I'll tell you." +</p> +<p> + And she did tell her, finding a certain relief from her pain in + unfolding to this commonplace little woman the glory of the masterpiece + among masterpieces. +</p> +<p> + "Why—why," gasped her listener, who had long since beckoned the other + seven with frantic finger, "how beautifully you explain it! How much you + know! Oh, why can't they talk as you do?" she wailed, her eyes full of + contempt for the despised guide. +</p> +<p> + "I am happy to have helped you," said Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + "Helped! Why, there are hundreds of Americans who would give anything to + have some one like you to be with them in Rome." +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd's whole body stiffened. She stared fixedly at the grateful + little American school-teacher. +</p> +<p> + "Some one like me—" +</p> +<p> + The little teacher blushed very red. +</p> +<p> + "I beg your pardon. I wasn't thinking. Of course you don't need to do + any such work, but I just couldn't help saying—" +</p> +<p> + "But I do need work," interrupted Mary Gowd. She stood up, her cheeks + pink again for the moment, her eyes bright. "I thank you. Oh, I thank + you!" +</p> +<p> + "You thank me!" faltered the American. +</p> +<p> + But Mary Gowd had folded her sketchbook and was off, through the + vestibule, down the splendid corridor, past the giant Swiss guard, to + the noisy, sunny Piazza di San Pietro. +</p> +<p> + That had been fifteen years ago. She had taken her guide's examinations + and passed them. She knew her Rome from the crypt of St. Peter's to the + top of the Janiculum Hill; from the Campagna to Tivoli. She read and + studied and learned. She delved into the past and brought up strange and + interesting truths. She could tell you weird stories of those white + marble men who lay so peacefully beneath St. Peter's dome, their ringed + hands crossed on their breasts. She learned to juggle dates with an ease + that brought gasps from her American clients, with their history that + went back little more than one hundred years. +</p> +<p> + She learned to designate as new anything that failed to have its origin + stamped B.C.; and the Magnificent Augustus, he who boasted of finding + Rome brick and leaving it marble, was a mere <i>nouveau riche</i> with his + miserable A.D. 14. +</p> +<p> + She was as much at home in the Thermae of Caracalla as you in your + white-and-blue-tiled bath. She could juggle the history of emperors with + one hand and the scandals of half a dozen kings with the other. No ruin + was too unimportant for her attention—no picture too faded for her + research. She had the centuries at her tongue's end. Michelangelo and + Canova were her brothers in art, and Rome was to her as your back-garden + patch is to you. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd hated this Rome as only an English woman can who has spent + fifteen years in that nest of intrigue. She fought the whole race of + Roman guides day after day. She no longer turned sick and faint when + they hissed after her vile Italian epithets that her American or English + clients quite failed to understand. Quite unconcernedly she would jam + down the lever of the taximeter the wily Italian cabby had pulled only + halfway so that the meter might register double. And when that + foul-mouthed one crowned his heap of abuse by screaming "<i>Camorrista! + Camor-r-rista!</i>" at her, she would merely shrug her shoulders and say + "<i>Andate presto!</i>" to show him she was above quarrelling with a cabman. +</p> +<p> + She ate eggs and bread, and drank the red wine, never having conquered + her disgust for Italian meat since first she saw the filthy carcasses, + fly-infested, dust-covered, loathsome, being carted through the swarming + streets. +</p> +<p> + It was six o'clock of an evening early in March when Mary Gowd went home + to the murky little room in the Via Babbuino. She was too tired to + notice the sunset. She was too tired to smile at the red-eyed baby of + the cobbler's wife, who lived in the rear. She was too tired to ask Tina + for the letters that seldom came. It had been a particularly trying day, + spent with a party of twenty Germans, who had said "<i>Herrlich!</i>" when + she showed them the marvels of the Vatican and "<i>Kolossal!</i>" at the + grandeur of the Colosseum and, for the rest, had kept their noses buried + in their Baedekers. +</p> +<p> + She groped her way cautiously down the black hall. Tina had a habit of + leaving sundry brushes, pans or babies lying about. After the warmth of + the March sun outdoors the house was cold with that clammy, penetrating, + tomblike chill of the Italian home. +</p> +<p> + "Tina!" she called. +</p> +<p> + From the rear of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping. + There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient + shoulders. Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the + white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy + Via Babbuino, closed the massive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy + windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut. + In that little room the roar of Rome was tamed to a dull humming. Mary + Gowd, born and bred amid the green of Northern England, had never become + hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and + clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; + the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns + that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the + electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping + women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the + cabman's whip—that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one + part whip and nine parts crack. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Gowd that + her brain was seared and welted by the pistol-shot reports of those + eternal whips. +</p> +<p> + She came forward now and lighted a candle that stood on the table and + another on the dresser. Their dim light seemed to make dimmer the dark + little room. She looked about with a little shiver. Then she sank into + the chintz-covered chair that was the one bit of England in the sombre + chamber. She took off the dusty black velvet hat, passed a hand over her + hair with a gesture that was more tired than tidy, and sat back, her + eyes shut, her body inert, her head sagging on her breast. +</p> +<p> + The voices in the back of the house had ceased. From the kitchen came + the slipslop of Tina's slovenly feet. Mary Gowd opened her eyes and sat + up very straight as Tina stood in the doorway. There was nothing + picturesque about Tina. Tina was not one of those olive-tinted, + melting-eyed daughters of Italy that one meets in fiction. Looking at + her yellow skin and her wrinkles and her coarse hands, one wondered + whether she was fifty, or sixty, or one hundred, as is the way with + Italian women of Tina's class at thirty-five. +</p> +<p> + Ah, the signora was tired! She smiled pityingly. Tired! Not at all, Mary + Gowd assured her briskly. She knew that Tina despised her because she + worked like a man. +</p> +<p> + "Something fine for supper?" Mary Gowd asked mockingly. Her Italian was + like that of the Romans themselves, so soft, so liquid, so perfect. +</p> +<p> + Tina nodded vigorously, her long earrings shaking. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Vitello</i>"—she began, her tongue clinging lovingly to the double <i>l</i> + sound—"<i>Vee-tail-loh</i>—" +</p> +<p> + "Ugh!" shuddered Mary Gowd. That eternal veal and mutton, pinkish, + flabby, sickening! +</p> +<p> + "What then?" demanded the outraged Tina. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd stood up, making gestures, hat in hand. +</p> +<p> + "Clotted cream, with strawberries," she said in English, an unknown + language, which always roused Tina to fury. "And a steak—a real steak + of real beef, three inches thick and covered with onions fried in + butter. And creamed chicken, and English hothouse tomatoes, and fresh + peaches and little hot rolls, and coffee that isn't licorice and ink, + and—and—" +</p> +<p> + Tina's dangling earrings disappeared in her shoulders. Her outspread + palms were eloquent. +</p> +<p> + "Crazy, these English!" said the shoulders and palms. "Mad!" +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd threw her hat on the bed, pushed aside a screen and busied + herself with a little alcohol stove. +</p> +<p> + "I shall prepare an omelet," she said over her shoulder in Italian. + "Also, I have here bread and wine." +</p> +<p> + "Ugh!" granted Tina. +</p> +<p> + "Ugh, veal!" grunted Mary Gowd. Then, as Tina's flapping feet turned + away: "Oh, Tina! Letters?" +</p> +<p> + Tina fumbled at the bosom of her gown, thought deeply and drew out a + crumpled envelope. It had been opened and clumsily closed again. Fifteen + years ago Mary Gowd would have raged. Now she shrugged philosophic + shoulders. Tina stole hairpins, opened letters that she could not hope + to decipher, rummaged bureau drawers, rifled cupboards and fingered + books; but then, so did most of the other Tinas in Rome. What use to + complain? +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd opened the thumb-marked letter, bringing it close to the + candlelight. As she read, a smile appeared. +</p> +<p> + "Huh! Gregg," she said, "Americans!" She glanced again at the hotel + letterhead on the stationery—the best hotel in Naples. "Americans—and + rich!" +</p> +<p> + The pleased little smile lingered as she beat the omelet briskly for her + supper. +</p> +<p> + The Henry D. Greggs arrived in Rome on the two o'clock train from + Naples. And all the Roman knights of the waving palm espied them from + afar and hailed them with whoops of joy. The season was still young and + the Henry D. Greggs looked like money—not Italian money, which is + reckoned in lire, but American money, which mounts grandly to dollars. + The postcard men in the Piazza delle Terme sped after their motor taxi. + The swarthy brigand, with his wooden box of tawdry souvenirs, marked + them as they rode past. The cripple who lurked behind a pillar in the + colonnade threw aside his coat with a practised hitch of his shoulder to + reveal the sickeningly maimed arm that was his stock in trade. +</p> +<p> + Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Gregg had left their comfortable home in Batavia, + Illinois, with its sleeping porch, veranda and lawn, and seven-passenger + car; with its two glistening bathrooms, and its Oriental rugs, and its + laundry in the basement, and its Sunday fried chicken and ice cream, + because they felt that Miss Eleanora Gregg ought to have the benefit of + foreign travel. Miss Eleanora Gregg thought so too: in fact, she had + thought so first. +</p> +<p> + Her name was Eleanora, but her parents called her Tweetie, which really + did not sound so bad as it might if Tweetie had been one whit less + pretty. Tweetie was so amazingly, Americanly pretty that she could have + triumphed over a pet name twice as absurd. +</p> +<p> + The Greggs came to Rome, as has been stated, at two P.M. Wednesday. By + two P.M. Thursday Tweetie had bought a pair of long, dangling earrings, + a costume with a Roman striped collar and sash, and had learned to loll + back in her cab in imitation of the dashing, black-eyed, sallow women + she had seen driving on the Pincio. By Thursday evening she was teasing + Papa Gregg for a spray of white aigrets, such as those same languorous + ladies wore in feathery mists atop their hats. +</p> +<p> + "But, Tweet," argued Papa Gregg, "what's the use? You can't take them + back with you. Custom-house regulations forbid it." +</p> +<p> + The rather faded but smartly dressed Mrs. Gregg asserted herself: +</p> +<p> + "They're barbarous! We had moving pictures at the club showing how + they're torn from the mother birds. No daughter of mine—" +</p> +<p> + "I don't care!" retorted Tweetie. "They're perfectly stunning; and I'm + going to have them." +</p> +<p> + And she had them—not that the aigret incident is important; but it may + serve to place the Greggs in their respective niches. +</p> +<p> + At eleven o'clock Friday morning Mary Gowd called at the Gregg's hotel, + according to appointment. In far-away Batavia, Illinois, Mrs. Gregg had + heard of Mary Gowd. And Mary Gowd, with her knowledge of everything + Roman—from the Forum to the best place at which to buy pearls—was to + be the staff on which the Greggs were to lean. +</p> +<p> + "My husband," said Mrs. Gregg; "my daughter Twee—er—Eleanora. We've + heard such wonderful things of you from my dear friend Mrs. Melville + Peters, of Batavia." +</p> +<p> + "Ah, yes!" exclaimed Mary Gowd. "A most charming person, Mrs. Peters." +</p> +<p> + "After she came home from Europe she read the most wonderful paper on + Rome before the Women's West End Culture Club, of Batavia. We're + affiliated with the National Federation of Women's Clubs, as you + probably know; and—" +</p> +<p> + "Now, Mother," interrupted Henry Gregg, "the lady can't be interested in + your club." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, but I am!" exclaimed Mary Gowd very vivaciously. "Enormously!" +</p> +<p> + Henry Gregg eyed her through his cigar smoke with suddenly narrowed + lids. +</p> +<p> + "M-m-m! Well, let's get to the point anyway. I know Tweetie here is + dying to see St. Peter's, and all that." +</p> +<p> + Tweetie had settled back inscrutably after one comprehensive, disdainful + look at Mary Gowd's suit, hat, gloves and shoes. Now she sat up, her + bewitching face glowing with interest. +</p> +<p> + "Tell me," she said, "what do they call those officers with the long + pale-blue capes and the silver helmets and the swords? And the ones in + dark-blue uniform with the maroon stripe at the side of the trousers? + And do they ever mingle with the—that is, there was one of the blue + capes here at tea yesterday—" +</p> +<p> + Papa Gregg laughed a great, comfortable laugh. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, so that's where you were staring yesterday, young lady! I thought + you acted kind of absent-minded." He got up to walk over and pinch + Tweetie's blushing cheek. +</p> +<p> + So it was that Mary Gowd began the process of pouring the bloody, + religious, wanton, pious, thrilling, dreadful history of Rome into the + pretty and unheeding ear of Tweetie Gregg. +</p> +<p> + On the fourth morning after that introductory meeting Mary Gowd arrived + at the hotel at ten, as usual, to take charge of her party for the day. + She encountered them in the hotel foyer, an animated little group + centred about a very tall, very dashing, very black-mustachioed figure + who wore a long pale blue cape thrown gracefully over one shoulder as + only an Italian officer can wear such a garment. He was looking down + into the brilliantly glowing face of the pretty Eleanora, and the pretty + Eleanora was looking up at him; and Pa and Ma Gregg were standing by, + placidly pleased. +</p> +<p> + A grim little line appeared about Miss Gowd's mouth. Blue Cape's black + eyes saw it, even as he bent low over Mary Gowd's hand at the words of + introduction. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Miss Gowd," pouted Tweetie, "it's too bad you haven't a telephone. + You see, we shan't need you to-day." +</p> +<p> + "No?" said Miss Gowd, and glanced at Blue Cape. +</p> +<p> + "No; Signor Caldini says it's much too perfect a day to go poking about + among old ruins and things." +</p> +<p> + Henry D. Gregg cleared his throat and took up the explanation. "Seems + the—er—Signor thinks it would be just the thing to take a touring car + and drive to Tivoli, and have a bite of lunch there." +</p> +<p> + "And come back in time to see the Colosseum by moonlight!" put in + Tweetie ecstatically. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes!" said Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + Pa Gregg looked at his watch. +</p> +<p> + "Well, I'll be running along," he said. Then, in answer to something in + Mary Gowd's eyes: "I'm not going to Tivoli, you see. I met a man from + Chicago here at the hotel. He and I are going to chin awhile this + morning. And Mrs. Gregg and his wife are going on a shopping spree. Say, + ma, if you need any more money speak up now, because I'm—" +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd caught his coat sleeve. +</p> +<p> + "One moment!" +</p> +<p> + Her voice was very low. "You mean—you mean Miss Eleanora will go to + Tivoli and to the Colosseum alone—with—with Signor Caldini?" +</p> +<p> + Henry Gregg smiled indulgently. +</p> +<p> + "The young folks always run round alone at home. We've got our own car + at home in Batavia, but Tweetie's beaus are always driving up for her + in—" +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd turned her head so that only Henry Gregg could hear what she + said. +</p> +<p> + "Step aside for just one moment. I must talk to you." +</p> +<p> + "Well, what?" +</p> +<p> + "Do as I say," whispered Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + Something of her earnestness seemed to convey a meaning to Henry Gregg. +</p> +<p> + "Just wait a minute, folks," he said to the group of three, and joined + Mary Gowd, who had chosen a seat a dozen paces away. "What's the + trouble?" he asked jocularly. "Hope you're not offended because Tweet + said we didn't need you to-day. You know young folks—" +</p> +<p> + "They must not go alone," said Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + "But—" +</p> +<p> + "This is not America. This is Italy—this Caldini is an Italian." +</p> +<p> + "Why, look here; Signor Caldini was introduced to us last night. His + folks really belong to the nobility." +</p> +<p> + "I know; I know," interrupted Mary Gowd. "I tell you they cannot go + alone. Please believe me! I have been fifteen years in Rome. Noble or + not, Caldini is an Italian. I ask you"—she had clasped her hands and + was looking pleadingly up into his face—"I beg of you, let me go with + them. You need not pay me to-day. You—" +</p> +<p> + Henry Gregg looked at her very thoughtfully and a little puzzled. Then + he glanced over at the group again, with Blue Cape looking down so + eagerly into Tweetie's exquisite face and Tweetie looking up so raptly + into Blue Cape's melting eyes and Ma Gregg standing so placidly by. He + turned again to Mary Gowd's earnest face. +</p> +<p> + "Well, maybe you're right. They do seem to use chaperons in + Europe—duennas, or whatever you call 'em. Seems a nice kind of chap, + though." +</p> +<p> + He strolled back to the waiting group. From her seat Mary Gowd heard + Mrs. Gregg's surprised exclamation, saw Tweetie's pout, understood + Caldini's shrug and sneer. There followed a little burst of + conversation. Then, with a little frown which melted into a smile for + Blue Cape, Tweetie went to her room for motor coat and trifles that the + long day's outing demanded. Mrs. Gregg, still voluble, followed. +</p> +<p> + Blue Cape, with a long look at Mary Gowd, went out to confer with the + porter about the motor. Papa Gregg, hand in pockets, cigar tilted, eyes + narrowed, stood irresolutely in the centre of the great, gaudy foyer. + Then, with a decisive little hunch of his shoulders, he came back to + where Mary Gowd sat. +</p> +<p> + "Did you say you've been fifteen years in Rome?" +</p> +<p> + "Fifteen years," answered Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + Henry D. Gregg took his cigar from his mouth and regarded it + thoughtfully. +</p> +<p> + "Well, that's quite a spell. Must like it here." Mary Gowd said nothing. + "Can't say I'm crazy about it—that is, as a place to live. I said to + Mother last night: 'Little old Batavia's good enough for Henry D.' Of + course it's a grand education, travelling, especially for Tweetie. + Funny, I always thought the fruit in Italy was regular hothouse + stuff—thought the streets would just be lined with trees all hung with + big, luscious oranges. But, Lord! Here we are at the best hotel in Rome, + and the fruit is worse than the stuff the pushcart men at home feed to + their families—little wizened bananas and oranges. Still, it's grand + here in Rome for Tweetie. I can't stay long—just ran away from business + to bring 'em over; but I'd like Tweetie to stay in Italy until she + learns the lingo. Sings, too—Tweetie does; and she and Ma think they'll + have her voice cultivated over here. They'll stay here quite a while, I + guess." +</p> +<p> + "Then you will not be here with them?" asked Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + "Me? No." +</p> +<p> + They sat silent for a moment. +</p> +<p> + "I suppose you're crazy about Rome," said Henry Gregg again. "There's a + lot of culture here, and history, and all that; and—" +</p> +<p> + "I hate Rome!" said Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + Henry Gregg stared at her in bewilderment. +</p> +<p> + "Then why in Sam Hill don't you go back to England?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm thirty-seven years old. That's one reason why. And I look older. + Oh, yes, I do. Thanks just the same. There are too many women in England + already—too many half-starving shabby genteel. I earn enough to live on + here—that is, I call it living. You couldn't. In the bad season, when + there are no tourists, I live on a lire a day, including my rent." +</p> +<p> + Henry Gregg stood up. +</p> +<p> + "My land! Why don't you come to America?" He waved his arms. "America!" +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd's brick-red cheeks grew redder. +</p> +<p> + "America!" she echoed. "When I see American tourists here throwing + pennies in the Fountain of Trevi, so that they'll come back to Rome, I + want to scream. By the time I save enough money to go to America I'll be + an old woman and it will be too late. And if I did contrive to scrape + together enough for my passage over I couldn't go to the United States + in these clothes. I've seen thousands of American women here. If they + look like that when they're just travelling about, what do they wear at + home!" +</p> +<p> + "Clothes?" inquired Henry Gregg, mystified. "What's wrong with your + clothes?" +</p> +<p> + "Everything! I've seen them look at my suit, which hunches in the back + and strains across the front, and is shiny at the seams. And my gloves! + And my hat! Well, even though I am English I know how frightful my hat + is." +</p> +<p> + "You're a smart woman," said Henry D. Gregg. +</p> +<p> + "Not smart enough," retorted Mary Gowd, "or I shouldn't be here." +</p> +<p> + The two stood up as Tweetie came toward them from the lift. Tweetie + pouted again at sight of Mary Gowd, but the pout cleared as Blue Cape, + his arrangements completed, stood in the doorway, splendid hat in hand. +</p> +<p> + It was ten o'clock when the three returned from Tivoli and the + Colosseum—Mary Gowd silent and shabbier than ever from the dust of the + road; Blue Cape smiling; Tweetie frankly pettish. Pa and Ma Gregg were + listening to the after-dinner concert in the foyer. +</p> +<p> + "Was it romantic—the Colosseum, I mean—by moonlight?" asked Ma Gregg, + patting Tweetie's cheek and trying not to look uncomfortable as Blue + Cape kissed her hand. +</p> +<p> + "Romantic!" snapped Tweetie. "It was as romantic as Main Street on + Circus Day. Hordes of people tramping about like buffaloes. Simply + swarming with tourists—German ones. One couldn't find a single ruin to + sit on. Romantic!" She glared at the silent Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + There was a strange little glint in Mary Gowd's eyes, and the grim line + was there about the mouth again, grimmer than it had been in the + morning. +</p> +<p> + "You will excuse me?" she said. "I am very tired. I will say good + night." +</p> +<p> + "And I," announced Caldini. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd turned swiftly to look at him. +</p> +<p> + "You!" said Tweetie Gregg. +</p> +<p> + "I trust that I may have the very great happiness to see you in the + morning," went on Caldini in his careful English. "I cannot permit + Signora Gowd to return home alone through the streets of Rome." He bowed + low and elaborately over the hands of the two women. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, well; for that matter—" began Henry Gregg gallantly. +</p> +<p> + Caldini raised a protesting, white-gloved hand. +</p> +<p> + "I cannot permit it." +</p> +<p> + He bowed again and looked hard at Mary Gowd. Mary Gowd returned the + look. The brick-red had quite faded from her cheeks. Then, with a nod, + she turned and walked toward the door. Blue Cape, sword clanking, + followed her. +</p> +<p> + In silence he handed her into the <i>fiacre</i>. In silence he seated himself + beside her. Then he leaned very close. +</p> +<p> + "I will talk in this damned English," he began, "that the pig of a + <i>fiaccheraio</i> may not understand. This—this Gregg, he is very rich, + like all Americans. And the little Eleanora! <i>Bellissima!</i> You must not + stand in my way. It is not good." Mary Dowd sat silent. "You will help + me. To-day you were not kind. There will be much money—money for me; + also for you." +</p> +<p> + Fifteen years before—ten years before—she would have died sooner than + listen to a plan such as he proposed; but fifteen years of Rome blunts + one's English sensibilities. Fifteen years of privation dulls one's + moral sense. And money meant America. And little Tweetie Gregg had not + lowered her voice or her laugh when she spoke that afternoon of Mary + Gowd's absurd English fringe and her red wrists above her too-short + gloves. +</p> +<p> + "How much?" asked Mary Gowd. He named a figure. She laughed. +</p> +<p> + "More—much more!" +</p> +<p> + He named another figure; then another. +</p> +<p> + "You will put it down on paper," said Mary Gowd, "and sign your + name—to-morrow." +</p> +<p> + They drove the remainder of the way in silence. At her door in the Via + Babbuino: +</p> +<p> + "You mean to marry her?" asked Mary Gowd. +</p> +<p> + Blue Cape shrugged eloquent shoulders: +</p> +<p> + "I think not," he said quite simply. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<p> + It was to be the Appian Way the next morning, with a stop at the + Catacombs. Mary Gowd reached the hotel very early, but not so early as + Caldini. +</p> +<p> + "Think the five of us can pile into one carriage?" boomed Henry Gregg + cheerily. +</p> +<p> + "A little crowded, I think," said Mary Gowd, "for such a long drive. + May I suggest that we three"—she smiled on Henry Gregg and his + wife—"take this larger carriage, while Miss Eleanora and Signor Caldini + follow in the single cab?" +</p> +<p> + A lightning message from Blue Cape's eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Yes; that would be nice!" cooed Tweetie. +</p> +<p> + So it was arranged. Mary Gowd rather outdid herself as a guide that + morning. She had a hundred little intimate tales at her tongue's end. + She seemed fairly to people those old ruins again with the men and women + of a thousand years ago. Even Tweetie—little frivolous, indifferent + Tweetie—was impressed and interested. +</p> +<p> + As they were returning to the carriages after inspecting the Baths of + Caracalla, Tweetie even skipped ahead and slipped her hand for a moment + into Mary Gowd's. +</p> +<p> + "You're simply wonderful!" she said almost shyly. "You make things sound + so real. And—and I'm sorry I was so nasty to you yesterday at Tivoli." +</p> +<p> + Mary Dowd looked down at the glowing little face. A foolish little face + it was, but very, very pretty, and exquisitely young and fresh and + sweet. Tweetie dropped her voice to a whisper: +</p> +<p> + "You should hear him pronounce my name. It is like music when he says + it—El-e-a-no-ra; like that. And aren't his kid gloves always + beautifully white? Why, the boys back home—" +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd was still staring down at her. She lifted the slim, ringed + little hand which lay within her white-cotton paw and stared at that + too. +</p> +<p> + Then with a jerk she dropped the girl's hand and squared her shoulders + like a soldier, so that the dowdy blue suit strained more than ever at + its seams; and the line that had settled about her mouth the night + before faded slowly, as though a muscle too tightly drawn had relaxed. +</p> +<p> + In the carriages they were seated as before. The horses started up, with + the smaller cab but a dozen paces behind. Mary Gowd leaned forward. She + began to speak—her voice very low, her accent clearly English, her + brevity wonderfully American. +</p> +<p> + "Listen to me!" she said. "You must leave Rome to-night!" +</p> +<p> + "Leave Rome to-night!" echoed the Greggs as though rehearsing a duet. +</p> +<p> + "Be quiet! You must not shout like that. I say you must go away." +</p> +<p> + Mamma Gregg opened her lips and shut them, wordless for once. Henry + Gregg laid one big hand on his wife's shaking knees and eyed Mary Gowd + very quietly. +</p> +<p> + "I don't get you," he said. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd looked straight at him as she said what she had to say: +</p> +<p> + "There are things in Rome you cannot understand. You could not + understand unless you lived here many years. I lived here many months + before I learned to step meekly off into the gutter to allow a man to + pass on the narrow sidewalk. You must take your pretty daughter and go + away. To-night! No—let me finish. I will tell you what happened to me + fifteen years ago, and I will tell you what this Caldini has in his + mind. You will believe me and forgive me; and promise me that you will + go quietly away." +</p> +<p> + When she finished Mrs. Gregg was white-faced and luckily too frightened + to weep. Henry Gregg started up in the carriage, his fists + white-knuckled, his lean face turned toward the carriage crawling + behind. +</p> +<p> + "Sit down!" commanded Mary Gowd. She jerked his sleeve. "Sit down!" +</p> +<p> + Henry Gregg sat down slowly. Then he wet his lips slightly and smiled. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, bosh!" he said. "This—this is the twentieth century and we're + Americans, and it's broad daylight. Why, I'll lick the—" +</p> +<p> + "This is Rome," interrupted Mary Gowd quietly, "and you will do nothing + of the kind, because he would make you pay for that too, and it would be + in all the papers; and your pretty daughter would hang her head in shame + forever." She put one hand on Henry Gregg's sleeve. "You do not know! + You do not! Promise me you will go." The tears sprang suddenly to her + English blue eyes. "Promise me! Promise me!" +</p> +<p> + "Henry!" cried Mamma Gregg, very grey-faced. "Promise, Henry!" +</p> +<p> + "I promise," said Henry Gregg, and he turned away. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd sank back in her seat and shut her eyes for a moment. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Presto!</i>" she said to the half-sleeping driver. Then she waved a gay + hand at the carriage in the rear. "<i>Presto!</i>" she called, smiling. + "<i>Presto!</i>" +</p> +<p> </p> + +<p> + At six o'clock Mary Gowd entered the little room in the Via Babbuino. + She went first to the window, drew the heavy curtains. The roar of Rome + was hushed to a humming. She lighted a candle that stood on the table. + Its dim light emphasized the gloom. She took off the battered black + velvet hat and sank into the chintz-covered English chair. Tina stood in + the doorway. Mary Gowd sat up with a jerk. +</p> +<p> + "Letters, Tina?" +</p> +<p> + Tina thought deeply, fumbled at the bosom of her gown and drew out a + sealed envelope grudgingly. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd broke the seal, glanced at the letter. Then, under Tina's + startled gaze, she held it to the flaming candle and watched it burn. +</p> +<p> + "What is it that you do?" demanded Tina. +</p> +<p> + Mary Gowd smiled. +</p> +<p> + "You have heard of America?" +</p> +<p> + "America! A thousand—a million time! My brother Luigi—" +</p> +<p> + "Naturally! This, then"—Mary Gowd deliberately gathered up the ashes + into a neat pile and held them in her hand, a crumpled heap—"this then, + Tina, is my trip to America." +</p> +<a name="2H_4_10"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + X +</h2> +<h2> + SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + The key to the heart of Paris is love. He whose key-ring lacks that open + sesame never really sees the city, even though he dwell in the shadow of + the Sorbonne and comprehend the <i>fiacre</i> French of the Paris cabman. + Some there are who craftily open the door with a skeleton key; some who + ruthlessly batter the panels; some who achieve only a wax impression, + which proves to be useless. There are many who travel no farther than + the outer gates. You will find them staring blankly at the stone walls; + and their plaint is: +</p> +<p> + "What do they find to rave about in this town?" +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold had been eight days in Paris and she had not so much as + peeked through the key-hole. In a vague way she realised that she was + seeing Paris as a blind man sees the sun—feeling its warmth, conscious + of its white light beating on the eyeballs, but never actually beholding + its golden glory. +</p> +<p> + This was Sophy Gold's first trip to Paris, and her heart and soul and + business brain were intent on buying the shrewdest possible bill of + lingerie and infants' wear for her department at Schiff Brothers', + Chicago; but Sophy under-estimated the powers of those three guiding + parts. While heart, soul, and brain were bent dutifully and + indefatigably on the lingerie and infants'-wear job they also were + registering a series of kaleidoscopic outside impressions. +</p> +<p> + As she drove from her hotel to the wholesale district, and from the + wholesale district to her hotel, there had flashed across her + consciousness the picture of the chic little modistes' models and + <i>ouvrières</i> slipping out at noon to meet their lovers on the corner, to + sit over their <i>sirop</i> or wine at some little near-by café, hands + clasped, eyes glowing. +</p> +<p> + Stepping out of the lift to ask for her room key, she had come on the + black-gowned floor clerk, deep in murmured conversation with the valet, + and she had seemed not to see Sophy at all as she groped subconsciously + for the key along the rows of keyboxes. She had seen the workmen in + their absurdly baggy corduroy trousers and grimy shirts strolling along + arm in arm with the women of their class—those untidy women with the + tidy hair. Bareheaded and happy, they strolled along, a strange contrast + to the glitter of the fashionable boulevard, stopping now and then to + gaze wide-eyed at a million-franc necklace in a jeweller's window; then + on again with a laugh and a shrug and a caress. She had seen the silent + couples in the Tuileries Gardens at twilight. +</p> +<p> + Once, in the Bois de Boulogne, a slim, sallow <i>élégant</i> had bent for + what seemed an interminable time over a white hand that was stretched + from the window of a motor car. He was standing at the curb; in either + greeting or parting, and his eyes were fastened on other eyes within the + car even while his lips pressed the white hand. +</p> +<p> + Then one evening—Sophy reddened now at memory of it—she had turned a + quiet corner and come on a boy and a girl. The girl was shabby and + sixteen; the boy pale, voluble, smiling. +</p> +<p> + Evidently they were just parting. Suddenly, as she passed, the boy had + caught the girl in his arms there on the street corner in the daylight, + and had kissed her—not the quick, resounding smack of casual + leave-taking, but a long, silent kiss that left the girl limp. +</p> +<p> + Sophy stood rooted to the spot, between horror and fascination. The + boy's arm brought the girl upright and set her on her feet. +</p> +<p> + She took a long breath, straightened her hat, and ran on to rejoin her + girl friend awaiting her calmly up the street. She was not even flushed; + but Sophy was. Sophy was blushing hotly and burning uncomfortably, so + that her eyes smarted. +</p> +<p> + Just after her late dinner on the eighth day of her Paris stay, Sophy + Gold was seated in the hotel lobby. Paris thronged with American + business buyers—those clever, capable, shrewd-eyed women who swarm on + the city in June and strip it of its choicest flowers, from ball gowns + to back combs. Sophy tried to pick them from the multitude that swept + past her. It was not difficult. The women visitors to Paris in June + drop easily into their proper slots. +</p> +<p> + There were the pretty American girls and their marvellously + young-looking mammas, both out-Frenching the French in their efforts to + look Parisian; there were rows of fat, placid, jewel-laden Argentine + mothers, each with a watchful eye on her black-eyed, volcanically calm, + be-powdered daughter; and there were the buyers, miraculously dressy in + next week's styles in suits and hats—of the old-girl type most of them, + alert, self-confident, capable. +</p> +<p> + They usually returned to their hotels at six, limping a little, + dog-tired; but at sight of the brightly lighted, gay hotel foyer they + would straighten up like war-horses scenting battle and achieve an + effective entrance from the doorway to the lift. +</p> +<p> + In all that big, busy foyer Sophy Gold herself was the one person + distinctly out of the picture. One did not know where to place her. To + begin with, a woman as irrevocably, irredeemably ugly as Sophy was an + anachronism in Paris. She belonged to the gargoyle period. You found + yourself speculating on whether it was her mouth or her nose that made + her so devastatingly plain, only to bring up at her eyes and find that + they alone were enough to wreck any ambitions toward beauty. You knew + before you saw it that her hair would be limp and straggling. +</p> +<p> + You sensed without a glance at them that her hands would be bony, with + unlovely knuckles. +</p> +<p> + The Fates, grinning, had done all that. Her Chicago tailor and milliner + had completed the work. Sophy had not been in Paris ten minutes before + she noticed that they were wearing 'em long and full. Her coat was short + and her skirt scant. Her hat was small. The Paris windows were full of + large and graceful black velvets of the Lillian Russell school. +</p> +<p> + "May I sit here?" +</p> +<p> + Sophy looked up into the plump, pink, smiling face of one of those very + women of the buyer type on whom she had speculated ten minutes before—a + good-natured face with shrewd, twinkling eyes. At sight of it you + forgave her her skittish white-kid-topped shoes. +</p> +<p> + "Certainly," smiled Sophy, and moved over a bit on the little French + settee. +</p> +<p> + The plump woman sat down heavily. In five minutes Sophy was conscious + she was being stared at surreptitiously. In ten minutes she was + uncomfortably conscious of it. In eleven minutes she turned her head + suddenly and caught the stout woman's eyes fixed on her, with just the + baffled, speculative expression she had expected to find in them. Sophy + Gold had caught that look in many women's eyes. She smiled grimly now. +</p> +<p> + "Don't try it," she said, "It's no use." +</p> +<p> + The pink, plump face flushed pinker. +</p> +<p> + "Don't try—" +</p> +<p> + "Don't try to convince yourself that if I wore my hair differently, or + my collar tighter, or my hat larger, it would make a difference in my + looks. It wouldn't. It's hard to believe that I'm as homely as I look, + but I am. I've watched women try to dress me in as many as eleven mental + changes of costume before they gave me up." +</p> +<p> + "But I didn't mean—I beg your pardon—you mustn't think—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, that's all right! I used to struggle, but I'm used to it now. It + took me a long time to realise that this was my real face and the only + kind I could ever expect to have." +</p> +<p> + The plump woman's kindly face grew kinder. +</p> +<p> + "But you're really not so—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes, I am. Upholstering can't change me. There are various kinds of + homely women—some who are hideous in blue maybe, but who soften up in + pink. Then there's the one you read about, whose features are lighted up + now and then by one of those rare, sweet smiles that make her plain face + almost beautiful. But once in a while you find a woman who is ugly in + any colour of the rainbow; who is ugly smiling or serious, talking or in + repose, hair down low or hair done high—just plain dyed-in-the-wool, + sewed-in-the-seam homely. I'm that kind. Here for a visit?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm a buyer," said the plump woman. +</p> +<p> + "Yes; I thought so. I'm the lingerie and infants'-wear buyer for Schiff, + Chicago." +</p> +<p> + "A buyer!" The plump woman's eyes jumped uncontrollably again to Sophy + Gold's scrambled features. "Well! My name's Miss Morrissey—Ella + Morrissey. Millinery for Abelman's, Pittsburgh. And it's no snap this + year, with the shops showing postage-stamp hats one day and cart-wheels + the next. I said this morning that I envied the head of the tinware + department. Been over often?" +</p> +<p> + Sophy made the shamefaced confession of the novice: "My first trip." +</p> +<p> + The inevitable answer came: +</p> +<p> + "Your first! Really! This is my twentieth crossing. Been coming over + twice a year for ten years. If there's anything I can tell you, just + ask. The first buying trip to Paris is hard until you know the ropes. Of + course you love this town?" +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold sat silent a moment, hesitating. Then she turned a puzzled + face toward Miss Morrissey. +</p> +<p> + "What do people mean when they say they love Paris?" +</p> +<p> + Ella Morrissey stared. Then a queer look came into her face—a pitying + sort of look. The shrewd eyes softened. She groped for words. +</p> +<p> + "When I first came over here, ten years ago, I—well, it would have been + easier to tell you then. I don't know—there's something about + Paris—something in the atmosphere—something in the air. It—it makes + you do foolish things. It makes you feel queer and light and happy. It's + nothing you can put your finger on and say 'That's it!' But it's there." +</p> +<p> + "Huh!" grunted Sophy Gold. "I suppose I could save myself a lot of + trouble by saying that I feel it; but I don't. I simply don't react to + this town. The only things I really like in Paris are the Tomb of + Napoleon, the Seine at night, and the strawberry tart you get at Vian's. + Of course the parks and boulevards are a marvel, but you can't expect me + to love a town for that. I'm no landscape gardener." +</p> +<p> + That pitying look deepened in Miss Morrissey's eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Have you been out in the evening? The restaurants! The French women! + The life!" +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold caught the pitying look and interpreted it without + resentment; but there was perhaps an added acid in her tone when she + spoke. +</p> +<p> + "I'm here to buy—not to play. I'm thirty years old, and it's taken me + ten years to work my way up to foreign buyer. I've worked. And I wasn't + handicapped any by my beauty. I've made up my mind that I'm going to buy + the smoothest-moving line of French lingerie and infants' wear that + Schiff Brothers ever had." +</p> +<p> + Miss Morrissey checked her. +</p> +<p> + "But, my dear girl, haven't you been round at all?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, a little; as much as a woman can go round alone in Paris—even a + homely woman. But I've been disappointed every time. The noise drives me + wild, to begin with. Not that I'm not used to noise. I am. I can stand + for a town that roars, like Chicago. But this city yelps. I've been + going round to the restaurants a little. At noon I always picked the + restaurant I wanted, so long as I had to pay for the lunch of the + <i>commissionnaire</i> who was with me anyway. Can you imagine any man at + home letting a woman pay for his meals the way those shrimpy Frenchmen + do? +</p> +<p> + "Well, the restaurants were always jammed full of Americans. The men of + the party would look over the French menu in a helpless sort of way, and + then they'd say: 'What do you say to a nice big steak with French-fried + potatoes?' The waiter would give them a disgusted look and put in the + order. They might just as well have been eating at a quick lunch place. + As for the French women, every time I picked what I took to be a real + Parisienne coming toward me I'd hear her say as she passed: 'Henry, I'm + going over to the Galerie Lafayette. I'll meet you at the American + Express at twelve. And, Henry, I think I'll need some more money.'" +</p> +<p> + Miss Ella Morrissey's twinkling eyes almost disappeared in wrinkles of + laughter; but Sophy Gold was not laughing. As she talked she gazed + grimly ahead at the throng that shifted and glittered and laughed and + chattered all about her. +</p> +<p> + "I stopped work early one afternoon and went over across the river. + Well! They may be artistic, but they all looked as though they needed a + shave and a hair-cut and a square meal. And the girls!" +</p> +<p> + Ella Morrissey raised a plump, protesting palm. +</p> +<p> + "Now look here, child, Paris isn't so much a city as a state of mind. To + enjoy it you've got to forget you're an American. Don't look at it from + a Chicago, Illinois, viewpoint. Just try to imagine you're a mixture of + Montmartre girl, Latin Quarter model and duchess from the Champs + Élysées. Then you'll get it." +</p> +<p> + "Get it!" retorted Sophy Gold. "If I could do that I wouldn't be buying + lingerie and infants' wear for Schiffs'. I'd be crowding Duse and + Bernhardt and Mrs. Fiske off the boards." +</p> +<p> + Miss Morrissey sat silent and thoughtful, rubbing one fat forefinger + slowly up and down her knee. Suddenly she turned. +</p> +<p> + "Don't be angry—but have you ever been in love?" +</p> +<p> + "Look at me!" replied Sophy Gold simply. Miss Morrissey reddened a + little. "As head of the lingerie section I've selected trousseaus for I + don't know how many Chicago brides; but I'll never have to decide + whether I'll have pink or blue ribbons for my own." +</p> +<p> + With a little impulsive gesture Ella Morrissey laid one hand on the + shoulder of her new acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + "Come on up and visit me, will you? I made them give me an inside room, + away from the noise. Too many people down here. Besides, I'd like to + take off this armour-plate of mine and get comfortable. When a girl gets + as old and fat as I am—" +</p> +<p> + "There are some letters I ought to get out," Sophy Gold protested + feebly. +</p> +<p> + "Yes; I know. We all have; but there's such a thing as overdoing this + duty to the firm. You get up at six to-morrow morning and slap off + those letters. They'll come easier and sound less tired." +</p> +<p> + They made for the lift; but at its very gates: +</p> +<p> + "Hello, little girl!" cried a masculine voice; and a detaining hand was + laid on Ella Morrissey's plump shoulder. +</p> +<p> + That lady recognised the voice and the greeting before she turned to + face their source. Max Tack, junior partner in the firm of Tack + Brothers, Lingerie and Infants' Wear, New York, held out an eager hand. +</p> +<p> + "Hello, Max!" said Miss Morrissey not too cordially. "My, aren't you + dressy!" +</p> +<p> + He was undeniably dressy—not that only, but radiant with the + self-confidence born of good looks, of well-fitting evening clothes, of + a fresh shave, of glistening nails. Max Tack, of the hard eye and the + soft smile, of the slim figure and the semi-bald head, of the flattering + tongue and the business brain, bent his attention full on the very plain + Miss Sophy Gold. +</p> +<p> + "Aren't you going to introduce me?" he demanded. +</p> +<p> + Miss Morrissey introduced them, buyer fashion—names, business + connection, and firms. +</p> +<p> + "I knew you were Miss Gold," began Max Tack, the honey-tongued. "Some + one pointed you out to me yesterday. I've been trying to meet you ever + since." +</p> +<p> + "I hope you haven't neglected your business," said Miss Gold without + enthusiasm. +</p> +<p> + Max Tack leaned closer, his tone lowered. +</p> +<p> + "I'd neglect it any day for you. Listen, little one: aren't you going + to take dinner with me some evening?" +</p> +<p> + Max Tack always called a woman "Little one." It was part of his business + formula. He was only one of the wholesalers who go to Paris yearly + ostensibly to buy models, but really to pay heavy diplomatic court to + those hundreds of women buyers who flock to that city in the interests + of their firms. To entertain those buyers who were interested in goods + such as he manufactured in America; to win their friendship; to make + them feel under obligation at least to inspect his line when they came + to New York—that was Max Tack's mission in Paris. He performed it + admirably. +</p> +<p> + "What evening?" he said now. "How about to-morrow?" Sophy Gold shook her + head. "Wednesday then? You stick to me and you'll see Paris. Thursday?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm buying my own dinners," said Sophy Gold. +</p> +<p> + Max Tack wagged a chiding forefinger at her. +</p> +<p> + "You little rascal!" No one had ever called Sophy Gold a little rascal + before. "You stingy little rascal! Won't give a poor lonesome fellow an + evening's pleasure, eh! The theatre? Want to go slumming?" +</p> +<p> + He was feeling his way now, a trifle puzzled. Usually he landed a buyer + at the first shot. Of course you had to use tact and discrimination. + Some you took to supper and to the naughty <i>revues</i>. +</p> +<p> + Occasionally you found a highbrow one who preferred the opera. Had he + not sat through Parsifal the week before? And nearly died! Some wanted + to begin at Tod Sloan's bar and work their way up through Montmartre, + ending with breakfast at the Pré Catalan. Those were the greedy ones. + But this one! +</p> +<p> + "What's she stalling for—with that face?" he asked himself. +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold was moving toward the lift, the twinkling-eyed Miss Morrissey + with her. +</p> +<p> + "I'm working too hard to play. Thanks, just the same. Good-night." +</p> +<p> + Max Tack, his face blank, stood staring up at them as the lift began to + ascend. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Trazyem</i>," said Miss Morrissey grandly to the lift man. +</p> +<p> + "Third," replied that linguistic person, unimpressed. +</p> +<p> + It turned out to be soothingly quiet and cool in Ella Morrissey's room. + She flicked on the light and turned an admiring glance on Sophy Gold. +</p> +<p> + "Is that your usual method?" +</p> +<p> + "I haven't any method," Miss Gold seated herself by the window. "But + I've worked too hard for this job of mine to risk it by putting myself + under obligations to any New York firm. It simply means that you've got + to buy their goods. It isn't fair to your firm." +</p> +<p> + Miss Morrissey was busy with hooks and eyes and strings. Her utterance + was jerky but concise. At one stage of her disrobing she breathed a + great sigh of relief as she flung a heavy garment from her. +</p> +<p> + "There! That's comfort! Nights like this I wish I had that back porch of + our flat to sit on for just an hour. Ma has flower boxes all round it, + and I bought one of those hammock couches last year. When I come home + from the store summer evenings I peel and get into my old blue-and-white + kimono and lie there, listening to the girl stirring the iced tea for + supper, and knowing that Ma has a platter of her swell cold fish with + egg sauce!" She relaxed into an armchair. "Tell me, do you always talk + to men that way?" +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold was still staring out the open window. +</p> +<p> + "They don't bother me much, as a rule." +</p> +<p> + "Max Tack isn't a bad boy. He never wastes much time on me. I don't buy + his line. Max is all business. Of course he's something of a smarty, and + he does think he's the first verse and chorus of Paris-by-night; but you + can't help liking him." +</p> +<p> + "Well, I can," said Sophy Gold, and her voice was a little bitter, "and + without half trying." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I don't say you weren't right. I've always made it a rule to steer + clear of the ax-grinders myself. There are plenty of girls who take + everything they can get. I know that Max Tack is just padded with + letters from old girls, beginning 'Dear Kid,' and ending, 'Yours with a + world of love!' I don't believe in that kind of thing, or in accepting + things. Julia Harris, who buys for three departments in our store, + drives up every morning in the French car that Parmentier's gave her + when she was here last year. That's bad principle and poor taste. + But—Well, you're young; and there ought to be something besides + business in your life." +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold turned her face from the window toward Miss Morrissey. It + served to put a stamp of finality on what she said: +</p> +<p> + "There never will be. I don't know anything but business. It's the only + thing I care about. I'll be earning my ten thousand a year pretty soon." +</p> +<p> + "Ten thousand a year is a lot; but it isn't everything. Oh, no, it + isn't. Look here, dear; nobody knows better than I how this working and + being independent and earning your own good money puts the stopper on + any sentiment a girl might have in her; but don't let it sour you. You + lose your illusions soon enough, goodness knows! There's no use in + smashing 'em out of pure meanness." +</p> +<p> + "I don't see what illusions have got to do with Max Tack," interrupted + Sophy Gold. +</p> +<p> + Miss Morrissey laughed her fat, comfortable chuckle. +</p> +<p> + "I suppose you're right, and I guess I've been getting a lee-tle bit + nosey; but I'm pretty nearly old enough to be your mother. The girls + kind of come to me and I talk to 'em. I guess they've spoiled me. + They—" +</p> +<p> + There came a smart rapping at the door, followed by certain giggling and + swishing. Miss Morrissey smiled. +</p> +<p> + "That'll be some of 'em now. Just run and open the door, will you, like + a nice little thing? I'm too beat out to move." +</p> +<p> + The swishing swelled to a mighty rustle as the door opened. Taffeta was + good this year, and the three who entered were the last in the world to + leave you in ignorance of that fact. Ella Morrissey presented her new + friend to the three, giving the department each represented as one would + mention a title or order. +</p> +<p> + "The little plump one in black?—Ladies' and Misses' Ready-to-wear, + Gates Company, Portland.... That's a pretty hat, Carrie. Get it to-day? + Give me a big black velvet every time. You can wear 'em with anything, + and yet they're dressy too. Just now small hats are distinctly passy. +</p> +<p> + "The handsome one who's dressed the way you always imagined the + Parisiennes would dress, but don't?—Fancy Goods, Stein & Stack, San + Francisco. Listen, Fan: don't go back to San Francisco with that stuff + on your lips. It's all right in Paris, where all the women do it; but + you know as well as I do that Morry Stein would take one look at you and + then tell you to go upstairs and wash your face. Well, I'm just telling + you as a friend. +</p> +<p> + "That little trick is the biggest lace buyer in the country.... No, you + wouldn't, would you? Such a mite! Even if she does wear a twenty-eight + blouse she's got a forty-two brain—haven't you, Belle? You didn't make + a mistake with that blue crêpe de chine, child. It's chic and yet it's + girlish. And you can wear it on the floor, too, when you get home. It's + quiet if it is stunning." +</p> +<p> + These five, as they sat there that June evening, knew what your wife and + your sister and your mother would wear on Fifth Avenue or Michigan + Avenue next October. On their shrewd, unerring judgment rested the + success or failure of many hundreds of feminine garments. The lace for + Miss Minnesota's lingerie; the jewelled comb in Miss Colorado's hair; + the hat that would grace Miss New Hampshire; the dress for Madam + Delaware—all were the results of their farsighted selection. They were + foragers of feminine fal-lals, and their booty would be distributed from + oyster cove to orange grove. +</p> +<p> + They were marcelled and manicured within an inch of their lives. They + rustled and a pleasant perfume clung about them. Their hats were so + smart that they gave you a shock. Their shoes were correct. Their skirts + bunched where skirts should bunch that year or lay smooth where + smoothness was decreed. They looked like the essence of frivolity—until + you saw their eyes; and then you noticed that that which is liquid in + sheltered women's eyes was crystallised in theirs. +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold, listening to them, felt strangely out of it and plainer than + ever. +</p> +<p> + "I'm taking tango lessons, Ella," chirped Miss Laces. "Every time I went + to New York last year I sat and twiddled my thumbs while every one else + was dancing. I've made up my mind I'll be in it this year." +</p> +<p> + "You girls are wonders!" Miss Morrissey marvelled. "I can't do it any + more. If I was to work as hard as I have to during the day and then run + round the way you do in the evening they'd have to hold services for me + at sea. I'm getting old." +</p> +<p> + "You—old!" This from Miss Ready-to-Wear. "You're younger now than I'll + ever be. Oh, Ella, I got six stunning models at Estelle Mornet's. + There's a business woman for you! Her place is smart from the ground + floor up—not like the shabby old junk shops the others have. And she + greets you herself. The personal touch! Let me tell you, it counts in + business!" +</p> +<p> + "I'd go slow on those cape blouses if I were you; I don't think they're + going to take at home. They look like regular Third Avenue style to me." +</p> +<p> + "Don't worry. I've hardly touched them." +</p> +<p> + They talked very directly, like men, when they discussed clothes; for to + them a clothes talk meant a business talk. +</p> +<p> + The telephone buzzed. The three sprang up, rustling. +</p> +<p> + "That'll be for us, Ella," said Miss Fancy Goods. "We told the office to + call us here. The boys are probably downstairs." She answered the call, + turned, nodded, smoothed her gloves and preened her laces. +</p> +<p> + Ella Morrissey, in kimonoed comfort, waved a good-bye from her armchair. + "Have a good time! You all look lovely. Oh, we met Max Tack downstairs, + looking like a grand duke!" +</p> +<p> + Pert Miss Laces turned at the door, giggling. +</p> +<p> + "He says the French aristocracy has nothing on him, because his + grandfather was one of the original Ten Ikes of New York." +</p> +<p> + A final crescendo of laughter, a last swishing of silks, a breath of + perfume from the doorway and they were gone. +</p> +<p> + Within the room the two women sat looking at the closed door for a + moment. Then Ella Morrissey turned to look at Sophy Gold just as Sophy + Gold turned to look at Ella Morrissey. +</p> +<p> + "Well?" smiled Ella. +</p> +<p> + Sophy Gold smiled too—a mirthless, one-sided smile. +</p> +<p> + "I felt just like this once when I was a little girl. I went to a party, + and all the other little girls had yellow curls. Maybe some of them had + brown ones; but I only remember a maze of golden hair, and pink and blue + sashes, and rosy cheeks, and ardent little boys, and the sureness of + those little girls—their absolute faith in their power to enthrall, and + in the perfection of their curls and sashes. I went home before the ice + cream. And I love ice cream!" +</p> +<p> + Ella Morrissey's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. +</p> +<p> + "Then the next time you're invited to a party you wait for the ice + cream, girlie." +</p> +<p> + "Maybe I will," said Sophy Gold. +</p> +<p> + The party came two nights later. It was such a very modest affair that + one would hardly call it that—least of all Max Tack, who had spent + seventy-five dollars the night before in entertaining an important + prospective buyer. +</p> +<p> + On her way to her room that sultry June night Sophy had encountered the + persistent Tack. Ella Morrissey, up in her room, was fathoms deep in + work. It was barely eight o'clock and there was a wonderful opal sky—a + June twilight sky, of which Paris makes a specialty—all grey and rose + and mauve and faint orange. +</p> +<p> + "Somebody's looking mighty sweet to-night in her new Paris duds!" +</p> +<p> + Max Tack's method of approach never varied in its simplicity. +</p> +<p> + "They're not Paris—they're Chicago." +</p> +<p> + His soul was in his eyes. +</p> +<p> + "They certainly don't look it!" Then, with a little hurt look in those + same expressive features: "I suppose, after the way you threw me down + hard the other night, you wouldn't come out and play somewhere, would + you—if I sat up and begged and jumped through this?" +</p> +<p> + "It's too warm for most things," Sophy faltered. +</p> +<p> + "Anywhere your little heart dictates," interrupted Max Tack ardently. + "Just name it." +</p> +<p> + Sophy looked up. +</p> +<p> + "Well, then, I'd like to take one of those boats and go down the river + to St.-Cloud. The station's just back of the Louvre. We've just time to + catch the eight-fifteen boat." +</p> +<p> + "Boat!" echoed Max Tack stupidly. Then, in revolt: "Why, say, girlie, + you don't want to do that! What is there in taking an old tub and + flopping down that dinky stream? Tell you what we'll do: we'll—" +</p> +<p> + "No, thanks," said Sophy. "And it really doesn't matter. You simply + asked me what I'd like to do and I told you. Thanks. Good-night." +</p> +<p> + "Now, now!" pleaded Max Tack in a panic. "Of course we'll go. I just + thought you'd rather do something fussier—that's all. I've never gone + down the river; but I think that's a classy little idea—yes, I do. Now + you run and get your hat and we'll jump into a taxi and—" +</p> +<p> + "You don't need to jump into a taxi; it's only two blocks. We'll walk." +</p> +<p> + There was a little crowd down at the landing station. Max Tack noticed, + with immense relief, that they were not half-bad-looking people either. + He had been rather afraid of workmen in red sashes and with lime on + their clothes, especially after Sophy had told him that a trip cost + twenty centimes each. +</p> +<p> + "Twenty centimes! That's about four cents! Well, my gad!" +</p> +<p> + They got seats in the prow. Sophy took off her hat and turned her face + gratefully to the cool breeze as they swung out into the river. The + Paris of the rumbling, roaring auto buses, and the honking horns, and + the shrill cries, and the mad confusion faded away. There was the + palely glowing sky ahead, and on each side the black reflection of the + tree-laden banks, mistily mysterious now and very lovely. There was not + a ripple on the water and the Pont Alexandre III and the golden glory of + the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides were ahead. +</p> +<p> + "Say, this is Venice!" exclaimed Max Tack. +</p> +<p> + A soft and magic light covered the shore, the river, the sky, and a soft + and magic something seemed to steal over the little boat and work its + wonders. The shabby student-looking chap and his equally shabby and + merry little companion, both Americans, closed the bag of fruit from + which they had been munching and sat looking into each other's eyes. +</p> +<p> + The long-haired artist, who looked miraculously like pictures of Robert + Louis Stevenson, smiled down at his queer, slender-legged little + daughter in the curious Cubist frock; and she smiled back and snuggled + up and rested her cheek on his arm. There seemed to be a deep and silent + understanding between them. You knew, somehow, that the little Cubist + daughter had no mother, and that the father's artist friends made much + of her and that she poured tea for them prettily on special days. +</p> +<p> + The bepowdered French girl who got on at the second station sat frankly + and contentedly in the embrace of her sweetheart. The stolid married + couple across the way smiled and the man's arm rested on his wife's + plump shoulder. +</p> +<p> + So the love boat glided down the river into the night. And the shore + faded and became grey, and then black. And the lights came out and cast + slender pillars of gold and green and scarlet on the water. +</p> +<p> + Max Tack's hand moved restlessly, sought Sophy's, found it, clasped it. + Sophy's hand had never been clasped like that before. She did not know + what to do with it, so she did nothing—which was just what she should + have done. +</p> +<p> + "Warm enough?" asked Max Tack tenderly. +</p> +<p> + "Just right," murmured Sophy. +</p> +<p> + The dream trip ended at St.-Cloud. They learned to their dismay that the + boat did not return to Paris. But how to get back? They asked questions, + sought direction—always a frantic struggle in Paris. Sophy, in the + glare of the street light, looked uglier than ever. +</p> +<p> + "Just a minute," said Max Tack. "I'll find a taxi." +</p> +<p> + "Nonsense! That man said the street car passed right here, and that we + should get off at the Bois. Here it is now! Come on!" +</p> +<p> + Max Tack looked about helplessly, shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. +</p> +<p> + "You certainly make a fellow hump," he said, not without a note of + admiration. "And why are you so afraid that I'll spend some money?" as + he handed the conductor the tiny fare. +</p> +<p> + "I don't know—unless it's because I've had to work so hard all my life + for mine." +</p> +<p> + At Porte Maillot they took one of the flock of waiting <i>fiacres</i>. +</p> +<p> + "But you don't want to go home yet!" protested Max Tack. +</p> +<p> + "I—I think I should like to drive in the Bois Park—if you don't + mind—that is—" +</p> +<p> + "Mind!" cried the gallant and game Max Tack. +</p> +<p> + Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might + drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven + with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her + tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and + because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy's extreme plainness, + he took her unaccustomed hand again in his. +</p> +<p> + "This little hand was never meant for work," he murmured. +</p> +<p> + Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a + mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that + particular <i>fiacre</i> wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to + the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near + by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they + saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris + moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the + lips. +</p> +<p> + Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would + have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as + well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy's mother, + and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother had been + kissed before her. So they told her to say: +</p> +<p> + "You shouldn't have done that." +</p> +<p> + And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries: +</p> +<p> + "I know it; but I couldn't help it. Don't be angry!" +</p> +<p> + "You know," said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, "I'm very, very + ugly—when it isn't moonlight." +</p> +<p> + "Paris," spake Max Tack, diplomat, "is so full of medium-lookers who + think they're pretty, and of pretty ones who think they're beauties, + that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn't any + fake notions to feed. They're all right; but give me a woman with brains + every time." Which was a lie! +</p> +<p> + They drove home down the Bois—the cool, spacious, tree-bordered + Bois—and through the Champs Élysées. Because he was an artist in his + way, and because every passing <i>fiacre</i> revealed the same picture, Max + Tack sat very near her and looked very tender and held her hand in his. + It would have raised a laugh at Broadway and Forty-second. It was quite, + quite sane and very comforting in Paris. +</p> +<p> + At the door of the hotel: +</p> +<p> + "I'm sailing Wednesday," said Max Tack. "You—you won't forget me?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, no—no!" +</p> +<p> + "You'll call me up or run into the office when you get to New York?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes!" +</p> +<p> + He walked with her to the lift, said good-bye and returned to the + <i>fiacre</i> with the tinkling bell. There was a stunned sort of look in his + face. The <i>fiacre</i> meter registered two francs seventy. Max Tack did a + lightning mental calculation. The expression on his face deepened. He + looked up at the cabby—the red-faced, bottle-nosed cabby, with his + absurd scarlet vest, his mustard-coloured trousers and his glazed top + hat. +</p> +<p> + "Well, can you beat that? Three francs thirty for the evening's + entertainment! Why—why, all she wanted was just a little love!" +</p> +<p> + To the bottle-nosed one all conversation in a foreign language meant + dissatisfaction with the meter. He tapped that glass-covered contrivance + impatiently with his whip. A flood of French bubbled at his lips. +</p> +<p> + "It's all right, boy! It's all right! You don't get me!" And Max Tacked + pressed a five-franc piece into the outstretched palm. Then to the hotel + porter: "Just grab a taxi for me, will you? These tubs make me nervous." +</p> +<p> + Sophy, on her way to her room, hesitated, turned, then ran up the stairs + to the next floor and knocked gently at Miss Morrissey's door. A moment + later that lady's kimonoed figure loomed large in the doorway. +</p> +<p> + "Who is—oh, it's you! Well, I was just going to have them drag the + Seine for you. Come in!" +</p> +<p> + She went back to the table. Sheets of paper, rough sketches of hat + models done from memory, notes and letters lay scattered all about. + Sophy leaned against the door dreamily. +</p> +<p> + "I've been working this whole mortal evening," went on Ella Morrissey, + holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her + working spectacles, "and I'm so tired that one eye's shut and the + other's running on first. Where've you been, child?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, driving!" Sophy's limp hair was a shade limper than usual, and a + strand of it had become loosened and straggled untidily down over her + ear. Her eyes looked large and strangely luminous. "Do you know, I love + Paris!" +</p> +<p> + Ella Morrissey laid down her pencil sketch and turned slowly. She + surveyed Sophy Gold, her shrewd eyes twinkling. +</p> +<p> + "That so? What made you change your mind?" +</p> +<p> + The dreamy look in Sophy's eyes deepened. +</p> +<p> + "Why—I don't know. There's something in the atmosphere—something in + the air. It makes you do and say foolish things. It makes you feel queer + and light and happy." +</p> +<p> + Ella Morrissey's bright twinkle softened to a glow. She stared for + another brief moment. Then she trundled over to where Sophy stood and + patted her leathery cheek. "Welcome to our city!" said Miss Ella + Morrissey. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_11"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + XI +</h2> +<h2> + THE THREE OF THEM +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + For eleven years Martha Foote, head housekeeper at the Senate Hotel, + Chicago, had catered, unseen, and ministered, unknown, to that great, + careless, shifting, conglomerate mass known as the Travelling Public. + Wholesale hostessing was Martha Foote's job. Senators and suffragists, + ambassadors and first families had found ease and comfort under Martha + Foote's régime. Her carpets had bent their nap to the tread of kings, + and show girls, and buyers from Montana. Her sheets had soothed the + tired limbs of presidents, and princesses, and prima donnas. For the + Senate Hotel is more than a hostelry; it is a Chicago institution. The + whole world is churned in at its revolving front door. +</p> +<p> + For eleven years Martha Foote, then, had beheld humanity throwing its + grimy suitcases on her immaculate white bedspreads; wiping its muddy + boots on her bath towels; scratching its matches on her wall paper; + scrawling its pencil marks on her cream woodwork; spilling its greasy + crumbs on her carpet; carrying away her dresser scarfs and pincushions. + There is no supremer test of character. Eleven years of hotel + housekeepership guarantees a knowledge of human nature that includes + some things no living being ought to know about her fellow men. And + inevitably one of two results must follow. You degenerate into a bitter, + waspish, and fault-finding shrew; or you develop into a patient, + tolerant, and infinitely understanding woman. Martha Foote dealt daily + with Polack scrub girls, and Irish porters, and Swedish chambermaids, + and Swiss waiters, and Halsted Street bell-boys. Italian tenors fried + onions in her Louis-Quinze suite. College boys burned cigarette holes in + her best linen sheets. Yet any one connected with the Senate Hotel, from + Pete the pastry cook to H.G. Featherstone, lessee-director, could vouch + for Martha Foote's serene unacidulation. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<p> + Don't gather from this that Martha Foote was a beaming, motherly person + who called you dearie. Neither was she one of those managerial and + magnificent blonde beings occasionally encountered in hotel corridors, + engaged in addressing strident remarks to a damp and crawling huddle of + calico that is doing something sloppy to the woodwork. Perhaps the + shortest cut to Martha Foote's character is through Martha Foote's + bedroom. (Twelfth floor. Turn to your left. That's it; 1246. Come in!) +</p> +<p> + In the long years of its growth and success the Senate Hotel had known + the usual growing pains. Starting with walnut and red plush it had, in + its adolescence, broken out all over into brass beds and birds'-eye + maple. This, in turn, had vanished before mahogany veneer and brocade. + Hardly had the white scratches on these ruddy surfaces been doctored by + the house painter when—whisk! Away with that sombre stuff! And in + minced a whole troupe of near-French furnishings; cream enamel beds, + cane-backed; spindle-legged dressing tables before which it was + impossible to dress; perilous chairs with raspberry complexions. Through + all these changes Martha Foote, in her big, bright twelfth floor room, + had clung to her old black walnut set. +</p> +<p> + The bed, to begin with, was a massive, towering edifice with a headboard + that scraped the lofty ceiling. Head and foot-board were fretted and + carved with great blobs representing grapes, and cornucopias, and + tendrils, and knobs and other bedevilments of the cabinet-maker's craft. + It had been polished and rubbed until now it shone like soft brown + satin. There was a monumental dresser too, with a liver-coloured marble + top. Along the wall, near the windows, was a couch; a heavy, wheezing, + fat-armed couch decked out in white ruffled cushions. I suppose the mere + statement that, in Chicago, Illinois, Martha Foote kept these cushions + always crisply white, would make any further characterization + superfluous. The couch made you think of a plump grandmother of bygone + days, a beruffled white fichu across her ample, comfortable bosom. Then + there was the writing desk; a substantial structure that bore no + relation to the pindling rose-and-cream affairs that graced the guest + rooms. It was the solid sort of desk at which an English novelist of the + three-volume school might have written a whole row of books without + losing his dignity or cramping his style. Martha Foote used it for + making out reports and instruction sheets, for keeping accounts, and for + her small private correspondence. +</p> +<p> + Such was Martha Foote's room. In a modern and successful hotel, whose + foyer was rose-shaded, brass-grilled, peacock-alleyed and tessellated, + that bed-sitting-room of hers was as wholesome, and satisfying, and real + as a piece of home-made rye bread on a tray of French pastry; and as + incongruous. +</p> +<p> + It was to the orderly comfort of these accustomed surroundings that the + housekeeper of the Senate Hotel opened her eyes this Tuesday morning. + Opened them, and lay a moment, bridging the morphean chasm that lay + between last night and this morning. It was 6:30 A.M. It is bad enough + to open one's eyes at 6:30 on Monday morning. But to open them at 6:30 + on Tuesday morning, after an indigo Monday.... The taste of yesterday + lingered, brackish, in Martha's mouth. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, well, it won't be as bad as yesterday, anyway. It can't." So she + assured herself, as she lay there. "There never were <i>two</i> days like + that, hand running. Not even in the hotel business." +</p> +<p> + For yesterday had been what is known as a muddy Monday. Thick, murky, + and oozy with trouble. Two conventions, three banquets, the lobby so + full of khaki that it looked like a sand-storm, a threatened strike in + the laundry, a travelling man in two-twelve who had the grippe and + thought he was dying, a shortage of towels (that bugaboo of the hotel + housekeeper) due to the laundry trouble that had kept the linen-room + telephone jangling to the tune of a hundred damp and irate guests. And + weaving in and out, and above, and about and through it all, like a + neuralgic toothache that can't be located, persisted the constant, + nagging, maddening complaints of the Chronic Kicker in six-eighteen. +</p> +<p> + Six-eighteen was a woman. She had arrived Monday morning, early. By + Monday night every girl on the switchboard had the nervous jumps when + they plugged in at her signal. She had changed her rooms, and back + again. She had quarrelled with the room clerk. She had complained to the + office about the service, the food, the linen, the lights, the noise, + the chambermaid, all the bell-boys, and the colour of the furnishings in + her suite. She said she couldn't live with that colour. It made her + sick. Between 8:30 and 10:30 that night, there had come a lull. + Six-eighteen was doing her turn at the Majestic. +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote knew that. She knew, too, that her name was Geisha McCoy, + and she knew what that name meant, just as you do. She had even laughed + and quickened and responded to Geisha McCoy's manipulation of her + audience, just as you have. Martha Foote knew the value of the personal + note, and it had been her idea that had resulted in the rule which + obliged elevator boys, chambermaids, floor clerks, doormen and waiters + if possible, to learn the names of Senate Hotel guests, no matter how + brief their stay. +</p> +<p> + "They like it," she had said, to Manager Brant. "You know that better + than I do. They'll be flattered, and surprised, and tickled to death, + and they'll go back to Burlington, Iowa, and tell how well known they + are at the Senate." +</p> +<p> + When the suggestion was met with the argument that no human being could + be expected to perform such daily feats of memory Martha Foote battered + it down with: +</p> +<p> + "That's just where you're mistaken. The first few days are bad. After + that it's easier every day, until it becomes mechanical. I remember when + I first started waiting on table in my mother's quick lunch eating house + in Sorghum, Minnesota. I'd bring 'em wheat cakes when they'd ordered + pork and beans, but it wasn't two weeks before I could take six orders, + from soup to pie, without so much as forgetting the catsup. Habit, + that's all." +</p> +<p> + So she, as well as the minor hotel employés, knew six-eighteen as Geisha + McCoy. Geisha McCoy, who got a thousand a week for singing a few songs + and chatting informally with the delighted hundreds on the other side of + the footlights. Geisha McCoy made nothing of those same footlights. She + reached out, so to speak, and shook hands with you across their amber + glare. Neither lovely nor alluring, this woman. And as for her + voice!—And yet for ten years or more this rather plain person, somewhat + dumpy, no longer young, had been singing her every-day, human songs + about every-day, human people. And invariably (and figuratively) her + audience clambered up over the footlights, and sat in her lap. She had + never resorted to cheap music-hall tricks. She had never invited the + gallery to join in the chorus. She descended to no finger-snapping. But + when she sang a song about a waitress she was a waitress. She never + hesitated to twist up her hair, and pull down her mouth, to get an + effect. She didn't seem to be thinking about herself, at all, or about + her clothes, or her method, or her effort, or anything but the audience + that was plastic to her deft and magic manipulation. +</p> +<p> + Until very recently. Six months had wrought a subtle change in Geisha + McCoy. She still sang her every-day, human songs about every-day, human + people. But you failed, somehow, to recognise them as such. They sounded + sawdust-stuffed. And you were likely to hear the man behind you say, + "Yeh, but you ought to have heard her five years ago. She's about + through." +</p> +<p> + Such was six-eighteen. Martha Foote, luxuriating in that one delicious + moment between her 6:30 awakening, and her 6:31 arising, mused on these + things. She thought of how, at eleven o'clock the night before, her + telephone had rung with the sharp zing! of trouble. The voice of Irish + Nellie, on night duty on the sixth floor, had sounded thick-brogued, + sure sign of distress with her. +</p> +<p> + "I'm sorry to be a-botherin' ye, Mis' Phut. It's Nellie speakin'—Irish + Nellie on the sixt'." +</p> +<p> + "What's the trouble, Nellie?" +</p> +<p> + "It's that six-eighteen again. She's goin' on like mad. She's carryin' + on something fierce." +</p> +<p> + "What about?" +</p> +<p> + "Th'—th' blankets, Mis' Phut." +</p> +<p> + "Blankets?—" +</p> +<p> + "She says—it's her wurruds, not mine—she says they're vile. Vile, she + says." +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote's spine had stiffened. "In this house! Vile!" +</p> +<p> + If there was one thing more than another upon which Martha Foote prided + herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy, + they were her especial fad. "Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold + snake-work are all well and good," she was wont to say, "and so are + American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys. + But it's the blankets on the beds that stamp a hotel first or second + class." And now this, from Nellie. +</p> +<p> + "I know how ye feel, an' all. I sez to 'er, I sez: 'There never was a + blanket in this <i>house</i>,' I sez, 'that didn't look as if it cud be + sarved up wit' whipped cr-ream,' I sez, 'an' et,' I sez to her; 'an' + fu'thermore,' I sez—" +</p> +<p> + "Never mind, Nellie. I know. But we never argue with guests. You know + that rule as well as I. The guest is right—always. I'll send up the + linen-room keys. You get fresh blankets; new ones. And no arguments. But + I want to see those—those vile—" +</p> +<p> + "Listen, Mis' Phut." Irish Nellie's voice, until now shrill with + righteous anger, dropped a discreet octave. "I seen 'em. An' they <i>are</i> + vile. Wait a minnit! But why? Becus that there maid of hers—that yella' + hussy—give her a body massage, wit' cold cream an' all, usin' th' + blankets f'r coverin', an' smearin' 'em right <i>an'</i> lift. This was + afther they come back from th' theayter. Th' crust of thim people, using + the iligent blankets off'n the beds t'—" +</p> +<p> + "Good night, Nellie. And thank you." +</p> +<p> + "Sure, ye know I'm that upset f'r distarbin' yuh, an' all, but—" +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote cast an eye toward the great walnut bed. "That's all right. + Only, Nellie—" +</p> +<p> + "Yesm'm." +</p> +<p> + "If I'm disturbed again on that woman's account for anything less than + murder—" +</p> +<p> + "Yesm'm?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, there'll <i>be</i> one, that's all. Good night." +</p> +<p> + Such had been Monday's cheerful close. +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote sat up in bed, now, preparatory to the heroic flinging + aside of the covers. "No," she assured herself, "it can't be as bad as + yesterday." She reached round and about her pillow, groping for the + recalcitrant hairpin that always slipped out during the night; found it, + and twisted her hair into a hard bathtub bun. +</p> +<p> + With a jangle that tore through her half-wakened senses the telephone at + her bedside shrilled into life. Martha Foote, hairpin in mouth, turned + and eyed it, speculatively, fearfully. It shrilled on in her very face, + and there seemed something taunting and vindictive about it. One long + ring, followed by a short one; a long ring, a short. "Ca-a-an't it? + Ca-a-an't it?" +</p> +<p> + "Something tells me I'm wrong," Martha Foote told herself, ruefully, and + reached for the blatant, snarling thing. +</p> +<p> + "Yes?" +</p> +<p> + "Mrs. Foote? This is Healy, the night clerk. Say, Mrs. Foote, I think + you'd better step down to six-eighteen and see what's—" +</p> +<p> + "I <i>am</i> wrong," said Martha Foote. +</p> +<p> + "What's that?" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing. Go on. Will I step down to six-eighteen and—?" +</p> +<p> + "She's sick, or something. Hysterics, I'd say. As far as I could make + out it was something about a noise, or a sound or—Anyway, she can't + locate it, and her maid says if we don't stop it right away—" +</p> +<p> + "I'll go down. Maybe it's the plumbing. Or the radiator. Did you ask?" +</p> +<p> + "No, nothing like that. She kept talking about a wail." +</p> +<p> + "A what!" +</p> +<p> + "A wail. A kind of groaning, you know. And then dull raps on the wall, + behind the bed." +</p> +<p> + "Now look here, Ed Healy; I get up at 6:30, but I can't see a joke + before ten. If you're trying to be funny!—" +</p> +<p> + "Funny! Why, say, listen, Mrs. Foote. I may be a night clerk, but I'm + not so low as to get you out at half past six to spring a thing like + that in fun. I mean it. So did she." +</p> +<p> + "But a kind of moaning! And then dull raps!" +</p> +<p> + "Those are her words. A kind of m—" +</p> +<p> + "Let's not make a chant of it. I think I get you. I'll be down there in + ten minutes. Telephone her, will you?" +</p> +<p> + "Can't you make it five?" +</p> +<p> + "Not without skipping something vital." +</p> +<p> + Still, it couldn't have been a second over ten, including shoes, hair, + and hooks-and-eyes. And a fresh white blouse. It was Martha Foote's + theory that a hotel housekeeper, dressed for work, ought to be as + inconspicuous as a steel engraving. She would have been, too, if it + hadn't been for her eyes. +</p> +<p> + She paused a moment before the door of six-eighteen and took a deep + breath. At the first brisk rat-tat of her knuckles on the door there had + sounded a shrill "Come in!" But before she could turn the knob the door + was flung open by a kimonoed mulatto girl, her eyes all whites. The girl + began to jabber, incoherently but Martha Foote passed on through the + little hall to the door of the bedroom. +</p> +<p> + Six-eighteen was in bed. At sight of her Martha Foote knew that she had + to deal with an over-wrought woman. Her hair was pushed back wildly from + her forehead. Her arms were clasped about her knees. At the left her + nightgown had slipped down so that one plump white shoulder gleamed + against the background of her streaming hair. The room was in almost + comic disorder. It was a room in which a struggle has taken place + between its occupant and that burning-eyed hag, Sleeplessness. The hag, + it was plain, had won. A half-emptied glass of milk was on the table by + the bed. Warmed, and sipped slowly, it had evidently failed to soothe. A + tray of dishes littered another table. Yesterday's dishes, their + contents congealed. Books and magazines, their covers spread wide as if + they had been flung, sprawled where they lay. A little heap of + grey-black cigarette stubs. The window curtain awry where she had stood + there during a feverish moment of the sleepless night, looking down upon + the lights of Grant Park and the sombre black void beyond that was Lake + Michigan. A tiny satin bedroom slipper on a chair, its mate, sole up, + peeping out from under the bed. A pair of satin slippers alone, + distributed thus, would make a nun's cell look disreputable. Over all + this disorder the ceiling lights, the wall lights, and the light from + two rosy lamps, beat mercilessly down; and upon the white-faced woman in + the bed. +</p> +<p> + She stared, hollow-eyed, at Martha Foote. Martha Foote, in the doorway, + gazed serenely back upon her. And Geisha McCoy's quick intelligence and + drama-sense responded to the picture of this calm and capable figure in + the midst of the feverish, over-lighted, over-heated room. In that + moment the nervous pucker between her eyes ironed out ever so little, + and something resembling a wan smile crept into her face. And what she + said was: +</p> +<p> + "I wouldn't have believed it." +</p> +<p> + "Believed what?" inquired Martha Foote, pleasantly. +</p> +<p> + "That there was anybody left in the world who could look like that in a + white shirtwaist at 6:30 A.M. Is that all your own hair?" +</p> +<p> + "Strictly." +</p> +<p> + "Some people have all the luck," sighed Geisha McCoy, and dropped + listlessly back on her pillows. Martha Foote came forward into the room. + At that instant the woman in the bed sat up again, tense, every nerve + strained in an attitude of listening. The mulatto girl had come swiftly + to the foot of the bed and was clutching the footboard, her knuckles + showing white. +</p> +<p> + "Listen!" A hissing whisper from the haggard woman in the bed. "What's + that?" +</p> +<p> + "Wha' dat!" breathed the coloured girl, all her elegance gone, her + every look and motion a hundred-year throwback to her voodoo-haunted + ancestors. +</p> +<p> + The three women remained rigid, listening. From the wall somewhere + behind the bed came a low, weird monotonous sound, half wail, half + croaking moan, like a banshee with a cold. A clanking, then, as of + chains. A s-s-swish. Then three dull raps, seemingly from within the + very wall itself. +</p> +<p> + The coloured girl was trembling. Her lips were moving, soundlessly. But + Geisha McCoy's emotion was made of different stuff. +</p> +<p> + "Now look here," she said, desperately, "I don't mind a sleepless night. + I'm used to 'em. But usually I can drop off at five, for a little while. + And that's been going on—well, I don't know how long. It's driving me + crazy. Blanche, you fool, stop that hand wringing! I tell you there's no + such thing as ghosts. Now you"—she turned to Martha Foote again—"you + tell me, for God's sake, what <i>is</i> that!" +</p> +<p> + And into Martha Foote's face there came such a look of mingled + compassion and mirth as to bring a quick flame of fury into Geisha + McCoy's eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Look here, you may think it's funny but—" +</p> +<p> + "I don't. I don't. Wait a minute." Martha Foote turned and was gone. An + instant later the weird sounds ceased. The two women in the room looked + toward the door, expectantly. And through it came Martha Foote, smiling. + She turned and beckoned to some one without. "Come on," she said. "Come + on." She put out a hand, encouragingly, and brought forward the + shrinking, cowering, timorous figure of Anna Czarnik, scrub-woman on the + sixth floor. Her hand still on her shoulder Martha Foote led her to the + centre of the room, where she stood, gazing dumbly about. She was the + scrub-woman you've seen in every hotel from San Francisco to Scituate. A + shapeless, moist, blue calico mass. Her shoes turned up ludicrously at + the toes, as do the shoes of one who crawls her way backward, crab-like, + on hands and knees. Her hands were the shrivelled, unlovely members that + bespeak long and daily immersion in dirty water. But even had these + invariable marks of her trade been lacking, you could not have failed to + recognise her type by the large and glittering mock-diamond comb which + failed to catch up her dank and stringy hair in the back. +</p> +<p> + One kindly hand on the woman's arm, Martha Foote performed the + introduction. +</p> +<p> + "This is Mrs. Anna Czarnik, late of Poland. Widowed. Likewise childless. + Also brotherless. Also many other uncomfortable things. But the life of + the crowd in the scrub-girls' quarters on the top floor. Aren't you, + Anna? Mrs. Anna Czarnik, I'm sorry to say, is the source of the + blood-curdling moan, and the swishing, and the clanking, and the + ghost-raps. There is a service stairway just on the other side of this + wall. Anna Czarnik was performing her morning job of scrubbing it. The + swishing was her wet rag. The clanking was her pail. The dull raps her + scrubbing brush striking the stair corner just behind your wall." +</p> +<p> + "You're forgetting the wail," Geisha McCoy suggested, icily. +</p> +<p> + "No, I'm not. The wail, I'm afraid, was Anna Czarnik, singing." +</p> +<p> + "Singing?" +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote turned and spoke a gibberish of Polish and English to the + bewildered woman at her side. Anna Czarnik's dull face lighted up ever + so little. +</p> +<p> + "She says the thing she was singing is a Polish folk-song about death + and sorrow, and it's called a—what was that, Anna?" +</p> +<p> + "Dumka." +</p> +<p> + "It's called a dumka. It's a song of mourning, you see? Of grief. And of + bitterness against the invaders who have laid her country bare." +</p> +<p> + "Well, what's the idea!" demanded Geisha McCoy. "What kind of a hotel is + this, anyway? Scrub-girls waking people up in the middle of the night + with a Polish cabaret. If she wants to sing her hymn of hate why does + she have to pick on me!" +</p> +<p> + "I'm sorry. You can go, Anna. No sing, remember! Sh-sh-sh!" +</p> +<p> + Anna Czarnik nodded and made her unwieldy escape. +</p> +<p> + Geisha McCoy waved a hand at the mulatto maid. "Go to your room, + Blanche. I'll ring when I need you." The girl vanished, gratefully, + without a backward glance at the disorderly room. Martha Foote felt + herself dismissed, too. And yet she made no move to go. She stood there, + in the middle of the room, and every housekeeper inch of her yearned to + tidy the chaos all about her, and every sympathetic impulse urged her + to comfort the nerve-tortured woman before her. Something of this must + have shone in her face, for Geisha McCoy's tone was half-pettish, + half-apologetic as she spoke. +</p> +<p> + "You've no business allowing things like that, you know. My nerves are + all shot to pieces anyway. But even if they weren't, who could stand + that kind of torture? A woman like that ought to lose her job for that. + One word from me at the office and she—" +</p> +<p> + "Don't say it, then," interrupted Martha Foote, and came over to the + bed. Mechanically her fingers straightened the tumbled covers, removed a + jumble of magazines, flicked away the crumbs. "I'm sorry you were + disturbed. The scrubbing can't be helped, of course, but there is a + rule against unnecessary noise, and she shouldn't have been singing. + But—well, I suppose she's got to find relief, somehow. Would you + believe that woman is the cut-up of the top floor? She's a natural + comedian, and she does more for me in the way of keeping the other girls + happy and satisfied than—" +</p> +<p> + "What about me? Where do I come in? Instead of sleeping until eleven + I'm kept awake by this Polish dirge. I go on at the Majestic at four, + and again at 9.45 and I'm sick, I tell you! Sick!" +</p> +<p> + She looked it, too. Suddenly she twisted about and flung herself, face + downward, on the pillow. "Oh, God!" she cried, without any particular + expression. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" +</p> +<p> + That decided Martha Foote. +</p> +<p> + She crossed over to the other side of the bed, first flicking off the + glaring top lights, sat down beside the shaken woman on the pillows, and + laid a cool, light hand on her shoulder. +</p> +<p> + "It isn't as bad as that. Or it won't be, anyway, after you've told me + about it." +</p> +<p> + She waited. Geisha McCoy remained as she was, face down. But she did not + openly resent the hand on her shoulder. So Martha Foote waited. And as + suddenly as Six-eighteen had flung herself prone she twisted about and + sat up, breathing quickly. She passed a hand over her eyes and pushed + back her streaming hair with an oddly desperate little gesture. Her lips + were parted, her eyes wide. +</p> +<p> + "They've got away from me," she cried, and Martha Foote knew what she + meant. "I can't hold 'em any more. I work as hard as ever—harder. + That's it. It seems the harder I work the colder they get. Last week, in + Indianapolis, they couldn't have been more indifferent if I'd been the + educational film that closes the show. And, oh my God! They sit and + knit." +</p> +<p> + "Knit!" echoed Martha Foote. "But everybody's knitting nowadays." +</p> +<p> + "Not when I'm on. They can't. But they do. There were three of them in + the third row yesterday afternoon. One of 'em was doing a grey sock with + four shiny needles. Four! I couldn't keep my eyes off of them. And the + second was doing a sweater, and the third a helmet. I could tell by + the shape. And you can't be funny, can you, when you're hypnotised by + three stony-faced females all doubled up over a bunch of olive-drab? + Olive-drab! I'm scared of it. It sticks out all over the house. Last + night there were two young kids in uniform right down in the first row, + centre, right. I'll bet the oldest wasn't twenty-three. There they sat, + looking up at me with their baby faces. That's all they are. Kids. The + house seems to be peppered with 'em. You wouldn't think olive-drab could + stick out the way it does. I can see it farther than red. I can see it + day and night. I can't seem to see anything else. I can't—" +</p> +<p> + Her head came down on her arms, that rested on her tight-hugged knees. +</p> +<p> + "Somebody of yours in it?" Martha Foote asked, quietly. She waited. Then + she made a wild guess—an intuitive guess. "Son?" +</p> +<p> + "How did you know?" Geisha McCoy's head came up. +</p> +<p> + "I didn't." +</p> +<p> + "Well, you're right. There aren't fifty people in the world, outside my + own friends, who know I've got a grown-up son. It's bad business to have + them think you're middle-aged. And besides, there's nothing of the stage + about Fred. He's one of those square-jawed kids that are just cut out to + be engineers. Third year at Boston Tech." +</p> +<p> + "Is he still there, then?" +</p> +<p> + "There! He's in France, that's where he is. Somewhere—in France. And + I've worked for twenty-two years with everything in me just set, like an + alarm-clock, for the time when that kid would step off on his own. He + always hated to take money from me, and I loved him for it. I never went + on that I didn't think of him. I never came off with a half dozen + encores that I didn't wish he could hear it. Why, when I played a + college town it used to be a riot, because I loved every fresh-faced boy + in the house, and they knew it. And now—and now—what's there in it? + What's there in it? I can't even hold 'em any more. I'm through, I tell + you. I'm through!" +</p> +<p> + And waited to be disputed. Martha Foote did not disappoint her. +</p> +<p> + "There's just this in it. It's up to you to make those three women in + the third row forget what they're knitting for, even if they don't + forget their knitting. Let 'em go on knitting with their hands, but keep + their heads off it. That's your job. You're lucky to have it." +</p> +<p> + "Lucky?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes <i>ma'am</i>! You can do all the dumka stuff in private, the way Anna + Czarnik does, but it's up to you to make them laugh twice a day for + twenty minutes." +</p> +<p> + "It's all very well for you to talk that cheer-o stuff. It hasn't come + home to you, I can see that." +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote smiled. "If you don't mind my saying it, Miss McCoy, you're + too worn out from lack of sleep to see anything clearly. You don't know + me, but I do know you, you see. I know that a year ago Anna Czarnik + would have been the most interesting thing in this town, for you. You'd + have copied her clothes, and got a translation of her sob song, and made + her as real to a thousand audiences as she was to us this morning; + tragic history, patient animal face, comic shoes and all. And that's the + trouble with you, my dear. When we begin to brood about our own troubles + we lose what they call the human touch. And that's your business asset." +</p> +<p> + Geisha McCoy was looking up at her with a whimsical half-smile. "Look + here. You know too much. You're not really the hotel housekeeper, are + you?" +</p> +<p> + "I am." +</p> +<p> + "Well, then, you weren't always—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes I was. So far as I know I'm the only hotel housekeeper in history + who can't look back to the time when she had three servants of her own, + and her private carriage. I'm no decayed black-silk gentlewoman. Not me. + My father drove a hack in Sorgham, Minnesota, and my mother took in + boarders and I helped wait on table. I married when I was twenty, my man + died two years later, and I've been earning my living ever since." +</p> +<p> + "Happy?" +</p> +<p> + "I must be, because I don't stop to think about it. It's part of my job + to know everything that concerns the comfort of the guests in this + hotel." +</p> +<p> + "Including hysterics in six-eighteen?" +</p> +<p> + "Including. And that reminds me. Up on the twelfth floor of this hotel + there's a big, old-fashioned bedroom. In half an hour I can have that + room made up with the softest linen sheets, and the curtains pulled + down, and not a sound. That room's so restful it would put old Insomnia + himself to sleep. Will you let me tuck you away in it?" +</p> +<p> + Geisha McCoy slid down among her rumpled covers, and nestled her head in + the lumpy, tortured pillows. "Me! I'm going to stay right here." +</p> +<p> + "But this room's—why, it's as stale as a Pullman sleeper. Let me have + the chambermaid in to freshen it up while you're gone." +</p> +<p> + "I'm used to it. I've got to have a room mussed up, to feel at home in + it. Thanks just the same." +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote rose, "I'm sorry. I just thought if I could help—" +</p> +<p> + Geisha McCoy leaned forward with one of her quick movements and caught + Martha Foote's hand in both her own, "You have! And I don't mean to be + rude when I tell you I haven't felt so much like sleeping in weeks. + Just turn out those lights, will you? And sort of tiptoe out, to give + the effect." Then, as Martha Foote reached the door, "And oh, say! D'you + think she'd sell me those shoes?" +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote didn't get her dinner that night until almost eight, what + with one thing and another. Still as days go, it wasn't so bad as + Monday; she and Irish Nellie, who had come in to turn down her bed, + agreed on that. The Senate Hotel housekeeper was having her dinner in + her room. Tony, the waiter, had just brought it on and had set it out + for her, a gleaming island of white linen, and dome-shaped metal tops. + Irish Nellie, a privileged person always, waxed conversational as she + folded back the bed covers in a neat triangular wedge. +</p> +<p> + "Six-eighteen kinda ca'med down, didn't she? High toime, the divil. She + had us jumpin' yist'iddy. I loike t' went off me head wid her, and th' + day girl th' same. Some folks ain't got no feelin', I dunno." +</p> +<p> + Martha Foote unfolded her napkin with a little tired gesture. "You can't + always judge, Nellie. That woman's got a son who has gone to war, and + she couldn't see her way clear to living without him. She's better now. + I talked to her this evening at six. She said she had a fine afternoon." +</p> +<p> + "Shure, she ain't the only wan. An' what do you be hearin' from your + boy, Mis' Phut, that's in France?" +</p> +<p> + "He's well, and happy. His arm's all healed, and he says he'll be in it + again by the time I get his letter." +</p> +<p> + "Humph," said Irish Nellie. And prepared to leave. She cast an + inquisitive eye over the little table as she made for the + door—inquisitive, but kindly. Her wide Irish nostrils sniffed a + familiar smell. "Well, fur th' land, Mis' Phut! If I was housekeeper + here, an' cud have hothouse strawberries, an' swatebreads undher + glass, an' sparrowgrass, an' chicken, <i>an'</i> ice crame, the way you + can, whiniver yuh loike, I wouldn't be a-eatin' cornbeef an' cabbage. + Not me." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes you would, Nellie," replied Martha Foote, quietly, and spooned + up the thin amber gravy. "Oh, yes you would." +</p> +<a name="2H_4_12"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2> + XII +</h2> +<h2> + SHORE LEAVE +</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> + Tyler Kamps was a tired boy. He was tired from his left great toe to + that topmost spot at the crown of his head where six unruly hairs always + persisted in sticking straight out in defiance of patient brushing, + wetting, and greasing. Tyler Kamps was as tired as only a boy can be at + 9.30 P.M. who has risen at 5.30 A.M. Yet he lay wide awake in his + hammock eight feet above the ground, like a giant silk-worm in an + incredible cocoon and listened to the sleep-sounds that came from the + depths of two hundred similar cocoons suspended at regular intervals + down the long dark room. A chorus of deep regular breathing, with an + occasional grunt or sigh, denoting complete relaxation. Tyler Kamps + should have been part of this chorus, himself. Instead he lay staring + into the darkness, thinking mad thoughts of which this is a sample: +</p> +<p> + "Gosh! Wouldn't I like to sit up in my hammock and give one yell! The + kind of a yell a movie cowboy gives on a Saturday night. Wake 'em up and + stop that—darned old breathing." +</p> +<p> + Nerves. He breathed deeply himself, once or twice, because it seemed, + somehow to relieve his feeling of irritation. And in that unguarded + moment of unconscious relaxation Sleep, that had been lying in wait for + him just around the corner, pounced on him and claimed him for its own. + From his hammock came the deep, regular inhalation, exhalation, with an + occasional grunt or sigh. The normal sleep-sounds of a very tired boy. +</p> +<p> + The trouble with Tyler Kamps was that he missed two things he hadn't + expected to miss at all. And he missed not at all the things he had been + prepared to miss most hideously. +</p> +<p> + First of all, he had expected to miss his mother. If you had known + Stella Kamps you could readily have understood that. Stella Kamps was + the kind of mother they sing about in the sentimental ballads; mother, + pal, and sweetheart. Which was where she had made her big mistake. When + one mother tries to be all those things to one son that son has a very + fair chance of turning out a mollycoddle. The war was probably all that + saved Tyler Kamps from such a fate. +</p> +<p> + In the way she handled this son of hers Stella Kamps had been as crafty + and skilful and velvet-gloved as a girl with her beau. The proof of it + is that Tyler had never known he was being handled. Some folks in + Marvin, Texas, said she actually flirted with him, and they were almost + justified. Certainly the way she glanced up at him from beneath her + lashes was excused only by the way she scolded him if he tracked up the + kitchen floor. But then, Stella Kamps and her boy were different, + anyway. Marvin folks all agreed about that. Flowers on the table at + meals. Sitting over the supper things talking and laughing for an hour + after they'd finished eating, as if they hadn't seen each other in + years. Reading out loud to each other, out of books and then going on + like mad about what they'd just read, and getting all het up about it. + And sometimes chasing each other around the yard, spring evenings, like + a couple of fool kids. Honestly, if a body didn't know Stella Kamps so + well, and what a fight she had put up to earn a living for herself and + the boy after that good-for-nothing Kamps up and left her, and what a + housekeeper she was, and all, a person'd think—well— +</p> +<p> + So, then, Tyler had expected to miss her first of all. The way she + talked. The way she fussed around him without in the least seeming to + fuss. Her special way of cooking things. Her laugh which drew laughter + in its wake. The funny way she had of saying things, vitalising + commonplaces with the spark of her own electricity. +</p> +<p> + And now he missed her only as the average boy of twenty-one misses the + mother he has been used to all his life. No more and no less. Which + would indicate that Stella Kamps, in her protean endeavours, had + overplayed the parts just a trifle. +</p> +<p> + He had expected to miss the boys at the bank. He had expected to miss + the Mandolin Club. The Mandolin Club met, officially, every Thursday and + spangled the Texas night with their tinkling. Five rather dreamy-eyed + adolescents slumped in stoop-shouldered comfort over the instruments + cradled in their arms, each right leg crossed limply over the left, each + great foot that dangled from the bony ankle, keeping rhythmic time to + the plunketty-plink-tinketty-plunk. +</p> +<p> + He had expected to miss the familiar faces on Main Street. He had even + expected to miss the neighbours with whom he and his mother had so + rarely mingled. All the hundred little, intimate, trivial, everyday + things that had gone to make up his life back home in Marvin, + Texas—these he had expected to miss. +</p> +<p> + And he didn't. +</p> +<p> + After ten weeks at the Great Central Naval Training Station so near + Chicago, Illinois, and so far from Marvin, Texas, there were two things + he missed. +</p> +<p> + He wanted the decent privacy of his small quiet bedroom back home. +</p> +<p> + He wanted to talk to a girl. +</p> +<p> + He knew he wanted the first, definitely. He didn't know he wanted the + second. The fact that he didn't know it was Stella Kamps' fault. She had + kept his boyhood girlless, year and year, by sheer force of her own love + for him, and need of him, and by the charm and magnetism that were hers. + She had been deprived of a more legitimate outlet for these emotions. + Concentrated on the boy, they had sufficed for him. The Marvin girls had + long ago given him up as hopeless. They fell back, baffled, their + keenest weapons dulled by the impenetrable armour of his impersonal + gaze. +</p> +<p> + The room? It hadn't been much of a room, as rooms go. Bare, clean, + asceptic, with a narrow, hard white bed and a maple dresser whose second + drawer always stuck and came out zig-zag when you pulled it; and a + swimmy mirror that made one side of your face look sort of lumpy, and + higher than the other side. In one corner a bookshelf. He had made it + himself at manual training. When he had finished it—the planing, the + staining, the polishing—Chippendale himself, after he had designed and + executed his first gracious, wide-seated, back-fitting chair, could have + felt no finer creative glow. As for the books it held, just to run your + eye over them was like watching Tyler Kamps grow up. Stella Kamps had + been a Kansas school teacher in the days before she met and married + Clint Kamps. And she had never quite got over it. So the book case + contained certain things that a fond mother (with a teaching past) would + think her small son ought to enjoy. Things like "Tom Brown At Rugby" and + "Hans Brinker, Or the Silver Skates." He had read them, dutifully, but + they were as good as new. No thumbed pages, no ragged edges, no creases + and tatters where eager boy hands had turned a page over—hastily. No, + the thumb-marked, dog's-eared, grimy ones were, as always, "Tom Sawyer" + and "Huckleberry Finn" and "Marching Against the Iroquois." +</p> +<p> + A hot enough little room in the Texas summers. A cold enough little + room in the Texas winters. But his own. And quiet. He used to lie there + at night, relaxed, just before sleep claimed him, and he could almost + feel the soft Texas night enfold him like a great, velvety, invisible + blanket, soothing him, lulling him. In the morning it had been pleasant + to wake up to its bare, clean whiteness, and to the tantalising + breakfast smells coming up from the kitchen below. His mother calling + from the foot of the narrow wooden stairway: +</p> +<p> + "Ty-<i>ler</i>!," rising inflection. "<i>Ty</i>-ler," falling inflection. "Get up, + son! Breakfast'll be ready." +</p> +<p> + It was always a terrific struggle between a last delicious stolen five + minutes between the covers, and the scent of the coffee and bacon. +</p> +<p> + "Ty-<i>ler</i>! You'll be late!" +</p> +<p> + A mighty stretch. A gathering of his will forces. A swing of his long + legs over the side of the bed so that they described an arc in the air. +</p> +<p> + "Been up years." +</p> +<p> + Breakfast had won. +</p> +<p> + Until he came to the Great Central Naval Training Station Tyler's + nearest approach to the nautical life had been when, at the age of six, + he had sailed chips in the wash tub in the back yard. Marvin, Texas, is + five hundred miles inland. And yet he had enlisted in the navy as + inevitably as though he had sprung from a long line of Vikings. In his + boyhood his choice of games had always been pirate. You saw him, a red + handkerchief binding his brow, one foot advanced, knee bent, scanning + the horizon for the treasure island from the vantage point of the + woodshed roof, while the crew, gone mad with thirst, snarled and + shrieked all about him, and the dirt yard below became a hungry, roaring + sea. His twelve-year-old vocabulary boasted such compound difficulties + as mizzentopsail-yard and main-topgallantmast. He knew the intricate + parts of a full-rigged ship from the mainsail to the deck, from the + jib-boom to the chart-house. All this from pictures and books. It was + the roving, restless spirit of his father in him, I suppose. Clint Kamps + had never been meant for marriage. When the baby Tyler was one year old + Clint had walked over to where his wife sat, the child in her lap, and + had tilted her head back, kissed her on the lips, and had gently pinched + the boy's roseleaf cheek with a quizzical forefinger and thumb. Then, + indolently, negligently, gracefully, he had strolled out of the house, + down the steps, into the hot and dusty street and so on and on and out + of their lives. Stella Kamps had never seen him again. Her letters back + home to her folks in Kansas were triumphs of bravery and bare-faced + lying. The kind of bravery, and the kind of lying that only a woman + could understand. She managed to make out, somehow, at first. And later, + very well indeed. As the years went on she and the boy lived together in + a sort of closed corporation paradise of their own. At twenty-one Tyler, + who had gone through grammar school, high school and business college + had never kissed a girl or felt a love-pang. Stella Kamps kept her age + as a woman does whose brain and body are alert and busy. When Tyler + first went to work in the Texas State Savings Bank of Marvin the girls + would come in on various pretexts just for a glimpse of his charming + blondeur behind the little cage at the rear. It is difficult for a + small-town girl to think of reasons for going into a bank. You have to + be moneyed to do it. They say that the Davies girl saved up nickels + until she had a dollar's worth and then came into the bank and asked to + have a bill in exchange for it. They gave her one—a crisp, new, crackly + dollar bill. She reached for it, gropingly, her eyes fixed on a point at + the rear of the bank. Two days later she came in and brazenly asked to + have it changed into nickels again. She might have gone on indefinitely + thus if Tyler's country hadn't given him something more important to do + than to change dollars into nickels and back again. +</p> +<p> + On the day he left for the faraway naval training station Stella Kamps + for the second time in her life had a chance to show the stuff she was + made of, and showed it. Not a whimper. Down at the train, standing at + the car window, looking up at him and smiling, and saying futile, + foolish, final things, and seeing only his blond head among the many + thrust out of the open window. +</p> +<p> + "... and Tyler, remember what I said about your feet. You know. Dry.... + And I'll send a box every week, only don't eat too many of the nut + cookies. They're so rich. Give some to the other—yes, I know you will. + I was just ... Won't it be grand to be right there on the water all the + time! My!... I'll write every night and then send it twice a week.... + I don't suppose you ... Well once a week, won't you, dear?... + You're—you're moving. The train's going! Good-b—" she ran along with + it for a few feet, awkwardly, as a woman runs. Stumblingly. +</p> +<p> + And suddenly, as she ran, his head always just ahead of her, she + thought, with a great pang: +</p> +<p> + "O my God, how young he is! How young he is, and he doesn't know + anything. I should have told him.... Things.... He doesn't know anything + about ... and all those other men—" +</p> +<p> + She ran on, one arm outstretched as though to hold him a moment longer + while the train gathered speed. "Tyler!" she called, through the din and + shouting. "Tyler, be good! Be good!" He only saw her lips moving, and + could not hear, so he nodded his head, and smiled, and waved, and was + gone. +</p> +<p> + So Tyler Kamps had travelled up to Chicago. Whenever they passed a + sizable town they had thrown open the windows and yelled, "Youp! Who-ee! + Yow!" +</p> +<p> + People had rushed to the streets and had stood there gazing after the + train. Tyler hadn't done much youping at first, but in the later stages + of the journey he joined in to keep his spirits up. He, who had never + been more than a two-hours' ride from home was flashing past villages, + towns, cities—hundreds of them. +</p> +<p> + The first few days had been unbelievably bad, what with typhoid + inoculations, smallpox vaccinations, and loneliness. The very first day, + when he had entered his barracks one of the other boys, older in + experience, misled by Tyler's pink and white and gold colouring, had + leaned forward from amongst a group and had called in glad surprise, at + the top of a leathery pair of lungs: +</p> +<p> + "Why, hello, sweetheart!" The others had taken it up with cruelty of + their age. "Hello, sweetheart!" It had stuck. Sweetheart. In the hard + years that followed—years in which the blood-thirsty and piratical + games of his boyhood paled to the mildest of imaginings—the nickname + still clung, long after he had ceased to resent it; long after he had + stripes and braid to refute it. +</p> +<p> + But in that Tyler Kamps we are not interested. It is the boy Tyler Kamps + with whom we have to do. Bewildered, lonely, and a little resentful. + Wondering where the sea part of it came in. Learning to say "on the + station" instead of "at the station," the idea being that the great + stretch of land on which the station was located was not really land, + but water; and the long wooden barracks not really barracks at all, but + ships. Learning to sleep in a hammock (it took him a full week). + Learning to pin back his sailor collar to save soiling the white braid + on it (that meant scrubbing). Learning—but why go into detail? One + sentence covers it. +</p> +<p> + Tyler met Gunner Moran. Moran, tattooed, hairy-armed, hairy-chested as a + gorilla and with something of the sadness and humour of the gorilla in + his long upper lip and short forehead. But his eyes did not bear out the + resemblance. An Irish blue; bright, unravaged; clear beacon lights in a + rough and storm-battered countenance. Gunner Moran wasn't a gunner at + all, or even a gunner's mate, but just a seaman who knew the sea from + Shanghai to New Orleans; from Liverpool to Barcelona. His knowledge of + knots and sails and rifles and bayonets and fists was a thing to strike + you dumb. He wasn't the stuff of which officers are made. But you should + have seen him with a Springfield! Or a bayonet! A bare twenty-five, + Moran, but with ten years' sea experience. Into those ten years he had + jammed a lifetime of adventure. And he could do expertly all the things + that Tyler Kamps did amateurishly. In a barrack, or in a company street, + the man who talks the loudest is the man who has the most influence. In + Tyler's barrack Gunner Moran was that man. +</p> +<p> + Because of what he knew they gave him two hundred men at a time and made + him company commander, without insignia or official position. In rank, + he was only a "gob" like the rest of them. In influence a captain. Moran + knew how to put the weight lunge behind the bayonet. It was a matter of + balance, of poise, more than of muscle. +</p> +<p> + Up in the front of his men, "G'wan," he would yell. "Whatddye think + you're doin'! Tickling 'em with a straw! That's a bayonet you got there, + not a tennis rackit. You couldn't scratch your initials on a Fritz that + way. Put a little guts into it. Now then!" +</p> +<p> + He had been used to the old Krag, with a cam that jerked out, and threw + back, and fed one shell at a time. The new Springfield, that was a + gloriously functioning thing in its simplicity, he regarded with a sort + of reverence and ecstasy mingled. As his fingers slid lightly, + caressingly along the shining barrel they were like a man's fingers + lingering on the soft curves of a woman's throat. The sight of a rookie + handling this metal sweetheart clumsily filled him with fury. +</p> +<p> + "Whatcha think you got there, you lubber, you! A section o' lead pipe! + You ought t' be back carryin' a shovel, where you belong. Here. Just a + touch. Like that. See? Easy now." +</p> +<p> + He could box like a professional. They put him up against Slovatsky, the + giant Russian, one day. Slovatsky put up his two huge hands, like hams, + and his great arms, like iron beams and looked down on this lithe, agile + bantam that was hopping about at his feet. Suddenly the bantam crouched, + sprang, and recoiled like a steel trap. Something had crashed up against + Slovatsky's chin. Red rage shook him. He raised his sledge-hammer right + for a slashing blow. Moran was directly in the path of it. It seemed + that he could no more dodge it than he could hope to escape an onrushing + locomotive, but it landed on empty air, with Moran around in back of the + Russian, and peering impishly up under his arm. It was like an elephant + worried by a mosquito. Then Moran's lightning right shot out again, + smartly, and seemed just to tap the great hulk on the side of the chin. + A ludicrous look of surprise on Slovatsky's face before he crumpled and + crashed. +</p> +<p> + This man it was who had Tyler Kamps' admiration. It was more than + admiration. It was nearer adoration. But there was nothing unnatural or + unwholesome about the boy's worship of this man. It was a legitimate + thing, born of all his fatherless years; years in which there had been + no big man around the house who could throw farther than Tyler, and eat + more, and wear larger shoes and offer more expert opinion. Moran + accepted the boy's homage with a sort of surly graciousness. +</p> +<p> + In Tyler's third week at the Naval Station mumps developed in his + barracks and they were quarantined. Tyler escaped the epidemic but he + had to endure the boredom of weeks of quarantine. At first they took it + as a lark, like schoolboys. Moran's hammock was just next Tyler's. On + his other side was a young Kentuckian named Dabney Courtney. The + barracks had dubbed him Monicker the very first day. Monicker had a + rather surprising tenor voice. Moran a salty bass. And Tyler his + mandolin. The trio did much to make life bearable, or unbearable, + depending on one's musical knowledge and views. The boys all sang a + great deal. They bawled everything they knew, from "Oh, You Beautiful + Doll" and "Over There" to "The End of a Perfect Day." The latter, <i>ad + nauseum</i>. They even revived "Just Break the News to Mother" and seemed + to take a sort of awful joy in singing its dreary words and mournful + measures. They played everything from a saxophone to a harmonica. They + read. They talked. And they grew so sick of the sight of one another + that they began to snap and snarl. +</p> +<p> + Sometimes they gathered round Moran and he told them tales they only + half believed. He had been in places whose very names were exotic and + oriental, breathing of sandalwood, and myrrh, and spices and aloes. They + were places over which a boy dreams in books of travel. Moran bared the + vivid tattooing on hairy arms and chest—tattooing representing anchors, + and serpents, and girls' heads, and hearts with arrows stuck through + them. Each mark had its story. A broad-swathed gentleman indeed, Gunner + Moran. He had an easy way with him that made you feel provincial and + ashamed. It made you ashamed of not knowing the sort of thing you used + to be ashamed of knowing. +</p> +<p> + Visiting day was the worst. They grew savage, somehow, watching the + mothers and sisters and cousins and sweethearts go streaming by to the + various barracks. One of the boys to whom Tyler had never even spoken + suddenly took a picture out of his blouse pocket and showed it to Tyler. + It was a cheap little picture—one of the kind they sell two for a + quarter if one sitter; two for thirty-five if two. This was a twosome. + The boy, and a girl. A healthy, wide-awake wholesome looking small-town + girl, who has gone through high school and cuts out her own shirtwaists. +</p> +<p> + "She's vice-president of the Silver Star Pleasure Club back home," the + boy confided to Tyler. "I'm president. We meet every other Saturday." +</p> +<p> + Tyler looked at the picture seriously and approvingly. Suddenly he + wished that he had, tucked away in his blouse, a picture of a + clear-eyed, round-cheeked vice-president of a pleasure club. He took out + his mother's picture and showed it. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yeh," said the boy, disinterestedly. +</p> +<p> + The dragging weeks came to an end. The night of Tyler's restlessness was + the last night of quarantine. To-morrow morning they would be free. At + the end of the week they were to be given shore leave. Tyler had made up + his mind to go to Chicago. He had never been there. +</p> +<p> + Five thirty. Reveille. +</p> +<p> + Tyler awoke with the feeling that something was going to happen. + Something pleasant. Then he remembered, and smiled. Dabney Courtney, in + the next hammock, was leaning far over the side of his perilous perch + and delivering himself of his morning speech. Tyler did not quite + understand this young southern elegant. Monicker had two moods, both of + which puzzled Tyler. When he awoke feeling gay he would lean over the + extreme edge of his hammock and drawl, with an affected English accent: +</p> +<p> + "If this is Venice, where are the canals?" +</p> +<p> + In his less cheerful moments he would groan, heavily, "There ain't no + Gawd!" +</p> +<p> + This last had been his morning observation during their many weeks of + durance vile. But this morning he was, for the first time in many days, + enquiring about Venetian waterways. +</p> +<p> + Tyler had no pal. His years of companionship with his mother had bred in + him a sort of shyness, a diffidence. He heard the other boys making + plans for shore leave. They all scorned Waukegan, which was the first + sizable town beyond the Station. Chicago was their goal. They were like + a horde of play-hungry devils after their confinement. Six weeks of + restricted freedom, six weeks of stored-up energy made them restive as + colts. +</p> +<p> + "Goin' to Chicago, kid?" Moran asked him, carelessly. It was Saturday + morning. +</p> +<p> + "Yes. Are you?" eagerly. +</p> +<p> + "Kin a duck swim?" +</p> +<p> + At the Y.M.C.A. they had given him tickets to various free amusements + and entertainments. They told him about free canteens, and about other + places where you could get a good meal, cheap. One of the tickets was + for a dance. Tyler knew nothing of dancing. This dance was to be given + at some kind of woman's club on Michigan Boulevard. Tyler read the card, + glumly. A dance meant girls. He knew that. Why hadn't he learned to + dance? +</p> +<p> + Tyler walked down to the station and waited for the train that would + bring him to Chicago at about one o'clock. The other boys, in little + groups, or in pairs, were smoking and talking. Tyler wanted to join + them, but he did not. They seemed so sufficient unto themselves, + with their plans, and their glib knowledge of places, and amusements, + and girls. On the train they all bought sweets from the train + butcher—chocolate maraschinos, and nut bars, and molasses kisses—and + ate them as greedily as children, until their hunger for sweets was + surfeited. +</p> +<p> + Tyler found himself in the same car with Moran. He edged over to a + seat near him, watching him narrowly. Moran was not mingling with the + other boys. He kept aloof, his sea-blue eyes gazing out at the flat + Illinois prairie. All about him swept and eddied the currents and + counter-currents of talk. +</p> +<p> + "They say there's a swell supper in the Tower Building for fifty cents." +</p> +<p> + "Fifty nothing. Get all you want in the Library canteen for nix." +</p> +<p> + "Where's this dance, huh?" +</p> +<p> + "Search <i>me</i>." +</p> +<p> + "Heh, Murph! I'll shoot you a game of pool at the club." +</p> +<p> + "Naw, I gotta date." +</p> +<p> + Tyler's glance encountered Moran's, and rested there. Scorn curled the + Irishman's broad upper lip. "Navy! This ain't no navy no more. It's a + Sunday school, that's what! Phonographs, an' church suppers, an' pool + an' dances! It's enough t' turn a fella's stomick. Lot of Sunday school + kids don't know a sail from a tablecloth when they see it." +</p> +<p> + He relapsed into contemptuous silence. +</p> +<p> + Tyler, who but a moment before had been envying them their familiarity + with these very things now nodded and smiled understanding at Moran. + "That's right," he said. Moran regarded him a moment, curiously. Then he + resumed his staring out of the window. You would never have guessed that + in that bullet head there was bewilderment and resentment almost + equalling Tyler's, but for a much different reason. Gunner Moran was of + the old navy—the navy that had been despised and spat upon. In those + days his uniform alone had barred him from decent theatres, decent + halls, decent dances, contact with decent people. They had forced him to + a knowledge of the burlesque houses, the cheap theatres, the shooting + galleries, the saloons, the dives. And now, bewilderingly, the public + had right-about faced. It opened its doors to him. It closed its saloons + to him. It sought him out. It offered him amusement. It invited him to + its home, and sat him down at its table, and introduced him to its + daughter. +</p> +<p> + "Nix!" said Gunner Moran, and spat between his teeth. "Not f'r me. I + pick me own lady friends." +</p> +<p> + Gunner Moran was used to picking his own lady friends. He had picked + them in wicked Port Said, and in Fiume; in Yokohama and Naples. He had + picked them unerringly, and to his taste, in Cardiff, and Hamburg, and + Vladivostok. +</p> +<p> + When the train drew in at the great Northwestern station shed he was + down the steps and up the long platform before the wheels had ceased + revolving. +</p> +<p> + Tyler came down the steps slowly. Blue uniforms were streaming past + him—a flood of them. White leggings twinkled with the haste of their + wearers. Caps, white or blue, flowed like a succession of rippling waves + and broke against the great doorway, and were gone. +</p> +<p> + In Tyler's town, back home in Marvin, Texas, you knew the train numbers + and their schedules, and you spoke of them by name, familiarly and + affectionately, as Number Eleven and Number Fifty-five. "I reckon + Fifty-five'll be late to-day, on account of the storm." +</p> +<p> + Now he saw half a dozen trains lined up at once, and a dozen more tracks + waiting, empty. The great train shed awed him. The vast columned waiting + room, the hurrying people, the uniformed guards gave him a feeling of + personal unimportance. He felt very negligible, and useless, and alone. + He stood, a rather dazed blue figure, in the vastness of that shining + place. A voice—the soft, cadenced voice of the negro—addressed him. +</p> +<p> + "Lookin' fo' de sailors' club rooms?" +</p> +<p> + Tyler turned. A toothy, middle-aged, kindly negro in a uniform and red + cap. Tyler smiled friendlily. Here was a human he could feel at ease + with. Texas was full of just such faithful, friendly types of negro. +</p> +<p> + "Reckon I am, uncle. Show me the way?" +</p> +<p> + Red Cap chuckled and led the way. "Knew you was f'om de south minute Ah + see yo'. Cain't fool me. Le'ssee now. You-all f'om—?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm from the finest state in the Union. The most glorious state in + the—" +</p> +<p> + "H'm—Texas," grinned Red Cap. +</p> +<p> + "How did you know!" +</p> +<p> + "Ah done heah 'em talk befoh, son. Ah done heah 'em talk be-foh." +</p> +<p> + It was a long journey through the great building to the section that had + been set aside for Tyler and boys like him. Tyler wondered how any one + could ever find it alone. When the Red Cap left him, after showing him + the wash rooms, the tubs for scrubbing clothes, the steam dryers, the + bath-tubs, the lunch room, Tyler looked after him regretfully. Then he + sped after him and touched him on the arm. +</p> +<p> + "Listen. Could I—would they—do you mean I could clean up in there—as + much as I wanted? And wash my things? And take a bath in a bathtub, with + all the hot water I want?" +</p> +<p> + "Yo' sho' kin. On'y things look mighty grabby now. Always is Sat'days. + Jes' wait aroun' an' grab yo' tu'n." +</p> +<p> + Tyler waited. And while he waited he watched to see how the other boys + did things. He saw how they scrubbed their uniforms with scrubbing + brushes, and plenty of hot water and soap. He saw how they hung them + carefully, so that they might not wrinkle, in the dryers. He saw them + emerge, glowing, from the tub rooms. And he waited, the fever of + cleanliness burning in his eye. +</p> +<p> + His turn came. He had waited more than an hour, reading, listening to + the phonograph and the electric piano, and watching. +</p> +<p> + Now he saw his chance and seized it. And then he went through a ceremony + that was almost a ritual. Stella Kamps, could she have seen it, would + have felt repaid for all her years of soap-and-water insistence. +</p> +<p> + First he washed out the stationary tub with soap, and brush, and + scalding water. Then he scalded the brush. Then the tub again. Then, + deliberately, and with the utter unconcern of the male biped he divested + himself, piece by piece, of every stitch of covering wherewith his body + was clothed. And he scrubbed them all. He took off his white leggings + and his white cap and scrubbed those, first. He had seen the other boys + follow that order of procedure. Then his flapping blue flannel trousers, + and his blouse. Then his underclothes, and his socks. And finally he + stood there, naked and unabashed, slim, and pink and silver as a + mountain trout. His face, as he bent over the steamy tub, was very red, + and moist and earnest. His yellow hair curled in little damp ringlets + about his brow. Then he hung his trousers and blouse in the dryers + without wringing them (wringing, he had been told, wrinkled them). He + rinsed and wrung, and flapped the underclothes, though, and shaped his + cap carefully, and spread his leggings, and hung those in the dryer, + too. And finally, with a deep sigh of accomplishment, he filled one of + the bathtubs in the adjoining room—filled it to the slopping-over point + with the luxurious hot water, and he splashed about in this, and + reclined in it, gloriously, until the waiting ones threatened to pull + him out. Then he dried himself and issued forth all flushed and rosy. He + wrapped himself in a clean coarse sheet, for his clothes would not be + dry for another half hour. Swathed in the sheet like a Roman senator he + lay down on one of the green velvet couches, relics of past Pullman + glories, and there, with the rumble and roar of steel trains overhead, + with the smart click of the billiard balls sounding in his ears, with + the phonograph and the electric piano going full blast, with the boys + dancing and larking all about the big room, he fell sound asleep as only + a boy cub can sleep. +</p> +<p> + When he awoke an hour later his clothes were folded in a neat pile by + the deft hand of some jackie impatient to use the drying space for his + own garments. Tyler put them on. He stood before a mirror and brushed + his hair until it glittered. He drew himself up with the instinctive + pride and self respect that comes of fresh clean clothes against the + skin. Then he placed his absurd round hat on his head at what he + considered a fetching angle, though precarious, and sallied forth on the + streets of Chicago in search of amusement and adventure. +</p> +<p> + He found them. +</p> +<p> + Madison and Canal streets, west, had little to offer him. He sensed that + the centre of things lay to the east, so he struck out along Madison, + trying not to show the terror with which the grim, roaring, clamorous + city filled him. He jingled the small coins in his pocket and strode + along, on the surface a blithe and carefree jackie on shore leave; a + forlorn and lonely Texas boy, beneath. +</p> +<p> + It was late afternoon. His laundering, his ablutions and his nap had + taken more time than he had realised. It was a mild spring day, with + just a Lake Michigan evening snap in the air. Tyler, glancing about + alertly, nevertheless felt dreamy, and restless, and sort of melting, + like a snow-heap in the sun. He wished he had some one to talk to. He + thought of the man on the train who had said, with such easy confidence, + "I got a date." Tyler wished that he too had a date—he who had never + had a rendezvous in his life. He loitered a moment on the bridge. Then + he went on, looking about him interestedly, and comparing Chicago, + Illinois, with Marvin, Texas, and finding the former sadly lacking. He + passed LaSalle, Clark. The streets were packed. The noise and rush + tired him, and bewildered him. He came to a moving picture theatre—one + of the many that dot the district. A girl occupied the little ticket + kiosk. She was rather a frowsy girl, not too young, and with a certain + look about the jaw. Tyler walked up to the window and shoved his money + through the little aperture. The girl fed him a pink ticket without + looking up. He stood there looking at her. Then he asked her a question. + "How long does the show take?" He wanted to see the colour of her eyes. + He wanted her to talk to him. +</p> +<p> + "'Bout a hour," said the girl, and raised wise eyes to his. +</p> +<p> + "Thanks," said Tyler, fervently, and smiled. No answering smile curved + the lady's lips. Tyler turned and went in. There was an alleged comic + film. Tyler was not amused. It was followed by a war picture. He left + before the show was over. He was very hungry by now. In his blouse + pocket were the various information and entertainment tickets with which + the Y.M.C.A. man had provided him. He had taken them out, carefully, + before he had done his washing. Now he looked them over. But a dairy + lunch room invited him, with its white tiling, and its pans of baked + apples, and browned beans and its coffee tank. He went in and ate a + solitary supper that was heavy on pie and cake. +</p> +<p> + When he came out to the street again it was evening. He walked over to + State Street (the wrong side). He took the dance card out of his pocket + and looked at it again. If only he had learned to dance. There'd be + girls. There'd have to be girls at a dance. He stood staring into the + red and tin-foil window display of a cigar store, turning the ticket + over in his fingers, and the problem over in his mind. +</p> +<p> + Suddenly, in his ear, a woman's voice, very soft and low. "Hello, + Sweetheart!" the voice said. His nickname! He whirled around, eagerly. +</p> +<p> + The girl was a stranger to him. But she was smiling, friendlily, and she + was pretty, too, sort of. "Hello, Sweetheart!" she said, again. +</p> +<p> + "Why, how-do, ma'am," said Tyler, Texas fashion. +</p> +<p> + "Where you going, kid?" she asked. +</p> +<p> + Tyler blushed a little. "Well, nowhere in particular, ma'am. Just kind + of milling around." +</p> +<p> + "Come on along with me," she said, and linked her arm in his. +</p> +<p> + "Why—why—thanks, but—" +</p> +<p> + And yet Texas people were always saying easterners weren't friendly. He + felt a little uneasy, though, as he looked down into her smiling face. + Something— +</p> +<p> + "Hello, Sweetheart!" said a voice, again. A man's voice, this time. Out + of the cigar store came Gunner Moran, the yellow string of a tobacco bag + sticking out of his blouse pocket, a freshly rolled cigarette between + his lips. +</p> +<p> + A queer feeling of relief and gladness swept over Tyler. And then Moran + looked sharply at the girl and said, "Why, hello, Blanche!" +</p> +<p> + "Hello yourself," answered the girl, sullenly. +</p> +<p> + "Thought you was in 'Frisco." +</p> +<p> + "Well, I ain't." +</p> +<p> + Moran shifted his attention from the girl to Tyler. "Friend o' yours?" +</p> +<p> + Before Tyler could open his lips to answer the girl put in, "Sure he is. + Sure I am. We been around together all afternoon." +</p> +<p> + Tyler jerked. "Why, ma'am, I guess you've made a mistake. I never saw + you before in my life. I kind of thought when you up and spoke to me you + must be taking me for somebody else. Well, now, isn't that funny—" +</p> +<p> + The smile faded from the girl's face, and it became twisted with fury. + She glared at Moran, her lips drawn back in a snarl. "Who're you to go + buttin' into my business! This guy's a friend of mine, I tell yuh!" +</p> +<p> + "Yeh? Well, he's a friend of mine, too. Me an' him had a date to meet + here right now and we're goin' over to a swell little dance on Michigan + Avenoo. So it's you who's buttin' in, Blanche, me girl." +</p> +<p> + The girl stood twisting her handkerchief savagely. She was panting a + little. "I'll get you for this." +</p> +<p> + "Beat it!" said Moran. He tucked his arm through Tyler's, with a little + impelling movement, and Tyler found himself walking up the street at a + smart gait, leaving the girl staring after them. +</p> +<p> + Tyler Kamps was an innocent, but he was not a fool. At what he had + vaguely guessed a moment before, he now knew. They walked along in + silence, the most ill-sorted pair that you might hope to find in all + that higgledy-piggledy city. And yet with a new, strong bond between + them. It was more than fraternal. It had something of the character of + the feeling that exists between a father and son who understand each + other. +</p> +<p> + Man-like, they did not talk of that which they were thinking. +</p> +<p> + Tyler broke the silence. +</p> +<p> + "Do you dance?" +</p> +<p> + "Me! Dance! Well, I've mixed with everything from hula dancers to geisha + girls, not forgettin' the Barbary Coast in the old days, but—well, I + ain't what you'd rightly call a dancer. Why you askin'?" +</p> +<p> + "Because I can't dance, either. But we'll just go up and see what it's + like, anyway." +</p> +<p> + "See wot wot's like?" +</p> +<p> + Tyler took out his card again, patiently. "This dance we're going to." +</p> +<p> + They had reached the Michigan Avenue address given on the card, and + Tyler stopped to look up at the great, brightly lighted building. Moran + stopped too, but for a different reason. He was staring, open-mouthed, + at Tyler Kamps. +</p> +<p> + "You mean t' say you thought I was goin'—" +</p> +<p> + He choked. "Oh, my Gawd!" +</p> +<p> + Tyler smiled at him, sweetly. "I'm kind of scared, too. But Monicker + goes to these dances and he says they're right nice. And lots of—of + pretty girls. Nice girls. I wouldn't go alone. But you—you're used to + dancing, and parties and—girls." +</p> +<p> + He linked his arm through the other man's. Moran allowed himself to be + propelled along, dazedly. Still protesting, he found himself in the + elevator with a dozen red-cheeked, scrubbed-looking jackies. At which + point Moran, game in the face of horror, accepted the inevitable. He + gave a characteristic jerk from the belt. +</p> +<p> + "Me, I'll try anything oncet. Lead me to it." +</p> +<p> + The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. "Out here for the jackies' + dance," said the elevator boy. +</p> +<p> + The two stepped out with the others. Stepped out gingerly, caps in hand. + A corridor full of women. A corridor a-flutter with girls. Talk. + Laughter. Animation. In another moment the two would have turned and + fled, terrified. But in that half-moment of hesitation and bewilderment + they were lost. +</p> +<p> + A woman approached them hand outstretched. A tall, slim, friendly + looking woman, low-voiced, silk-gowned, inquiring. +</p> +<p> + "Good-evening!" she said, as if she had been haunting the halls in the + hope of their coming. "I'm glad to see you. You can check your caps + right there. Do you dance?" +</p> +<p> + Two scarlet faces. Four great hands twisting at white caps in an agony + of embarrassment. "Why, no ma'am." +</p> +<p> + "That's fine. We'll teach you. Then you'll go into the ball room and + have a wonderful time." +</p> +<p> + "But—" in choked accents from Moran. +</p> +<p> + "Just a minute. Miss Hall!" She beckoned a diminutive blonde in blue. + "Miss Hall, this is Mr.—ah—Mr. Moran. Thanks. And Mr.?—yes—Mr. + Kamps. Tyler Kamps. They want to learn to dance. I'll turn them right + over to you. When does your class begin?" +</p> +<p> + Miss Hall glanced at a toy watch on the tiny wrist. Instinctively and + helplessly Moran and Tyler focused their gaze on the dials that bound + their red wrists. "Starting right now," said Miss Hall, crisply. She + eyed the two men with calm appraising gaze. "I'm sure you'll both make + wonderful dancers. Follow me." +</p> +<p> + She turned. There was something confident, dauntless, irresistible about + the straight little back. The two men stared at it. Then at each other. + Panic was writ large on the face of each. Panic, and mutiny. Flight was + in the mind of both. Miss Hall turned, smiled, held out a small white + hand. "Come on," she said. "Follow me." +</p> +<p> + And the two, as though hypnotised, followed. +</p> +<p> + A fair-sized room, with a piano in one corner and groups of fidgeting + jackies in every other corner. Moran and Tyler sighed with relief at + sight of them. At least they were not to be alone in their agony. +</p> +<p> + Miss Hall wasted no time. Slim ankles close together, head held high, + she stood in the centre of the room. "Now then, form a circle please!" +</p> +<p> + Twenty six-foot, well-built specimens of manhood suddenly became + shambling hulks. They clumped forward, breathing hard, and smiling + mirthlessly, with an assumption of ease that deceived no one, least of + all, themselves. "A little lively, please. Don't look so scared. I'm not + a bit vicious. Now then, Miss Weeks! A fox trot." +</p> +<p> + Miss Weeks, at the piano, broke into spirited strains. The first + faltering steps in the social career of Gunner Moran and Tyler Kamps had + begun. +</p> +<p> + To an onlooker, it might have been mirth-provoking if it hadn't been, + somehow, tear-compelling. The thing that little Miss Hall was doing + might have seemed trivial to one who did not know that it was + magnificent. It wasn't dancing merely that she was teaching these + awkward, serious, frightened boys. She was handing them a key that would + unlock the social graces. She was presenting them with a magic something + that would later act as an open sesame to a hundred legitimate delights. +</p> +<p> + She was strictly business, was Miss Hall. No nonsense about her. + "One-two-three-four! And a <i>one</i>-two <i>three</i>-four. One-two-three-four! + And a <i>turn</i>-two, <i>turn</i>-four. Now then, all together. Just four + straight steps as if you were walking down the street. That's it! + One-two-three-four! Don't look at me. Look at my feet. And a <i>one</i>-two + <i>three</i>-four." +</p> +<p> + Red-faced, they were. Very earnest. Pathetically eager and docile. Weeks + of drilling had taught them to obey commands. To them the little + dancing teacher whose white spats twinkled so expertly in the tangle of + their own clumsy clumping boots was more than a pretty girl. She was + knowledge. She was power. She was the commanding officer. And like + children they obeyed. +</p> +<p> + Moran's Barbary Coast experience stood him in good stead now, though the + stern and watchful Miss Hall put a quick stop to a certain tendency + toward shoulder work. Tyler possessed what is known as a rhythm sense. + An expert whistler is generally a natural dancer. Stella Kamps had + always waited for the sound of his cheerful whistle as he turned the + corner of Vernon Street. High, clear, sweet, true, he would approach his + top note like a Tettrazini until, just when you thought he could not + possibly reach that dizzy eminence he did reach it, and held it, and + trilled it, bird-like, in defiance of the laws of vocal equilibrium. +</p> +<p> + His dancing was much like that. Never a half-beat behind the + indefatigable Miss Weeks. It was a bit laboured, at first, but it was + true. Little Miss Hall, with the skilled eye of the specialist, picked + him at a glance. +</p> +<p> + "You've danced before?" +</p> +<p> + "No ma'am." +</p> +<p> + "Take the head of the line, please. Watch Mr. Kamps. Now then, all + together, please." +</p> +<p> + And they were off again. +</p> +<p> + At 9.45 Tyler Kamps and Gunner Moran were standing in the crowded + doorway of the ballroom upstairs, in a panic lest some girl should ask + them to dance; fearful lest they be passed by. Little Miss Hall had + brought them to the very door, had left them there with a stern + injunction not to move, and had sped away in search of partners for + them. +</p> +<p> + Gunner Moran's great scarlet hands were knotted into fists. His Adam's + apple worked convulsively. +</p> +<p> + "Le's duck," he whispered hoarsely. The jackie band in the corner + crashed into the opening bars of a fox trot. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, it don't seem—" But it was plain that Tyler was weakening. Another + moment and they would have turned and fled. But coming toward them was + little Miss Hall, her blonde head bobbing in and out among the swaying + couples. At her right and left was a girl. Her bright eyes held her two + victims in the doorway. They watched her approach, and were helpless to + flee. They seemed to be gripped by a horrible fascination. Their limbs + were fluid. +</p> +<p> + A sort of groan rent Moran. Miss Hall and the two girls stood before + them, cool, smiling, unruffled. +</p> +<p> + "Miss Cunningham, this is Mr. Tyler Kamps. Mr. Moran, Miss Cunningham. + Miss Drew—Mr. Moran, Mr. Kamps." +</p> +<p> + The boy and the man gulped, bowed, mumbled something. +</p> +<p> + "Would you like to dance?" said Miss Cunningham, and raised limpid eyes + to Tyler's. +</p> +<p> + "Why—I—you see I don't know how. I just started to—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, <i>that's</i> all right," Miss Cunningham interrupted, cheerfully. + "We'll try it." She stood in position and there seemed to radiate from + her a certain friendliness, a certain assurance and understanding that + was as calming as it was stimulating. In a sort of daze Tyler found + himself moving over the floor in time to the music. He didn't know that + he was being led, but he was. She didn't try to talk. He breathed a + prayer of thanks for that. She seemed to know, somehow, about those four + straight steps and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, + and turn-two, turn-four. He didn't know that he was counting aloud, + desperately. He didn't even know, just then, that this was a girl he was + dancing with. He seemed to move automatically, like a marionette. He + never was quite clear about those first ten minutes of his ballroom + experience. +</p> +<p> + The music ceased. A spat of applause. Tyler mopped his head, and his + hands, and applauded too, like one in a dream. They were off again for + the encore. +</p> +<p> + Five minutes later he found himself seated next Miss Cunningham in a + chair against the wall. And for the first time since their meeting the + mists of agony cleared before his gaze and he saw Miss Cunningham as a + tall, slim, dark-haired girl, with a glint of mischief in her eye, and a + mouth that looked as if she were trying to keep from smiling. +</p> +<p> + "Why don't you?" Tyler asked, and was aghast. +</p> +<p> + "Why don't I what?" +</p> +<p> + "Smile if you want to." +</p> +<p> + At which the glint in her eye and the hidden smile on her lips sort of + met and sparked and she laughed. Tyler laughed, too, and then they + laughed together and were friends. +</p> +<p> + Miss Cunningham's conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice + girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met + at a war recreation dance. Nothing could have been more commonplace or + unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would + have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison. +</p> +<p> + "Where are you from?" +</p> +<p> + "Why, I'm from Texas, ma'am. Marvin, Texas." +</p> +<p> + "Is that so? So many of the boys are from Texas. Are you out at the + station or on one of the boats?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm on the Station. Yes ma'am." +</p> +<p> + "Do you like the navy?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes ma'am, I do. I sure do. You know there isn't a drafted man in the + navy. No ma'am! We're all enlisted men." +</p> +<p> + "When do you think the war will end, Mr. Kamps?" +</p> +<p> + He told her, gravely. He told her many other things. He told her about + Texas, at length and in detail, being a true son of that Brobdingnagian + state. Your Texan born is a walking mass of statistics. Miss Cunningham + made a sympathetic and interested listener. Her brown eyes were round + and bright with interest. He told her that the distance from Texas to + Chicago was only half as far as from here to there in the state of Texas + itself. Yes <i>ma'am</i>! He had figures about tons of grain, and heads of + horses and herds of cattle. Why, say, you could take little ol' meachin' + Germany and tuck it away in a corner of Texas and you wouldn't any more + know it was there than if it was somebody's poor no-'count ranch. Why, + Big Y ranch alone would make the whole country of Germany look like a + cattle grazin' patch. It was bigger than all those countries in Europe + strung together, and every man in Texas would rather fight than eat. Yes + ma'am. Why, you couldn't hold 'em. +</p> +<p> + "My!" breathed Miss Cunningham. +</p> +<p> + They danced again. Miss Cunningham introduced him to some other girls, + and he danced with them, and they in turn asked him about the station, + and Texas, and when he thought the war would end. And altogether he had + a beautiful time of it, and forgot completely and entirely about Gunner + Moran. It was not until he gallantly escorted Miss Cunningham downstairs + for refreshments that he remembered his friend. He had procured hot + chocolate for himself and Miss Cunningham; and sandwiches, and + delectable chunks of caramel cake. And they were talking, and eating, + and laughing and enjoying themselves hugely, and Tyler had gone back for + more cake at the urgent invitation of the white-haired, pink-cheeked + woman presiding at the white-clothed table in the centre of the + charming room. And then he had remembered. A look of horror settled down + over his face. He gasped. +</p> +<p> + "W-what's the matter?" demanded Miss Cunningham. +</p> +<p> + "My—my friend. I forgot all about him." He regarded her with stricken + eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, that's all right," Miss Cunningham assured him for the second time + that evening. "We'll just go and find him. He's probably forgotten all + about you, too." +</p> +<p> + And for the second time she was right. They started on their quest. It + was a short one. Off the refreshment room was a great, gracious + comfortable room all deep chairs, and soft rugs, and hangings, and + pictures and shaded lights. All about sat pairs and groups of sailors + and girls, talking, and laughing and consuming vast quantities of cake. + And in the centre of just such a group sat Gunner Moran, lolling at his + ease in a rosy velvet-upholstered chair. His little finger was crookt + elegantly over his cup. A large and imposing square of chocolate cake in + the other hand did not seem to cramp his gestures as he talked. Neither + did the huge bites with which he was rapidly demolishing it seem in the + least to stifle his conversation. Four particularly pretty girls, and + two matrons surrounded him. And as Tyler and Miss Cunningham approached + him he was saying, "Well, it's got so I can't sleep in anything <i>but</i> a + hammick. Yessir! Why, when I was fifteen years old I was—" He caught + Tyler's eye. "Hello!" he called, genially. "Meet me friend." This to the + bevy surrounding him. "I was just tellin' these ladies here—" +</p> +<p> + And he was off again. All the tales that he told were not necessarily + true. But that did not detract from their thrill. Moran's audience grew + as he talked. And he talked until he and Tyler had to run all the way to + the Northwestern station for the last train that would get them on the + Station before shore leave expired. Moran, on leaving, shook hands like + a presidential candidate. +</p> +<p> + "I never met up with a finer bunch of ladies," he assured them, again + and again. "Sure I'm comin' back again. Ask me. I've had a elegant time. + Elegant. I never met a finer bunch of ladies." +</p> +<p> + They did not talk much in the train, he and Tyler. It was a sleepy lot + of boys that that train carried back to the Great Central Naval Station. + Tyler was undressed and in his hammock even before Moran, the expert. He + would not have to woo sleep to-night. Finally Moran, too, had swung + himself up to his precarious nest and relaxed with a tired, happy grunt. +</p> +<p> + Quiet again brooded over the great dim barracks. Tyler felt himself + slipping off to sleep, deliciously. She would be there next Saturday. + Her first name, she had said, was Myrtle. An awful pretty name for a + girl. Just about the prettiest he had ever heard. Her folks invited + jackies to dinner at the house nearly every Sunday. Maybe, if they gave + him thirty-six hours' leave next time— +</p> +<p> + "Hey, Sweetheart!" sounded in a hissing whisper from Moran's hammock. +</p> +<p> + "What?" +</p> +<p> + "Say, was that four steps and then turn-turn, or four and two steps t' + the side? I kinda forgot." +</p> +<p> + "O, shut up!" growled Monicker, from the other side. "Let a fellow + sleep, can't you! What do you think this is? A boarding school!" +</p> +<p> + "Shut up yourself!" retorted Tyler, happily. "It's four steps, and two + to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn two, turn + two." +</p> +<p> + "I was pretty sure," said Moran, humbly. And relaxed again. +</p> +<p> + Quiet settled down upon the great room. There were only the sounds of + deep regular breathing, with an occasional grunt or sigh. The normal + sleep sounds of very tired boys. +</p> +<p> </p> + +<center> + THE END +</center> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cheerful--By Request, by Edna Ferber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST *** + +***** This file should be named 11395-h.htm or 11395-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/3/9/11395/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Cheerful--By Request + +Author: Edna Ferber + +Release Date: March 1, 2004 [EBook #11395] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +CHEERFUL +BY REQUEST + + +By + +EDNA FERBER + + +AUTHOR OF "DAWN O'HARA," "BUTTERED SIDE DOWN" +"ROAST BEEF MEDIUM," "FANNY HERSELF" + + +1918 + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER + I. CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST + II. THE GAY OLD DOG + III. THE TOUGH GUY + IV. THE ELDEST + V. THAT'S MARRIAGE + VI. THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD + VII. THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT + VIII. THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK + IX. THE GUIDING MISS GOWD + X. SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN + XI. THE THREE OF THEM + XII. SHORE LEAVE + + + +CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST + + + +I + + +CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST + +The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh +cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from +the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a +Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of +business. + +"Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate. Dear +me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express +that which is in his--ah--heart. But in the last year we've been swamped +with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know, +about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on +the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen +sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked +up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I'm not +demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could--that is--would +you--do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful +story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. +Not pink, but not all grey either. Say--mauve." ... + +That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink. +Which makes mauve. + +Unless you are connected (which you probably are not) with the great +firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have heard +of Josie Fifer. + +There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A +statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special +writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce +courts--what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss +Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies +have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats for +breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson; pictures +of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage +hands rewriting it--long before the opening night we know more about the +piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager to +see it. + +Josie Fifer's knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the +ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the +birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to +the closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of +inanition, old age, or--as was sometimes the case--before it was born, +it was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the +grave. + +Her notification of its demise would come thus: + +"Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe" (the property man of H. & L. at the +phone). + +"Well?" + +"A little waspish this morning, aren't you, Josephine?" + +"I've got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 'Ataboy' company to +mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I'm +going to stand here wasting my--" + +"All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that 'My Mistake' +closes Saturday. The stuff'll be up Monday morning early." + +A sardonic laugh from Josie. "And yet they say 'What's in a name!'" + +The unfortunate play had been all that its title implies. Its purpose +was to star an actress who hadn't a glint. Her second-act costume alone +had cost $700, but even Russian sable bands can't carry a bad play. The +critics had pounced on it with the savagery of their kind and hacked it, +limb from limb, leaving its carcass to rot under the pitiless white +glare of Broadway. The dress with the Russian sable bands went the way +of all Hahn & Lohman tragedies. Josie Fifer received it, if not +reverently, still appreciatively. + +"I should think Sid Hahn would know by this time," she observed +sniffily, as her expert fingers shook out the silken folds and smoothed +the fabulous fur, "that auburn hair and a gurgle and a Lucille dress +don't make a play. Besides, Fritzi Kirke wears the biggest shoe of any +actress I ever saw. A woman with feet like that"--she picked up a satin +slipper, size 7-1/2 C--"hasn't any business on the stage. She ought to +travel with a circus. Here, Etta. Hang this away in D, next to the +amethyst blue velvet, and be sure and lock the door." + +McCabe had been right. A waspish wit was Josie's. + +The question is whether to reveal to you now where it was that Josie +Fifer reigned thus, queen of the cast-offs; or to take you back to the +days that led up to her being there--the days when she was Jose Fyfer on +the programme. + +Her domain was the storage warehouse of Hahn & Lohman, as you may have +guessed. If your business lay Forty-third Street way, you might have +passed the building a hundred times without once giving it a seeing +glance. It was not Forty-third Street of the small shops, the smart +crowds, and the glittering motors. It was the Forty-third lying east of +the Grand Central sluice gates; east of fashion; east, in a word, of +Fifth Avenue--a great square brick building smoke-grimed, cobwebbed, and +having the look of a cold-storage plant or a car barn fallen into +disuse; dusty, neglected, almost eerie. Yet within it lurks Romance, and +her sombre sister Tragedy, and their antic brother Comedy, the cut-up. + +A worn flight of wooden steps leads up from the sidewalk to the dim +hallway; a musty-smelling passage wherein you are met by a genial sign +which reads: + +"No admittance. Keep out. This means you." + +To confirm this, the eye, penetrating the gloom, is confronted by a +great blank metal door that sheathes the elevator. To ride in that +elevator is to know adventure, so painfully, so protestingly, with such +creaks and jerks and lurchings does it pull itself from floor to floor, +like an octogenarian who, grunting and groaning, hoists himself from his +easy-chair by slow stages that wring a protest from ankle, knee, hip, +back and shoulder. The corkscrew stairway, broken and footworn though it +is, seems infinitely less perilous. + +First floor--second--third--fourth. Whew! And there you are in Josie +Fifer's kingdom--a great front room, unexpectedly bright and even cosy +with its whir of sewing machines: tables, and tables, and tables, piled +with orderly stacks of every sort of clothing, from shoes to hats, from +gloves to parasols; and in the room beyond this, and beyond that, and +again beyond that, row after row of high wooden cabinets stretching the +width of the room, and forming innumerable aisles. All of Bluebeard's +wives could have been tucked away in one corner of the remotest and +least of these, and no one the wiser. All grimly shut and locked, they +are, with the key in Josie's pocket. But when, at the behest of McCabe, +or sometimes even Sid Hahn himself, she unlocked and opened one of +these doors, what treasures hung revealed! What shimmer and sparkle and +perfume--and moth balls! The long-tailed electric light bulb held high +in one hand, Josie would stand at the door like a priestess before her +altar. + +There they swung, the ghosts and the skeletons, side by side. You +remember that slinking black satin snakelike sheath that Gita Morini +wore in "Little Eyolf"? There it dangles, limp, invertebrate, yet how +eloquent! No other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with +its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin +collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it +she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a +long, long time. + +Dresses there are that have made stage history. Surely you remember the +beruffled, rose-strewn confection in which the beautiful Elsa Marriott +swam into our ken in "Mississipp'"? She used to say, wistfully, that she +always got a hand on her entrance in that dress. It was due to the sheer +shock of delight that thrilled audience after audience as it beheld her +loveliness enhanced by this floating, diaphanous tulle cloud. There it +hangs, time-yellowed, its pristine freshness vanished quite, yet as +fragrant with romance as is the sere and withered blossom of a dead +white rose pressed within the leaves of a book of love poems. Just next +it, incongruously enough, flaunt the wicked froufrou skirts and the +low-cut bodice and the wasp waist of the abbreviated costume in which +Cora Kassell used so generously to display her charms. A rich and portly +society matron of Pittsburgh now--she whose name had been a synonym for +pulchritude these thirty years; she who had had more cold creams, hats, +cigars, corsets, horses, and lotions named for her than any woman in +history! Her ample girth would have wrought sad havoc with that +eighteen-inch waist now. Gone are the chaste curves of the slim white +silk legs that used to kick so lithely from the swirl of lace and +chiffon. Yet there it hangs, pertly pathetic, mute evidence of her +vanished youth, her delectable beauty, and her unblushing confidence in +those same. + +Up one aisle and down the next--velvet, satin, lace and broadcloth--here +the costume the great Canfield had worn in Richard III; there the little +cocked hat and the slashed jerkin in which Maude Hammond, as Peterkins, +winged her way to fame up through the hearts of a million children whose +ages ranged from seven to seventy. Brocades and ginghams; tailor suits +and peignoirs; puffed sleeves and tight--dramatic history, all, they +spelled failure, success, hope, despair, vanity, pride, triumph, decay. +Tragic ghosts, over which Josie Fifer held grim sway! + +Have I told you that Josie Fifer, moving nimbly about the great +storehouse, limped as she went? The left leg swung as a normal leg +should. The right followed haltingly, sagging at hip and knee. And that +brings us back to the reason for her being where she was. And what. + +The story of how Josie Fifer came to be mistress of the cast-off robes +of the firm of Hahn & Lohman is one of those stage tragedies that never +have a public performance. Josie had been one of those little girls who +speak pieces at chicken-pie suppers held in the basement of the +Presbyterian church. Her mother had been a silly, idle woman addicted to +mother hubbards and paper-backed novels about the house. Her one passion +was the theatre, a passion that had very scant opportunity for feeding +in Wapello, Iowa. Josie's piece-speaking talent was evidently a direct +inheritance. Some might call it a taint. + +Two days before one of Josie's public appearances her mother would twist +the child's hair into innumerable rag curlers that stood out in +grotesque, Topsy-like bumps all over her fair head. On the eventful +evening each rag chrysalis would burst into a full-blown butterfly curl. +In a pale-blue, lace-fretted dress over a pale-blue slip, made in what +her mother called "Empire style," Josie would deliver herself of +"Entertaining Big Sister's Beau" and other sophisticated classics with +an incredible ease and absence of embarrassment. It wasn't a definite +boldness in her. She merely liked standing there before all those +people, in her blue dress and her toe slippers, speaking her pieces with +enhancing gestures taught her by her mother in innumerable rehearsals. + +Any one who has ever lived in Wapello, Iowa, or its equivalent, +remembers the old opera house on the corner of Main and Elm, with +Schroeder's drug store occupying the first floor. Opera never came +within three hundred miles of Wapello, unless it was the so-called +comic kind. It was before the day of the ubiquitous moving-picture +theatre that has since been the undoing of the one-night stand +and the ten-twenty-thirty stock company. The old red-brick opera +house furnished unlimited thrills for Josie and her mother. From +the time Josie was seven she was taken to see whatever Wapello was +offered in the way of the drama. That consisted mostly of plays of the +tell-me-more-about-me-mother type. + +By the time she was ten she knew the whole repertoire of the Maude La +Vergne Stock Company by heart. She was _blase_ with "East Lynne" and +"The Two Orphans," and even "Camille" left her cold. She was as wise to +the trade tricks as is a New York first nighter. She would sit there in +the darkened auditorium of a Saturday afternoon, surveying the stage +with a judicious and undeceived eye, as she sucked indefatigably at a +lollipop extracted from the sticky bag clutched in one moist palm. (A +bag of candy to each and every girl; a ball or a top to each and every +boy!) Josie knew that the middle-aged _soubrette_ who came out between +the first and second acts to sing a gingham-and-sunbonnet song would +whisk off to reappear immediately in knee-length pink satin and curls. +When the heroine left home in a shawl and a sudden snowstorm that +followed her upstage and stopped when she went off, Josie was +interested, but undeceived. She knew that the surprised-looking white +horse used in the Civil War comedy-drama entitled "His Southern +Sweetheart" came from Joe Brink's livery stable in exchange for four +passes, and that the faithful old negro servitor in the white cotton wig +would save somebody from something before the afternoon was over. + +In was inevitable that as Josie grew older she should take part in +home-talent plays. It was one of these tinsel affairs that had made +clear to her just where her future lay. The Wapello _Daily Courier_ +helped her in her decision. She had taken the part of a gipsy queen, +appropriately costumed in slightly soiled white satin slippers with +four-inch heels, and a white satin dress enhanced by a red sash, a black +velvet bolero, and large hoop earrings. She had danced and sung with a +pert confidence, and the _Courier_ had pronounced her talents not +amateur, but professional, and had advised the managers (who, no doubt, +read the Wapello _Courier_ daily, along with their _Morning Telegraph_) +to seek her out, and speedily. + +Josie didn't wait for them to take the hint. She sought them out +instead. There followed seven tawdry, hard-working, heartbreaking years. +Supe, walk-on, stock, musical comedy--Josie went through them all. If +any illusions about the stage had survived her Wapello days, they would +have vanished in the first six months of her dramatic career. By the +time she was twenty-four she had acquired the wisdom of fifty, a +near-seal coat, a turquoise ring with a number of smoky-looking crushed +diamonds surrounding it, and a reputation for wit and for decency. The +last had cost the most. + +During all these years of cheap theatrical boarding houses (the most +soul-searing cheapness in the world), of one-night stands, of insult, +disappointment, rebuff, and something that often came perilously near to +want, Josie Fifer managed to retain a certain humorous outlook on life. +There was something whimsical about it. She could even see a joke on +herself. When she first signed her name Jose Fyfer, for example, she did +it with, an appreciative giggle and a glint in her eye as she formed the +accent mark over the e. + +"They'll never stop me now," she said. "I'm made. But I wish I knew if +that J was pronounced like H, in humbug. Are there any Spanish blondes?" + +It used to be the habit of the other women in the company to say to her: +"Jo, I'm blue as the devil to-day. Come on, give us a laugh." + +She always obliged. + +And then came a Sunday afternoon in late August when her laugh broke off +short in the middle, and was forever after a stunted thing. + +She was playing Atlantic City in a second-rate musical show. She had +never seen the ocean before, and she viewed it now with an appreciation +that still had in it something of a Wapello freshness. + +They all planned to go in bathing that hot August afternoon after +rehearsal. Josie had seen pictures of the beauteous bathing girl dashing +into the foaming breakers. She ran across the stretch of glistening +beach, paused and struck a pose, one toe pointed waterward, her arms +extended affectedly. + +"So!" she said mincingly. "So this is Paris!" + +It was a new line in those days, and they all laughed, as she had meant +they should. So she leaped into the water with bounds and shouts and +much waving of white arms. A great floating derelict of a log struck her +leg with its full weight, and with all the tremendous force of the +breaker behind it. She doubled up ridiculously, and went down like a +shot. Those on the beach laughed again. When she came up, and they saw +her distorted face they stopped laughing, and fished her out. Her leg +was broken in two places, and mashed in a dozen. + +Jose Fyfer's dramatic career was over. (This is not the cheery portion +of the story.) + +When she came out of the hospital, three months later, she did very +well indeed with her crutches. But the merry-eyed woman had +vanished--she of the Wapello colouring that had persisted during +all these years. In her place limped a wan, shrunken, tragic little +figure whose humour had soured to a caustic wit. The near-seal coat and +the turquoise-and-crushed-diamond ring had vanished too. + +During those agonized months she had received from the others in +the company such kindness and generosity as only stage folk can +show--flowers, candy, dainties, magazines, sent by every one from the +prima donna to the call boy. Then the show left town. There came a few +letters of kind inquiry, then an occasional post card, signed by half a +dozen members of the company. Then these ceased. Josie Fifer, in her +cast and splints and bandages and pain, dragged out long hospital days +and interminable hospital nights. She took a dreary pleasure in +following the tour of her erstwhile company via the pages of the +theatrical magazines. + +"They're playing Detroit this week," she would announce to the aloof and +spectacled nurse. Or: "One-night stands, and they're due in Muncie, +Ind., to-night. I don't know which is worse--playing Muncie for one +night or this moan factory for a three month's run." + +When she was able to crawl out as far as the long corridor she spoke to +every one she met. As she grew stronger she visited here and there, and +on the slightest provocation she would give a scene ranging all the way +from "Romeo and Juliet" to "The Black Crook." It was thus she first met +Sid Hahn, and felt the warming, healing glow of his friendship. + +Some said that Sid Hahn's brilliant success as a manager at thirty-five +was due to his ability to pick winners. Others thought it was his +refusal to be discouraged when he found he had picked a failure. Still +others, who knew him better, were likely to say: "Why, I don't know. +It's a sort of--well, you might call it charm--and yet--. Did you ever see +him smile? He's got a million-dollar grin. You can't resist it." + +None of them was right. Or all of them. Sid Hahn, erstwhile usher, call +boy, press agent, advance man, had a genius for things theatrical. It +was inborn. Dramatic, sensitive, artistic, intuitive, he was often +rendered inarticulate by the very force and variety of his feelings. A +little, rotund, ugly man, Sid Hahn, with the eyes of a dreamer, the +wide, mobile mouth of a humourist, the ears of a comic ol'-clo'es man. +His generosity was proverbial, and it amounted to a vice. + +In September he had come to Atlantic City to try out "Splendour." It was +a doubtful play, by a new author, starring Sarah Haddon for the first +time. No one dreamed the play would run for years, make a fortune for +Hahn, lift Haddon from obscurity to the dizziest heights of stardom, and +become a classic of the stage. + +Ten minutes before the curtain went up on the opening performance Hahn +was stricken with appendicitis. There was not even time to rush him to +New York. He was on the operating table before the second act was +begun. When he came out of the ether he said: "How did it go?" + +"Fine!" beamed the nurse. "You'll be out in two weeks." + +"Oh, hell! I don't mean the operation. I mean the play." + +He learned soon enough from the glowing, starry-eyed Sarah Haddon and +from every one connected with the play. He insisted on seeing them all +daily, against his doctor's orders, and succeeded in working up a +temperature that made his hospital stay a four weeks' affair. He refused +to take the tryout results as final. + +"Don't be too bubbly about this thing," he cautioned Sarah Haddon. "I've +seen too many plays that were skyrockets on the road come down like +sticks when they struck New York." + +The company stayed over in Atlantic City for a week, and Hahn held +scraps of rehearsals in his room when he had a temperature of 102. Sarah +Haddon worked like a slave. She seemed to realise that her great +opportunity had come--the opportunity for which hundreds of gifted +actresses wait a lifetime. Haddon was just twenty-eight then--a year +younger than Josie Fifer. She had not yet blossomed into the full +radiance of her beauty. She was too slender, and inclined to stoop a +bit, but her eyes were glorious, her skin petal-smooth, her whole face +reminding one, somehow, of an intelligent flower. Her voice was a +golden, liquid delight. + +Josie Fifer, dragging herself from bed to chair, and from chair to bed, +used to watch for her. Hahn's room was on her floor. Sarah Haddon, in +her youth and beauty and triumph, represented to Josie all that she had +dreamed of and never realised; all that she had hoped for and never +could know. She used to insist on having her door open, and she would +lie there for hours, her eyes fixed on that spot in the hall across +which Haddon would flash for one brief instant on her way to the room +down the corridor. There is about a successful actress a certain radiant +something--a glamour, a luxuriousness, an atmosphere that suggest a +mysterious mixture of silken things, of perfume, of adulation, of all +that is rare and costly and perishable and desirable. + +Josie Fifer's stage experience had included none of this. But she knew +they were there. She sensed that to this glorious artist would come all +those fairy gifts that Josie Fifer would never possess. All things about +her--her furs, her gloves, her walk, her hats, her voice, her very shoe +ties--were just what Josie would have wished for. As she lay there she +developed a certain grim philosophy. + +"She's got everything a woman could wish for. Me, I haven't got a thing. +Not a blamed thing! And yet they say everything works out in the end +according to some scheme or other. Well, what's the answer to this, I +wonder? I can't make it come out right. I guess one of the figures must +have got away from me." + +In the second week of Sid Hahn's convalescence he heard, somehow, of +Josie Fifer. It was characteristic of him that he sent for her. She put +a chiffon scarf about the neck of her skimpy little kimono, spent an +hour and ten minutes on her hair, made up outrageously with that sublime +unconsciousness that comes from too close familiarity with rouge pad and +grease jar, and went. She was trembling as though facing a first-night +audience in a part she wasn't up on. Between the crutches, the lameness, +and the trembling she presented to Sid Hahn, as she stood in the +doorway, a picture that stabbed his kindly, sensitive heart with a quick +pang of sympathy. + +He held out his hand. Josie's crept into it. At the feel of that +generous friendly clasp she stopped trembling. Said Hahn: + +"My nurse tells me that you can do a bedside burlesque of 'East Lynne' +that made even that Boston-looking interne with the thick glasses laugh. +Go on and do it for me, there's a good girl. I could use a laugh myself +just now." + +And Josie Fifer caught up a couch cover for a cloak, with the scarf that +was about her neck for a veil, and, using Hahn himself as the ailing +chee-ild, gave a biting burlesque of the famous bedside visit that +brought the tears of laughter to his eyes, and the nurse flying from +down the hall. "This won't do," said that austere person. + +"Won't, eh? Go on and stick your old thermometer in my mouth. What do I +care! A laugh like that is worth five degrees of temperature." + +When Josie rose to leave he eyed her keenly, and pointed to the dragging +leg. + +"How about that? Temporary or permanent?" + +"Permanent." + +"Oh, fudge! Who's telling you that? These days they can do--" + +"Not with this, though. That one bone was mashed into about twenty-nine +splinters, and when it came to putting 'em together again a couple of +pieces were missing. I must've mislaid 'em somewhere. Anyway, I make a +limping exit--for life." + +"Then no more stage for you--eh, my girl?" + +"No more stage." + +Hahn reached for a pad of paper on the table at his bedside, scrawled a +few words on it, signed it "S.H." in the fashion which became famous, +and held the paper out to her. + +"When you get out of here," he said, "you come to New York, and up to my +office; see? Give 'em this at the door. I've got a job for you--if you +want it." + +And that was how Josie Fifer came to take charge of the great Hahn & +Lohman storehouse. It was more than a storehouse. It was a museum. It +housed the archives of the American stage. If Hahn & Lohman prided +themselves on one thing more than on another, it was the lavish +generosity with which they invested a play, from costumes to carpets. A +period play was a period play when they presented it. You never saw a +French clock on a Dutch mantel in a Hahn & Lohman production. No hybrid +hangings marred their back drop. No matter what the play, the firm +provided its furnishings from the star's slippers to the chandeliers. +Did a play last a year or a week, at the end of its run furniture, +hangings, scenery, rugs, gowns, everything, went off in wagonloads to +the already crowded storehouse on East Forty-third Street. + +Sometimes a play proved so popular that its original costumes, outworn, +had to be renewed. Sometimes the public cried "Thumbs down!" at the +opening performance, and would have none of it thereafter. That meant +that costumes sometimes reached Josie Fifer while the wounds of the +dressmaker's needle still bled in them. And whether for a week or a year +fur on a Hahn & Lohman costume was real fur; its satin was silk-backed, +its lace real lace. No paste, or tinsel, or cardboard about H. & L.! +Josie Fifer could recall the scenes in a play, step by step from noting +with her keen eye the marks left on costume after costume by the ravages +of emotion. At the end of a play's run she would hold up a dress for +critical inspection, turning it this way and that. + +"This is the dress she wore in her big scene at the end of the second +act where she crawls on her knees to her wronged husband and pounds on +the door and weeps. She certainly did give it some hard wear. When +Marriott crawls she crawls, and when she bawls she bawls. I'll say that +for her. From the looks of this front breadth she must have worn a +groove in the stage at the York." + +No gently sentimental reason caused Hahn & Lohman to house these +hundreds of costumes, these tons of scenery, these forests of furniture. +Neither had Josie Fifer been hired to walk wistfully among them like a +spinster wandering in a dead rose garden. No, they were stored for a +much thriftier reason. They were stored, if you must know, for possible +future use. H. & L. were too clever not to use a last year's costume for +a this year's road show. They knew what a coat of enamel would do for a +bedroom set. It was Josie Fifer's duty not only to tabulate and care for +these relics, but to refurbish them when necessary. The sewing was done +by a little corps of assistants under Josie's direction. + +But all this came with the years. When Josie Fifer, white and weak, +first took charge of the H. & L. _lares et penates_, she told herself it +was only for a few months--a year or two at most. The end of sixteen +years found her still there. + +When she came to New York, "Splendour" was just beginning its phenomenal +three years' run. The city was mad about the play. People came to see +it again and again--a sure sign of a long run. The Sarah Haddon second-act +costume was photographed, copied (unsuccessfully), talked about, until +it became as familiar as a uniform. That costume had much to do +with the play's success, though Sarah Haddon would never admit it. +"Splendour" was what is known as a period play. The famous dress was of +black velvet, made with a quaint, full-gathered skirt that made Haddon's +slim waist seem fairylike and exquisitely supple. The black velvet +bodice outlined the delicate swell of the bust. A rope of pearls +enhanced the whiteness of her throat. Her hair, done in old-time +scallops about her forehead, was a gleaming marvel of simplicity, and +the despair of every woman who tried to copy it. The part was that of an +Italian opera singer. The play pulsated with romance and love, glamour +and tragedy. Sarah Haddon, in her flowing black velvet robe and her +pearls and her pallor, was an exotic, throbbing, exquisite realisation +of what every woman in the audience dreamed of being and every man +dreamed of loving. + +Josie Fifer saw the play for the first time from a balcony seat given +her by Sid Hahn. It left her trembling, red-eyed, shaken. After that she +used to see it, by hook or crook whenever possible. She used to come in +at the stage door and lurk back of the scenes and in the wings when she +had no business there. She invented absurd errands to take her to the +theatre where "Splendour" was playing. Sid Hahn always said that after +the big third-act scene he liked to watch the audience swim up the +aisle. Josie, hidden in the back-stage shadows, used to watch, +fascinated, breathless. Then, one night, she indiscreetly was led, by +her, absorbed interest, to venture too far into the wings. It was +during the scene where Haddon, hearing a broken-down street singer +cracking the golden notes of "Aida" into a thousand mutilated fragments, +throws open her window and, leaning far out, pours a shower of Italian +and broken English and laughter and silver coin upon her amazed +compatriot below. + +When the curtain went down she came off raging. + +"What was that? Who was that standing in the wings? How dare any one +stand there! Everybody knows I can't have any one in the wings. Staring! +It ruined my scene to-night. Where's McCabe? Tell Mr. Hahn I want to see +him. Who was it? Staring at me like a ghost!" + +Josie had crept away, terrified, contrite, and yet resentful. But the +next week saw her back at the theatre, though she took care to stay in +the shadows. + +She was waiting for the black velvet dress. It was more than a dress to +her. It was infinitely more than a stage costume. It was the habit of +glory. It epitomised all that Josie Fifer had missed of beauty and +homage and success. + +The play ran on, and on, and on. Sarah Haddon was superstitious about +the black gown. She refused to give it up for a new one. She insisted +that if ever she discarded the old black velvet for a new the run of the +play would stop. She assured Hahn that its shabbiness did not show from +the front. She clung to it with that childish unreasonableness that is +so often found in people of the stage. + +But Josie waited patiently. Dozens of costumes passed through her +hands. She saw plays come and go. Dresses came to her whose lining bore +the mark of world-famous modistes. She hung them away, or refurbished +them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness. Sometimes her +caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the complacency of +the erstwhile wearers of the garments. Her knowledge of the stage, its +artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was widening and +deepening. No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening clothes was more +scathingly severe than she. She sewed on satin. She mended fine lace. +She polished stage jewels. And waited. She knew that one day her +patience would be rewarded. And then, at last came the familiar voice +over the phone: "Hello, Fifer! McCabe talking." + +"Well?" + +"'Splendour' closes Saturday. Haddon says she won't play in this heat. +They're taking it to London in the autumn. The stuff'll be up Monday, +early." + +Josie Fifer turned away from the telephone with a face so radiant that +one of her sewing women, looking up, was moved to comment. + +"Got some good news, Miss Fifer?" + +"'Splendour' closes this week." + +"Well, my land! To look at you a person would think you'd been losing +money at the box office every night it ran." + +The look was still on her face when Monday morning came. She was sewing +on a dress just discarded by Adelaide French, the tragedienne. +Adelaide's maid was said to be the hardest-worked woman in the +profession. When French finished with a costume it was useless as a +dress; but it was something historic, like a torn and tattered battle +flag--an emblem. + +McCabe, box under his arm, stood in the doorway. Josie Fifer stood up so +suddenly that the dress on her lap fell to the floor. She stepped over +it heedlessly, and went toward McCabe, her eyes on the pasteboard box. +Behind McCabe stood two more men, likewise box-laden. + +"Put them down here," said Josie. The men thumped the boxes down on the +long table. Josie's fingers were already at the strings. She opened the +first box, emptied its contents, tossed them aside, passed on to the +second. Her hands busied themselves among the silks and broadcloth of +this; then on to the third and last box. McCabe and his men, with +scenery and furniture still to unload and store, turned to go. Their +footsteps echoed hollowly as they clattered down the worn old stairway. +Josie snapped the cord that bound the third box. Her cheeks were +flushed, her eyes bright. She turned it upside down. Then she pawed it +over. Then she went back to the contents of the first two boxes, clawing +about among the limp garments with which the table was strewn. She was +breathing quickly. Suddenly: "It isn't here!" she cried. "It isn't +here!" She turned and flew to the stairway. The voices of the men came +up to her. She leaned far over the railing. "McCabe! McCabe!" + +"Yeh? What do you want?" + +"The black velvet dress! The black velvet dress! It isn't there." + +"Oh, yeh. That's all right. Haddon, she's got a bug about that dress, +and she says she wants to take it to London with her, to use on the +opening night. She says if she wears a new one that first night, the +play'll be a failure. Some temperament, that girl, since she's got to be +a star!" + +Josie stood clutching the railing of the stairway. Her disappointment +was so bitter that she could not weep. She felt cheated, outraged. She +was frightened at the intensity of her own sensations. "She might have +let me have it," she said aloud in the dim half light of the hallway. +"She's got everything else in the world. She might have let me have +that." + +Then she went back into the big, bright sewing room. "Splendour" ran +three years in London. + +During those three years she saw Sid Hahn only three or four times. He +spent much of his time abroad. Whenever opportunity presented itself she +would say: "Is 'Splendour' still playing in London?" + +"Still playing." + +The last time Hahn, intuitive as always, had eyed her curiously. "You +seem to be interested in that play." + +"Oh, well," Josie had replied with assumed carelessness, "it being in +Atlantic City just when I had my accident, and then meeting you through +that, and all, why, I always kind of felt a personal interest in it." ... + +At the end of three years Sarah Haddon returned to New York with an +English accent, a slight embonpoint, and a little foreign habit of +rushing up to her men friends with a delighted exclamation (preferably +French) and kissing them on both cheeks. When Josie Fifer, happening +back stage at a rehearsal of the star's new play, first saw her do this +a grim gleam came into her eyes. + +"Bernhardt's the only woman who can spring that and get away with it," +she said to her assistant. "Haddon's got herself sized up wrong. I'll +gamble her next play will be a failure." + +And it was. + +The scenery, props, and costumes of the London production of "Splendour" +were slow in coming back. But finally they did come. Josie received them +with the calmness that comes of hope deferred. It had been three years +since she last saw the play. She told herself, chidingly, that she had +been sort of foolish over that play and this costume. Her recent glimpse +of Haddon had been somewhat disillusioning. But now, when she finally +held the gown itself in her hand--the original "Splendour" second-act +gown, a limp, soft black mass: just a few yards of worn and shabby +velvet--she found her hands shaking. Here was where she had hugged the +toy dog to her breast. Here where she had fallen on her knees to pray +before the little shrine in her hotel room. Every worn spot had a +meaning for her. Every mark told a story. Her fingers smoothed it +tenderly. + +"Not much left of that," said one of the sewing girls, glancing up. "I +guess Sarah would have a hard time making the hooks and eyes meet now. +They say she's come home from London looking a little too prosperous." + +Josie did not answer. She folded the dress over her arm and carried it +to the wardrobe room. There she hung it away in an empty closet, quite +apart from the other historic treasures. And there it hung, untouched, +until the following Sunday. + +On Sunday morning East Forty-third Street bears no more resemblance to +the week-day Forty-third than does a stiffly starched and subdued +Sabbath-school scholar to his Monday morning self. Strangely quiet it +is, and unfrequented. Josie Fifer, scurrying along in the unwonted +stillness, was prompted to throw a furtive glance over her shoulder now +and then, as though afraid of being caught at some criminal act. She ran +up the little flight of steps with a rush, unlocked the door with +trembling fingers, and let herself into the cool, dank gloom of the +storehouse hall. The metal door of the elevator stared inquiringly after +her. She fled past it to the stairway. Every step of that ancient +structure squeaked and groaned. First floor, second, third, fourth. The +everyday hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be +holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the +worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to +see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, +wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast +room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous +little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a +near-by table and disappeared into the wardrobe room beyond. + +Minutes passed--an hour. She did not come back. From the room beyond +came strange sounds--a woman's voice; the thrill of a song; cries; the +anguish of tears; laughter, harsh and high, as a desperate and deceived +woman laughs--all this following in such rapid succession that Sid Hahn, +puffing laboriously up the four flights of stairs leading to the +wardrobe floor, entered the main room unheard. Unknown to any one, he +was indulging in one of his unsuspected visits to the old wareroom that +housed the evidence of past and gone successes--successes that had +brought him fortune and fame, but little real happiness, perhaps. No one +knew that he loved to browse among these pathetic rags of a forgotten +triumph. No one would have dreamed that this chubby little man could +glow and weep over the cast-off garment of a famous Cyrano, or the faded +finery of a Zaza. + +At the doorway he paused now, startled. He was listening with every +nerve of his taut body. What? Who? He tiptoed across the room with a +step incredibly light for one so stout, peered cautiously around the +side of the doorway, and leaned up against it weakly. Josie Fifer, in +the black velvet and mock pearls of "Splendour," with her grey-streaked +blonde hair hidden under the romantic scallops of a black wig, was +giving the big scene from the third act. And though it sounded like a +burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever +as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black +wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy +awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in +Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. He shrank back now. + +She was coming to the big speech at the close of the act--the big +renunciation speech that was the curtain. Sid Hahn turned and tiptoed +painfully, breathlessly, magnificently, out of the big front room, into +the hallway, down the creaking stairs, and so to the sunshine of +Forty-third Street, with its unaccustomed Sunday-morning quiet. And he +was smiling that rare and melting smile of his--the smile that was said +to make him look something like a kewpie, and something like a cupid, +and a bit like an imp, and very much like an angel. There was little of +the first three in it now, and very much of the last. And so he got +heavily into his very grand motor car and drove off. + +"Why, the poor little kid," said he--"the poor, lonely, stifled little +crippled-up kid." + +"I beg your pardon, sir?" inquired his chauffeur. + +"Speak when you're spoken to," snapped Sid Hahn. + +And here it must be revealed to you that Sid Hahn did not marry the +Cinderella of the storage warehouse. He did not marry anybody, and +neither did Josie. And yet there is a bit more to this story--ten years +more, if you must know--ten years, the end of which found Josie a +sparse, spectacled, and agile little cripple, as alert and caustic as +ever. It found Sid Hahn the most famous theatrical man of his day. It +found Sarah Haddon at the fag-end of a career that had blazed with +triumph and adulation. She had never had a success like "Splendour." +Indeed, there were those who said that all the plays that followed had +been failures, carried to semi-success on the strength of that play's +glorious past. She eschewed low-cut gowns now. She knew that it is the +telltale throat which first shows the marks of age. She knew, too, why +Bernhardt, in "Camille," always died in a high-necked nightgown. She +took to wearing high, ruffled things about her throat, and softening, +kindly chiffons. + +And then, in a mistaken moment, they planned a revival of "Splendour." +Sarah Haddon would again play the part that had become a classic. +Fathers had told their children of it--of her beauty, her golden voice, +the exquisite grace of her, the charm, the tenderness, the pathos. And +they told them of the famous black velvet dress, and how in it she had +moved like a splendid, buoyant bird. + +So they revived "Splendour." And men and women brought their sons and +daughters to see. And what they saw was a stout, middle-aged woman in a +too-tight black velvet dress that made her look like a dowager. And when +this woman flopped down on her knees in the big scene at the close of +the last act she had a rather dreadful time of it getting up again. +And the audience, resentful, bewildered, cheated of a precious memory, +laughed. That laugh sealed the career of Sarah Haddon. It is a +fickle thing, this public that wants to be amused; fickle and cruel +and--paradoxically enough--true to its superstitions. The Sarah Haddon +of eighteen years ago was one of these. They would have none of this +fat, puffy, ample-bosomed woman who was trying to blot her picture from +their memory. "Away with her!" cried the critics through the columns of +next morning's paper. And Sarah Haddon's day was done. + +"It's because I didn't wear the original black velvet dress!" cried she, +with the unreasoning rage for which she had always been famous. "If I +had worn it, everything would have been different. That dress had a +good-luck charm. Where is it? I want it. I don't care if they do take +off the play. I want it. I want it." + +"Why, child," Sid Hahn said soothingly, "that dress has probably fallen +into dust by this time." + +"Dust! What do you mean? How old do you think I am? That you should say +that to me! I've made millions for you, and now--" + +"Now, now, Sally, be a good girl. That's all rot about that dress being +lucky. You've grown out of this part; that's all. We'll find another +play--" + +"I want that dress." + +Sid Hahn flushed uncomfortably. "Well, if you must know, I gave it +away." + +"To whom?" + +"To--to Josie Fifer. She took a notion to it, and so I told her she +could have it." Then, as Sarah Haddon rose, dried her eyes, and began to +straighten her hat: "Where are you going?" He trailed her to the door +worriedly. "Now, Sally, don't do anything foolish. You're just tired and +overstrung. Where are you--" + +"I am going to see Josie Fifer." + +"Now, look here, Sarah!" + +But she was off, and Sid Hahn could only follow after, the showman in +him anticipating the scene that was to follow. When he reached the +fourth floor of the storehouse Sarah Haddon was there ahead of him. The +two women--one tall, imperious, magnificent in furs; the other shrunken, +deformed, shabby--stood staring at each other from opposites sides of +the worktable. And between them, in a crumpled, grey-black heap, lay the +velvet gown. + +"I don't care who says you can have it," Josie Fifer's shrill voice was +saying. "It's mine, and I'm going to keep it. Mr. Hahn himself gave it +to me. He said I could cut it up for a dress or something if I wanted +to. Long ago." Then, as Sid Hahn himself appeared, she appealed to him. +"There he is now. Didn't you, Mr. Hahn? Didn't you say I could have it? +Years ago?" + +"Yes, Jo," said Sid Hahn. "It's yours, to do with as you wish." + +Sarah Haddon, who never had been denied anything in all her pampered +life, turned to him now. Her bosom rose and fell. She was breathing +sharply. "But S.H.!" she cried, "S.H., I've got to have it. Don't you +see, I want it! It's all I've got left in the world of what I used to +be. I want it!" She began to cry, and it was not acting. + +Josie Fifer stood staring at her, her eyes wide with horror and +unbelief. + +"Why, say, listen! Listen! You can have it. I didn't know you wanted it +as bad as that. Why, you can have it. I want you to take it. Here." + +She shoved it across the table. Sarah reached out for it quickly. She +rolled it up in a tight bundle and whisked off with it without a +backward glance at Josie or at Hahn. She was still sobbing as she went +down the stairs. + +The two stood staring at each other ludicrously. Hahn spoke first. + +"I'm sorry, Josie. That was nice of you, giving it to her like that." + +But Josie did not seem to hear. At least she paid no attention to his +remark. She was staring at him with that dazed and wide-eyed look of +one upon whom a great truth has just dawned. Then, suddenly, she began +to laugh. She laughed a high, shrill laugh that was not so much an +expression of mirth as of relief. + +Sid Hahn put up a pudgy hand in protest. "Josie! Please! For the love of +Heaven don't _you_ go and get it. I've had to do with one hysterical +woman to-day. Stop that laughing! Stop it!" + +Josie stopped, not abruptly, but in a little series of recurring +giggles. Then these subsided and she was smiling. It wasn't at all her +usual smile. The bitterness was quite gone from it. She faced Sid Hahn +across the table. Her palms were outspread, as one who would make things +plain. "I wasn't hysterical. I was just laughing. I've been about +seventeen years earning that laugh. Don't grudge it to me." + +"Let's have the plot," said Hahn. + +"There isn't any. You see, it's just--well, I've just discovered how it +works out. After all these years! She's had everything she wanted all +her life. And me, I've never had anything. Not a thing. She's travelled +one way, and I've travelled in the opposite direction, and where has it +brought us? Here we are, both fighting over an old black velvet rag. +Don't you see? Both wanting the same--" She broke off, with the little +twisted smile on her lips again. "Life's a strange thing, Mr. Hahn." + +"I hope, Josie, you don't claim any originality for that remark," +replied Sid Hahn dryly. + +"But," argued the editor, "you don't call this a cheerful story, I +hope." + +"Well, perhaps not exactly boisterous. But it teaches a lesson, and all +that. And it's sort of philosophical and everything, don't you think?" + +The editor shuffled the sheets together decisively, so that they formed +a neat sheaf. "I'm afraid I didn't make myself quite clear. It's +entertaining, and all that, but--ah--in view of our present needs, I'm +sorry to say we--" + + + + +II + + +THE GAY OLD DOG + +Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago, Illinois +(this is not a humorous story), are familiar with the region known as +the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point +between New York and San Francisco there is presented this brief +explanation: + +The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron +arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would +be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from +Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete +circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels, +the theatres, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (diluted) and the +Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And he who frequents it by night in +search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound. + +Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights +granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third +row, aisle, left. When a new loop cafe was opened Jo's table always +commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing. On entering +he was wont to say, "Hello, Gus," with careless cordiality to the head +waiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to table as he +removed his gloves. He ordered things under glass, so that his table, at +midnight or thereabouts, resembled a hot-bed that favours the bell +system. The waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes his +own salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice, +lemon, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite +of it. People at near-by tables would lay down their knives and forks to +watch, fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie in using all the oil +in sight and calling for more. + +That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, +roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth +that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist +belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up +Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb +with a jaunty youthfulness against which every one of his fat-encased +muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending on one's +vision. + +The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz. He had +been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and harassed brother of +three unwed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of how Jo +Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be compressed within the +limits of a short story. It should be told as are the photo plays, with +frequent throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of +a man's life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal +economy amounting to parsimony. + +At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the +wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who +called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now +and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that +had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving +him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a +three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a +fixture. + +Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously +made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the +living. + +"Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls." + +"I will, Ma," Jo had choked. + +"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the +girls are all provided for." Then as Joe had hesitated, appalled: "Joey, +it's my dying wish. Promise!" + +"I promise, Ma," he had said. + +Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a +completely ruined life. + +They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too. +That is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over +on the West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way. +She said the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated +steel. But all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it--or +fairly faithful copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle +knack. She could skim the State Street windows and come away with a +mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads +of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went +home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress. +Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't +really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like +Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of +its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she +affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with a rose stuck +through it. + +Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household +leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept +house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the family +beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her sleep until +ten. + +This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was +an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't +consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put +you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of three sisters, it +means that you must constantly be calling for, escorting, or dropping +one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's age were standing before their +mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while +they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon +for a shot-silk, and at the last moment decided against the shot-silk in +favor of a plain black-and-white, because she had once said she +preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his feathers +for conquest, was saying: + +"Well, my God, I _am_ hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I just got +home. You girls have been laying around the house all day. No wonder +you're ready." + +He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a time +when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and brilliant-hued +socks, according to the style of that day, and the inalienable right of +any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those rare occasions when +his business necessitated an out-of-town trip, he would spend half a day +floundering about the shops, selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, or +feathers, or fans, or gloves for the girls. They always turned out to be +the wrong kind, judging by their reception. + +From Carrie, "What in the world do I want of a fan!" + +"I thought you didn't have one," Jo would say. + +"I haven't. I never go to dances." + +Jo would pass a futile hand over the top of his head, as was his way +when disturbed. "I just thought you'd like one. I thought every girl +liked a fan. Just," feebly, "just to--to have." + +"Oh, for pity's sake!" + +And from Eva or Babe, "I've _got_ silk stockings, Jo." Or, "You brought +me handkerchiefs the last time." + +There was something selfish in his giving, as there always is in any +gift freely and joyfully made. They never suspected the exquisite +pleasure it gave him to select these things; these fine, soft, silken +things. There were many things about this slow-going, amiable brother of +theirs that they never suspected. If you had told them he was a dreamer +of dreams, for example, they would have been amused. Sometimes, +dead-tired by nine o'clock, after a hard day down town, he would doze +over the evening paper. At intervals he would wake, red-eyed, to a +snatch of conversation such as, "Yes, but if you get a blue you can wear +it anywhere. It's dressy, and at the same time it's quiet, too." Eva, +the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring +dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old +smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had +banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, +and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening +clothes. The kind of man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a +toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in +a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was +transformed into a brocaded and chandeliered rendezvous for the +brilliance of the city. Beauty was here, and wit. But none so beautiful +and witty as She. Mrs.--er--Jo Hertz. There was wine, of course; but no +vulgar display. There was music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter. And +he the gracious, tactful host, king of his own domain-- + +"Jo, for heaven's sake, if you're going to snore go to bed!" + +"Why--did I fall asleep?" + +"You haven't been doing anything else all evening. A person would think +you were fifty instead of thirty." + +And Jo Hertz was again just the dull, grey, commonplace brother of three +well-meaning sisters. + +Babe used to say petulantly, "Jo, why don't you ever bring home any of +your men friends? A girl might as well not have any brother, all the +good you do." + +Jo, conscience-stricken, did his best to make amends. But a man who +has been petticoat-ridden for years loses the knack, somehow, of +comradeship with men. He acquires, too, a knowledge of women, and +a distaste for them, equalled only, perhaps, by that of an +elevator-starter in a department store. + +Which brings us to one Sunday in May. Jo came home from a late Sunday +afternoon walk to find company for supper. Carrie often had in one of +her school-teacher friends, or Babe one of her frivolous intimates, or +even Eva a staid guest of the old-girl type. There was always a Sunday +night supper of potato salad, and cold meat, and coffee, and perhaps a +fresh cake. Jo rather enjoyed it, being a hospitable soul. But he +regarded the guests with the undazzled eyes of a man to whom they were +just so many petticoats, timid of the night streets and requiring escort +home. If you had suggested to him that some of his sisters' popularity +was due to his own presence, or if you had hinted that the more +kittenish of these visitors were probably making eyes at him, he would +have stared in amazement and unbelief. + +This Sunday night it turned out to be one of Carrie's friends. + +"Emily," said Carrie, "this is my brother, Jo." + +Jo had learned what to expect in Carrie's friends. Drab-looking women in +the late thirties, whose facial lines all slanted downward. + +"Happy to meet you," said Jo, and looked down at a different sort +altogether. A most surprisingly different sort, for one of Carrie's +friends. This Emily person was very small, and fluffy, and blue-eyed, +and sort of--well, crinkly looking. You know. The corners of her mouth +when she smiled, and her eyes when she looked up at you, and her hair, +which was brown, but had the miraculous effect, somehow, of being +golden. + +Jo shook hands with her. Her hand was incredibly small, and soft, so +that you were afraid of crushing it, until you discovered she had a firm +little grip all her own. It surprised and amused you, that grip, as does +a baby's unexpected clutch on your patronising forefinger. As Jo felt it +in his own big clasp, the strangest thing happened to him. Something +inside Jo Hertz stopped working for a moment, then lurched sickeningly, +then thumped like mad. It was his heart. He stood staring down at her, +and she up at him, until the others laughed. Then their hands fell +apart, lingeringly. + +"Are you a school-teacher, Emily?" he said. + +"Kindergarten. It's my first year. And don't call me Emily, please." + +"Why not? It's your name. I think it's the prettiest name in the world." +Which he hadn't meant to say at all. In fact, he was perfectly aghast to +find himself saying it. But he meant it. + +At supper he passed her things, and stared, until everybody laughed +again, and Eva said acidly, "Why don't you feed her?" + +It wasn't that Emily had an air of helplessness. She just made you feel +you wanted her to be helpless, so that you could help her. + +Jo took her home, and from that Sunday night he began to strain at the +leash. He took his sisters out, dutifully, but he would suggest, with a +carelessness that deceived no one, "Don't you want one of your girl +friends to come along? That little What's-her-name--Emily, or something. +So long's I've got three of you, I might as well have a full squad." + +For a long time he didn't know what was the matter with him. He only +knew he was miserable, and yet happy. Sometimes his heart seemed to ache +with an actual physical ache. He realised that he wanted to do things +for Emily. He wanted to buy things for Emily--useless, pretty, expensive +things that he couldn't afford. He wanted to buy everything that Emily +needed, and everything that Emily desired. He wanted to marry Emily. +That was it. He discovered that one day, with a shock, in the midst of a +transaction in the harness business. He stared at the man with whom he +was dealing until that startled person grew uncomfortable. + +"What's the matter, Hertz?" + +"Matter?" + +"You look as if you'd seen a ghost or found a gold mine. I don't know +which." + +"Gold mine," said Jo. And then, "No. Ghost." + +For he remembered that high, thin voice, and his promise. And the +harness business was slithering downhill with dreadful rapidity, as the +automobile business began its amazing climb. Jo tried to stop it. But he +was not that kind of business man. It never occurred to him to jump out +of the down-going vehicle and catch the up-going one. He stayed on, +vainly applying brakes that refused to work. + +"You know, Emily, I couldn't support two households now. Not the way +things are. But if you'll wait. If you'll only wait. The girls +might--that is, Babe and Carrie--" + +She was a sensible little thing, Emily. "Of course I'll wait. But we +mustn't just sit back and let the years go by. We've got to help." + +She went about it as if she were already a little match-making matron. +She corralled all the men she had ever known and introduced them to +Babe, Carrie, and Eva separately, in pairs, and _en masse_. She arranged +parties at which Babe could display the curl. She got up picnics. She +stayed home while Jo took the three about. When she was present she +tried to look as plain and obscure as possible, so that the sisters +should show up to advantage. She schemed, and planned, and contrived, +and hoped; and smiled into Jo's despairing eyes. + +And three years went by. Three precious years. Carrie still taught +school, and hated it. Eva kept house, more and more complainingly as +prices advanced and allowance retreated. Stell was still Babe, the +family beauty; but even she knew that the time was past for curls. +Emily's hair, somehow, lost its glint and began to look just plain +brown. Her crinkliness began to iron out. + +"Now, look here!" Jo argued, desperately, one night. "We could be happy, +anyway. There's plenty of room at the house. Lots of people begin that +way. Of course, I couldn't give you all I'd like to, at first. But +maybe, after a while--" + +No dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed servitors, and satin +damask now. Just two rooms, all their own, all alone, and Emily to work +for. That was his dream. But it seemed less possible than that other +absurd one had been. + +You know that Emily was as practical a little thing as she looked +fluffy. She knew women. Especially did she know Eva, and Carrie, and +Babe. She tried to imagine herself taking the household affairs and the +housekeeping pocketbook out of Eva's expert hands. Eva had once +displayed to her a sheaf of aigrettes she had bought with what she saved +out of the housekeeping money. So then she tried to picture herself +allowing the reins of Jo's house to remain in Eva's hands. And +everything feminine and normal in her rebelled. Emily knew she'd want to +put away her own freshly laundered linen, and smooth it, and pat it. She +was that kind of woman. She knew she'd want to do her own delightful +haggling with butcher and vegetable pedlar. She knew she'd want to muss +Jo's hair, and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with him, if necessary, +without the awareness of three ever-present pairs of maiden eyes and +ears. + +"No! No! We'd only be miserable. I know. Even if they didn't object. And +they would, Jo. Wouldn't they?" + +His silence was miserable assent. Then, "But you do love me, don't you, +Emily?" + +"I do, Jo. I love you--and love you--and love you. But, Jo, I--can't." + +"I know it, dear. I knew it all the time, really. I just thought, maybe, +somehow--" + +The two sat staring for a moment into space, their hands clasped. Then +they both shut their eyes, with a little shudder, as though what they +saw was terrible to look upon. Emily's hand, the tiny hand that was so +unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his, and his crushed the absurd +fingers until she winced with pain. + +That was the beginning of the end, and they knew it. + +Emily wasn't the kind of girl who would be left to pine. There are too +many Jo's in the world whose hearts are prone to lurch and then thump at +the feel of a soft, fluttering, incredibly small hand in their grip. One +year later Emily was married to a young man whose father owned a large, +pie-shaped slice of the prosperous state of Michigan. + +That being safely accomplished, there was something grimly humorous in +the trend taken by affairs in the old house on Calumet. For Eva +married. Of all people, Eva! Married well, too, though he was a great +deal older than she. She went off in a hat she had copied from a French +model at Field's, and a suit she had contrived with a home dressmaker, +aided by pressing on the part of the little tailor in the basement over +on Thirty-first Street. It was the last of that, though. The next time +they saw her, she had on a hat that even she would have despaired of +copying, and a suit that sort of melted into your gaze. She moved to the +North Side (trust Eva for that), and Babe assumed the management of the +household on Calumet Avenue. It was rather a pinched little household +now, for the harness business shrank and shrank. + +"I don't see how you can expect me to keep house decently on this!" Babe +would say contemptuously. Babe's nose, always a little inclined to +sharpness, had whittled down to a point of late. "If you knew what Ben +gives Eva." + +"It's the best I can do, Sis. Business is something rotten." + +"Ben says if you had the least bit of--" Ben was Eva's husband, and +quotable, as are all successful men. + +"I don't care what Ben says," shouted Jo, goaded into rage. "I'm sick of +your everlasting Ben. Go and get a Ben of your own, why don't you, if +you're so stuck on the way he does things." + +And Babe did. She made a last desperate drive, aided by Eva, and she +captured a rather surprised young man in the brokerage way, who had made +up his mind not to marry for years and years. Eva wanted to give her her +wedding things, but at that Jo broke into sudden rebellion. + +"No sir! No Ben is going to buy my sister's wedding clothes, understand? +I guess I'm not broke--yet. I'll furnish the money for her things, and +there'll be enough of them, too." + +Babe had as useless a trousseau, and as filled with extravagant +pink-and-blue and lacy and frilly things as any daughter of doting +parents. Jo seemed to find a grim pleasure in providing them. But it +left him pretty well pinched. After Babe's marriage (she insisted that +they call her Estelle now) Jo sold the house on Calumet. He and Carrie +took one of those little flats that were springing up, seemingly over +night, all through Chicago's South Side. + +There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She had given up teaching two +years before, and had gone into Social Service work on the West Side. +She had what is known as a legal mind--hard, clear, orderly--and she +made a great success of it. Her dream was to live at the Settlement +House and give all her time to the work. Upon the little household she +bestowed a certain amount of grim, capable attention. It was the same +kind of attention she would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling +and running had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't +hesitate to say so. + +Jo took to prowling about department store basements, and household +goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain in a ham, or a sack +of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a window clamp, or a new kind +of paring knife. He was forever doing odd little jobs that the janitor +should have done. It was the domestic in him claiming its own. + +Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery +cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she called a +plain talk. + +"Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant resident +worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know fifty other girls +who'd give their ears for it. I go in next month." + +They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then he glanced +around the little dining room, with its ugly tan walls and its heavy, +dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted cumbersomely into the +five-room flat). + +"Away? Away from here, you mean--to live?" Carrie laid down her fork. +"Well, really, Jo! After all that explanation." + +"But to go over there to live! Why, that neighbourhood's full of dirt, +and disease, and crime, and the Lord knows what all. I can't let you do +that, Carrie." + +Carrie's chin came up. She laughed a short little laugh. "Let me! +That's eighteenth-century talk, Jo. My life's my own to live. I'm +going." + +And she went. + +Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was up. Then he sold what +furniture he could, stored or gave away the rest, and took a room on +Michigan Avenue in one of the old stone mansions whose decayed splendour +was being put to such purpose. + +Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and go. And he +found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or +go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a +thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged +woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In +the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But +he grows flabby where she grows lean. + +Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva's, and on Sunday noon at +Stell's. He tucked his napkin under his chin and openly enjoyed the +home-made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner he tried to talk +business with Eva's husband, or Stell's. His business talks were the +old-fashioned kind, beginning: + +"Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance your raw hides and leathers." + +But Ben and George didn't want to "take, f'rinstance, your raw hides and +leathers." They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf, +or politics or stocks. They were the modern type of business man who +prefers to leave his work out of his play. Business, with them, was a +profession--a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's +clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great +criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would +listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first +chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at +their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with +good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by +almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who +is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and +one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a +bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and +unsatisfied. + +Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry. + +"It isn't natural," Eva told him. "I never saw a man who took so little +interest in women." + +"Me!" protested Jo, almost shyly. "Women!" + +"Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened schoolboy." + +So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting +age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between thirty-six and +forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, +and classes, and politics, and economics, and boards. They rather +terrified Jo. He didn't understand much that they talked about, and he +felt humbly inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had +passed him by. He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him +not to bother, and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not +only of going home quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture +to any highwayman or brawler who might molest them. + +The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her, Jo?" + +"Like who?" Jo would spar feebly. + +"Miss Matthews." + +"Who's she?" + +"Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean the girl who was +here for dinner. The one who talked so well on the emigration question. + +"Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to be a smart woman." + +"Smart! She's a perfectly splendid girl." + +"Sure," Jo would agree cheerfully. + +"But didn't you like her?" + +"I can't say I did, Eve. And I can't say I didn't. She made me think a +lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader. Name of Himes. As I recall +her, she must have been a fine woman. But I never thought of her as a +woman at all. She was just Teacher." + +"You make me tired," snapped Eva impatiently. "A man of your age. You +don't expect to marry a girl, do you? A child!" + +"I don't expect to marry anybody," Jo had answered. + +And that was the truth, lonely though he often was. + +The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. Any one who got the meaning +of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a north-shore suburb, +and a house. Eva's daughter, Ethel, was growing up, and her mother had +an eye on society. + +That did away with Jo's Thursday dinner. Then Stell's husband bought a +car. They went out into the country every Sunday. Stell said it was +getting so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway. Besides, they +were unhealthy, old-fashioned things. They always meant to ask Jo to +come along, but by the time their friends were placed, and the lunch, +and the boxes, and sweaters, and George's camera, and everything, there +seemed to be no room for a man of Jo's bulk. So that eliminated the +Sunday dinners. + +"Just drop in any time during the week," Stell said, "for dinner. Except +Wednesday--that's our bridge night--and Saturday. And, of course, +Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don't wait for me to phone." + +And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those +you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up +against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with +indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through the +brazen plate-glass window. + +And then came the War. The war that spelled death and destruction to +millions. The war that brought a fortune to Jo Hertz, and transformed +him, over night, from a baggy-kneed old bachelor, whose business was a +failure, to a prosperous manufacturer whose only trouble was the +shortage in hides for the making of his product--leather! The armies of +Europe called for it. Harnesses! More harnesses! Straps! Millions of +straps. More! More! + +The musty old harness business over on Lake Street was magically changed +from a dust-covered, dead-alive concern to an orderly hive that hummed +and glittered with success. Orders poured in. Jo Hertz had inside +information on the War. He knew about troops and horses. He talked +with French and English and Italian buyers--noblemen, many of +them--commissioned by their countries to get American-made supplies. And +now, when he said to Ben or George, "Take f'rinstance your raw hides and +leathers," they listened with respectful attention. + +And then began the gay-dog business in the life of Jo Hertz. He +developed into a Loop-hound, ever keen on the scent of fresh pleasure. +That side of Jo Hertz which had been repressed and crushed and ignored +began to bloom, unhealthily. At first he spent money on his rather +contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, +and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and +there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way +he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. +He explained it. + +"Just turn it on. Ice-water! Any hour of the day or night." + +He bought a car. Naturally. A glittering affair; in colour a bright +blue, with pale blue leather straps and a great deal of gold fittings, +and wire wheels. Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would +use, rather than an elderly business man. You saw him driving about in +it, red-faced and rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in +the Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when +doubtful and roving-eyed matrons in kolinsky capes are wont to +congregate to sip pale amber drinks. Actors grew to recognise the +semi-bald head and the shining, round, good-natured face looming out at +them from the dim well of the parquet, and sometimes, in a musical show, +they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could pick out the +critics as they came down the aisle, and even had a nodding acquaintance +with two of them. + +"Kelly, of the _Herald_," he would say carelessly. "Bean, of the _Trib_. +They're all afraid of him." + +So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he might have been called a +Man About Town. + +And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. So he searched about in his +mind and brought from the dim past the memory of the luxuriously +furnished establishment of which he used to dream in the evenings when +he dozed over his paper in the old house on Calumet. So he rented an +apartment, many-roomed and expensive, with a man-servant in charge, and +furnished it in styles and periods ranging through all the Louises. The +living room was mostly rose colour. It was like an unhealthy and bloated +boudoir. And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight +of this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury +of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naive indulgence of +long-starved senses, and there was in it a great resemblance to the +rolling eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking his lips over an all-day +sucker. + +The War went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll in--a +flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on shopping bent, entered +a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on Michigan Avenue. Exclusive, +that is, in price. Eva's weakness, you may remember, was hats. She was +seeking a hat now. She described what she sought with a languid +conciseness, and stood looking about her after the saleswoman had +vanished in quest of it. The room was becomingly rose-illumined and +somewhat dim, so that some minutes had passed before she realised that a +man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five feet away--a man with +a walking stick, and yellow gloves, and tan spats, and a check suit--was +her brother Jo. From him Eva's wild-eyed glance leaped to the woman who +was trying on hats before one of the many long mirrors. She was seated, +and a saleswoman was exclaiming discreetly at her elbow. + +Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning, +hat-laden. "Not to-day," she gasped. "I'm feeling ill. Suddenly." And +almost ran from the room. + +That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone +pidgin-English devised by every family of married sisters as protection +against the neighbours and Central. Translated, it ran thus: + +"He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought I'd die! But at least he +had sense enough not to speak. She was one of those limp, willowy +creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a +baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to get her hands on those +hats. I saw it all in one awful minute. You know the way I do. I suppose +some people would call her pretty. I don't. And her colour! Well! And +the most expensive-looking hats. Aigrettes, and paradise, and feathers. +Not one of them under seventy-five. Isn't it disgusting! At his age! +Suppose Ethel had been with me!" + +The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a restaurant. She said it +spoiled her evening. And the third time it was Ethel. She was one of the +guests at a theatre party given by Nicky Overton II. You know. The North +Shore Overtons. Lake Forest. They came in late, and occupied the entire +third row at the opening performance of "Believe Me!" And Ethel was +Nicky's partner. She was glowing like a rose. When the lights went up +after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of +her with what she afterward described as a blonde. Then her uncle had +turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that +spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had turned +to face forward again, quickly. + +"Who's the old bird?" Nicky had asked. Ethel had pretended not to hear, +so he had asked again. + +"My Uncle," Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and +down to her throat. Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had +gone up ever so slightly. + +It spoiled Ethel's evening. More than that, as she told her mother of it +later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life. + +Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate, kimonoed hour that +precedes bedtime. She gesticulated heatedly with her hair brush. + +"It's disgusting, that's what it is. Perfectly disgusting. There's no +fool like an old fool. Imagine! A creature like that. At his time of +life." + +There exists a strange and loyal kinship among men. "Well, I don't +know," Ben said now, and even grinned a little. "I suppose a boy's got +to sow his wild oats some time." + +"Don't be any more vulgar than you can help," Eva retorted. "And I +think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy +interested in Ethel." + +"If he's interested in her," Ben blundered, "I guess the fact that +Ethel's uncle went to the theatre with some one who wasn't Ethel's aunt +won't cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will +it?" + +"All right," Eva had retorted. "If you're not man enough to stop it, +I'll have to, that's all. I'm going up there with Stell this week." + +They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his apartment +when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his +master home to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva arranged +to meet Stell in town. They would drive to Jo's apartment together, and +wait for him there. + +When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of the +American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard +was a billowing, surging mass: Flags, pennants, banners crowds. All the +elements that make for demonstration. And over the whole--quiet. No +holiday crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient +hours to see the khaki-clads go by. Three years of indefatigable reading +had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to. + +"Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped. + +"Nicky Overton's only nineteen, thank goodness." + +Their car was caught in the jam. When they moved at all it was by +inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, +nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they waited. + +No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the +relieved houseman. + +Jo's home has already been described to you. Stell and Eva, sunk in +rose-coloured cushions, viewed it with disgust, and some mirth. They +rather avoided each other's eyes. + +"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of +the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings, +and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, restlessly. She picked up +a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and +wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she +turned and passed into Jo's bedroom. And there you knew Jo for what he +was. + +This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the +clean-minded and simple-hearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury +with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any +house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual +furniture was panelled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been +the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that +stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a +pink tarleton _danseuse_ who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of +those wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be +hung. No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military +brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly +stack of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and +gave a little gasp. One of them was on gardening. + +"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the War, by an +Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep. +His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe-tree in +every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked +so human. Eva shut the door on them, quickly. Some bottles on the +dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such as a man uses who is growing +bald and is panic-stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall. +Some rhubarb-and-soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a little +box of pepsin tablets. + +"Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night," Eva said, and +wandered out into the rose-coloured front room again with the air of one +who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell +followed her furtively. + +"Where do you suppose he can be?" she demanded. "It's"--she glanced at +her wrist--"why, it's after six!" + +And then there was a little click. The two women sat up, tense. The door +opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room +stood up. + +"Why--Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn't you let me know?" + +"We were just about to leave. We thought you weren't coming home." + +Joe came in, slowly. + +"I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys go by." He sat down, +heavily. The light from the window fell on him. And you saw that his +eyes were red. + +And you'll have to learn why. He had found himself one of the thousands +in the jam on Michigan Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb, +where his big frame shut off the view of the unfortunates behind him. He +waited with the placid interest of one who has subscribed to all the +funds and societies to which a prosperous, middle-aged business man is +called upon to subscribe in war time. Then, just as he was about to +leave, impatient at the delay, the crowd had cried, with a queer +dramatic, exultant note in its voice, "Here they come! Here come the +boys!" + +Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a +mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all +indignant resentment. "Say, looka here!" + +The little fists kept up their frantic beating and pushing. And a +voice--a choked, high little voice--cried, "Let me by! I can't see! You +man, you! You big fat man! My boy's going by--to war--and I can't see! +Let me by!" + +Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He looked down. And +upturned to him in agonised appeal was the face of little Emily. They +stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really +only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around +Emily's waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk +protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She was breathing +rapidly, as if she had been running. Her eyes were straining up the +street. + +"Why, Emily, how in the world!--" + +"I ran away. Fred didn't want me to come. He said it would excite me too +much." + +"Fred?" + +"My husband. He made me promise to say good-bye to Jo at home." + +"Jo?" + +"Jo's my boy. And he's going to war. So I ran away. I had to see him. I +had to see him go." + +She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up the street. + +"Why, sure," said Jo. "Of course you want to see him." And then the +crowd gave a great roar. There came over Jo a feeling of weakness. He +was trembling. The boys went marching by. + +"There he is," Emily shrilled, above the din. "There be is! There he is! +There he--" And waved a futile little hand. It wasn't so much a wave as +a clutching. A clutching after something beyond her reach. + +"Which one? Which one, Emily?" + +"The handsome one. The handsome one. There!" Her voice quavered and +died. + +Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. "Point him out," he commanded. +"Show me." And the next instant. "Never mind. I see him." + +Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from among the hundreds. Had +picked him as surely as his own father might have. It was Emily's boy. +He was marching by, rather stiffly. He was nineteen, and fun-loving, and +he had a girl, and he didn't particularly want to go to France and--to +go to France. But more than he had hated going, he had hated not to go. +So he marched by, looking straight ahead, his jaw set so that his chin +stuck out just a little. Emily's boy. + +Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His eyes, the hard-boiled +eyes of a Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he +was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay dog. He was Jo Hertz, +thirty, in love with life, in love with Emily, and with the stinging +blood of young manhood coursing through his veins. + +Another minute and the boy had passed on up the broad street--the fine, +flag-bedecked street--just one of a hundred service-hats bobbing in +rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore and flowing on. + +Then he disappeared altogether. + +Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling something, over and over. "I +can't. I can't. Don't ask me to. I can't let him go. Like that. I +can't." + +Jo said a queer thing. + +"Why, Emily! We wouldn't have him stay home, would we? We wouldn't want +him to do anything different, would we? Not our boy. I'm glad he +enlisted. I'm proud of him. So are you glad." + +Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the car that was +waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. They said good-bye, awkwardly. +Emily's face was a red, swollen mass. + +So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway half an hour later he +blinked, dazedly, and when the light from the window fell on him you saw +that his eyes were red. + +Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat forward in her chair, +clutching her bag rather nervously. + +"Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a reason. We're here to +tell you that this thing's got to stop." + +"Thing? Stop?" + +"You know very well what I mean. You saw me at the milliner's that day. +And night before last, Ethel. We're all disgusted. If you must go about +with people like that, please have some sense of decency." + +Something gathering in Jo's face should have warned her. But he was +slumped down in his chair in such a huddle, and he looked so old and fat +that she did not heed it. She went on. "You've got us to consider. Your +sisters. And your nieces. Not to speak of your own--" + +But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what she saw in his face +even Eva faltered and stopped. It wasn't at all the face of a fat, +middle-aged sport. It was a face Jovian, terrible. + +"You!" he began, low-voiced, ominous. "You!" He raised a great fist +high. "You two murderers! You didn't consider me, twenty years ago. You +come to me with talk like that. Where's my boy! You killed him, you two, +twenty years ago. And now he belongs to somebody else. Where's my son +that should have gone marching by to-day?" He flung his arms out in a +great gesture of longing. The red veins stood out on his forehead. +"Where's my son! Answer me that, you two selfish, miserable women. +Where's my son!" Then, as they huddled together, frightened, wild-eyed. +"Out of my house! Out of my house! Before I hurt you!" + +They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them. + +Jo stood, shaking, in the centre of the room. Then he reached for a +chair, gropingly, and sat down. He passed one moist, flabby hand over +his forehead and it came away wet. The telephone rang. He sat still. It +sounded far away and unimportant, like something forgotten. I think he +did not even hear it with his conscious ear. But it rang and rang +insistently. Jo liked to answer his telephone, when at home. + +"Hello!" He knew instantly the voice at the other end. + +"That you, Jo?" it said. + +"Yes." + +"How's my boy?" + +"I'm--all right." + +"Listen, Jo. The crowd's coming over to-night. I've fixed up a little +poker game for you. Just eight of us." + +"I can't come to-night, Gert." + +"Can't! Why not?" + +"I'm not feeling so good." + +"You just said you were all right." + +"I _am_ all right. Just kind of tired." + +The voice took on a cooing note. "Is my Joey tired? Then he shall be all +comfy on the sofa, and he doesn't need to play if he don't want to. No, +sir." + +Jo stood staring at the black mouth-piece of the telephone. He was +seeing a procession go marching by. Boys, hundreds of boys, in khaki. + +"Hello! Hello!" the voice took on an anxious note. "Are you there?" + +"Yes," wearily. + +"Jo, there's something the matter. You're sick. I'm coming right over." + +"No!" + +"Why not? You sound as if you'd been sleeping. Look here--" + +"Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked onto the +hook. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Long after the connection had +been broken. + +He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he turned +and walked into the front room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk +had come on. All the light had gone out of everything. The zest had gone +out of life. The game was over--the game he had been playing against +loneliness and disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A +lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous, rose-coloured room that had +grown, all of a sudden, drab. + + + + +III + + +THE TOUGH GUY + +You could not be so very tough in Chippewa, Wisconsin. But Buzz Werner +managed magnificently with the limited means at hand. Before he was +nineteen mothers were warning their sons against him, and brothers their +sisters. Buzz Werner not only was tough--he looked tough. When he +spoke--which was often--his speech slid sinisterly out of the extreme +left corner of his mouth. He had a trick of hitching himself up from the +belt--one palm on the stomach and a sort of heaving jerk from the waist, +as a prize fighter does it--that would have made a Van Bibber look +rough. + +His name was not really Buzz, but quotes are dispensed with because no +one but his mother remembered what it originally had been. His mother +called him Ernie and she alone, in all Chippewa, Wisconsin, was unaware +that her son was the town tough guy. But even she sometimes mildly +remonstrated with him for being what she called kind of wild. Buzz had +yellow hair with a glint in it, and it curled up into a bang at the +front. No amount of wetting or greasing could subdue that irrepressible +forelock. A boy with hair like that never grows up in his mother's +eyes. + +If Buzz's real name was lost in the dim mists of boyhood, the origin and +fitness of his nickname were apparent after two minutes' conversation +with him. Buzz Werner was called Buzz not only because he talked too +much, but because he was a braggart. His conversation bristled with the +perpendicular pronoun, and his pet phrase was, "I says to him--" + +He buzzed. + +By the time Buzz was fourteen he was stealing brass from the yards of +the big paper mills down in the Flats and selling it to the junk man. +How he escaped the reform school is a mystery. Perhaps it was the blond +forelock. At nineteen he was running with the Kearney girl. + +Twenty-five years hence Chippewa will have learned to treat the +Kearney-girl type as a disease, and a public menace. Which she was. The +Kearney girl ran wild in Chippewa, and Chippewa will be paying taxes on +the fruit of her liberty for a hundred years to come. The Kearney girl +was a beautiful idiot, with a lovely oval face, and limpid, rather +wistful blue eyes, and fair, fine hair, and a long slim neck. She looked +very much like those famous wantons of history, from Lucrezia Borgia to +Nell Gwyn, that you see pictured in the galleries of Europe--all very +mild and girlish, with moist red mouths, like a puppy's, so that you +wonder if they have not been basely defamed through all the centuries. + +The Kearney girl's father ran a saloon out on Second Avenue, and every +few days the Chippewa paper would come out with a story of a brawl, a +knifing, or a free-for-all fight following a Saturday night in +Kearney's. The Kearney girl herself was forever running up and down +Grand Avenue, which was the main business street. She would trail up and +down from the old Armory to the post-office and back again. When she +turned off into the homeward stretch on Outagamie Street there always +slunk after her some stoop-shouldered, furtive, loping youth. But he +never was seen with her on Grand Avenue. She had often been up before +old Judge Colt for some nasty business or other. At such times the +shabby office of the Justice of the Peace would be full of shawled +mothers and heavy-booted, work-worn fathers, and an aunt or two, and +some cousins, and always a slinking youth fumbling with the hat in his +hands, his glance darting hither and thither, from group to group, but +never resting for a moment within any one else's gaze. Of all these +present, the Kearney girl herself was always the calmest. Old Judge Colt +meted out justice according to his lights. Unfortunately, the wearing of +a yellow badge on the breast was a custom that had gone out some years +before. + +This nymph it was who had taken a fancy to Buzz Werner. It looked very +black for his future. + +The strange part of it was that the girl possessed little attraction for +Buzz. It was she who made all the advances. Buzz had sprung from very +decent stock, as you shall see. And something about the sultry +unwholesomeness of this girl repelled him, though he was hardly aware +that this was so. Buzz and his gang would meet down town of a Saturday +night, very moist as to hair and clean as to soft shirt. They would +lounge on the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's +brightly lighted drug store, watching the girls go by. They were, for +the most part, a pimply-faced lot. They would shuffle their feet in a +slow jig, hands in pockets. When a late comer joined them it was +considered _au fait_ to welcome him by assuming a fistic attitude, after +the style of the pugilists pictured in the barber-shop magazines, and +spar a good-natured and make-believe round with him, with much agile +dancing about in a circle, head held stiffly, body crouching, while +working a rapid and facetious right. + +This corner, or Donovan's pool-shack, was their club, their forum. Here +they recounted their exploits, bragged of their triumphs, boasted of +their girls, flexed their muscles to show their strength. And all +through their talk there occurred again and again a certain term whose +use is common to their kind. Their remarks were prefaced and interlarded +and concluded with it, so that it was no longer an oath or a blasphemy. + +"Je's, I was sore at 'm. I told him where to get off at. Nobody can talk +to me like that. Je's, I should say not." + +So accustomed had it grown that it was not even thought of as +profanity. + +If Buzz's family could have heard him in his talk with his street-corner +companions they would not have credited their ears. A mouthy braggart in +company is often silent in his own home, and Buzz was no exception to +this rule. Fortunately, Buzz's braggadocio carried with it a certain +conviction. He never kept a job more than a month, and his own account +of his leave-taking was always as vainglorious as it was dramatic. + +"'G'wan!' I says to him, 'Who you talkin' to? I don't have to take +nothin' from you nor nobody like you,' I says. 'I'm as good as you are +any day, and better. You can have your dirty job,' I says. And with that +I give him my time and walked out on 'm. Je's, he was sore!" + +They would listen to him, appreciatively, but with certain mental +reservations; reservations inevitable when a speaker's name is Buzz. One +by one they would melt away as their particular girl, after flaunting by +with a giggle and a sidelong glance for the dozenth time, would switch +her skirts around the corner of Outagamie Street past the Brill House, +homeward bound. + +"Well, s'long," they would say. And lounging after her, would overtake +her in the shadow of the row of trees in front of the Agassiz School. + +If the Werner family had been city folk they would, perforce, have +burrowed in one of those rabbit-warren tenements that line block after +block of city streets. But your small-town labouring man is likely to +own his two-story frame house with a garden patch in the back and a +cement walk leading up to the front porch, and pork roast on Sundays. +The Werners had all this, no thanks to Pa Werner; no thanks to Buzz, +surely; and little to Minnie Werner who clerked in the Sugar Bowl Candy +Store and tried to dress like Angie Hatton whose father owned the +biggest Pulp and Paper mill in the Fox River Valley. No, the house and +the garden, the porch and the cement sidewalk, and the pork roast all +had their origin in Ma Werner's tireless energy, in Ma Werner's thrift; +in her patience and unremitting toil, her nimble fingers and bent back, +her shapeless figure and unbounded and unexpressed (verbally, that +is) love for her children. Pa Werner--sullen, lazy, brooding, +tyrannical--she soothed and mollified for the children's sake, or +shouted down with a shrewish outburst, as the occasion required. An +expert stone-mason by trade, Pa Werner could be depended on only when he +was not drinking, or when he was not on strike, or when he had not +quarrelled with the foreman. An anarchist, Pa--dissatisfied with things +as they were, but with no plan for improving them. His evil-smelling +pipe between his lips, he would sit, stocking-footed, in silence, +smoking and thinking vague, formless, surly thoughts. This sullen unrest +and rebellion it was that, transmitted to his son, had made Buzz the +unruly braggart that he was, and which, twenty or thirty years hence, +would find him just such a one as his father--useless, evil-tempered, +half brutal, defiant of order. + +It was in May, a fine warm sunny day, that Ma Werner, looking up from +the garden patch where she was spading, a man's old battered felt hat +perched grotesquely atop her white head, saw Buzz lounging homeward, +cutting across lots from Bates Street, his dinner pail glinting in the +sun. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Ma Werner straightened +painfully and her over-flushed face took on a purplish tinge. She wiped +her moist chin with an apron-corner. + +As Buzz espied her his gait became a swagger. At sight of that swagger +Ma knew. She dropped her spade and plodded heavily through the freshly +turned earth to the back porch as Buzz turned in at the walk. She +shifted her weight ponderously as she wiped first one earth-crusted shoe +and then the other. + +"What's the matter, Ernie? You ain't sick, are you?" + +"Naw." + +"What you home so early for?" + +"Because I feel like it, that's why." + +He took the back steps at a bound and slammed the kitchen door behind +him. Ma Werner followed heavily after. Buzz was hanging his hat up +behind the kitchen door. He turned with a scowl as his mother entered. +She looked even more ludicrous in the house than she had outside, with +her skirts tucked up to make spading the easier, so that there was +displayed an unseemly length of thick ankle rising solidly above the old +pair of men's side-boots that encased her feet. The battered hat perched +rakishly atop her knob of gray-white hair gave her a jaunty, sporting +look, as of a ponderous, burlesque Watteau. + +She abandoned pretense. "Ernie, your pa'll be awful mad. You know the +way he carried on the last time." + +"Let him. He aint worked five days himself this month." Then, at a +sudden sound from the front of the house, "He ain't home, is he?" + +"That's the shade flapping." + +Buzz turned toward the inside wooden stairway that led to the half-story +above. But his mother followed, with surprising agility for so heavy a +woman. She put a hand on his arm. "Such a good-payin' job, Ernie. An' +you said only yesterday you liked it. Somethin' must've happened." + +There broke a grim little laugh from Buzz. "Believe _me_ something +happened good an' plenty." A little frightened look came into his eyes. +"I just had a run-in with young Hatton." + +The red faded from her face and a grey-white mask seemed to slip down +over it. "You don't mean Hatton! Not Hatton's son. Ernie, you ain't +done--" + +A dash of his street-corner bravado came back to him. "Aw, keep your +hair on, Ma. I didn't know it was young Hatton when I hit'm. An' anyway +nobody his age is gonna tell me where to get off at. Say, w'en a guy who +ain't twenty-three, hardly, and that never done a lick in his life +except go to college, the sissy, tries t'--" + +But the first sentence only had penetrated her brain. She grappled with +it, dizzily. "Hit him! Ernie, you don't mean you hit him! Not Hatton's +son! Ernie!" + +"Sure I did. You oughta seen his face." But there was very little +triumph or satisfaction in Buzz Werner's face or voice as he said it. +"Course, I didn't know it was him when I done it. I dunno would it have +made any difference if I had." + +She seemed so old and so shrunken, in spite of her bulk, as she looked +up at him. The look in her eyes was so strained. The way her hand +brought her apron-corner up to her mouth, as though to stifle the fear +that shook her, was so groping, somehow, so uncertain, that, +paradoxically, the pitifulness of it reacted to make him savage. + +When she quavered her next question, "What was he doin' in the mill?" he +turned toward the stairway again, flinging his answer over his shoulder. + +"Learnin' the business, that's what. From the ground up, see?" He turned +at the first stair and leaned forward and down, one hand on the +door-jamb. "Well, believe me he don't use me as no ground-dirt. An' when +I'm takin' the screen off the big roll--see?--he comes up to me an' +says I'm handlin' it rough an' it's a delicate piece of mechanism. +'Who're you?' I says. 'Never mind who I am' he says, 'I'm working' on +this job,' he says, 'an' this is a paper mill you're workin' in,' he +says, 'not a boiler factory. Treat the machinery accordin', like a real +workman,' he says. The simp! I just stepped down off the platform of the +big press, and I says, 'Well, you look like a kinda delicate piece of +mechanism yourself,' I says, 'an' need careful handlin', so take that +for a starter,' I says. An' with that I handed him one in the nose." +Buzz laughed, but there was little mirth in it. "I bet he seen enough +wheels an' delicate machinery that minute to set up a whole new plant." + +There was nothing of mirth in the woman's drawn face. "Oh, Ernie, f'r +God's sake! What they goin' to do to you!" + +He was half way up the narrow stairway, she at the foot of it, peering +up at him. "They won't do anything. I guess old Hatton ain't so stuck on +havin' his swell golf club crowd know his little boy was beat up by one +of the workmen." + +He was clumping about upstairs now. So she turned toward the kitchen, +dazedly. She glanced at the clock. Going on toward five. Still in +the absurd hat she got out a panful of potatoes and began to peel +them skilfuly, automatically. The seamed and hardened fingers +had come honestly by their deftness. They had twirled and peeled +pecks--bushels--tons of these brown balls in their time. + +At five-thirty Pa came in. At six, Minnie. She had to go back to the +Sugar Bowl until nine. Five minutes later the supper was steaming on +the table. + +"Ernie," called Ma, toward the ceiling. "Er-nie! Supper's on." The three +sat down at the table without waiting. Pa had slipped off his shoes, and +was in his stockinged feet. They ate in silence. It was a good meal. A +European family of the same class would have considered it a banquet. +There were meat and vegetables, butter and home-made bread, preserve and +cake, true to the standards of the extravagant American labouring-class +household. In the summer the garden supplied them with lettuce, beans, +peas, onions, radishes, beets, potatoes, corn, thanks to Ma's aching +back and blistered hands. They stored enough vegetables in the cellar to +last through the winter. + +Buzz usually cleaned up after supper. But to-night, when he came down, +he was already clean-shaven, clean-shirted, and his hair was wet from +the comb. He took his place in silence. His acid-stained work shoes had +been replaced by his good tan ones. Evidently he was going down town +after supper. Buzz never took any exercise for the sake of his body's +good. Sometimes he and the Lembke boys across the way played a game of +ball in the middle of the road, or in the vacant lot, but they did it +out of the game instinct, and with no thought of their muscles' gain. + +But to-night, evidently, there was to be no ball. Buzz ate little. His +mother, forever between the stove and the table, ate less. But that was +nothing unusual in her. She waited on the others, but mostly she hovered +about the boy. + +"Ernie, you ain't eaten your potatoes. Look how nice an' mealy they +are." + +"Don't want none." + +"Ernie, would you rather have a baked apple than the raspberry preserve? +I fixed a pan this morning." + +"Naw. Lemme alone. I ain't hungry." + +He slouched from the table. Minnie, teacup in hand, regarded him over +its rim with wide, malicious eyes. "I saw that Kearney girl go by here +before supper, and she rubbered in like everything." + +"You're a liar," said Buzz, unemotionally. + +"I did so! She went by and then she came back again. I saw her both +times. Say, I guess I ought to know her. Anybody in town'd know +Kearney." + +Buzz had been headed toward the front porch. He hesitated and turned, +now, and picked up the newspaper from the sitting-room sofa. Pa Werner, +in trousers, shirt and suspenders, was padding about the kitchen with +his pipe and tobacco. He came into the sitting room now and stood a +moment, his lips twisted about the pipe-stem. The pipe's putt-putting +gave warning that he was about to break into unaccustomed speech. He +regarded Buzz with beady, narrowed eyes. + +"You let me see you around with that Kearney girl and I'll break every +bone in your body, and hers too. The hussy!" + +"Oh, you will, will you?" + +Ma, who had been making countless trips from the kitchen to the back +garden with water pail and sprinkling can sagging from either arm, put +in a word to stay the threatening storm. "Now, Pa! Now, Ernie!" The two +men subsided into bristling silence. + +Suddenly, "There she is again!" shrilled Minnie, from her bedroom. Buzz +shrank back in his chair. Old man Werner, with a muttered oath, went to +the open doorway and stood there, puffing savage little spurts of smoke +streetward. The Kearney girl stared brazenly at him as she strolled +slowly by, a slim and sinister figure. Old man Werner watched her until +she passed out of sight. + +"You go gettin' mixed up with dirt like that," threatened he, "and I'll +learn you. She'll be hangin' around the mill yet, the brass-faced thing. +If I hear of it I'll get the foreman to put her off the place. You'll +stay home to-night. Carry a pail of water for your ma once." + +"Carry it yourself." + +Buzz, with a wary eye up the street, slouched out to the front porch, +into the twilight of the warm May evening. Charley Lembke, from his +porch across the street, called to him: "Goin' down town?" + +"Yeh, I guess so." + +"Ain't you afraid of bein' pinched?" Buzz turned his head quickly +toward the room just behind him. He turned to go in. Charley's voice +came again, clear and far-reaching. "I hear you had a run-in with +Hatton's son, and knocked him down. Some class t' you, Buzz, even if it +does cost you your job." + +From within the sound of a newspaper hurled to the floor. Pa Werner was +at the door. "What's that! What's that he's sayin'?" + +Buzz, cornered, jutted a threatening jaw at his father and brazened it +out. "Can't you hear good?" + +"Come on in here." + +Buzz hesitated a moment. Then he turned, slowly, and walked into the +little sitting room with an attempt at a swagger that failed to convince +even himself. He leaned against the side of the door, hands in pockets. +Pa Werner faced him, black-browed. "Is that right, what he said? Lembke? +Huh?" + +"Sure it's right. I had a run-in with Hatton, an' licked him, and give'm +my time. What you goin' to do about it?" + +Ma Werner was in the room, now. Minnie, passing through on her way to +work again, caught the electric current of the storm about to break and +escaped it with a parting: + +"Oh, for the land's sakes! You two. Always a-fighting." + +The two men faced each other. The one a sturdy man-boy nearing twenty, +with a great pair of shoulders and a clear eye, a long, quick arm and a +deft hand--these last his assets as a workman. The other, gnarled, +prematurely wrinkled, almost gnome-like. This one took his pipe from +between his lips and began to speak. The drink he had had at Wenzel's on +the way home sparked his speech. + +He began with a string of epithets. They flowed from his lips, an acid +stream. Pick and choose as I will, there is none that can be repeated +here. Old Man Werner had, perhaps, been something of a tough guy +himself, in his youth. As he reviled his son now you saw that son, at +fifty, just such another stocking-footed, bitter old man, smoking a glum +pipe on the back porch, summer evenings, and spitting into the fresh +young grass. + +I don't say that this thought came to Buzz as his father flayed him with +his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the +non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head. +Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a +little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensively. He had +paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had +said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again +and again. "Now, Pa!--" But he stopped now, fist raised in a last +profane period. Buzz stood regarding him with his unblinking stare. + +Finally: "You through?" said Buzz. + +"Ya-as," snarled Pa, "I'm through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be +hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get out o' +here!" + +"I'm gettin'," said Buzz. He took his hat off the hook and wiped it +carefully with the lower side of his sleeve, round and round. He placed +it on his head, jauntily. He stepped to the kitchen, took a tooth-pick +from the little red-and-white glass holder on the table, and--with this +emblem of insouciance, at an angle of ninety, between his +teeth--strolled indolently, nonchalantly down the front steps, along the +cement walk to the street and so toward town. The two old people, left +alone in the sudden silence of the house, stared after the swaggering +figure until the dim twilight blotted it out. And a sinister something +seemed to close its icy grip about the heart of one of them. A vague +premonition that she could only feel, not express, made her next words +seem futile. + +"Pa, you oughtn't to talked to him like that. He's just a little wild. +He looked so kind of funny when he went out. I don'no, he looked so kind +of--" + +"He looked like the bum he is, that's what. No respect for nothing. For +his pa, or ma, or nothing. Down on the corner with the rest of 'em, +that's where he's goin'. Hatton ain't goin' to let this go by. You see." + +But she, on her way to the kitchen, repeated, "I don'no, he looked so +kind of funny. He looked so kind of--" + +Considering all things--the happenings of the past few hours, at +least--Buzz, as he strolled on down toward Grand Avenue with his +sauntering, care-free gait, did undoubtedly look kind of funny. The +red-hot rage of the afternoon and the white-hot rage of the evening had +choked the furnace of brain and soul with clinkers so that he was +thinking unevenly and disconnectedly. On the surface he was cool and +unruffled. He stopped for a moment at the railroad tracks to talk with +Stumpy Gans, the one-legged gateman. The little bell above Stumpy's +shanty was ringing its warning, so he strolled leisurely over to the +depot platform to see the 7:15 come in from Chicago. When the train +pulled out Buzz went on down the street. His mind was darting here and +there, planning this revenge, discarding it; seizing on another, +abandoning that. He'd show'm. He'd show'm. Sick of the whole damn bunch, +anyway.... Wonder was Hatton going to raise a shindy.... Let'm. Who +cares?... The old man was a drunk, that's what.... Ma had looked kinda +sick.... + +He put that uncomfortable thought out of his mind and slammed the door +on it. Anyway, he'd show'm. + +Out of the shadows of the great trees in front of the Agassiz School +stepped the Kearney girl, like a lean and hungry cat. One hand clutched +his arm. + +Buzz jumped and said something under his breath. Then he laughed, +shortly. "Might as well kill a guy as scare him to death!" + +She thrust one hand through his arm and linked it with the other. "I've +been waiting for you, Buzz." + +"Yeh. Well, let me tell you something. You quit traipsing up and down in +front of my house, see?" + +"I wanted to see you. An' I didn't know whether you was coming down town +to-night or not." + +"Well, I am. So now you know." He pulled away from her, but she twined +her arm the tighter about his. + +"Ain't sore at me, are yuh, Buzz?" + +"No. Leggo my arm." + +"If you're sore because I been foolin' round with that little wart of a +Donahue--" She turned wise eyes up to him, trying to make them limpid in +the darkness. + +"What do I care who you run with?" + +"Don't you care, Buzz?" The words were soft but there was a steel edge +to her utterance. + +"No." + +"Oh, Buzz, I'm batty about you. I can't help it, can I? H'm? Look here, +you go on to Grand, and hang around for an hour, maybe, and I'll meet +you here an' we'll walk a ways. Will you? I got something to tell you." + +"Naw, I can't to-night. I'm busy." + +And then the steel edge cut. "Buzz, if you turn me down I'll have you +up." + +"Up?" + +"Before old Colt. I can fix up charges. He'll believe it. Say, he knows +me, Judge Colt does. I can name you an'--" + +"Me!" Sheer amazement rang in his voice. "Me? You must be crazy. I +ain't had anything to do with you. You make me sick." + +"That don't make any difference. You can't prove it. I told you I was +crazy about you. I told you--" + +He jerked loose from her then and was off. He ran one block. Then, after +a backward glance, fell into a quick walk that brought him past the +Brill House and to Schroeder's drug store corner. There was his +crowd--Spider, and Red, and Bing, and Casey. They took him literally +unto their breasts. They thumped him on the back. They bestowed on him +the low epithets with which they expressed admiration. Red worked at one +of the bleaching vats in the Hatton paper mill. The story of Buzz's +fistic triumph had spread through the big plant like a flame. + +"Go on, Buzz, tell 'em about it," Red urged, now. "Je's, I like to died +laughing when I heard it. He must of looked a sight, the poor boob. Go +on, Buzz, tell 'em how you says to him he must be a kind of delicate +piece of--you know; go on, tell 'em." + +Buzz hitched himself up with a characteristic gesture, and plunged into +his story. His audience listened entranced, interrupting him with an +occasional "Je's!" of awed admiration. But the thing seemed to lack a +certain something. Perhaps Casey put his finger on that something when, +at the recital's finish he asked: + +"Didn't he see you was goin' to hit him?" + +"No. He never see a thing." + +Casey ruminated a moment. "You could of give him a chanst to put up his +dukes," he said at last. A little silence fell upon the group. Honour +among thieves. + +Buzz shifted uncomfortably. "He's a bigger guy than I am. I bet he's +over six foot. The papers was always telling how he played football at +that college he went to." + +Casey spoke up again. "They say he didn't wait for this here draft. He's +goin' to Fort Sheridan, around Chicago somewhere, to be made a officer." + +"Yeh, them rich guys, they got it all their own way," Spider spoke up, +gloomily. "They--" + +From down the street came a dull, muffled thud-thud-thud-thud. Already +Chippewa, Wisconsin, had learned to recognise it. Grand Avenue, none too +crowded on this mid-week night, pressed to the curb to see. Down the +street they stared toward the moving mass that came steadily nearer. The +listless group on the corner stiffened into something like interest. + +"Company G," said Red. "I hear they're leavin' in a couple of days." + +And down the street they came, thud-thud-thud, Company G, headed for the +new red-brick Armory for the building of which they had engineered +everything from subscription dances and exhibition drills to turkey +raffles. Chippewa had never taken Company G very seriously until now. +How could it, when Company G was made up of Willie Kemp, who clerked in +Hassell's shoe store; Fred Garvey, the reporter on the Chippewa +_Eagle_; Hermie Knapp, the real-estate man, and Earl Hanson who came +around in the morning for your grocery order. + +Thud-thud-thud-thud. And to Chippewa, standing at the curb, quite +suddenly these every-day men and boys were transformed into something +remote and almost terrible. Something grim. Something sacrificial. +Something sacred. + +Thud-thud-thud-thud. Looking straight ahead. + +"The poor boobs," said Spider, and spat, and laughed. + +The company passed on down the street--vanished. Grand Avenue went its +way. + +A little silence fell upon the street-corner group. Bing was the first +to speak. + +"They won't git me in this draft. I got a mother an' two kid sisters to +support." + +"Yeh, a swell lot of supportin' you do!" + +"Who says I don't! I can prove it." + +"They'll get me all right," said Casey. "I ain't kickin'." + +"I'm under age," from Red. + +Spider said nothing. His furtive eyes darted here and there. Spider was +of age. And Spider had no family to support. But Spider had reason to +know that no examining board would pass him into the army of his +country. And it was a reason of which one did not speak. "You're only +twenty, ain't you, Buzz?" he asked, to cover the gap in the +conversation. + +"Yeh." Silence fell again. Then, "But I wouldn't mind goin'. Anything +for a change. This place makes me sick." + +Spider laughed. "You better be a hero and go and enlist." + +Buzz's head came up with a jerk. "Je's, I never thought of that!" + +Red struck an attitude, one hand on his breast. "Now's your chanct, +Buzz, to save your country an' your flag. Enlistment office's right over +the Golden Eagle clothing store. Step up. Don't crowd gents! This way!" + +Buzz was staring at him, open-mouthed. His gaze was fixed, tense. +Suddenly he seemed to gather all his muscles together as for a spring. +But he only threw his cigarette into the gutter, yawned elaborately, and +moved away. "S'long," he said; and lounged off. The others looked after +him a moment, puzzled, speculative. Buzz was not usually so laconic. But +evidently he was leaving with no further speech. + +"I guess maybe he ain't so dead sure that Hatton bunch won't git him for +this, anyway," Casey said. Then, raising his voice: "Goin' home, Buzz?" + +"Yeh." + +But he did not. If they had watched him they would have seen him change +his lounging gait when he reached the corner. They would have seen him +stand a moment, sending a quick glance this way and that, then turn, +retrace his steps almost at a run, and dart into the doorway that led +to the flight of wooden stairs at the side of the Golden Eagle clothing +store. + +A dingy room. A man at a bare table. Another seated at the window, his +chair tipped back, his feet on the sill, a pipe between his teeth. Buzz, +shambling, suddenly awkward, stood in the door. + +"This the place where you enlist?" + +The man at the table stood up. The chair in front of the open window +came down on all-fours. + +"Sure," said the first man. "What's your name?" + +Buzz told him. + +"Meet Sergeant Keith. He's a Canadian. Been through the whole game." + +Five minutes later Buzz's fine white torso rose above his trousers like +a great pillar. Unconsciously his sagging shoulders had straightened. +His stomach was held in. His chest jutted, shelf-like. His ribs showed +through the pink-white flesh. + +"Get some of that pork off of him," observed Sergeant Keith, "and he'll +do in a couple of Fritzes before he's through." + +"Me!" blurted Buzz, struggling now with his shirt. "A couple! Say, you +don't know me. Whaddyou mean, a couple? I can lick a whole regiment of +them beerheads with one hand tied behind me an' my feet in a sack." He +emerged from the struggle with his shirt, his face very red, his hair +rumpled. + +Sergeant Keith smiled a grim little smile. "Keep your shirt on, kid," +he said, "and remember, this isn't a fist fight you're going into. It's +war." + +Buzz, fumbling with his hat, put his question. "When--when do I go?" For +he had signed his name in his round, boyish, sixth-grade scrawl. + +"To-morrow. Now listen to these instructions." + +"T-to-morrow?" gasped Buzz. + +He was still gasping as he reached the street and struck out toward +home. To-morrow! When the Kearney girl again stepped out of the +tree-shadows he stared at her as at something remote and trivial. + +"I thought you tried to give me the slip, Buzz. Where you been?" + +"Never mind where I've been." + +She fell into step beside him, but had difficulty in matching his great +strides. She caught at his arm. At that Buzz turned and stopped. It was +too dark to see his face, but something in his voice--something new, and +hard, and resolute--reached even the choked and slimy cells of this +creature's consciousness. + +"Now looka here. You beat it. I got somethin' on my mind to-night and I +can't be bothered with no fool girl, see? Don't get me sore. I mean it." + +Her hand dropped away from his arm. "I didn't mean what I said about +havin' you up, Buzz; honest t' Gawd I didn't." + +"I don't care what you meant." + +'Will you meet me to-morrow night? Will you, Buzz?" + +"If I'm in this town to-morrow night I'll meet you. Is that good +enough?" + +He turned and strode away. But she was after him. "Where you goin' +to-morrow?" + +"I'm goin' to war, that's where." + +"Yes you are!" scoffed Miss Kearney. Then, at his silence: "You didn't +go and do a fool thing like that?" + +"I sure did." + +"When you goin'?" + +"To-morrow." + +"Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and +do that for?" + +"Search _me_," said Buzz, dully. "Search _me_." + +Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly, +empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been +called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any +emotion so dignified as scorn. + +The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The +Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly +_negligee_ as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis +Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his +chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono, +sewing. + +On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the +hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant +that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz +leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three +were on him. + +"Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma +Werner's head came up sharply at that. + +"What you done, Ernie?" + +"Enlisted." + +"Enlisted--for what?" + +"For the war; what do you suppose?" + +Ma Werner rose at that, heavily. "Ernie! You never!" + +Pa Werner was wide awake now. Out of his memory of the old country, and +soldier service there, he put his next question. "Did you sign to it?" + +"Yeh." + +"When you goin'?" + +"To-morrow." + +Even Pa Werner gasped at that. + +In families like the Werners emotion is rarely expressed. But now, +because of something in the stricken face and starting eyes of the +woman, and the open-mouthed dumbfoundedness of the old man, and the +sudden tender fearfulness in the face of the girl; and because, in that +moment, all these seemed very safe, and accustomed, and, somehow, dear, +Buzz curled his mouth into the sneer of the tough guy and spoke out of +the corner of that contorted feature. + +"What did you think I was goin' to do? Huh? Stick around here and take +dirt from the bunch of you! Nix! I'm through!" + +There was nothing dramatic about Buzz's going. He seemed to be whisked +away. One moment he was eating his breakfast at an unaccustomed hour, in +his best shirt and trousers, his mother, only half understanding even +now, standing over him with the coffee pot; the next he was standing +with his cheap shiny suitcase in his hand. Then he was waiting on the +depot platform, and Hefty Burke, the baggage man, was saying, "Where you +goin', Buzz?" + +"Goin' to fight the Germans." + +Hefty had hooted hoarsely: "Ya-a-as you are, you big bluff!" + +"Who you callin' a bluff, you baggage-smasher, you! I'm goin' to war, +I'm tellin' you." + +Hefty, still scoffing, turned away to his work. "Well, then, I guess +it's as good as over. Give old Willie a swipe for me, will you?" + +"You bet I will. Watch me!" + +I think he more than half meant it. + +And thus Buzz Werner went to war. He was vague about its locality. +Somewhere in Europe. He was pretty sure it was France. A line from his +Fourth Grade geography came back to him. "The French," it had said, "are +a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines." + +Well, that sounded all right. + +The things that happened to Buzz Werner in the next twelve months +cannot be detailed here. They would require the space of what the +publishers call a 12-mo volume. Buzz himself could never have told you. +Things happened too swiftly, too concentratedly. + +Chicago first. Buzz had never seen Chicago. Now that he saw it, he +hardly believed it. His first glimpse of it left him cowering, +terrified. The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness, +were like blows upon his defenceless head. They beat the braggadocio and +the self-confidence temporarily out of him. But only temporarily. + +Then came a camp. A rough, temporary camp compared to which the present +cantonments are luxurious. The United States Government took Buzz Werner +by the slack of the trousers and the slack of the mind, and, holding him +thus, shook him into shape--and into submission. And eventually--though +it required months--into an understanding of why that submission was +manly, courageous, and fine. But before he learned that he learned many +other things. He learned there was little good in saying, "Aw, g'wan!" +to a dapper young lieutenant if they clapped you into the guard-house +for saying it. There was little point to throwing down your shovel and +refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for +doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out. He +learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a +dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an +olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so +sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from +limb, during the night, and never put together again. He stood out with +a raw squad in the dirt of No Man's Land between barracks and went +through exercises that took hold of his great slack muscles and welded +them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim, +six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless, +merciless--a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between +thumb and finger--like that!--who made life a hell for Buzz Werner. +Until his muscles became used to it. + +"One--_two_!--three! One--_two_--three! One--_two_--three!" yelled this +person. And, "_In_hale! _Ex_hale! _In_hale! _Ex_hale!" till Buzz's lungs +were bursting, his eyes were starting from his head, his chest carried a +sledge hammer inside it, his thigh-muscles screamed, and his legs, arms, +neck, were no longer parts of him, but horrid useless burdens, detached, +yet clinging. He learned what this person meant when he shouted (always +with the rising inflection), "Comp'ny! Right! _Whup_!" Buzz whupped with +the best of 'em. The whipper-snapper seemed tireless. Long after Buzz +felt that another moment of it would kill him the lithe young lieutenant +would be leaping about like a faun, and pride kept Buzz going though he +wanted to drop with fatigue, and his shirt and hair and face were wet +with sweat. + +So much for his body. It soon became accustomed to the routine, then +hardened. His mind was less pliable. But that, too, was undergoing a +change. He found that the topics of conversation that used to interest +his little crowd on the street corner in Chippewa were not of much +interest, here. There were boys from every part of the great country. +And they talked of the places whence they had come and speculated about +the places to which they were going. And Buzz listened and learned. +There was strangely little talk about girls. There usually is when +muscles and mind are being driven to the utmost. But he heard men--men +as big as he--speak openly of things that he had always sneered at as +soft. After one of these conversations he wrote an awkward, but +significant scrawl home to his mother. + +"Well Ma," he wrote, "I guess maybe you would like to hear a few words +from me. Well I like it in the army it is the life for me you bet. I am +feeling great how are you all--" + +Ma Werner wasted an entire morning showing it around the neighbourhood, +and she read and reread it until it was almost pulp. + +Six months of this. Buzz Werner was an intelligent machine composed of +steel, cord, and iron. I think he had forgotten that the Kearney girl +had ever existed. One day, after three months of camp life, the man in +the next cot had thrown him a volume of Kipling. Buzz fingered it, +disinterestedly. Until that moment Kipling had not existed for Buzz +Werner. After that moment he dominated his leisure hours. The Y.M.C.A. +hut had many battered volumes of this writer. Buzz read them all. + +The week before Thanksgiving Buzz found himself on his way to New York. +For some reason unexplained to him he was separated from his company in +one of the great shake-ups performed for the good of the army. He never +saw them again. He was sent straight to a New York camp. When he beheld +his new lieutenant his limbs became fluid, and his heart leaped into his +throat, and his mouth stood open, and his eyes bulged. It was young +Hatton--Harry Hatton--whose aristocratic nose he had punched six months +before, in the Hatton Pulp and Paper Mill. + +And even as he stared young Hatton fixed him with his eye, and then came +over to him and said, "It's all right, Werner." + +Buzz Werner could only salute with awkward respect, while with one great +gulp his heart slid back into normal place. He had not thought that +Hatton was so tall, or so broad-shouldered, or so-- + +He no more thought of telling the other men that he had once knocked +this man down than he thought of knocking him down again. He would +almost as soon have thought of taking a punch at the President. + +The day before Thanksgiving Buzz was told he might have a holiday. Also +he was given an address and a telephone number in New York City and told +that if he so desired he might call at that address and receive a +bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. They were expecting him there. That the +telephone exchange was Murray Hill, and the street Madison Avenue meant +nothing to Buzz. He made the short trip to New York, floundered about +the city, found every one willing and eager to help him find the address +on the slip, and brought up, finally, in front of the house on Madison +Avenue. It was a large, five-story stone place, and Buzz supposed it was +a flat, of course. He stood off and surveyed it. Then he ascended the +steps and rang the bell. They must have been waiting for him. The door +was opened by a large amiable-looking, middle-aged man who said, "Well, +well! Come in, come in, my boy!" a great deal as the folks in Chippewa, +Wisconsin, might have said it. The stout old party also said he was glad +to see him and Buzz believed it. They went upstairs, much to Buzz's +surprise. In Buzz's experience upstairs always meant bedrooms. But in +this case it meant a great bright sitting room, with books in it, and a +fireplace, very cheerful. There were not a lot of people in the room. +Just a middle-aged woman in a soft kind of dress, who came to him +without any fuss and the first thing he knew he felt acquainted. Within +the next fifteen minutes or so some other members of the family seemed +to ooze in, unnoticeably. First thing you knew, there they were. They +didn't pay such an awful lot of attention to you. Just took you for +granted. A couple of young kids, a girl of fourteen, and a boy of +sixteen who asked you easy questions about the army till you found +yourself patronising him. And a tall black-haired girl who made you +think of the vamps in the movies, only her eyes were different. And +then, with a little rush, a girl about his own age, or maybe younger--he +couldn't tell--who came right up to him, and put out her hand, and gave +him a grip with her hard little fist, just like a boy, and said, "I'm +Joyce Ladd." + +"Pleased to meetcha," mumbled Buzz. And then he found himself talking to +her quite easily. She knew a surprising lot about the army. + +"I've two brothers over there," she said. "And all my friends, of +course." He found out later, quite by accident, that this boyish, but +strangely appealing person belonged to some sort of Motor Service +League, and drove an automobile, every day, from eight to six, up and +down and round and about New York, working like a man in the service of +the country. He never would have believed that the world held that kind +of girl. + +Then four other men in uniform came in, and it turned out that three of +them were privates like himself, and the other a sergeant. Their awkward +entrance made him feel more than ever at ease, and ten minutes later +they were all talking like mad, and laughing and joking as if they had +known these people for years. They all went in to dinner. Buzz got +panicky when he thought of the knives and forks, but that turned out all +right, too, because they brought these as you needed them. And besides, +the things they gave you to eat weren't much different from the things +you had for Sunday or Thanksgiving dinner at home, and it was cooked the +way his mother would have cooked it--even better, perhaps. And lots of +it. And paper snappers and caps and things, and much laughter and talk. +And Buzz Werner, who had never been shown any respect or deference in +his life, was asked, politely, his opinion of the war, and the army, and +when he thought it all would end; and he told them, politely, too. + +After dinner Mrs. Ladd said, "What would you boys like to do? Would you +like to drive around the city and see New York? Or would you like to go +to a matinee, or a picture show? Or do you want to stay here? Some of +Joyce's girl friends are coming in a little later." + +And Buzz found himself saying, stumblingly, "I--I'd kind of rather stay +and talk with the girls." Buzz, the tough guy, blushing like a shy +schoolboy. + +They did not even laugh at that. They just looked as if they understood +that you missed girls at camp. Mrs. Ladd came over to him and put her +hand on his arm and said, "That's splendid. We'll all go up to the +ballroom and dance." And they did. And Buzz, who had learned to dance at +places like Kearney's saloon, and at the mill shindigs, glided expertly +about with Joyce Ladd of Madison Avenue, and found himself seated in a +great cushioned window-seat, talking with her about Kipling. It was like +talking to another fellow, almost, only it had a thrill in it. She said +such comic things. And when she laughed she threw back her head and your +eyes were dazzled by her slender white throat. They all stayed for +supper. And when they left Mrs. Ladd and Joyce handed them packages +that, later, turned out to be cigarettes, and chocolate, and books, and +soap, and knitted things and a wallet. And when Buzz opened the wallet +and found, with relief, that there was no money in it he knew that he +had met and mingled with American royalty as its equal. + +Three days later he sailed for France. + +Buzz Werner, the Chippewa tough guy, in Paris! Buzz Werner at Napoleon's +tomb, that glorious white marble poem. Buzz Werner in the Place de la +Concorde. Eating at funny little Paris restaurants. + +Then a new life. Life in a drab, rain-soaked, mud-choked little French +village, sleeping in barns, or stables, or hen coops. If the French were +"a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," he'd like to know where +it came in! Nothing but drill and mud, mud and drill, and rain, rain, +rain! And old women with tragic faces, and young women with old eyes. +And unbelievable stories of courage and sacrifice. And more rain, and +more mud, and more drill. And then--into it! + +Into it with both feet. Living in the trenches. Back home, in camp, they +had refused to take the trenches seriously. They had played in them as +children play bear under the piano or table, and had refused to keep +their heads down. But Buzz learned to keep his down now, quickly enough. +A first terrifying stretch of this, then back to the rear again. More +mud and drill. Marches so long and arduous that walking was no longer +walking but a dreadful mechanical motion. He learned what thirst was, +did Buzz. He learned what it was to be obliged to keep your mind off the +thought of pails of water--pails that slopped and brimmed over, so that +you could put your head into them and lip around like a horse. + +Then back into the trenches. And finally, over the top! Very little +memory of what happened after that. A rush. Trampling over soft heaps +that writhed. Some one yelling like an Indian with a voice somehow like +his own. The German trench reached. At them with his bayonet! He +remembered, automatically, how his manual had taught him to jerk out the +steel, after you had driven it home. He did it. Into the very trench +itself. A great six-foot German struggling with a slim figure that Buzz +somehow recognised as his lieutenant, Hatton. A leap at him, like an +enraged dog: + +"G'wan! who you shovin', you big slob you" yelled Buzz (I regret to +say). And he thrust at him, and through him. The man released his +grappling hold of Hatton's throat, and grunted, and sat down. And Buzz +laughed. And the two went on, Buzz behind his lieutenant, and then +something smote his thigh, and he too sat down. The dying German had +thrown his last bomb, and it had struck home. + +Buzz Werner would never again do a double shuffle on Schroeder's +drug-store corner. + +Hospital days. Hospital nights. A wheel chair. Crutches. Home. + +It was May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little +red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his +uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at +his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one. +As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just before reaching +the town proper, there was old Bart Ochsner ringing the bell for dinner +at the Junction eating house. Well, for the love of Mike! Wouldn't that +make you laugh. Ringing that bell, just like always, as if nothing had +happened in the last year! Buzz leaned against the window, to see. There +was some commotion in the train and some one spoke his name. Buzz +turned, and there stood Old Man Hatton, and a lot of others, and he +seemed to be making a speech, and kind of crying, though that couldn't +be possible. And his father was there, very clean and shaved and queer. +Buzz caught words about bravery, and Chippewa's pride, and he was fussed +to death, and glad when the train pulled in at the Chippewa station. But +there the commotion was worse than ever. There was a band, playing away +like mad. Buzz's great hands grown very white, were fidgeting at his +uniform buttons, and at the stripe on his sleeve, and the medal on his +breast. They wouldn't let him carry a thing, and when he came out on the +car platform to descend there went up a great sound that was half roar +and half scream. Buzz Werner was the first of Chippewa's men to come +back. + +After that it was rather hazy. There was his mother. His sister Minnie, +too. He even saw the Kearney girl, with her loose red mouth, and her +silly eyes, and she was as a strange woman to him. He was in Hatton's +glittering automobile, being driven down Grand Avenue. There were +speeches, and a dinner, and, later, when he was allowed to go home, +rather white, a steady stream of people pouring in and out of the house +all day. That night, when he limped up the stairs to his hot little room +under the roof he was dazed, spent, and not so very happy. + +Next morning, though, he felt more himself, and inclined to joke. And +then there was a talk with old Man Hatton; a talk that left Buzz +somewhat numb, and the family breathless. + +Visitors again, all that afternoon. + +After supper he carried water for the garden, against his mother's +outraged protests. + +"What'll folks think!" she said, "you carryin' water for me?" + +Afterward he took his smart visored cap off the hook and limped down +town, his boots and leggings and uniform very spick and span from Ma +Werner's expert brushing and rubbing. She refused to let Buzz touch +them, although he tried to tell her that he had done that job for a +year. + +At the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's drug +store, stood what was left of the gang, and some new members who had +come during the year that had passed. Buzz knew them all. + +They greeted him at first with a mixture of shyness and resentment. They +eyed his leg, and his uniform, and the metal and ribbon thing that hung +at his breast. Bing and Red and Spider were there. Casey was gone. + +Finally Spider spat and said, "G'wan, Buzz, give us your spiel about how +you saved young Hatton--the simp!" + +"Who says he's a simp?" inquired Buzz, very quietly. But there was a +look about his jaw. + +"Well--anyway--the papers was full of how you was a hero. Say, is that +right that old Hatton's goin' to send you to college? Huh? Je's!" + +"Yeh," chorused the others, "go on, Buzz. Tell us." + +Red put his question. "Tell us about the fightin', Buzz. Is it like they +say?" + +It was Buzz Werner's great moment. He had pictured it a thousand times +in his mind as he lay in the wet trenches, as he plodded the muddy +French roads, as he reclined in his wheel chair in the hospital garden. +He had them in the hollow of his hand. His eyes brightened. He looked at +the faces so eagerly fixed on his utterance. + +"G'wan, Buzz," they urged. + +Buzz opened his lips and the words he used were the words he might have +used a year before, as to choice. "There's nothin' to tell. A guy didn't +have no time to be scairt. Everything kind of come at once, and you got +yours, or either you didn't. That's all there was to it. Je's, it was +fierce!" + +They waited. Nothing more. "Yeh, but tell us--" + +And suddenly Buzz turned away. The little group about him fell back, +respectfully. Something in his face, perhaps. A quietness, a new +dignity. + +"S'long, boys," he said. And limped off, toward home. + +And in that moment Buzz, the bully and braggart, vanished forever. And +in his place--head high, chest up, eyes clear--limped Ernest Werner, the +man. + + + + +IV + + +THE ELDEST + +The Self-Complacent Young Cub leaned an elbow against the mantel as +you've seen it done in English plays, and blew a practically perfect +smoke-ring. It hurtled toward me like a discus. + +"Trouble with your stuff," he began at once (we had just been +introduced), "is that it lacks plot. Been meaning to meet and tell you +that for a long time. Your characterization's all right, and your +dialogue. In fact, I think they're good. But your stuff lacks _raison +d'etre_--if you know what I mean. + +"But"--in feeble self-defence--"people's insides are often so much more +interesting than their outsides; that which they think or feel so much +more thrilling than anything they actually do. Bennett--Wells--" + +"Rot!" remarked the young cub, briskly. "Plot's the thing." + + * * * * * + +There is no plot to this because there is no plot to Rose. There never +was. There never will be. Compared to the drab monotony of Rose's +existence a desert waste is as thrilling as a five-reel film. + +They had called her Rose, fatuously, as parents do their first-born +girl. No doubt she had been normally pink and white and velvety. It is a +risky thing to do, however. Think back hastily on the Roses you know. +Don't you find a startling majority still clinging, sere and withered, +to the family bush? + +In Chicago, Illinois, a city of two millions (or is it three?), there +are women whose lives are as remote, as grey, as unrelated to the world +about them as is the life of a Georgia cracker's woman-drudge. Rose was +one of these. An unwed woman, grown heavy about the hips and arms, as +houseworking women do, though they eat but little, moving dully about +the six-room flat on Sangamon Street, Rose was as much a slave as any +black wench of plantation days. + +There was the treadmill of endless dishes, dirtied as fast as cleansed; +there were beds, and beds, and beds; gravies and soups and stews. And +always the querulous voice of the sick woman in the front bedroom +demanding another hot water bag. Rose's day was punctuated by hot water +bags. They dotted her waking hours. She filled hot water bags +automatically, like a machine--water half-way to the top, then one hand +clutching the bag's slippery middle while the other, with a deft twist, +ejected the air within; a quick twirl of the metal stopper, the bag +released, squirming, and, finally, its plump and rufous cheeks wiped +dry. + +"Is that too hot for you, Ma? Where'd you want it--your head or your +feet?" + +A spinster nearing forty, living thus, must have her memories--one +precious memory, at least--or she dies. Rose had hers. She hugged it, +close. The L trains roared by, not thirty feet from her kitchen door. +Alley and yard and street sent up their noises to her. The life of +Chicago's millions yelped at her heels. On Rose's face was the vague, +mute look of the woman whose days are spent indoors, at sordid tasks. + +At six-thirty every night that look lifted, for an hour. At six-thirty +they came home--Floss, and Al, and Pa--their faces stamped with the +marks that come from a day spent in shop and factory. They brought with +them the crumbs and husks of the day's happenings, and these they flung +carelessly before the life-starved Rose and she ate them, gratefully. + +They came in with a rush, hungry, fagged, grimed, imperious, smelling of +the city. There was a slamming of doors, a banging of drawers, a clatter +of tongues, quarrelling, laughter. A brief visit to the sick woman's +room. The thin, complaining voice reciting its tale of the day's +discomfort and pain. Then supper. + +"Guess who I waited on to-day!" Floss might demand. + +Rose, dishing up, would pause, interested. "Who?" + +"Gladys Moraine! I knew her the minute she came down the aisle. I saw +her last year when she was playing in 'His Wives.' She's prettier off +than on, I think. I waited on her, and the other girls were wild. She +bought a dozen pairs of white kids, and made me give 'em to her huge, so +she could shove her hand right into 'em, like a man does. Two sizes too +big. All the swells wear 'em that way. And only one ring--an emerald the +size of a dime." + +"What'd she wear?" Rose's dull face was almost animated. + +"Ah yes!" in a dreamy falsetto from Al, "what _did_ she wear?" + +"Oh, shut up, Al! Just a suit, kind of plain, and yet you'd notice it. +And sables! And a Gladys Moraine hat. Everything quiet, and plain, and +dark; and yet she looked like a million dollars. I felt like a roach +while I was waiting on her, though she was awfully sweet to me." + +Or perhaps Al, the eel-like, would descend from his heights to mingle a +brief moment in the family talk. Al clerked in the National Cigar +Company's store at Clark and Madison. His was the wisdom of the snake, +the weasel, and the sphinx. A strangely silent young man, this Al, +thin-lipped, smooth-cheeked, perfumed. Slim of waist, flat of hip, +narrow of shoulder, his was the figure of the born fox-trotter. He +walked lightly, on the balls of his feet, like an Indian, but without +the Indian's dignity. + +"Some excitement ourselves, to-day, down at the store, believe me. The +Old Man's son started in to learn the retail selling end of the +business. Back of the showcase with the rest of us, waiting on trade, +and looking like a Yale yell." + +Pa would put down his paper to stare over his reading specs at Al. + +"Mannheim's son! The president!" + +"Yep! And I guess he loves it, huh? The Old Man wants him to learn the +business from the ground up. I'll bet he'll never get higher than the +first floor. To-day he went out to lunch at one and never shows up again +till four. Wears English collars, and smokes a brand of cigarettes we +don't carry." + +Thus was the world brought to Rose. Her sallow cheek would show a faint +hint of colour as she sipped her tea. + +At six-thirty on a Monday morning in late April (remember, nothing's +going to happen) Rose smothered her alarm clock at the first warning +snarl. She was wide-awake at once, as are those whose yesterdays, +to-days and to-morrows are all alike. Rose never opened her eyes to the +dim, tantalising half-consciousness of a something delightful or a +something harrowing in store for her that day. For one to whom the +wash-woman's Tuesday visitation is the event of the week, and in whose +bosom the delivery boy's hoarse "Groc-rees!" as he hurls soap and cabbage +on the kitchen table, arouses a wild flurry, there can be very little +thrill on awakening. + +Rose slept on the davenport-couch in the sitting-room. That fact in +itself rises her status in the family. This Monday morning she opened +her eyes with what might be called a start if Rose were any other sort +of heroine. Something had happened, or was happening. It wasn't the six +o'clock steam hissing in the radiator. She was accustomed to that. The +rattle of the L trains, and the milkman's artillery disturbed her as +little as does the chirping of the birds the farmer's daughter. A +sensation new, yet familiar; delicious, yet painful, held her. She +groped to define it, lying there. Her gaze, wandering over the expanse +of the grey woollen blanket, fixed upon a small black object trembling +there. The knowledge that came to her then had come, many weeks before, +in a hundred subtle and exquisite ways, to those who dwell in the open +places. Rose's eyes narrowed craftily. Craftily, stealthily, she sat up, +one hand raised. Her eyes still fixed on the quivering spot, the hand +descended, lightning-quick. But not quickly enough. The black spot +vanished. It sped toward the open window. Through that window there came +a balmy softness made up of Lake Michigan zephyr, and stockyards smell, +and distant budding things. Rose had failed to swat the first fly of the +season. Spring had come. + +As she got out of bed and thud-thudded across the room on her heels to +shut the window she glanced out into the quiet street. Her city eyes, +untrained to nature's hints, failed to notice that the scraggy, +smoke-dwarfed oak that sprang, somehow, miraculously, from the mangey +little dirt-plot in front of the building had developed surprising +things all over its scrawny branches overnight. But she did see that the +front windows of the flat building across the way were bare of the +Chicago-grey lace curtains that had hung there the day before. House +cleaning! Well, most decidedly spring had come. + +Rose was the household's Aurora. Following the donning of her limp and +obscure garments it was Rose's daily duty to tear the silent family from +its slumbers. Ma was always awake, her sick eyes fixed hopefully on the +door. For fourteen years it had been the same. + +"Sleeping?" + +"Sleeping! I haven't closed an eye all night." + +Rose had learned not to dispute that statement. + +"It's spring out! I'm going to clean the closets and the bureau drawers +to-day. I'll have your coffee in a jiffy. Do you feel like getting up +and sitting out on the back porch, toward noon, maybe?" + +On her way kitchenward she stopped for a sharp tattoo at the door of the +room in which Pa and Al slept. A sleepy grunt of remonstrance rewarded +her. She came to Floss's door, turned the knob softly, peered in. Floss +was sleeping as twenty sleeps, deeply, dreamlessly, one slim bare arm +outflung, the lashes resting ever so lightly on the delicate curve of +cheek. As she lay there asleep in her disordered bedroom, her clothes +strewing chair, dresser, floor, Floss's tastes, mental equipment, +spiritual make-up, innermost thoughts, were as plainly to be read by +the observer as though she had been scientifically charted by a +psycho-analyst, a metaphysician and her dearest girl friend. + +"Floss! Floss, honey! Quarter to seven!" Floss stirred, moaned faintly, +dropped into sleep again. + +Fifteen minutes later, the table set, the coffee simmering, the morning +paper brought from the back porch to Ma, Rose had heard none of the +sounds that proclaimed the family astir--the banging of drawers, the +rush of running water, the slap of slippered feet. A peep of enquiry +into the depths of the coffee pot, the gas turned to a circle of blue +beads, and she was down the hall to sound the second alarm. + +"Floss, you know if Al once gets into the bathroom!" Floss sat up in +bed, her eyes still closed. She made little clucking sounds with her +tongue and lips, as a baby does when it wakes. Drugged with sleep, hair +tousled, muscles sagging, at seven o'clock in the morning, the most +trying hour in the day for a woman, Floss was still triumphantly pretty. +She had on one of those absurd pink muslin nightgowns, artfully designed +to look like crepe de chine. You've seen them rosily displayed in the +cheaper shop windows, marked ninety-eight cents, and you may have +wondered who might buy them, forgetting that there is an imitation mind +for every imitation article in the world. + +Rose stooped, picked up a pair of silk stockings from the floor, and +ran an investigating hand through to heel and toe. She plucked a soiled +pink blouse off the back of a chair, eyed it critically, and tucked it +under her arm with the stockings. + +"Did you have a good time last night?" + +Floss yawned elaborately, stretched her slim arms high above her head; +then, with a desperate effort, flung back the bed-clothes, swung her +legs over the side of the bed and slipped her toes into the shabby, +pomponed slippers that lay on the floor. + +"I say, did you have a g--" + +"Oh Lord, I don't know! I guess so," snapped Floss. Temperamentally, +Floss was not at her best at seven o'clock on Monday morning. Rose did +not pursue the subject. She tried another tack. + +"It's as mild as summer out. I see the Werners and the Burkes are +housecleaning. I thought I'd start to-day with the closets, and the +bureau drawers. You could wear your blue this morning, if it was +pressed." + +Floss yawned again, disinterestedly, and folded her kimono about her. + +"Go as far as you like. Only don't put things back in my closet so's I +can't ever find 'em again. I wish you'd press that blue skirt. And wash +out the Georgette crepe waist. I might need it." + +The blouse, and skirt, and stockings under her arm, Rose went back to +the kitchen to prepare her mother's breakfast tray. Wafted back to her +came the acrid odour of Pa's matutinal pipe, and the accustomed +bickering between Al and Floss over the possession of the bathroom. + +"What do you think this is, anyway? A Turkish bath?" + +"Shave in your own room!" + +Between Floss and Al there existed a feud that lifted only when a third +member of the family turned against either of them. Immediately they +about-faced and stood united against the offender. + +Pa was the first to demand breakfast, as always. Very neat, was Pa, and +fussy, and strangely young looking to be the husband of the grey-haired, +parchment-skinned woman who lay in the front bedroom. Pa had two manias: +the movies, and a passion for purchasing new and complicated household +utensils--cream-whippers, egg-beaters, window-clamps, lemon-squeezers, +silver-polishers. He haunted department store basements in search of +them. + +He opened his paper now and glanced at the head-lines and at the Monday +morning ads. "I see the Fair's got a spring housecleaning sale. They +advertise a new kind of extension curtain rod. And Scouro, three cakes +for a dime." + +"If you waste one cent more on truck like that," Rose protested, placing +his breakfast before him, "when half the time I can't make the +housekeeping money last through the week!" + +"Your ma did it." + +"Fourteen years ago liver wasn't thirty-two cents a pound," retorted +Rose, "and besides--" + +"Scramble 'em!" yelled Al, from the bedroom, by way of warning. + +There was very little talk after that. The energies of three of them +were directed toward reaching the waiting desk or counter on time. The +energy of one toward making that accomplishment easy. The front door +slammed once--that was Pa, on his way; slammed again--Al. Floss rushed +into the dining-room fastening the waist-band of her skirt, her hat +already on. Rose always had a rather special breakfast for Floss. Floss +posed as being a rather special person. She always breakfasted last, and +late. Floss's was a fastidiousness which shrinks at badly served food, a +spotted table-cloth, or a last year's hat, while it overlooks a rent in +an undergarment or the accumulated dust in a hairbrush. Her blouse was +of the sheerest. Her hair shone in waves about her delicate checks. She +ate her orange, and sipped her very special coffee, and made a little +face over her egg that had been shirred in the oven or in some way +highly specialised. Then the front door slammed again--a semi-slam, this +time. Floss never did quite close a door. Rose followed her down the +hall, shut and bolted it, Chicago fashion. The sick woman in the front +bedroom had dropped into one of her fitful morning dozes. At eight +o'clock the little flat was very still. + +If you knew nothing about Rose; if you had not already been told that +she slept on the sitting-room davenport; that she was taken for granted +as the family drudge; that she was, in that household, merely an +intelligent machine that made beds, fried eggs, filled hot water bags, +you would get a characterization of her from this: She was the sort of +person who never has a closet or bureau drawer all her own. Her few and +negligible garments hung apologetically in obscure corners of closets +dedicated to her sister's wardrobe or her brother's, or her spruce and +fussy old father's. Vague personal belongings, such as combings, +handkerchiefs, a spectacle case, a hairbrush, were found tucked away in +a desk pigeon-hole, a table drawer, or on the top shelf in the bathroom. + +As she pulled the disfiguring blue gingham dust-cap over her hair now, +and rolled her sleeves to her elbows, you would never have dreamed that +Rose was embarking upon her great adventure. You would never have +guessed that the semi-yearly closet cleaning was to give to Rose a +thrill as delicious as it was exquisitely painful. But Rose knew. And so +she teased herself, and tried not to think of the pasteboard box on the +shelf in the hall closet, under the pile of reserve blankets, and told +herself that she would leave that closet until the last, when she would +have to hurry over it. + + * * * * * + +When you clean closets and bureau drawers thoroughly you have to carry +things out to the back porch and flap them, Rose was that sort of +housekeeper. She leaned over the porch railing and flapped things, so +that the dust motes spun and swirled in the sunshine. Rose's arms worked +up and down energetically, then less energetically, finally ceased their +motion altogether. She leaned idle elbows on the porch railing and gazed +down into the yard below with a look in her eyes such as no squalid +Chicago back yard, with its dusty debris, could summon, even in +spring-time. + +The woman next door came out on her back porch that adjoined Rose's. The +day seemed to have her in its spell, too, for in her hand was something +woolly and wintry, and she began to flap it about as Rose had done. She +had lived next door since October, had that woman, but the two had never +exchanged a word, true to the traditions of their city training. Rose +had her doubts of the woman next door. She kept a toy dog which she +aired afternoons, and her kimonos were florid and numerous. Now, as the +eyes of the two women met, Rose found herself saying, "Looks like +summer." + +The woman next door caught the scrap of conversation eagerly, hungrily. +"It certainly does! Makes me feel like new clothes, and housecleaning." + +"I started to-day!" said Rose, triumphantly. + +"Not already!" gasped the woman next door, with the chagrin that only a +woman knows who has let May steal upon her unawares. + +From far down the alley sounded a chant, drawing nearer and nearer, +until there shambled into view a decrepit horse drawing a dilapidated +huckster's cart. Perched on the seat was a Greek who turned his dusky +face up toward the two women leaning over the porch railings. "Rhubarb, +leddy. Fresh rhubarb!" + +"My folks don't care for rhubarb sauce," Rose told the woman next door. + +"It makes the worst pie in the world," the woman confided to Rose. + +Whereupon each bought a bunch of the succulent green and red stalks. It +was their offering at the season's shrine. + +Rose flung the rhubarb on the kitchen table, pulled her dust-cap more +firmly about her ears, and hurried back to the disorder of Floss's dim +little bedroom. After that it was dust-cloth, and soapsuds, and +scrub-brush in a race against recurrent water bags, insistent doorbells, +and the inevitable dinner hour. It was mid-afternoon when Rose, standing +a-tiptoe on a chair, came at last to the little box on the top shelf +under the bedding in the hall closet. Her hand touched the box, and +closed about it. A little electric thrill vibrated through her body. She +stepped down from the chair, heavily, listened until her acute ear +caught the sound of the sick woman's slumbrous breathing; then, box in +hand, walked down the dark hall to the kitchen. The rhubarb pie, still +steaming in its pan, was cooling on the kitchen table. The dishes from +the invalid's lunch-tray littered the sink. But Rose, seated on the +kitchen chair, her rumpled dust-cap pushed back from her flushed, +perspiring face, untied the rude bit of string that bound the old candy +box, removed the lid, slowly, and by that act was wafted magically out +of the world of rhubarb pies, and kitchen chairs, and dirty dishes, into +that place whose air is the breath of incense and myrrh, whose paths are +rose-strewn, whose dwellings are temples dedicated to but one small god. +The land is known as Love, and Rose travelled back to it on the magic +rug of memory. + +A family of five in a six-room Chicago flat must sacrifice sentiment to +necessity. There is precious little space for those pressed flowers, +time-yellowed gowns, and ribbon-bound packets that figured so +prominently in the days of attics. Into the garbage can with yesterday's +roses! The janitor's burlap sack yawns for this morning's mail; last +year's gown has long ago met its end at the hands of the ol'-clo'es man +or the wash-woman's daughter. That they had survived these fourteen +years, and the strictures of their owner's dwelling, tells more about +this boxful of letters than could be conveyed by a battalion of +adjectives. + +Rose began at the top of the pile, in her orderly fashion, and read +straight through to the last. It took one hour. Half of that time she +was not reading. She was staring straight ahead with what is mistakenly +called an unseeing look, but which actually pierces the veil of years +and beholds things far, far beyond the vision of the actual eye. They +were the letters of a commonplace man to a commonplace woman, written +when they loved each other, and so they were touched with something of +the divine. They must have been, else how could they have sustained this +woman through fifteen years of drudgery? They were the only tangible +foundation left of the structure of dreams she had built about this man. +All the rest of her house of love had tumbled about her ears fifteen +years before, but with these few remaining bricks she had erected many +times since castles and towers more exquisite and lofty and soaring than +the original humble structure had ever been. + +The story? Well, there really isn't any, as we've warned you. Rose had +been pretty then in much the same delicate way that Floss was pretty +now. They were to have been married. Rose's mother fell ill, Floss and +Al were little more than babies. The marriage was put off. The illness +lasted six months--a year--two years--became interminable. The breach +into which Rose had stepped closed about her and became a prison. The +man had waited, had grown impatient, finally rebelled. He had fled, +probably, to marry a less encumbered lady. Rose had gone dully on, +caring for the household, the children, the sick woman. In the years +that had gone by since then Rose had forgiven him his faithlessness. +She only remembered that he had been wont to call her his Roeschen, +his Rosebud, his pretty flower (being a German gentleman). She only +recalled the wonder of having been first in some one's thoughts--she +who now was so hopelessly, so irrevocably last. + +As she sat there in her kitchen, wearing her soap-stained and faded blue +gingham, and the dust-cap pushed back at a rakish angle, a simpering +little smile about her lips, she was really very much like the +disappointed old maids you used to see so cruelly pictured in the comic +valentines. Had those letters obsessed her a little more strongly she +might have become quite mad, the Freudians would tell you. Had they held +less for her, or had she not been so completely the household's slave, +she might have found a certain solace and satisfaction in viewing the +Greek profile and marcel wave of the most-worshipped movie star. As it +was, they were her ballast, her refuge, the leavening yeast in the soggy +dough of her existence. This man had wanted her to be his wife. She had +found favour in his eyes. She was certain that he still thought of her, +sometimes, and tenderly, regretfully, as she thought of him. It helped +her to live. Not only that, it made living possible. + +A clock struck, a window slammed, or a street-noise smote her ear +sharply. Some sound started her out of her reverie. Rose jumped, stared +a moment at the letters in her lap, then hastily, almost shamefacedly, +sorted them (she knew each envelope by heart) tied them, placed them in +their box and bore them down the hail. There, mounting her chair, she +scrubbed the top shelf with her soapy rag, placed the box in its +corner, left the hall closet smelling of cleanliness, with never a hint +of lavender to betray its secret treasure. + +Were Rose to die and go to Heaven, there to spend her days thumbing a +golden harp, her hands, by force of habit, would, drop harp-strings at +quarter to six, to begin laying a celestial and unspotted table-cloth +for supper. Habits as deeply rooted as that must hold, even in +after-life. + +To-night's six-thirty stampede was noticeably subdued on the part of Pa +and Al. It had been a day of sudden and enervating heat, and the city +had done its worst to them. Pa's pink gills showed a hint of purple. +Al's flimsy silk shirt stuck to his back, and his glittering pompadour +was many degrees less submissive than was its wont. But Floss came in +late, breathless, and radiant, a large and significant paper bag in her +hand. Rose, in the kitchen, was transferring the smoking supper from pot +to platter. Pa, in the doorway of the sick woman's little room, had just +put his fourteen-year-old question with his usual assumption of +heartiness and cheer: "Well, well! And how's the old girl to-night? Feel +like you could get up and punish a little supper, eh?" Al engaged at the +telephone with some one whom he addressed proprietorially as Kid, was +deep in his plans for the evening's diversion. Upon this accustomed +scene Floss burst with havoc. + +"Rose! Rose, did you iron my Georgette crepe? Listen! Guess what!" All +this as she was rushing down the hall, paper hat-bag still in hand. +"Guess who was in the store to-day!" + +Rose, at the oven, turned a flushed and interested face toward Floss. + +"Who? What's that? A hat?" + +"Yes. But listen--" + +"Let's see it." + +Floss whipped it out of its bag, defiantly. "There! But wait a minute! +Let me tell you--" + +"How much?" + +Floss hesitated just a second. Her wage was nine dollars a week. Then, +"Seven-fifty, trimmed." The hat was one of those tiny, head-hugging +absurdities that only the Flosses can wear. + +"Trimmed is right!" jeered Al, from the doorway. + +Rose, thin-lipped with disapproval, turned to her stove again. + +"Well, but I had to have it. I'm going to the theatre to-night. And +guess who with! Henry Selz!" + +Henry Selz was the unromantic name of the commonplace man over whose +fifteen-year-old letters Rose had glowed and dreamed an hour before. It +was a name that had become mythical in that household--to all but one. +Rose heard it spoken now with a sense of unreality. She smiled a little +uncertainly, and went on stirring the flour thickening for the gravy. +But she was dimly aware that something inside her had suspended action +for a moment, during which moment she felt strangely light and +disembodied, and that directly afterward the thing began to work madly, +so that there was a choked feeling in her chest and a hot pounding in +her head. + +"What's the joke?" she said, stirring the gravy in the pan. + +"Joke nothing! Honest to God! I was standing back of the counter at +about ten. The rush hadn't really begun yet. Glove trade usually starts +late. I was standing there kidding Herb, the stock boy, when down the +aisle comes a man in a big hat, like you see in the western pictures, +hair a little grey at the temples, and everything, just like a movie +actor. I said to Herb, 'Is it real?' I hadn't got the words out of my +mouth when the fellow sees me, stands stock still in the middle of the +aisle with his mouth open and his eyes sticking out. 'Register +surprise,' I said to Herb, and looked around for the camera. And that +minute he took two jumps over to where I was standing, grabbed my hands +and says, 'Rose! Rose!' kind of choky. 'Not by about twenty years,' I +said. 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!'" + +Rose--a transfigured Rose, glowing, trembling, radiant--repeated, +vibrantly, "You said, 'I'm Floss, Rose's sister. Let go my hands!' +And--?" + +"He looked kind of stunned, for just a minute. His face was a scream, +honestly. Then he said, 'But of course. Fifteen years. But I had always +thought of her as just the same.' And he kind of laughed, ashamed, like +a kid. And the whitest teeth!" + +"Yes, they were--white," said Rose. "Well?" + +"Well, I said, 'Won't I do instead?' 'You bet you'll do!' he said. And +then he told me his name, and how he was living out in Spokane, and his +wife was dead, and he had made a lot of money--fruit, or real estate, or +something. He talked a lot about it at lunch, but I didn't pay any +attention, as long as he really has it a lot I care how--" + +"At lunch?" + +"Everything from grape-fruit to coffee. I didn't know it could be done +in one hour. Believe me, he had those waiters jumping. It takes money. +He asked all about you, and ma, and everything. And he kept looking at +me and saying, 'It's wonderful!' I said, 'Isn't it!' but I meant the +lunch. He wanted me to go driving this afternoon--auto and everything. +Kept calling me Rose. It made me kind of mad, and I told him how you +look. He said, 'I suppose so,' and asked me to go to a show to-night. +Listen, did you press my Georgette? And the blue?" + +"I'll iron the waist while you're eating. I'm not hungry. It only takes +a minute. Did you say he was grey?" + +"Grey? Oh, you mean--why, just here, and here. Interesting, but not a +bit old. And he's got that money look that makes waiters and doormen and +taxi drivers just hump. I don't want any supper. Just a cup of tea. I +haven't got enough time to dress in, decently, as it is." + +Al, draped in the doorway, removed his cigarette to give greater force +to his speech. "Your story interests me strangely, little gell. But +there's a couple of other people that would like to eat, even if you +wouldn't. Come on with that supper, Ro. Nobody staked me to a lunch +to-day." + +Rose turned to her stove again. Two carmine spots had leaped suddenly to +her cheeks. She served the meal in silence, and ate nothing, but that +was not remarkable. For the cook there is little appeal in the meat that +she has tended from its moist and bloody entrance in the butcher's +paper, through the basting or broiling stage to its formal appearance on +the platter. She saw that Al and her father were served. Then she went +back to the kitchen, and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly +fluted the ruffles of the crepe blouse. Floss appeared when the meal was +half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset +cover showing under her thin kimono. She poured herself a cup of tea and +drank it in little quick, nervous gulps. She looked deliriously young, +and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the +flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and anticipation lent a glow to her +eyes, colour to her cheeks. Al, glancing expertly at the ingenuousness +of her artfully simple coiffure, the slim limpness of her body, her +wide-eyed gaze, laughed a wise little laugh. + +"Every move a Pickford. And so girlish withal." + +Floss ignored him. "Hurry up with that waist, Rose!" + +"I'm on the collar now. In a second." There was a little silence. Then: +"Floss, is--is Henry going to call for you--here?" + +"Well, sure! Did you think I was going to meet him on the corner? He +said he wanted to see you, or something polite like that." + +She finished her tea and vanished again. Al, too, had disappeared to +begin that process from which he had always emerged incredibly sleek, +and dapper and perfumed. His progress with shaving brush, shirt, collar +and tie was marked by disjointed bars of the newest syncopation whistled +with an uncanny precision and fidelity to detail. He caught the broken +time, and tossed it lightly up again, and dropped it, and caught it +deftly like a juggler playing with frail crystal globes that seem +forever on the point of crashing to the ground. + +Pa stood up, yawning. "Well," he said, his manner very casual, "guess +I'll just drop around to the movie." + +From the kitchen, "Don't you want to sit with ma a minute, first?" + +"I will when I come back. They're showing the third installment of 'The +Adventures of Aline,' and I don't want to come in in the middle of it." + +He knew the selfishness of it, this furtive and sprightly old man. And +because he knew it he attempted to hide his guilt under a burst of +temper. + +"I've been slaving all day. I guess I've got the right to a little +amusement. A man works his fingers to the bone for his family, and then +his own daughter nags him." + +He stamped down the hall, righteously, and slammed the front door. + +Rose came from the kitchen, the pink blouse, warm from the iron, in one +hand. She prinked out its ruffles and pleatings as she went. Floss, +burnishing her nails somewhat frantically with a dilapidated and greasy +buffer, snatched the garment from her and slipped bare arms into it. The +front door bell rang, three big, determined rings. Panic fell upon the +household. + +"It's him!" whispered Floss, as if she could be heard in the entrance +three floors below. "You'll have to go." + +"I can't!" Every inch of her seemed to shrink and cower away from the +thought. "I can't!" Her eyes darted to and fro like a hunted thing +seeking to escape. She ran to the hall. "Al! Al, go to the door, will +you?" + +"Can't," came back in a thick mumble. "Shaving." + +The front door-bell rang again, three big, determined rings. "Rose!" +hissed Floss, her tone venomous. "I can't go with my waist open. For +heaven's sake! Go to the door!" + +"I can't," repeated Rose, in a kind of wail. "I--can't." And went. As +she went she passed one futile, work-worn hand over her hair, plucked +off her apron and tossed it into; a corner, first wiping her flushed +face with it. + +Henry Selz came up the shabby stairs springily as a man of forty should. +Rose stood at the door and waited for him. He stood in the doorway a +moment, uncertainly. + +"How-do, Henry." + +His uncertainty became incredulity. Then, "Why, how-do, Rose! Didn't +know you--for a minute. Well, well! It's been a long time. Let's +see--ten--fourteen--about fifteen years, isn't it?" + +His tone was cheerfully conversational. He really was interested, +mathematically. He was as sentimental in his reminiscence as if he had +been calculating the lapse of time between the Chicago fire and the +World's Fair. + +"Fifteen," said Rose, "in May. Won't you come in? Floss'll be here in a +minute." + +Henry Selz came in and sat down on the davenport couch and dabbed at his +forehead. The years had been very kind to him--those same years that had +treated Rose so ruthlessly. He had the look of an outdoor man; a man who +has met prosperity and walked with her, and followed her pleasant ways; +a man who has learned late in life of golf and caviar and tailors, but +who has adapted himself to these accessories of wealth with a minimum of +friction. + +"It certainly is warm, for this time of year." He leaned back and +regarded Rose tolerantly. "Well, and how've you been? Did little sister +tell you how flabbergasted I was when I saw her this morning? I'm darned +if it didn't take fifteen years off my age, just like that! I got kind +of balled up for one minute and thought it was you. She tell you?" + +"Yes, she told me," said Rose. + +"I hear your ma's still sick. That certainly is tough. And you've never +married, eh?" + +"Never married," echoed Rose. + +And so they made conversation, a little uncomfortably, until there came +quick, light young steps down the hallway, and Floss appeared in the +door, a radiant, glowing, girlish vision. Youth was in her eyes, her +cheeks, on her lips. She radiated it. She was miraculously well dressed, +in her knowingly simple blue serge suit, and her tiny hat, and her neat +shoes and gloves. + +"Ah! And how's the little girl to-night?" said Henry Selz. + +Floss dimpled, blushed, smiled, swayed. "Did I keep you waiting a +terribly long time?" + +"No, not a bit. Rose and I were chinning over old times, weren't we, +Rose?" A kindly, clumsy thought struck him. "Say, look here, Rose. We're +going to a show. Why don't you run and put on your hat and come along. +H'm? Come on!" + +Rose smiled as a mother smiles at a child that has unknowingly hurt her. +"No, thanks, Henry. Not to-night. You and Floss run along. Yes, I'll +remember you to Ma. I'm sorry you can't see her. But she don't see +anybody, poor Ma." + +Then they were off, in a little flurry of words and laughter. From force +of habit Rose's near-sighted eyes peered critically at the hang of +Floss's blue skirt and the angle of the pert new hat. She stood a +moment, uncertainly, after they had left. On her face was the queerest +look, as of one thinking, re-adjusting, struggling to arrive at a +conclusion in the midst of sudden bewilderment. She turned mechanically +and went into her mother's room. She picked up the tray on the table by +the bed. + +"Who was that?" asked the sick woman, in her ghostly, devitalised voice. + +"That was Henry Selz," said Rose. + +The sick woman grappled a moment with memory. "Henry Selz! Henry--oh, +yes. Did he go out with Rose?" + +"Yes," said Rose. + +"It's cold in here," whined the sick woman. + +"I'll get you a hot bag in a minute, Ma." Rose carried the tray down the +hall to the kitchen. At that Al emerged from his bedroom, shrugging +himself into his coat. He followed Rose down the hall and watched her as +she filled the bag and screwed it and wiped it dry. + +"I'll take that in to Ma," he volunteered. He was up the hall and back +in a flash. Rose had slumped into a chair at the dining-room table, and +was pouring herself a cup of cold and bitter tea. Al came over to her +and laid one white hand on her shoulder. + +"Ro, lend me a couple of dollars till Saturday, will you?" + +"I should say not." + +Al doused his cigarette in the dregs of a convenient teacup. He bent +down and laid his powdered and pale cheek against Rose's sallow one. One +arm was about her, and his hand patted her shoulder. + +"Oh, come on, kid," he coaxed. "Don't I always pay you back? Come on! Be +a sweet ol' sis. I wouldn't ask you only I've got a date to go to the +White City to-night, and dance, and I couldn't get out of it. I tried." +He kissed her, and his lips were moist, and he reeked of tobacco, and +though Rose shrugged impatiently away from him he knew that he had won. +Rose was not an eloquent woman; she was not even an articulate one, at +times. If she had been, she would have lifted up her voice to say now: + +"Oh, God! I am a woman! Why have you given me all the sorrows, and the +drudgery, and the bitterness and the thanklessness of motherhood, with +none of its joys! Give me back my youth! I'll drink the dregs at the +bottom of the cup, but first let me taste the sweet!" + +But Rose did not talk or think in such terms. She could not have put +into words the thing she was feeling even if she had been able to +diagnose it. So what she said was, "Don't you think I ever get sick and +tired of slaving for a thankless bunch like you? Well, I do! Sick and +tired of it. That's what! You make me tired, coming around asking for +money, as if I was a bank." + +But Al waited. And presently she said, grudgingly, wearily, "There's a +dollar bill and some small change in the can on the second shelf in the +china closet." + +Al was off like a terrier. From the pantry came the clink of metal +against metal. He was up the hall in a flash, without a look at Rose. +The front door slammed a third time. + +Rose stirred her cold tea slowly, leaning on the table's edge and gazing +down into the amber liquid that she did not mean to drink. For suddenly +and comically her face puckered up like a child's. Her head came down +among the supper things with a little crash that set the teacups, and +the greasy plates to jingling, and she sobbed as she lay there, with +great tearing, ugly sobs that would not be stilled, though she tried to +stifle them as does one who lives in a paper-thin Chicago flat. She was +not weeping for the Henry Selz whom she had just seen. She was not +weeping for envy of her selfish little sister, or for loneliness, or +weariness. She was weeping at the loss of a ghost who had become her +familiar. She was weeping because a packet of soiled and yellow old +letters on the top shelf in the hall closet was now only a packet of +soiled and yellow old letters, food for the ash can. She was weeping +because the urge of spring, that had expressed itself in her only this +morning pitifully enough in terms of rhubarb, and housecleaning and a +bundle of thumbed old love letters, had stirred in her for the last +time. + +But presently she did stop her sobbing and got up and cleared the table, +and washed the dishes and even glanced at the crumpled sheets of the +morning paper that she never found time to read until evening. By eight +o'clock the little flat was very still. + + + + +V + + +THAT'S MARRIAGE + +Theresa Platt (she that had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husband +across the breakfast table with eyes that smouldered. When a woman's +eyes smoulder at 7.30 a.m. the person seated opposite her had better +look out. But Orville Platt was quite unaware of any smouldering in +progress. He was occupied with his eggs. How could he know that these +very eggs were feeding the dull red menace in Terry Platt's eyes? + +When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it. He +treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts +of our daily life contain the element of chance that is to be found in a +three-minute breakfast egg. + +This was Orville Platt's method of attack: First, he chipped off the +top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a passionate and +relentless scrutiny. Straightening--preparatory to plunging his spoon +therein--he flapped his right elbow. It wasn't exactly a flap; it was a +pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a +mental state. Orville Platt always gave that little preliminary jerk +when he was contemplating a step, or when he was moved, or +argumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening. + +Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap--they had been married +four years--to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning +hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing Terry Platt's nerves into raw, +bleeding fragments. + +Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She was +breathing unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself, "if he +flaps again when he opens the second egg, I'll scream. I'll scream. I'll +scream! I'll sc--" + +He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up the second, +chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then--up went the elbow, and +down, with the accustomed little flap. + +The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early morning quiet of Wetona, +Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of Terry Platt's +hysteria. + +"Terry! For God's sake! What's the matter!" + +Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The egg yolk +trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and flung a gay spot +of yellow on the cloth. He started toward her. + +Terry, wild-eyed, pointed a shaking finger at him. She was laughing, +now, uncontrollably. "Your elbow! Your elbow!" + +"Elbow?" He looked down at it, bewildered; then up, fright in his face. +"What's the matter with it?" + +She mopped her eyes. Sobs shook her. "You f-f-flapped it." + +"F-f-f--" The bewilderment in Orville Platt's face gave way to anger. +"Do you mean to tell me that you screeched like that because my--because +I moved my elbow?" + +"Yes." + +His anger deepened and reddened to fury. He choked. He had started from +his chair with his napkin in his hand. He still clutched it. Now he +crumpled it into a wad and hurled it to the centre of the table, where +it struck a sugar bowl, dropped back, and uncrumpled slowly, +reprovingly. "You--you--" Then bewilderment closed down again like a fog +over his countenance. "But why? I can't see--" + +"Because it--because I can't stand it any longer. Flapping. This is what +you do. Like this." + +And she did it. Did it with insulting fidelity, being a clever mimic. + +"Well, all I can say is you're crazy, yelling like that, for nothing." + +"It isn't nothing." + +"Isn't, huh? If that isn't nothing, what is?" They were growing +incoherent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac? Like a wild +woman? The neighbours'll think I've killed you. What d'you mean, +anyway!" + +"I mean I'm tired of watching it, that's what. Sick and tired." + +"Y'are, huh? Well, young lady, just let me tell _you_ something--" + +He told her. There followed one of those incredible quarrels, as +sickening as they are human, which can take place only between two +people who love each other; who love each other so well that each knows +with cruel certainty the surest way to wound the other; and who stab, +and tear, and claw at these vulnerable spots in exact proportion to +their love. + +Ugly words. Bitter words. Words that neither knew they knew flew between +them like sparks between steel striking steel. + +From him--"Trouble with you is you haven't got enough to do. That's the +trouble with half you women. Just lay around the house, rotting. I'm a +fool, slaving on the road to keep a good-for-nothing--" + +"I suppose you call sitting around hotel lobbies slaving! I suppose the +house runs itself! How about my evenings? Sitting here alone, night +after night, when you're on the road." + +Finally, "Well, if you don't like it," he snarled, and lifted his chair +by the back and slammed it down, savagely, "if you don't like it, why +don't you get out, h'm? Why don't you get out?" + +And from her, her eyes narrowed to two slits, her cheeks scarlet: + +"Why, thanks. I guess I will." + +Ten minutes later he had flung out of the house to catch the 8.19 for +Manitowoc. He marched down the street, his shoulders swinging +rhythmically to the weight of the burden he carried--his black leather +hand-bag and the shiny tan sample case, battle-scarred, both, from many +encounters with ruthless porters and 'bus men and bell boys. For four +years, as he left for his semi-monthly trip, he and Terry had observed a +certain little ceremony (as had the neighbours). She would stand in the +doorway watching him down the street, the heavier sample-case banging +occasionally at his shin. The depot was only three blocks away. Terry +watched him with fond, but unillusioned eyes, which proves that she +really loved him. He was a dapper, well-dressed fat man, with a weakness +for pronounced patterns in suitings, and addicted to brown derbies. One +week on the road, one week at home. That was his routine. The wholesale +grocery trade liked Platt, and he had for his customers the fondness +that a travelling salesman has who is successful in his territory. +Before his marriage to Terry Sheehan his little red address book had +been overwhelming proof against the theory that nobody loves a fat man. + +Terry, standing in the doorway, always knew that when he reached the +corner, just where Schroeder's house threatened to hide him from view, +he would stop, drop the sample case, wave his hand just once, pick up +the sample case and go on, proceeding backward for a step or two, until +Schroeder's house made good its threat. It was a comic scene in the +eyes of the onlooker, perhaps because a chubby Romeo offends the sense +of fitness. The neighbours, lurking behind their parlour curtains, had +laughed at first. But after awhile they learned to look for that little +scene, and to take it unto themselves, as if it were a personal thing. +Fifteen-year wives whose husbands had long since abandoned flowery +farewells used to get a vicarious thrill out of it, and to eye Terry +with a sort of envy. + +This morning Orville Platt did not even falter when he reached +Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily ahead, the +heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had stopped--though she +knew he wouldn't--Terry Platt would not have seen him. She remained +seated at the disordered breakfast table, a dreadfully still figure, and +sinister; a figure of stone and fire; of ice and flame. Over and over in +her mind she was milling the things she might have said to him, and had +not. She brewed a hundred vitriolic cruelties that she might have flung +in his face. She would concoct one biting brutality, and dismiss it for +a second, and abandon that for a third. She was too angry to cry--a +dangerous state in a woman. She was what is known as cold mad, so that +her mind was working clearly and with amazing swiftness, and yet as +though it were a thing detached; a thing that was no part of her. + +She sat thus for the better part of an hour, motionless except for one +forefinger that was, quite unconsciously, tapping out a popular and +cheap little air that she had been strumming at the piano the evening +before, having bought it down town that same afternoon. It had struck +Orville's fancy, and she had played it over and over for him. Her right +forefinger was playing the entire tune, and something in the back of her +head was following it accurately, though the separate thinking process +was going on just the same. Her eyes were bright, and wide, and hot. +Suddenly she became conscious of the musical antics of her finger. She +folded it in with its mates, so that her hand became a fist. She stood +up and stared down at the clutter of the breakfast table. The egg--that +fateful second egg--had congealed to a mottled mess of yellow and white. +The spoon lay on the cloth. His coffee, only half consumed, showed tan +with a cold grey film over it. A slice of toast at the left of his plate +seemed to grin at her with the semi-circular wedge that he had bitten +out of it. + +Terry stared down at this congealing remnant. Then she laughed, a hard, +high little laugh, pushed a plate away contemptuously with her hand, and +walked into the sitting room. On the piano was the piece of music +(Bennie Gottschalk's great song hit, "Hicky Bloo") which she had been +playing the night before. She picked it up, tore it straight across, +once, placed the pieces back to back and tore it across again. Then she +dropped the pieces to the floor. + +"You bet I'm going," she said, as though concluding a train of thought. +"You just bet I'm going. Right now!" + +And Terry went. She went for much the same reason as that given by the +ladye of high degree in the old English song--she who had left her lord +and bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The thing that +was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a conjugal quarrel +precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of the arm. It went so much +deeper that if psychology had not become a cant word we might drag it +into the explanation. It went so deep that it's necessary to delve back +to the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real +significance of it, and of the things she did after she went. + +When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan she had played the piano, +afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the Bijou theatre, on Cass +street, Wetona, Wisconsin. Any one with a name like Terry Sheehan would, +perforce, do well anything she might set out to do. There was nothing of +genius in Terry, but there was something of fire, and much that was +Irish. The combination makes for what is known as imagination in +playing. Which meant that the Watson Team, Eccentric Song and Dance +Artists, never needed a rehearsal when they played the Bijou. Ruby +Watson used merely to approach Terry before the Monday performance, +sheet-music in hand, and say, "Listen, dearie. We've got some new +business I want to wise you to. Right here it goes '_Tum_ dee-dee _dum_ +dee-dee _tum dum dum_. See? Like that. And then Jim vamps. Get me?" + +Terry, at the piano, would pucker her pretty brow a moment. Then, "Like +this, you mean?" + +"That's it! You've got it." + +"All right. I'll tell the drum." + +She could play any tune by ear, once heard. She got the spirit of a +thing, and transmitted it. When Terry played a march number you tapped +the floor with your foot, and unconsciously straightened your shoulders. +When she played a home-and-mother song that was heavy on the minor wail +you hoped that the man next to you didn't know you were crying (which he +probably didn't, because he was weeping, too). + +At that time motion pictures had not attained their present virulence. +Vaudeville, polite or otherwise, had not yet been crowded out by the +ubiquitous film. The Bijou offered entertainment of the cigar-box tramp +variety, interspersed with trick bicyclists, soubrettes in slightly +soiled pink, trained seals, and Family Fours with lumpy legs who tossed +each other about and struck Goldbergian attitudes. + +Contact with these gave Terry Sheehan a semi-professional tone. The more +conservative of her townspeople looked at her askance. There never had +been an evil thing about Terry, but Wetona considered her rather fly. +Terry's hair was very black, and she had a fondness for those little, +close-fitting scarlet velvet turbans. A scarlet velvet turban would have +made Martha Washington look fly. Terry's mother had died when the girl +was eight, and Terry's father had been what is known as easy-going. A +good-natured, lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He +drove around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any +money because he did honest work and charged as little for it as men who +did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did not crumble, and his +lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired in the contracting +business in that way. Ed Sheehan and his daughter were great friends. +When he died (she was nineteen) they say she screamed once, like a +banshee, and dropped to the floor. + +After they had straightened out the muddle of books in Ed Sheehan's +gritty, dusty little office Terry turned her piano-playing talent to +practical account. At twenty-one she was still playing at the Bijou, and +into her face was creeping the first hint of that look of sophistication +which comes from daily contact with the artificial world of the +footlights. It is the look of those who must make believe as a business, +and are a-weary. You see it developed into its highest degree in the +face of a veteran comedian. It is the thing that gives the look of utter +pathos and tragedy to the relaxed expression of a circus clown. + +There are, in a small, Mid-West town like Wetona, just two kinds of +girls. Those who go down town Saturday nights, and those who don't. +Terry, if she had not been busy with her job at the Bijou, would have +come in the first group. She craved excitement. There was little chance +to satisfy such craving in Wetona, but she managed to find certain +means. The travelling men from the Burke House just across the street +used to drop in at the Bijou for an evening's entertainment. They +usually sat well toward the front, and Terry's expert playing, and the +gloss of her black hair, and her piquant profile as she sometimes looked +up toward the stage for a signal from one of the performers, caught +their fancy, and held it. + +Terry did not accept their attentions promiscuously. She was too decent +a girl for that. But she found herself, at the end of a year or two, +with a rather large acquaintance among these peripatetic gentlemen. You +occasionally saw one of them strolling home with her. Sometimes she went +driving with one of them of a Sunday afternoon. And she rather enjoyed +taking Sunday dinner at the Burke Hotel with a favoured friend. She +thought those small-town hotel Sunday dinners the last word in elegance. +The roast course was always accompanied by an aqueous, semi-frozen +concoction which the bill of fare revealed as Roman punch. It added a +royal touch to the repast, even when served with roast pork. I don't say +that any of these Lotharios snatched a kiss during a Sunday afternoon +drive. Or that Terry slapped him promptly. But either seems extremely +likely. + +Terry was twenty-two when Orville Platt, making his initial Wisconsin +trip for the wholesale grocery house he represented, first beheld +Terry's piquant Irish profile, and heard her deft manipulation of the +keys. Orville had the fat man's sense of rhythm and love of music. He +had a buttery tenor voice, too, of which he was rather proud. + +He spent three days in Wetona that first trip, and every evening saw him +at the Bijou, first row, centre. He stayed through two shows each time, +and before he had been there fifteen minutes Terry was conscious of him +through the back of her head. In fact I think that, in all innocence, +she rather played up to him. Orville Platt paid no more heed to the +stage, and what was occurring thereon, than if it had not been. He sat +looking at Terry, and waggling his head in time to the music. Not that +Terry was a beauty. But she was one of those immaculately clean types. +That look of fragrant cleanliness was her chief charm. Her clear, smooth +skin contributed to it, and the natural pencilling of her eyebrows. But +the thing that accented it, and gave it a last touch, was the way in +which her black hair came down in a little point just in the centre of +her forehead, where hair meets brow. It grew to form what is known as a +cow-lick. (A prettier name for it is widow's peak.) Your eye lighted on +it, pleased, and from it travelled its gratified way down her white +temples, past her little ears, to the smooth black coil at the nape of +her neck. It was a trip that rested you. + +At the end of the last performance on the second night of his visit to +the Bijou, Orville waited until the audience had begun to file out. Then +he leaned forward over the rail that separated orchestra from audience. + +"Could you," he said, his tones dulcet, "could you oblige me with the +name of that last piece you played?" + +Terry was stacking her music. "George!" she called, to the drum. +"Gentleman wants to know the name of that last piece." And prepared to +leave. + +"'My Georgia Crackerjack'," said the laconic drum. + +Orville Platt took a hasty side-step in the direction of the door toward +which Terry was headed. "It's a pretty thing," he said, fervently. "An +awful pretty thing. Thanks. It's beautiful." + +Terry flung a last insult at him over her shoulder: "Don't thank _me_ +for it. I didn't write it." + +Orville Platt did not go across the street to the hotel. He wandered up +Cass street, and into the ten-o'clock quiet of Main street, and down as +far as the park and back. "Pretty as a pink! And play!... And good, too. +Good." + +A fat man in love. + +At the end of six months they were married. Terry was surprised into it. +Not that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. +For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his +wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had +sent her large boxes of stale drug-store chocolates, and called her +endearing names as they made cautious declaration such as: + +"I've known a lot of girls, but you've got something different. I don't +know. You've got so much sense. A fellow can chum around with you. +Little pal." + +Orville's headquarters were Wetona. They rented a comfortable, +seven-room house in a comfortable, middle-class neighbourhood, and Terry +dropped the red velvet turbans and went in for picture hats and paradise +aigrettes. Orville bought her a piano whose tone was so good that to her +ear, accustomed to the metallic discords of the Bijou instrument, it +sounded out of tune. She played a great deal at first, but unconsciously +she missed the sharp spat of applause that used to follow her public +performance. She would play a piece, brilliantly, and then her hands +would drop to her lap. And the silence of her own sitting room would +fall flat on her ears. It was better on the evenings when Orville was +home. He sang, in his throaty, fat man's tenor, to Terry's expert +accompaniment. + +"This is better than playing for those bum actors, isn't it, hon?" And +he would pinch her ear. + +"Sure"--listlessly. + +But after the first year she became accustomed to what she termed +private life. She joined an afternoon sewing club, and was active in the +ladies' branch of the U.C.T. She developed a knack at cooking, too, and +Orville, after a week or ten days of hotel fare in small Wisconsin +towns, would come home to sea-foam biscuits, and real soup, and honest +pies and cake. Sometimes, in the midst of an appetising meal he would +lay down his knife and fork and lean back in his chair, and regard the +cool and unruffled Terry with a sort of reverence in his eyes. Then he +would get up, and come around to the other side of the table, and tip +her pretty face up to his. + +"I'll bet I'll wake up, some day, and find out it's all a dream. You +know this kind of thing doesn't really happen--not to a dub like me." + +One year; two; three; four. Routine. A little boredom. Some impatience. +She began to find fault with the very things she had liked in him: his +super-neatness; his fondness for dashing suit patterns; his throaty +tenor; his worship of her. And the flap. Oh, above all, that flap! That +little, innocent, meaningless mannerism that made her tremble with +nervousness. She hated it so that she could not trust herself to speak +of it to him. That was the trouble. Had she spoken of it, laughingly or +in earnest, before it became an obsession with her, that hideous +breakfast quarrel, with its taunts, and revilings, and open hate, might +never have come to pass. For that matter, any one of those foreign +fellows with the guttural names and the psychoanalytical minds could +have located her trouble in one _seance_. + +Terry Platt herself didn't know what was the matter with her. She would +have denied that anything was wrong. She didn't even throw her hands +above her head and shriek: "I want to live! I want to live! I want to +live!" like a lady in a play. She only knew she was sick of sewing at +the Wetona West-End Red Cross shop; sick of marketing, of home comforts, +of Orville, of the flap. + +Orville, you may remember, left at 8.19. The 11.23 bore Terry +Chicagoward. She had left the house as it was--beds unmade, rooms +unswept, breakfast table uncleared. She intended never to come back. + +Now and then a picture of the chaos she had left behind would flash +across her order-loving mind. The spoon on the table-cloth. Orville's +pajamas dangling over the bathroom chair. The coffee-pot on the gas +stove. + +"Pooh! What do I care?" + +In her pocketbook she had a tidy sum saved out of the housekeeping +money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville had never been niggardly. +Her meals when Orville was on the road, had been those sketchy, +haphazard affairs with which women content themselves when their +household is manless. At noon she went into the dining car and ordered a +flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus, and Neapolitan +ice cream. The men in the dining car eyed her speculatively and with +appreciation. Then their glance dropped to the third finger of her left +hand, and wandered away. She had meant to remove it. In fact, she had +taken it off and dropped it into her bag. But her hand felt so queer, so +unaccustomed, so naked, that she had found herself slipping the narrow +band on again, and her thumb groped for it, gratefully. + +It was almost five o'clock when she reached Chicago. She felt no +uncertainty or bewilderment. She had been in Chicago three or four times +since her marriage. She went to a down town hotel. It was too late, she +told herself, to look for a more inexpensive room that night. When she +had tidied herself she went out. The things she did were the childish, +aimless things that one does who finds herself in possession of sudden +liberty. She walked up State Street, and stared in the windows; came +back, turned into Madison, passed a bright little shop in the window of +which taffy--white and gold--was being wound endlessly and fascinatingly +about a double-jointed machine. She went in and bought a sackful, and +wandered on down the street, munching. + +She had supper at one of those white-tiled sarcophagi that emblazon +Chicago's down town side streets. It had been her original intention to +dine in state in the rose-and-gold dining room of her hotel. She had +even thought daringly of lobster. But at the last moment she recoiled +from the idea of dining alone in that wilderness of tables so obviously +meant for two. + +After her supper she went to a picture show. She was amazed to find +there, instead of the accustomed orchestra, a pipe-organ that panted and +throbbed and rumbled over lugubrious classics. The picture was about a +faithless wife. Terry left in the middle of it. + +She awoke next morning at seven, as usual, started up wildly, looked +around, and dropped back. Nothing to get up for. The knowledge did not +fill her with a rush of relief. She would have her breakfast in bed! She +telephoned for it, languidly. But when it came she got up and ate it +from the table, after all. Terry was the kind of woman to whom a pink +gingham all-over apron, and a pink dust-cap are ravishingly becoming at +seven o'clock in the morning. That sort of woman congenitally cannot +enjoy her breakfast in bed. + +That morning she found a fairly comfortable room, more within her means, +on the north side in the boarding house district. She unpacked and hung +up her clothes and drifted down town again, idly. It was noon when she +came to the corner of State and Madison streets. It was a maelstrom that +caught her up, and buffeted her about, and tossed her helplessly this +way and that. The corner of Broadway and Forty-second streets has been +exploited in song and story as the world's most hazardous human +whirlpool. I've negotiated that corner. I've braved the square in front +of the American Express Company's office in Paris, June, before the War. +I've crossed the Strand at 11 p.m. when the theatre crowds are just out. +And to my mind the corner of State and Madison streets between twelve +and one, mid-day, makes any one of these dizzy spots look bosky, sylvan, +and deserted. + +The thousands jostled Terry, and knocked her hat awry, and dug her with +unheeding elbows, and stepped on her feet. + +"Say, look here!" she said, once futilely. They did not stop to listen. +State and Madison has no time for Terrys from Wetona. It goes its way, +pellmell. If it saw Terry at all it saw her only as a prettyish person, +in the wrong kind of suit and hat, with a bewildered, resentful look on +her face. + +Terry drifted on down the west side of State Street, with the hurrying +crowd. State and Monroe. A sound came to Terry's ears. A sound familiar, +beloved. To her ear, harassed with the roar and crash, with the shrill +scream of the crossing policemen's whistle, with the hiss of feet +shuffling on cement, it was a celestial strain. She looked up, toward +the sound. A great second-story window opened wide to the street. In it +a girl at a piano, and a man, red-faced, singing through a megaphone. +And on a flaring red and green sign: + + BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S MUSIC HOUSE! + + COME IN! HEAR BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S LATEST + HIT! THE HEART-THROB SONG THAT HAS GOT 'EM ALL! + THE SONG THAT MADE THE KAISER CRAWL! + + "_I COME FROM PARIS, ILLINOIS, BUT OH! + YOU PARIS, FRANCE! + + I USED TO WEAR BLUE OVERALLS BUT + NOW ITS KHAKI PANTS_." + + COME IN! COME IN! + +Terry accepted. + +She followed the sound of the music. Around the corner. Up a little +flight of stairs. She entered the realm of Euterpe; Euterpe with her +back hair frizzed; Euterpe with her flowing white robe replaced by +soiled white boots that failed to touch the hem of an empire-waisted +blue serge; Euterpe abandoning her lyre for jazz. She sat at the piano, +a red-haired young lady whose familiarity with the piano had bred +contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her +fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed grey and glistening nails, clawed the +keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of +music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. +The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by +request. A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of +one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, +"'Hicky Bloo!' Miss Ryan." And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a +hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which an +Indian tom-tom would have seemed as dulcet as the strumming of a lute in +a lady's boudoir. + +Terry joined the crowds about the counter. The girl at the piano was not +looking at the keys. Her head was screwed around over her left shoulder +and as she played she was holding forth animatedly to a girl friend who +had evidently dropped in from some store or office during the lunch +hour. Now and again the fat man paused in his vocal efforts to +reprimand her for her slackness. She paid no heed. There was something +gruesome, uncanny, about the way her fingers went their own way over the +defenceless keys. Her conversation with the frowzy little girl went on. + +"Wha'd he say?" (Over her shoulder). + +"Oh, he laffed." + +"Well, didja go?" + +"Me! Well, whutya think I yam, anyway?" + +"I woulda took a chanst." + +The fat man rebelled. + +"Look here! Get busy! What are you paid for? Talkin' or playin'? Huh?" + +The person at the piano, openly reproved thus before her friend, lifted +her uninspired hands from the keys and spake. When she had finished she +rose. + +"But you can't leave now," the megaphone man argued. "Right in the rush +hour." + +"I'm gone," said the girl. The fat man looked about, helplessly. He +gazed at the abandoned piano, as though it must go on of its own accord. +Then at the crowd. "Where's Miss Schwimmer?" he demanded of a clerk. + +"Out to lunch." + +Terry pushed her way to the edge of the counter and leaned over. "I can +play for you," she said. + +The man looked at her. "Sight?" + +"Yes." + +"Come on." + +Terry went around to the other side of the counter, took off her hat +and coat, rubbed her hands together briskly, sat down and began to play. +The crowd edged closer. + +It is a curious study, this noonday crowd that gathers to sate its +music-hunger on the scraps vouchsafed it by Bernie Gottschalk's Music +House. Loose-lipped, slope-shouldered young men with bad complexions and +slender hands. Girls whose clothes are an unconscious satire on +present-day fashions. On their faces, as they listen to the music, is a +look of peace and dreaming. They stand about, smiling a wistful half +smile. It is much the same expression that steals over the face of a +smoker who has lighted his after-dinner cigar, or of a drug victim who +is being lulled by his opiate. The music seems to satisfy a something +within them. Faces dull, eyes lustreless, they listen in a sort of +trance. + +Terry played on. She played as Terry Sheehan used to play. She played as +no music hack at Bernie Gottschalk's had ever played before. The crowd +swayed a little to the sound of it. Some kept time with little jerks of +the shoulder--the little hitching movement of the rag-time dancer whose +blood is filled with the fever of syncopation. Even the crowd flowing +down State Street must have caught the rhythm of it, for the room soon +filled. + +At two o'clock the crowd began to thin. Business would be slack, now, +until five, when it would again pick up until closing time at six. + +The fat vocalist put down his megaphone, wiped his forehead, and +regarded Terry with a warm blue eye. He had just finished singing "I've +Wandered Far from Dear Old Mother's Knee." (Bernie Gottschalk Inc. +Chicago. New York. You can't get bit with a Gottschalk hit. 15 cents +each.) + +"Girlie," he said, emphatically, "You sure--can--play!" He came over to +her at the piano and put a stubby hand on her shoulder. "Yessir! Those +little fingers--" + +Terry just turned her head to look down her nose at the moist hand +resting on her shoulder. "Those little fingers are going to meet your +face--suddenly--if you don't move on." + +"Who gave you your job?" demanded the fat man. + +"Nobody. I picked it myself. You can have it if you want it." + +"Can't you take a joke?" + +"Label yours." + +As the crowd dwindled she played less feverishly, but there was nothing +slipshod about her performance. The chubby songster found time to +proffer brief explanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It +used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose junk, and songs +about wanting to go back to every place from Dixie to Duluth. But now +seems it's all these here flag raisers. Honestly, I'm so sick of 'em I +got a notion to enlist to get away from it." + +Terry eyed him with, withering briefness. "A little training wouldn't +ruin your figure." + +She had never objected to Orville's _embonpoint_. But then, Orville was +a different sort of fat man; pink-cheeked, springy, immaculate. + +At four o'clock, as she was in the chorus of "Isn't There Another Joan +of Arc?" a melting masculine voice from the other side of the counter +said, "Pardon me. What's that you're playing?" + +Terry told him. She did not look up. + +"I wouldn't have known it. Played like that--a second Marseillaise. If +the words--what are the words? Let me see a--" + +"Show the gentleman a 'Joan'," Terry commanded briefly, over her +shoulder. The fat man laughed a wheezy laugh. Terry glanced around, +still playing, and encountered the gaze of two melting masculine eyes +that matched the melting masculine voice. The songster waved a hand +uniting Terry and the eyes in informal introduction. + +"Mr. Leon Sammett, the gentleman who sings the Gottschalk songs wherever +songs are heard. And Mrs.--that is--and Mrs. Sammett--" + +Terry turned. A sleek, swarthy world-old young man with the fashionable +concave torso, and alarmingly convex bone-rimmed glasses. Through them +his darkly luminous gaze glowed upon Terry. To escape their warmth she +sent her own gaze past him to encounter the arctic stare of the large +blonde person who had been included so lamely in the introduction. And +at that the frigidity of that stare softened, melted, dissolved. + +"Why Terry Sheehan! What in the world!" + +Terry's eyes bored beneath the layers of flabby fat. "It's--why, it's +Ruby Watson, isn't it? Eccentric Song and Dance--" + +She glanced at the concave young man and faltered. He was not Jim, of +the Bijou days. From him her eyes leaped back to the fur-bedecked +splendour of the woman. The plump face went so painfully red that the +makeup stood out on it, a distinct layer, like thin ice covering flowing +water. As she surveyed that bulk Terry realised that while Ruby might +still claim eccentricity, her song and dance days were over. "That's +ancient history, m'dear. I haven't been working for three years. What're +you doing in this joint? I'd heard you'd done well for yourself. That +you were married." + +"I am. That is I--well, I am. I--" + +At that the dark young man leaned over and patted Terry's hand that lay +on the counter. He smiled. His own hand was incredibly slender, long, +and tapering. + +"That's all right," he assured her, and smiled. "You two girls can have +a reunion later. What I want to know is can you play by ear?" + +"Yes, but--" + +He leaned far over the counter. "I knew it the minute I heard you play. +You've got the touch. Now listen. See if you can get this, and fake the +bass." + +He fixed his sombre and hypnotic eyes on Terry. His mouth screwed up +into a whistle. The tune--a tawdry but haunting little melody--came +through his lips. And Terry's quick ear sensed that every note was flat. +She turned back to the piano. "Of course you know you flatted every +note," she said. + +This time it was the blonde woman who laughed, and the man who flushed. +Terry cocked her head just a little to one side, like a knowing bird, +looked up into space beyond the piano top, and played the lilting little +melody with charm and fidelity. The dark young man followed her with a +wagging of the head and little jerks of both outspread hands. His +expression was beatific, enraptured. He hummed a little under his breath +and any one who was music wise would have known that he was just a +half-beat behind her all the way. + +When she had finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He bent his lean +frame over the counter and, despite his swart colouring, seemed to +glitter upon her--his eyes, his teeth, his very finger-nails. + +"Something led me here. I never come up on Tuesdays. But something--" + +"You was going to complain," put in his lady, heavily, "about that Teddy +Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the same songs this week that you +been boosting at the Inn." + +He put up a vibrant, peremptory hand. "Bah! What does that matter now! +What does anything matter now! Listen Miss--ah--Miss?--" + +"Pl--Sheehan. Terry Sheehan." + +He gazed off a moment into space. "H'm. 'Leon Sammett in Songs. Miss +Terry Sheehan at the Piano.' That doesn't sound bad. Now listen, Miss +Sheehan. I'm singing down at the University Inn. The Gottschalk song +hits. I guess you know my work. But I want to talk to you, private. It's +something to your interest. I go on down at the Inn at six. Will you +come and have a little something with Ruby and me? Now?" + +"Now?" faltered Terry, somewhat helplessly. Things seemed to be moving +rather swiftly for her, accustomed as she was to the peaceful routine of +the past four years. + +"Get your hat. It's your life chance. Wait till you see your name in +two-foot electrics over the front of every big-time house in the +country. You've got music in you. Tie to me and you're made." He turned +to the woman beside him. "Isn't that so, Rube?" + +"Sure. Look at _me_!" One would not have thought there could be so much +subtle vindictiveness in a fat blonde. + +Sammett whipped out a watch. "Just three-quarters of an hour. Come on, +girlie." + +His conversation had been conducted in an urgent undertone, with side +glances at the fat man with the megaphone. Terry approached him now. + +"I'm leaving now," she said. + +"Oh, no you're not. Six o'clock is your quitting time." + +In which he touched the Irish in Terry. "Any time I quit is my quitting +time." She went in quest of hat and coat much as the girl had done whose +place she had taken early in the day. The fat man followed her, +protesting. Terry, pinning on her hat tried to ignore him. But he laid +one plump hand on her arm and kept it there, though she tried to shake +him off. + +"Now, listen to me. That boy wouldn't mind putting his heel on your face +if he thought it would bring him up a step. I know'm. Y'see that walking +stick he's carrying? Well, compared to the yellow stripe that's in him, +that cane is a lead pencil. He's a song tout, that's all he is." Then, +more feverishly, as Terry tried to pull away: "Wait a minute. You're a +decent girl. I want to--Why, he can't even sing a note without you give +it to him first. He can put a song over, yes. But how? By flashin' that +toothy grin, of his and talkin' every word of it. Don't you--" + +But Terry freed herself with a final jerk and whipped around the +counter. The two, who had been talking together in an undertone, turned +to welcome her. "We've got a half hour. Come on. It's just over to Clark +and up a block or so." + +If you know Chicago at all, you know the University Inn, that gloriously +intercollegiate institution which welcomes any graduate of any school +of experience, and guarantees a post-graduate course in less time than +any similar haven of knowledge. Down a flight of stairs and into the +unwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality, between +five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at a table in an +obscure corner. A waiter brought them things in little glasses, though +no order had been given. The woman who had been Ruby Watson was so +silent as to be almost wordless. But the man talked rapidly. He talked +well, too. The same quality that enabled him, voiceless though he was, +to boost a song to success, was making his plea sound plausible in +Terry's ears now. + +"I've got to go and make up in a few minutes. So get this. I'm not going +to stick down in this basement eating house forever. I've got too much +talent. If I only had a voice--I mean a singing voice. But I haven't. +But then, neither has Georgie Cohan, and I can't see that it's wrecked +his life any. Look at Elsie Janis! But she sings. And they like it! Now +listen. I've got a song. It's my own. That bit you played for me up at +Gottschalk's is part of the chorus. But it's the words that'll go big. +They're great. It's an aviation song, see? Airship stuff. They're +yelling that it's the airyoplanes that're going to win this war. Well, +I'll help 'em. This song is going to put the aviator where he belongs. +It's going to be the big song of the war. It's going to make 'Tipperary' +sound like a Moody and Sankey hymn. It's the--" + +Ruby lifted her heavy-lidded eyes and sent him a meaning look. "Get +down to business, Leon. I'll tell her how good you are while you're +making up." + +He shot her a malignant glance, but took her advice. "Now what I've been +looking for for years is somebody who has got the music knack to give me +the accompaniment just a quarter of a jump ahead of my voice, see? I can +follow like a lamb, but I've got to have that feeler first. It's more +than a knack. It's a gift. And you've got it. I know it when I see it. I +want to get away from this cabaret thing. There's nothing in it for a +man of my talent. I'm gunning for vaudeville. But they won't book me +without a tryout. And when they hear my voice they--Well, if me and you +work together we can fool 'em. The song's great. And my makeup's one of +these av-iation costumes to go with the song, see? Pants tight in the +knee and baggy on the hips. And a coat with one of those full skirt +whaddyoucall'ems--" + +"Peplums," put in Ruby, placidly. + +"Sure. And the girls'll be wild about it. And the words!" he began to +sing, gratingly off-key: + + "Put on your sky clothes, + Put on your fly clothes + And take a trip with me. + We'll sail so high + Up in the sky + We'll drop a bomb from Mercury." + +"Why, that's awfully cute!" exclaimed Terry. Until now her opinion of +Mr. Sammett's talents had not been on a level with his. + +"Yeh, but wait till you hear the second verse. That's only part of the +chorus. You see, he's supposed to be talking to a French girl. He says: + + I'll parlez-vous in Francais plain, + You'll answer, '_Cher Americain_, + We'll both. . . . . . . . . . ." + +The six o'clock lights blazed up, suddenly. A sad-looking group of men +trailed in and made for a corner where certain bulky, shapeless bundles +were soon revealed as those glittering and tortuous instruments which go +to make a jazz band. + +"You better go, Lee. The crowd comes in awful early now, with all those +buyers in town." + +Both hands on the table he half rose, reluctantly, still talking. "I've +got three other songs. They make Gottschalk's stuff look sick. All I +want's a chance. What I want you to do is accompaniment. On the stage, +see? Grand piano. And a swell set. I haven't quite made up my mind to +it. But a kind of an army camp room, see? And maybe you dressed as +Liberty. Anyway, it'll be new, and a knock-out. If only we can get away +with the voice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years never had a--" + +The band opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal, and thump of drum. +"Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he fled. Terry followed +his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of +the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a little +sigh. "Well! If he talks that way to the managers I don't see--" + +Ruby laughed a mirthless little laugh. "Talk doesn't get it over with +the managers, honey. You've got to deliver." + +"Well, but he's--that song _is_ a good one. I don't say it's as good as +he thinks it is, but it's good." + +"Yes," admitted the woman, grudgingly, "it's good." + +"Well, then?" + +The woman beckoned a waiter; he nodded and vanished, and reappeared with +a glass that was twin to the one she had just emptied. "Does he look +like he knew French? Or could make a rhyme?" + +"But didn't he? Doesn't he?" + +"The words were written by a little French girl who used to skate down +here last winter, when the craze was on. She was stuck on a Chicago kid +who went over to fly for the French." + +"But the music?" + +"There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret and she--" + +Terry's head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "I don't believe +it!" + +"Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was so different +from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so +nimbly in the Old Bijou days. "What'd you and your husband quarrel +about, Terry?" + +Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. He +just--I--it was--Say, how did you know we'd quarrelled?" + +And suddenly all the fat woman's apathy dropped from her like a garment +and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined her heavy face. She +pushed her glass aside and leaned forward on her folded arms, so that +her face was close to Terry's. + +"Terry Sheehan, I know you've quarrelled, and I know just what it was +about. Oh, I don't mean the very thing it was about; but the kind of +thing. I'm going to do something for you, Terry, that I wouldn't take +the trouble to do for most women. But I guess I ain't had all the +softness knocked out of me yet, though it's a wonder. And I guess I +remember too plain the decent kid you was in the old days. What was the +name of that little small-time house me and Jim used to play? Bijou, +that's it; Bijou." + +The band struck up a new tune. Leon Sammett--slim, sleek, lithe in his +evening clothes--appeared with a little fair girl in pink chiffon. The +woman reached across the table and put one pudgy, jewelled hand on +Terry's arm. "He'll be through in ten minutes. Now listen to me. I left +Jim four years ago, and there hasn't been a minute since then, day or +night, when I wouldn't have crawled back to him on my hands and knees if +I could. But I couldn't. He wouldn't have me now. How could he? How do I +know you've quarrelled? I can see it in your eyes. They look just the +way mine have felt for four years, that's how. I met up with this boy, +and there wasn't anybody to do the turn for me that I'm trying to do for +you. Now get this. I left Jim because when he ate corn on the cob he +always closed his eyes and it drove me wild. Don't laugh." + +"I'm not laughing," said Terry. + +"Women are like that. One night--we was playing Fond du Lac; I remember +just as plain--we was eating supper and Jim reached for one of those big +yellow ears, and buttered and salted it, and me kind of hanging on to +the edge of the table with my nails. Seemed to me if he shut his eyes +when he put his teeth into that ear of corn I'd scream. And he did. And +I screamed. And that's all." + +Terry sat staring at her with a wide-eyed stare, like a sleep walker. +Then she wet her lips, slowly. "But that's almost the very--" + +"Kid, go on back home. I don't know whether it's too late or not, but go +anyway. If you've lost him I suppose it ain't any more than you deserve, +but I hope to God you don't get your desserts this time. He's almost +through. If he sees you going he can't quit in the middle of his song to +stop you. He'll know I put you wise, and he'll prob'ly half kill me for +it. But it's worth it. You get." + +And Terry--dazed, shaking, but grateful--fled. Down the noisy aisle, up +the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house. Out again, with +her suitcase, and into the right railroad station somehow, at last. Not +another Wetona train until midnight. She shrank into a remote corner of +the waiting room and there she huddled until midnight watching the +entrances like a child who is fearful of ghosts in the night. + +The hands of the station clock seemed fixed and immovable. The hour +between eleven and twelve was endless. She was on the train. It was +almost morning. It was morning. Dawn was breaking. She was home! She had +the house key clutched tightly in her hand long before she turned +Schroeder's corner. Suppose he had come home! Suppose he had jumped a +town and come home ahead of his schedule. They had quarrelled once +before, and he had done that. + +Up the front steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stood there a +moment in the early morning half-light. She peered into the dining room. +The table, with its breakfast debris, was as she had left it. In the +kitchen the coffee pot stood on the gas stove. She was home. She was +safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into crisp +gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Down-stairs +once more she plunged into an orgy of cleaning. Dishes, table, stove, +floor, rugs. She washed, scoured, flapped, swabbed, polished. By eight +o'clock she had done the work that would ordinarily have taken until +noon. The house was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds. + +During all this time she had been listening, listening, with her +sub-conscious ear. Listening for something she had refused to name +definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same; waiting. + +And then, at eight o'clock, it came. The rattle of a key in the lock. +The boom of the front door. Firm footsteps. + +He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him. They came +together and were in each other's arms. She was weeping. + +"Now, now, old girl. What's there to cry about? Don't, honey; don't. +It's all right." + +She raised her head then, to look at him. How fresh, and rosy, and big +he seemed, after that little sallow, yellow restaurant rat. + +"How did you get here? How did you happen--?" + +"Jumped all the way from Ashland. Couldn't get a sleeper, so I sat up +all night. I had to come back and square things with you, Terry. My mind +just wasn't on my work. I kept thinking how I'd talked--how I'd +talked--" + +"Oh, Orville, don't! I can't bear--Have you had your breakfast?" + +"Why, no. The train was an hour late. You know that Ashland train." + +But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You go and +clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and everything in fifteen minutes. You +poor boy. No breakfast!" + +She made good her promise. It could not have been more than twenty +minutes later when he was buttering his third feathery, golden brown +biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watched him, and listened, and +again her eyes were sombre, but for a different reason. He broke open +his egg. His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch. Then he +remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again, +carefully. And at that she gave a little tremulous cry, and rushed +around the table to him. + +"Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent +and kissed the rough coat sleeve. + +"Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!" + +"Oh, Orville, listen--" + +"Yes." + +"Listen, Orville--" + +"I'm listening, Terry." + +"I've got something to tell you. There's something you've got to know." + +"Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you'd out with it, pretty soon, if I just +waited." + +She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared at him. +"But how could you know? You couldn't! How could you?" + +He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. When you have +something on your mind you always take up a spoon of coffee, and look at +it, and kind of joggle it back and forth in the spoon, and then dribble +it back into the cup again, without once tasting it. It used to get me +nervous when we were first married watching you. But now I know it just +means you're worried about something, and I wait, and pretty soon--" + +"Oh, Orville!" she cried, then. "Oh, Orville!" + +"Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to daddy. And you'll feel +better." + + + + +VI + + +THE WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD + +Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman--so +bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street, +from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a +man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the street +with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at--in +her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length sealskin +coat in our town, and Ganz' shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. +Hers were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women. + +Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round +Christmas time, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, +dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out +of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set +with flashy imitation stones--or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow +hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her +appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in +the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and +paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She +owned the House With the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot--did +Blanche Devine. And beneath her silks and laces and furs there was a +scarlet letter on her breast. + +In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She did not +look like a bad woman. Of course she used too much perfumed white +powder, and as she passed you caught the oversweet breath of a certain +heavy scent. Then, too, her diamond eardrops would have made any woman's +features look hard; but her plump face, in spite of its heaviness, wore +an expression of good-humoured intelligence, and her eyeglasses gave +her somehow a look of respectability. We do not associate vice with +eyeglasses. So in a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed +prosperous, comfortable wife and mother, who was in danger of losing her +figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town +character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns +girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering +among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each +other and jest in undertones. + +So, knowing Blanche Devine as we did, there was something resembling a +riot in one of our most respectable neighbourhoods when it was learned +that she had given up her interest in the house near the freight depot +and was going to settle down in the white cottage on the corner and be +good. All the husbands in the block, urged on by righteously indignant +wives, dropped in on Alderman Mooney after supper to see if the thing +could not be stopped. The fourth of the protesting husbands to arrive +was the Very Young Husband, who lived next door to the corner cottage +that Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a Very Young +Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky was +three-going-on-four, and looked something like an angel--only healthier +and with grimier hands. The whole neighbourhood borrowed her and tried +to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil. + +Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar fooling with the furnace. He was +in his furnace overalls--a short black pipe in his mouth. Three +protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband, following +Mrs. Mooney's directions, cautiously descended the cellar stairs, +Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze +of pipe-smoke. + +"Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm. "Come on +down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since supper. She don't +draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a furnace always gets balky. +How many tons you used this winter?" + +"Oh--ten," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman Mooney +considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up against the side +of the cistern, his hands in his pockets. "Say, Mooney, is that right +about Blanche Devine's having bought the house on the corner?" + +"You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this evening. I'm +expecting the rest of the block before bedtime. She's bought it all +right." + +The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the toe of +his boot. + +"Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready to cry at +supper. This'll be a fine neighbourhood for Snooky to grow up in! What's +a woman like that want to come into a respectable street for anyway? I +own my home and pay my taxes--" + +Alderman Mooney looked up. + +"So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the place--paint +it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch, and lay a +cement walk all round." + +The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to +emphasize his remarks with gestures. + +"What's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in diamonds for +windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace with peacocks on it. +You're the alderman of this ward, aren't you? Well, it was up to you to +keep her out of this block! You could have fixed it with an injunction +or something. I'm going to get up a petition--that's what I'm going--" + +Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned the +rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed +his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a +profitless conversation. + +"She's bought the house," he said mildly, "and paid for it. And it's +hers. She's got a right to live in this neighbourhood as long as she +acts respectable." + +The Very Young Husband laughed. + +"She won't last! They never do." + +Alderman Mooney had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was rubbing his +thumb over the smooth bowl, looking down at it with unseeing eyes. On +his face was a queer look--the look of one who is embarrassed because he +is about to say something honest. + +"Look here! I want to tell you something: I happened to be up in the +mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She had to go +through a lot of red tape before she got it--had quite a time of it, she +did! And say, kid, that woman ain't so--bad." + +The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently: + +"Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town +character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got religion or +something, and wants to quit and be decent, why doesn't she go to +another town--Chicago or some place--where nobody knows her?" + +That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipebowl +stopped. He looked up slowly. + +"That's what I said--the mayor too. But Blanche Devine said she wanted +to try it here. She said this was home to her. Funny--ain't it? Said +she wouldn't be fooling anybody here. They know her. And if she moved +away, she said, it'd leak out some way sooner or later. It does, she +said. Always! Seems she wants to live like--well, like other women. She +put it like this: She says she hasn't got religion, or any of that. She +says she's no different than she was when she was twenty. She says that +for the last ten years the ambition of her life has been to be able to +go into a grocery store and ask the price of, say, celery; and, if the +clerk charged her ten when it ought to be seven, to be able to sass +him with a regular piece of her mind--and then sail out and trade +somewhere else until he saw that she didn't have to stand anything from +storekeepers, any more than any other woman that did her own marketing. +She's a smart woman, Blanche is! She's saved her money. God knows I +ain't taking her part--exactly; but she talked a little, and the mayor +and me got a little of her history." + +A sneer appeared on the face of the Very Young Husband. He had been +known before he met Jen as a rather industrious sower of that seed known +as wild oats. He knew a thing or two, did the Very Young Husband, in +spite of his youth! He always fussed when Jen wore even a V-necked +summer gown on the street. + +"Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," west on Alderman Mooney in +answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and always +expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent when she was +eighteen--with a baby. She worked for four dollars a week in a cheap +eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on that. Then the baby--" + +"Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs. Mooney's +going to call?" + +"Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me down to +monkey with the furnace. She's wild--Minnie is." He peeled off his +overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young Husband started to ascend +the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney laid a detaining finger on his +sleeve. "Don't say anything in front of Minnie! She's boiling! Minnie +and the kids are going to visit her folks out West this summer; so I +wouldn't so much as dare to say 'Good morning!' to the Devine woman. +Anyway a person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind of thought +I'd tell you about her." + +"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly. + +In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came +stonemasons, who began to build something. It was a great stone +fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of the little +white cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a home for herself. We +no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth--we build them for the +warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by. + +Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the work +progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house, looking +up at it pridefully and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or +fingertip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He spaded up +a neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long ridge near +the fence that separated her yard from that of the very young couple +next door. The ridge spelled sweet peas and nasturtiums to our +small-town eyes. + +On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation among +the white-ruffled bedroom curtains of the neighbourhood. Later on +certain odours, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere. Blanche +Devine, flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her diamond +eardrops flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great fur +coat; but on the third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, +carrying a little household ladder, a pail of steaming water and sundry +voluminous white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side +of the house mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows: with +housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a grey sweater +and on her head was a battered felt hat--the sort of window-washing +costume that has been worn by women from time immemorial. We noticed +that she used plenty of hot water and clean rags, and that she rubbed +the glass until it sparkled, leaning perilously sideways on the ladder +to detect elusive streaks. Our keenest housekeeping eye could find no +fault with the way Blanche Devine washed windows. + +By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops--perhaps it was +their absence that gave her face a new expression. When she went down +town we noticed that her hats were more like the hats the other women in +our town wore; but she still affected extravagant footgear, as is right +and proper for a stout woman who has cause to be vain of her feet. We +noticed that her trips down town were rare that spring and summer. She +used to come home laden with little bundles; and before supper she would +change her street clothes for a neat, washable housedress, as is our +thrifty custom. Through her bright windows we could see her moving +briskly about from kitchen to sitting room; and from the smells that +floated out from her kitchen door, she seemed to be preparing for her +solitary supper the same homely viands that were frying or stewing or +baking in our kitchens. Sometimes you could detect the delectable scent +of browning hot tea biscuit. It takes a brave, courageous, determined +woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself. + +Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning she came +to the service there was a little flurry among the ushers at the +vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear. The second Sunday +morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman next to whom they seated +her turned, regarded her stonily for a moment, then rose agitatedly and +moved to a pew across the aisle. Blanche Devine's face went a dull red +beneath her white powder. She never came again--though we saw the +minister visit her once or twice. She always accompanied him to the door +pleasantly, holding it well open until he was down the little flight of +steps and on the sidewalk. The minister's wife did not call--but, then, +there are limits to the duties of a minister's wife. + +She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we used to +see her moving about in her little garden patch in the dewy, golden +morning. She wore absurd pale-blue kimonos that made her stout figure +loom immense against the greenery of garden and apple tree. The +neighbourhood women viewed these negligees with Puritan disapproval as +they smoothed down their own prim, starched gingham skirts. They said it +was disgusting--and perhaps it was; but the habit of years is not easily +overcome. Blanche Devine--snipping her sweet peas; peering anxiously at +the Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile fingers to the +trellis; watering the flower baskets that hung from her porch--was +blissfully unconscious of the disapproving eyes. I wish one of us had +just stopped to call good morning to her over the fence, and to say in +our neighbourly, small town way: "My, ain't this a scorcher! So early +too! It'll be fierce by noon!" But we did not. + +I think perhaps the evenings must have been the loneliest for her. The +summer evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human, +neighbourly sounds. After the heat of the day it is infinitely pleasant +to relax in the cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the +town eddying about us. We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. We +call across-lots to our next-door neighbour. The men water the lawns and +the flower boxes and get together in little quiet groups to discuss the +new street paving. I have even known Mrs. Hines to bring her cherries +out there when she had canning to do, and pit them there on the front +porch partially shielded by her porch vine, but not so effectually that +she was deprived of the sights and sounds about her. The kettle in her +lap and the dishpan full of great ripe cherries on the porch floor by +her chair, she would pit and chat and peer out through the vines, the +red juice staining her plump bare arms. + +I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those lonesome +evenings--those evenings filled with little friendly sights and sounds. +It is lonely, uphill business at best--this being good. It must have +been difficult for her, who had dwelt behind closed shutters so long, to +seat herself on the new front porch for all the world to stare at; but +she did sit there--resolutely--watching us in silence. + +She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that fell to +her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used to hold daily +conversation with her. They--sociable gentlemen--would stand on her +doorstep, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost, +exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway--a tea towel in +one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a +miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her +knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of +us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen +the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering, +nostril-pricking smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, +tantalising, divinely sticky odour that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, +from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, +gazing in the direction of the enticing smells next door. Early one +September morning there floated out from Blanche Devine's kitchen that +clean, fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies--cookies with butter +in them, and spice, and with nuts on top. Just by the smell of them your +mind's eye pictured them coming from the oven--crisp brown circlets, +crumbly, toothsome, delectable. Snooky, in her scarlet sweater and cap, +sniffed them from afar and straightway deserted her sandpile to take her +stand at the fence. She peered through the restraining bars, standing on +tiptoe. Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and rolling-pin, saw +the eager golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her heart, raised one +fat, dimpled hand above the fence and waved it friendlily. Blanche +Devine waved back. Thus encouraged, Snooky's two hands wigwagged +frantically above the pickets. Blanche Devine hesitated a moment, her +floury hand on her hip. Then she went to the pantry shelf and took out a +clean white saucer. She selected from the brown jar on the table three +of the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with a walnut meat +perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the saucer and, +descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the triumphant +Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips smiling, her eyes +tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white arm. + +"Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of horror and of +wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't you dare to touch those!" +Snooky hesitated rebelliously, one pink finger in her pouting mouth. +"Snooky! Do you hear me?" + +And the Very Young Wife began to descend the steps of her back porch. +Snooky, regretful eyes on the toothsome dainties, turned away aggrieved. +The Very Young Wife, her lips set, her eyes flashing, advanced and +seized the shrieking Snooky by one writhing arm and dragged her away +toward home and safety. + +Blanche Devine stood there at the fence, holding the saucer in her hand. +The saucer tipped slowly, and the three cookies slipped off and fell to +the grass. Blanche Devine followed them with her eyes and stood staring +at them a moment. Then she turned quickly, went into the house and shut +the door. + +It was about this time we noticed that Blanche Devine was away much of +the time. The little white cottage would be empty for a week. We knew +she was out of town because the expressman would come for her trunk. We +used to lift our eyebrows significantly. The newspapers and handbills +would accumulate in a dusty little heap on the porch; but when she +returned there was always a grand cleaning, with the windows open, and +Blanche--her head bound turbanwise in a towel--appearing at a window +every few minutes to shake out a dustcloth. She seemed to put an +enormous amount of energy into those cleanings--as if they were a sort +of safety valve. + +As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long, long +after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to pull down the +shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire dancing gnomelike on the +wall. + +There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling hail--one of +those blustering, wild nights that are followed by morning-paper reports +of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed, telephone and telegraph wires +down. It must have been midnight or past when there came a hammering at +Blanche Devine's door--a persistent, clamorous rapping. Blanche Devine, +sitting before her dying fire half asleep, started and cringed when she +heard it; then jumped to her feet, her hand at her breast--her eyes +darting this way and that, as though seeking escape. + +She had heard a rapping like that before. It had meant bluecoats +swarming up the stairway, and frightened cries and pleadings, and wild +confusion. So she started forward now, quivering. And then she +remembered, being wholly awake now--she remembered, and threw up her +head and smiled a little bitterly and walked toward the door. The +hammering continued, louder than ever. Blanche Devine flicked on the +porch light and opened the door. The half-clad figure of the Very Young +Wife next door staggered into the room. She seized Blanche Devine's arm +with both her frenzied hands and shook her, the wind and snow beating in +upon both of them. + +"The baby!" she screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "The baby! The +baby--" + +Blanche Devine shut the door and shook the Young Wife smartly by the +shoulders. + +"Stop screaming," she said quietly. "Is she sick?" + +The Young Wife told her, her teeth chattering: + +"Come quick! She's dying! Will's out of town. I tried to get the doctor. +The telephone wouldn't--I saw your light! For God's sake--" + +Blanche Devine grasped the Young Wife's arm, opened the door, and +together they sped across the little space that separated the two +houses. Blanche Devine was a big woman, but she took the stairs like a +girl and found the right bedroom by some miraculous woman instinct. A +dreadful choking, rattling sound was coming from Snooky's bed. + +"Croup," said Blanche Devine, and began her fight. + +It was a good fight. She marshalled her little inadequate forces, made +up of the half-fainting Young Wife and the terrified and awkward hired +girl. + +"Get the hot water on--lots of it!" Blanche Devine pinned up her +sleeves. "Hot cloths! Tear up a sheet--or anything! Got an oilstove? I +want a teakettle boiling in the room. She's got to have the steam. If +that don't do it we'll raise an umbrella over her and throw a sheet +over, and hold the kettle under till the steam gets to her that way. Got +any ipecac?" + +The Young Wife obeyed orders, whitefaced and shaking. Once Blanche +Devine glanced up at her sharply. + +"Don't you dare faint!" she commanded. + +And the fight went on. Gradually the breathing that had been so +frightful became softer, easier. Blanche Devine did not relax. It was +not until the little figure breathed gently in sleep that Blanche Devine +sat back satisfied. Then she tucked a cover ever so gently at the side +of the bed, took a last satisfied look at the face on the pillow, and +turned to look at the wan, dishevelled Young Wife. + +"She's all right now. We can get the doctor when morning comes--though I +don't know's you'll need him." + +The Young Wife came round to Blanche Devine's side of the bed and stood +looking up at her. + +"My baby died," said Blanche Devine simply. The Young Wife gave a little +inarticulate cry, put her two hands on Blanche Devine's broad shoulders +and laid her tired head on her breast. + +"I guess I'd better be going," said Blanche Devine. + +The Young Wife raised her head. Her eyes were round with fright. + +"Going! Oh, please stay! I'm so afraid. Suppose she should take sick +again! That awful--awful breathing--" + +"I'll stay if you want me to." + +"Oh, please! I'll make up your bed and you can rest--" + +"I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll sit up +here in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed. I'll watch and +see that everything's all right. Have you got something I can read out +here--something kind of lively--with a love story in it?" + +So the night went by. Snooky slept in her little white bed. The Very +Young Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the hall, +her stout figure looming grotesque in wall-shadows, sat Blanche Devine +pretending to read. Now and then she rose and tiptoed into the bedroom +with miraculous quiet, and stooped over the little bed and listened and +looked--and tiptoed away again, satisfied. + +The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with tales +of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed a sigh of +relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She watched the house +now with a sort of proprietary eye. She wondered about Snooky; but she +knew better than to ask. So she waited. The Young Wife next door had +told her husband all about that awful night--had told him with tears and +sobs. The Very Young Husband had been very, very angry with her--angry +and hurt, he said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been so sick! +Look at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a woman! Well, +really he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that she +must never speak to the woman again. Never! + +So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the Young +Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room window, and she +made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in order to go to the door. +She stood in the doorway and the Very Young Wife went by on the arm of +her husband. She went by--rather white-faced--without a look or a word +or a sign! + +And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a look +that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly, +narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It was +the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled--if having one's lips +curl away from one's teeth can be called smiling. + +Two days later there was great news of the white cottage on the corner. +The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the rugs were rolled. +The wagons came and backed up to the house and took those things that +had made a home for Blanche Devine. And when we heard that she had +bought back her interest in the House With the Closed Shutters, near the +freight depot, we sniffed. + +"I knew she wouldn't last!" we said. + +"They never do!" said we. + + + + +VII + + +THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT + +There is a story--Kipling, I think--that tells of a spirited horse +galloping in the dark suddenly drawing up tense, hoofs bunched, slim +flanks quivering, nostrils dilated, ears pricked. Urging being of no +avail the rider dismounts, strikes a match, advances a cautious step or +so, and finds himself at the precipitous brink of a newly formed +crevasse. + +So it is with your trained editor. A miraculous sixth sense guides him. +A mysterious something warns him of danger lurking within the seemingly +innocent oblong white envelope. Without slitting the flap, without +pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed glasses, without clearing his +throat, without lighting his cigarette--he knows. + +The deadly newspaper story he scents in the dark. Cub reporter. Crusty +city editor. Cub fired. Stumbles on to a big story. Staggers into +newspaper office wild-eyed. Last edition. "Hold the presses!" Crusty +C.E. stands over cub's typewriter grabbing story line by line. Even +foreman of pressroom moved to tears by tale. "Boys, this ain't just a +story this kid's writin'. This is history!" Story finished. Cub faints. +C.E. makes him star reporter. + +The athletic story: "I could never marry a mollycoddle like you, Harold +Hammond!" Big game of the year. Team crippled. Second half. Halfback +hurt. Harold Hammond, scrub, into the game. Touchdown! Broken leg. Five +to nothing. "Harold, can you ever, ever forgive me?" + +The pseudo-psychological story: She had been sitting before the fire for +a long, long time. The flame had flickered and died down to a +smouldering ash. The sound of his departing footsteps echoed and +re-echoed through her brain. But the little room was very, very still. + +The shop-girl story: Torn boots and temptation, tears and snears, pathos +and bathos, all the way from Zola to the vice inquiry. + +Having thus attempted to hide the deadly commonplaceness of this story +with a thin layer of cynicism, perhaps even the wily editor may be +tricked into taking the leap. + + * * * * * + +Four weeks before the completion of the new twelve-story addition the +store advertised for two hundred experienced saleswomen. Rachel +Wiletzky, entering the superintendent's office after a wait of three +hours, was Applicant No. 179. The superintendent did not look up as +Rachel came in. He scribbled busily on a pad of paper at his desk, thus +observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of superintendents +when interviewing applicants. Rachel Wiletzky, standing by his desk, +did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one hip. A sense +of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's subconsciousness. He +glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his +pencil and sat up slowly. His mind was working quickly enough though. In +the twelve seconds that intervened between the laying down of the pencil +and the sitting up in his chair he had hastily readjusted all his +well-founded preconceived ideas on the appearance of shop-girl +applicants. + +Rachel Wiletzky had the colouring and physique of a dairymaid. It was +the sort of colouring that you associate in your mind with lush green +fields, and Jersey cows, and village maids, in Watteau frocks, balancing +brimming pails aloft in the protecting curve of one rounded upraised +arm, with perhaps a Maypole dance or so in the background. Altogether, +had the superintendent been given to figures of speech, he might have +said that Rachel was as much out of place among the preceding one +hundred and seventy-eight bloodless, hollow-chested, stoop-shouldered +applicants as a sunflower would be in a patch of dank white fungi. + +He himself was one of those bleached men that you find on the office +floor of department stores. Grey skin, grey eyes, greying hair, careful +grey clothes--seemingly as void of pigment as one of those sunless +things you disclose when you turn over a board that has long lain on the +mouldy floor of a damp cellar. It was only when you looked closely that +you noticed a fleck of golden brown in the cold grey of each eye, and a +streak of warm brown forming an unquenchable forelock that the +conquering grey had not been able to vanquish. It may have been a +something within him corresponding to those outward bits of human +colouring that tempted him to yield to a queer impulse. He whipped from +his breast-pocket the grey-bordered handkerchief, reached up swiftly and +passed one white corner of it down the length of Rachel Wiletzky's +Killarney-rose left cheek. The rude path down which the handkerchief had +travelled deepened to red for a moment before both rose-pink cheeks +bloomed into scarlet. The superintendent gazed rather ruefully from +unblemished handkerchief to cheek and back again. + +"Why--it--it's real!" he stammered. + +Rachel Wiletzky smiled a good-natured little smile that had in it a dash +of superiority. + +"If I was putting it on," she said, "I hope I'd have sense enough to +leave something to the imagination. This colour out of a box would take +a spiderweb veil to tone it down." + +Not much more than a score of words. And yet before the half were spoken +you were certain that Rachel Wiletzky's knowledge of lush green fields +and bucolic scenes was that gleaned from the condensed-milk ads that +glare down at one from billboards and street-car chromos. Hers was the +ghetto voice--harsh, metallic, yet fraught with the resonant music of +tragedy. + +"H'm--name?" asked the grey superintendent. He knew that vocal quality. + +A queer look stole into Rachel Wiletzky's face, a look of cunning and +determination and shrewdness. + +"Ray Willets," she replied composedly. "Double l." + +"Clerked before, of course. Our advertisement stated--" + +"Oh yes," interrupted Ray Willets hastily, eagerly. "I can sell goods. +My customers like me. And I don't get tired. I don't know why, but I +don't." + +The superintendent glanced up again at the red that glowed higher with +the girl's suppressed excitement. He took a printed slip from the little +pile of paper that lay on his desk. + +"Well, anyway, you're the first clerk I ever saw who had so much red +blood that she could afford to use it for decorative purposes. Step into +the next room, answer the questions on this card and turn it in. You'll +be notified." + +Ray Willets took the searching, telltale blank that put its questions so +pertinently. "Where last employed?" it demanded. "Why did you leave? Do +you live at home?" + +Ray Willets moved slowly away toward the door opposite. The +superintendent reached forward to press the button that would summon +Applicant No. 180. But before his finger touched it Ray Willets turned +and came back swiftly. She held the card out before his surprised eyes. + +"I can't fill this out. If I do I won't get the job. I work over at the +Halsted Street Bazaar. You know--the Cheap Store. I lied and sent word I +was sick so I could come over here this morning. And they dock you for +time off whether you're sick or not." + +The superintendent drummed impatiently with his fingers. "I can't listen +to all this. Haven't time. Fill out your blank, and if--" + +All that latent dramatic force which is a heritage of her race came to +the girl's aid now. + +"The blank! How can I say on a blank that I'm leaving because I want to +be where real people are? What chance has a girl got over there on the +West Side? I'm different. I don't know why, but I am. Look at my face! +Where should I get red cheeks from? From not having enough to eat half +the time and sleeping three in a bed?" + +She snatched off her shabby glove and held one hand out before the man's +face. + +"From where do I get such hands? Not from selling hardware over at +Twelfth and Halsted. Look at it! Say, couldn't that hand sell silk and +lace?" + +Some one has said that to make fingers and wrists like those which Ray +Willets held out for inspection it is necessary to have had at least +five generations of ancestors who have sat with their hands folded in +their laps. Slender, tapering, sensitive hands they were, pink-tipped, +temperamental. Wistful hands they were, speaking hands, an inheritance, +perhaps, from some dreamer ancestor within the old-world ghetto, some +long-haired, velvet-eyed student of the Talmud dwelling within the pale +with its squalor and noise, and dreaming of unseen things beyond the +confining gates--things rare and exquisite and fine. + +"Ashamed of your folks?" snapped the superintendent. + +"N-no--No! But I want to be different. I am different! Give me a chance, +will you? I'm straight. And I'll work. And I can sell goods. Try me." + +That all-pervading greyness seemed to have lifted from the man at the +desk. The brown flecks in the eyes seemed to spread and engulf the +surrounding colourlessness. His face, too, took on a glow that seemed to +come from within. It was like the lifting of a thick grey mist on a +foggy morning, so that the sun shines bright and clear for a brief +moment before the damp curtain rolls down again and effaces it. + +He leaned forward in his chair, a queer half-smile on his face. + +"I'll give you your chance," he said, "for one month. At the end of that +time I'll send for you. I'm not going to watch you. I'm not going to +have you watched. Of course your sale slips will show the office whether +you're selling goods or not. If you're not they'll discharge you. But +that's routine. What do you want to sell?" + +"What do I want to--Do you mean--Why, I want to sell the lacy +things." + +"The lacy--" + +Ray, very red-cheeked, made the plunge. "The--the lawnjeree, you know. +The things with ribbon and handwork and yards and yards of real lace. +I've seen 'em in the glass case in the French Room. Seventy-nine dollars +marked down from one hundred." + +The superintendent scribbled on a card. "Show this Monday morning. Miss +Jevne is the head of your department. You'll spend two hours a day in +the store school of instruction for clerks. Here, you're forgetting your +glove." + +The grey look had settled down on him again as he reached out to press +the desk button. Ray Willets passed out at the door opposite the one +through which Rachel Wiletzky had entered. + +Some one in the department nick-named her Chubbs before she had spent +half a day in the underwear and imported lingerie. At the store school +she listened and learned. She learned how important were things of which +Halsted Street took no cognisance. She learned to make out a sale slip +as complicated as an engineering blueprint. She learned that a clerk +must develop suavity and patience in the same degree as a customer waxes +waspish and insulting, and that the spectrum's colours do not exist in +the costume of the girl-behind-the-counter. For her there are only black +and white. These things she learned and many more, and remembered them, +for behind the rosy cheeks and the terrier-bright eyes burned the +indomitable desire to get on. And the finished embodiment of all of Ray +Willets' desires and ambitions was daily before her eyes in the presence +of Miss Jevne, head of the lingerie and negligees. + +Of Miss Jevne it might be said that she was real where Ray was +artificial, and artificial where Ray was real. Everything that Miss +Jevne wore was real. She was as modish as Ray was shabby, as slim as Ray +was stocky, as artificially tinted and tinctured as Ray was naturally +rosy-cheeked and buxom. It takes real money to buy clothes as real as +those worn by Miss Jevne. The soft charmeuse in her graceful gown was +real and miraculously draped. The cobweb-lace collar that so delicately +traced its pattern against the black background of her gown was real. So +was the ripple of lace that cascaded down the front of her blouse. The +straight, correct, hideously modern lines of her figure bespoke a real +eighteen-dollar corset. Realest of all, there reposed on Miss Jevne's +bosom a bar pin of platinum and diamonds--very real diamonds set in a +severely plain but very real bar of precious platinum. So if you except +Miss Jevne's changeless colour, her artificial smile, her glittering +hair and her undulating head-of-the-department walk, you can see that +everything about Miss Jevne was as real as money can make one. + +Miss Jevne, when she deigned to notice Ray Willets at all, called her +"girl," thus: "Girl, get down one of those Number Seventeens for +me--with the pink ribbons." Ray did not resent the tone. She thought +about Miss Jevne as she worked. She thought about her at night when she +was washing and ironing her other shirtwaist for next day's wear. In the +Halsted Street Bazaar the girls had been on terms of dreadful intimacy +with those affairs in each other's lives which popularly are supposed to +be private knowledge. They knew the sum which each earned per week; how +much they turned in to help swell the family coffers and how much they +were allowed to keep for their own use. They knew each time a girl spent +a quarter for a cheap sailor collar or a pair of near-silk stockings. +Ray Willets, who wanted passionately to be different, whose hands so +loved the touch of the lacy, silky garments that made up the lingerie +and negligee departments, recognised the perfection of Miss Jevne's +faultless realness--recognised it, appreciated it, envied it. It worried +her too. How did she do it? How did one go about attaining the same +degree of realness? + +Meanwhile she worked. She learned quickly. She took care always to be +cheerful, interested, polite. After a short week's handling of lacy +silken garments she ceased to feel a shock when she saw Miss Jevne +displaying a _robe-de-nuit_ made up of white cloud and sea-foam and +languidly assuring the customer that of course it wasn't to be expected +that you could get a fine handmade lace at that price--only +twenty-seven-fifty. Now if she cared to look at something really +fine--made entirely by hand--why-- + +The end of the first ten days found so much knowledge crammed into Ray +Willets' clever, ambitious little head that the pink of her cheeks had +deepened to carmine, as a child grows flushed and too bright-eyed when +overstimulated and overtired. + +Miss Myrtle, the store beauty, strolled up to Ray, who was straightening +a pile of corset covers and _brassieres_. Miss Myrtle was the store's +star cloak-and-suit model. Tall, svelte, graceful, lovely in line and +contour, she was remarkably like one of those exquisite imbeciles that +Rossetti used to love to paint. Hers were the great cowlike eyes, the +wonderful oval face, the marvellous little nose, the perfect lips and +chin. Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before a +possible purchaser, and make it look like an imported model at one +hundred and twenty-five. When Miss Myrtle opened those exquisite lips +and spoke you got a shock that hurt. She laid one cool slim finger on +Ray's ruddy cheek. + +"Sure enough!" she drawled nasally. "Whereja get it anyway, kid? You +must of been brought up on peaches 'n' cream and slept in a pink cloud +somewheres." + +"Me!" laughed Ray, her deft fingers busy straightening a bow here, a +ruffle of lace there. "Me! The L-train runs so near my bed that if it +was ever to get a notion to take a short cut it would slice off my legs +to the knees." + +"Live at home?" Miss Myrtle's grasshopper mind never dwelt long on one +subject. + +"Well, sure," replied Ray. "Did you think I had a flat up on the Drive?" + +"I live at home too," Miss Myrtle announced impressively. She was +leaning indolently against the table. Her eyes followed the deft, quick +movements of Ray's slender, capable hands. Miss Myrtle always leaned +when there was anything to lean on. Involuntarily she fell into melting +poses. One shoulder always drooped slightly, one toe always trailed a +bit like the picture on the cover of the fashion magazines, one hand and +arm always followed the line of her draperies while the other was raised +to hip or breast or head. + +Ray's busy hands paused a moment. She looked up at the picturesque +Myrtle. "All the girls do, don't they?" + +"Huh?" said Myrtle blankly. + +"Live at home, I mean? The application blank says--" + +"Say, you've got clever hands, ain't you?" put in Miss Myrtle +irrelevantly. She looked ruefully at her own short, stubby, +unintelligent hands, that so perfectly reflected her character in that +marvellous way hands have. "Mine are stupid-looking. I'll bet you'll get +on." She sagged to the other hip with a weary gracefulness. "I ain't +got no brains," she complained. + +"Where do they live then?" persisted Ray. + +"Who? Oh, I live at home"--again virtuously--"but I've got some heart if +I am dumb. My folks couldn't get along without what I bring home every +week. A lot of the girls have flats. But that don't last. Now Jevne--" + +"Yes?" said Ray eagerly. Her plump face with its intelligent eyes was +all aglow. + +Miss Myrtle lowered her voice discreetly. "Her own folks don't know +where she lives. They says she sends 'em money every month, but with the +understanding that they don't try to come to see her. They live way over +on the West Side somewhere. She makes her buying trip to Europe every +year. Speaks French and everything. They say when she started to earn +real money she just cut loose from her folks. They was a drag on her and +she wanted to get to the top." + +"Say, that pin's real, ain't it?" + +"Real? Well, I should say it is! Catch Jevne wearing anything that's +phony. I saw her at the theatre one night. Dressed! Well, you'd have +thought that birds of paradise were national pests, like English +sparrows. Not that she looked loud. But that quiet, rich elegance, you +know, that just smells of money. Say, but I'll bet she has her lonesome +evenings!" + +Ray Willets' eyes darted across the long room and rested upon the +shining black-clad figure of Miss Jevne moving about against the +luxurious ivory-and-rose background of the French Room. + +"She--she left her folks, h'm?" she mused aloud. + +Miss Myrtle, the brainless, regarded the tips of her shabby boots. + +"What did it get her?" she asked as though to herself. "I know what it +does to a girl, seeing and handling stuff that's made for millionaires, +you get a taste for it yourself. Take it from me, it ain't the +six-dollar girl that needs looking after. She's taking her little pay +envelope home to her mother that's a widow and it goes to buy milk for +the kids. Sometimes I think the more you get the more you want. +Somebody ought to turn that vice inquiry on to the tracks of that +thirty-dollar-a-week girl in the Irish crochet waist and the diamond bar +pin. She'd make swell readin'." + +There fell a little silence between the two--a silence of which neither +was conscious. Both were thinking, Myrtle disjointedly, purposelessly, +all unconscious that her slow, untrained mind had groped for a great and +vital truth and found it; Ray quickly, eagerly, connectedly, a new and +daring resolve growing with lightning rapidity. + +"There's another new baby at our house," she said aloud suddenly. "It +cries all night pretty near." + +"Ain't they fierce?" laughed Myrtle. "And yet I dunno--" + +She fell silent again. Then with the half-sign with which we waken from +day dreams she moved away in response to the beckoning finger of a +saleswoman in the evening-coat section. Ten minutes later her exquisite +face rose above the soft folds of a black charmeuse coat that rippled +away from her slender, supple body in lines that a sculptor dreams of +and never achieves. + +Ray Willets finished straightening her counter. Trade was slow. She +moved idly in the direction of the black-garbed figure that flitted +about in the costly atmosphere of the French section. It must be a very +special customer to claim Miss Jevne's expert services. Ray glanced in +through the half-opened glass and ivory-enamel doors. + +"Here, girl," called Miss Jevne. Ray paused and entered. Miss Jevne was +frowning. "Miss Myrtle's busy. Just slip this on. Careful now. Keep your +arms close to your head." + +She slipped a marvellously wrought garment over Ray's sleek head. Fluffy +drifts of equally exquisite lingerie lay scattered about on chairs, over +mirrors, across showtables. On one of the fragile little ivory-and-rose +chairs, in the centre of the costly little room, sat a large, blonde, +perfumed woman who clanked and rustled and swished as she moved. Her +eyes were white-lidded and heavy, but strangely bright. One ungloved +hand was very white too, but pudgy and covered so thickly with gems that +your eye could get no clear picture of any single stone or setting. + +Ray, clad in the diaphanous folds of the _robe-de-nuit_ that was so +beautifully adorned with delicate embroideries wrought by the patient, +needle-scarred fingers of some silent, white-faced nun in a far-away +convent, paced slowly up and down the short length of the room that the +critical eye of this coarse, unlettered creature might behold the +wonders woven by this weary French nun, and, beholding, approve. + +"It ain't bad," spake the blonde woman grudgingly. "How much did you +say?" + +"Ninety-five," Miss Jevne made answer smoothly. "I selected it myself +when I was in France my last trip. A bargain." + +She slid the robe carefully over Ray's head. The frown came once more to +her brow. She bent close to Ray's ear. "Your waist's ripped under the +left arm. Disgraceful!" + +The blonde woman moved and jangled a bit in her chair. "Well, I'll take +it," she sighed. "Look at the colour on that girl! And it's real too." +She rose heavily and came over to Ray, reached up and pinched her cheek +appraisingly with perfumed white thumb and forefinger. + +"That'll do, girl," said Miss Jevne sweetly. "Take this along and change +these ribbons from blue to pink." + +Ray Willets bore the fairy garment away with her. She bore it tenderly, +almost reverently. It was more than a garment. It represented in her +mind a new standard of all that was beautiful and exquisite and +desirable. + +Ten days before the formal opening of the new twelve-story addition +there was issued from the superintendent's office an order that made a +little flurry among the clerks in the sections devoted to women's dress. +The new store when thrown open would mark an epoch in the retail +drygoods business of the city, the order began. Thousands were to be +spent on perishable decorations alone. The highest type of patronage was +to be catered to. Therefore the women in the lingerie, negligee, +millinery, dress, suit and corset sections were requested to wear during +opening week a modest but modish black one-piece gown that would blend +with the air of elegance which those departments were to maintain. + +Ray Willets of the lingerie and negligee sections read her order slip +slowly. Then she reread it. Then she did a mental sum in simple +arithmetic. A childish sum it was. And yet before she got her answer the +solving of it had stamped on her face a certain hard, set, resolute +look. + +The store management had chosen Wednesday to be the opening day. By +eight-thirty o'clock Wednesday morning the French lingerie, millinery +and dress sections, with their women clerks garbed in modest but modish +black one-piece gowns, looked like a levee at Buckingham when the court +is in mourning. But the ladies-in-waiting, grouped about here and +there, fell back in respectful silence when there paced down the aisle +the queen royal in the person of Miss Jevne. There is a certain sort of +black gown that is more startling and daring than scarlet. Miss Jevne's +was that style. Fast black you might term it. Miss Jevne was aware of +the flurry and flutter that followed her majestic progress down the +aisle to her own section. She knew that each eye was caught in the tip +of the little dog-eared train that slipped and slunk and wriggled along +the ground, thence up to the soft drapery caught so cunningly just below +the knee, up higher to the marvelously simple sash that swayed with each +step, to the soft folds of black against which rested the very real +diamond and platinum bar pin, up to the lace at her throat, and then +stopping, blinking and staring again gazed fixedly at the string of +pearls that lay about her throat, pearls rosily pink, mistily grey. An +aura of self-satisfaction enveloping her, Miss Jevne disappeared behind +the rose-garlanded portals of the new cream-and-mauve French section. +And there the aura vanished, quivering. For standing before one of the +plate-glass cases and patting into place with deft fingers the satin bow +of a hand-wrought chemise was Ray Willets, in her shiny little black +serge skirt and the braver of her two white shirtwaists. + +Miss Jevne quickened her pace. Ray turned. Her bright brown eyes grew +brighter at sight of Miss Jevne's wondrous black. Miss Jevne, her train +wound round her feet like an actress' photograph, lifted her eyebrows +to an unbelievable height. + +"Explain that costume!" she said. + +"Costume?" repeated Ray, fencing. + +Miss Jevne's thin lips grew thinner. "You understood that women in this +department were to wear black one-piece gowns this week!" + +Ray smiled a little twisted smile. "Yes, I understood." + +"Then what--" + +Ray's little smile grew a trifle more uncertain. "--I had the +money--last week--I was going to--The baby took sick--the heat I guess, +coming so sudden. We had the doctor--and medicine--I--Say, your own +folks come before black one-piece dresses!" + +Miss Jevne's cold eyes saw the careful patch under Ray's left arm where +a few days before the torn place had won her a reproof. It was the last +straw. + +"You can't stay in this department in that rig!" + +"Who says so?" snapped Ray with a flash of Halsted Street bravado. "If +my customers want a peek at Paquin I'll send 'em to you." + +"I'll show you who says so!" retorted Miss Jevne, quite losing sight of +the queen business. The stately form of the floor manager was visible +among the glass showcases beyond. Miss Jevne sought him agitatedly. All +the little sagging lines about her mouth showed up sharply, defying +years of careful massage. + +The floor manager bent his stately head and listened. Then, led by Miss +Jevne, he approached Ray Willets, whose deft fingers, trembling a very +little now, were still pretending to adjust the perfect pink-satin bow. + +The manager touched her on the arm not unkindly. "Report for work in the +kitchen utensils, fifth floor," he said. Then at sight of the girl's +face: "We can't have one disobeying orders, you know. The rest of the +clerks would raise a row in no time." + +Down in the kitchen utensils and household goods there was no rule +demanding modest but modish one-piece gowns. In the kitchenware one +could don black sateen sleevelets to protect one's clean white waist +without breaking the department's tenets of fashion. You could even pin +a handkerchief across the front of your waist, if your job was that of +dusting the granite ware. + +At first Ray's delicate fingers, accustomed to the touch of soft, sheer +white stuff and ribbon and lace and silk, shrank from contact with meat +grinders, and aluminum stewpans, and egg beaters, and waffle irons, and +pie tins. She handled them contemptuously. She sold them listlessly. +After weeks of expatiating to customers on the beauties and excellencies +of gossamer lingerie she found it difficult to work up enthusiasm over +the virtues of dishpans and spice boxes. By noon she was less resentful. +By two o'clock she was saying to a fellow clerk: + +"Well, anyway, in this section you don't have to tell a woman how +graceful and charming she's going to look while she's working the +washing machine." + +She was a born saleswoman. In spite of herself she became interested +in the buying problems of the practical and plain-visaged housewives +who patronised this section. By three o'clock she was looking +thoughtful--thoughtful and contented. + +Then came the summons. The lingerie section was swamped! Report to Miss +Jevne at once! Almost regretfully Ray gave her customer over to an idle +clerk and sought out Miss Jevne. Some of that lady's statuesqueness was +gone. The bar pin on her bosom rose and fell rapidly. She espied Ray and +met her halfway. In her hand she carried a soft black something which +she thrust at Ray. + +"Here, put that on in one of the fitting rooms. Be quick about it. It's +your size. The department's swamped. Hurry now!" + +Ray took from Miss Jevne the black silk gown, modest but modish. There +was no joy in Ray's face. Ten minutes later she emerged in the limp and +clinging little frock that toned down her colour and made her plumpness +seem but rounded charm. + +The big store will talk for many a day of that afternoon and the three +afternoons that followed, until Sunday brought pause to the thousands of +feet beating a ceaseless tattoo up and down the thronged aisles. On the +Monday following thousands swarmed down upon the store again, but not in +such overwhelming numbers. There were breathing spaces. It was during +one of these that Miss Myrtle, the beauty, found time for a brief +moment's chat with Ray Willets. + +Ray was straightening her counter again. She had a passion for order. +Myrtle eyed her wearily. Her slender shoulders had carried an endless +number and variety of garments during those four days and her feet had +paced weary miles that those garments might the better be displayed. + +"Black's grand on you," observed Myrtle. "Tones you down." She glanced +sharply at the gown. "Looks just like one of our eighteen-dollar models. +Copy it?" + +"No," said Ray, still straightening petticoats and corset covers. Myrtle +reached out a weary, graceful arm and touched one of the lacy piles +adorned with cunning bows of pink and blue to catch the shopping eye. + +"Ain't that sweet!" she exclaimed. "I'm crazy about that shadow lace. +It's swell under voiles. I wonder if I could take one of them home to +copy it." + +Ray glanced up. "Oh, that!" she said contemptuously. "That's just a +cheap skirt. Only twelve-fifty. Machine-made lace. Imitation +embroidery--" + +She stopped. She stared a moment at Myrtle with the fixed and wide-eyed +gaze of one who does not see. + +"What'd I just say to you?" + +"Huh?" ejaculated Myrtle, mystified. + +"What'd I just say?" repeated Ray. + +Myrtle laughed, half understanding. "You said that was a cheap junk +skirt at only twelve-fifty, with machine lace and imitation--" + +But Ray Willets did not wait to hear the rest. She was off down the +aisle toward the elevator marked "Employees." The superintendent's +office was on the ninth floor. She stopped there. The grey +superintendent was writing at his desk. He did not look up as Ray +entered, thus observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of +superintendents when interviewing employees. Ray Willets, standing by +his desk, did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one +hip. A consciousness of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's mind. +He glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his +pencil and sat up slowly. + +"Oh, it's you!" he said. + +"Yes, it's me," replied Ray Willets simply. "I've been here a month +to-day." + +"Oh, yes." He ran his fingers through his hair so that the brown +forelock stood away from the grey. "You've lost some of your roses," he +said, and tapped his cheek. "What's the trouble?" + +"I guess it's the dress," explained Ray, and glanced down at the folds +of her gown. She hesitated a moment awkwardly. "You said you'd send for +me at the end of the month. You didn't." + +"That's all right," said the grey superintendent. "I was pretty sure I +hadn't made a mistake. I can gauge applicants pretty fairly. Let's +see--you're in the lingerie, aren't you?" + +"Yes." + +Then with a rush: "That's what I want to talk to you about. I've changed +my mind. I don't want to stay in the lingeries. I'd like to be +transferred to the kitchen utensils and household goods." + +"Transferred! Well, I'll see what I can do. What was the name now? I +forget." + +A queer look stole into Ray Willets' face, a look of determination and +shrewdness. + +"Name?" she said. "My name is Rachel Wiletzky." + + + + +VIII + + +THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK + +Miss Sadie Corn was not a charmer, but when you handed your room-key to +her you found yourself stopping to chat a moment. If you were the right +kind you showed her your wife's picture in the front of your watch. If +you were the wrong kind, with your scant hair carefully combed to hide +the bald spot, you showed her the newspaper clipping that you carried in +your vest pocket. Following inspection of the first, Sadie Corn would +say: "Now that's what I call a sweet face! How old is the youngest?" +Upon perusal the second was returned with dignity and: "Is that supposed +to be funny?" In each case Sadie Corn had you placed for life. + +She possessed the invaluable gift of the floor clerk, did Sadie +Corn--that of remembering names and faces. Though you had registered at +the Hotel Magnifique but the night before, for the first time, Sadie +Corn would look up at you over her glasses as she laid your key in its +proper row, and say: "Good morning, Mr. Schultz! Sleep well?" + +"Me!" you would stammer, surprised and gratified. "Me! Fine! +H'm--Thanks!" Whereupon you would cross your right foot over your left +nonchalantly and enjoy that brief moment's chat with Floor Clerk Number +Two. You went back to Ishpeming, Michigan, with three new impressions: +The first was that you were becoming a personage of considerable +importance. The second was that the Magnifique realised this great truth +and was grateful for your patronage. The third was that New York was a +friendly little hole after all! + +Miss Sadie Corn was dean of the Hotel Magnifique's floor clerks. The +primary requisite in successful floor clerkship is homeliness. The +second is discreet age. The third is tact. And for the benefit of those +who think the duties of a floor clerk end when she takes your key when +you leave your room, and hands it back as you return, it may be +mentioned that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh requisites are +diplomacy, ingenuity, unlimited patience and a comprehensive knowledge +of human nature. Ambassadors have been known to keep their jobs on less +than that. + +She had come to the Magnifique at thirty-three, a plain, spare, sallow +woman, with a quiet, capable manner, a pungent trick of the tongue on +occasion, a sparse fluff of pale-coloured hair, and big, bony-knuckled +hands, such as you see on women who have the gift of humanness. She was +forty-eight now--still plain, still spare, still sallow. Those bony, +big-knuckled fingers had handed keys to potentates, and pork-packers, +and millinery buyers from Seattle; and to princes incognito, and paupers +much the same--the difference being that the princes dressed down to +the part, while the paupers dressed up to it. + +Time, experience, understanding and the daily dealing with ever-changing +humanity had brought certain lines into Sadie Corn's face. So skilfully +were they placed that the unobservant put them down as wrinkles on the +countenance of a homely, middle-aged woman; but he who read as he ran +saw that the lines about the eyes were quizzical, shrewd lines, which +come from the practice of gauging character at a glance; that the +mouth-markings meant tolerance and sympathy and humour; that the +forehead furrows had been carved there by those master chisellers, +suffering and sacrifice. + +In the last three or four years Sadie Corn had taken to wearing a little +lavender-and-white crocheted shawl about her shoulders on cool days, and +when Two-fifty-seven, who was a regular, caught his annual heavy cold +late in the fall, Sadie would ask him sharply whether he had on his +winter flannels. On his replying in the negative she would rebuke him +scathingly and demand a bill of sizable denomination; and when her watch +was over she would sally forth to purchase four sets of men's winter +underwear. As captain of the Magnifique's thirty-four floor clerks Sadie +Corn's authority extended from the parlours to the roof, but her +especial domain was floor two. Ensconced behind her little desk in a +corner, blocked in by mailracks, pantry signals, pneumatic-tube chutes +and telephone, with a clear view of the elevators and stairway, Sadie +Corn was mistress of the moods, manners and morals of the Magnifique's +second floor. + +It was six thirty p.m. on Monday of Automobile Show Week when Sadie Corn +came on watch. She came on with a lively, well-developed case of +neuralgia over her right eye and extending down into her back teeth. +With its usual spitefulness the attack had chosen to make its appearance +during her long watch. It never selected her short-watch days, when she +was on duty only from eleven a.m. until six-thirty p.m. + +Now with a peppermint bottle held close to alternately sniffing nostrils +Sadie Corn was running her eye over the complex report sheet of the +floor clerk who had just gone off watch. The report was even more +detailed and lengthy than usual. Automobile Show Week meant that the +always prosperous Magnifique was filled to the eaves and turning them +away. It meant twice the usual number of inside telephone calls anent +rooms too hot, rooms too cold, radiators hammering, radiators hissing, +windows that refused to open, windows that refused to shut, packages +undelivered, hot water not forthcoming. As the human buffers between +guests and hotel management, it was the duty of Sadie Corn and her +diplomatic squad to pacify the peevish, to smooth the path of the +paying. + +Down the hall strolled Donahue, the house detective--Donahue the +leisurely. Donahue the keen-eyed, Donahue the guileless--looking in his +evening clothes for all the world like a prosperous diner-out. He smiled +benignly upon Sadie Corn, and Sadie Corn had the bravery to smile back +in spite of her neuralgia, knowing well that men have no sympathy with +that anguishing ailment and no understanding of it. + +"Everything serene, Miss Corn?" inquired Donahue. + +"Everything's serene," said Sadie Corn. "Though Two-thirty-three +telephoned a minute ago to say that if the valet didn't bring his pants +from the presser in the next two seconds he'd come down the hall as he +is and get 'em. Perhaps you'd better stay round." + +Donahue chuckled and passed on. Half way down the hall he retraced his +steps, and stopped again before Sadie Corn's busy desk. He balanced a +moment thoughtfully from toe to heel, his chin lifted inquiringly: "Keep +your eye on Two-eighteen and Two-twenty-three this morning?" + +"Like a lynx!" answered Sadie. + +"Anything?" + +"Not a thing. I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after +dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always +speaks to any woman alone who isn't pockmarked and toothless. Two +minutes after he's met a girl his voice takes on the 'cello note. I know +his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me +first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I'm so homely that +pretty soon I'll be ripe for bachelor floor thirteen. You know as well +as I that to qualify for that job a floor clerk's got to look like a +gargoyle." + +"Maybe they're all right," said Donahue thoughtfully. "If it's just a +flirtation, why--anyway, watch 'em this evening. The day watch listened +in and says they've made some date for to-night." + +He was off down the hall again with his light, quick step that still had +the appearance of leisureliness. + +The telephone at Sadie's right buzzed warningly. Sadie picked up the +receiver and plunged into the busiest half hour of the evening. From +that moment until seven o'clock her nimble fingers and eyes and brain +and tongue directed the steps of her little world. She held the +telephone receiver at one ear and listened to the demands of incoming +and outgoing guests with the other. She jotted down reports, dealt out +mail and room-keys, kept her neuralgic eye on stairs and elevators and +halls, her sound orb on tube and pantry signals, while through and +between and above all she guided the stream of humanity that trickled +past her desk--bellhops, Polish chambermaids, messenger boys, guests, +waiters, parlour maids. + +Just before seven there disembarked at floor two out of the +cream-and-gold elevator one of those visions that have helped to make +Fifth Avenue a street of the worst-dressed women in the world. The +vision was Two-eighteen, and her clothes were of the kind that prepared +you for the shock that you got when you looked at her face. Plume met +fur, and fur met silk, and silk met lace, and lace met gold--and the +whole met and ran into a riot of colour, and perfume--and little +jangling, swishing sounds. Just by glancing at Two-eighteen's feet in +their inadequate openwork silk and soft kid you knew that Two-eighteen's +lips would be carmined. + +She came down the corridor and stopped at Sadie Corn's desk. Sadie Corn +had her key ready for her. Two-eighteen took it daintily between +white-gloved fingers. + +"I'll want a maid in fifteen minutes," she said. "Tell them to send me +the one I had yesterday. The pretty one. She isn't so clumsy as some." + +Sadie Corn jotted down a note without looking up. + +"Oh, Julia? Sorry--Julia's busy," she lied. + +Two-eighteen knew she lied, because at that moment there came round the +bend in the broad, marble stairway that led up from the parlour floor +the trim, slim figure of Julia herself. + +Two-eighteen took a quick step forward. "Here, girl! I'll want you to +hook me in fifteen minutes," she said. + +"Very well, ma'am," replied Julia softly. + +There passed between Sadie Corn and Two-eighteen a--well, you could +hardly call it a look, it was so fleeting, so ephemeral; that electric, +pregnant, meaning something that flashes between two women who dislike +and understand each other. Then Two-eighteen was off down the hall to +her room. + +Julia stood at the head of the stairway just next to Sadie's desk +and watched Two-eighteen until the bend in the corridor hid her. +Julia, of the lady's-maid staff, could never have qualified for the +position of floor clerk, even if she had chosen to bury herself in +lavender-and-white crocheted shawls to the tip of her marvellous little +Greek nose. In her frilly white cap, her trim black gown, her immaculate +collar and cuffs and apron, Julia looked distractingly like the young +person who, in the old days of the furniture-dusting drama, was wont to +inform you that it was two years since young master went away--all but +her feet. The feather-duster person was addicted to French-heeled, +beaded slippers. Not so Julia. Julia was on her feet for ten hours or so +a day. When you subject your feet to ten-hour tortures you are apt to +pass by French-heeled effects in favour of something flat-heeled, laced, +with an easy, comfortable crack here and there at the sides, and +stockings with white cotton soles. + +Julia, at the head of the stairway, stood looking after Two-eighteen +until the tail of her silken draperies had whisked round the corner. +Then, still staring, Julia spoke resentfully: + +"Life for her is just one darned pair of long white kid gloves after +another! Look at her! Why is it that kind of a face is always wearing +the sables and diamonds?" + +"Sables and diamonds," replied Sadie Corn, sniffing essence of +peppermint, "seem a small enough reward for having to carry round a mug +like that!" + +Julia came round to the front of Sadie Corn's desk. Her eyes were +brooding, her lips sullen. + +"Oh, I don't know!" she said bitterly. "Being pretty don't get you +anything--just being pretty! When I first came I used to wonder at those +women that paint their faces and colour their hair, and wear skirts that +are too tight and waists that are too low. But--I don't know! This +town's so big and so--so kind of uninterested. When you see everybody +wearing clothes that are more gorgeous than yours, and diamonds bigger, +and limousines longer and blacker and quieter, it gives you a kind of +fever. You--you want to make people look at you too." + +Sadie Corn leaned back in her chair. The peppermint bottle was held at +her nose. It may have been that which caused her eyes to narrow to mere +slits as she gazed at the drooping Julia. She said nothing. Suddenly +Julia seemed to feel the silence. She looked down at Sadie Corn. As by a +miracle all the harsh, sullen lines in the girl's face vanished, to be +replaced by a lovely compassion. + +"Your neuralgy again, dearie?" she asked in pretty concern. + +Sadie sniffed long and audibly at the peppermint bottle. + +"If you ask me I think there's some imp inside of my head trying to push +my right eye out with his thumb. Anyway it feels like that." + +"Poor old dear!" breathed Julia. "It's the weather. Have them send you +up a pot of black tea." + +"When you've got neuralgy over your right eye," observed Sadie Corn +grimly, "there's just one thing helps--that is to crawl into bed in a +flannel nightgown, with the side of your face resting on the red rubber +bosom of a hot-water bottle. And I can't do it; so let's talk about +something cheerful. Seen Jo to-day?" + +There crept into Julia's face a wave of colour--not the pink of +pleasure, but the dull red of pain. She looked away from Sadie's eyes +and down at her shabby boots. The sullen look was in her face once more. + +"No; I ain't seen him," she said. + +"What's the trouble?" Sadie asked. + +"I've been busy," replied Julia airily. Then, with a forced vivacity: +"Though it's nothing to Auto Show Week last year. I remember that week I +hooked up until my fingers were stiff. You know the way the dresses +fastened last winter. Some of 'em ought to have had a map to go by, they +were that complicated. And now, just when I've got so's I can hook any +dress that was ever intended for the human form--" + +"Wasn't it Jo who said they ought to give away an engineering blueprint +with every dress, when you told him about the way they hooked?" put in +Sadie. "What's the trouble between you and--" + +Julia rattled on, unheeding: + +"You wouldn't believe what a difference there's been since these new +peasant styles have come in! And the Oriental craze! Hook down the side, +most of 'em--and they can do 'em themselves if they ain't too fat." + +"Remember Jo saying they ought to have a hydraulic press for some of +those skintight dames, when your fingers were sore from trying to +squeeze them into their casings? By the way, what's the trouble between +you and--" + +"Makes an awful difference in my tips!" cut in Julia deftly. "I don't +believe I've hooked up six this evening, and two of them sprung the +haven't-anything-but-a-five-dollar-bill-see-you-to-morrow! Women are +devils! I wish--" + +Sadie Corn leaned forward, placed her hand on Julia's arm, and turned +the girl about so that she faced her. Julia tried miserably to escape +her keen eyes and failed. + +"What's the trouble between you and Jo?" she demanded for the fourth +time. "Out with it or I'll telephone down to the engine room and ask him +myself." + +"Oh, well, if you want to know--" She paused, her eyelids drooping +again; then, with a rush: "Me and Jo have quarrelled again--for good, +this time. I'm through!" + +"What about?" + +"I s'pose you'll say I'm to blame. Jo's mother's sick again. She's got +to go to the hospital and have another operation. You know what that +means--putting off the wedding again until God knows when! I'm sick of +it--putting off and putting off! I told him we might as well quit and be +done with it. We'll never get married at this rate. Soon's Jo gets +enough put by to start us on, something happens. Last three times it's +been his ma. Pretty soon I'll be as old and wrinkled and homely as--" + +"As me!" put in Sadie calmly. "Well, I don't know's that's the worst +thing that can happen to you. I'm happy. I had my plans, too, when I was +a girl like you--not that I was ever pretty; but I had my trials. Funny +how the thing that's easy and the thing that's right never seem to be +the same!" + +"Oh, I'm fond of Jo's ma," said Julia, a little shamefacedly. "We get +along all right. She knows how it is, I guess; and feels--well, in the +way. But when Jo told me, I was tired I guess. We had words. I told him +there were plenty waiting for me if he was through. I told him I could +have gone out with a real swell only last Saturday if I'd wanted to. +What's a girl got her looks for if not to have a good time?" + +"Who's this you were invited out by?" asked Sadie Corn. + +"You must have noticed him," said Julia, dimpling. "He's as handsome as +an actor. Name's Venner. He's in two-twenty-three." + +There came the look of steel into Sadie Corn's eyes. + +"Look here, Julia! You've been here long enough to know that you're not +to listen to the talk of the men guests round here. Two-twenty-three +isn't your kind--and you know it! If I catch you talking to him again +I'll--" + +The telephone at her elbow sounded sharply. She answered it absently, +her eyes, with their expression of pain and remonstrance, still +unshrinking before the onslaught of Julia's glare. Then her expression +changed. A look of consternation came into her face. + +"Right away, madam!" she said, at the telephone. "Right away! You won't +have to wait another minute." She hung up the receiver and waved Julia +away with a gesture. "It's Two-eighteen. You promised to be there in +fifteen minutes. She's been waiting and her voice sounds like a saw. +Better be careful how you handle her." + +Julia's head, with its sleek, satiny coils of black hair that waved away +so bewitchingly from the cream of her skin, came up with a jerk. + +"I'm tired of being careful of other people's feelings. Let somebody be +careful of mine for a change." She walked off down the hall, the little +head still held high. A half dozen paces and she turned. "What was it +you said you'd do to me if you caught me talking to him again?" she +sneered. + +A miserable twinge of pain shot through Sadie Corn's eye, to be followed +by a wave of nausea that swept over her. They alone were responsible for +her answer. + +"I'll report you!" she snapped, and was sorry at once. + +Julia turned again, walked down the corridor and round the corner in the +direction of two-eighteen. + +Long after Julia had disappeared Sadie Corn stared after +her--miserable, regretful. + +Julia knocked once at the door of two-eighteen and turned the knob +before a high, shrill voice cried: + +"Come!" + +Two-eighteen was standing in the centre of the floor in scant satin +knickerbockers and tight brassiere. The blazing folds of a cerise satin +gown held in her hands made a great, crude patch of colour in the +neutral-tinted bedroom. The air was heavy with scent. Hair, teeth, eyes, +fingernails--Two-eighteen glowed and glistened. Chairs and bed held odds +and ends. + +"Where've you been, girl?" shrilled Two-eighteen. "I've been waiting +like a fool! I told you to be here in fifteen minutes." + +"My stop-watch isn't working right," replied Julia impudently and took +the cerise satin gown in her two hands. + +She made a ring of the gown's opening, and through that cerise frame her +eyes met those of Two-eighteen. + +"Careful of my hair!" Two-eighteen warned her, and ducked her head to +the practised movement of Julia's arms. The cerise gown dropped to her +shoulders without grazing a hair. Two-eighteen breathed a sigh of +relief. She turned to face the mirror. + +"It starts at the left, three hooks; then to the centre; then back +four--under the arm and down the middle again. That chiffon comes over +like a drape." + +She picked up a buffer from the litter of ivory and silver on the +dresser and began to polish her already glittering nails, turning her +head this way and that, preening her neck, biting her scarlet lips to +deepen their crimson, opening her eyes wide and half closing them +languorously. Julia, down on her knees in combat with the trickiest of +the hooks, glanced up and saw. Two-eighteen caught the glance in the +mirror. She stopped her idle polishing and preening to study the glowing +and lovely little face that looked up at her. A certain queer expression +grew in her eyes--a speculative, eager look. + +"Tell me, little girl," she said, "What do you do round here?" + +Julia turned from the mirror to the last of the hooks, her fingers +working nimbly. + +"Me? My regular job is working. Don't jerk, please. I've fastened this +one three times." + +"Working!" laughed Two-eighteen, fingering the diamonds at her throat. +"What does a pretty girl like you want to do that for?" + +"Hook off here," said Julia. "Shall I sew it?" + +"Pin it!" snapped Two-eighteen. + +Julia's tidy nature revolted. + +"It'll take just a minute to catch it with thread--" + +Two-eighteen whirled about in one of the sudden hot rages of her kind: + +"Pin it, you fool! Pin it! I told you I was late!" + +Julia paused a moment, the red surging into her face. Then in silence +she knelt and wove a pin deftly in and out. When she rose from her +knees her face was quite white. + +"There, that's the girl!" said Two-eighteen blithely, her rage +forgotten. "Just pat this over my shoulders." + +She handed a powder-puff to Julia and turned her back to the broad +mirror, holding a hand-glass high as she watched the powder-laden puff +leaving a snowy coat on the neck and shoulders and back so generously +displayed in the cherry-coloured gown. Julia's face was set and hard. + +"Oh, now, don't sulk!" coaxed Two-eighteen good-naturedly, all of a +sudden. "I hate sulky girls. I like people to be cheerful round me." + +"I'm not used to being yelled at," Julia said resentfully. + +Two-eighteen patted her cheek lightly. "You come out with me to-morrow +and I'll buy you something pretty. Don't you like pretty clothes?" + +"Yes; but--" + +"Of course you do. Every girl does--especially pretty ones like you. How +do you like this dress? Don't you think it smart?" + +She turned squarely to face Julia, trying on her the tricks she had +practised in the mirror. A little cruel look came into Julia's face. + +"Last year's, isn't it?" she asked coolly. + +"This!" cried Two-eighteen, stiffening. "Last year's! I got it yesterday +on Fifth Avenue, and paid two hundred and fifty for it. What do you--" + +"Oh, I believe you," drawled Julia. "They can tell a New Yorker from an +out-of-towner every time. You know the really new thing is the Bulgarian +effect!" + +"Well, of all the nerve!" began Two-eighteen, turning to the mirror in a +sort of fright. "Of all the--" + +What she saw there seemed to reassure. She raised one hand to push the +gown a little more off the left shoulder. + +"Will there be anything else?" inquired Julia, standing aloof. + +Two-eighteen turned reluctantly from the mirror and picked up a jewelled +gold-mesh bag that lay on the bed. From it she extracted a coin and held +it out to Julia. It was a generous coin. Julia looked at it. Her +smouldering wrath burst into flame. + +"Keep it!" she said savagely, and was out of the room and down the hall. + +Sadie Corn, at her desk, looked up quickly as Julia turned the corner. +Julia, her head held high, kept her eyes resolutely away from Sadie. + +"Oh, Julia, I want to talk to you!" said Sadie Corn as Julia reached the +stairway. Julia began to descend the stairs, unheeding. Sadie Corn rose +and leaned over the railing, her face puckered with anxiety. "Now, +Julia, girl, don't hold that up against me! I didn't mean it. You know +that. You wouldn't be mad at a poor old woman that's half crazy with +neuralgy!" Julia hesitated, one foot poised to take the next step. "Come +on up," coaxed Sadie Corn, "and tell me what Two-eighteen's wearing +this evening. I'm that lonesome, with nothing to do but sit here and +watch the letter-ghosts go flippering down the mailchute! Come on!" + +"What made you say you'd report me?" demanded Julia bitterly. + +"I'd have said the same thing to my own daughter if I had one. You know +yourself I'd bite my tongue out first!" + +"Well!" said Julia slowly, and relented. She came up the stairs almost +shyly. "Neuralgy any better?" + +"Worse!" said Sadie Corn cheerfully. + +Julia leaned against the desk sociably and glanced down the hall. + +"Would you believe it," she snickered, "she's wearing red! With that +hair! She asked me if I didn't think she looked too pale. I wanted to +tell her that if she had any more colour, with that dress, they'd be +likely to use the chemical sprinklers on her when she struck the Alley." + +"Sh-sh-sh!" breathed Sadie in warning. Two-eighteen, in her shimmering, +flame-coloured costume, was coming down the hall toward the elevators. +She walked with the absurd and stumbling step that her scant skirt +necessitated. With each pace the slashed silken skirt parted to reveal a +shameless glimpse of cerise silk stocking. In her wake came Venner, of +Two-twenty-three--a strange contrast in his black and white. + +Sadie and Julia watched them from the corner nook. Opposite the desk +Two-eighteen stopped and turned to Julia. + +"Just run into my room and pick things up and hang them away, will you?" +she said. "I didn't have time--and I hate things all about when I come +in dead tired." + +The little formula of service rose automatically to Julia's lips. + +"Very well, madam," she said. + +Her eyes and Sadie's followed the two figures until they had stepped +into the cream-and-gold elevator and had vanished. Sadie, peppermint +bottle at nose, spoke first: + +"She makes one of those sandwich men with a bell, on Sixth Avenue, look +like a shrinking violet!" + +Julia's lower lip was caught between her teeth. The scent that had +enveloped Two-eighteen as she passed was still in the air. Julia's +nostrils dilated as she sniffed it. Her breath came a little quickly. +Sadie Corn sat very still, watching her. + +"Look at her!" said Julia, her voice vibrant. "Look at her! Old and +homely, and all made up! I powdered her neck. Her skin's like tripe. + +"Now Julia--" remonstrated Sadie Corn soothingly. + +"I don't care," went on Julia with a rush. "I'm young. And I'm pretty +too. And I like pretty things. It ain't fair! That was one reason why I +broke with Jo. It wasn't only his mother. I told him he couldn't ever +give me the things I want anyway. You can't help wanting 'em--seeing +them all round every day on women that aren't half as good-looking as +you are! I want low-cut dresses too. My neck's like milk. I want silk +underneath, and fur coming up on my coat collar to make my cheeks look +pink. I'm sick of hooking other women up. I want to stand in front of a +mirror, looking at myself, polishing my pink nails with a silver thing +and having somebody else hook me up!" + +In Sadie Corn's eyes there was a mist that could not be traced to +neuralgia or peppermint. + +"Julia, girl," said Sadie Corn, "ever since the world began there's been +hookers and hooked. And there always will be. I was born a hooker. So +were you. Time was when I used to cry out against it too. But shucks! I +know better now. I wouldn't change places. Being a hooker gives you such +an all-round experience like of mankind. The hooked only get a front +view. They only see faces and arms and chests. But the hookers--they see +the necks and shoulderblades of this world, as well as faces. It's +mighty broadening--being a hooker. It's the hookers that keep this world +together, Julia, and fastened up right. It wouldn't amount to much if it +had to depend on such as that!" She nodded her head in the direction the +cerise figure had taken. "The height of her ambition is to get the +cuticle of her nails trained back so perfectly that it won't have to be +cut; and she don't feel decently dressed to be seen in public unless +she's wearing one of those breastplates of orchids. Envy her! Why, +Julia, don't you know that as you were standing here in your black dress +as she passed she was envying you!" + +"Envying me!" said Julia, and laughed a short laugh that had little of +mirth in it. "You don't understand, Sadie!" + +Sadie Corn smiled a rather sad little smile. + +"Oh, yes, I do understand. Don't think because a woman's homely, and +always has been, that she doesn't have the same heartaches that a pretty +woman has. She's built just the same inside." + +Julia turned her head to stare at her wide-eyed. It was a long and +trying stare, as though she now saw Sadie Corn for the first time. + +Sadie, smiling up at the girl, stood it bravely. Then, with a sudden +little gesture, Julia patted the wrinkled, sallow cheek and was off down +the hall and round the corner to two-eighteen. + +The lights still blazed in the bedroom. Julia closed the door and stood +with her back to it, looking about the disordered chamber. In that +marvellous way a room has of reflecting the very personality of its +absent owner, room two-eighteen bore silent testimony to the manner of +woman who had just left it. The air was close and overpoweringly sweet +with perfume--sachet, powder--the scent of a bedroom after a vain and +selfish woman has left it. The litter of toilet articles lay scattered +about on the dresser. Chairs and bed held garments of lace and silk. A +bewildering negligee hung limply over a couch; and next it stood a +patent-leather slipper, its mate on the floor. + +Julia saw these things in one accustomed glance. Then she advanced to +the middle of the room and stooped to pick up a pink wadded bedroom +slipper from where it lay under the bed. And her hand touched a coat of +velvet and fur that had been flung across the counterpane--touched it +and rested there. + +The coat was of stamped velvet and fur. Great cuffs of fur there were, +and a sumptuous collar that rolled from neck to waist. There was a +lining of vivid orange. Julia straightened up and stood regarding the +garment, her hands on her hips. + +"I wonder if it's draped in the back," she said to herself, and picked +it up. It was draped in the back--bewitchingly. She held it at arm's +length, turning it this way and that. Then, as though obeying some +powerful force she could not resist, Julia plunged her arms into the +satin of the sleeves and brought the great soft revers up about her +throat. The great, gorgeous, shimmering thing completely hid her grubby +little black gown. She stepped to the mirror and stood surveying herself +in a sort of ecstasy. Her cheeks glowed rose-pink against the dark fur, +as she had known they would. Her lovely little head, with its coils of +black hair, rose flowerlike from the clinging garment. She was still +standing there, lips parted, eyes wide with delight, when the door +opened and closed--and Venner, of two-twenty-three, strode into the +room. + +"You little beauty!" exclaimed Two-twenty-three. + +Julia had wheeled about. She stood staring at him, eyes and lips wide +with fright now. One hand clutched the fur at her breast. + +"Why, what--" she gasped. + +Two-twenty-three laughed. + +"I knew I'd find you here. I made an excuse to come up. Old Nutcracker +Face in the hall thinks I went to my own room." He took two quick steps +forward. "You raving little Cinderella beauty, you!"--And he gathered +Julia, coat and all, into his arms. + +"Let me go!" panted Julia, fighting with all the strength of her young +arms. "Let me go!" + +"You'll have coats like this," Two-twenty-three was saying in her +ear--"a dozen of them! And dresses too; and laces and furs! You'll be +ten times the beauty you are now! And that's saying something. Listen! +You meet me to-morrow--" + +There came a ring--sudden and startling--from the telephone on the wall +near the door. The man uttered something and turned. Julia pushed him +away, loosened the coat with fingers that shook and dropped it to the +floor. It lay in a shimmering circle about the tired feet in their worn, +cracked boots. And one foot was raised suddenly and kicked the silken +garment into a heap. + +The telephone bell sounded again. Venner, of two-twenty-three, plunged +his hand into his pocket, took out something and pressed it in Julia's +palm, shutting her fingers over it. Julia did not need to open them and +look to see--she knew by the feel of the crumpled paper, stiff and +crackling. He was making for the door, with some last instructions that +she did not hear, before she spoke. The telephone bell had stopped its +insistent ringing. + +Julia raised her arm and hurled at him with all her might the +yellow-backed paper he had thrust in her hand. + +"I'll--I'll get my man to whip you for this!" she panted. "Jo'll pull +those eyelashes of yours out and use 'em for couplings. You miserable +little--" + +The outside door opened again, striking Two-twenty-three squarely in the +back. He crumpled up against the wall with an oath. + +Sadie Corn, in the doorway, gave no heed to him. Her eyes searched +Julia's flushed face. What she saw there seemed to satisfy her. She +turned to him then grimly. + +"What are you doing here?" Sadie asked briskly. + +Two-twenty-three muttered something about the wrong room by mistake. +Julia laughed. + +"He lies!" she said, and pointed to the floor. "That bill belongs to +him." + +Sadie Corn motioned to him. + +"Pick it up!" she said. + +"I don't--want it!" snarled Two-twenty-three. + +"Pick--it--up!" articulated Sadie Corn very carefully. He came forward, +stooped, put the bill in his pocket. "You check out to-night!" said +Sadie Corn. Then, at a muttered remonstrance from him: "Oh, yes, you +will! So will Two-eighteen. Huh? Oh, I guess she will! Say, what do you +think a floor clerk's for? A human keyrack? I'll give you until twelve. +I'm off watch at twelve-thirty." Then, to Julia, as he slunk off: "Why +didn't you answer the phone? That was me ringing!" + +A sob caught Julia in the throat, but she turned it into a laugh. + +"I didn't hardly hear it. I was busy promising him a licking from Jo." + +Sadie Corn opened the door. + +"Come on down the hall. I've left no one at the desk. It was Jo I was +telephoning you for." + +Julia grasped her arm with gripping fingers. + +"Jo! He ain't--" + +Sadie Corn took the girl's hand in hers. + +"Jo's all right! But Jo's mother won't bother you any more, Sadie. +You'll never need to give up your housekeeping nest-egg for her again. +Jo told me to tell you." + +Julia stared at her for one dreadful moment, her fist, with the knuckles +showing white, pressed against her mouth. A little moan came from her +that, repeated over and over, took the form of words: + +"Oh, Sadie, if I could only take back what I said to Jo! If I could only +take back what I said to Jo! He'll never forgive me now! And I'll never +forgive myself!" + +"He'll forgive you," said Sadie Corn; "but you'll never forgive +yourself. That's as it should be. That, you know, is our punishment for +what we say in thoughtlessness and anger." + +They turned the corridor corner. Standing before the desk near the +stairway was the tall figure of Donahue, house detective. Donahue had +always said that Julia was too pretty to be a hotel employe. + +"Straighten up, Julia!" whispered Sadie Corn. "And smile if it kills +you--unless you want to make me tell the whole of it to Donahue." + +Donahue, the keen-eyed, balancing, as was his wont, from toe to heel and +back again, his chin thrust out inquiringly, surveyed the pair. + +"Off watch?" inquired Donahue pleasantly, staring at Julia's eyes. +"What's wrong with Julia?" + +"Neuralgy!" said Sadie Corn crisply. "I've just told her to quit rubbing +her head with peppermint. She's got the stuff into her eyes." + +She picked up the bottle on her desk and studied its label, frowning. +"Run along downstairs, Julia. I'll see if they won't send you some hot +tea." + +Donahue, hands clasped behind him, was walking off in his leisurely, +light-footed way. + +"Everything serene?" he called back over his big shoulder. + +The neuralgic eye closed and opened, perhaps with another twinge. + +"Everything's serene!" said Sadie Corn. + + + + +IX + + +THE GUIDING MISS GOWD + +It has long been the canny custom of writers on travel bent to defray +the expense of their journeyings by dashing off tales filled with +foreign flavour. Dickens did it, and Dante. It has been tried all the +way from Tasso to Twain; from Raskin to Roosevelt. A pleasing custom it +is and thrifty withal, and one that has saved many a one but poorly +prepared for the European robber in uniform the moist and unpleasant +task of swimming home. + +Your writer spends seven days, say, in Paris. Result? The Latin Quarter +story. _Oh, mes enfants!_ That Parisian student-life story! There is the +beautiful young American girl--beautiful, but as earnest and good as she +is beautiful, and as talented as she is earnest and good. And wedded, be +it understood, to her art--preferably painting or singing. From New +York! Her name must be something prim, yet winsome. Lois will do--Lois, +_la belle Americaine_. Then the hero--American too. Madly in love with +Lois. Tall he is and always clean-limbed--not handsome, but with one of +those strong, rugged faces. His name, too, must be strong and plain, yet +snappy. David is always good. The villain is French, fascinating, and +wears a tiny black moustache to hide his mouth, which is cruel. + +The rest is simple. A little French restaurant--Henri's. Know you not +Henri's? _Tiens!_ But Henri's is not for the tourist. A dim little shop +and shabby, modestly tucked away in the shadows of the Rue Brie. But the +food! Ah, the--whadd'you-call'ems--in the savoury sauce, that is Henri's +secret! The tender, broiled _poularde_, done to a turn! The bottle of +red wine! _Mais oui_; there one can dine under the watchful glare of +Rosa, the plump, black-eyed wife of the _concierge_. With a snowy apron +about her buxom waist, and a pot of red geraniums somewhere, and a +sleek, lazy cat contentedly purring in the sunny window! + +Then Lois starving in a garret. Temptation! _Sacre bleu! Zut!_ Also _nom +d'un nom!_ Enter David. _Bon!_ Oh, David, take me away! Take me back to +dear old Schenectady. Love is more than all else, especially when no one +will buy your pictures. + +The Italian story recipe is even simpler. A pearl necklace; a low, clear +whistle. Was it the call of a bird or a signal? His-s-s-st! Again! A +black cape; the flash of steel in the moonlight; the sound of a splash +in the water; a sickening gurgle; a stifled cry! Silence! His-st! +_Vendetta!_ + +There is the story made in Germany, filled with students and steins and +scars; with beer and blonde, blue-eyed _Maedchen_ garbed--the _Maedchen_, +that is--in black velvet bodice, white chemisette, scarlet skirt with +two rows of black ribbon at the bottom, and one yellow braid over the +shoulder. Especially is this easily accomplished if actually written in +the _Vaterland_, German typewriting machines being equipped with +_umlauts_. + +And yet not one of these formulas would seem to fit the story of Mary +Gowd. Mary Gowd, with her frumpy English hat and her dreadful English +fringe, and her brick-red English cheeks, which not even the enervating +Italian sun, the years of bad Italian food or the damp and dim little +Roman room had been able to sallow. Mary Gowd, with her shabby blue suit +and her mangy bit of fur, and the glint of humour in her pale blue eyes. +Many, many times that same glint of humour had saved English Mary Gowd +from seeking peace in the muddy old Tiber. + +Her card read imposingly thus: Mary M. Gowd, Cicerone. Certificated and +Licensed Lecturer on Art and Archaeology. Via del Babbuino, Roma. + +In plain language Mary Gowd was a guide. Now, Rome is swarming with +guides; but they are men guides. They besiege you in front of Cook's. +They perch at the top of the Capitoline Hill, ready to pounce on you +when you arrive panting from your climb up the shallow steps. They lie +in wait in the doorway of St. Peter's. Bland, suave, smiling, quiet, but +insistent, they dog you from the Vatican to the Catacombs. + +Hundreds there are of these little men--undersized, even in this land +of small men--dapper, agile, low-voiced, crafty. In his inner coat +pocket each carries his credentials, greasy, thumb-worn documents, but +precious. He glances at your shoes--this insinuating one--or at your +hat, or at any of those myriad signs by which he marks you for his own. +Then up he steps and speaks to you in the language of your country, be +you French, German, English, Spanish or American. + +And each one of this clan--each slim, feline little man in blue serge, +white-toothed, gimlet-eyed, smooth-tongued, brisk--hated Mary Gowd. They +hated her with the hate of an Italian for an outlander--with the hate of +an Italian for a woman who works with her brain--with the hate of an +Italian who sees another taking the bread out of his mouth. All this, +coupled with the fact that your Italian is a natural-born hater, may +indicate that the life of Mary Gowd had not the lyric lilt that life is +commonly reputed to have in sunny Italy. + +Oh, there is no formula for Mary Gowd's story. In the first place, the +tale of how Mary Gowd came to be the one woman guide in Rome runs like +melodrama. And Mary herself, from her white cotton gloves, darned at the +fingers, to her figure, which mysteriously remained the same in spite of +fifteen years of scant Italian fare, does not fit gracefully into the +role of heroine. + +Perhaps that story, scraped to bedrock, shorn of all floral features, +may gain in force what it loses in artistry. + +She was twenty-two when she came to Rome--twenty-two and art-mad. She +had been pretty, with that pink-cheesecloth prettiness of the provincial +English girl, who degenerates into blowsiness at thirty. Since seventeen +she had saved and scrimped and contrived for this modest Roman holiday. +She had given painting lessons--even painted on loathsome china--that +the little hoard might grow. And when at last there was enough she had +come to this Rome against the protests of the fussy English father and +the spinster English sister. + +The man she met quite casually one morning in the Sistine +Chapel--perhaps he bumped her elbow as they stood staring up at the +glorious ceiling. A thousand pardons! Ah, an artist too? In five minutes +they were chattering like mad--she in bad French and exquisite English; +he in bad English and exquisite French. He knew Rome--its pictures, its +glories, its history--as only an Italian can. And he taught her art, and +he taught her Italian, and he taught her love. + +And so they were married, or ostensibly married, though Mary did not +know the truth until three months later when he left her quite as +casually as he had met her, taking with him the little hoard, and Mary's +English trinkets, and Mary's English roses, and Mary's broken pride. + +So! There was no going back to the fussy father or the spinster sister. +She came very near resting her head on Father Tiber's breast in those +days. She would sit in the great galleries for hours, staring at the +wonder-works. Then, one day, again in the Sistine Chapel, a fussy little +American woman had approached her, her eyes snapping. Mary was +sketching, or trying to. + +"Do you speak English?" + +"I am English," said Mary. + +The feathers in the hat of the fussy little woman quivered. + +"Then tell me, is this ceiling by Raphael?" + +"Ceiling!" gasped Mary Gowd. "Raphael!" + +Then, very gently, she gave the master's name. + +"Of course!" snapped the excited little American. "I'm one of a party of +eight. We're all school-teachers And this guide"--she waved a hand in +the direction of a rapt little group standing in the agonising position +the ceiling demands--"just informed us that the ceiling is by Raphael. +And we're paying him ten lire!" + +"Won't you sit here?" Mary Gowd made a place for her. "I'll tell you." + +And she did tell her, finding a certain relief from her pain in +unfolding to this commonplace little woman the glory of the masterpiece +among masterpieces. + +"Why--why," gasped her listener, who had long since beckoned the other +seven with frantic finger, "how beautifully you explain it! How much you +know! Oh, why can't they talk as you do?" she wailed, her eyes full of +contempt for the despised guide. + +"I am happy to have helped you," said Mary Gowd. + +"Helped! Why, there are hundreds of Americans who would give anything to +have some one like you to be with them in Rome." + +Mary Gowd's whole body stiffened. She stared fixedly at the grateful +little American school-teacher. + +"Some one like me--" + +The little teacher blushed very red. + +"I beg your pardon. I wasn't thinking. Of course you don't need to do +any such work, but I just couldn't help saying--" + +"But I do need work," interrupted Mary Gowd. She stood up, her cheeks +pink again for the moment, her eyes bright. "I thank you. Oh, I thank +you!" + +"You thank me!" faltered the American. + +But Mary Gowd had folded her sketchbook and was off, through the +vestibule, down the splendid corridor, past the giant Swiss guard, to +the noisy, sunny Piazza di San Pietro. + +That had been fifteen years ago. She had taken her guide's examinations +and passed them. She knew her Rome from the crypt of St. Peter's to the +top of the Janiculum Hill; from the Campagna to Tivoli. She read and +studied and learned. She delved into the past and brought up strange and +interesting truths. She could tell you weird stories of those white +marble men who lay so peacefully beneath St. Peter's dome, their ringed +hands crossed on their breasts. She learned to juggle dates with an ease +that brought gasps from her American clients, with their history that +went back little more than one hundred years. + +She learned to designate as new anything that failed to have its origin +stamped B.C.; and the Magnificent Augustus, he who boasted of finding +Rome brick and leaving it marble, was a mere _nouveau riche_ with his +miserable A.D. 14. + +She was as much at home in the Thermae of Caracalla as you in your +white-and-blue-tiled bath. She could juggle the history of emperors with +one hand and the scandals of half a dozen kings with the other. No ruin +was too unimportant for her attention--no picture too faded for her +research. She had the centuries at her tongue's end. Michelangelo and +Canova were her brothers in art, and Rome was to her as your back-garden +patch is to you. + +Mary Gowd hated this Rome as only an English woman can who has spent +fifteen years in that nest of intrigue. She fought the whole race of +Roman guides day after day. She no longer turned sick and faint when +they hissed after her vile Italian epithets that her American or English +clients quite failed to understand. Quite unconcernedly she would jam +down the lever of the taximeter the wily Italian cabby had pulled only +halfway so that the meter might register double. And when that +foul-mouthed one crowned his heap of abuse by screaming "_Camorrista! +Camor-r-rista!_" at her, she would merely shrug her shoulders and say +"_Andate presto!_" to show him she was above quarrelling with a cabman. + +She ate eggs and bread, and drank the red wine, never having conquered +her disgust for Italian meat since first she saw the filthy carcasses, +fly-infested, dust-covered, loathsome, being carted through the swarming +streets. + +It was six o'clock of an evening early in March when Mary Gowd went home +to the murky little room in the Via Babbuino. She was too tired to +notice the sunset. She was too tired to smile at the red-eyed baby of +the cobbler's wife, who lived in the rear. She was too tired to ask Tina +for the letters that seldom came. It had been a particularly trying day, +spent with a party of twenty Germans, who had said "_Herrlich!_" when +she showed them the marvels of the Vatican and "_Kolossal!_" at the +grandeur of the Colosseum and, for the rest, had kept their noses buried +in their Baedekers. + +She groped her way cautiously down the black hall. Tina had a habit of +leaving sundry brushes, pans or babies lying about. After the warmth of +the March sun outdoors the house was cold with that clammy, penetrating, +tomblike chill of the Italian home. + +"Tina!" she called. + +From the rear of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping. +There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient +shoulders. Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the +white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy +Via Babbuino, closed the massive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy +windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut. +In that little room the roar of Rome was tamed to a dull humming. Mary +Gowd, born and bred amid the green of Northern England, had never become +hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and +clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; +the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns +that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the +electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping +women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the +cabman's whip--that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one +part whip and nine parts crack. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Gowd that +her brain was seared and welted by the pistol-shot reports of those +eternal whips. + +She came forward now and lighted a candle that stood on the table and +another on the dresser. Their dim light seemed to make dimmer the dark +little room. She looked about with a little shiver. Then she sank into +the chintz-covered chair that was the one bit of England in the sombre +chamber. She took off the dusty black velvet hat, passed a hand over her +hair with a gesture that was more tired than tidy, and sat back, her +eyes shut, her body inert, her head sagging on her breast. + +The voices in the back of the house had ceased. From the kitchen came +the slipslop of Tina's slovenly feet. Mary Gowd opened her eyes and sat +up very straight as Tina stood in the doorway. There was nothing +picturesque about Tina. Tina was not one of those olive-tinted, +melting-eyed daughters of Italy that one meets in fiction. Looking at +her yellow skin and her wrinkles and her coarse hands, one wondered +whether she was fifty, or sixty, or one hundred, as is the way with +Italian women of Tina's class at thirty-five. + +Ah, the signora was tired! She smiled pityingly. Tired! Not at all, Mary +Gowd assured her briskly. She knew that Tina despised her because she +worked like a man. + +"Something fine for supper?" Mary Gowd asked mockingly. Her Italian was +like that of the Romans themselves, so soft, so liquid, so perfect. + +Tina nodded vigorously, her long earrings shaking. + +"_Vitello_"--she began, her tongue clinging lovingly to the double _l_ +sound--"_Vee-tail-loh_--" + +"Ugh!" shuddered Mary Gowd. That eternal veal and mutton, pinkish, +flabby, sickening! + +"What then?" demanded the outraged Tina. + +Mary Gowd stood up, making gestures, hat in hand. + +"Clotted cream, with strawberries," she said in English, an unknown +language, which always roused Tina to fury. "And a steak--a real steak +of real beef, three inches thick and covered with onions fried in +butter. And creamed chicken, and English hothouse tomatoes, and fresh +peaches and little hot rolls, and coffee that isn't licorice and ink, +and--and--" + +Tina's dangling earrings disappeared in her shoulders. Her outspread +palms were eloquent. + +"Crazy, these English!" said the shoulders and palms. "Mad!" + +Mary Gowd threw her hat on the bed, pushed aside a screen and busied +herself with a little alcohol stove. + +"I shall prepare an omelet," she said over her shoulder in Italian. +"Also, I have here bread and wine." + +"Ugh!" granted Tina. + +"Ugh, veal!" grunted Mary Gowd. Then, as Tina's flapping feet turned +away: "Oh, Tina! Letters?" + +Tina fumbled at the bosom of her gown, thought deeply and drew out a +crumpled envelope. It had been opened and clumsily closed again. Fifteen +years ago Mary Gowd would have raged. Now she shrugged philosophic +shoulders. Tina stole hairpins, opened letters that she could not hope +to decipher, rummaged bureau drawers, rifled cupboards and fingered +books; but then, so did most of the other Tinas in Rome. What use to +complain? + +Mary Gowd opened the thumb-marked letter, bringing it close to the +candlelight. As she read, a smile appeared. + +"Huh! Gregg," she said, "Americans!" She glanced again at the hotel +letterhead on the stationery--the best hotel in Naples. "Americans--and +rich!" + +The pleased little smile lingered as she beat the omelet briskly for her +supper. + +The Henry D. Greggs arrived in Rome on the two o'clock train from +Naples. And all the Roman knights of the waving palm espied them from +afar and hailed them with whoops of joy. The season was still young and +the Henry D. Greggs looked like money--not Italian money, which is +reckoned in lire, but American money, which mounts grandly to dollars. +The postcard men in the Piazza delle Terme sped after their motor taxi. +The swarthy brigand, with his wooden box of tawdry souvenirs, marked +them as they rode past. The cripple who lurked behind a pillar in the +colonnade threw aside his coat with a practised hitch of his shoulder to +reveal the sickeningly maimed arm that was his stock in trade. + +Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Gregg had left their comfortable home in Batavia, +Illinois, with its sleeping porch, veranda and lawn, and seven-passenger +car; with its two glistening bathrooms, and its Oriental rugs, and its +laundry in the basement, and its Sunday fried chicken and ice cream, +because they felt that Miss Eleanora Gregg ought to have the benefit of +foreign travel. Miss Eleanora Gregg thought so too: in fact, she had +thought so first. + +Her name was Eleanora, but her parents called her Tweetie, which really +did not sound so bad as it might if Tweetie had been one whit less +pretty. Tweetie was so amazingly, Americanly pretty that she could have +triumphed over a pet name twice as absurd. + +The Greggs came to Rome, as has been stated, at two P.M. Wednesday. By +two P.M. Thursday Tweetie had bought a pair of long, dangling earrings, +a costume with a Roman striped collar and sash, and had learned to loll +back in her cab in imitation of the dashing, black-eyed, sallow women +she had seen driving on the Pincio. By Thursday evening she was teasing +Papa Gregg for a spray of white aigrets, such as those same languorous +ladies wore in feathery mists atop their hats. + +"But, Tweet," argued Papa Gregg, "what's the use? You can't take them +back with you. Custom-house regulations forbid it." + +The rather faded but smartly dressed Mrs. Gregg asserted herself: + +"They're barbarous! We had moving pictures at the club showing how +they're torn from the mother birds. No daughter of mine--" + +"I don't care!" retorted Tweetie. "They're perfectly stunning; and I'm +going to have them." + +And she had them--not that the aigret incident is important; but it may +serve to place the Greggs in their respective niches. + +At eleven o'clock Friday morning Mary Gowd called at the Gregg's hotel, +according to appointment. In far-away Batavia, Illinois, Mrs. Gregg had +heard of Mary Gowd. And Mary Gowd, with her knowledge of everything +Roman--from the Forum to the best place at which to buy pearls--was to +be the staff on which the Greggs were to lean. + +"My husband," said Mrs. Gregg; "my daughter Twee--er--Eleanora. We've +heard such wonderful things of you from my dear friend Mrs. Melville +Peters, of Batavia." + +"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Mary Gowd. "A most charming person, Mrs. Peters." + +"After she came home from Europe she read the most wonderful paper on +Rome before the Women's West End Culture Club, of Batavia. We're +affiliated with the National Federation of Women's Clubs, as you +probably know; and--" + +"Now, Mother," interrupted Henry Gregg, "the lady can't be interested in +your club." + +"Oh, but I am!" exclaimed Mary Gowd very vivaciously. "Enormously!" + +Henry Gregg eyed her through his cigar smoke with suddenly narrowed +lids. + +"M-m-m! Well, let's get to the point anyway. I know Tweetie here is +dying to see St. Peter's, and all that." + +Tweetie had settled back inscrutably after one comprehensive, disdainful +look at Mary Gowd's suit, hat, gloves and shoes. Now she sat up, her +bewitching face glowing with interest. + +"Tell me," she said, "what do they call those officers with the long +pale-blue capes and the silver helmets and the swords? And the ones in +dark-blue uniform with the maroon stripe at the side of the trousers? +And do they ever mingle with the--that is, there was one of the blue +capes here at tea yesterday--" + +Papa Gregg laughed a great, comfortable laugh. + +"Oh, so that's where you were staring yesterday, young lady! I thought +you acted kind of absent-minded." He got up to walk over and pinch +Tweetie's blushing cheek. + +So it was that Mary Gowd began the process of pouring the bloody, +religious, wanton, pious, thrilling, dreadful history of Rome into the +pretty and unheeding ear of Tweetie Gregg. + +On the fourth morning after that introductory meeting Mary Gowd arrived +at the hotel at ten, as usual, to take charge of her party for the day. +She encountered them in the hotel foyer, an animated little group +centred about a very tall, very dashing, very black-mustachioed figure +who wore a long pale blue cape thrown gracefully over one shoulder as +only an Italian officer can wear such a garment. He was looking down +into the brilliantly glowing face of the pretty Eleanora, and the pretty +Eleanora was looking up at him; and Pa and Ma Gregg were standing by, +placidly pleased. + +A grim little line appeared about Miss Gowd's mouth. Blue Cape's black +eyes saw it, even as he bent low over Mary Gowd's hand at the words of +introduction. + +"Oh, Miss Gowd," pouted Tweetie, "it's too bad you haven't a telephone. +You see, we shan't need you to-day." + +"No?" said Miss Gowd, and glanced at Blue Cape. + +"No; Signor Caldini says it's much too perfect a day to go poking about +among old ruins and things." + +Henry D. Gregg cleared his throat and took up the explanation. "Seems +the--er--Signor thinks it would be just the thing to take a touring car +and drive to Tivoli, and have a bite of lunch there." + +"And come back in time to see the Colosseum by moonlight!" put in +Tweetie ecstatically. + +"Oh, yes!" said Mary Gowd. + +Pa Gregg looked at his watch. + +"Well, I'll be running along," he said. Then, in answer to something in +Mary Gowd's eyes: "I'm not going to Tivoli, you see. I met a man from +Chicago here at the hotel. He and I are going to chin awhile this +morning. And Mrs. Gregg and his wife are going on a shopping spree. Say, +ma, if you need any more money speak up now, because I'm--" + +Mary Gowd caught his coat sleeve. + +"One moment!" + +Her voice was very low. "You mean--you mean Miss Eleanora will go to +Tivoli and to the Colosseum alone--with--with Signor Caldini?" + +Henry Gregg smiled indulgently. + +"The young folks always run round alone at home. We've got our own car +at home in Batavia, but Tweetie's beaus are always driving up for her +in--" + +Mary Gowd turned her head so that only Henry Gregg could hear what she +said. + +"Step aside for just one moment. I must talk to you." + +"Well, what?" + +"Do as I say," whispered Mary Gowd. + +Something of her earnestness seemed to convey a meaning to Henry Gregg. + +"Just wait a minute, folks," he said to the group of three, and joined +Mary Gowd, who had chosen a seat a dozen paces away. "What's the +trouble?" he asked jocularly. "Hope you're not offended because Tweet +said we didn't need you to-day. You know young folks--" + +"They must not go alone," said Mary Gowd. + +"But--" + +"This is not America. This is Italy--this Caldini is an Italian." + +"Why, look here; Signor Caldini was introduced to us last night. His +folks really belong to the nobility." + +"I know; I know," interrupted Mary Gowd. "I tell you they cannot go +alone. Please believe me! I have been fifteen years in Rome. Noble or +not, Caldini is an Italian. I ask you"--she had clasped her hands and +was looking pleadingly up into his face--"I beg of you, let me go with +them. You need not pay me to-day. You--" + +Henry Gregg looked at her very thoughtfully and a little puzzled. Then +he glanced over at the group again, with Blue Cape looking down so +eagerly into Tweetie's exquisite face and Tweetie looking up so raptly +into Blue Cape's melting eyes and Ma Gregg standing so placidly by. He +turned again to Mary Gowd's earnest face. + +"Well, maybe you're right. They do seem to use chaperons in +Europe--duennas, or whatever you call 'em. Seems a nice kind of chap, +though." + +He strolled back to the waiting group. From her seat Mary Gowd heard +Mrs. Gregg's surprised exclamation, saw Tweetie's pout, understood +Caldini's shrug and sneer. There followed a little burst of +conversation. Then, with a little frown which melted into a smile for +Blue Cape, Tweetie went to her room for motor coat and trifles that the +long day's outing demanded. Mrs. Gregg, still voluble, followed. + +Blue Cape, with a long look at Mary Gowd, went out to confer with the +porter about the motor. Papa Gregg, hand in pockets, cigar tilted, eyes +narrowed, stood irresolutely in the centre of the great, gaudy foyer. +Then, with a decisive little hunch of his shoulders, he came back to +where Mary Gowd sat. + +"Did you say you've been fifteen years in Rome?" + +"Fifteen years," answered Mary Gowd. + +Henry D. Gregg took his cigar from his mouth and regarded it +thoughtfully. + +"Well, that's quite a spell. Must like it here." Mary Gowd said nothing. +"Can't say I'm crazy about it--that is, as a place to live. I said to +Mother last night: 'Little old Batavia's good enough for Henry D.' Of +course it's a grand education, travelling, especially for Tweetie. +Funny, I always thought the fruit in Italy was regular hothouse +stuff--thought the streets would just be lined with trees all hung with +big, luscious oranges. But, Lord! Here we are at the best hotel in Rome, +and the fruit is worse than the stuff the pushcart men at home feed to +their families--little wizened bananas and oranges. Still, it's grand +here in Rome for Tweetie. I can't stay long--just ran away from business +to bring 'em over; but I'd like Tweetie to stay in Italy until she +learns the lingo. Sings, too--Tweetie does; and she and Ma think they'll +have her voice cultivated over here. They'll stay here quite a while, I +guess." + +"Then you will not be here with them?" asked Mary Gowd. + +"Me? No." + +They sat silent for a moment. + +"I suppose you're crazy about Rome," said Henry Gregg again. "There's a +lot of culture here, and history, and all that; and--" + +"I hate Rome!" said Mary Gowd. + +Henry Gregg stared at her in bewilderment. + +"Then why in Sam Hill don't you go back to England?" + +"I'm thirty-seven years old. That's one reason why. And I look older. +Oh, yes, I do. Thanks just the same. There are too many women in England +already--too many half-starving shabby genteel. I earn enough to live on +here--that is, I call it living. You couldn't. In the bad season, when +there are no tourists, I live on a lire a day, including my rent." + +Henry Gregg stood up. + +"My land! Why don't you come to America?" He waved his arms. "America!" + +Mary Gowd's brick-red cheeks grew redder. + +"America!" she echoed. "When I see American tourists here throwing +pennies in the Fountain of Trevi, so that they'll come back to Rome, I +want to scream. By the time I save enough money to go to America I'll be +an old woman and it will be too late. And if I did contrive to scrape +together enough for my passage over I couldn't go to the United States +in these clothes. I've seen thousands of American women here. If they +look like that when they're just travelling about, what do they wear at +home!" + +"Clothes?" inquired Henry Gregg, mystified. "What's wrong with your +clothes?" + +"Everything! I've seen them look at my suit, which hunches in the back +and strains across the front, and is shiny at the seams. And my gloves! +And my hat! Well, even though I am English I know how frightful my hat +is." + +"You're a smart woman," said Henry D. Gregg. + +"Not smart enough," retorted Mary Gowd, "or I shouldn't be here." + +The two stood up as Tweetie came toward them from the lift. Tweetie +pouted again at sight of Mary Gowd, but the pout cleared as Blue Cape, +his arrangements completed, stood in the doorway, splendid hat in hand. + +It was ten o'clock when the three returned from Tivoli and the +Colosseum--Mary Gowd silent and shabbier than ever from the dust of the +road; Blue Cape smiling; Tweetie frankly pettish. Pa and Ma Gregg were +listening to the after-dinner concert in the foyer. + +"Was it romantic--the Colosseum, I mean--by moonlight?" asked Ma Gregg, +patting Tweetie's cheek and trying not to look uncomfortable as Blue +Cape kissed her hand. + +"Romantic!" snapped Tweetie. "It was as romantic as Main Street on +Circus Day. Hordes of people tramping about like buffaloes. Simply +swarming with tourists--German ones. One couldn't find a single ruin to +sit on. Romantic!" She glared at the silent Mary Gowd. + +There was a strange little glint in Mary Gowd's eyes, and the grim line +was there about the mouth again, grimmer than it had been in the +morning. + +"You will excuse me?" she said. "I am very tired. I will say good +night." + +"And I," announced Caldini. + +Mary Gowd turned swiftly to look at him. + +"You!" said Tweetie Gregg. + +"I trust that I may have the very great happiness to see you in the +morning," went on Caldini in his careful English. "I cannot permit +Signora Gowd to return home alone through the streets of Rome." He bowed +low and elaborately over the hands of the two women. + +"Oh, well; for that matter--" began Henry Gregg gallantly. + +Caldini raised a protesting, white-gloved hand. + +"I cannot permit it." + +He bowed again and looked hard at Mary Gowd. Mary Gowd returned the +look. The brick-red had quite faded from her cheeks. Then, with a nod, +she turned and walked toward the door. Blue Cape, sword clanking, +followed her. + +In silence he handed her into the _fiacre_. In silence he seated himself +beside her. Then he leaned very close. + +"I will talk in this damned English," he began, "that the pig of a +_fiaccheraio_ may not understand. This--this Gregg, he is very rich, +like all Americans. And the little Eleanora! _Bellissima!_ You must not +stand in my way. It is not good." Mary Dowd sat silent. "You will help +me. To-day you were not kind. There will be much money--money for me; +also for you." + +Fifteen years before--ten years before--she would have died sooner than +listen to a plan such as he proposed; but fifteen years of Rome blunts +one's English sensibilities. Fifteen years of privation dulls one's +moral sense. And money meant America. And little Tweetie Gregg had not +lowered her voice or her laugh when she spoke that afternoon of Mary +Gowd's absurd English fringe and her red wrists above her too-short +gloves. + +"How much?" asked Mary Gowd. He named a figure. She laughed. + +"More--much more!" + +He named another figure; then another. + +"You will put it down on paper," said Mary Gowd, "and sign your +name--to-morrow." + +They drove the remainder of the way in silence. At her door in the Via +Babbuino: + +"You mean to marry her?" asked Mary Gowd. + +Blue Cape shrugged eloquent shoulders: + +"I think not," he said quite simply. + + * * * * * + +It was to be the Appian Way the next morning, with a stop at the +Catacombs. Mary Gowd reached the hotel very early, but not so early as +Caldini. + +"Think the five of us can pile into one carriage?" boomed Henry Gregg +cheerily. + +"A little crowded, I think," said Mary Gowd, "for such a long drive. +May I suggest that we three"--she smiled on Henry Gregg and his +wife--"take this larger carriage, while Miss Eleanora and Signor Caldini +follow in the single cab?" + +A lightning message from Blue Cape's eyes. + +"Yes; that would be nice!" cooed Tweetie. + +So it was arranged. Mary Gowd rather outdid herself as a guide that +morning. She had a hundred little intimate tales at her tongue's end. +She seemed fairly to people those old ruins again with the men and women +of a thousand years ago. Even Tweetie--little frivolous, indifferent +Tweetie--was impressed and interested. + +As they were returning to the carriages after inspecting the Baths of +Caracalla, Tweetie even skipped ahead and slipped her hand for a moment +into Mary Gowd's. + +"You're simply wonderful!" she said almost shyly. "You make things sound +so real. And--and I'm sorry I was so nasty to you yesterday at Tivoli." + +Mary Dowd looked down at the glowing little face. A foolish little face +it was, but very, very pretty, and exquisitely young and fresh and +sweet. Tweetie dropped her voice to a whisper: + +"You should hear him pronounce my name. It is like music when he says +it--El-e-a-no-ra; like that. And aren't his kid gloves always +beautifully white? Why, the boys back home--" + +Mary Gowd was still staring down at her. She lifted the slim, ringed +little hand which lay within her white-cotton paw and stared at that +too. + +Then with a jerk she dropped the girl's hand and squared her shoulders +like a soldier, so that the dowdy blue suit strained more than ever at +its seams; and the line that had settled about her mouth the night +before faded slowly, as though a muscle too tightly drawn had relaxed. + +In the carriages they were seated as before. The horses started up, with +the smaller cab but a dozen paces behind. Mary Gowd leaned forward. She +began to speak--her voice very low, her accent clearly English, her +brevity wonderfully American. + +"Listen to me!" she said. "You must leave Rome to-night!" + +"Leave Rome to-night!" echoed the Greggs as though rehearsing a duet. + +"Be quiet! You must not shout like that. I say you must go away." + +Mamma Gregg opened her lips and shut them, wordless for once. Henry +Gregg laid one big hand on his wife's shaking knees and eyed Mary Gowd +very quietly. + +"I don't get you," he said. + +Mary Gowd looked straight at him as she said what she had to say: + +"There are things in Rome you cannot understand. You could not +understand unless you lived here many years. I lived here many months +before I learned to step meekly off into the gutter to allow a man to +pass on the narrow sidewalk. You must take your pretty daughter and go +away. To-night! No--let me finish. I will tell you what happened to me +fifteen years ago, and I will tell you what this Caldini has in his +mind. You will believe me and forgive me; and promise me that you will +go quietly away." + +When she finished Mrs. Gregg was white-faced and luckily too frightened +to weep. Henry Gregg started up in the carriage, his fists +white-knuckled, his lean face turned toward the carriage crawling +behind. + +"Sit down!" commanded Mary Gowd. She jerked his sleeve. "Sit down!" + +Henry Gregg sat down slowly. Then he wet his lips slightly and smiled. + +"Oh, bosh!" he said. "This--this is the twentieth century and we're +Americans, and it's broad daylight. Why, I'll lick the--" + +"This is Rome," interrupted Mary Gowd quietly, "and you will do nothing +of the kind, because he would make you pay for that too, and it would be +in all the papers; and your pretty daughter would hang her head in shame +forever." She put one hand on Henry Gregg's sleeve. "You do not know! +You do not! Promise me you will go." The tears sprang suddenly to her +English blue eyes. "Promise me! Promise me!" + +"Henry!" cried Mamma Gregg, very grey-faced. "Promise, Henry!" + +"I promise," said Henry Gregg, and he turned away. + +Mary Gowd sank back in her seat and shut her eyes for a moment. + +"_Presto!_" she said to the half-sleeping driver. Then she waved a gay +hand at the carriage in the rear. "_Presto!_" she called, smiling. +"_Presto!_" + + * * * * * + +At six o'clock Mary Gowd entered the little room in the Via Babbuino. +She went first to the window, drew the heavy curtains. The roar of Rome +was hushed to a humming. She lighted a candle that stood on the table. +Its dim light emphasized the gloom. She took off the battered black +velvet hat and sank into the chintz-covered English chair. Tina stood in +the doorway. Mary Gowd sat up with a jerk. + +"Letters, Tina?" + +Tina thought deeply, fumbled at the bosom of her gown and drew out a +sealed envelope grudgingly. + +Mary Gowd broke the seal, glanced at the letter. Then, under Tina's +startled gaze, she held it to the flaming candle and watched it burn. + +"What is it that you do?" demanded Tina. + +Mary Gowd smiled. + +"You have heard of America?" + +"America! A thousand--a million time! My brother Luigi--" + +"Naturally! This, then"--Mary Gowd deliberately gathered up the ashes +into a neat pile and held them in her hand, a crumpled heap--"this then, +Tina, is my trip to America." + + + + +X + + +SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN + +The key to the heart of Paris is love. He whose key-ring lacks that open +sesame never really sees the city, even though he dwell in the shadow of +the Sorbonne and comprehend the _fiacre_ French of the Paris cabman. +Some there are who craftily open the door with a skeleton key; some who +ruthlessly batter the panels; some who achieve only a wax impression, +which proves to be useless. There are many who travel no farther than +the outer gates. You will find them staring blankly at the stone walls; +and their plaint is: + +"What do they find to rave about in this town?" + +Sophy Gold had been eight days in Paris and she had not so much as +peeked through the key-hole. In a vague way she realised that she was +seeing Paris as a blind man sees the sun--feeling its warmth, conscious +of its white light beating on the eyeballs, but never actually beholding +its golden glory. + +This was Sophy Gold's first trip to Paris, and her heart and soul and +business brain were intent on buying the shrewdest possible bill of +lingerie and infants' wear for her department at Schiff Brothers', +Chicago; but Sophy under-estimated the powers of those three guiding +parts. While heart, soul, and brain were bent dutifully and +indefatigably on the lingerie and infants'-wear job they also were +registering a series of kaleidoscopic outside impressions. + +As she drove from her hotel to the wholesale district, and from the +wholesale district to her hotel, there had flashed across her +consciousness the picture of the chic little modistes' models and +_ouvrieres_ slipping out at noon to meet their lovers on the corner, to +sit over their _sirop_ or wine at some little near-by cafe, hands +clasped, eyes glowing. + +Stepping out of the lift to ask for her room key, she had come on the +black-gowned floor clerk, deep in murmured conversation with the valet, +and she had seemed not to see Sophy at all as she groped subconsciously +for the key along the rows of keyboxes. She had seen the workmen in +their absurdly baggy corduroy trousers and grimy shirts strolling along +arm in arm with the women of their class--those untidy women with the +tidy hair. Bareheaded and happy, they strolled along, a strange contrast +to the glitter of the fashionable boulevard, stopping now and then to +gaze wide-eyed at a million-franc necklace in a jeweller's window; then +on again with a laugh and a shrug and a caress. She had seen the silent +couples in the Tuileries Gardens at twilight. + +Once, in the Bois de Boulogne, a slim, sallow _elegant_ had bent for +what seemed an interminable time over a white hand that was stretched +from the window of a motor car. He was standing at the curb; in either +greeting or parting, and his eyes were fastened on other eyes within the +car even while his lips pressed the white hand. + +Then one evening--Sophy reddened now at memory of it--she had turned a +quiet corner and come on a boy and a girl. The girl was shabby and +sixteen; the boy pale, voluble, smiling. + +Evidently they were just parting. Suddenly, as she passed, the boy had +caught the girl in his arms there on the street corner in the daylight, +and had kissed her--not the quick, resounding smack of casual +leave-taking, but a long, silent kiss that left the girl limp. + +Sophy stood rooted to the spot, between horror and fascination. The +boy's arm brought the girl upright and set her on her feet. + +She took a long breath, straightened her hat, and ran on to rejoin her +girl friend awaiting her calmly up the street. She was not even flushed; +but Sophy was. Sophy was blushing hotly and burning uncomfortably, so +that her eyes smarted. + +Just after her late dinner on the eighth day of her Paris stay, Sophy +Gold was seated in the hotel lobby. Paris thronged with American +business buyers--those clever, capable, shrewd-eyed women who swarm on +the city in June and strip it of its choicest flowers, from ball gowns +to back combs. Sophy tried to pick them from the multitude that swept +past her. It was not difficult. The women visitors to Paris in June +drop easily into their proper slots. + +There were the pretty American girls and their marvellously +young-looking mammas, both out-Frenching the French in their efforts to +look Parisian; there were rows of fat, placid, jewel-laden Argentine +mothers, each with a watchful eye on her black-eyed, volcanically calm, +be-powdered daughter; and there were the buyers, miraculously dressy in +next week's styles in suits and hats--of the old-girl type most of them, +alert, self-confident, capable. + +They usually returned to their hotels at six, limping a little, +dog-tired; but at sight of the brightly lighted, gay hotel foyer they +would straighten up like war-horses scenting battle and achieve an +effective entrance from the doorway to the lift. + +In all that big, busy foyer Sophy Gold herself was the one person +distinctly out of the picture. One did not know where to place her. To +begin with, a woman as irrevocably, irredeemably ugly as Sophy was an +anachronism in Paris. She belonged to the gargoyle period. You found +yourself speculating on whether it was her mouth or her nose that made +her so devastatingly plain, only to bring up at her eyes and find that +they alone were enough to wreck any ambitions toward beauty. You knew +before you saw it that her hair would be limp and straggling. + +You sensed without a glance at them that her hands would be bony, with +unlovely knuckles. + +The Fates, grinning, had done all that. Her Chicago tailor and milliner +had completed the work. Sophy had not been in Paris ten minutes before +she noticed that they were wearing 'em long and full. Her coat was short +and her skirt scant. Her hat was small. The Paris windows were full of +large and graceful black velvets of the Lillian Russell school. + +"May I sit here?" + +Sophy looked up into the plump, pink, smiling face of one of those very +women of the buyer type on whom she had speculated ten minutes before--a +good-natured face with shrewd, twinkling eyes. At sight of it you +forgave her her skittish white-kid-topped shoes. + +"Certainly," smiled Sophy, and moved over a bit on the little French +settee. + +The plump woman sat down heavily. In five minutes Sophy was conscious +she was being stared at surreptitiously. In ten minutes she was +uncomfortably conscious of it. In eleven minutes she turned her head +suddenly and caught the stout woman's eyes fixed on her, with just the +baffled, speculative expression she had expected to find in them. Sophy +Gold had caught that look in many women's eyes. She smiled grimly now. + +"Don't try it," she said, "It's no use." + +The pink, plump face flushed pinker. + +"Don't try--" + +"Don't try to convince yourself that if I wore my hair differently, or +my collar tighter, or my hat larger, it would make a difference in my +looks. It wouldn't. It's hard to believe that I'm as homely as I look, +but I am. I've watched women try to dress me in as many as eleven mental +changes of costume before they gave me up." + +"But I didn't mean--I beg your pardon--you mustn't think--" + +"Oh, that's all right! I used to struggle, but I'm used to it now. It +took me a long time to realise that this was my real face and the only +kind I could ever expect to have." + +The plump woman's kindly face grew kinder. + +"But you're really not so--" + +"Oh, yes, I am. Upholstering can't change me. There are various kinds of +homely women--some who are hideous in blue maybe, but who soften up in +pink. Then there's the one you read about, whose features are lighted up +now and then by one of those rare, sweet smiles that make her plain face +almost beautiful. But once in a while you find a woman who is ugly in +any colour of the rainbow; who is ugly smiling or serious, talking or in +repose, hair down low or hair done high--just plain dyed-in-the-wool, +sewed-in-the-seam homely. I'm that kind. Here for a visit?" + +"I'm a buyer," said the plump woman. + +"Yes; I thought so. I'm the lingerie and infants'-wear buyer for Schiff, +Chicago." + +"A buyer!" The plump woman's eyes jumped uncontrollably again to Sophy +Gold's scrambled features. "Well! My name's Miss Morrissey--Ella +Morrissey. Millinery for Abelman's, Pittsburgh. And it's no snap this +year, with the shops showing postage-stamp hats one day and cart-wheels +the next. I said this morning that I envied the head of the tinware +department. Been over often?" + +Sophy made the shamefaced confession of the novice: "My first trip." + +The inevitable answer came: + +"Your first! Really! This is my twentieth crossing. Been coming over +twice a year for ten years. If there's anything I can tell you, just +ask. The first buying trip to Paris is hard until you know the ropes. Of +course you love this town?" + +Sophy Gold sat silent a moment, hesitating. Then she turned a puzzled +face toward Miss Morrissey. + +"What do people mean when they say they love Paris?" + +Ella Morrissey stared. Then a queer look came into her face--a pitying +sort of look. The shrewd eyes softened. She groped for words. + +"When I first came over here, ten years ago, I--well, it would have been +easier to tell you then. I don't know--there's something about +Paris--something in the atmosphere--something in the air. It--it makes +you do foolish things. It makes you feel queer and light and happy. It's +nothing you can put your finger on and say 'That's it!' But it's there." + +"Huh!" grunted Sophy Gold. "I suppose I could save myself a lot of +trouble by saying that I feel it; but I don't. I simply don't react to +this town. The only things I really like in Paris are the Tomb of +Napoleon, the Seine at night, and the strawberry tart you get at Vian's. +Of course the parks and boulevards are a marvel, but you can't expect me +to love a town for that. I'm no landscape gardener." + +That pitying look deepened in Miss Morrissey's eyes. + +"Have you been out in the evening? The restaurants! The French women! +The life!" + +Sophy Gold caught the pitying look and interpreted it without +resentment; but there was perhaps an added acid in her tone when she +spoke. + +"I'm here to buy--not to play. I'm thirty years old, and it's taken me +ten years to work my way up to foreign buyer. I've worked. And I wasn't +handicapped any by my beauty. I've made up my mind that I'm going to buy +the smoothest-moving line of French lingerie and infants' wear that +Schiff Brothers ever had." + +Miss Morrissey checked her. + +"But, my dear girl, haven't you been round at all?" + +"Oh, a little; as much as a woman can go round alone in Paris--even a +homely woman. But I've been disappointed every time. The noise drives me +wild, to begin with. Not that I'm not used to noise. I am. I can stand +for a town that roars, like Chicago. But this city yelps. I've been +going round to the restaurants a little. At noon I always picked the +restaurant I wanted, so long as I had to pay for the lunch of the +_commissionnaire_ who was with me anyway. Can you imagine any man at +home letting a woman pay for his meals the way those shrimpy Frenchmen +do? + +"Well, the restaurants were always jammed full of Americans. The men of +the party would look over the French menu in a helpless sort of way, and +then they'd say: 'What do you say to a nice big steak with French-fried +potatoes?' The waiter would give them a disgusted look and put in the +order. They might just as well have been eating at a quick lunch place. +As for the French women, every time I picked what I took to be a real +Parisienne coming toward me I'd hear her say as she passed: 'Henry, I'm +going over to the Galerie Lafayette. I'll meet you at the American +Express at twelve. And, Henry, I think I'll need some more money.'" + +Miss Ella Morrissey's twinkling eyes almost disappeared in wrinkles of +laughter; but Sophy Gold was not laughing. As she talked she gazed +grimly ahead at the throng that shifted and glittered and laughed and +chattered all about her. + +"I stopped work early one afternoon and went over across the river. +Well! They may be artistic, but they all looked as though they needed a +shave and a hair-cut and a square meal. And the girls!" + +Ella Morrissey raised a plump, protesting palm. + +"Now look here, child, Paris isn't so much a city as a state of mind. To +enjoy it you've got to forget you're an American. Don't look at it from +a Chicago, Illinois, viewpoint. Just try to imagine you're a mixture of +Montmartre girl, Latin Quarter model and duchess from the Champs +Elysees. Then you'll get it." + +"Get it!" retorted Sophy Gold. "If I could do that I wouldn't be buying +lingerie and infants' wear for Schiffs'. I'd be crowding Duse and +Bernhardt and Mrs. Fiske off the boards." + +Miss Morrissey sat silent and thoughtful, rubbing one fat forefinger +slowly up and down her knee. Suddenly she turned. + +"Don't be angry--but have you ever been in love?" + +"Look at me!" replied Sophy Gold simply. Miss Morrissey reddened a +little. "As head of the lingerie section I've selected trousseaus for I +don't know how many Chicago brides; but I'll never have to decide +whether I'll have pink or blue ribbons for my own." + +With a little impulsive gesture Ella Morrissey laid one hand on the +shoulder of her new acquaintance. + +"Come on up and visit me, will you? I made them give me an inside room, +away from the noise. Too many people down here. Besides, I'd like to +take off this armour-plate of mine and get comfortable. When a girl gets +as old and fat as I am--" + +"There are some letters I ought to get out," Sophy Gold protested +feebly. + +"Yes; I know. We all have; but there's such a thing as overdoing this +duty to the firm. You get up at six to-morrow morning and slap off +those letters. They'll come easier and sound less tired." + +They made for the lift; but at its very gates: + +"Hello, little girl!" cried a masculine voice; and a detaining hand was +laid on Ella Morrissey's plump shoulder. + +That lady recognised the voice and the greeting before she turned to +face their source. Max Tack, junior partner in the firm of Tack +Brothers, Lingerie and Infants' Wear, New York, held out an eager hand. + +"Hello, Max!" said Miss Morrissey not too cordially. "My, aren't you +dressy!" + +He was undeniably dressy--not that only, but radiant with the +self-confidence born of good looks, of well-fitting evening clothes, of +a fresh shave, of glistening nails. Max Tack, of the hard eye and the +soft smile, of the slim figure and the semi-bald head, of the flattering +tongue and the business brain, bent his attention full on the very plain +Miss Sophy Gold. + +"Aren't you going to introduce me?" he demanded. + +Miss Morrissey introduced them, buyer fashion--names, business +connection, and firms. + +"I knew you were Miss Gold," began Max Tack, the honey-tongued. "Some +one pointed you out to me yesterday. I've been trying to meet you ever +since." + +"I hope you haven't neglected your business," said Miss Gold without +enthusiasm. + +Max Tack leaned closer, his tone lowered. + +"I'd neglect it any day for you. Listen, little one: aren't you going +to take dinner with me some evening?" + +Max Tack always called a woman "Little one." It was part of his business +formula. He was only one of the wholesalers who go to Paris yearly +ostensibly to buy models, but really to pay heavy diplomatic court to +those hundreds of women buyers who flock to that city in the interests +of their firms. To entertain those buyers who were interested in goods +such as he manufactured in America; to win their friendship; to make +them feel under obligation at least to inspect his line when they came +to New York--that was Max Tack's mission in Paris. He performed it +admirably. + +"What evening?" he said now. "How about to-morrow?" Sophy Gold shook her +head. "Wednesday then? You stick to me and you'll see Paris. Thursday?" + +"I'm buying my own dinners," said Sophy Gold. + +Max Tack wagged a chiding forefinger at her. + +"You little rascal!" No one had ever called Sophy Gold a little rascal +before. "You stingy little rascal! Won't give a poor lonesome fellow an +evening's pleasure, eh! The theatre? Want to go slumming?" + +He was feeling his way now, a trifle puzzled. Usually he landed a buyer +at the first shot. Of course you had to use tact and discrimination. +Some you took to supper and to the naughty _revues_. + +Occasionally you found a highbrow one who preferred the opera. Had he +not sat through Parsifal the week before? And nearly died! Some wanted +to begin at Tod Sloan's bar and work their way up through Montmartre, +ending with breakfast at the Pre Catalan. Those were the greedy ones. +But this one! + +"What's she stalling for--with that face?" he asked himself. + +Sophy Gold was moving toward the lift, the twinkling-eyed Miss Morrissey +with her. + +"I'm working too hard to play. Thanks, just the same. Good-night." + +Max Tack, his face blank, stood staring up at them as the lift began to +ascend. + +"_Trazyem_," said Miss Morrissey grandly to the lift man. + +"Third," replied that linguistic person, unimpressed. + +It turned out to be soothingly quiet and cool in Ella Morrissey's room. +She flicked on the light and turned an admiring glance on Sophy Gold. + +"Is that your usual method?" + +"I haven't any method," Miss Gold seated herself by the window. "But +I've worked too hard for this job of mine to risk it by putting myself +under obligations to any New York firm. It simply means that you've got +to buy their goods. It isn't fair to your firm." + +Miss Morrissey was busy with hooks and eyes and strings. Her utterance +was jerky but concise. At one stage of her disrobing she breathed a +great sigh of relief as she flung a heavy garment from her. + +"There! That's comfort! Nights like this I wish I had that back porch of +our flat to sit on for just an hour. Ma has flower boxes all round it, +and I bought one of those hammock couches last year. When I come home +from the store summer evenings I peel and get into my old blue-and-white +kimono and lie there, listening to the girl stirring the iced tea for +supper, and knowing that Ma has a platter of her swell cold fish with +egg sauce!" She relaxed into an armchair. "Tell me, do you always talk +to men that way?" + +Sophy Gold was still staring out the open window. + +"They don't bother me much, as a rule." + +"Max Tack isn't a bad boy. He never wastes much time on me. I don't buy +his line. Max is all business. Of course he's something of a smarty, and +he does think he's the first verse and chorus of Paris-by-night; but you +can't help liking him." + +"Well, I can," said Sophy Gold, and her voice was a little bitter, "and +without half trying." + +"Oh, I don't say you weren't right. I've always made it a rule to steer +clear of the ax-grinders myself. There are plenty of girls who take +everything they can get. I know that Max Tack is just padded with +letters from old girls, beginning 'Dear Kid,' and ending, 'Yours with a +world of love!' I don't believe in that kind of thing, or in accepting +things. Julia Harris, who buys for three departments in our store, +drives up every morning in the French car that Parmentier's gave her +when she was here last year. That's bad principle and poor taste. +But--Well, you're young; and there ought to be something besides +business in your life." + +Sophy Gold turned her face from the window toward Miss Morrissey. It +served to put a stamp of finality on what she said: + +"There never will be. I don't know anything but business. It's the only +thing I care about. I'll be earning my ten thousand a year pretty soon." + +"Ten thousand a year is a lot; but it isn't everything. Oh, no, it +isn't. Look here, dear; nobody knows better than I how this working and +being independent and earning your own good money puts the stopper on +any sentiment a girl might have in her; but don't let it sour you. You +lose your illusions soon enough, goodness knows! There's no use in +smashing 'em out of pure meanness." + +"I don't see what illusions have got to do with Max Tack," interrupted +Sophy Gold. + +Miss Morrissey laughed her fat, comfortable chuckle. + +"I suppose you're right, and I guess I've been getting a lee-tle bit +nosey; but I'm pretty nearly old enough to be your mother. The girls +kind of come to me and I talk to 'em. I guess they've spoiled me. +They--" + +There came a smart rapping at the door, followed by certain giggling and +swishing. Miss Morrissey smiled. + +"That'll be some of 'em now. Just run and open the door, will you, like +a nice little thing? I'm too beat out to move." + +The swishing swelled to a mighty rustle as the door opened. Taffeta was +good this year, and the three who entered were the last in the world to +leave you in ignorance of that fact. Ella Morrissey presented her new +friend to the three, giving the department each represented as one would +mention a title or order. + +"The little plump one in black?--Ladies' and Misses' Ready-to-wear, +Gates Company, Portland.... That's a pretty hat, Carrie. Get it to-day? +Give me a big black velvet every time. You can wear 'em with anything, +and yet they're dressy too. Just now small hats are distinctly passy. + +"The handsome one who's dressed the way you always imagined the +Parisiennes would dress, but don't?--Fancy Goods, Stein & Stack, San +Francisco. Listen, Fan: don't go back to San Francisco with that stuff +on your lips. It's all right in Paris, where all the women do it; but +you know as well as I do that Morry Stein would take one look at you and +then tell you to go upstairs and wash your face. Well, I'm just telling +you as a friend. + +"That little trick is the biggest lace buyer in the country.... No, you +wouldn't, would you? Such a mite! Even if she does wear a twenty-eight +blouse she's got a forty-two brain--haven't you, Belle? You didn't make +a mistake with that blue crepe de chine, child. It's chic and yet it's +girlish. And you can wear it on the floor, too, when you get home. It's +quiet if it is stunning." + +These five, as they sat there that June evening, knew what your wife and +your sister and your mother would wear on Fifth Avenue or Michigan +Avenue next October. On their shrewd, unerring judgment rested the +success or failure of many hundreds of feminine garments. The lace for +Miss Minnesota's lingerie; the jewelled comb in Miss Colorado's hair; +the hat that would grace Miss New Hampshire; the dress for Madam +Delaware--all were the results of their farsighted selection. They were +foragers of feminine fal-lals, and their booty would be distributed from +oyster cove to orange grove. + +They were marcelled and manicured within an inch of their lives. They +rustled and a pleasant perfume clung about them. Their hats were so +smart that they gave you a shock. Their shoes were correct. Their skirts +bunched where skirts should bunch that year or lay smooth where +smoothness was decreed. They looked like the essence of frivolity--until +you saw their eyes; and then you noticed that that which is liquid in +sheltered women's eyes was crystallised in theirs. + +Sophy Gold, listening to them, felt strangely out of it and plainer than +ever. + +"I'm taking tango lessons, Ella," chirped Miss Laces. "Every time I went +to New York last year I sat and twiddled my thumbs while every one else +was dancing. I've made up my mind I'll be in it this year." + +"You girls are wonders!" Miss Morrissey marvelled. "I can't do it any +more. If I was to work as hard as I have to during the day and then run +round the way you do in the evening they'd have to hold services for me +at sea. I'm getting old." + +"You--old!" This from Miss Ready-to-Wear. "You're younger now than I'll +ever be. Oh, Ella, I got six stunning models at Estelle Mornet's. +There's a business woman for you! Her place is smart from the ground +floor up--not like the shabby old junk shops the others have. And she +greets you herself. The personal touch! Let me tell you, it counts in +business!" + +"I'd go slow on those cape blouses if I were you; I don't think they're +going to take at home. They look like regular Third Avenue style to me." + +"Don't worry. I've hardly touched them." + +They talked very directly, like men, when they discussed clothes; for to +them a clothes talk meant a business talk. + +The telephone buzzed. The three sprang up, rustling. + +"That'll be for us, Ella," said Miss Fancy Goods. "We told the office to +call us here. The boys are probably downstairs." She answered the call, +turned, nodded, smoothed her gloves and preened her laces. + +Ella Morrissey, in kimonoed comfort, waved a good-bye from her armchair. +"Have a good time! You all look lovely. Oh, we met Max Tack downstairs, +looking like a grand duke!" + +Pert Miss Laces turned at the door, giggling. + +"He says the French aristocracy has nothing on him, because his +grandfather was one of the original Ten Ikes of New York." + +A final crescendo of laughter, a last swishing of silks, a breath of +perfume from the doorway and they were gone. + +Within the room the two women sat looking at the closed door for a +moment. Then Ella Morrissey turned to look at Sophy Gold just as Sophy +Gold turned to look at Ella Morrissey. + +"Well?" smiled Ella. + +Sophy Gold smiled too--a mirthless, one-sided smile. + +"I felt just like this once when I was a little girl. I went to a party, +and all the other little girls had yellow curls. Maybe some of them had +brown ones; but I only remember a maze of golden hair, and pink and blue +sashes, and rosy cheeks, and ardent little boys, and the sureness of +those little girls--their absolute faith in their power to enthrall, and +in the perfection of their curls and sashes. I went home before the ice +cream. And I love ice cream!" + +Ella Morrissey's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. + +"Then the next time you're invited to a party you wait for the ice +cream, girlie." + +"Maybe I will," said Sophy Gold. + +The party came two nights later. It was such a very modest affair that +one would hardly call it that--least of all Max Tack, who had spent +seventy-five dollars the night before in entertaining an important +prospective buyer. + +On her way to her room that sultry June night Sophy had encountered the +persistent Tack. Ella Morrissey, up in her room, was fathoms deep in +work. It was barely eight o'clock and there was a wonderful opal sky--a +June twilight sky, of which Paris makes a specialty--all grey and rose +and mauve and faint orange. + +"Somebody's looking mighty sweet to-night in her new Paris duds!" + +Max Tack's method of approach never varied in its simplicity. + +"They're not Paris--they're Chicago." + +His soul was in his eyes. + +"They certainly don't look it!" Then, with a little hurt look in those +same expressive features: "I suppose, after the way you threw me down +hard the other night, you wouldn't come out and play somewhere, would +you--if I sat up and begged and jumped through this?" + +"It's too warm for most things," Sophy faltered. + +"Anywhere your little heart dictates," interrupted Max Tack ardently. +"Just name it." + +Sophy looked up. + +"Well, then, I'd like to take one of those boats and go down the river +to St.-Cloud. The station's just back of the Louvre. We've just time to +catch the eight-fifteen boat." + +"Boat!" echoed Max Tack stupidly. Then, in revolt: "Why, say, girlie, +you don't want to do that! What is there in taking an old tub and +flopping down that dinky stream? Tell you what we'll do: we'll--" + +"No, thanks," said Sophy. "And it really doesn't matter. You simply +asked me what I'd like to do and I told you. Thanks. Good-night." + +"Now, now!" pleaded Max Tack in a panic. "Of course we'll go. I just +thought you'd rather do something fussier--that's all. I've never gone +down the river; but I think that's a classy little idea--yes, I do. Now +you run and get your hat and we'll jump into a taxi and--" + +"You don't need to jump into a taxi; it's only two blocks. We'll walk." + +There was a little crowd down at the landing station. Max Tack noticed, +with immense relief, that they were not half-bad-looking people either. +He had been rather afraid of workmen in red sashes and with lime on +their clothes, especially after Sophy had told him that a trip cost +twenty centimes each. + +"Twenty centimes! That's about four cents! Well, my gad!" + +They got seats in the prow. Sophy took off her hat and turned her face +gratefully to the cool breeze as they swung out into the river. The +Paris of the rumbling, roaring auto buses, and the honking horns, and +the shrill cries, and the mad confusion faded away. There was the +palely glowing sky ahead, and on each side the black reflection of the +tree-laden banks, mistily mysterious now and very lovely. There was not +a ripple on the water and the Pont Alexandre III and the golden glory of +the dome of the Hotel des Invalides were ahead. + +"Say, this is Venice!" exclaimed Max Tack. + +A soft and magic light covered the shore, the river, the sky, and a soft +and magic something seemed to steal over the little boat and work its +wonders. The shabby student-looking chap and his equally shabby and +merry little companion, both Americans, closed the bag of fruit from +which they had been munching and sat looking into each other's eyes. + +The long-haired artist, who looked miraculously like pictures of Robert +Louis Stevenson, smiled down at his queer, slender-legged little +daughter in the curious Cubist frock; and she smiled back and snuggled +up and rested her cheek on his arm. There seemed to be a deep and silent +understanding between them. You knew, somehow, that the little Cubist +daughter had no mother, and that the father's artist friends made much +of her and that she poured tea for them prettily on special days. + +The bepowdered French girl who got on at the second station sat frankly +and contentedly in the embrace of her sweetheart. The stolid married +couple across the way smiled and the man's arm rested on his wife's +plump shoulder. + +So the love boat glided down the river into the night. And the shore +faded and became grey, and then black. And the lights came out and cast +slender pillars of gold and green and scarlet on the water. + +Max Tack's hand moved restlessly, sought Sophy's, found it, clasped it. +Sophy's hand had never been clasped like that before. She did not know +what to do with it, so she did nothing--which was just what she should +have done. + +"Warm enough?" asked Max Tack tenderly. + +"Just right," murmured Sophy. + +The dream trip ended at St.-Cloud. They learned to their dismay that the +boat did not return to Paris. But how to get back? They asked questions, +sought direction--always a frantic struggle in Paris. Sophy, in the +glare of the street light, looked uglier than ever. + +"Just a minute," said Max Tack. "I'll find a taxi." + +"Nonsense! That man said the street car passed right here, and that we +should get off at the Bois. Here it is now! Come on!" + +Max Tack looked about helplessly, shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. + +"You certainly make a fellow hump," he said, not without a note of +admiration. "And why are you so afraid that I'll spend some money?" as +he handed the conductor the tiny fare. + +"I don't know--unless it's because I've had to work so hard all my life +for mine." + +At Porte Maillot they took one of the flock of waiting _fiacres_. + +"But you don't want to go home yet!" protested Max Tack. + +"I--I think I should like to drive in the Bois Park--if you don't +mind--that is--" + +"Mind!" cried the gallant and game Max Tack. + +Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might +drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven +with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her +tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and +because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy's extreme plainness, +he took her unaccustomed hand again in his. + +"This little hand was never meant for work," he murmured. + +Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a +mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that +particular _fiacre_ wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to +the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near +by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they +saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris +moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the +lips. + +Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would +have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as +well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy's mother, +and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother had been +kissed before her. So they told her to say: + +"You shouldn't have done that." + +And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries: + +"I know it; but I couldn't help it. Don't be angry!" + +"You know," said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, "I'm very, very +ugly--when it isn't moonlight." + +"Paris," spake Max Tack, diplomat, "is so full of medium-lookers who +think they're pretty, and of pretty ones who think they're beauties, +that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn't any +fake notions to feed. They're all right; but give me a woman with brains +every time." Which was a lie! + +They drove home down the Bois--the cool, spacious, tree-bordered +Bois--and through the Champs Elysees. Because he was an artist in his +way, and because every passing _fiacre_ revealed the same picture, Max +Tack sat very near her and looked very tender and held her hand in his. +It would have raised a laugh at Broadway and Forty-second. It was quite, +quite sane and very comforting in Paris. + +At the door of the hotel: + +"I'm sailing Wednesday," said Max Tack. "You--you won't forget me?" + +"Oh, no--no!" + +"You'll call me up or run into the office when you get to New York?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +He walked with her to the lift, said good-bye and returned to the +_fiacre_ with the tinkling bell. There was a stunned sort of look in his +face. The _fiacre_ meter registered two francs seventy. Max Tack did a +lightning mental calculation. The expression on his face deepened. He +looked up at the cabby--the red-faced, bottle-nosed cabby, with his +absurd scarlet vest, his mustard-coloured trousers and his glazed top +hat. + +"Well, can you beat that? Three francs thirty for the evening's +entertainment! Why--why, all she wanted was just a little love!" + +To the bottle-nosed one all conversation in a foreign language meant +dissatisfaction with the meter. He tapped that glass-covered contrivance +impatiently with his whip. A flood of French bubbled at his lips. + +"It's all right, boy! It's all right! You don't get me!" And Max Tacked +pressed a five-franc piece into the outstretched palm. Then to the hotel +porter: "Just grab a taxi for me, will you? These tubs make me nervous." + +Sophy, on her way to her room, hesitated, turned, then ran up the stairs +to the next floor and knocked gently at Miss Morrissey's door. A moment +later that lady's kimonoed figure loomed large in the doorway. + +"Who is--oh, it's you! Well, I was just going to have them drag the +Seine for you. Come in!" + +She went back to the table. Sheets of paper, rough sketches of hat +models done from memory, notes and letters lay scattered all about. +Sophy leaned against the door dreamily. + +"I've been working this whole mortal evening," went on Ella Morrissey, +holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her +working spectacles, "and I'm so tired that one eye's shut and the +other's running on first. Where've you been, child?" + +"Oh, driving!" Sophy's limp hair was a shade limper than usual, and a +strand of it had become loosened and straggled untidily down over her +ear. Her eyes looked large and strangely luminous. "Do you know, I love +Paris!" + +Ella Morrissey laid down her pencil sketch and turned slowly. She +surveyed Sophy Gold, her shrewd eyes twinkling. + +"That so? What made you change your mind?" + +The dreamy look in Sophy's eyes deepened. + +"Why--I don't know. There's something in the atmosphere--something in +the air. It makes you do and say foolish things. It makes you feel queer +and light and happy." + +Ella Morrissey's bright twinkle softened to a glow. She stared for +another brief moment. Then she trundled over to where Sophy stood and +patted her leathery cheek. "Welcome to our city!" said Miss Ella +Morrissey. + + + + +XI + + +THE THREE OF THEM + +For eleven years Martha Foote, head housekeeper at the Senate Hotel, +Chicago, had catered, unseen, and ministered, unknown, to that great, +careless, shifting, conglomerate mass known as the Travelling Public. +Wholesale hostessing was Martha Foote's job. Senators and suffragists, +ambassadors and first families had found ease and comfort under Martha +Foote's regime. Her carpets had bent their nap to the tread of kings, +and show girls, and buyers from Montana. Her sheets had soothed the +tired limbs of presidents, and princesses, and prima donnas. For the +Senate Hotel is more than a hostelry; it is a Chicago institution. The +whole world is churned in at its revolving front door. + +For eleven years Martha Foote, then, had beheld humanity throwing its +grimy suitcases on her immaculate white bedspreads; wiping its muddy +boots on her bath towels; scratching its matches on her wall paper; +scrawling its pencil marks on her cream woodwork; spilling its greasy +crumbs on her carpet; carrying away her dresser scarfs and pincushions. +There is no supremer test of character. Eleven years of hotel +housekeepership guarantees a knowledge of human nature that includes +some things no living being ought to know about her fellow men. And +inevitably one of two results must follow. You degenerate into a bitter, +waspish, and fault-finding shrew; or you develop into a patient, +tolerant, and infinitely understanding woman. Martha Foote dealt daily +with Polack scrub girls, and Irish porters, and Swedish chambermaids, +and Swiss waiters, and Halsted Street bell-boys. Italian tenors fried +onions in her Louis-Quinze suite. College boys burned cigarette holes in +her best linen sheets. Yet any one connected with the Senate Hotel, from +Pete the pastry cook to H.G. Featherstone, lessee-director, could vouch +for Martha Foote's serene unacidulation. + + * * * * * + +Don't gather from this that Martha Foote was a beaming, motherly person +who called you dearie. Neither was she one of those managerial and +magnificent blonde beings occasionally encountered in hotel corridors, +engaged in addressing strident remarks to a damp and crawling huddle of +calico that is doing something sloppy to the woodwork. Perhaps the +shortest cut to Martha Foote's character is through Martha Foote's +bedroom. (Twelfth floor. Turn to your left. That's it; 1246. Come in!) + +In the long years of its growth and success the Senate Hotel had known +the usual growing pains. Starting with walnut and red plush it had, in +its adolescence, broken out all over into brass beds and birds'-eye +maple. This, in turn, had vanished before mahogany veneer and brocade. +Hardly had the white scratches on these ruddy surfaces been doctored by +the house painter when--whisk! Away with that sombre stuff! And in +minced a whole troupe of near-French furnishings; cream enamel beds, +cane-backed; spindle-legged dressing tables before which it was +impossible to dress; perilous chairs with raspberry complexions. Through +all these changes Martha Foote, in her big, bright twelfth floor room, +had clung to her old black walnut set. + +The bed, to begin with, was a massive, towering edifice with a headboard +that scraped the lofty ceiling. Head and foot-board were fretted and +carved with great blobs representing grapes, and cornucopias, and +tendrils, and knobs and other bedevilments of the cabinet-maker's craft. +It had been polished and rubbed until now it shone like soft brown +satin. There was a monumental dresser too, with a liver-coloured marble +top. Along the wall, near the windows, was a couch; a heavy, wheezing, +fat-armed couch decked out in white ruffled cushions. I suppose the mere +statement that, in Chicago, Illinois, Martha Foote kept these cushions +always crisply white, would make any further characterization +superfluous. The couch made you think of a plump grandmother of bygone +days, a beruffled white fichu across her ample, comfortable bosom. Then +there was the writing desk; a substantial structure that bore no +relation to the pindling rose-and-cream affairs that graced the guest +rooms. It was the solid sort of desk at which an English novelist of the +three-volume school might have written a whole row of books without +losing his dignity or cramping his style. Martha Foote used it for +making out reports and instruction sheets, for keeping accounts, and for +her small private correspondence. + +Such was Martha Foote's room. In a modern and successful hotel, whose +foyer was rose-shaded, brass-grilled, peacock-alleyed and tessellated, +that bed-sitting-room of hers was as wholesome, and satisfying, and real +as a piece of home-made rye bread on a tray of French pastry; and as +incongruous. + +It was to the orderly comfort of these accustomed surroundings that the +housekeeper of the Senate Hotel opened her eyes this Tuesday morning. +Opened them, and lay a moment, bridging the morphean chasm that lay +between last night and this morning. It was 6:30 A.M. It is bad enough +to open one's eyes at 6:30 on Monday morning. But to open them at 6:30 +on Tuesday morning, after an indigo Monday.... The taste of yesterday +lingered, brackish, in Martha's mouth. + +"Oh, well, it won't be as bad as yesterday, anyway. It can't." So she +assured herself, as she lay there. "There never were _two_ days like +that, hand running. Not even in the hotel business." + +For yesterday had been what is known as a muddy Monday. Thick, murky, +and oozy with trouble. Two conventions, three banquets, the lobby so +full of khaki that it looked like a sand-storm, a threatened strike in +the laundry, a travelling man in two-twelve who had the grippe and +thought he was dying, a shortage of towels (that bugaboo of the hotel +housekeeper) due to the laundry trouble that had kept the linen-room +telephone jangling to the tune of a hundred damp and irate guests. And +weaving in and out, and above, and about and through it all, like a +neuralgic toothache that can't be located, persisted the constant, +nagging, maddening complaints of the Chronic Kicker in six-eighteen. + +Six-eighteen was a woman. She had arrived Monday morning, early. By +Monday night every girl on the switchboard had the nervous jumps when +they plugged in at her signal. She had changed her rooms, and back +again. She had quarrelled with the room clerk. She had complained to the +office about the service, the food, the linen, the lights, the noise, +the chambermaid, all the bell-boys, and the colour of the furnishings in +her suite. She said she couldn't live with that colour. It made her +sick. Between 8:30 and 10:30 that night, there had come a lull. +Six-eighteen was doing her turn at the Majestic. + +Martha Foote knew that. She knew, too, that her name was Geisha McCoy, +and she knew what that name meant, just as you do. She had even laughed +and quickened and responded to Geisha McCoy's manipulation of her +audience, just as you have. Martha Foote knew the value of the personal +note, and it had been her idea that had resulted in the rule which +obliged elevator boys, chambermaids, floor clerks, doormen and waiters +if possible, to learn the names of Senate Hotel guests, no matter how +brief their stay. + +"They like it," she had said, to Manager Brant. "You know that better +than I do. They'll be flattered, and surprised, and tickled to death, +and they'll go back to Burlington, Iowa, and tell how well known they +are at the Senate." + +When the suggestion was met with the argument that no human being could +be expected to perform such daily feats of memory Martha Foote battered +it down with: + +"That's just where you're mistaken. The first few days are bad. After +that it's easier every day, until it becomes mechanical. I remember when +I first started waiting on table in my mother's quick lunch eating house +in Sorghum, Minnesota. I'd bring 'em wheat cakes when they'd ordered +pork and beans, but it wasn't two weeks before I could take six orders, +from soup to pie, without so much as forgetting the catsup. Habit, +that's all." + +So she, as well as the minor hotel employes, knew six-eighteen as Geisha +McCoy. Geisha McCoy, who got a thousand a week for singing a few songs +and chatting informally with the delighted hundreds on the other side of +the footlights. Geisha McCoy made nothing of those same footlights. She +reached out, so to speak, and shook hands with you across their amber +glare. Neither lovely nor alluring, this woman. And as for her +voice!--And yet for ten years or more this rather plain person, somewhat +dumpy, no longer young, had been singing her every-day, human songs +about every-day, human people. And invariably (and figuratively) her +audience clambered up over the footlights, and sat in her lap. She had +never resorted to cheap music-hall tricks. She had never invited the +gallery to join in the chorus. She descended to no finger-snapping. But +when she sang a song about a waitress she was a waitress. She never +hesitated to twist up her hair, and pull down her mouth, to get an +effect. She didn't seem to be thinking about herself, at all, or about +her clothes, or her method, or her effort, or anything but the audience +that was plastic to her deft and magic manipulation. + +Until very recently. Six months had wrought a subtle change in Geisha +McCoy. She still sang her every-day, human songs about every-day, human +people. But you failed, somehow, to recognise them as such. They sounded +sawdust-stuffed. And you were likely to hear the man behind you say, +"Yeh, but you ought to have heard her five years ago. She's about +through." + +Such was six-eighteen. Martha Foote, luxuriating in that one delicious +moment between her 6:30 awakening, and her 6:31 arising, mused on these +things. She thought of how, at eleven o'clock the night before, her +telephone had rung with the sharp zing! of trouble. The voice of Irish +Nellie, on night duty on the sixth floor, had sounded thick-brogued, +sure sign of distress with her. + +"I'm sorry to be a-botherin' ye, Mis' Phut. It's Nellie speakin'--Irish +Nellie on the sixt'." + +"What's the trouble, Nellie?" + +"It's that six-eighteen again. She's goin' on like mad. She's carryin' +on something fierce." + +"What about?" + +"Th'--th' blankets, Mis' Phut." + +"Blankets?--" + +"She says--it's her wurruds, not mine--she says they're vile. Vile, she +says." + +Martha Foote's spine had stiffened. "In this house! Vile!" + +If there was one thing more than another upon which Martha Foote prided +herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy, +they were her especial fad. "Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold +snake-work are all well and good," she was wont to say, "and so are +American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys. +But it's the blankets on the beds that stamp a hotel first or second +class." And now this, from Nellie. + +"I know how ye feel, an' all. I sez to 'er, I sez: 'There never was a +blanket in this _house_,' I sez, 'that didn't look as if it cud be +sarved up wit' whipped cr-ream,' I sez, 'an' et,' I sez to her; 'an' +fu'thermore,' I sez--" + +"Never mind, Nellie. I know. But we never argue with guests. You know +that rule as well as I. The guest is right--always. I'll send up the +linen-room keys. You get fresh blankets; new ones. And no arguments. But +I want to see those--those vile--" + +"Listen, Mis' Phut." Irish Nellie's voice, until now shrill with +righteous anger, dropped a discreet octave. "I seen 'em. An' they _are_ +vile. Wait a minnit! But why? Becus that there maid of hers--that yella' +hussy--give her a body massage, wit' cold cream an' all, usin' th' +blankets f'r coverin', an' smearin' 'em right _an'_ lift. This was +afther they come back from th' theayter. Th' crust of thim people, using +the iligent blankets off'n the beds t'--" + +"Good night, Nellie. And thank you." + +"Sure, ye know I'm that upset f'r distarbin' yuh, an' all, but--" + +Martha Foote cast an eye toward the great walnut bed. "That's all right. +Only, Nellie--" + +"Yesm'm." + +"If I'm disturbed again on that woman's account for anything less than +murder--" + +"Yesm'm?" + +"Well, there'll _be_ one, that's all. Good night." + +Such had been Monday's cheerful close. + +Martha Foote sat up in bed, now, preparatory to the heroic flinging +aside of the covers. "No," she assured herself, "it can't be as bad as +yesterday." She reached round and about her pillow, groping for the +recalcitrant hairpin that always slipped out during the night; found it, +and twisted her hair into a hard bathtub bun. + +With a jangle that tore through her half-wakened senses the telephone at +her bedside shrilled into life. Martha Foote, hairpin in mouth, turned +and eyed it, speculatively, fearfully. It shrilled on in her very face, +and there seemed something taunting and vindictive about it. One long +ring, followed by a short one; a long ring, a short. "Ca-a-an't it? +Ca-a-an't it?" + +"Something tells me I'm wrong," Martha Foote told herself, ruefully, and +reached for the blatant, snarling thing. + +"Yes?" + +"Mrs. Foote? This is Healy, the night clerk. Say, Mrs. Foote, I think +you'd better step down to six-eighteen and see what's--" + +"I _am_ wrong," said Martha Foote. + +"What's that?" + +"Nothing. Go on. Will I step down to six-eighteen and--?" + +"She's sick, or something. Hysterics, I'd say. As far as I could make +out it was something about a noise, or a sound or--Anyway, she can't +locate it, and her maid says if we don't stop it right away--" + +"I'll go down. Maybe it's the plumbing. Or the radiator. Did you ask?" + +"No, nothing like that. She kept talking about a wail." + +"A what!" + +"A wail. A kind of groaning, you know. And then dull raps on the wall, +behind the bed." + +"Now look here, Ed Healy; I get up at 6:30, but I can't see a joke +before ten. If you're trying to be funny!--" + +"Funny! Why, say, listen, Mrs. Foote. I may be a night clerk, but I'm +not so low as to get you out at half past six to spring a thing like +that in fun. I mean it. So did she." + +"But a kind of moaning! And then dull raps!" + +"Those are her words. A kind of m--" + +"Let's not make a chant of it. I think I get you. I'll be down there in +ten minutes. Telephone her, will you?" + +"Can't you make it five?" + +"Not without skipping something vital." + +Still, it couldn't have been a second over ten, including shoes, hair, +and hooks-and-eyes. And a fresh white blouse. It was Martha Foote's +theory that a hotel housekeeper, dressed for work, ought to be as +inconspicuous as a steel engraving. She would have been, too, if it +hadn't been for her eyes. + +She paused a moment before the door of six-eighteen and took a deep +breath. At the first brisk rat-tat of her knuckles on the door there had +sounded a shrill "Come in!" But before she could turn the knob the door +was flung open by a kimonoed mulatto girl, her eyes all whites. The girl +began to jabber, incoherently but Martha Foote passed on through the +little hall to the door of the bedroom. + +Six-eighteen was in bed. At sight of her Martha Foote knew that she had +to deal with an over-wrought woman. Her hair was pushed back wildly from +her forehead. Her arms were clasped about her knees. At the left her +nightgown had slipped down so that one plump white shoulder gleamed +against the background of her streaming hair. The room was in almost +comic disorder. It was a room in which a struggle has taken place +between its occupant and that burning-eyed hag, Sleeplessness. The hag, +it was plain, had won. A half-emptied glass of milk was on the table by +the bed. Warmed, and sipped slowly, it had evidently failed to soothe. A +tray of dishes littered another table. Yesterday's dishes, their +contents congealed. Books and magazines, their covers spread wide as if +they had been flung, sprawled where they lay. A little heap of +grey-black cigarette stubs. The window curtain awry where she had stood +there during a feverish moment of the sleepless night, looking down upon +the lights of Grant Park and the sombre black void beyond that was Lake +Michigan. A tiny satin bedroom slipper on a chair, its mate, sole up, +peeping out from under the bed. A pair of satin slippers alone, +distributed thus, would make a nun's cell look disreputable. Over all +this disorder the ceiling lights, the wall lights, and the light from +two rosy lamps, beat mercilessly down; and upon the white-faced woman in +the bed. + +She stared, hollow-eyed, at Martha Foote. Martha Foote, in the doorway, +gazed serenely back upon her. And Geisha McCoy's quick intelligence and +drama-sense responded to the picture of this calm and capable figure in +the midst of the feverish, over-lighted, over-heated room. In that +moment the nervous pucker between her eyes ironed out ever so little, +and something resembling a wan smile crept into her face. And what she +said was: + +"I wouldn't have believed it." + +"Believed what?" inquired Martha Foote, pleasantly. + +"That there was anybody left in the world who could look like that in a +white shirtwaist at 6:30 A.M. Is that all your own hair?" + +"Strictly." + +"Some people have all the luck," sighed Geisha McCoy, and dropped +listlessly back on her pillows. Martha Foote came forward into the room. +At that instant the woman in the bed sat up again, tense, every nerve +strained in an attitude of listening. The mulatto girl had come swiftly +to the foot of the bed and was clutching the footboard, her knuckles +showing white. + +"Listen!" A hissing whisper from the haggard woman in the bed. "What's +that?" + +"Wha' dat!" breathed the coloured girl, all her elegance gone, her +every look and motion a hundred-year throwback to her voodoo-haunted +ancestors. + +The three women remained rigid, listening. From the wall somewhere +behind the bed came a low, weird monotonous sound, half wail, half +croaking moan, like a banshee with a cold. A clanking, then, as of +chains. A s-s-swish. Then three dull raps, seemingly from within the +very wall itself. + +The coloured girl was trembling. Her lips were moving, soundlessly. But +Geisha McCoy's emotion was made of different stuff. + +"Now look here," she said, desperately, "I don't mind a sleepless night. +I'm used to 'em. But usually I can drop off at five, for a little while. +And that's been going on--well, I don't know how long. It's driving me +crazy. Blanche, you fool, stop that hand wringing! I tell you there's no +such thing as ghosts. Now you"--she turned to Martha Foote again--"you +tell me, for God's sake, what _is_ that!" + +And into Martha Foote's face there came such a look of mingled +compassion and mirth as to bring a quick flame of fury into Geisha +McCoy's eyes. + +"Look here, you may think it's funny but--" + +"I don't. I don't. Wait a minute." Martha Foote turned and was gone. An +instant later the weird sounds ceased. The two women in the room looked +toward the door, expectantly. And through it came Martha Foote, smiling. +She turned and beckoned to some one without. "Come on," she said. "Come +on." She put out a hand, encouragingly, and brought forward the +shrinking, cowering, timorous figure of Anna Czarnik, scrub-woman on the +sixth floor. Her hand still on her shoulder Martha Foote led her to the +centre of the room, where she stood, gazing dumbly about. She was the +scrub-woman you've seen in every hotel from San Francisco to Scituate. A +shapeless, moist, blue calico mass. Her shoes turned up ludicrously at +the toes, as do the shoes of one who crawls her way backward, crab-like, +on hands and knees. Her hands were the shrivelled, unlovely members that +bespeak long and daily immersion in dirty water. But even had these +invariable marks of her trade been lacking, you could not have failed to +recognise her type by the large and glittering mock-diamond comb which +failed to catch up her dank and stringy hair in the back. + +One kindly hand on the woman's arm, Martha Foote performed the +introduction. + +"This is Mrs. Anna Czarnik, late of Poland. Widowed. Likewise childless. +Also brotherless. Also many other uncomfortable things. But the life of +the crowd in the scrub-girls' quarters on the top floor. Aren't you, +Anna? Mrs. Anna Czarnik, I'm sorry to say, is the source of the +blood-curdling moan, and the swishing, and the clanking, and the +ghost-raps. There is a service stairway just on the other side of this +wall. Anna Czarnik was performing her morning job of scrubbing it. The +swishing was her wet rag. The clanking was her pail. The dull raps her +scrubbing brush striking the stair corner just behind your wall." + +"You're forgetting the wail," Geisha McCoy suggested, icily. + +"No, I'm not. The wail, I'm afraid, was Anna Czarnik, singing." + +"Singing?" + +Martha Foote turned and spoke a gibberish of Polish and English to the +bewildered woman at her side. Anna Czarnik's dull face lighted up ever +so little. + +"She says the thing she was singing is a Polish folk-song about death +and sorrow, and it's called a--what was that, Anna?" + +"Dumka." + +"It's called a dumka. It's a song of mourning, you see? Of grief. And of +bitterness against the invaders who have laid her country bare." + +"Well, what's the idea!" demanded Geisha McCoy. "What kind of a hotel is +this, anyway? Scrub-girls waking people up in the middle of the night +with a Polish cabaret. If she wants to sing her hymn of hate why does +she have to pick on me!" + +"I'm sorry. You can go, Anna. No sing, remember! Sh-sh-sh!" + +Anna Czarnik nodded and made her unwieldy escape. + +Geisha McCoy waved a hand at the mulatto maid. "Go to your room, +Blanche. I'll ring when I need you." The girl vanished, gratefully, +without a backward glance at the disorderly room. Martha Foote felt +herself dismissed, too. And yet she made no move to go. She stood there, +in the middle of the room, and every housekeeper inch of her yearned to +tidy the chaos all about her, and every sympathetic impulse urged her +to comfort the nerve-tortured woman before her. Something of this must +have shone in her face, for Geisha McCoy's tone was half-pettish, +half-apologetic as she spoke. + +"You've no business allowing things like that, you know. My nerves are +all shot to pieces anyway. But even if they weren't, who could stand +that kind of torture? A woman like that ought to lose her job for that. +One word from me at the office and she--" + +"Don't say it, then," interrupted Martha Foote, and came over to the +bed. Mechanically her fingers straightened the tumbled covers, removed a +jumble of magazines, flicked away the crumbs. "I'm sorry you were +disturbed. The scrubbing can't be helped, of course, but there is a +rule against unnecessary noise, and she shouldn't have been singing. +But--well, I suppose she's got to find relief, somehow. Would you +believe that woman is the cut-up of the top floor? She's a natural +comedian, and she does more for me in the way of keeping the other girls +happy and satisfied than--" + +"What about me? Where do I come in? Instead of sleeping until eleven +I'm kept awake by this Polish dirge. I go on at the Majestic at four, +and again at 9.45 and I'm sick, I tell you! Sick!" + +She looked it, too. Suddenly she twisted about and flung herself, face +downward, on the pillow. "Oh, God!" she cried, without any particular +expression. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" + +That decided Martha Foote. + +She crossed over to the other side of the bed, first flicking off the +glaring top lights, sat down beside the shaken woman on the pillows, and +laid a cool, light hand on her shoulder. + +"It isn't as bad as that. Or it won't be, anyway, after you've told me +about it." + +She waited. Geisha McCoy remained as she was, face down. But she did not +openly resent the hand on her shoulder. So Martha Foote waited. And as +suddenly as Six-eighteen had flung herself prone she twisted about and +sat up, breathing quickly. She passed a hand over her eyes and pushed +back her streaming hair with an oddly desperate little gesture. Her lips +were parted, her eyes wide. + +"They've got away from me," she cried, and Martha Foote knew what she +meant. "I can't hold 'em any more. I work as hard as ever--harder. +That's it. It seems the harder I work the colder they get. Last week, in +Indianapolis, they couldn't have been more indifferent if I'd been the +educational film that closes the show. And, oh my God! They sit and +knit." + +"Knit!" echoed Martha Foote. "But everybody's knitting nowadays." + +"Not when I'm on. They can't. But they do. There were three of them in +the third row yesterday afternoon. One of 'em was doing a grey sock with +four shiny needles. Four! I couldn't keep my eyes off of them. And the +second was doing a sweater, and the third a helmet. I could tell by +the shape. And you can't be funny, can you, when you're hypnotised by +three stony-faced females all doubled up over a bunch of olive-drab? +Olive-drab! I'm scared of it. It sticks out all over the house. Last +night there were two young kids in uniform right down in the first row, +centre, right. I'll bet the oldest wasn't twenty-three. There they sat, +looking up at me with their baby faces. That's all they are. Kids. The +house seems to be peppered with 'em. You wouldn't think olive-drab could +stick out the way it does. I can see it farther than red. I can see it +day and night. I can't seem to see anything else. I can't--" + +Her head came down on her arms, that rested on her tight-hugged knees. + +"Somebody of yours in it?" Martha Foote asked, quietly. She waited. Then +she made a wild guess--an intuitive guess. "Son?" + +"How did you know?" Geisha McCoy's head came up. + +"I didn't." + +"Well, you're right. There aren't fifty people in the world, outside my +own friends, who know I've got a grown-up son. It's bad business to have +them think you're middle-aged. And besides, there's nothing of the stage +about Fred. He's one of those square-jawed kids that are just cut out to +be engineers. Third year at Boston Tech." + +"Is he still there, then?" + +"There! He's in France, that's where he is. Somewhere--in France. And +I've worked for twenty-two years with everything in me just set, like an +alarm-clock, for the time when that kid would step off on his own. He +always hated to take money from me, and I loved him for it. I never went +on that I didn't think of him. I never came off with a half dozen +encores that I didn't wish he could hear it. Why, when I played a +college town it used to be a riot, because I loved every fresh-faced boy +in the house, and they knew it. And now--and now--what's there in it? +What's there in it? I can't even hold 'em any more. I'm through, I tell +you. I'm through!" + +And waited to be disputed. Martha Foote did not disappoint her. + +"There's just this in it. It's up to you to make those three women in +the third row forget what they're knitting for, even if they don't +forget their knitting. Let 'em go on knitting with their hands, but keep +their heads off it. That's your job. You're lucky to have it." + +"Lucky?" + +"Yes _ma'am_! You can do all the dumka stuff in private, the way Anna +Czarnik does, but it's up to you to make them laugh twice a day for +twenty minutes." + +"It's all very well for you to talk that cheer-o stuff. It hasn't come +home to you, I can see that." + +Martha Foote smiled. "If you don't mind my saying it, Miss McCoy, you're +too worn out from lack of sleep to see anything clearly. You don't know +me, but I do know you, you see. I know that a year ago Anna Czarnik +would have been the most interesting thing in this town, for you. You'd +have copied her clothes, and got a translation of her sob song, and made +her as real to a thousand audiences as she was to us this morning; +tragic history, patient animal face, comic shoes and all. And that's the +trouble with you, my dear. When we begin to brood about our own troubles +we lose what they call the human touch. And that's your business asset." + +Geisha McCoy was looking up at her with a whimsical half-smile. "Look +here. You know too much. You're not really the hotel housekeeper, are +you?" + +"I am." + +"Well, then, you weren't always--" + +"Yes I was. So far as I know I'm the only hotel housekeeper in history +who can't look back to the time when she had three servants of her own, +and her private carriage. I'm no decayed black-silk gentlewoman. Not me. +My father drove a hack in Sorgham, Minnesota, and my mother took in +boarders and I helped wait on table. I married when I was twenty, my man +died two years later, and I've been earning my living ever since." + +"Happy?" + +"I must be, because I don't stop to think about it. It's part of my job +to know everything that concerns the comfort of the guests in this +hotel." + +"Including hysterics in six-eighteen?" + +"Including. And that reminds me. Up on the twelfth floor of this hotel +there's a big, old-fashioned bedroom. In half an hour I can have that +room made up with the softest linen sheets, and the curtains pulled +down, and not a sound. That room's so restful it would put old Insomnia +himself to sleep. Will you let me tuck you away in it?" + +Geisha McCoy slid down among her rumpled covers, and nestled her head in +the lumpy, tortured pillows. "Me! I'm going to stay right here." + +"But this room's--why, it's as stale as a Pullman sleeper. Let me have +the chambermaid in to freshen it up while you're gone." + +"I'm used to it. I've got to have a room mussed up, to feel at home in +it. Thanks just the same." + +Martha Foote rose, "I'm sorry. I just thought if I could help--" + +Geisha McCoy leaned forward with one of her quick movements and caught +Martha Foote's hand in both her own, "You have! And I don't mean to be +rude when I tell you I haven't felt so much like sleeping in weeks. +Just turn out those lights, will you? And sort of tiptoe out, to give +the effect." Then, as Martha Foote reached the door, "And oh, say! D'you +think she'd sell me those shoes?" + +Martha Foote didn't get her dinner that night until almost eight, what +with one thing and another. Still as days go, it wasn't so bad as +Monday; she and Irish Nellie, who had come in to turn down her bed, +agreed on that. The Senate Hotel housekeeper was having her dinner in +her room. Tony, the waiter, had just brought it on and had set it out +for her, a gleaming island of white linen, and dome-shaped metal tops. +Irish Nellie, a privileged person always, waxed conversational as she +folded back the bed covers in a neat triangular wedge. + +"Six-eighteen kinda ca'med down, didn't she? High toime, the divil. She +had us jumpin' yist'iddy. I loike t' went off me head wid her, and th' +day girl th' same. Some folks ain't got no feelin', I dunno." + +Martha Foote unfolded her napkin with a little tired gesture. "You can't +always judge, Nellie. That woman's got a son who has gone to war, and +she couldn't see her way clear to living without him. She's better now. +I talked to her this evening at six. She said she had a fine afternoon." + +"Shure, she ain't the only wan. An' what do you be hearin' from your +boy, Mis' Phut, that's in France?" + +"He's well, and happy. His arm's all healed, and he says he'll be in it +again by the time I get his letter." + +"Humph," said Irish Nellie. And prepared to leave. She cast an +inquisitive eye over the little table as she made for the +door--inquisitive, but kindly. Her wide Irish nostrils sniffed a +familiar smell. "Well, fur th' land, Mis' Phut! If I was housekeeper +here, an' cud have hothouse strawberries, an' swatebreads undher +glass, an' sparrowgrass, an' chicken, _an'_ ice crame, the way you +can, whiniver yuh loike, I wouldn't be a-eatin' cornbeef an' cabbage. +Not me." + +"Oh, yes you would, Nellie," replied Martha Foote, quietly, and spooned +up the thin amber gravy. "Oh, yes you would." + + + + +XII + + +SHORE LEAVE + +Tyler Kamps was a tired boy. He was tired from his left great toe to +that topmost spot at the crown of his head where six unruly hairs always +persisted in sticking straight out in defiance of patient brushing, +wetting, and greasing. Tyler Kamps was as tired as only a boy can be at +9.30 P.M. who has risen at 5.30 A.M. Yet he lay wide awake in his +hammock eight feet above the ground, like a giant silk-worm in an +incredible cocoon and listened to the sleep-sounds that came from the +depths of two hundred similar cocoons suspended at regular intervals +down the long dark room. A chorus of deep regular breathing, with an +occasional grunt or sigh, denoting complete relaxation. Tyler Kamps +should have been part of this chorus, himself. Instead he lay staring +into the darkness, thinking mad thoughts of which this is a sample: + +"Gosh! Wouldn't I like to sit up in my hammock and give one yell! The +kind of a yell a movie cowboy gives on a Saturday night. Wake 'em up and +stop that--darned old breathing." + +Nerves. He breathed deeply himself, once or twice, because it seemed, +somehow to relieve his feeling of irritation. And in that unguarded +moment of unconscious relaxation Sleep, that had been lying in wait for +him just around the corner, pounced on him and claimed him for its own. +From his hammock came the deep, regular inhalation, exhalation, with an +occasional grunt or sigh. The normal sleep-sounds of a very tired boy. + +The trouble with Tyler Kamps was that he missed two things he hadn't +expected to miss at all. And he missed not at all the things he had been +prepared to miss most hideously. + +First of all, he had expected to miss his mother. If you had known +Stella Kamps you could readily have understood that. Stella Kamps was +the kind of mother they sing about in the sentimental ballads; mother, +pal, and sweetheart. Which was where she had made her big mistake. When +one mother tries to be all those things to one son that son has a very +fair chance of turning out a mollycoddle. The war was probably all that +saved Tyler Kamps from such a fate. + +In the way she handled this son of hers Stella Kamps had been as crafty +and skilful and velvet-gloved as a girl with her beau. The proof of it +is that Tyler had never known he was being handled. Some folks in +Marvin, Texas, said she actually flirted with him, and they were almost +justified. Certainly the way she glanced up at him from beneath her +lashes was excused only by the way she scolded him if he tracked up the +kitchen floor. But then, Stella Kamps and her boy were different, +anyway. Marvin folks all agreed about that. Flowers on the table at +meals. Sitting over the supper things talking and laughing for an hour +after they'd finished eating, as if they hadn't seen each other in +years. Reading out loud to each other, out of books and then going on +like mad about what they'd just read, and getting all het up about it. +And sometimes chasing each other around the yard, spring evenings, like +a couple of fool kids. Honestly, if a body didn't know Stella Kamps so +well, and what a fight she had put up to earn a living for herself and +the boy after that good-for-nothing Kamps up and left her, and what a +housekeeper she was, and all, a person'd think--well-- + +So, then, Tyler had expected to miss her first of all. The way she +talked. The way she fussed around him without in the least seeming to +fuss. Her special way of cooking things. Her laugh which drew laughter +in its wake. The funny way she had of saying things, vitalising +commonplaces with the spark of her own electricity. + +And now he missed her only as the average boy of twenty-one misses the +mother he has been used to all his life. No more and no less. Which +would indicate that Stella Kamps, in her protean endeavours, had +overplayed the parts just a trifle. + +He had expected to miss the boys at the bank. He had expected to miss +the Mandolin Club. The Mandolin Club met, officially, every Thursday and +spangled the Texas night with their tinkling. Five rather dreamy-eyed +adolescents slumped in stoop-shouldered comfort over the instruments +cradled in their arms, each right leg crossed limply over the left, each +great foot that dangled from the bony ankle, keeping rhythmic time to +the plunketty-plink-tinketty-plunk. + +He had expected to miss the familiar faces on Main Street. He had even +expected to miss the neighbours with whom he and his mother had so +rarely mingled. All the hundred little, intimate, trivial, everyday +things that had gone to make up his life back home in Marvin, +Texas--these he had expected to miss. + +And he didn't. + +After ten weeks at the Great Central Naval Training Station so near +Chicago, Illinois, and so far from Marvin, Texas, there were two things +he missed. + +He wanted the decent privacy of his small quiet bedroom back home. + +He wanted to talk to a girl. + +He knew he wanted the first, definitely. He didn't know he wanted the +second. The fact that he didn't know it was Stella Kamps' fault. She had +kept his boyhood girlless, year and year, by sheer force of her own love +for him, and need of him, and by the charm and magnetism that were hers. +She had been deprived of a more legitimate outlet for these emotions. +Concentrated on the boy, they had sufficed for him. The Marvin girls had +long ago given him up as hopeless. They fell back, baffled, their +keenest weapons dulled by the impenetrable armour of his impersonal +gaze. + +The room? It hadn't been much of a room, as rooms go. Bare, clean, +asceptic, with a narrow, hard white bed and a maple dresser whose second +drawer always stuck and came out zig-zag when you pulled it; and a +swimmy mirror that made one side of your face look sort of lumpy, and +higher than the other side. In one corner a bookshelf. He had made it +himself at manual training. When he had finished it--the planing, the +staining, the polishing--Chippendale himself, after he had designed and +executed his first gracious, wide-seated, back-fitting chair, could have +felt no finer creative glow. As for the books it held, just to run your +eye over them was like watching Tyler Kamps grow up. Stella Kamps had +been a Kansas school teacher in the days before she met and married +Clint Kamps. And she had never quite got over it. So the book case +contained certain things that a fond mother (with a teaching past) would +think her small son ought to enjoy. Things like "Tom Brown At Rugby" and +"Hans Brinker, Or the Silver Skates." He had read them, dutifully, but +they were as good as new. No thumbed pages, no ragged edges, no creases +and tatters where eager boy hands had turned a page over--hastily. No, +the thumb-marked, dog's-eared, grimy ones were, as always, "Tom Sawyer" +and "Huckleberry Finn" and "Marching Against the Iroquois." + +A hot enough little room in the Texas summers. A cold enough little +room in the Texas winters. But his own. And quiet. He used to lie there +at night, relaxed, just before sleep claimed him, and he could almost +feel the soft Texas night enfold him like a great, velvety, invisible +blanket, soothing him, lulling him. In the morning it had been pleasant +to wake up to its bare, clean whiteness, and to the tantalising +breakfast smells coming up from the kitchen below. His mother calling +from the foot of the narrow wooden stairway: + +"Ty-_ler_!," rising inflection. "_Ty_-ler," falling inflection. "Get up, +son! Breakfast'll be ready." + +It was always a terrific struggle between a last delicious stolen five +minutes between the covers, and the scent of the coffee and bacon. + +"Ty-_ler_! You'll be late!" + +A mighty stretch. A gathering of his will forces. A swing of his long +legs over the side of the bed so that they described an arc in the air. + +"Been up years." + +Breakfast had won. + +Until he came to the Great Central Naval Training Station Tyler's +nearest approach to the nautical life had been when, at the age of six, +he had sailed chips in the wash tub in the back yard. Marvin, Texas, is +five hundred miles inland. And yet he had enlisted in the navy as +inevitably as though he had sprung from a long line of Vikings. In his +boyhood his choice of games had always been pirate. You saw him, a red +handkerchief binding his brow, one foot advanced, knee bent, scanning +the horizon for the treasure island from the vantage point of the +woodshed roof, while the crew, gone mad with thirst, snarled and +shrieked all about him, and the dirt yard below became a hungry, roaring +sea. His twelve-year-old vocabulary boasted such compound difficulties +as mizzentopsail-yard and main-topgallantmast. He knew the intricate +parts of a full-rigged ship from the mainsail to the deck, from the +jib-boom to the chart-house. All this from pictures and books. It was +the roving, restless spirit of his father in him, I suppose. Clint Kamps +had never been meant for marriage. When the baby Tyler was one year old +Clint had walked over to where his wife sat, the child in her lap, and +had tilted her head back, kissed her on the lips, and had gently pinched +the boy's roseleaf cheek with a quizzical forefinger and thumb. Then, +indolently, negligently, gracefully, he had strolled out of the house, +down the steps, into the hot and dusty street and so on and on and out +of their lives. Stella Kamps had never seen him again. Her letters back +home to her folks in Kansas were triumphs of bravery and bare-faced +lying. The kind of bravery, and the kind of lying that only a woman +could understand. She managed to make out, somehow, at first. And later, +very well indeed. As the years went on she and the boy lived together in +a sort of closed corporation paradise of their own. At twenty-one Tyler, +who had gone through grammar school, high school and business college +had never kissed a girl or felt a love-pang. Stella Kamps kept her age +as a woman does whose brain and body are alert and busy. When Tyler +first went to work in the Texas State Savings Bank of Marvin the girls +would come in on various pretexts just for a glimpse of his charming +blondeur behind the little cage at the rear. It is difficult for a +small-town girl to think of reasons for going into a bank. You have to +be moneyed to do it. They say that the Davies girl saved up nickels +until she had a dollar's worth and then came into the bank and asked to +have a bill in exchange for it. They gave her one--a crisp, new, crackly +dollar bill. She reached for it, gropingly, her eyes fixed on a point at +the rear of the bank. Two days later she came in and brazenly asked to +have it changed into nickels again. She might have gone on indefinitely +thus if Tyler's country hadn't given him something more important to do +than to change dollars into nickels and back again. + +On the day he left for the faraway naval training station Stella Kamps +for the second time in her life had a chance to show the stuff she was +made of, and showed it. Not a whimper. Down at the train, standing at +the car window, looking up at him and smiling, and saying futile, +foolish, final things, and seeing only his blond head among the many +thrust out of the open window. + +"... and Tyler, remember what I said about your feet. You know. Dry.... +And I'll send a box every week, only don't eat too many of the nut +cookies. They're so rich. Give some to the other--yes, I know you will. +I was just ... Won't it be grand to be right there on the water all the +time! My!... I'll write every night and then send it twice a week.... +I don't suppose you ... Well once a week, won't you, dear?... +You're--you're moving. The train's going! Good-b--" she ran along with +it for a few feet, awkwardly, as a woman runs. Stumblingly. + +And suddenly, as she ran, his head always just ahead of her, she +thought, with a great pang: + +"O my God, how young he is! How young he is, and he doesn't know +anything. I should have told him.... Things.... He doesn't know anything +about ... and all those other men--" + +She ran on, one arm outstretched as though to hold him a moment longer +while the train gathered speed. "Tyler!" she called, through the din and +shouting. "Tyler, be good! Be good!" He only saw her lips moving, and +could not hear, so he nodded his head, and smiled, and waved, and was +gone. + +So Tyler Kamps had travelled up to Chicago. Whenever they passed a +sizable town they had thrown open the windows and yelled, "Youp! Who-ee! +Yow!" + +People had rushed to the streets and had stood there gazing after the +train. Tyler hadn't done much youping at first, but in the later stages +of the journey he joined in to keep his spirits up. He, who had never +been more than a two-hours' ride from home was flashing past villages, +towns, cities--hundreds of them. + +The first few days had been unbelievably bad, what with typhoid +inoculations, smallpox vaccinations, and loneliness. The very first day, +when he had entered his barracks one of the other boys, older in +experience, misled by Tyler's pink and white and gold colouring, had +leaned forward from amongst a group and had called in glad surprise, at +the top of a leathery pair of lungs: + +"Why, hello, sweetheart!" The others had taken it up with cruelty of +their age. "Hello, sweetheart!" It had stuck. Sweetheart. In the hard +years that followed--years in which the blood-thirsty and piratical +games of his boyhood paled to the mildest of imaginings--the nickname +still clung, long after he had ceased to resent it; long after he had +stripes and braid to refute it. + +But in that Tyler Kamps we are not interested. It is the boy Tyler Kamps +with whom we have to do. Bewildered, lonely, and a little resentful. +Wondering where the sea part of it came in. Learning to say "on the +station" instead of "at the station," the idea being that the great +stretch of land on which the station was located was not really land, +but water; and the long wooden barracks not really barracks at all, but +ships. Learning to sleep in a hammock (it took him a full week). +Learning to pin back his sailor collar to save soiling the white braid +on it (that meant scrubbing). Learning--but why go into detail? One +sentence covers it. + +Tyler met Gunner Moran. Moran, tattooed, hairy-armed, hairy-chested as a +gorilla and with something of the sadness and humour of the gorilla in +his long upper lip and short forehead. But his eyes did not bear out the +resemblance. An Irish blue; bright, unravaged; clear beacon lights in a +rough and storm-battered countenance. Gunner Moran wasn't a gunner at +all, or even a gunner's mate, but just a seaman who knew the sea from +Shanghai to New Orleans; from Liverpool to Barcelona. His knowledge of +knots and sails and rifles and bayonets and fists was a thing to strike +you dumb. He wasn't the stuff of which officers are made. But you should +have seen him with a Springfield! Or a bayonet! A bare twenty-five, +Moran, but with ten years' sea experience. Into those ten years he had +jammed a lifetime of adventure. And he could do expertly all the things +that Tyler Kamps did amateurishly. In a barrack, or in a company street, +the man who talks the loudest is the man who has the most influence. In +Tyler's barrack Gunner Moran was that man. + +Because of what he knew they gave him two hundred men at a time and made +him company commander, without insignia or official position. In rank, +he was only a "gob" like the rest of them. In influence a captain. Moran +knew how to put the weight lunge behind the bayonet. It was a matter of +balance, of poise, more than of muscle. + +Up in the front of his men, "G'wan," he would yell. "Whatddye think +you're doin'! Tickling 'em with a straw! That's a bayonet you got there, +not a tennis rackit. You couldn't scratch your initials on a Fritz that +way. Put a little guts into it. Now then!" + +He had been used to the old Krag, with a cam that jerked out, and threw +back, and fed one shell at a time. The new Springfield, that was a +gloriously functioning thing in its simplicity, he regarded with a sort +of reverence and ecstasy mingled. As his fingers slid lightly, +caressingly along the shining barrel they were like a man's fingers +lingering on the soft curves of a woman's throat. The sight of a rookie +handling this metal sweetheart clumsily filled him with fury. + +"Whatcha think you got there, you lubber, you! A section o' lead pipe! +You ought t' be back carryin' a shovel, where you belong. Here. Just a +touch. Like that. See? Easy now." + +He could box like a professional. They put him up against Slovatsky, the +giant Russian, one day. Slovatsky put up his two huge hands, like hams, +and his great arms, like iron beams and looked down on this lithe, agile +bantam that was hopping about at his feet. Suddenly the bantam crouched, +sprang, and recoiled like a steel trap. Something had crashed up against +Slovatsky's chin. Red rage shook him. He raised his sledge-hammer right +for a slashing blow. Moran was directly in the path of it. It seemed +that he could no more dodge it than he could hope to escape an onrushing +locomotive, but it landed on empty air, with Moran around in back of the +Russian, and peering impishly up under his arm. It was like an elephant +worried by a mosquito. Then Moran's lightning right shot out again, +smartly, and seemed just to tap the great hulk on the side of the chin. +A ludicrous look of surprise on Slovatsky's face before he crumpled and +crashed. + +This man it was who had Tyler Kamps' admiration. It was more than +admiration. It was nearer adoration. But there was nothing unnatural or +unwholesome about the boy's worship of this man. It was a legitimate +thing, born of all his fatherless years; years in which there had been +no big man around the house who could throw farther than Tyler, and eat +more, and wear larger shoes and offer more expert opinion. Moran +accepted the boy's homage with a sort of surly graciousness. + +In Tyler's third week at the Naval Station mumps developed in his +barracks and they were quarantined. Tyler escaped the epidemic but he +had to endure the boredom of weeks of quarantine. At first they took it +as a lark, like schoolboys. Moran's hammock was just next Tyler's. On +his other side was a young Kentuckian named Dabney Courtney. The +barracks had dubbed him Monicker the very first day. Monicker had a +rather surprising tenor voice. Moran a salty bass. And Tyler his +mandolin. The trio did much to make life bearable, or unbearable, +depending on one's musical knowledge and views. The boys all sang a +great deal. They bawled everything they knew, from "Oh, You Beautiful +Doll" and "Over There" to "The End of a Perfect Day." The latter, _ad +nauseum_. They even revived "Just Break the News to Mother" and seemed +to take a sort of awful joy in singing its dreary words and mournful +measures. They played everything from a saxophone to a harmonica. They +read. They talked. And they grew so sick of the sight of one another +that they began to snap and snarl. + +Sometimes they gathered round Moran and he told them tales they only +half believed. He had been in places whose very names were exotic and +oriental, breathing of sandalwood, and myrrh, and spices and aloes. They +were places over which a boy dreams in books of travel. Moran bared the +vivid tattooing on hairy arms and chest--tattooing representing anchors, +and serpents, and girls' heads, and hearts with arrows stuck through +them. Each mark had its story. A broad-swathed gentleman indeed, Gunner +Moran. He had an easy way with him that made you feel provincial and +ashamed. It made you ashamed of not knowing the sort of thing you used +to be ashamed of knowing. + +Visiting day was the worst. They grew savage, somehow, watching the +mothers and sisters and cousins and sweethearts go streaming by to the +various barracks. One of the boys to whom Tyler had never even spoken +suddenly took a picture out of his blouse pocket and showed it to Tyler. +It was a cheap little picture--one of the kind they sell two for a +quarter if one sitter; two for thirty-five if two. This was a twosome. +The boy, and a girl. A healthy, wide-awake wholesome looking small-town +girl, who has gone through high school and cuts out her own shirtwaists. + +"She's vice-president of the Silver Star Pleasure Club back home," the +boy confided to Tyler. "I'm president. We meet every other Saturday." + +Tyler looked at the picture seriously and approvingly. Suddenly he +wished that he had, tucked away in his blouse, a picture of a +clear-eyed, round-cheeked vice-president of a pleasure club. He took out +his mother's picture and showed it. + +"Oh, yeh," said the boy, disinterestedly. + +The dragging weeks came to an end. The night of Tyler's restlessness was +the last night of quarantine. To-morrow morning they would be free. At +the end of the week they were to be given shore leave. Tyler had made up +his mind to go to Chicago. He had never been there. + +Five thirty. Reveille. + +Tyler awoke with the feeling that something was going to happen. +Something pleasant. Then he remembered, and smiled. Dabney Courtney, in +the next hammock, was leaning far over the side of his perilous perch +and delivering himself of his morning speech. Tyler did not quite +understand this young southern elegant. Monicker had two moods, both of +which puzzled Tyler. When he awoke feeling gay he would lean over the +extreme edge of his hammock and drawl, with an affected English accent: + +"If this is Venice, where are the canals?" + +In his less cheerful moments he would groan, heavily, "There ain't no +Gawd!" + +This last had been his morning observation during their many weeks of +durance vile. But this morning he was, for the first time in many days, +enquiring about Venetian waterways. + +Tyler had no pal. His years of companionship with his mother had bred in +him a sort of shyness, a diffidence. He heard the other boys making +plans for shore leave. They all scorned Waukegan, which was the first +sizable town beyond the Station. Chicago was their goal. They were like +a horde of play-hungry devils after their confinement. Six weeks of +restricted freedom, six weeks of stored-up energy made them restive as +colts. + +"Goin' to Chicago, kid?" Moran asked him, carelessly. It was Saturday +morning. + +"Yes. Are you?" eagerly. + +"Kin a duck swim?" + +At the Y.M.C.A. they had given him tickets to various free amusements +and entertainments. They told him about free canteens, and about other +places where you could get a good meal, cheap. One of the tickets was +for a dance. Tyler knew nothing of dancing. This dance was to be given +at some kind of woman's club on Michigan Boulevard. Tyler read the card, +glumly. A dance meant girls. He knew that. Why hadn't he learned to +dance? + +Tyler walked down to the station and waited for the train that would +bring him to Chicago at about one o'clock. The other boys, in little +groups, or in pairs, were smoking and talking. Tyler wanted to join +them, but he did not. They seemed so sufficient unto themselves, +with their plans, and their glib knowledge of places, and amusements, +and girls. On the train they all bought sweets from the train +butcher--chocolate maraschinos, and nut bars, and molasses kisses--and +ate them as greedily as children, until their hunger for sweets was +surfeited. + +Tyler found himself in the same car with Moran. He edged over to a +seat near him, watching him narrowly. Moran was not mingling with the +other boys. He kept aloof, his sea-blue eyes gazing out at the flat +Illinois prairie. All about him swept and eddied the currents and +counter-currents of talk. + +"They say there's a swell supper in the Tower Building for fifty cents." + +"Fifty nothing. Get all you want in the Library canteen for nix." + +"Where's this dance, huh?" + +"Search _me_." + +"Heh, Murph! I'll shoot you a game of pool at the club." + +"Naw, I gotta date." + +Tyler's glance encountered Moran's, and rested there. Scorn curled the +Irishman's broad upper lip. "Navy! This ain't no navy no more. It's a +Sunday school, that's what! Phonographs, an' church suppers, an' pool +an' dances! It's enough t' turn a fella's stomick. Lot of Sunday school +kids don't know a sail from a tablecloth when they see it." + +He relapsed into contemptuous silence. + +Tyler, who but a moment before had been envying them their familiarity +with these very things now nodded and smiled understanding at Moran. +"That's right," he said. Moran regarded him a moment, curiously. Then he +resumed his staring out of the window. You would never have guessed that +in that bullet head there was bewilderment and resentment almost +equalling Tyler's, but for a much different reason. Gunner Moran was of +the old navy--the navy that had been despised and spat upon. In those +days his uniform alone had barred him from decent theatres, decent +halls, decent dances, contact with decent people. They had forced him to +a knowledge of the burlesque houses, the cheap theatres, the shooting +galleries, the saloons, the dives. And now, bewilderingly, the public +had right-about faced. It opened its doors to him. It closed its saloons +to him. It sought him out. It offered him amusement. It invited him to +its home, and sat him down at its table, and introduced him to its +daughter. + +"Nix!" said Gunner Moran, and spat between his teeth. "Not f'r me. I +pick me own lady friends." + +Gunner Moran was used to picking his own lady friends. He had picked +them in wicked Port Said, and in Fiume; in Yokohama and Naples. He had +picked them unerringly, and to his taste, in Cardiff, and Hamburg, and +Vladivostok. + +When the train drew in at the great Northwestern station shed he was +down the steps and up the long platform before the wheels had ceased +revolving. + +Tyler came down the steps slowly. Blue uniforms were streaming past +him--a flood of them. White leggings twinkled with the haste of their +wearers. Caps, white or blue, flowed like a succession of rippling waves +and broke against the great doorway, and were gone. + +In Tyler's town, back home in Marvin, Texas, you knew the train numbers +and their schedules, and you spoke of them by name, familiarly and +affectionately, as Number Eleven and Number Fifty-five. "I reckon +Fifty-five'll be late to-day, on account of the storm." + +Now he saw half a dozen trains lined up at once, and a dozen more tracks +waiting, empty. The great train shed awed him. The vast columned waiting +room, the hurrying people, the uniformed guards gave him a feeling of +personal unimportance. He felt very negligible, and useless, and alone. +He stood, a rather dazed blue figure, in the vastness of that shining +place. A voice--the soft, cadenced voice of the negro--addressed him. + +"Lookin' fo' de sailors' club rooms?" + +Tyler turned. A toothy, middle-aged, kindly negro in a uniform and red +cap. Tyler smiled friendlily. Here was a human he could feel at ease +with. Texas was full of just such faithful, friendly types of negro. + +"Reckon I am, uncle. Show me the way?" + +Red Cap chuckled and led the way. "Knew you was f'om de south minute Ah +see yo'. Cain't fool me. Le'ssee now. You-all f'om--?" + +"I'm from the finest state in the Union. The most glorious state in +the--" + +"H'm--Texas," grinned Red Cap. + +"How did you know!" + +"Ah done heah 'em talk befoh, son. Ah done heah 'em talk be-foh." + +It was a long journey through the great building to the section that had +been set aside for Tyler and boys like him. Tyler wondered how any one +could ever find it alone. When the Red Cap left him, after showing him +the wash rooms, the tubs for scrubbing clothes, the steam dryers, the +bath-tubs, the lunch room, Tyler looked after him regretfully. Then he +sped after him and touched him on the arm. + +"Listen. Could I--would they--do you mean I could clean up in there--as +much as I wanted? And wash my things? And take a bath in a bathtub, with +all the hot water I want?" + +"Yo' sho' kin. On'y things look mighty grabby now. Always is Sat'days. +Jes' wait aroun' an' grab yo' tu'n." + +Tyler waited. And while he waited he watched to see how the other boys +did things. He saw how they scrubbed their uniforms with scrubbing +brushes, and plenty of hot water and soap. He saw how they hung them +carefully, so that they might not wrinkle, in the dryers. He saw them +emerge, glowing, from the tub rooms. And he waited, the fever of +cleanliness burning in his eye. + +His turn came. He had waited more than an hour, reading, listening to +the phonograph and the electric piano, and watching. + +Now he saw his chance and seized it. And then he went through a ceremony +that was almost a ritual. Stella Kamps, could she have seen it, would +have felt repaid for all her years of soap-and-water insistence. + +First he washed out the stationary tub with soap, and brush, and +scalding water. Then he scalded the brush. Then the tub again. Then, +deliberately, and with the utter unconcern of the male biped he divested +himself, piece by piece, of every stitch of covering wherewith his body +was clothed. And he scrubbed them all. He took off his white leggings +and his white cap and scrubbed those, first. He had seen the other boys +follow that order of procedure. Then his flapping blue flannel trousers, +and his blouse. Then his underclothes, and his socks. And finally he +stood there, naked and unabashed, slim, and pink and silver as a +mountain trout. His face, as he bent over the steamy tub, was very red, +and moist and earnest. His yellow hair curled in little damp ringlets +about his brow. Then he hung his trousers and blouse in the dryers +without wringing them (wringing, he had been told, wrinkled them). He +rinsed and wrung, and flapped the underclothes, though, and shaped his +cap carefully, and spread his leggings, and hung those in the dryer, +too. And finally, with a deep sigh of accomplishment, he filled one of +the bathtubs in the adjoining room--filled it to the slopping-over point +with the luxurious hot water, and he splashed about in this, and +reclined in it, gloriously, until the waiting ones threatened to pull +him out. Then he dried himself and issued forth all flushed and rosy. He +wrapped himself in a clean coarse sheet, for his clothes would not be +dry for another half hour. Swathed in the sheet like a Roman senator he +lay down on one of the green velvet couches, relics of past Pullman +glories, and there, with the rumble and roar of steel trains overhead, +with the smart click of the billiard balls sounding in his ears, with +the phonograph and the electric piano going full blast, with the boys +dancing and larking all about the big room, he fell sound asleep as only +a boy cub can sleep. + +When he awoke an hour later his clothes were folded in a neat pile by +the deft hand of some jackie impatient to use the drying space for his +own garments. Tyler put them on. He stood before a mirror and brushed +his hair until it glittered. He drew himself up with the instinctive +pride and self respect that comes of fresh clean clothes against the +skin. Then he placed his absurd round hat on his head at what he +considered a fetching angle, though precarious, and sallied forth on the +streets of Chicago in search of amusement and adventure. + +He found them. + +Madison and Canal streets, west, had little to offer him. He sensed that +the centre of things lay to the east, so he struck out along Madison, +trying not to show the terror with which the grim, roaring, clamorous +city filled him. He jingled the small coins in his pocket and strode +along, on the surface a blithe and carefree jackie on shore leave; a +forlorn and lonely Texas boy, beneath. + +It was late afternoon. His laundering, his ablutions and his nap had +taken more time than he had realised. It was a mild spring day, with +just a Lake Michigan evening snap in the air. Tyler, glancing about +alertly, nevertheless felt dreamy, and restless, and sort of melting, +like a snow-heap in the sun. He wished he had some one to talk to. He +thought of the man on the train who had said, with such easy confidence, +"I got a date." Tyler wished that he too had a date--he who had never +had a rendezvous in his life. He loitered a moment on the bridge. Then +he went on, looking about him interestedly, and comparing Chicago, +Illinois, with Marvin, Texas, and finding the former sadly lacking. He +passed LaSalle, Clark. The streets were packed. The noise and rush +tired him, and bewildered him. He came to a moving picture theatre--one +of the many that dot the district. A girl occupied the little ticket +kiosk. She was rather a frowsy girl, not too young, and with a certain +look about the jaw. Tyler walked up to the window and shoved his money +through the little aperture. The girl fed him a pink ticket without +looking up. He stood there looking at her. Then he asked her a question. +"How long does the show take?" He wanted to see the colour of her eyes. +He wanted her to talk to him. + +"'Bout a hour," said the girl, and raised wise eyes to his. + +"Thanks," said Tyler, fervently, and smiled. No answering smile curved +the lady's lips. Tyler turned and went in. There was an alleged comic +film. Tyler was not amused. It was followed by a war picture. He left +before the show was over. He was very hungry by now. In his blouse +pocket were the various information and entertainment tickets with which +the Y.M.C.A. man had provided him. He had taken them out, carefully, +before he had done his washing. Now he looked them over. But a dairy +lunch room invited him, with its white tiling, and its pans of baked +apples, and browned beans and its coffee tank. He went in and ate a +solitary supper that was heavy on pie and cake. + +When he came out to the street again it was evening. He walked over to +State Street (the wrong side). He took the dance card out of his pocket +and looked at it again. If only he had learned to dance. There'd be +girls. There'd have to be girls at a dance. He stood staring into the +red and tin-foil window display of a cigar store, turning the ticket +over in his fingers, and the problem over in his mind. + +Suddenly, in his ear, a woman's voice, very soft and low. "Hello, +Sweetheart!" the voice said. His nickname! He whirled around, eagerly. + +The girl was a stranger to him. But she was smiling, friendlily, and she +was pretty, too, sort of. "Hello, Sweetheart!" she said, again. + +"Why, how-do, ma'am," said Tyler, Texas fashion. + +"Where you going, kid?" she asked. + +Tyler blushed a little. "Well, nowhere in particular, ma'am. Just kind +of milling around." + +"Come on along with me," she said, and linked her arm in his. + +"Why--why--thanks, but--" + +And yet Texas people were always saying easterners weren't friendly. He +felt a little uneasy, though, as he looked down into her smiling face. +Something-- + +"Hello, Sweetheart!" said a voice, again. A man's voice, this time. Out +of the cigar store came Gunner Moran, the yellow string of a tobacco bag +sticking out of his blouse pocket, a freshly rolled cigarette between +his lips. + +A queer feeling of relief and gladness swept over Tyler. And then Moran +looked sharply at the girl and said, "Why, hello, Blanche!" + +"Hello yourself," answered the girl, sullenly. + +"Thought you was in 'Frisco." + +"Well, I ain't." + +Moran shifted his attention from the girl to Tyler. "Friend o' yours?" + +Before Tyler could open his lips to answer the girl put in, "Sure he is. +Sure I am. We been around together all afternoon." + +Tyler jerked. "Why, ma'am, I guess you've made a mistake. I never saw +you before in my life. I kind of thought when you up and spoke to me you +must be taking me for somebody else. Well, now, isn't that funny--" + +The smile faded from the girl's face, and it became twisted with fury. +She glared at Moran, her lips drawn back in a snarl. "Who're you to go +buttin' into my business! This guy's a friend of mine, I tell yuh!" + +"Yeh? Well, he's a friend of mine, too. Me an' him had a date to meet +here right now and we're goin' over to a swell little dance on Michigan +Avenoo. So it's you who's buttin' in, Blanche, me girl." + +The girl stood twisting her handkerchief savagely. She was panting a +little. "I'll get you for this." + +"Beat it!" said Moran. He tucked his arm through Tyler's, with a little +impelling movement, and Tyler found himself walking up the street at a +smart gait, leaving the girl staring after them. + +Tyler Kamps was an innocent, but he was not a fool. At what he had +vaguely guessed a moment before, he now knew. They walked along in +silence, the most ill-sorted pair that you might hope to find in all +that higgledy-piggledy city. And yet with a new, strong bond between +them. It was more than fraternal. It had something of the character of +the feeling that exists between a father and son who understand each +other. + +Man-like, they did not talk of that which they were thinking. + +Tyler broke the silence. + +"Do you dance?" + +"Me! Dance! Well, I've mixed with everything from hula dancers to geisha +girls, not forgettin' the Barbary Coast in the old days, but--well, I +ain't what you'd rightly call a dancer. Why you askin'?" + +"Because I can't dance, either. But we'll just go up and see what it's +like, anyway." + +"See wot wot's like?" + +Tyler took out his card again, patiently. "This dance we're going to." + +They had reached the Michigan Avenue address given on the card, and +Tyler stopped to look up at the great, brightly lighted building. Moran +stopped too, but for a different reason. He was staring, open-mouthed, +at Tyler Kamps. + +"You mean t' say you thought I was goin'--" + +He choked. "Oh, my Gawd!" + +Tyler smiled at him, sweetly. "I'm kind of scared, too. But Monicker +goes to these dances and he says they're right nice. And lots of--of +pretty girls. Nice girls. I wouldn't go alone. But you--you're used to +dancing, and parties and--girls." + +He linked his arm through the other man's. Moran allowed himself to be +propelled along, dazedly. Still protesting, he found himself in the +elevator with a dozen red-cheeked, scrubbed-looking jackies. At which +point Moran, game in the face of horror, accepted the inevitable. He +gave a characteristic jerk from the belt. + +"Me, I'll try anything oncet. Lead me to it." + +The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. "Out here for the jackies' +dance," said the elevator boy. + +The two stepped out with the others. Stepped out gingerly, caps in hand. +A corridor full of women. A corridor a-flutter with girls. Talk. +Laughter. Animation. In another moment the two would have turned and +fled, terrified. But in that half-moment of hesitation and bewilderment +they were lost. + +A woman approached them hand outstretched. A tall, slim, friendly +looking woman, low-voiced, silk-gowned, inquiring. + +"Good-evening!" she said, as if she had been haunting the halls in the +hope of their coming. "I'm glad to see you. You can check your caps +right there. Do you dance?" + +Two scarlet faces. Four great hands twisting at white caps in an agony +of embarrassment. "Why, no ma'am." + +"That's fine. We'll teach you. Then you'll go into the ball room and +have a wonderful time." + +"But--" in choked accents from Moran. + +"Just a minute. Miss Hall!" She beckoned a diminutive blonde in blue. +"Miss Hall, this is Mr.--ah--Mr. Moran. Thanks. And Mr.?--yes--Mr. +Kamps. Tyler Kamps. They want to learn to dance. I'll turn them right +over to you. When does your class begin?" + +Miss Hall glanced at a toy watch on the tiny wrist. Instinctively and +helplessly Moran and Tyler focused their gaze on the dials that bound +their red wrists. "Starting right now," said Miss Hall, crisply. She +eyed the two men with calm appraising gaze. "I'm sure you'll both make +wonderful dancers. Follow me." + +She turned. There was something confident, dauntless, irresistible about +the straight little back. The two men stared at it. Then at each other. +Panic was writ large on the face of each. Panic, and mutiny. Flight was +in the mind of both. Miss Hall turned, smiled, held out a small white +hand. "Come on," she said. "Follow me." + +And the two, as though hypnotised, followed. + +A fair-sized room, with a piano in one corner and groups of fidgeting +jackies in every other corner. Moran and Tyler sighed with relief at +sight of them. At least they were not to be alone in their agony. + +Miss Hall wasted no time. Slim ankles close together, head held high, +she stood in the centre of the room. "Now then, form a circle please!" + +Twenty six-foot, well-built specimens of manhood suddenly became +shambling hulks. They clumped forward, breathing hard, and smiling +mirthlessly, with an assumption of ease that deceived no one, least of +all, themselves. "A little lively, please. Don't look so scared. I'm not +a bit vicious. Now then, Miss Weeks! A fox trot." + +Miss Weeks, at the piano, broke into spirited strains. The first +faltering steps in the social career of Gunner Moran and Tyler Kamps had +begun. + +To an onlooker, it might have been mirth-provoking if it hadn't been, +somehow, tear-compelling. The thing that little Miss Hall was doing +might have seemed trivial to one who did not know that it was +magnificent. It wasn't dancing merely that she was teaching these +awkward, serious, frightened boys. She was handing them a key that would +unlock the social graces. She was presenting them with a magic something +that would later act as an open sesame to a hundred legitimate delights. + +She was strictly business, was Miss Hall. No nonsense about her. +"One-two-three-four! And a _one_-two _three_-four. One-two-three-four! +And a _turn_-two, _turn_-four. Now then, all together. Just four +straight steps as if you were walking down the street. That's it! +One-two-three-four! Don't look at me. Look at my feet. And a _one_-two +_three_-four." + +Red-faced, they were. Very earnest. Pathetically eager and docile. Weeks +of drilling had taught them to obey commands. To them the little +dancing teacher whose white spats twinkled so expertly in the tangle of +their own clumsy clumping boots was more than a pretty girl. She was +knowledge. She was power. She was the commanding officer. And like +children they obeyed. + +Moran's Barbary Coast experience stood him in good stead now, though the +stern and watchful Miss Hall put a quick stop to a certain tendency +toward shoulder work. Tyler possessed what is known as a rhythm sense. +An expert whistler is generally a natural dancer. Stella Kamps had +always waited for the sound of his cheerful whistle as he turned the +corner of Vernon Street. High, clear, sweet, true, he would approach his +top note like a Tettrazini until, just when you thought he could not +possibly reach that dizzy eminence he did reach it, and held it, and +trilled it, bird-like, in defiance of the laws of vocal equilibrium. + +His dancing was much like that. Never a half-beat behind the +indefatigable Miss Weeks. It was a bit laboured, at first, but it was +true. Little Miss Hall, with the skilled eye of the specialist, picked +him at a glance. + +"You've danced before?" + +"No ma'am." + +"Take the head of the line, please. Watch Mr. Kamps. Now then, all +together, please." + +And they were off again. + +At 9.45 Tyler Kamps and Gunner Moran were standing in the crowded +doorway of the ballroom upstairs, in a panic lest some girl should ask +them to dance; fearful lest they be passed by. Little Miss Hall had +brought them to the very door, had left them there with a stern +injunction not to move, and had sped away in search of partners for +them. + +Gunner Moran's great scarlet hands were knotted into fists. His Adam's +apple worked convulsively. + +"Le's duck," he whispered hoarsely. The jackie band in the corner +crashed into the opening bars of a fox trot. + +"Oh, it don't seem--" But it was plain that Tyler was weakening. Another +moment and they would have turned and fled. But coming toward them was +little Miss Hall, her blonde head bobbing in and out among the swaying +couples. At her right and left was a girl. Her bright eyes held her two +victims in the doorway. They watched her approach, and were helpless to +flee. They seemed to be gripped by a horrible fascination. Their limbs +were fluid. + +A sort of groan rent Moran. Miss Hall and the two girls stood before +them, cool, smiling, unruffled. + +"Miss Cunningham, this is Mr. Tyler Kamps. Mr. Moran, Miss Cunningham. +Miss Drew--Mr. Moran, Mr. Kamps." + +The boy and the man gulped, bowed, mumbled something. + +"Would you like to dance?" said Miss Cunningham, and raised limpid eyes +to Tyler's. + +"Why--I--you see I don't know how. I just started to--" + +"Oh, _that's_ all right," Miss Cunningham interrupted, cheerfully. +"We'll try it." She stood in position and there seemed to radiate from +her a certain friendliness, a certain assurance and understanding that +was as calming as it was stimulating. In a sort of daze Tyler found +himself moving over the floor in time to the music. He didn't know that +he was being led, but he was. She didn't try to talk. He breathed a +prayer of thanks for that. She seemed to know, somehow, about those four +straight steps and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, +and turn-two, turn-four. He didn't know that he was counting aloud, +desperately. He didn't even know, just then, that this was a girl he was +dancing with. He seemed to move automatically, like a marionette. He +never was quite clear about those first ten minutes of his ballroom +experience. + +The music ceased. A spat of applause. Tyler mopped his head, and his +hands, and applauded too, like one in a dream. They were off again for +the encore. + +Five minutes later he found himself seated next Miss Cunningham in a +chair against the wall. And for the first time since their meeting the +mists of agony cleared before his gaze and he saw Miss Cunningham as a +tall, slim, dark-haired girl, with a glint of mischief in her eye, and a +mouth that looked as if she were trying to keep from smiling. + +"Why don't you?" Tyler asked, and was aghast. + +"Why don't I what?" + +"Smile if you want to." + +At which the glint in her eye and the hidden smile on her lips sort of +met and sparked and she laughed. Tyler laughed, too, and then they +laughed together and were friends. + +Miss Cunningham's conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice +girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met +at a war recreation dance. Nothing could have been more commonplace or +unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would +have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison. + +"Where are you from?" + +"Why, I'm from Texas, ma'am. Marvin, Texas." + +"Is that so? So many of the boys are from Texas. Are you out at the +station or on one of the boats?" + +"I'm on the Station. Yes ma'am." + +"Do you like the navy?" + +"Yes ma'am, I do. I sure do. You know there isn't a drafted man in the +navy. No ma'am! We're all enlisted men." + +"When do you think the war will end, Mr. Kamps?" + +He told her, gravely. He told her many other things. He told her about +Texas, at length and in detail, being a true son of that Brobdingnagian +state. Your Texan born is a walking mass of statistics. Miss Cunningham +made a sympathetic and interested listener. Her brown eyes were round +and bright with interest. He told her that the distance from Texas to +Chicago was only half as far as from here to there in the state of Texas +itself. Yes _ma'am_! He had figures about tons of grain, and heads of +horses and herds of cattle. Why, say, you could take little ol' meachin' +Germany and tuck it away in a corner of Texas and you wouldn't any more +know it was there than if it was somebody's poor no-'count ranch. Why, +Big Y ranch alone would make the whole country of Germany look like a +cattle grazin' patch. It was bigger than all those countries in Europe +strung together, and every man in Texas would rather fight than eat. Yes +ma'am. Why, you couldn't hold 'em. + +"My!" breathed Miss Cunningham. + +They danced again. Miss Cunningham introduced him to some other girls, +and he danced with them, and they in turn asked him about the station, +and Texas, and when he thought the war would end. And altogether he had +a beautiful time of it, and forgot completely and entirely about Gunner +Moran. It was not until he gallantly escorted Miss Cunningham downstairs +for refreshments that he remembered his friend. He had procured hot +chocolate for himself and Miss Cunningham; and sandwiches, and +delectable chunks of caramel cake. And they were talking, and eating, +and laughing and enjoying themselves hugely, and Tyler had gone back for +more cake at the urgent invitation of the white-haired, pink-cheeked +woman presiding at the white-clothed table in the centre of the +charming room. And then he had remembered. A look of horror settled down +over his face. He gasped. + +"W-what's the matter?" demanded Miss Cunningham. + +"My--my friend. I forgot all about him." He regarded her with stricken +eyes. + +"Oh, that's all right," Miss Cunningham assured him for the second time +that evening. "We'll just go and find him. He's probably forgotten all +about you, too." + +And for the second time she was right. They started on their quest. It +was a short one. Off the refreshment room was a great, gracious +comfortable room all deep chairs, and soft rugs, and hangings, and +pictures and shaded lights. All about sat pairs and groups of sailors +and girls, talking, and laughing and consuming vast quantities of cake. +And in the centre of just such a group sat Gunner Moran, lolling at his +ease in a rosy velvet-upholstered chair. His little finger was crookt +elegantly over his cup. A large and imposing square of chocolate cake in +the other hand did not seem to cramp his gestures as he talked. Neither +did the huge bites with which he was rapidly demolishing it seem in the +least to stifle his conversation. Four particularly pretty girls, and +two matrons surrounded him. And as Tyler and Miss Cunningham approached +him he was saying, "Well, it's got so I can't sleep in anything _but_ a +hammick. Yessir! Why, when I was fifteen years old I was--" He caught +Tyler's eye. "Hello!" he called, genially. "Meet me friend." This to the +bevy surrounding him. "I was just tellin' these ladies here--" + +And he was off again. All the tales that he told were not necessarily +true. But that did not detract from their thrill. Moran's audience grew +as he talked. And he talked until he and Tyler had to run all the way to +the Northwestern station for the last train that would get them on the +Station before shore leave expired. Moran, on leaving, shook hands like +a presidential candidate. + +"I never met up with a finer bunch of ladies," he assured them, again +and again. "Sure I'm comin' back again. Ask me. I've had a elegant time. +Elegant. I never met a finer bunch of ladies." + +They did not talk much in the train, he and Tyler. It was a sleepy lot +of boys that that train carried back to the Great Central Naval Station. +Tyler was undressed and in his hammock even before Moran, the expert. He +would not have to woo sleep to-night. Finally Moran, too, had swung +himself up to his precarious nest and relaxed with a tired, happy grunt. + +Quiet again brooded over the great dim barracks. Tyler felt himself +slipping off to sleep, deliciously. She would be there next Saturday. +Her first name, she had said, was Myrtle. An awful pretty name for a +girl. Just about the prettiest he had ever heard. Her folks invited +jackies to dinner at the house nearly every Sunday. Maybe, if they gave +him thirty-six hours' leave next time-- + +"Hey, Sweetheart!" sounded in a hissing whisper from Moran's hammock. + +"What?" + +"Say, was that four steps and then turn-turn, or four and two steps t' +the side? I kinda forgot." + +"O, shut up!" growled Monicker, from the other side. "Let a fellow +sleep, can't you! What do you think this is? A boarding school!" + +"Shut up yourself!" retorted Tyler, happily. "It's four steps, and two +to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn two, turn +two." + +"I was pretty sure," said Moran, humbly. And relaxed again. + +Quiet settled down upon the great room. There were only the sounds of +deep regular breathing, with an occasional grunt or sigh. The normal +sleep sounds of very tired boys. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cheerful--By Request, by Edna Ferber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST *** + +***** This file should be named 11395.txt or 11395.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/3/9/11395/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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