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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: Gigolo + +Author: Edna Ferber + +Release Date: January 22, 2007 [EBook #20419] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIGOLO *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + <h1>GIGOLO</h1> + + <h4>BY</h4> + + <h2>EDNA FERBER</h2> + + <h4>AUTHOR OF<br /><br /> + + SO BIG, EMMA McCHESNEY & CO.,<br /> + FANNY HERSELF, THE GIRLS, ETC.</h4> + + +<p class='center'> GROSSET & DUNLAP<br /> + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK<br /><br /> + Made in the United States of America<br /> + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY<br /> + + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> + + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br /> + + COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY McCLURE's MAGAZINE, INCORPORATED<br /> + COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY IN THE UNITED STATES,<br /> + GREAT BRITAIN AND CANADA<br /><br /> + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY,<br /> + AND THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY<br /><br /> + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES<br /> + + AT<br /> + + THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><br /><br />CONTENTS<br /></h2> + + + +<div class='centered'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="50%" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Afternoon of a Faun</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'><b>1</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Old Man Minick</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_34'><b>34</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gigolo</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_69'><b>69</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Not a Day Over Twenty-One</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_106'><b>106</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Home Girl</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_150'><b>150</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ain't Nature Wonderful!</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_188'><b>188</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Sudden Sixties</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_222'><b>222</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">If I Should Ever Travel!</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_259'><b>259</b></a></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h1><br /><br /><i>GIGOLO</i><br /><br /></h1> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN</h2> + + +<p>Though he rarely heeded its summons—cagy boy that he was—the telephone +rang oftenest for Nick. Because of the many native noises of the place, +the telephone had a special bell that was a combination buzz and ring. +It sounded above the roar of outgoing cars, the splash of the hose, the +sputter and hum of the electric battery in the rear. Nick heard it, +unheeding. A voice—Smitty's or Mike's or Elmer's—answering its call. +Then, echoing through the grey, vaulted spaces of the big garage: "Nick! +Oh, Ni-ick!"</p> + +<p>From the other side of the great cement-floored enclosure, or in muffled +tones from beneath a car: "Whatcha want?"</p> + +<p>"Dame on the wire."</p> + +<p>"I ain't in."</p> + +<p>The obliging voice again, dutifully repeating the message: "He ain't +in.... Well, it's hard to say. He might be in in a couple hours and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>then again he might not be back till late. I guess he's went to Hammond +on a job——" (Warming to his task now.) "Say, won't I do?... Who's +fresh! Aw, say, <i>lady</i>!"</p> + +<p>You'd think, after repeated rebuffs of this sort, she could not possibly +be so lacking in decent pride as to leave her name for Smitty or Mike or +Elmer to bandy about. But she invariably did, baffled by Nick's +elusiveness. She was likely to be any one of a number. Miss Bauers +phoned: Will you tell him, please? (A nasal voice, and haughty, with the +hauteur that seeks to conceal secret fright.) Tell him it's important. +Miss Ahearn phoned: Will you tell him, please? Just say Miss Ahearn. +A-h-e-a-r-n. Miss Olson: Just Gertie. But oftenest Miss Bauers.</p> + +<p>Cupid's messenger, wearing grease-grimed overalls and the fatuous grin +of the dalliant male, would transmit his communication to the uneager +Nick.</p> + +<p>"'S wonder you wouldn't answer the phone once yourself. Says you was to +call Miss Bauers any time you come in between one and six at Hyde +Park—wait a min't'—yeh—Hyde Park 6079, and any time after six at——"</p> + +<p>"Wha'd she want?"</p> + +<p>"Well, how the hell should I know! Says call Miss Bauers any time +between one and six at Hyde Park 6——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Swell chanst. <i>Swell</i> chanst!"</p> + +<p>Which explains why the calls came oftenest for Nick. He was so +indifferent to them. You pictured the patient and persistent Miss +Bauers, or the oxlike Miss Olson, or Miss Ahearn, or just Gertie +hovering within hearing distance of the telephone listening, +listening—while one o'clock deepened to six—for the call that never +came; plucking up fresh courage at six until six o'clock dragged on to +bedtime. When next they met: "I bet you was there all the time. Pity you +wouldn't answer a call when a person leaves their name. You could of +give me a ring. I bet you was there all the time."</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe I was."</p> + +<p>Bewildered, she tried to retaliate with the boomerang of vituperation.</p> + +<p>How could she know? How could she know that this slim, slick young +garage mechanic was a woodland creature in disguise—a satyr in store +clothes—a wild thing who perversely preferred to do his own pursuing? +How could Miss Bauers know—she who cashiered in the Green Front Grocery +and Market on Fifty-third Street? Or Miss Olson, at the Rialto ticket +window? Or the Celtic, emotional Miss Ahearn, the manicure? Or Gertie +the goof? They knew nothing of mythology; of pointed ears and pug noses +and goat's feet. Nick's ears, to their fond gaze, presented an honest +red surface pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>truding from either side of his head. His feet, in tan +laced shoes, were ordinary feet, a little more than ordinarily expert, +perhaps, in the convolutions of the dance at Englewood Masonic Hall, +which is part of Chicago's vast South Side. No; a faun, to Miss Bauers, +Miss Olson, Miss Ahearn, and just Gertie, was one of those things in the +Lincoln Park Zoo.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, sometimes, they realized, vaguely, that Nick was different. +When, for example, they tried—and failed—to picture him looking +interestedly at one of those three-piece bedroom sets glistening like +pulled taffy in the window of the installment furniture store, while +they, shy yet proprietary, clung to his arm and eyed the price ticket. +Now $98.50. You couldn't see Nick interested in bedroom sets, in price +tickets, in any of those settled, fixed, everyday things. He was fluid, +evasive, like quicksilver, though they did not put it thus.</p> + +<p>Miss Bauers, goaded to revolt, would say pettishly: "You're like a +mosquito, that's what. Person never knows from one minute to the other +where you're at."</p> + +<p>"Yeh," Nick would retort. "When you know where a mosquito's at, what do +you do to him? Plenty. I ain't looking to be squashed."</p> + +<p>Miss Ahearn, whose public position (the Hygienic Barber Shop. Gent's +manicure, 50c.) offered un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>limited social opportunities, would assume a +gay indifference. "They's plenty boys begging to take me out every hour +in the day. Swell lads, too. I ain't waiting round for any greasy +mechanic like you. Don't think it. Say, lookit your nails! They'd queer +you with me, let alone what else all is wrong with you."</p> + +<p>In answer Nick would put one hand—one broad, brown, steel-strong hand +with its broken discoloured nails—on Miss Ahearn's arm, in its flimsy +georgette sleeve. Miss Ahearn's eyelids would flutter and close, and a +little shiver would run with icy-hot feet all over Miss Ahearn.</p> + +<p>Nick was like that.</p> + +<p>Nick's real name wasn't Nick at all—or scarcely at all. His last name +was Nicholas, and his parents, long before they became his parents, +traced their origin to some obscure Czechoslovakian province—long +before we became so glib with our Czechoslovakia. His first name was +Dewey, knowing which you automatically know the date of his birth. It +was a patriotic but unfortunate choice on the part of his parents. The +name did not fit him; was too mealy; not debonair enough. Nick. Nicky in +tenderer moments (Miss Bauers, Miss Olson, Miss Ahearn, just Gertie, et +al.).</p> + +<p>His method with women was firm and somewhat stern, but never brutal. He +never waited for them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> if they were late. Any girl who assumed that her +value was enhanced in direct proportion to her tardiness in keeping an +engagement with Nick found herself standing disconsolate on the corner +of Fifty-third and Lake trying to look as if she were merely waiting for +the Lake Park car and not peering wistfully up and down the street in +search of a slim, graceful, hurrying figure that never came.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to convey in words the charm that Nick possessed. Seeing +him, you beheld merely a medium-sized young mechanic in reasonably +grimed garage clothes when working; and in tight pants, tight coat, silk +shirt, long-visored green cap when at leisure. A rather pallid skin due +to the nature of his work. Large deft hands, a good deal like the hands +of a surgeon, square, blunt-fingered, spatulate. Indeed, as you saw him +at work, a wire-netted electric bulb held in one hand, the other plunged +deep into the vitals of the car on which he was engaged, you thought of +a surgeon performing a major operation. He wore one of those round +skullcaps characteristic of his craft (the brimless crown of an old felt +hat). He would deftly remove the transmission case and plunge his hand +deep into the car's guts, feeling expertly about with his engine-wise +fingers as a surgeon feels for liver, stomach, gall bladder, intestines, +appendix. When he brought up his hand, all dripping with grease (which +is the warm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> blood of the car), he invariably had put his finger on the +sore spot.</p> + +<p>All this, of course, could not serve to endear him to the girls. On the +contrary, you would have thought that his hands alone, from which he +could never quite free the grease and grit, would have caused some +feeling of repugnance among the lily-fingered. But they, somehow, seemed +always to be finding an excuse to touch him: his tie, his hair, his coat +sleeve. They seemed even to derive a vicarious thrill from holding his +hat or cap when on an outing. They brushed imaginary bits of lint from +his coat lapel. They tried on his seal ring, crying: "Oo, lookit, how +big it is for me, even my thumb!" He called this "pawing a guy over"; +and the lint ladies he designated as "thread pickers."</p> + +<p>No; it can't be classified, this powerful draw he had for them. His +conversation furnished no clue. It was commonplace conversation, +limited, even dull. When astonished, or impressed, or horrified, or +amused, he said: "Ken yuh feature that!" When emphatic or confirmatory, +he said: "You <i>tell</i> 'em!"</p> + +<p>It wasn't his car and the opportunities it furnished for drives, both +country and city. That motley piece of mechanism represented such an +assemblage of unrelated parts as could only have been made to coördinate +under Nick's expert guidance. It was out of commission more than half +the time, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> could never be relied upon to furnish a holiday. Both +Miss Bauers and Miss Ahearn had twelve-cylinder opportunities that +should have rendered them forever unfit for travel in Nick's one-lung +vehicle of locomotion.</p> + +<p>It wasn't money. Though he was generous enough with what he had, Nick +couldn't be generous with what he hadn't. And his wage at the garage was +$40 a week. Miss Ahearn's silk stockings cost $4.50.</p> + +<p>His unconcern should have infuriated them, but it served to pique. He +wasn't actually as unconcerned as he appeared, but he had early learned +that effort in their direction was unnecessary. Nick had little +imagination; a gorgeous selfishness; a tolerantly contemptuous liking +for the sex. Naturally, however, his attitude toward them had been +somewhat embittered by being obliged to watch their method of driving a +car in and out of the Ideal Garage doorway. His own manipulation of the +wheel was nothing short of wizardry.</p> + +<p>He played the harmonica.</p> + +<p>Each Thursday afternoon was Nick's half day off. From twelve until +seven-thirty he was free to range the bosky highways of Chicago. When +his car—he called it "the bus"—was agreeable, he went awheel in search +of amusement. The bus being indisposed, he went afoot. He rarely made +plans in advance; usually was accompanied by some success<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>ful +telephonee. He rather liked to have a silken skirt beside him fluttering +and flirting in the breeze as he broke the speed regulations.</p> + +<p>On this Thursday afternoon in July he had timed his morning job to a +miraculous nicety so that at the stroke of twelve his workaday garments +dropped from him magically, as though he were a male (and reversed) +Cinderella. There was a wash room and a rough sort of sleeping room +containing two cots situated in the second story of the Ideal Garage. +Here Nick shed the loose garments of labour for the fashionably tight +habiliments of leisure. Private chauffeurs whose employers housed their +cars in the Ideal Garage used this nook for a lounge and smoker. Smitty, +Mike, Elmer, and Nick snatched stolen siestas there in the rare absences +of the manager. Sometimes Nick spent the night there when forced to work +overtime. His home life, at best, was a sketchy affair. Here chauffeurs, +mechanics, washers lolled at ease exchanging soft-spoken gossip, motor +chat, speculation, comment, and occasional verbal obscenity. Each +possessed a formidable knowledge of that neighbourhood section of +Chicago known as Hyde Park. This knowledge was not confined to car costs +and such impersonal items, but included meals, scandals, relationships, +finances, love affairs, quarrels, peccadillos. Here Nick often played +his harmonica, his lips sweeping the metal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> length of it in throbbing +rendition of such sure-fire sentimentality as The Long, Long Trail, or +Mammy, while the others talked, joked, kept time with tapping feet or +wagging heads.</p> + +<p>To-day the hot little room was empty except for Nick, shaving before the +cracked mirror on the wall, and old Elmer, reading a scrap of +yesterday's newspaper as he lounged his noon hour away. Old Elmer was +thirty-seven, and Nicky regarded him as an octogenarian. Also, old +Elmer's conversation bored Nick to the point of almost sullen +resentment. Old Elmer was a family man. His talk was all of his +family—the wife, the kids, the flat. A garrulous person, lank, pasty, +dish-faced, and amiable. His half day off was invariably spent tinkering +about the stuffy little flat—painting, nailing up shelves, mending a +broken window shade, puttying a window, playing with his pasty little +boy, aged sixteen months, and his pasty little girl, aged three years. +Next day he regaled his fellow workers with elaborate recitals of his +holiday hours.</p> + +<p>"Believe me, that kid's a caution. Sixteen months old, and what does he +do yesterday? He unfastens the ketch on the back-porch gate. We got a +gate on the back porch, see." (This frequent "see" which interlarded +Elmer's verbiage was not used in an interrogatory way, but as a period, +and by way of emphasis. His voice did not take the rising inflec<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>tion as +he uttered it.) "What does he do, he opens it. I come home, and the wife +says to me: 'Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate +to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, he'd got it open +to-day and was crawling out almost.' Say, can you beat that for a kid +sixteen months——"</p> + +<p>Nick had finished shaving, had donned his clean white soft shirt. His +soft collar fitted to a miracle about his strong throat. Nick's +sartorial effects were a triumph—on forty a week. "Say, can't you talk +about nothing but that kid of yours? I bet he's a bum specimen at that. +Runt, like his pa."</p> + +<p>Elmer flung down his newspaper in honest indignation as Nick had +wickedly meant he should. "Is that so! Why, we was wrastling round—me +and him, see—last night on the floor, and what does he do, he raises +his mitt and hands me a wallop in the stomick it like to knock the wind +out of me. That's all. Sixteen months——"</p> + +<p>"Yeh. I suppose this time next year he'll be boxing for money."</p> + +<p>Elmer resumed his paper. "What do <i>you</i> know." His tone mingled pity +with contempt.</p> + +<p>Nick took a last critical survey of the cracked mirror's reflection and +found it good. "Nothing, only this: you make me sick with your kids and +your missus and your place. Say, don't you never have no fun?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Fun! Why, say, last Sunday we was out to the beach, and the kid swum +out first thing you know——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, shut up!" He was dressed now. He slapped his pockets. Harmonica. +Cigarettes. Matches. Money. He was off, his long-visored cloth cap +pulled jauntily over his eyes.</p> + +<p>Elmer, bearing no rancour, flung a last idle query: "Where you going?"</p> + +<p>"How should I know? Just bumming around. Bus is outa commission, and I'm +outa luck."</p> + +<p>He clattered down the stairs, whistling.</p> + +<p>Next door for a shine at the Greek bootblack's. Enthroned on the dais, a +minion at his feet, he was momentarily monarchial. How's the boy? Good? +Same here. Down, his brief reign ended. Out into the bright noon-day +glare of Fifty-third Street.</p> + +<p>A fried-egg sandwich. Two blocks down and into the white-tiled +lunchroom. He took his place in the row perched on stools in front of +the white slab, his feet on the railing, his elbows on the counter. Four +white-aproned vestals with blotchy skins performed rites over the +steaming nickel urns, slid dishes deftly along the slick surface of the +white slab, mopped up moisture with a sly grey rag. No nonsense about +them. This was the rush hour. Hungry men from the shops and offices and +garages of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> district were bent on food (not badinage). They ate +silently, making a dull business of it. Coffee? What kinda pie do you +want? No fooling here. "Hello, Jessie."</p> + +<p>As she mopped the slab in front of him you noticed a slight softening of +her features, intent so grimly on her task. "What's yours?"</p> + +<p>"Bacon-and-egg sandwich. Glass of milk. Piece of pie. Blueberry."</p> + +<p>Ordinarily she would not have bothered. But with him: "The blueberry +ain't so good to-day, I noticed. Try the peach?"</p> + +<p>"All right." He looked at her. She smiled. Incredibly, the dishes +ordered seemed to leap out at her from nowhere. She crashed them down on +the glazed white surface in front of him. The bacon-and-egg sandwich was +served open-faced, an elaborate confection. Two slices of white bread, +side by side. On one reposed a fried egg, hard, golden, delectable, +indigestible. On the other three crisp curls of bacon. The ordinary +order held two curls only. A dish so rich in calories as to make it food +sufficient for a day. Jessie knew nothing of calories, nor did Nick. She +placed a double order of butter before him—two yellow pats, +moisture-beaded. As she scooped up his milk from the can you saw that +the glass was but three quarters filled. From a deep crock she ladled a +smaller scoop and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> filled the glass to the top. The deep crock held +cream. Nick glanced up at her again. Again Jessie smiled. A plain +damsel, Jessie, and capable. She went on about her business. What's +yours? Coffee with? White or rye? No nonsense about her. And yet: "Pie +all right?"</p> + +<p>"Yeh. It's good."</p> + +<p>She actually blushed.</p> + +<p>He finished, swung himself off the stool, nodded to Jessie. She stacked +his dishes with one lean, capable hand, mopped the slab with the other, +but as she made for the kitchen she flung a glance at him over her +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Day off?"</p> + +<p>"Yeh."</p> + +<p>"Some folks has all the luck."</p> + +<p>He grinned. His teeth were strong and white and even. He walked toward +the door with his light quick step, paused for a toothpick as he paid +his check, was out again into the July sunlight. Her face became dull +again.</p> + +<p>Well, not one o'clock. Guessed he'd shoot a little pool. He dropped into +Moriarty's cigar store. It was called a cigar store because it dealt in +magazines, newspapers, soft drinks, golf balls, cigarettes, pool, +billiards, chocolates, chewing gum, and cigars. In the rear of the store +were four green-topped tables, three for pool and one for billiards. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> +hung about aimlessly, watching the game at the one occupied table. The +players were slim young men like himself, their clothes replicas of his +own, their faces lean and somewhat hard. Two of them dropped out. Nick +took a cue from the rack, shed his tight coat. They played under a +glaring electric light in the heat of the day, yet they seemed cool, +aloof, immune from bodily discomfort. It was a strangely silent game and +as mirthless as that of the elfin bowlers in Rip Van Winkle. The +slim-waisted shirted figures bent plastically over the table in the +graceful postures of the game. You heard only the click of the balls, an +occasional low-voiced exclamation. A solemn crew, and unemotional.</p> + +<p>Now and then: "What's all the shootin' fur?"</p> + +<p>"In she goes."</p> + +<p>Nick, winner, tired of it in less than an hour. He bought a bottle of +some acidulous drink just off the ice and refreshed himself with it, +drinking from the bottle's mouth. He was vaguely restless, dissatisfied. +Out again into the glare of two o'clock Fifty-third Street. He strolled +up a block toward Lake Park Avenue. It was hot. He wished the bus wasn't +sick. Might go in swimming, though. He considered this idly. Hurried +steps behind him. A familiar perfume wafted to his senses. A voice nasal +yet cooing. Miss Bauers. Miss Bauers on pleasure bent, palpably, being +attired in the briefest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> of silks, white-strapped slippers, white silk +stockings, scarlet hat. The Green Front Grocery and Market closed for a +half day each Thursday afternoon during July and August. Nicky had not +availed himself of the knowledge.</p> + +<p>"Well, if it ain't Nicky! I just seen you come out of Moriarty's as I +was passing." (She had seen him go in an hour before and had waited a +patient hour in the drug store across the street.) "What you doing +around loose this hour the day, anyway?"</p> + +<p>"I'm off 'safternoon."</p> + +<p>"Are yuh? So'm I." Nicky said nothing. Miss Bauers shifted from one +plump silken leg to the other. "What you doing?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing much."</p> + +<p>"So'm I. Let's do it together." Miss Bauers employed the direct method.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Nick, vaguely. He didn't object particularly. And yet he +was conscious of some formless programme forming mistily in his mind—a +programme that did not include the berouged, be-powdered, plump, and +silken Miss Bauers.</p> + +<p>"I phoned you this morning, Nicky. Twice."</p> + +<p>"Yeh?"</p> + +<p>"They said you wasn't in."</p> + +<p>"Yeh?"</p> + +<p>A hard young woman, Miss Bauers, yet simple:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> powerfully drawn toward +this magnetic and careless boy; powerless to forge chains strong enough +to hold him. "Well, how about Riverview? I ain't been this summer."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's so darn far. Take all day getting there, pretty near."</p> + +<p>"Not driving, it wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"I ain't got the bus. Busted."</p> + +<p>His apathy was getting on her nerves. "How about a movie, then?" Her +feet hurt. It was hot.</p> + +<p>His glance went up the street toward the Harper, down the street toward +the Hyde Park. The sign above the Harper offered Mother o' Mine. The +lettering above the Hyde Park announced Love's Sacrifice.</p> + +<p>"Gawd, no," he made decisive answer.</p> + +<p>Miss Bauers's frazzled nerves snapped. "You make me sick! Standing +there. Nothing don't suit you. Say, I ain't so crazy to go round with +you. Cheap guy! Prob'ly you'd like to go over to Wooded Island or +something, in Jackson Park, and set on the grass and feed the squirrels. +That'd be a treat for me, that would." She laughed a high, scornful +tear-near laugh.</p> + +<p>"Why—say——" Nick stared at her, and yet she felt he did not see her. +A sudden peace came into his face—the peace of a longing fulfilled. He +turned his head. A Lake Park Avenue street car<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> was roaring its way +toward them. He took a step toward the roadway. "I got to be going."</p> + +<p>Fear flashed its flame into Miss Bauers's pale blue eyes. "Going! How do +you mean, going? Going where?"</p> + +<p>"I got to be going." The car had stopped opposite them. His young face +was stern, implacable. Miss Bauers knew she was beaten, but she clung to +hope tenaciously, piteously. "I got to see a party, see?"</p> + +<p>"You never said anything about it in the first place. Pity you wouldn't +say so in the first place. Who you got to see, anyway?" She knew it was +useless to ask. She knew she was beating her fists against a stone wall, +but she must needs ask notwithstanding: "Who you got to see?"</p> + +<p>"I got to see a party. I forgot." He made the car step in two long +strides; had swung himself up. "So long!" The car door slammed after +him. Miss Bauers, in her unavailing silks, stood disconsolate on the hot +street corner.</p> + +<p>He swayed on the car platform until Sixty-third Street was reached. +There he alighted and stood a moment at the curb surveying idly the +populous corner. He purchased a paper bag of hot peanuts from a vender's +glittering scarlet and nickel stand, and crossed the street into the +pathway that led to Jackson Park, munching as he went. In an open<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> space +reserved for games some boys were playing baseball with much hoarse +hooting and frenzied action. He drew near to watch. The ball, +misdirected, sailed suddenly toward him. He ran backward at its swift +approach, leaped high, caught it, and with a long curving swing, so easy +as to appear almost effortless, sent it hurtling back. The lad on the +pitcher's mound made as if to catch it, changed his mind, dodged, +started after it.</p> + +<p>The boy at bat called to Nick: "Heh, you! Wanna come on and pitch?"</p> + +<p>Nick shook his head and went on.</p> + +<p>He wandered leisurely along the gravel path that led to the park golf +shelter. The wide porch was crowded with golfers and idlers. A foursome +was teed up at the first tee. Nick leaned against a porch pillar waiting +for them to drive. That old boy had pretty good practise swing ... +Stiff, though ... Lookit that dame. Je's! I bet she takes fifteen shots +before she ever gets on to the green ... There, that kid had pretty good +drive. Must of been hundred and fifty, anyway. Pretty good for a kid.</p> + +<p>Nick, in the course of his kaleidoscopic career, had been a caddie at +thirteen in torn shirt and flapping knickers. He had played the smooth, +expert, scornful game of the caddie with a natural swing from the lithe +waist and a follow-through that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> the envy of the muscle-bound men +who watched him. He hadn't played in years. The game no longer +interested him. He entered the shelter lunchroom. The counters were +lined with lean, brown, hungry men and lean, brown, hungry women. They +were eating incredible dishes considering that the hour was 3 <span class="smcap">P. +M.</span> and the day a hot one. Corned-beef hash with a poached egg on +top; wieners and potato salad; meat pies; hot roast beef sandwiches; +steaming cups of coffee in thick white ware; watermelon. Nick slid a leg +over a stool as he had done earlier in the afternoon. Here, too, the +Hebes were of stern stuff, as they needs must be to serve these ravenous +hordes of club swingers who swarmed upon them from dawn to dusk. Their +task it was to wait upon the golfing male, which is man at his +simplest—reduced to the least common denominator and shorn of all +attraction for the female eye and heart. They represented merely hungry +mouths, weary muscles, reaching fists. The waitresses served them as a +capable attendant serves another woman's child—efficiently and without +emotion.</p> + +<p>"Blueberry pie à la mode," said Nick—"with strawberry ice cream."</p> + +<p>Inured as she was to the horrors of gastronomic miscegenation, the +waitress—an old girl—recoiled at this.</p> + +<p>"Say, I don't think you'd like that. They don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> mix so very good. Why +don't you try the peach pie instead with the strawberry ice cream—if +you want strawberry?" He looked so young and cool and fresh.</p> + +<p>"Blueberry," repeated Nick sternly, and looked her in the eye. The old +waitress laughed a little and was surprised to find herself laughing. +"'S for you to say." She brought him the monstrous mixture, and he +devoured it to the last chromatic crumb.</p> + +<p>"Nothing the matter with that," he remarked as she passed, dish-laden.</p> + +<p>She laughed again tolerantly, almost tenderly. "Good thing you're +young." Her busy glance lingered a brief moment on his face. He +sauntered out.</p> + +<p>Now he took the path to the right of the shelter, crossed the road, +struck the path again, came to a rustic bridge that humped high in the +middle, spanning a cool green stream, willow-bordered. The cool green +stream was an emerald chain that threaded its way in a complete circlet +about the sylvan spot known as Wooded Island, relic of World's Fair +days.</p> + +<p>The little island lay, like a thing under enchantment, silent, fragrant, +golden, green, exquisite. Squirrels and blackbirds, rabbits and pigeons +mingled in Æsopian accord. The air was warm and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> still, held by the +encircling trees and shrubbery. There was not a soul to be seen. At the +far north end the two Japanese model houses, survivors of the +exposition, gleamed white among the trees.</p> + +<p>Nick stood a moment. His eyelids closed, languorously. He stretched his +arms out and up deliciously, bringing his stomach in and his chest out. +He took off his cap and stuffed it into his pocket. He strolled across +the thick cool nap of the grass, deserting the pebble path. At the west +edge of the island a sign said: "No One Allowed in the Shrubbery." +Ignoring it, Nick parted the branches, stopped and crept, reached the +bank that sloped down to the cool green stream, took off his coat, and +lay relaxed upon the ground. Above him the tree branches made a pattern +against the sky. Little ripples lipped the shore. Scampering +velvet-footed things, feathered things, winged things made pleasant stir +among the leaves. Nick slept.</p> + +<p>He awoke in half an hour refreshed. He lay there, thinking of nothing—a +charming gift. He found a stray peanut in his pocket and fed it to a +friendly squirrel. His hand encountered the cool metal of his harmonica. +He drew out the instrument, placed his coat, folded, under his head, +crossed his knees, one leg swinging idly, and began to play rapturously. +He was perfectly happy. He played Gimme Love, whose jazz measures are +stolen from Mendelssohn's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Spring Song. He did not know this. The leaves +rustled. He did not turn his head.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Pan!" said a voice. A girl came down the slope and seated +herself beside him. She was not smiling.</p> + +<p>Nick removed the harmonica from his lips and wiped his mouth with the +back of his hand. "Hello who?"</p> + +<p>"Hello, Pan."</p> + +<p>"Wrong number, lady," Nick said, and again applied his lips to the mouth +organ. The girl laughed then, throwing back her head. Her throat was +long and slim and brown. She clasped her knees with her arms and looked +at Nick amusedly. Nick thought she was a kind of homely little thing.</p> + +<p>"Pan," she explained, "was a pagan deity. He played pipes in the woods."</p> + +<p>"'S all right with me," Nick ventured, bewildered but amiable. He wished +she'd go away. But she didn't. She began to take off her shoes and +stockings. She went down to the water's edge, then, and paddled her +feet. Nick sat up, outraged. "Say, you can't do that."</p> + +<p>She glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Oh, yes, I can. It's so +hot." She wriggled her toes ecstatically.</p> + +<p>The leaves rustled again, briskly, unmistakably this time. A heavy +tread. A rough voice. "Say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> looka here! Get out of there, you! What +the——" A policeman, red-faced, wroth. "You can't do that! Get outa +here!"</p> + +<p>It was like a movie, Nick thought.</p> + +<p>The girl turned her head. "Oh, now, Mr. Elwood," she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's you, miss," said the policeman. You would not have believed it +could be the same policeman. He even giggled. "Thought you was away."</p> + +<p>"I was. In fact, I am, really. I just got sick of it and ran away for a +day. Drove. Alone. The family'll be wild."</p> + +<p>"All the way?" said the policeman, incredulously. "Say, I thought that +looked like your car standing out there by the road; but I says no, she +ain't in town." He looked sharply at Nick, whose face had an Indian +composure, though his feelings were mixed. "Who's this?"</p> + +<p>"He's a friend of mine. His name's Pan." She was drying her feet with an +inadequate rose-coloured handkerchief. She crept crabwise up the bank, +and put on her stockings and slippers.</p> + +<p>"Why'n't you come out and set on a bench?" suggested the policeman, +worriedly.</p> + +<p>The girl shook her head. "In Arcadia we don't sit on benches. I should +think you'd know that. Go on away, there's a dear. I want to talk to +this—to Pan."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>He persisted. "What'd your pa say, I'd like to know!" The girl shrugged +her shoulders. Nick made as though to rise. He was worried. A nut, +that's what. She pressed him down again with a hard brown hand.</p> + +<p>"Now it's all right. He's going. Old Fuss!" The policeman stood a brief +moment longer. Then the foliage rustled again. He was gone. The girl +sighed, happily. "Play that thing some more, will you? You're a wiz at +it, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"I'm pretty good," said Nick, modestly. Then the outrageousness of her +conduct struck him afresh. "Say, who're you, anyway?"</p> + +<p>"My name's Berry—short for Bernice.... What's yours, Pan?"</p> + +<p>"Nick—that is—Nick."</p> + +<p>"Ugh, terrible! I'll stick to Pan. What d'you do when you're not +Panning?" Then, at the bewilderment in his face: "What's your job?"</p> + +<p>"I work in the Ideal Garage. Say, you're pretty nosey, ain't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, pretty.... That accounts for your nails, h'm?" She looked at her +own brown paws. "'Bout as bad as mine. I drove one hundred and fifty +miles to-day."</p> + +<p>"Ya-as, you did!"</p> + +<p>"I did! Started at six. And I'll probably drive back to-night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You're crazy!"</p> + +<p>"I know it," she agreed, "and it's wonderful.... Can you play the Tommy +Toddle?"</p> + +<p>"Yeh. It's kind of hard, though, where the runs are. I don't get the +runs so very good." He played it. She kept time with head and feet. When +he had finished and wiped his lips:</p> + +<p>"Elegant!" She took the harmonica from him, wiped it brazenly on the +much-abused, rose-coloured handkerchief and began to play, her cheeks +puffed out, her eyes round with effort. She played the Tommy Toddle, and +her runs were perfect. Nick's chagrin was swallowed by his admiration +and envy.</p> + +<p>"Say, kid, you got more wind than a factory whistle. Who learned you to +play?"</p> + +<p>She struck her chest with a hard brown fist. "Tennis ... Tim taught me."</p> + +<p>"Who's Tim?"</p> + +<p>"The—a chauffeur."</p> + +<p>Nick leaned closer. "Say, do you ever go to the dances at Englewood +Masonic Hall?"</p> + +<p>"I never have."</p> + +<p>"'Jah like to go some time?"</p> + +<p>"I'd love it." She grinned up at him, her teeth flashing white in her +brown face.</p> + +<p>"It's swell here," he said, dreamily. "Like the woods?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Winter, when it's cold and dirty, I think about how it's here summers. +It's like you could take it out of your head and look at it whenever you +wanted to."</p> + +<p>"Endymion."</p> + +<p>"Huh?"</p> + +<p>"A man said practically the same thing the other day. Name of Keats."</p> + +<p>"Yeh?"</p> + +<p>"He said: 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'"</p> + +<p>"That's one way putting it," he agreed, graciously.</p> + +<p>Unsmilingly she reached over with one slim forefinger, as if compelled, +and touched the blond hairs on Nick's wrist. Just touched them. Nick +remained motionless. The girl shivered a little, deliciously. She +glanced at him shyly. Her lips were provocative. Thoughtlessly, blindly, +Nick suddenly flung an arm about her, kissed her. He kissed her as he +had never kissed Miss Bauers—as he had never kissed Miss Ahearn, Miss +Olson, or just Gertie. The girl did not scream, or push him away, or +slap him, or protest, or giggle as would have the above-mentioned young +ladies. She sat breathing rather fast, a tinge of scarlet showing +beneath the tan.</p> + +<p>"Well, Pan," she said, low-voiced, "you're running true to form, +anyway." She eyed him appraisingly. "Your appeal is in your virility, I +suppose. Yes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> + +<p>"My what?"</p> + +<p>She rose. "I've got to go."</p> + +<p>Panic seized him. "Say, don't drive back to-night, huh? Wherever it is +you've got to go. You ain't driving back to-night?"</p> + +<p>She made no answer; parted the bushes, was out on the gravel path in the +sunlight, a slim, short-skirted, almost childish figure. He followed. +They crossed the bridge, left the island, reached the roadway almost in +silence. At the side of the road was a roadster. Its hood was the kind +that conceals power. Its lamps were two giant eyes rimmed in precious +metal. Its line spelled strength. Its body was foreign. Nick's +engine-wise eyes saw these things at a glance.</p> + +<p>"That your car?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Gosh!"</p> + +<p>She unlocked it, threw in the clutch, shifted, moved. "Say!" was wrung +from Nick helplessly. She waved at him. "Good-bye, Pan." He stared, +stricken. She was off swiftly, silently; flashed around a corner; was +hidden by the trees and shrubs.</p> + +<p>He stood a moment. He felt bereaved, cheated. Then a little wave of +exaltation shook him. He wanted to talk to someone. "Gosh!" he said +again. He glanced at his wrist. Five-thirty. He guessed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> he'd go home. +He guessed he'd go home and get one of Ma's dinners. One of Ma's dinners +and talk to Ma. The Sixty-third Street car. He could make it and back in +plenty time.</p> + +<p>Nick lived in that section of Chicago known as Englewood, which is not +so sylvan as it sounds, but appropriate enough for a faun. Not only +that; he lived in S. Green Street, Englewood. S. Green Street, near +Seventieth, is almost rural with its great elms and poplars, its frame +cottages, its back gardens. A neighbourhood of thrifty, foreign-born +fathers and mothers, many children, tree-lined streets badly paved. Nick +turned in at a two-story brown frame cottage. He went around to the +back. Ma was in the kitchen.</p> + +<p>Nick's presence at the evening meal was an uncertain thing. Sometimes he +did not eat at home for a week, excepting only his hurried early +breakfast. He rarely spent an evening at home, and when he did used the +opportunity for making up lost sleep. Pa never got home from work until +after six. Nick liked his dinner early and hot. On his rare visits his +mother welcomed him like one of the Gracchi. Mother and son understood +each other wordlessly, having much in common. You would not have thought +it of her (forty-six bust, forty waist, measureless hips), but Ma was a +nymph at heart. Hence Nick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Hello, Ma!" She was slamming expertly about the kitchen.</p> + +<p>"Hello, yourself," said Ma. Ma had a line of slang gleaned from her +numerous brood. It fell strangely from her lips. Ma had never quite lost +a tinge of foreign accent, though she had come to America when a girl. A +hearty, zestful woman, savouring life with gusto, undiminished by +child-bearing and hard work. "Eating home, Dewey?" She alone used his +given name.</p> + +<p>"Yeh, but I gotta be back by seven-thirty. Got anything ready?"</p> + +<p>"Dinner ain't, but I'll get you something. Plenty. Platter ham and eggs +and a quick fry. Cherry cobbler's done. I'll fix you some." (Cherry +cobbler is shortcake with a soul.)</p> + +<p>He ate enormously at the kitchen table, she hovering over him.</p> + +<p>"What's the news, Dewey?"</p> + +<p>"Ain't none." He ate in silence. Then: "How old was you when you married +Pa?"</p> + +<p>"Me? Say, I wasn't no more'n a kid. I gotta laugh when I think of it."</p> + +<p>"What was Pa earning?"</p> + +<p>She laughed a great hearty laugh, dipping a piece of bread sociably in +the ham fat on the platter as she stood by the table, just to bear him +company.</p> + +<p>"Say, earn! If he'd of earned what you was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> earning now, we'd of thought +we was millionaires. Time Etty was born he was pulling down thirteen a +week, and we saved on it." She looked at him suddenly, sharply. "Why?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I was just wondering."</p> + +<p>"Look what good money he's getting now! If I was you, I wouldn't stick +around no old garage for what they give you. You could get a good job in +the works with Pa; first thing you know you'd be pulling down big money. +You're smart like that with engines.... Takes a lot of money nowadays +for feller to get married."</p> + +<p>"You <i>tell</i> 'em," agreed Nick. He looked up at her, having finished +eating. His glance was almost tender. "How'd you come to marry Pa, +anyway? You and him's so different."</p> + +<p>The nymph in Ma leaped to the surface and stayed there a moment, +sparkling, laughing, dimpling. "Oh, I dunno. I kept running away and he +kept running after. Like that."</p> + +<p>He looked up again quickly at that. "Yeh. That's it. Fella don't like to +have no girl chasing him all the time. Say, he likes to do the chasing +himself. Ain't that the truth?"</p> + +<p>"You <i>tell</i> 'em!" agreed Ma. A great jovial laugh shook her. +Heavy-footed now, but light of heart.</p> + +<p>Suddenly: "I'm thinking of going to night school. Learn something. I +don't know nothing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You do, too, Dewey!"</p> + +<p>"Aw, wha'd I know? I never had enough schooling. Wished I had."</p> + +<p>"Who's doings was it? You wouldn't stay. Wouldn't go no more than sixth +reader and quit. Nothing wouldn't get you to go."</p> + +<p>He agreed gloomily. "I know it. I don't know what nothing is. +Uh—Arcadia—or—now—vitality or nothing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that comes easy," she encouraged him, "when you begin once."</p> + +<p>He reached for her hand gratefully. "You're a swell cook, Ma." He had a +sudden burst of generosity, of tenderness. "Soon's the bus is fixed I'll +take you joy-riding over to the lake."</p> + +<p>Ma always wore a boudoir cap of draggled lace and ribbon for motoring. +Nick almost never offered her a ride. She did not expect him to.</p> + +<p>She pushed him playfully. "Go on! You got plenty young girls to take +riding, not your ma."</p> + +<p>"Oh, girls!" he said, scornfully. Then in another tone: "Girls."</p> + +<p>He was off. It was almost seven. Pa was late. He caught a car back to +Fifty-third Street. Elmer was lounging in the cool doorway of the +garage. Nick, in sheer exuberance of spirits, squared off, doubled his +fists, and danced about Elmer in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> semicircle, working his arms as a +prizefighter does, warily. He jabbed at Elmer's jaw playfully.</p> + +<p>"What you been doing," inquired that long-suffering gentleman, "makes +you feel so good? Where you been?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nowheres. Bumming round. Park."</p> + +<p>He turned in the direction of the stairway. Elmer lounged after him. +"Oh, say, dame's been calling you for the last hour and a half. Like to +busted the phone. Makes me sick."</p> + +<p>"Aw, Bauers."</p> + +<p>"No, that wasn't the name. Name's Mary or Berry, or something like that. +A dozen times, I betcha. Says you was to call her as soon as you come +in. Drexel 47—wait a min't'—yeh—that's right—Drexel 473——"</p> + +<p>"Swell chanst," said Nick. Suddenly his buoyancy was gone. His shoulders +drooped. His cigarette dangled limp. Disappointment curved his lips, +burdened his eyes. "<i>Swell</i> chanst!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="OLD_MAN_MINICK" id="OLD_MAN_MINICK"></a>OLD MAN MINICK</h2> + + +<p>His wife had always spoiled him outrageously. No doubt of that. Take, +for example, the matter of the pillows merely. Old man Minick slept +high. That is, he thought he slept high. He liked two plump pillows on +his side of the great, wide, old-fashioned cherry bed. He would sink +into them with a vast grunting and sighing and puffing expressive of +nerves and muscles relaxed and gratified. But in the morning there was +always one pillow on the floor. He had thrown it there. Always, in the +morning, there it lay, its plump white cheek turned reproachfully up at +him from the side of the bed. Ma Minick knew this, naturally, after +forty years of the cherry bed. But she never begrudged him that extra +pillow. Each morning, when she arose, she picked it up on her way to +shut the window. Each morning the bed was made up with two pillows on +his side of it, as usual.</p> + +<p>Then there was the window. Ma Minick liked it open wide. Old man Minick, +who rather prided himself on his modernism (he called it being up to +date) was distrustful of the night air. In the folds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> of its sable +mantle lurked a swarm of dread things—colds, clammy miasmas, fevers.</p> + +<p>"Night air's just like any other air," Ma Minick would say, with some +asperity. Ma Minick was no worm; and as modern as he. So when they went +to bed the window would be open wide. They would lie there, the two old +ones, talking comfortably about commonplace things. The kind of talk +that goes on between a man and a woman who have lived together in +wholesome peace (spiced with occasional wholesome bickerings) for more +than forty years.</p> + +<p>"Remind me to see Gerson to-morrow about that lock on the basement door. +The paper's full of burglars."</p> + +<p>"If I think of it." She never failed to.</p> + +<p>"George and Nettie haven't been over in a week now."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, young folks.... Did you stop in and pay that Koritz the fifty +cents for pressing your suit?"</p> + +<p>"By golly, I forgot again! First thing in the morning."</p> + +<p>A sniff. "Just smell the Yards." It was Chicago.</p> + +<p>"Wind must be from the west."</p> + +<p>Sleep came with reluctant feet, but they wooed her patiently. And +presently she settled down between them and they slept lightly. Usually, +some time during the night, he awoke, slid cautiously and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> with infinite +stealth from beneath the covers and closed the wide-flung window to +within a bare two inches of the sill. Almost invariably she heard him; +but she was a wise old woman; a philosopher of parts. She knew better +than to allow a window to shatter the peace of their marital felicity. +As she lay there, smiling a little grimly in the dark and giving no sign +of being awake, she thought, "Oh, well, I guess a closed window won't +kill me either."</p> + +<p>Still, sometimes, just to punish him a little, and to prove that she was +nobody's fool, she would wait until he had dropped off to sleep again +and then she, too, would achieve a stealthy trip to the window and would +raise it slowly, carefully, inch by inch.</p> + +<p>"How did that window come to be open?" he would say in the morning, +being a poor dissembler.</p> + +<p>"Window? Why, it's just the way it was when we went to bed." And she +would stoop to pick up the pillow that lay on the floor.</p> + +<p>There was little or no talk of death between this comfortable, active, +sound-appearing man of almost seventy and this plump capable woman of +sixty-six. But as always, between husband and wife, it was understood +wordlessly (and without reason) that old man Minick would go first. Not +that either of them had the slightest intention of going. In fact, when +it happened they were planning to spend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> the winter in California and +perhaps live there indefinitely if they liked it and didn't get too +lonesome for George and Nettie, and the Chicago smoke, and Chicago +noise, and Chicago smells and rush and dirt. Still, the solid sum paid +yearly in insurance premiums showed clearly that he meant to leave her +in comfort and security. Besides, the world is full of widows. Everyone +sees that. But how many widowers? Few. Widows there are by the +thousands; living alone; living in hotels; living with married daughters +and sons-in-law or married sons and daughters-in-law. But of widowers in +a like situation there are bewilderingly few. And why this should be no +one knows.</p> + +<p>So, then. The California trip never materialized. And the year that +followed never was quite clear in old man Minick's dazed mind. In the +first place, it was the year in which stocks tumbled and broke their +backs. Gilt-edged securities showed themselves to be tinsel. Old man +Minick had retired from active business just one year before, meaning to +live comfortably on the fruit of a half-century's toil. He now saw that +fruit rotting all about him. There was in it hardly enough nourishment +to sustain them. Then came the day when Ma Minick went downtown to see +Matthews about that pain right here and came home looking shrivelled, +talking shrilly about nothing, and evading Pa's eyes. Followed months<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> +that were just a jumble of agony, X-rays, hope, despair, morphia, +nothingness.</p> + +<p>After it was all over: "But I was going first," old man Minick said, +dazedly.</p> + +<p>The old house on Ellis near Thirty-ninth was sold for what it would +bring. George, who knew Chicago real-estate if any one did, said they +might as well get what they could. Things would only go lower. You'll +see. And nobody's going to have any money for years. Besides, look at +the neighbourhood!</p> + +<p>Old man Minick said George was right. He said everybody was right. You +would hardly have recognized in this shrunken figure and wattled face +the spruce and dressy old man whom Ma Minick used to spoil so +delightfully. "You know best, George. You know best." He who used to +stand up to George until Ma Minick was moved to say, "Now, Pa, you don't +know everything."</p> + +<p>After Matthews' bills, and the hospital, and the nurses and the +medicines and the thousand and one things were paid there was left +exactly five hundred dollars a year.</p> + +<p>"You're going to make your home with us, Father," George and Nettie +said. Alma, too, said this would be the best. Alma, the married +daughter, lived in Seattle. "Though you know Ferd and I would be only +too glad to have you."</p> + +<p>Seattle! The ends of the earth. Oh, no. No! he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> protested, every fibre +of his old frame clinging to the accustomed. Seattle, at seventy! He +turned piteous eyes on his son George and his daughter-in-law Nettie. +"You're going to make your home with us, Father," they reassured him. He +clung to them gratefully. After it was over Alma went home to her +husband and their children.</p> + +<p>So now he lived with George and Nettie in the five-room flat on South +Park Avenue, just across from Washington Park. And there was no extra +pillow on the floor.</p> + +<p>Nettie hadn't said he couldn't have the extra pillow. He had told her he +used two and she had given him two the first week. But every morning she +had found a pillow cast on the floor.</p> + +<p>"I thought you used two pillows, Father."</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"But there's always one on the floor when I make the bed in the morning. +You always throw one on the floor. You only sleep on one pillow, +really."</p> + +<p>"I use two pillows."</p> + +<p>But the second week there was one pillow. He tossed and turned a good +deal there in his bedroom off the kitchen. But he got used to it in +time. Not used to it, exactly, but—well——</p> + +<p>The bedroom off the kitchen wasn't as menial as it sounds. It was really +rather cosy. The five-room flat held living room, front bedroom, dining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> +room, kitchen, and maid's room. The room off the kitchen was intended as +a maid's room but Nettie had no maid. George's business had suffered +with the rest. George and Nettie had said, "I wish there was a front +room for you, Father. You could have ours and we'd move back here, only +this room's too small for twin beds and the dressing table and the +chiffonier." They had meant it—or meant to mean it.</p> + +<p>"This is fine," old man Minick had said. "This is good enough for +anybody." There was a narrow white enamel bed and a tiny dresser and a +table. Nettie had made gay cretonne covers and spreads and put a little +reading lamp on the table and arranged his things. Ma Minick's picture +on the dresser with her mouth sort of pursed to make it look small. It +wasn't a recent picture. Nettie and George had had it framed for him as +a surprise. They had often urged her to have a picture taken, but she +had dreaded it. Old man Minick didn't think much of that photograph, +though he never said so. He needed no photograph of Ma Minick. He had a +dozen of them; a gallery of them; thousands of them. Lying on his one +pillow he could take them out and look at them one by one as they passed +in review, smiling, serious, chiding, praising, there in the dark. He +needed no picture on his dresser.</p> + +<p>A handsome girl, Nettie, and a good girl. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> thought of her as a girl, +though she was well past thirty. George and Nettie had married late. +This was only the third year of their marriage. Alma, the daughter, had +married young, but George had stayed on, unwed, in the old house on +Ellis until he was thirty-six and all Ma Minick's friends' daughters had +had a try at him in vain. The old people had urged him to marry, but it +had been wonderful to have him around the house, just the same. Somebody +young around the house. Not that George had stayed around very much. But +when he was there you knew he was there. He whistled while dressing. He +sang in the bath. He roared down the stairway, "Ma, where's my clean +shirts?" The telephone rang for him. Ma Minick prepared special dishes +for him. The servant girl said, "Oh, now, Mr. George, look what you've +done! Gone and spilled the grease all over my clean kitchen floor!" and +wiped it up adoringly while George laughed and gobbled his bit of food +filched from pot or frying pan.</p> + +<p>They had been a little surprised about Nettie. George was in the bond +business and she worked for the same firm. A plump, handsome, +eye-glassed woman with fine fresh colouring, a clear skin that old man +Minick called appetizing, and a great coil of smooth dark hair. She wore +plain tailored things and understood the bond business in a way that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> +might have led you to think hers a masculine mind if she hadn't been so +feminine, too, in her manner. Old man Minick had liked her better than +Ma Minick had.</p> + +<p>Nettie had called him Pop and joked with him and almost flirted with him +in a daughterly sort of way. He liked to squeeze her plump arm and pinch +her soft cheek between thumb and forefinger. She would laugh up at him +and pat his shoulder and that shoulder would straighten spryly and he +would waggle his head doggishly.</p> + +<p>"Look out there, George!" the others in the room would say. "Your dad'll +cut you out. First thing you know you'll lose your girl, that's all."</p> + +<p>Nettie would smile. Her teeth were white and strong and even. Old man +Minick would laugh and wink, immensely pleased and flattered. "We +understand each other, don't we, Pop?" Nettie would say.</p> + +<p>During the first years of their married life Nettie stayed home. She +fussed happily about her little flat, gave parties, went to parties, +played bridge. She seemed to love the ease, the relaxation, the small +luxuries. She and George were very much in love. Before her marriage she +had lived in a boarding house on Michigan Avenue. At mention of it now +she puckered up her face. She did not attempt to conceal her fondness +for these five rooms of hers, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> neat, so quiet, so bright, so cosy. +Over-stuffed velvet in the living room, with silk lampshades, and small +tables holding books and magazines and little boxes containing +cigarettes or hard candies. Very modern. A gate-legged table in the +dining room. Caramel-coloured walnut in the bedroom, rich and dark and +smooth. She loved it. An orderly woman. Everything in its place. Before +eleven o'clock the little apartment was shining, spotless; cushions +plumped, crumbs brushed, vegetables in cold water. The telephone. +"Hello!... Oh, hello, Bess! Oh, hours ago ... Not a thing ... Well, if +George is willing ... I'll call him up and ask him. We haven't seen a +show in two weeks. I'll call you back within the next half hour ... No, +I haven't done my marketing yet.... Yes, and have dinner downtown. Meet +at seven."</p> + +<p>Into this orderly smooth-running mechanism was catapulted a bewildered +old man. She no longer called him Pop. He never dreamed of squeezing the +plump arm or pinching the smooth cheek. She called him Father. Sometimes +George's Father. Sometimes, when she was telephoning, there came to +him—"George's father's living with us now, you know. I can't."</p> + +<p>They were very kind to him, Nettie and George. "Now just you sit right +down here, Father. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> do you want to go poking off into your own room +for?"</p> + +<p>He remembered that in the last year Nettie had said something about +going back to work. There wasn't enough to do around the house to keep +her busy. She was sick of afternoon parties. Sew and eat, that's all, +and gossip, or play bridge. Besides, look at the money. Business was +awful. The two old people had resented this idea as much as George +had—more, in fact. They were scandalized.</p> + +<p>"Young folks nowdays!" shaking their heads. "Young folks nowdays. What +are they thinking of! In my day when you got married you had babies."</p> + +<p>George and Nettie had had no babies. At first Nettie had said, "I'm so +happy. I just want a chance to rest. I've been working since I was +seventeen. I just want to rest, first." One year. Two years. Three. And +now Pa Minick.</p> + +<p>Ma Minick, in the old house on Ellis Avenue, had kept a loose sort of +larder; not lavish, but plentiful. They both ate a great deal, as old +people are likely to do. Old man Minick, especially, had liked to +nibble. A handful of raisins from the box on the shelf. A couple of nuts +from the dish on the sideboard. A bit of candy rolled beneath the +tongue. At dinner (sometimes, toward the last, even at noon-time) a +plate of steaming soup, hot, revivifying, stimulating. Plenty of this +and plenty of that. "What's the mat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>ter, Jo? You're not eating." But he +was, amply. Ma Minick had liked to see him eat too much. She was wrong, +of course.</p> + +<p>But at Nettie's things were different. Hers was a sufficient but stern +ménage. So many mouths to feed; just so many lamb chops. Nettie knew +about calories and vitamines and mysterious things like that, and talked +about them. So many calories in this. So many calories in that. He never +was quite clear in his mind about these things said to be lurking in his +food. He had always thought of spinach as spinach, chops as chops. But +to Nettie they were calories. They lunched together, these two. George +was, of course, downtown. For herself Nettie would have one of those +feminine pick-up lunches; a dab of apple sauce, a cup of tea, and a +slice of cold toast left from breakfast. This she would eat while old +man Minick guiltily supped up his cup of warmed-over broth, or his +coddled egg. She always pressed upon him any bit of cold meat that was +left from the night before, or any remnants of vegetable or spaghetti. +Often there was quite a little fleet of saucers and sauce plates grouped +about his main plate. Into these he dipped and swooped uncomfortably, +and yet with a relish. Sometimes, when he had finished, he would look +about, furtively.</p> + +<p>"What'll you have, Father? Can I get you something?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Nothing, Nettie, nothing. I'm doing fine." She had finished the last of +her wooden toast and was waiting for him, kindly.</p> + +<p>Still, this balanced and scientific fare seemed to agree with him. As +the winter went on he seemed actually to have regained most of his +former hardiness and vigour. A handsome old boy he was, ruddy, hale, +with the zest of a juicy old apple, slightly withered but still sappy. +It should be mentioned that he had a dimple in his cheek which flashed +unexpectedly when he smiled. It gave him a roguish—almost +boyish—effect most appealing to the beholder. Especially the feminine +beholder. Much of his spoiling at the hands of Ma Minick had doubtless +been due to this mere depression of the skin.</p> + +<p>Spring was to bring a new and welcome source of enrichment into his +life. But these first six months of his residence with George and Nettie +were hard. No spoiling there. He missed being made much of. He got +kindness, but he needed love. Then, too, he was rather a gabby old man. +He liked to hold forth. In the old house on Ellis there had been +visiting back and forth between men and women of his own age, and Ma's. +At these gatherings he had waxed oratorical or argumentative, and they +had heard him, some in agreement, some in disagreement, but always +respectfully, whether he prated of real estate or social depravity; +prohibition or European exchange.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Let me tell you, here and now, something's got to be done before you +can get a country back on a sound financial basis. Why, take Russia +alone, why ..." Or: "Young people nowdays! They don't know what respect +means. I tell you there's got to be a change and there will be, and it's +the older generation that's got to bring it about. What do they know of +hardship! What do they know about work—real work. Most of 'em's never +done a real day's work in their life. All they think of is dancing and +gambling and drinking. Look at the way they dress! Look at ..."</p> + +<p><i>Ad lib.</i></p> + +<p>"That's so," the others would agree. "I was saying only yesterday ..."</p> + +<p>Then, too, until a year or two before, he had taken active part in +business. He had retired only at the urging of Ma and the children. They +said he ought to rest and play and enjoy himself.</p> + +<p>Now, as his strength and good spirits gradually returned he began to go +downtown, mornings. He would dress, carefully, though a little shakily. +He had always shaved himself and he kept this up. All in all, during the +day, he occupied the bathroom literally for hours, and this annoyed +Nettie to the point of frenzy, though she said nothing. He liked the +white cheerfulness of the little tiled room. He puddled about in the +water endlessly. Snorted and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> splashed and puffed and snuffled and blew. +He was one of those audible washers who emerge dripping and whose +ablutions are distributed impartially over ceiling, walls, and floor.</p> + +<p>Nettie, at the closed door: "Father, are you all right?"</p> + +<p>Splash! Prrrf! "Yes. Sure. I'm all right."</p> + +<p>"Well, I didn't know. You've been in there so long."</p> + +<p>He was a neat old man, but there was likely to be a spot or so on his +vest or his coat lapel, or his tie. Ma used to remove these, on or off +him, as the occasion demanded, rubbing carefully and scolding a little, +making a chiding sound between tongue and teeth indicative of great +impatience of his carelessness. He had rather enjoyed these sounds, and +this rubbing and scratching on the cloth with the fingernail and a +moistened rag. They indicated that someone cared. Cared about the way he +looked. Had pride in him. Loved him. Nettie never removed spots. Though +infrequently she said, "Father, just leave that suit out, will you? I'll +send it to the cleaner's with George's. The man's coming to-morrow +morning." He would look down at himself, hastily, and attack a spot here +and there with a futile fingernail.</p> + +<p>His morning toilette completed, he would make for the Fifty-first Street +L. Seated in the train<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> he would assume an air of importance and testy +haste; glance out of the window; look at his watch. You got the +impression of a handsome and well-preserved old gentleman on his way +downtown to consummate a shrewd business deal. He had been familiar with +Chicago's downtown for fifty years and he could remember when State +Street was a tree-shaded cottage district. The noise and rush and +clangour of the Loop had long been familiar to him. But now he seemed to +find the downtown trip arduous, even hazardous. The roar of the elevated +trains, the hoarse hoots of the motor horns, the clang of the street +cars, the bedlam that is Chicago's downtown district bewildered him, +frightened him almost. He would skip across the street like a harried +hare, just missing a motor truck's nose and all unconscious of the +stream of invective directed at him by its charioteer. "Heh! Whatcha!... +Look!"—Sometimes a policeman came to his aid, or attempted to, but he +resented this proffered help.</p> + +<p>"Say, look here, my lad," he would say to the tall, tired, and not at +all burly (standing on one's feet directing traffic at Wabash and +Madison for eight hours a day does not make for burliness) policeman, +"I've been coming downtown since long before you were born. You don't +need to help me. I'm no jay from the country."</p> + +<p>He visited the Stock Exchange. This depressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> him. Stocks were lower +than ever and still going down. His five hundred a year was safe, but +the rest seemed doomed for his lifetime, at least. He would drop in at +George's office. George's office was pleasantly filled with dapper, neat +young men and (surprisingly enough) dapper, slim young women, seated at +desks in the big light-flooded room. At one corner of each desk stood a +polished metal placard on a little standard, and bearing the name of the +desk's occupant. Mr. Owens. Mr. Satterlee. Mr. James. Miss Rauch. Mr. +Minick.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Father," Mr. Minick would say, looking annoyed. "What's bringing +you down?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just had a little business to tend to over at the +Exchange. Thought I'd drop in. How's business?"</p> + +<p>"Rotten."</p> + +<p>"I should think it was!" Old man Minick would agree. +"I—should—think—it—was! Hm."</p> + +<p>George wished he wouldn't. He couldn't have it, that's all. Old man +Minick would stroll over to the desk marked Satterlee, or Owens, or +James. These brisk young men would toss an upward glance at him and +concentrate again on the sheets and files before them. Old man Minick +would stand, balancing from heel to toe and blowing out his breath a +little. He looked a bit yellow and granulated and wavering, there in the +cruel morning light of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> the big plate glass windows. Or perhaps it was +the contrast he presented with these slim, slick young salesmen.</p> + +<p>"Well, h'are you to-day, Mr.—uh—Satterlee? What's the good word?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Satterlee would not glance up this time. "I'm pretty well. Can't +complain."</p> + +<p>"Good. Good."</p> + +<p>"Anything I can do for you?"</p> + +<p>"No-o-o. No. Not a thing. Just dropped in to see my son a minute."</p> + +<p>"I see." Not unkindly. Then, as old man Minick still stood there, +balancing, Mr. Satterlee would glance up again, frowning a little. "Your +son's desk is over there, I believe. Yes."</p> + +<p>George and Nettie had a bedtime conference about these visits and Nettie +told him, gently, that the bond house head objected to friends and +relatives dropping in. It was against office rules. It had been so when +she was employed there. Strictly business. She herself had gone there +only once since her marriage.</p> + +<p>Well, that was all right. Business was like that nowdays. Rush and grab +and no time for anything.</p> + +<p>The winter was a hard one, with a record snowfall and intense cold. He +stayed indoors for days together. A woman of his own age in like +position could have occupied herself usefully and happily.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> She could +have hemmed a sash-curtain; knitted or crocheted; tidied a room; taken a +hand in the cooking or preparing of food; ripped an old gown; made over +a new one; indulged in an occasional afternoon festivity with women of +her own years. But for old man Minick there were no small tasks. There +was nothing he could do to make his place in the household justifiable. +He wasn't even particularly good at those small jobs of hammering, or +painting, or general "fixing." Nettie could drive a nail more swiftly, +more surely than he. "Now, Father, don't you bother. I'll do it. Just +you go and sit down. Isn't it time for your afternoon nap?"</p> + +<p>He waxed a little surly. "Nap! I just got up. I don't want to sleep my +life away."</p> + +<p>George and Nettie frequently had guests in the evening. They played +bridge, or poker, or talked.</p> + +<p>"Come in, Father," George would say. "Come in. You all know Dad, don't +you, folks?" He would sit down, uncertainly. At first he had attempted +to expound, as had been his wont in the old house on Ellis. "I want to +say, here and now, that this country's got to ..." But they went on, +heedless of him. They interrupted or refused, politely, to listen. So he +sat in the room, yet no part of it. The young people's talk swirled and +eddied all about him. He was utterly lost in it. Now and then Nettie or +George would turn to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> and with raised voice (he was not at all deaf +and prided himself on it) would shout, "It's about this or that, Father. +He was saying ..."</p> + +<p>When the group roared with laughter at a sally from one of them he would +smile uncertainly but amiably, glancing from one to the other in +complete ignorance of what had passed, but not resenting it. He took to +sitting more and more in his kitchen bedroom, smoking a comforting pipe +and reading and re-reading the evening paper. During that winter he and +Canary, the negro washwoman, became quite good friends. She washed down +in the basement once a week but came up to the kitchen for her massive +lunch. A walrus-waisted black woman, with a rich throaty voice, a +rolling eye, and a kindly heart. He actually waited for her appearance +above the laundry stairs.</p> + +<p>"Weh, how's Mist' Minick to-day! Ah nev' did see a gemun spry's you ah +fo' yo' age. No, suh! nev' did."</p> + +<p>At this rare praise he would straighten his shoulders and waggle his +head. "I'm worth any ten of these young sprats to-day." Canary would +throw back her head in a loud and companionable guffaw.</p> + +<p>Nettie would appear at the kitchen swinging door. "Canary's having her +lunch, Father. Don't you want to come into the front room with me? We'll +have our lunch in another half-hour."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> He followed her obediently +enough. Nettie thought of him as a troublesome and rather pathetic +child—a child who would never grow up. If she attributed any thoughts +to that fine old head they were ambling thoughts, bordering, perhaps, on +senility. Little did she know how expertly this old one surveyed her and +how ruthlessly he passed judgment. She never suspected the thoughts that +formed in the active brain.</p> + +<p>He knew about women. He had married a woman. He had had children by her. +He looked at this woman—his son's wife—moving about her little +five-room flat. She had theories about children. He had heard her +expound them. You didn't have them except under such and such +circumstances. It wasn't fair otherwise. Plenty of money for their +education. Well. He and his wife had had three children. Paul, the +second, had died at thirteen. A blow, that had been. They had not always +planned for the coming of the three but they always had found a way, +afterward. You managed, somehow, once the little wrinkled red ball had +fought its way into the world. You managed. You managed. Look at George! +Yet when he was born, thirty-nine years ago, Pa and Ma Minick had been +hard put to it.</p> + +<p>Sitting there, while Nettie dismissed him as negligible, he saw her +clearly, grimly. He looked at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> her. She was plump, but not too short, +with a generous width between the hips; a broad full bosom, but firm; +round arms and quick slim legs; a fine sturdy throat. The curve between +arm and breast made a graceful gracious line ... Working in a bond +office ... Working in a bond office ... There was nothing in the Bible +about working in a bond office. Here was a woman built for +child-bearing.</p> + +<p>She thought him senile, negligible.</p> + +<p>In March Nettie had in a sewing woman for a week. She had her two or +three times a year. A hawk-faced woman of about forty-nine, with a +blue-bottle figure and a rapacious eye. She sewed in the dining room and +there was a pleasant hum of machine and snip of scissors and murmur of +conversation and rustle of silky stuff; and hot savoury dishes for +lunch. She and old man Minick became great friends. She even let him +take out bastings. This when Nettie had gone out from two to four, +between fittings.</p> + +<p>He chuckled and waggled his head. "I expect to be paid regular +assistant's wages for this," he said.</p> + +<p>"I guess you don't need any wages, Mr. Minick," the woman said. "I guess +you're pretty well fixed."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, I can't complain." (Five hundred a year.)</p> + +<p>"Complain! I should say not! If I was to com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>plain it'd be different. +Work all day to keep myself; and nobody to come home to at night."</p> + +<p>"Widow, ma'am?"</p> + +<p>"Since I was twenty. Work, work, that's all I've had. And lonesome! I +suppose you don't know what lonesome is."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't I!" slipped from him. He had dropped the bastings.</p> + +<p>The sewing woman flashed a look at him from the cold hard eye. "Well, +maybe you do. I suppose living here like this, with sons and daughters, +ain't so grand, for all your money. Now me, I've always managed to keep +my own little place that I could call home, to come back to. It's only +two rooms, and nothing to rave about, but it's home. Evenings I just +cook and fuss around. Nobody to fuss for, but I fuss, anyway. Cooking, +that's what I love to do. Plenty of good food, that's what folks need to +keep their strength up." Nettie's lunch that day had been rather scant.</p> + +<p>She was there a week. In Nettie's absence she talked against her. He +protested, but weakly. Did she give him egg-nogs? Milk? Hot toddy? Soup? +Plenty of good rich gravy and meat and puddings? Well! That's what folks +needed when they weren't so young any more. Not that he looked old. My, +no. Sprier than many young boys, and handsomer than his own son if she +did say so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> + +<p>He fed on it, hungrily. The third day she was flashing meaning glances +at him across the luncheon table. The fourth she pressed his foot +beneath the table. The fifth, during Nettie's afternoon absence, she got +up, ostensibly to look for a bit of cloth which she needed for sewing, +and, passing him, laid a caressing hand on his shoulder. Laid it there +and pressed his shoulder ever so little. He looked up, startled. The +glances across the luncheon had largely passed over his head; the foot +beneath the table might have been an accident. But this—this was +unmistakable. He stood up, a little shakily. She caught his hand. The +hawk-like face was close to his.</p> + +<p>"You need somebody to love you," she said. "Somebody to do for you, and +love you." The hawk face came nearer. He leaned a little toward it. But +between it and his face was Ma Minick's face, plump, patient, quizzical, +kindly. His head came back sharply. He threw the woman's hot hand from +him.</p> + +<p>"Woman!" he cried. "Jezebel!"</p> + +<p>The front door slammed. Nettie. The woman flew to her sewing. Old man +Minick, shaking, went into his kitchen bedroom.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Nettie, depositing her bundles on the dining room table, +"did you finish that faggoting? Why, you haven't done so very much, have +you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I ain't feeling so good," said the woman. "That lunch didn't agree with +me."</p> + +<p>"Why, it was a good plain lunch. I don't see——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it was plain enough, all right."</p> + +<p>Next day she did not come to finish her work. Sick, she telephoned. +Nettie called it an outrage. She finished the sewing herself, though she +hated sewing. Pa Minick said nothing, but there was a light in his eye. +Now and then he chuckled, to Nettie's infinite annoyance, though she +said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Wanted to marry me!" he said to himself, chuckling. "Wanted to marry +me! The old rip!"</p> + +<p>At the end of April, Pa Minick discovered Washington Park, and the Club, +and his whole life was from that day transformed.</p> + +<p>He had taken advantage of the early spring sunshine to take a walk, at +Nettie's suggestion.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you go into the Park, Father? It's really warm out. And the +sun's lovely. Do you good."</p> + +<p>He had put on his heaviest shirt, and a muffler, and George's old red +sweater with the great white "C" on its front, emblem of George's +athletic prowess at the University of Chicago; and over all, his +greatcoat. He had taken warm mittens and his cane with the greyhound's +head handle, carved. So equipped he had ambled uninterestedly over to +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> Park across the way. And there he had found new life.</p> + +<p>New life in old life. For the park was full of old men. Old men like +himself, with greyhound's-head canes, and mufflers and somebody's +sweater worn beneath their greatcoats. They wore arctics, though the +weather was fine. The skin of their hands and cheek-bones was glazed and +had a tight look though it lay in fine little folds. There were +splotches of brown on the backs of their hands, and on the temples and +forehead. Their heavy grey or brown socks made comfortable folds above +their ankles. From that April morning until winter drew on the Park saw +old man Minick daily. Not only daily but by the day. Except for his +meals, and a brief hour for his after-luncheon nap, he spent all his +time there.</p> + +<p>For in the park old man Minick and all the old men gathered there found +a Forum—a safety valve—a means of expression. It did not take him long +to discover that the Park was divided into two distinct sets of old men. +There were the old men who lived with their married sons and +daughters-in-law or married daughters and sons-in-law. Then there were +the old men who lived in the Grant Home for Aged Gentlemen. You saw its +fine red-brick façade through the trees at the edge of the Park.</p> + +<p>And the slogan of these first was:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> + +<p>"My son and my da'ter they wouldn't want me to live in any public Home. +No, sirree! They want me right there with them. In their own home. +That's the kind of son and daughter I've got!"</p> + +<p>The slogan of the second was:</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't live with any son or daughter. Independent. That's me. My +own boss. Nobody to tell me what I can do and what I can't. Treat you +like a child. I'm my own boss! Pay my own good money and get my keep for +it."</p> + +<p>The first group, strangely enough, was likely to be spotted of vest and +a little frayed as to collar. You saw them going on errands for their +daughters-in-law. A loaf of bread. Spool of white No. 100. They took +their small grandchildren to the duck pond and between the two toddlers +hand in hand—the old and infirm and the infantile and infirm—it was +hard to tell which led which.</p> + +<p>The second group was shiny as to shoes, spotless as to linen, dapper as +to clothes. They had no small errands. Theirs was a magnificent leisure. +And theirs was magnificent conversation. The questions they discussed +and settled there in the Park—these old men—were not international +merely. They were cosmic in scope.</p> + +<p>The War? Peace? Disarmament? China? Free love? Mere conversational +bubbles to be tossed in the air and disposed of in a burst of foam. +Strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> meat for old man Minick who had so long been fed on pap. But he +soon got used to it. Between four and five in the afternoon, in a spot +known as Under The Willows, the meeting took the form of a club—an open +forum. A certain group made up of Socialists, Free Thinkers, parlour +anarchists, bolshevists, had for years drifted there for talk. Old man +Minick learned high-sounding phrases. "The Masters ... democracy ... +toil of the many for the good of the few ... the ruling class ... free +speech ... the People...."</p> + +<p>The strong-minded ones held forth. The weaker ones drifted about on the +outskirts, sometimes clinging to the moist and sticky paw of a +round-eyed grandchild. Earlier in the day—at eleven o'clock, say—the +talk was not so general nor so inclusive. The old men were likely to +drift into groups of two or three or four. They sat on sun-bathed +benches and their conversation was likely to be rather smutty at times, +for all they looked so mild and patriarchal and desiccated. They paid +scant heed to the white-haired old women who, like themselves, were +sunning in the park. They watched the young women switch by, with +appreciative glances at their trim figures and slim ankles. The day of +the short skirt was a grand time for them. They chuckled among +themselves and made wicked comment. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> saw only white-haired, placid, +tremulous old men, but their minds still worked with belated masculinity +like naughty small boys talking behind the barn.</p> + +<p>Old man Minick early achieved a certain leadership in the common talk. +He had always liked to hold forth. This last year had been one of almost +unendurable bottling up. At first he had timidly sought the less +assertive ones of his kind. Mild old men who sat in rockers in the +pavilion waiting for lunch time. Their conversation irritated him. They +remarked everything that passed before their eyes.</p> + +<p>"There's a boat. Fella with a boat."</p> + +<p>A silence. Then, heavily: "Yeh."</p> + +<p>Five minutes.</p> + +<p>"Look at those people laying on the grass. Shouldn't think it was warm +enough for that.... Now they're getting up."</p> + +<p>A group of equestrians passed along the bridle path on the opposite side +of the lagoon. They made a frieze against the delicate spring greenery. +The coats of the women were scarlet, vivid green, arresting, +stimulating.</p> + +<p>"Riders."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Good weather for riding."</p> + +<p>A man was fishing near by. "Good weather for fishing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Wonder what time it is, anyway." From a pocket, deep-buried, came forth +a great gold blob of a watch. "I've got one minute to eleven."</p> + +<p>Old man Minick dragged forth a heavy globe. "Mm. I've got eleven."</p> + +<p>"Little fast, I guess."</p> + +<p>Old man Minick shook off this conversation impatiently. This wasn't +conversation. This was oral death, though he did not put it thus. He +joined the other men. They were discussing Spiritualism. He listened, +ventured an opinion, was heard respectfully and then combated +mercilessly. He rose to the verbal fight, and won it.</p> + +<p>"Let's see," said one of the old men. "You're not living at the Grant +Home, are you?"</p> + +<p>"No," old man Minick made reply, proudly. "I live with my son and his +wife. They wouldn't have it any other way."</p> + +<p>"Hm. Like to be independent myself."</p> + +<p>"Lonesome, ain't it? Over there?"</p> + +<p>"Lonesome! Say, Mr.—what'd you say your name was? Minick? Mine's +Hughes—I never was lonesome in my life 'cept for six months when I +lived with my daughter and her husband and their five children. Yes, +sir. That's what I call lonesome, in an eight-room flat."</p> + +<p>George and Nettie said, "It's doing you good,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Father, being out in the +air so much." His eyes were brighter, his figure straighter, his colour +better. It was that day he had held forth so eloquently on the +emigration question. He had to read a lot—papers and magazines and one +thing and another—to keep up. He devoured all the books and pamphlets +about bond issues and national finances brought home by George. In the +Park he was considered an authority on bonds and banking. He and a +retired real-estate man named Mowry sometimes debated a single question +for weeks. George and Nettie, relieved, thought he ambled to the Park +and spent senile hours with his drooling old friends discussing nothing +amiably and witlessly. This while he was eating strong meat, drinking +strong drink.</p> + +<p>Summer sped. Was past. Autumn held a new dread for old man Minick. When +winter came where should he go? Where should he go? Not back to the +five-room flat all day, and the little back bedroom, and nothingness. In +his mind there rang a childish old song they used to sing at school. A +silly song:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where do all the birdies go?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>I</i> know. <i>I</i> know.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But he didn't know. He was terror-stricken. October came and went. With +the first of November the Park became impossible, even at noon, and with +two overcoats and the sweater. The first frost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> was a black frost for +him. He scanned the heavens daily for rain or snow. There was a cigar +store and billiard room on the corner across the boulevard and there he +sometimes went, with a few of his Park cronies, to stand behind the +players' chairs and watch them at pinochle or rum. But this was a dull +business. Besides, the Grant men never came there. They had card rooms +of their own.</p> + +<p>He turned away from this smoky little den on a drab November day, sick +at heart. The winter. He tried to face it, and at what he saw he shrank +and was afraid.</p> + +<p>He reached the apartment and went around to the rear, dutifully. His +rubbers were wet and muddy and Nettie's living-room carpet was a +fashionable grey. The back door was unlocked. It was Canary's day +downstairs, he remembered. He took off his rubbers in the kitchen and +passed into the dining room. Voices. Nettie had company. Some friends, +probably, for tea. He turned to go to his room, but stopped at hearing +his own name. Father Minick. Father Minick. Nettie's voice.</p> + +<p>"Of course, if it weren't for Father Minick I would have. But how can we +as long as he lives with us? There isn't room. And we can't afford a +bigger place now, with rents what they are. This way it wouldn't be fair +to the child. We've talked it over, George and I. Don't you suppose? But +not as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> long as Father Minick is with us. I don't mean we'd use the +maid's room for a—for the—if we had a baby. But I'd have to have +someone in to help, then, and we'd have to have that extra room."</p> + +<p>He stood there in the dining room, quiet. Quiet. His body felt queerly +remote and numb, but his mind was working frenziedly. Clearly, too, in +spite of the frenzy. Death. That was the first thought. Death. It would +be easy. But he didn't want to die. Strange, but he didn't want to die. +He liked Life. The Park, the trees, the Club, the talk, the whole +show.... Nettie was a good girl.... The old must make way for the young. +They had the right to be born.... Maybe it was just another excuse. +Almost four years married. Why not three years ago?... The right to +live. The right to live....</p> + +<p>He turned, stealthily, stealthily, and went back into the kitchen, put +on his rubbers, stole out into the darkening November afternoon.</p> + +<p>In an hour he was back. He entered at the front door this time, ringing +the bell. He had never had a key. As if he were a child they would not +trust him with one. Nettie's women friends were just leaving. In the air +you smelled a mingling of perfume, and tea, and cakes, and powder. He +sniffed it, sensitively.</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Mr. Minick!" they said. "How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> are you! Well, you +certainly look it. And how do you manage these gloomy days?"</p> + +<p>He smiled genially, taking off his greatcoat and revealing the red +sweater with the big white "C" on it. "I manage. I manage." He puffed +out his cheeks. "I'm busy moving."</p> + +<p>"Moving!" Nettie's startled eyes flew to his, held them. "Moving, +Father?"</p> + +<p>"Old folks must make way for the young," he said, gaily. "That's the law +of life. Yes, sir! New ones. New ones."</p> + +<p>Nettie's face was scarlet. "Father, what in the world——"</p> + +<p>"I signed over at the Grant Home to-day. Move in next week." The women +looked at her, smiling. Old man Minick came over to her and patted her +plump arm. Then he pinched her smooth cheek with a quizzical thumb and +forefinger. Pinched it and shook it ever so little.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean," said Nettie, out of breath.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you do," said old man Minick, and while his tone was light and +jesting there was in his old face something stern, something menacing. +"Yes, you do."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When he entered the Grant Home a group of them was seated about the +fireplace in the main hall. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> neat, ruddy, septuagenarian circle. They +greeted him casually, with delicacy of feeling, as if he were merely +approaching them at their bench in the Park.</p> + +<p>"Say, Minick, look here. Mowry here says China ought to have been +included in the four-power treaty. He says——"</p> + +<p>Old man Minick cleared his throat. "You take China, now," he said, "with +her vast and practically, you might say, virgin country, why——"</p> + +<p>An apple-cheeked maid in a black dress and a white apron stopped before +him. He paused.</p> + +<p>"Housekeeper says for me to tell you your room's all ready, if you'd +like to look at it now."</p> + +<p>"Minute. Minute, my child." He waved her aside with the air of one who +pays five hundred a year for independence and freedom. The girl turned +to go. "Uh—young lady! Young lady!" She looked at him. "Tell the +housekeeper two pillows, please. Two pillows on my bed. Be sure."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. Two pillows. Yes, sir. I'll be sure."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="GIGOLO" id="GIGOLO"></a>GIGOLO</h2> + + +<p>In the first place, <i>gigolo</i> is slang. In the second place (with no +desire to appear patronizing, but one's French conversation class does +not include the <i>argot</i>), it is French slang. In the third place, the +gig is pronounced zhig, and the whole is not a respectable word. +Finally, it is a term of utter contempt.</p> + +<p>A gigolo, generally speaking, is a man who lives off women's money. In +the mad year 1922 A. W., a gigolo, definitely speaking, designated one +of those incredible and pathetic male creatures, born of the war, who, +for ten francs or more or even less, would dance with any woman wishing +to dance on the crowded floors of public tea rooms, dinner or supper +rooms in the cafés, hotels, and restaurants of France. Lean, sallow, +handsome, expert, and unwholesome, one saw them everywhere, their slim +waists and sleek heads in juxtaposition to plump, respectable American +matrons and slender, respectable American flappers. For that matter, +feminine respectability of almost every nationality (except the French) +yielded itself to the skilful guidance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> of the genus gigolo in the tango +or fox-trot. Naturally, no decent French girl would have been allowed +for a single moment to dance with a gigolo. But America, touring Europe +like mad after years of enforced absence, outnumbered all other nations +atravel ten to one.</p> + +<p>By no feat of fancy could one imagine Gideon Gory, of the Winnebago, +Wisconsin, Gorys, employed daily and nightly as a gigolo in the gilt and +marble restaurants that try to outsparkle the Mediterranean along the +Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Gideon Gory, of Winnebago, Wisconsin! Why +any one knows that the Gorys were to Winnebago what the Romanoffs were +to Russia—royal, remote, omnipotent. Yet the Romanoffs went in the +cataclysm, and so, too, did the Gorys. To appreciate the depths to which +the boy Gideon had fallen one must have known the Gorys in their glory. +It happened something like this:</p> + +<p>The Gorys lived for years in the great, ugly, sprawling, luxurious old +frame house on Cass Street. It was high up on the bluff overlooking the +Fox River and, incidentally, the huge pulp and paper mills across the +river in which the Gory money had been made. The Gorys were so rich and +influential (for Winnebago, Wisconsin) that they didn't bother to tear +down the old frame house and build a stone one, or to cover its faded +front with cosmetics of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> stucco. In most things the Gorys led where +Winnebago could not follow. They disdained to follow where Winnebago +led. The Gorys had an automobile when those vehicles were entered from +the rear and when Winnebago roads were a wallow of mud in the spring and +fall and a snow-lined trench in the winter. The family was of the town, +and yet apart from it. The Gorys knew about golf, and played it in far +foreign playgrounds when the rest of us thought of it, if we thought of +it at all, as something vaguely Scotch, like haggis. They had oriental +rugs and hardwood floors when the town still stepped on carpets; and by +the time the rest of the town had caught up on rugs the Gorys had gone +back to carpets, neutral tinted. They had fireplaces in bedrooms, and +used them, like characters in an English novel. Old Madame Gory had a +slim patent leather foot, with a buckle, and carried a sunshade when she +visited the flowers in the garden. Old Gideon was rumoured to have wine +with his dinner. Gideon Junior (father of Giddy) smoked cigarettes with +his monogram on them. Shroeder's grocery ordered endive for them, all +blanched and delicate in a wicker basket from France or Belgium, when we +had just become accustomed to head-lettuce.</p> + +<p>Every prosperous small American town has its Gory family. Every small +town newspaper relishes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the savoury tid-bits that fall from the rich +table of the family life. Thus you saw that Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Gory, +Jr., have returned from California where Mr. Gory had gone for the polo. +Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Gory, Jr., announce the birth, in New York, of a +son, Gideon III (our, in a manner of speaking, hero). Mr. and Mrs. +Gideon Gory, Jr., and son Gideon III, left to-day for England and the +continent. It is understood that Gideon III will be placed at school in +England. Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Gory, accompanied by Madame Gory, have gone +to Chicago for a week of the grand opera.</p> + +<p>Born of all this, you would have thought that young Giddy would grow up +a somewhat objectionable young man; and so, in fact, he did, though not +nearly so objectionable as he might well have been, considering things +in general and his mother in particular. At sixteen, for example, Giddy +was driving his own car—a car so exaggerated and low-slung and with +such a long predatory and glittering nose that one marvelled at the +expertness with which he swung its slim length around the corners of our +narrow tree-shaded streets. He was a real Gory, was Giddy, with his +thick waving black hair (which he tried for vain years to train into +docility), his lean swart face, and his slightly hooked Gory nose. In +appearance Winnebago pronounced him foreign looking—an attribute which +he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> later turned into a doubtful asset in Nice. On the rare occasions +when Giddy graced Winnebago with his presence you were likely to find +him pursuing the pleasures that occupied other Winnebago boys of his +age, if not station. In some miraculous way he had escaped being a snob. +Still, training and travel combined to lead him into many innocent +errors. When he dropped into Fetzer's pool shack carrying a malacca +cane, for example. He had carried a cane every day for six months in +Paris, whence he had just returned. Now it was as much a part of his +street attire as his hat—more, to be exact, for the hatless head had +just then become the street mode. There was a good game of Kelly in +progress. Giddy, leaning slightly on his stick, stood watching it. +Suddenly he was aware that all about the dim smoky little room players +and loungers were standing in attitudes of exaggerated elegance. Each +was leaning on a cue, his elbow crooked in as near an imitation of +Giddy's position as the stick's length would permit. The figure was +curved so that it stuck out behind and before; the expression on each +face was as asinine as its owner's knowledge of the comic-weekly swell +could make it; the little finger of the free hand was extravagantly +bent. The players themselves walked with a mincing step about the table. +And: "My deah fellah, what a pretty play. Mean to say, neat,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> don't you +know," came incongruously from the lips of Reddy Lennigan, whose father +ran the Lennigan House on Outagamie Street. He spatted his large hands +delicately together in further expression of approval.</p> + +<p>"Think so?" giggled his opponent, Mr. Dutchy Meisenberg. "<i>Aw</i>—fly +sweet of you to say so, old thing." He tucked his unspeakable +handkerchief up his cuff and coughed behind his palm. He turned to +Giddy. "Excuse my not having my coat on, deah boy."</p> + +<p>Just here Giddy might have done a number of things, all wrong. The game +was ended. He walked to the table, and, using the offending stick as a +cue, made a rather pretty shot that he had learned from Benoit in +London. Then he ranged the cane neatly on the rack with the cues. He +even grinned a little boyishly. "You win," he said. "My treat. What'll +you have?"</p> + +<p>Which was pretty sporting for a boy whose American training had been +what Giddy's had been.</p> + +<p>Giddy's father, on the death of old Gideon, proved himself much more +expert at dispensing the paper mill money than at accumulating it. After +old Madame Gory's death just one year following that of her husband, +Winnebago saw less and less of the three remaining members of the royal +family. The frame house on the river bluff would be closed for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> year +or more at a time. Giddy's father rather liked Winnebago and would have +been content to spend six months of the year in the old Gory house, but +Giddy's mother, who had been a Leyden, of New York, put that idea out of +his head pretty effectively.</p> + +<p>"Don't talk to me," she said, "about your duty toward the town that gave +you your money and all that kind of feudal rot because you know you +don't mean it. It bores you worse than it does me, really, but you like +to think that the villagers are pulling a forelock when you walk down +Normal Avenue. As a matter of fact they're not doing anything of the +kind. They've got their thumbs to their noses, more likely."</p> + +<p>Her husband protested rather weakly. "I don't care. I like the old +shack. I know the heating apparatus is bum and that we get the smoke +from the paper mills, but—I don't know—last year, when we had that +punk pink palace at Cannes I kept thinking——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gideon Gory raised the Leyden eyebrow. "Don't get sentimental, Gid, +for God's sake! It's a shanty, and you know it. And you know that it +needs everything from plumbing to linen. I don't see any sense in +sinking thousands in making it livable when we don't want to live in +it."</p> + +<p>"But I do want to live in it—once in a while. I'm used to it. I was +brought up in it. So was the kid.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> He likes it, too. Don't you, Giddy?" +The boy was present, as usual, at this particular scene.</p> + +<p>The boy worshipped his mother. But, also, he was honest. So, "Yeh, I +like the ol' barn all right," he confessed.</p> + +<p>Encouraged, his father went on: "Yesterday the kid was standing out +there on the bluff-edge breathing like a whale, weren't you, Giddy? And +when I asked him what he was puffing about he said he liked the smell of +the sulphur and chemicals and stuff from the paper mills, didn't you, +kid?"</p> + +<p>Shame-facedly, "Yeh," said Giddy.</p> + +<p>Betrayed thus by husband and adored son, the Leyden did battle. "You can +both stay here, then," she retorted with more spleen than elegance, "and +sniff sulphur until you're black in the face. I'm going to London in +May."</p> + +<p>They, too, went to London in May, of course, as she had known they +would. She had not known, though, that in leading her husband to England +in May she was leading him to his death as well.</p> + +<p>"All Winnebago will be shocked and grieved to learn," said the Winnebago +<i>Courier</i> to the extent of two columns and a cut, "of the sudden and +violent death in England of her foremost citizen, Gideon Gory. Death was +due to his being thrown from his horse while hunting."</p> + +<p>... To being thrown from his horse while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> hunting. Shocked and grieved +though it might or might not be, Winnebago still had the fortitude to +savour this with relish. Winnebago had died deaths natural and +unnatural. It had been run over by automobiles, and had its skull +fractured at football, and been drowned in Lake Winnebago, and struck by +lightning, and poisoned by mushrooms, and shot by burglars. But never +had Winnebago citizen had the distinction of meeting death by being +thrown from his horse while hunting. While hunting. Scarlet coats. +Hounds in full cry. Baronial halls. Hunt breakfasts. <i>Vogue.</i> <i>Vanity +Fair.</i></p> + +<p>Well! Winnebago was almost grateful for this final and most picturesque +gesture of Gideon Gory the second.</p> + +<p>The widowed Leyden did not even take the trouble personally to +superintend the selling of the Gory place on the river bluff. It was +sold by an agent while she and Giddy were in Italy, and if she was ever +aware that the papers in the transaction stated that the house had been +bought by Orson J. Hubbell she soon forgot the fact and the name. Giddy, +leaning over her shoulder while she handled the papers, and signing on +the line indicated by a legal forefinger, may have remarked:</p> + +<p>"Hubbell. That's old Hubbell, the dray man. Must be money in the draying +line."</p> + +<p>Which was pretty stupid of him, because he should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> have known that the +draying business was now developed into the motor truck business with +great vans roaring their way between Winnebago and Kaukauna, Winnebago +and Neenah, and even Winnebago and Oshkosh. He learned that later.</p> + +<p>Just now Giddy wasn't learning much of anything, and, to do him credit, +the fact distressed him not a little. His mother insisted that she +needed him, and developed a bad heart whenever he rebelled and +threatened to sever the apron-strings. They lived abroad entirely now. +Mrs. Gory showed a talent for spending the Gory gold that must have set +old Gideon to whirling in his Winnebago grave. Her spending of it was +foolish enough, but her handling of it was criminal. She loved Europe. +America bored her. She wanted to identify herself with foreigners, with +foreign life. Against advice she sold her large and lucrative interest +in the Winnebago paper mills and invested great sums in French stocks, +in Russian enterprises, in German shares.</p> + +<p>She liked to be mistaken for a French woman.</p> + +<p>She and Gideon spoke the language like natives—or nearly.</p> + +<p>She was vain of Gideon's un-American looks, and cross with him when, on +their rare and brief visits to New York, he insisted that he liked +American tailoring and American-made shoes. Once or twice, soon after +his father's death, he had said, casually,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> "You didn't like Winnebago, +did you? Living in it, I mean."</p> + +<p>"<i>Like</i> it!"</p> + +<p>"Well, these English, I mean, and French—they sort of grow up in a +place, and stay with it and belong to it, see what I mean? and it gives +you a kind of permanent feeling. Not patriotic, exactly, but solid and +native heathy and Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace and all that kind of slop."</p> + +<p>"Giddy darling, don't be silly."</p> + +<p>Occasionally, too, he said, "Look here, Julia"—she liked this modern +method of address—"look here, Julia, I ought to be getting busy. Doing +something. Here I am, nineteen, and I can't do a thing except dance +pretty well, but not as well as that South American eel we met last +week; mix a cocktail pretty well, but not as good a one as Benny the +bartender turns out at Voyot's; ride pretty well, but not as well as the +English chaps; drive a car——"</p> + +<p>She interrupted him there. "Drive a car better than even an Italian +chauffeur. Had you there, Giddy darling."</p> + +<p>She undoubtedly had Giddy darling there. His driving was little short of +miraculous, and his feeling for the intricate inside of a motor engine +was as delicate and unerring as that of a professional pianist for his +pet pianoforte. They motored a good deal, with France as a permanent +background<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> and all Europe as a playground. They flitted about the +continent, a whirl of glittering blue-and-cream enamel, tan leather +coating, fur robes, air cushions, gold-topped flasks, and petrol. Giddy +knew Como and Villa D'Este as the place where that pretty Hungarian +widow had borrowed a thousand lires from him at the Casino roulette +table and never paid him back; London as a pleasing potpourri of briar +pipes, smart leather gloves, music-hall revues, and night clubs; Berlin +as a rather stuffy hole where they tried to ape Paris and failed, but +you had to hand it to Charlotte when it came to the skating at the Eis +Palast. A pleasing existence, but unprofitable. No one saw the cloud +gathering because of cloud there was none, even of the man's-hand size +so often discerned as a portent.</p> + +<p>When the storm broke (this must be hurriedly passed over because of the +let's-not-talk-about-the-war-I'm-so-sick-of-it-aren't-you feeling) Giddy +promptly went into the Lafayette Escadrille. Later he learned never to +mention this to an American because the American was so likely to say, +"There must have been about eleven million scrappers in that outfit. +Every fella you meet's been in the Lafayette Escadrille. If all the guys +were in it that say they were they could have licked the Germans the +first day out. That outfit's worse than the old Floradora Sextette."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mrs. Gory was tremendously proud of him, and not as worried as she +should have been. She thought it all a rather smart game, and not at all +serious. She wasn't even properly alarmed about her European money, at +first. Giddy looked thrillingly distinguished and handsome in his +aviation uniform. When she walked in the Paris streets with him she +glowed like a girl with her lover. But after the first six months of it +Mrs. Gory, grown rather drawn and haggard, didn't think the whole affair +quite so delightful. She scarcely ever saw Giddy. She never heard the +drum of an airplane without getting a sick, gone feeling at the pit of +her stomach. She knew, now, that there was more to the air service than +a becoming uniform. She was doing some war work herself in an +incompetent, frenzied sort of way. With Giddy soaring high and her +foreign stocks and bonds falling low she might well be excused for the +panic that shook her from the time she opened her eyes in the morning +until she tardily closed them at night.</p> + +<p>"Let's go home, Giddy darling," like a scared child.</p> + +<p>"Where's that?"</p> + +<p>"Don't be cruel. America's the only safe place now."</p> + +<p>"Too darned safe!" This was 1915.</p> + +<p>By 1917 she was actually in need of money. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> Giddy did not know much +about this because Giddy had, roughly speaking, got his. He had the +habit of soaring up into the sunset and sitting around in a large pink +cloud like a kid bouncing on a feather bed. Then, one day, he soared +higher and farther than he knew, having, perhaps, grown careless through +over-confidence. He heard nothing above the roar of his own engine, and +the two planes were upon him almost before he knew it. They were not +French, or English, or American planes. He got one of them and would +have got clean away if the other had not caught him in the arm. The +right arm. His mechanician lay limp. Even then he might have managed a +landing but the pursuing plane got in a final shot. There followed a +period of time that seemed to cover, say, six years but that was +actually only a matter of seconds. At the end of that period Giddy, +together with a tangle of wire, silk, wood, and something that had been +the mechanician, lay inside the German lines, and you would hardly have +thought him worth the disentangling.</p> + +<p>They did disentangle him, though, and even patched him up pretty +expertly, but not so expertly, perhaps, as they might have, being enemy +surgeons and rather busy with the patching of their own injured. The +bone, for example, in the lower right arm, knitted promptly and +properly, being a young and healthy bone, but they rather over-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>looked +the matter of arm nerves and muscles, so that later, though it looked a +perfectly proper arm, it couldn't lift four pounds. His head had emerged +slowly, month by month, from swathings of gauze. What had been quite a +crevasse in his skull became only a scarlet scar that his hair pretty +well hid when he brushed it over the bad place. But the surgeon, perhaps +being overly busy, or having no real way of knowing that Giddy's nose +had been a distinguished and aristocratically hooked Gory nose, had +remoulded that wrecked feature into a pure Greek line at first sight of +which Giddy stood staring weakly into the mirror; reeling a little with +surprise and horror and unbelief and general misery. "Can this be I?" he +thought, feeling like the old man of the bramble bush in the Mother +Goose rhyme. A well-made and becoming nose, but not so fine looking as +the original feature had been, as worn by Giddy.</p> + +<p>"Look here!" he protested to the surgeon, months too late. "Look here, +this isn't my nose."</p> + +<p>"Be glad," replied that practical Prussian person, "that you have any."</p> + +<p>With his knowledge of French and English and German Giddy acted as +interpreter during the months of his invalidism and later internment, +and things were not so bad with him. He had no news of his mother, +though, and no way of knowing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> whether she had news of him. With 1918, +and the Armistice and his release, he hurried to Paris and there got the +full impact of the past year's events.</p> + +<p>Julia Gory was dead and the Gory money nonexistent.</p> + +<p>Out of the ruins—a jewel or two and some paper not quite worthless—he +managed a few thousand francs and went to Nice. There he walked in the +sunshine, and sat in the sunshine, and even danced in the sunshine, a +dazed young thing together with hundreds of other dazed young things, +not thinking, not planning, not hoping. Existing only in a state of +semi-consciousness like one recovering from a blinding blow. The francs +dribbled away. Sometimes he played baccarat and won; oftener he played +baccarat and lost. He moved in a sort of trance, feeling nothing. +Vaguely he knew that there was a sort of Conference going on in Paris. +Sometimes he thought of Winnebago, recalling it remotely, dimly, as one +is occasionally conscious of a former unknown existence. Twice he went +to Paris for periods of some months, but he was unhappy there and even +strangely bewildered, like a child. He was still sick in mind and body, +though he did not know it. Driftwood, like thousands of others, tossed +up on the shore after the storm; lying there bleached and useless and +battered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then, one day in Nice, there was no money. Not a franc. Not a centime. +He knew hunger. He knew terror. He knew desperation. It was out of this +period that there emerged Giddy, the gigolo. Now, though, the name +bristled with accent marks, thus: Gédéon Goré.</p> + +<p>This Gédéon Goré, of the Nice dansants, did not even remotely resemble +Gideon Gory of Winnebago, Wisconsin. This Gédéon Goré wore French +clothes of the kind that Giddy Gory had always despised. A slim, sallow, +sleek, sad-eyed gigolo in tight French garments, the pants rather flappy +at the ankle; effeminate French shoes with fawn-coloured uppers and +patent-leather eyelets and vamps, most despicable; a slim cane; hair +with a magnificent natural wave that looked artificially marcelled and +that was worn with a strip growing down from the temples on either side +in the sort of cut used only by French dandies and English stage +butlers. No, this was not Giddy Gory. The real Giddy Gory lay in a smart +but battered suitcase under the narrow bed in his lodgings. The suitcase +contained:</p> + +<p>Item; one grey tweed suit with name of a London tailor inside.</p> + +<p>Item; one pair Russia calf oxfords of American make.</p> + +<p>Item; one French aviation uniform with leather coat, helmet, and gloves +all bearing stiff and curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> splotches of brown or rust-colour which +you might not recognize as dried blood stains.</p> + +<p>Item; one handful assorted medals, ribbons, orders, etc.</p> + +<p>All Europe was dancing. It seemed a death dance, grotesque, convulsive, +hideous. Paris, Nice, Berlin, Budapest, Rome, Vienna, London writhed and +twisted and turned and jiggled. St. Vitus himself never imagined +contortions such as these. In the narrow side-street dance rooms of +Florence, and in the great avenue restaurants of Paris they were +performing exactly the same gyrations—wiggle, squirm, shake. And over +all the American jazz music boomed and whanged its syncopation. On the +music racks of violinists who had meant to be Elmans or Kreislers were +sheets entitled Jazz Baby Fox Trot. Drums, horns, cymbals, castanets, +sandpaper. So the mannequins and marionettes of Europe tried to whirl +themselves into forgetfulness.</p> + +<p>The Americans thought Giddy was a Frenchman. The French knew him for an +American, dress as he would. Dancing became with him a profession—no, a +trade. He danced flawlessly, holding and guiding his partner +impersonally, firmly, expertly in spite of the weak right arm—it served +well enough. Gideon Gory had always been a naturally rhythmic dancer. +Then, too, he had been fond of dancing. Years of practise had perfected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> +him. He adopted now the manner and position of the professional. As he +danced he held his head rather stiffly to one side, and a little down, +the chin jutting out just a trifle. The effect was at the same time +stiff and chic. His footwork was infallible. The intricate and imbecilic +steps of the day he performed in flawless sequence. Under his masterly +guidance the feet of the least rhythmic were suddenly endowed with +deftness and grace. One swayed with him as naturally as with an +elemental force. He danced politely and almost wordlessly unless first +addressed, according to the code of his kind. His touch was firm, yet +remote. The dance concluded, he conducted his partner to her seat, bowed +stiffly from the waist, heels together, and departed. For these services +he was handed ten francs, twenty francs, thirty francs, or more, if +lucky, depending on the number of times he was called upon to dance with +a partner during the evening. Thus was dancing, the most spontaneous and +unartificial of the Muses, vulgarized, commercialized, prostituted. +Lower than Gideon Gory, of Winnebago, Wisconsin, had fallen, could no +man fall.</p> + +<p>Sometimes he danced in Paris. During the high season he danced in Nice. +Afternoon and evening found him busy in the hot, perfumed, overcrowded +dance salons. The Negresco, the Ruhl, Maxim's, Belle Meunière, the +Casina Municipale. He learned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> to make his face go a perfect +blank—pale, cryptic, expressionless. Between himself and the other boys +of his ilk there was little or no professional comradeship. A weird lot +they were, young, though their faces were strangely lacking in the look +of youth. All of them had been in the war. Most of them had been +injured. There was Aubin, the Frenchman. The right side of Aubin's face +was rather startlingly handsome in its Greek perfection. It was like a +profile chiselled. The left side was another face—the same, and yet not +the same. It was as though you saw the left side out of drawing, or +blurred, or out of focus. It puzzled you—shocked you. The left side of +Aubin's face had been done over by an army surgeon who, though deft and +scientific, had not had a hand expert as that of the Original Sculptor. +Then there was Mazzetti, the Roman. He parted his hair on the wrong +side, and under the black wing of it was a deep groove into which you +could lay a forefinger. A piece of shell had plowed it neatly. The +Russian boy who called himself Orloff had the look in his eyes of one +who has seen things upon which eyes never should have looked. He smoked +constantly and ate, apparently, not at all. Among these there existed a +certain unwritten code and certain unwritten signals.</p> + +<p>You did not take away the paying partner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> a fellow gigolo. If in too +great demand you turned your surplus partners over to gigolos +unemployed. You did not accept less than ten francs (they all broke this +rule). Sometimes Gédéon Goré made ten francs a day, sometimes twenty, +sometimes fifty, infrequently a hundred. Sometimes not enough to pay for +his one decent meal a day. At first he tried to keep fit by walking a +certain number of miles daily along the ocean front. But usually he was +too weary to persist in this. He did not think at all. He felt nothing. +Sometimes, down deep, deep in a long-forgotten part of his being a voice +called feebly, plaintively to the man who had been Giddy Gory. But he +shut his ears and mind and consciousness and would not listen.</p> + +<p>The American girls were best, the gigolos all agreed, and they paid +well, though they talked too much. Gédéon Goré was a favourite among +them. They thought he was so foreign looking, and kind of sad and stern +and everything. His French, fluent, colloquial, and bewildering, awed +them. They would attempt to speak to him in halting and hackneyed +phrases acquired during three years at Miss Pence's Select School at +Hastings-on-the-Hudson. At the cost of about a thousand dollars a word +they would enunciate, painfully:</p> + +<p>"<i>Je pense que</i>—um—<i>que Nice est le plus belle</i>—uh—<i>ville de +France</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> + +<p>Giddy, listening courteously, his head inclined as though unwilling to +miss one conversational pearl falling from the pretty American's lips, +would appear to consider this gravely. Then, sometimes in an unexpected +burst of pure mischief, he would answer:</p> + +<p>"You said something! <i>Some</i> burg, I'm telling the world."</p> + +<p>The girl, startled, would almost leap back from the confines of his arms +only to find his face stern, immobile, his eyes sombre and reflective.</p> + +<p>"Why! Where did you pick that up?"</p> + +<p>His eyebrows would go up. His face would express complete lack of +comprehension. "<i>Pardon?</i>"</p> + +<p>Afterward, at home, in Toledo or Kansas City or Los Angeles, the girl +would tell about it. "I suppose some American girl taught it to him, +just for fun. It sounded too queer—because his French was so wonderful. +He danced divinely. A Frenchman, and so aristocratic! Think of his being +a professional partner. They have them over there, you know. Everybody's +dancing in Europe. And gay! Why, you'd never know there'd been a war."</p> + +<p>Mary Hubbell, of the Winnebago Hubbells, did not find it so altogether +gay. Mary Hubbell, with her father, Orson J. Hubbell, and her mother, +Bee Hubbell, together with what appeared to be practically the entire +white population of the United<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> States, came to Europe early in 1922, +there to travel, to play, to rest, to behold, and to turn their good +hard American dollars into cordwood-size bundles of German marks, +Austrian kronen, Italian lires, and French francs. Most of the men +regarded Europe as a wine list. In their mental geography Rheims, Rhine, +Moselle, Bordeaux, Champagne, or Würzburg were not localities but +libations. The women, for the most part, went in for tortoise-shell +combs, fringed silk shawls, jade earrings, beaded bags, and coral neck +chains. Up and down the famous thoroughfare of Europe went the absurd +pale blue tweed tailleurs and the lavender tweed cape suits of America's +wives and daughters. Usually, after the first month or two, they shed +these respectable, middle-class habiliments for what they fondly +believed to be smart Paris costumes; and you could almost invariably +tell a good, moral, church-going matron of the Middle West by the fact +that she was got up like a demimondaine of the second class, in the +naïve belief that she looked French and chic.</p> + +<p>The three Hubbells were thoroughly nice people. Mary Hubbell was more +than thoroughly nice. She was a darb. She had done a completely good job +during the 1918-1918 period, including the expert driving of a wild and +unbroken Ford up and down the shell-torn roads of France. One of those +small-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>town girls with a big-town outlook, a well-trained mind, a slim +boyish body, a good clear skin, and a steady eye that saw. Mary Hubbell +wasn't a beauty by a good many measurements, but she had her points, as +witness the number of bouquets, bundles, books, and bon-bons piled in +her cabin when she sailed.</p> + +<p>The well-trained mind and the steady seeing eye enabled Mary Hubbell to +discover that Europe wasn't so gay as it seemed to the blind; and she +didn't write home to the effect that you'd never know there'd been war.</p> + +<p>The Hubbells had the best that Europe could afford. Orson J. Hubbell, a +mild-mannered, grey-haired man with a nice flat waist-line and a good +keen eye (hence Mary's) adored his women-folk and spoiled them. During +the first years of his married life he had been Hubbell, the drayman, as +Giddy Gory had said. He had driven one of his three drays himself, +standing sturdily in the front of the red-painted wooden two-horse wagon +as it rattled up and down the main business thoroughfare of Winnebago. +But the war and the soaring freight-rates had dealt generously with +Orson Hubbell. As railroad and shipping difficulties increased the +Hubbell draying business waxed prosperous. Factories, warehouses, and +wholesale business firms could be assured that their goods would arrive +promptly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> safely, and cheaply when conveyed by a Hubbell van. So now +the three red-painted wooden horse-driven drays were magically +transformed into a great fleet of monster motor vans that plied up and +down the state of Wisconsin and even into Michigan and Illinois and +Indiana. The Orson J. Hubbell Transportation Company, you read. And +below, in yellow lettering on the red background:</p> + +<p class='center'> +Have HUBBELL Do Your HAULING. +</p> + +<p>There was actually a million in it, and more to come. The buying of the +old Gory house on the river bluff had been one of the least of Orson's +feats. And now that house was honeycombed with sleeping porches and +linen closets and enamel fittings and bathrooms white and glittering as +an operating auditorium. And there were shower baths, and blue rugs, and +great soft fuzzy bath towels and little white innocent guest towels +embroidered with curly H's whose tails writhed at you from all corners.</p> + +<p>Orson J. and Mrs. Hubbell had never been in Europe before, and they +enjoyed themselves enormously. That is to say, Mrs. Orson J. did, and +Orson, seeing her happy, enjoyed himself vicariously. His hand slid in +and out of his inexhaustible pocket almost automatically now. And "How +much?" was his favourite locution. They went everywhere, did everything. +Mary boasted a pretty fair French.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> Mrs. Hubbell conversed in the +various languages of Europe by speaking pidgin English very loud, and +omitting all verbs, articles, adverbs, and other cumbersome +superfluities. Thus, to the <i>fille de chambre</i>.</p> + +<p>"Me out now you beds." The red-cheeked one from the provinces +understood, in some miraculous way, that Mrs. Hubbell was now going out +and that the beds could be made and the rooms tidied.</p> + +<p>They reached Nice in February and plunged into its gaieties. "Just +think!" exclaimed Mrs. Hubbell rapturously, "only three francs for a +facial or a manicure and two for a marcel. It's like finding them."</p> + +<p>"If the Mediterranean gets any bluer," said Mary, "I don't think I can +stand it, it's so lovely."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hubbell, at tea, expressed a desire to dance. Mary, at tea, desired +to dance but didn't express it. Orson J. loathed tea; and the early +draying business had somewhat unfitted his sturdy legs for the lighter +movements of the dance. But he wanted only their happiness. So he looked +about a bit, and asked some questions, and came back.</p> + +<p>"Seems there's a lot of young chaps who make a business of dancing with +the women-folks who haven't dancing men along. Hotel hires 'em. Funny to +us but I guess it's all right, and quite the thing around here. You pay +'em so much a dance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> or so much an afternoon. You girls want to try +it?"</p> + +<p>"I do," said Mrs. Orson J. Hubbell. "It doesn't sound respectable. Then +that's what all those thin little chaps are who have been dancing with +those pretty American girls. They're sort of ratty looking, aren't they? +What do they call 'em? That's a nice-looking one, over there—no, +no!—dancing with the girl in grey, I mean. If that's one I'd like to +dance with him, Orson. Good land, what would the Winnebago ladies say! +What do they call 'em, I wonder."</p> + +<p>Mary had been gazing very intently at the nice-looking one over there +who was dancing with the girl in grey. She answered her mother's +question, still gazing at him. "They call them gigolos," she said, +slowly. Then, "Get that one Dad, will you, if you can? You dance with +him first, Mother, and then I'll——"</p> + +<p>"I can get two," volunteered Orson J.</p> + +<p>"No," said Mary Hubbell, sharply.</p> + +<p>The nice-looking gigolo seemed to be in great demand, but Orson J. +succeeded in capturing him after the third dance. It turned out to be a +tango, and though Mrs. Hubbell, pretty well scared, declared that she +didn't know it and couldn't dance it, the nice-looking gigolo assured +her, through the medium of Mary's interpretation, that Mrs. Hubbell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> had +only to follow his guidance. It was quite simple. He did not seem to +look directly at Mary, or at Orson J. or at Mrs. Hubbell, as he spoke. +The dance concluded, Mrs. Hubbell came back breathless, but enchanted.</p> + +<p>"He has beautiful manners," she said, aloud, in English. "And dance! You +feel like a swan when you're dancing with him. Try him, Mary." The +gigolo's face, as he bowed before her, was impassive, inscrutable.</p> + +<p>But, "Sh!" said Mary.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense! Doesn't understand a word."</p> + +<p>Mary danced the next dance with him. They danced wordlessly until the +dance was half over. Then, abruptly, Mary said in English, "What's your +name?"</p> + +<p>Close against him she felt a sudden little sharp contraction of the +gigolo's diaphragm—the contraction that reacts to surprise or alarm. +But he said, in French, "<i>Pardon?</i>"</p> + +<p>So, "What's your name?" said Mary, in French this time.</p> + +<p>The gigolo with the beautiful manners hesitated longer than really +beautiful manners should permit. But finally, "Je m'appelle Gédéon +Goré." He pronounced it in his most nasal, perfect Paris French. It +didn't sound even remotely like Gideon Gory.</p> + +<p>"My name's Hubbell," said Mary, in her pretty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> fair French. "Mary +Hubbell. I come from a little town called Winnebago."</p> + +<p>The Goré eyebrow expressed polite disinterestedness.</p> + +<p>"That's in Wisconsin," continued Mary, "and I love it."</p> + +<p>"<i>Naturellement</i>," agreed the gigolo, stiffly.</p> + +<p>They finished the dance without further conversation. Mrs. Hubbell had +the next dance. Mary the next. They spent the afternoon dancing, until +dinner time. Orson J.'s fee, as he handed it to the gigolo, was the kind +that mounted grandly into dollars instead of mere francs. The gigolo's +face, as he took it, was not more inscrutable than Mary's as she watched +him take it.</p> + +<p>From that afternoon, throughout the next two weeks, if any girl as +thoroughly fine as Mary Hubbell could be said to run after any man, Mary +ran after that gigolo. At the same time one could almost have said that +he tried to avoid her. Mary took a course of tango lessons, and urged +her mother to do the same. Even Orson J. noticed it.</p> + +<p>"Look here," he said, in kindly protest. "Aren't you getting pretty +thick with this jigger?"</p> + +<p>"Sociological study, Dad. I'm all right."</p> + +<p>"Yeh, you're all right. But how about him?"</p> + +<p>"He's all right, too."</p> + +<p>The gigolo resisted Mary's unmaidenly advances,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> and yet, when he was +with her, he seemed sometimes to forget to look sombre and blank and +remote. They seemed to have a lot to say to each other. Mary talked +about America a good deal. About her home town ... "and big elms and +maples and oaks in the yard ... the Fox River valley ... Middle West ... +Normal Avenue ... Cass Street ... Fox River paper mills...."</p> + +<p>She talked in French and English. The gigolo confessed, one day, to +understanding some English, though he seemed to speak none. After that +Mary, when very much in earnest, or when enthusiastic, spoke in her +native tongue altogether. She claimed an intense interest in European +after-war conditions, in reconstruction, in the attitude toward life of +those millions of young men who had actually participated in the +conflict. She asked questions that might have been considered +impertinent, not to say nervy.</p> + +<p>"Now you," she said, brutally, "are a person of some education, +refinement, and background. Yet you are content to dance around in +these—these—well, back home a chap might wash dishes in a cheap +restaurant or run an elevator in an east side New York loft building, +but he'd never——"</p> + +<p>A very faint dull red crept suddenly over the pallor of the gigolo's +face. They were sitting out on a bench on the promenade, facing the +ocean (in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> direct defiance on Mary's part of all rules of conduct of +respectable girls toward gigolos). Mary Hubbell had said rather brusque +things before. But now, for the first time, the young man defended +himself faintly.</p> + +<p>"For us," he replied in his exquisite French, "it is finished. For us +there is nothing. This generation, it is no good. I am no good. They are +no good." He waved a hand in a gesture that included the promenaders, +the musicians in the cafés, the dancers, the crowds eating and drinking +at the little tables lining the walk.</p> + +<p>"What rot!" said Mary Hubbell, briskly. "They probably said exactly the +same thing in Asia after Alexander had got through with 'em. I suppose +there was such dancing and general devilment in Macedonia that every one +said the younger generation had gone to the dogs since the war, and the +world would never amount to anything again. But it seemed to pick up, +didn't it?"</p> + +<p>The boy turned and looked at her squarely for the first time, his eyes +meeting hers. Mary looked at him. She even swayed toward him a little, +her lips parted. There was about her a breathlessness, an expectancy. So +they sat for a moment, and between them the air was electric, vibrant. +Then, slowly, he relaxed, sat back, slumped a little on the bench. Over +his face, that for a moment had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> alight with something vital, there +crept again the look of defeat, of sombre indifference. At sight of that +look Mary Hubbell's jaw set. She leaned forward. She clasped her fine +large hands tight. She did not look at the gigolo, but out, across the +blue Mediterranean, and beyond it. Her voice was low and a little +tremulous and she spoke in English only.</p> + +<p>"It isn't finished here—here in Europe. But it's sick. Back home, in +America, though, it's alive. Alive! And growing. I wish I could make you +understand what it's like there. It's all new, and crude, maybe, and +ugly, but it's so darned healthy and sort of clean. I love it. I love +every bit of it. I know I sound like a flag-waver but I don't care. I +mean it. And I know it's sentimental, but I'm proud of it. The kind of +thing I feel about the United States is the kind of thing Mencken sneers +at. You don't know who Mencken is. He's a critic who pretends to despise +everything because he's really a sentimentalist and afraid somebody'll +find it out. I don't say I don't appreciate the beauty of all this Italy +and France and England and Germany. But it doesn't get me the way just +the mention of a name will get me back home. This trip, for example. +Why, last summer four of us—three other girls and I—motored from +Wisconsin to California, and we drove every inch of the way ourselves. +The Santa Fé Trail! The Ocean-to-Ocean High<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>way! The Lincoln Highway! +The Dixie Highway! The Yellowstone Trail! The very sound of those words +gives me a sort of prickly feeling. They mean something so big and vital +and new. I get a thrill out of them that I haven't had once over here. +Why even this," she threw out a hand that included and dismissed the +whole sparkling panorama before her, "this doesn't begin to give the +jolt that I got out of Walla Walla, and Butte, and Missoula, and +Spokane, and Seattle, and Albuquerque. We drove all day, and ate ham and +eggs at some little hotel or lunch-counter at night, and outside the +hotel the drummers would be sitting, talking and smoking; and there were +Western men, very tanned and tall and lean, in those big two-gallon hats +and khaki pants and puttees. And there were sunsets, and sand, and +cactus and mountains, and campers and Fords. I can smell the Kansas corn +fields and I can see the Iowa farms and the ugly little raw American +towns, and the big thin American men, and the grain elevators near the +railroad stations, and I know those towns weren't the way towns ought to +look. They were ugly and crude and new. Maybe it wasn't all beautiful, +but gosh! it was real, and growing, and big and alive! Alive!"</p> + +<p>Mary Hubbell was crying. There, on the bench along the promenade in the +sunshine at Nice, she was crying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> + +<p>The boy beside her suddenly rose, uttered a little inarticulate sound, +and left her there on the bench in the sunshine. Vanished, completely, +in the crowd.</p> + +<p>For three days the Orson J. Hubbells did not see their favourite gigolo. +If Mary was disturbed she did not look it, though her eye was alert in +the throng. During the three days of their gigolo's absence Mrs. Hubbell +and Mary availed themselves of the professional services of the Italian +gigolo Mazzetti. Mrs. Hubbell said she thought his dancing was, if +anything, more nearly perfect than that What's-his-name, but his manner +wasn't so nice and she didn't like his eyes. Sort of sneaky. Mary said +she thought so, too.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless she was undoubtedly affable toward him, and talked (in +French) and laughed and even walked with him, apparently in complete +ignorance of the fact that these things were not done. Mazzetti spoke +frequently of his colleague, Goré, and always in terms of disparagement. +A low fellow. A clumsy dancer. One unworthy of Mary's swanlike grace. +Unfit to receive Orson J. Hubbell's generous fees.</p> + +<p>Late one evening, during the mid-week after-dinner dance, Goré appeared +suddenly in the doorway. It was ten o'clock. The Hubbells were dallying +with their after-dinner coffee at one of the small tables about the +dance floor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mary, keen-eyed, saw him first. She beckoned Mazzetti who stood in +attendance beside Mrs. Hubbell's chair. She snatched up the wrap that +lay at hand and rose. "It's stifling in here. I'm going out on the +Promenade for a breath of air. Come on." She plucked at Mazzetti's +sleeve and actually propelled him through the crowd and out of the room. +She saw Goré's startled eyes follow them.</p> + +<p>She even saw him crossing swiftly to where her mother and father sat. +Then she vanished into the darkness with Mazzetti. And the Mazzettis put +but one interpretation upon a young woman who strolls into the soft +darkness of the Promenade with a gigolo.</p> + +<p>And Mary Hubbell knew this.</p> + +<p>Gédéon Goré stood before Mr. and Mrs. Orson J. Hubbell. "Where is your +daughter?" he demanded, in French.</p> + +<p>"Oh, howdy-do," chirped Mrs. Hubbell. "Well, it's Mr. Goré! We missed +you. I hope you haven't been sick."</p> + +<p>"Where is your daughter?" demanded Gédéon Goré, in French. "Where is +Mary?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hubbell caught the word Mary. "Oh, Mary. Why, she's gone out for a +walk with Mr. Mazzetti."</p> + +<p>"Good God!" said Gédéon Goré, in perfectly plain English. And vanished.</p> + +<p>Orson J. Hubbell sat a moment, thinking. Then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> "Why, say, he talked +English. That young French fella talked English."</p> + +<p>The young French fella, hatless, was skimming down the Promenade des +Anglais, looking intently ahead, and behind, and to the side, and all +around in the darkness. He seemed to be following a certain trail, +however. At one side of the great wide walk, facing the ocean, was a +canopied bandstand. In its dim shadow, he discerned a wisp of white. He +made for it, swiftly, silently. Mazzetti's voice low, eager, insistent. +Mazzetti's voice hoarse, ugly, importunate. The figure in white rose. +Goré stood before the two. The girl took a step toward him, but Mazzetti +took two steps and snarled like a villain in a movie, if a villain in a +movie could be heard to snarl.</p> + +<p>"Get out of here!" said Mazzetti, in French, to Goré. "You pig! Swine! +To intrude when I talk with a lady. You are finished. Now she belongs to +me."</p> + +<p>"The hell she does!" said Giddy Gory in perfectly plain American and +swung for Mazzetti with his bad right arm. Mazzetti, after the fashion +of his kind, let fly in most unsportsmanlike fashion with his feet, +kicking at Giddy's stomach and trying to bite with his small sharp +yellow teeth. And then Giddy's left, that had learned some neat tricks +of boxing in the days of the Gory greatness, landed fairly on the +Mazzetti nose. And with a howl of pain and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> rage and terror the +Mazzetti, a hand clapped to that bleeding feature, fled in the darkness.</p> + +<p>And, "O, Giddy!" said Mary, "I thought you'd never come."</p> + +<p>"Mary. Mary Hubbell. Did you know all the time? You did, didn't you? You +think I'm a bum, don't you? Don't you?"</p> + +<p>Her hand on his shoulder. "Giddy, I've been stuck on you since I was +nine years old, in Winnebago. I kept track of you all through the war, +though I never once saw you. Then I lost you. Giddy, when I was a kid I +used to look at you from the sidewalk through the hedge of the house on +Cass. Honestly. Honestly, Giddy."</p> + +<p>"But look at me now. Why, Mary, I'm—I'm no good. Why, I don't see how +you ever knew——"</p> + +<p>"It takes more than a new Greek nose and French clothes and a bum arm to +fool me, Gid. Do you know, there were a lot of photographs of you left +up in the attic of the Cass Street house when we bought it. I know them +all by heart, Giddy. By heart.... Come on home, Giddy. Let's go home."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="NOT_A_DAY_OVER_TWENTY-ONE" id="NOT_A_DAY_OVER_TWENTY-ONE"></a>NOT A DAY OVER TWENTY-ONE</h2> + + +<p>Any one old enough to read this is old enough to remember that favourite +heroine of fiction who used to start her day by rising from her couch, +flinging wide her casement, leaning out and breathing deep the perfumed +morning air. You will recall, too, the pure white rose clambering at the +side of the casement, all jewelled with the dew of dawn. This the lady +plucked carolling. Daily she plucked it. A hardy perennial if ever there +was one. Subsequently, pressing it to her lips, she flung it into the +garden below, where stood her lover (likewise an early riser).</p> + +<p>Romantic proceeding this, but unhygienic when you consider that her rush +for the closed casement was doubtless due to the fact that her bedroom, +hermetically sealed during the night, must have grown pretty stuffy by +morning. Her complexion was probably bad.</p> + +<p>No such idyllic course marked the matin of our heroine. Her day's +beginning differed from the above in practically every detail. Thus:</p> + +<p>A—When Harrietta rose from her couch (cream<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> enamel, full-sized bed +with double hair mattress and box springs) she closed her casement with +a bang, having slept in a gale that swept her two-room-and-kitchenette +apartment on the eleventh floor in Fifty-sixth Street.</p> + +<p>B—She never leaned out except, perhaps, to flap a dust rag, because +lean as she might, defying the laws of gravity and the house +superintendent, she could have viewed nothing more than roofs and sky +and chimneys where already roofs and sky and chimneys filled the eye +(unless you consider that by screwing around and flattening one ear and +the side of your jaw against the window jamb you could almost get a +glimpse of distant green prominently mentioned in the agent's ad as +"unexcelled view of Park").</p> + +<p>C—The morning air wasn't perfumed for purposes of breathing deep, being +New York morning air, richly laden with the smell of warm asphalt, +smoke, gas, and, when the wind was right, the glue factory on the Jersey +shore across the river.</p> + +<p>D—She didn't pluck a rose, carolling, because even if, by some magic +Burbankian process, Jack's bean-stalk had been made rose-bearing it +would have been hard put to it to reach this skyscraper home.</p> + +<p>E—If she had flung it, it probably would have ended its eleven-story +flight in the hand cart of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> Messinger's butcher boy, who usually made +his first Fifty-sixth Street delivery at about that time.</p> + +<p>F—The white rose would not have been jewelled and sparkling with the +dews of dawn, anyway, as at Harrietta's rising hour (between 10.30 and +11.30 A. M.) the New York City dews, if any, have left for the day.</p> + +<p>Spartans who rise regularly at the chaste hour of seven will now regard +Harrietta with disapproval. These should be told that Harrietta never +got to bed before twelve-thirty nor to sleep before two-thirty, which, +on an eight-hour sleep count, should even things up somewhat in their +minds. They must know, too, that in one corner of her white-and-blue +bathroom reposed a pair of wooden dumb-bells, their ankles neatly +crossed. She used them daily. Also she bathed, massaged, exercised, took +facial and electric treatments; worked like a slave; lived like an +athlete in training in order to preserve her hair, skin, teeth, and +figure; almost never ate what she wanted nor as much as she liked.</p> + +<p>That earlier lady of the closed casement and the white rose probably +never even heard of a dentifrice or a cold shower.</p> + +<p>The result of Harrietta's rigours was that now, at thirty-seven, she +could pass for twenty-seven on Fifth Avenue at five o'clock (flesh-pink, +single-mesh face veil); twenty-five at a small dinner (rose-col<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>oured +shades over the candles), and twenty-two, easily, behind the amber +footlights.</p> + +<p>You will have guessed that Harrietta, the Heroine, is none other than +Harrietta Fuller, deftest of comediennes, whom you have seen in one or +all of those slim little plays in which she has made a name but no money +to speak of, being handicapped for the American stage by her +intelligence and her humour sense, and, as she would tell you, by her +very name itself.</p> + +<p>"Harrietta Fuller! Don't you see what I mean?" she would say. "In the +first place, it's hard to remember. And it lacks force. Or maybe rhythm. +It doesn't clink. It sort of humps in the middle. A name should flow. +Take a name like Barrymore—or Bernhardt—or Duse—you can't forget +them. Oh, I'm not comparing myself to them. Don't be funny. I just +mean—why, take Harrietta alone. It's deadly. A Thackeray miss, all +black silk mitts and white cotton stockings. Long ago, in the beginning, +I thought of shortening it. But Harriet Fuller sounds like a +school-teacher, doesn't it? And Hattie Fuller makes me think, somehow, +of a burlesque actress. You know. 'Hattie Fuller and Her Bouncing +Belles.'"</p> + +<p>At thirty-seven Harrietta Fuller had been fifteen years on the stage. +She had little money, a small stanch following, an exquisite technique, +and her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> fur coat was beginning to look gnawed around the edges. People +even said maddeningly: "Harrietta Fuller? I saw her when I was a kid, +years ago. Why, she must be le'see—ten—twelve—why, she must be going +on pretty close to forty."</p> + +<p>A worshipper would defend her. "You're crazy! I saw her last month when +she was playing in Cincinnati, and she doesn't look a day over +twenty-one. That's a cute play she's in—There and Back. Not much to it, +but she's so kind and natural. Made me think of Jen a little."</p> + +<p>That was part of Harrietta's art—making people think of Jen. Watching +her, they would whisper: "Look! Isn't that Jen all over? The way she +sits there and looks up at him while she's sewing."</p> + +<p>Harrietta Fuller could take lines that were stilted and shoddy and speak +them in a way to make them sound natural and distinctive and real. She +was a clear blonde, but her speaking voice had in it a contralto note +that usually accompanies brunette colouring.</p> + +<p>It surprised and gratified you, that tone, as does mellow wine when you +have expected cider. She could walk on to one of those stage library +sets that reek of the storehouse and the property carpenter, seat +herself, take up a book or a piece of handiwork, and instantly the +absurd room became a human, livable place. She had a knack of sitting, +not as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> actress ordinarily seats herself in a drawing room—feet +carefully strained to show the high arch, body posed to form a +"line"—but easily, as a woman sits in her own house. If you saw her in +the supper scene of My Mistake, you will remember how she twisted her +feet about the rungs of the straight little chair in which she sat. Her +back was toward the audience throughout the scene, according to stage +directions, yet she managed to convey embarrassment, fright, terror, +determination, decision in the agonized twisting of those expressive +feet.</p> + +<p>Authors generally claimed these bits of business as having originated +with them. For that matter, she was a favourite with playwrights, as +well she might be, considering the vitality which she injected into +their hackneyed situations. Every little while some young writer, fired +by an inflection in her voice or a nuance in her comedy, would rush back +stage to tell her that she never had had a part worthy of her, and that +he would now come to her rescue. Sometimes he kept his word, and +Harrietta, six months later, would look up from the manuscript to say: +"This is delightful! It's what I've been looking for for years. The +deftness of the comedy. And that little scene with the gardener!"</p> + +<p>But always, after the managers had finished suggesting bits that would +brighten it up, and changes that would put it over with the Western +buyers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Harrietta would regard the mutilated manuscript sorrowingly. +"But I can't play this now, you know. It isn't the same part at all. +It's—forgive me—vulgar."</p> + +<p>Then some little red-haired ingénue would get it, and it would run a +solid year on Broadway and two seasons on the road, and in all that time +Harrietta would have played six months, perhaps, in three different +plays, in all of which she would score what is known as a "personal +success." A personal success usually means bad business at the box +office.</p> + +<p>Now this is immensely significant. In the advertisements of the play in +which Harrietta Fuller might be appearing you never read:<br /><br /></p> + +<p class='center'> +HARRIETTA FULLER<br /> +In<br /> +Thus and So<br /><br /> +</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 12em;">No. It was always:</span><br /><br /></p> + +<p class='center'> +THUS AND SO<br /> + +With<br /> + +Harrietta Fuller<br /> +</p> + +<p>Between those two prepositions lies a whole theatrical world of +difference. The "In" means stardom; the "With" that the play is +considered more important than the cast.</p> + +<p>Don't feel sorry for Harrietta Fuller. Thousands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> of women have envied +her; thousands of men admired, and several have loved her devotedly, +including her father, the Rev. H. John Scoville (deceased). The H. +stands for Harry. She was named for him, of course. When he entered the +church he was advised to drop his first name and use his second as being +more fitting in his position. But the outward change did not affect his +inner self. He remained more Harry than John to the last. It was from +him Harrietta got her acting sense, her humour, her intelligence, and +her bad luck.</p> + +<p>When Harry Scoville was eighteen he wanted to go on the stage. At twenty +he entered the ministry. It was the natural outlet for his suppressed +talents. In his day and family and environment young men did not go on +the stage. The Scovilles were Illinois pioneers and lived in Evanston, +and Mrs. Scoville (Harrietta's grandmother, you understand, though +Harrietta had not yet appeared) had a good deal to say as to whether +coleslaw or cucumber pickles should be served at the Presbyterian church +suppers, along with the veal loaf and the scalloped oysters. And when +she decided on coleslaw, coleslaw it was. A firm tread had Mother +Scoville, a light hand with pastry, and a will that was adamant. She it +was who misdirected Harry's gifts toward the pulpit instead of the +stage. He never forgave her for it, though he made a great success of +his calling and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> died unsuspecting his rancour. The women of his +congregation shivered deliciously when the Rev. H. John Scoville stood +on his tiptoes at the apex of some fiery period and hurled the force of +his eloquence at them. He, the minister, was unconsciously dramatizing +himself as a minister.</p> + +<p>The dramatic method had not then come into use in the pulpit. His method +of delivery was more restrained than that of the old-time revivalist; +less analytical and detached than that of the present-day religious +lecturer.</p> + +<p>Presbyterian Evanston wending its way home to Sunday roast and ice cream +would say: "Wasn't Reverend Scoville powerful to-day! My!" They never +guessed how Reverend Scoville had had to restrain himself from +delivering Mark Antony's address to the Romans. He often did it in his +study when his gentle wife thought he was rehearsing next Sunday's +sermon.</p> + +<p>As he grew older he overcame these boyish weaknesses, but he never got +over his feeling for the stage. There were certain ill-natured gossips +who claimed to have recognized the fine, upright figure and the mobile +face with hair greying at the temples as having occupied a seat in the +third row of the balcony in the old Grand Opera House during the run of +Erminie. The elders put it down as spite talk and declared that, +personally, they didn't believe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> a word of it. The Rev. H. John did +rather startle them when he discarded the ministerial black broadcloth +for a natty Oxford suit of almost business cut. He was a pioneer in this +among the clergy. The congregation soon became accustomed to it; in +time, boasted of it as marking their progressiveness.</p> + +<p>He had a neat ankle, had the Reverend Scoville, in fine black lisle; a +merry eye; a rather grim look about the mouth, as has a man whose life +is a secret disappointment. His little daughter worshipped him. He +called her Harry. When Harrietta was eleven she was reading Lever and +Dickens and Dumas, while other little girls were absorbed in the Elsie +Series and The Wide, Wide World. Her father used to deliver his sermons +to her in private rehearsal, and her eager mobile face reflected his +every written mood.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rev!" she cried one day (it is to be regretted, but that is what +she always called him). "Oh, Rev, you should have been an actor!"</p> + +<p>He looked at her queerly. "What makes you think so?"</p> + +<p>"You're too thrilling for a minister." She searched about in her agile +mind for fuller means of making her thought clear. "It's like when +Mother cooks rose geranium leaves in her grape jell. She says they gives +it a finer flavour, but they don't really. You can't taste them for the +grapes, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> they're just wasted when they're so darling and perfumy and +just right in the garden." Her face was pink with earnestness.</p> + +<p>"D'you see what I mean, Rev?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think I see, Harry."</p> + +<p>Then she surprised him. "I'm going on the stage," she said, "and be a +great actress when I'm grown up."</p> + +<p>His heart gave a leap and a lurch. "Why do you say that?"</p> + +<p>"Because I want to. And because you didn't. It'll be as if you had been +an actor instead of a minister—only it'll be me."</p> + +<p>A bewildering enough statement to any one but the one who made it and +the one to whom it was made. She was trying to say that here was the law +of compensation working. But she didn't know this. She had never heard +of the law of compensation.</p> + +<p>Her gentle mother fought her decision with all the savagery of the +gentle.</p> + +<p>"You'll have to run away, Harry," her father said, sadly. And at +twenty-two Harrietta ran. Her objective was New York. Her father did not +burden her with advice. He credited her with the intelligence she +possessed, but he did overlook her emotionalism, which was where he made +his mistake. Just before she left he said: "Now listen, Harry. You're a +good-looking girl, and young. You'll keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> your looks for a long time. +You're not the kind of blonde who'll get wishy-washy or fat. You've got +quite a good deal of brunette in you. It crops out in your voice. It'll +help preserve your looks. Don't marry the first man who asks you or the +first man who says he'll die if you don't. You've got lots of time."</p> + +<p>That kind of advice is a good thing for the young. Two weeks later +Harrietta married a man she had met on the train between Evanston and +New York. His name was Lawrence Fuller, and Harrietta had gone to school +with him in Evanston. She had lost track of him later. She remembered, +vaguely, people had said he had gone to New York and was pretty wild. +Young as she was and inexperienced, there still was something about his +face that warned her. It was pathological, but she knew nothing of +pathology. He talked of her and looked at her and spoke, masterfully and +yet shyly, of being with her in New York. Harrietta loved the way his +hair sprang away from his brow and temples in a clean line. She shoved +the thought of his chin out of her mind. His hands touched her a good +deal—her shoulder, her knee, her wrist—but so lightly that she +couldn't resent it even if she had wanted to. When they did this, queer +little stinging flashes darted through her veins. He said he would die +if she did not marry him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> + +<p>They had two frightful years together and eight years apart before he +died, horribly, in the sanatorium whose enormous fees she paid weekly. +They had regularly swallowed her earnings at a gulp.</p> + +<p>Naturally a life like this develops the comedy sense. You can't play +tragedy while you're living it. Harrietta served her probation in stock, +road companies, one-night stands before she achieved Broadway. In five +years her deft comedy method had become distinctive; in ten it was +unique. Yet success—as the stage measures it in size of following and +dollars of salary—had never been hers.</p> + +<p>Harrietta knew she wasn't a success. She saw actresses younger, older, +less adroit, lacking her charm, minus her beauty, featured, starred, +heralded. Perhaps she gave her audiences credit for more intelligence +than they possessed, and they, unconsciously, resented this. Perhaps if +she had read the Elsie Series at eleven, instead of Dickens, she might +have been willing to play in that million-dollar success called Gossip. +It was offered her. The lead was one of those saccharine parts, vulgar, +false, and slyly carnal. She didn't in the least object to it on the +ground of immorality, but the bad writing bothered her. There was, for +example, a line in which she was supposed to beat her breast and say: +"He's my mate! He's my man! And I'm his woman!! I love him, I tell you +I—<i>love him!</i>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> + +<p>"People don't talk like that," she told the author, in a quiet aside, +during rehearsal. "Especially women. They couldn't. They use quite +commonplace idiom when they're excited."</p> + +<p>"Thanks," said the author, elaborately polite. "That's the big scene in +the play. It'll be a knockout."</p> + +<p>When Harrietta tried to speak these lines in rehearsal she began to +giggle and ended in throwing up the ridiculous part. They gave it to +that little Frankie Langdon, and the playwright's prophecy came true. +The breast-beating scene was a knockout. It ran for two years in New +York alone. Langdon's sables, chinchillas, ermines, and jewels were +always sticking out from the pages of <i>Vanity Fair</i> and <i>Vogue</i>. When +she took curtain calls, Langdon stood with her legs far apart, boyishly, +and tossed her head and looked up from beneath her lowered lids and +acted surprised and sort of gasped like a fish and bit her lip and +mumbled to herself as if overcome. The audience said wasn't she a shy, +young, bewildered darling!</p> + +<p>A hard little rip if ever there was one—Langdon—and as shy as a +man-eating crocodile.</p> + +<p>This sort of sham made Harrietta sick. She, whose very art was that of +pretending, hated pretense, affectation, "coy stuff." This was, perhaps, +unfortunate. Your Fatigued Financier prefers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> the comedy form in which a +spade is not only called a spade but a slab of iron for digging up dirt. +Harrietta never even pretended to have a cough on an opening night so +that the critics, should the play prove a failure, might say: "Harrietta +Fuller, though handicapped by a severe cold, still gave her usual +brilliant and finished performance in a part not quite worthy of her +talents." No. The plaintive smothered cough, the quick turn aside, the +heaving shoulder, the wispy handkerchief were clumsy tools beneath her +notice.</p> + +<p>There often were long periods of idleness when her soul sickened and her +purse grew lean. Long hot summers in New York when awnings, window boxes +geranium filled, drinks iced and acidulous, and Ken's motor car for +cooling drives to the beaches failed to soothe the terror in her. Thirty +... thirty-two ... thirty-four ... thirty-six....</p> + +<p>She refused to say it. She refused to think of it. She put the number +out of her mind and slammed the door on it—on that hideous number +beginning with f. At such times she was given to contemplation of her +own photographs—and was reassured. Her intelligence told her that +retouching varnish, pumice stone, hard pencil, and etching knife had all +gone into the photographer's version of this clear-eyed, fresh-lipped +blooming creature gazing back at her so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> limpidly. But, then, who didn't +need a lot of retouching? Even the youngest of them.</p> + +<p>All this. Yet she loved it. The very routine of it appealed to her +orderly nature: a routine that, were it widely known, would shatter all +those ideas about the large, loose life of the actress. Harrietta Fuller +liked to know that at such and such an hour she would be in her dressing +room; at such and such an hour on the stage; precisely at another hour +she would again be in her dressing room preparing to go home. Then the +stage would be darkened. They would be putting the scenery away. She +would be crossing the bare stage on her way home. Then she would be +home, undressing, getting ready for bed, reading. She liked a cup of +clear broth at night, or a drink of hot cocoa. It soothed and rested +her. Besides, one is hungry after two and a half hours of +high-tensioned, nerve-exhausting work. She was in bed usually by +twelve-thirty.</p> + +<p>"But you can't fall asleep like a dewy babe in my kind of job," she used +to explain. "People wonder why actresses lie in bed until noon, or +nearly. They have to, to get as much sleep as a stenographer or a clerk +or a book-keeper. At midnight I'm all keyed up and over-stimulated, and +as wide awake as an all-night taxi driver. It takes two solid hours of +reading to send me bye-bye."</p> + +<p>The world did not interest itself in that phase of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> Harrietta's life. +Neither did it find fascination in her domestic side. Harrietta did a +good deal of tidying and dusting and redding up in her own two-room +apartment, so high and bright and spotless. She liked to cook, too, and +was expert at it. Not for her those fake pictures of actresses and opera +stars in chiffon tea gowns and satin slippers and diamond chains cooking +"their favourite dish of spaghetti and creamed mushrooms," and staring +out at you bright-eyed and palpably unable to tell the difference +between salt and paprika. Harrietta liked the ticking of a clock in a +quiet room; oven smells; concocting new egg dishes; washing out lacy +things in warm soapsuds. A throw-back, probably, to her grandmother +Scoville.</p> + +<p>The worst feature of a person like Harrietta is, as you already have +discovered with some impatience, that one goes on and on, talking about +her. And the listener at last breaks out with: "This is all very +interesting, but I feel as if I know her now. What then?"</p> + +<p>Then the thing to do is to go serenely on telling, for example, how the +young thing in Harrietta Fuller's company invariably came up to her at +the first rehearsal and said tremulously: "Miss Fuller, I—you won't +mind—I just want to tell you how proud I am to be one of your company. +Playing with you. You've been my ideal ever since I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> a little g—" +then, warned by a certain icy mask slipping slowly over the brightness +of Harrietta's features—"ever so long, but I never even hoped——"</p> + +<p>These young things always learned an amazing lot from watching the deft, +sure strokes of Harrietta's craftsmanship. She was kind to them, too. +Encouraged them. Never hogged a scene that belonged to them. Never cut +their lines. Never patronized them. They usually played ingénue parts, +and their big line was that uttered on coming into a room looking for +Harrietta. It was: "Ah, <i>there</i> you are!"</p> + +<p>How can you really know Harrietta unless you realize the deference with +which she was treated in her own little sphere? If the world at large +did not acclaim her, there was no lack of appreciation on the part of +her fellow workers. They knew artistry when they saw it. Though she had +never attained stardom, she still had the distinction that usually comes +only to a star back stage. Unless she actually was playing in support of +a first-magnitude star, her dressing room was marked "A." Other members +of the company did not drop into her dressing room except by invitation. +That room was neat to the point of primness. A square of white coarse +sheeting was spread on the floor, under the chair before her dressing +table, to gather up dust and powder. It was regularly shaken or changed. +There were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> always flowers—often a single fine rose in a slender vase. +On her dressing table, in a corner, you were likely to find three or +four volumes—perhaps The Amenities of Book-Collecting; something or +other of Max Beerbohm's; a book of verse (not Amy Lowell's).</p> + +<p>These were not props designed to impress the dramatic critic who might +drop in for one of those personal little theatrical calls to be used in +next Sunday's "Chats in the Wings." They were there because Harrietta +liked them and read them between acts. She had a pretty wit of her own. +The critics liked to talk with her. Even George Jean Hathem, whose +favourite pastime was to mangle the American stage with his pen and hold +its bleeding, gaping fragments up for the edification of Budapest, +Petrograd, Vienna, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stevens Point, Wis., said +that five minutes of Harrietta Fuller's conversation was worth a +lifetime of New York stage dialogue. For that matter I think that Mr. +Beerbohm himself would not have found a talk with her altogether dull or +profitless.</p> + +<p>The leading man generally made love to her in an expert, unaggressive +way. A good many men had tried to make love to her at one time or +another. They didn't get on very well. Harrietta never went to late +suppers. Some of them complained: "When you try to make love to her she +laughs at you!" She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> wasn't really laughing at them. She was laughing at +what she knew about life. Occasionally men now married, and living dully +content in the prim suburban smugness of Pelham or New Rochelle, boasted +of past friendship with her, wagging their heads doggishly. "Little +Fuller! I used to know her well."</p> + +<p>They lied.</p> + +<p>Not that she didn't count among her friends many men. She dined with +them and they with her. They were writers and critics, lawyers and +doctors, engineers and painters. Actors almost never. They sent her +books and flowers; valued her opinion, delighted in her conversation, +wished she wouldn't sometimes look at them so quizzically. And if they +didn't always comprehend her wit, they never failed to appreciate the +contour of her face, where the thoughtful brow was contradicted by the +lovely little nose, and both were drowned in the twin wells of the +wide-apart, misleadingly limpid eyes that lay ensnaringly between.</p> + +<p>"Your eyes!" these gentlemen sometimes stammered, "the lashes are +reflected in them like ferns edging a pool."</p> + +<p>"Yes. The mascara's good for them. You'd think all that black sticky +stuff I have put on, would hurt them, but it really makes them grow, I +believe. Sometimes I even use a burnt match, and yet it——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Damn your burnt matches! I'm talking about your lashes."</p> + +<p>"So am I." She would open her eyes wide in surprise, and the lashes +could almost be said to wave at him tantalizingly, like fairy fans. (He +probably wished he could have thought of that.)</p> + +<p>Ken never talked to her about her lashes. Ken thought she was the most +beauteous, witty, intelligent woman in the world, but he had never told +her so, and she found herself wishing he would. Ken was forty-one and +Knew About Etchings. He knew about a lot of other things, too. +Difficult, complex things like Harrietta Fuller, for example. He had to +do with some intricate machine or other that was vital to printing, and +he was perfecting something connected with it or connecting something +needed for its perfection that would revolutionize the thing the machine +now did (whatever it was). Harrietta refused to call him an inventor. +She said it sounded so impecunious. They had known each other for six +years. When she didn't feel like talking he didn't say: "What's the +matter?" He never told her that women had no business monkeying with +stocks or asked her what they called that stuff her dress was made of, +or telephoned before noon. Twice a year he asked her to marry him, +presenting excellent reasons. His name was Carrigan. You'd like him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p> + +<p>"When I marry," Harrietta would announce, "which will be never, it will +be the only son of a rich iron king from Duluth, Minnesota. And I'll go +there to live in an eighteen-room mansion and pluck roses for the +breakfast room."</p> + +<p>"There are few roses in Duluth," said Ken, "to speak of. And no +breakfast rooms. You breakfast in the dining room, and in the winter you +wear flannel underwear and galoshes."</p> + +<p>"California, then. And he can be the son of a fruit king. I'm not +narrow."</p> + +<p>Harrietta was thirty-seven and a half when there came upon her a great +fear. It had been a wretchedly bad season. Two failures. The rent on her +two-room apartment in Fifty-sixth Street jumped from one hundred and +twenty-five, which she could afford, to two hundred a month, which she +couldn't. Mary—Irish Mary—her personal maid, left her in January. +Personal maids are one of the superstitions of the theatrical +profession, and an actress of standing is supposed to go hungry rather +than maidless.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you fire Irish Mary?" Ken had asked Harrietta during a period +of stringency.</p> + +<p>"I can't afford to."</p> + +<p>Ken understood, but you may not. Harrietta would have made it clear. +"Any actress who earns more than a hundred a week is supposed to have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> +maid in her dressing room. No one knows why, but it's true. I remember +in The Small-Town Girl I wore the same gingham dress throughout three +acts, but I was paying Mary twenty a week just the same. If I hadn't +some one in the company would have told some one in another company that +Harrietta Fuller was broke. It would have seeped through the director to +the manager, and next time they offered me a part they'd cut my salary. +It's absurd, but there it is. A vicious circle."</p> + +<p>Irish Mary's reason for leaving Harrietta was a good one. It would have +to be, for she was of that almost extinct species, the devoted retainer. +Irish Mary wasn't the kind of maid one usually encounters back stage. No +dapper, slim, black-and-white pert miss, with a wisp of apron and a +knowledgeous eye. An ample, big-hipped, broad-bosomed woman with an +apron like a drop curtain and a needle knack that kept Harrietta mended, +be-ribboned, beruffled, and exquisite from her garters to her coat +hangers. She had been around the theatre for twenty-five years, and her +thick, deft fingers had served a long line of illustrious +ladies—Corinne Foster, Gertrude Bennett, Lucille Varney. She knew all +the shades of grease paint from Flesh to Sallow Old Age, and if you +gained an ounce she warned you.</p> + +<p>Her last name was Lesom, but nobody re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>membered it until she brought +forward a daughter of fifteen with the request that she be given a job; +anything—walk-on, extra, chorus. Lyddy, she called her. The girl seldom +spoke. She was extremely stupid, but a marvellous mimic, and pretty +beyond belief; fragile, and yet with something common about her even in +her fragility. Her wrists had a certain flat angularity that bespoke a +peasant ancestry, but she had a singular freshness and youthful bloom. +The line of her side face from the eye socket to the chin was a +delicious thing that curved with the grace of a wing. The high cheekbone +sloped down so that the outline was heart-shaped. There were little +indentations at the corners of her mouth. She had eyes singularly clear, +like a child's, and a voice so nasal, so strident, so dreadful that when +she parted her pretty lips and spoke, the sound shocked you like a +peacock's raucous screech.</p> + +<p>Harrietta had managed to get a bit for her here, a bit for her there, +until by the time she was eighteen she was giving a fairly creditable +performance in practically speechless parts. It was dangerous to trust +her even with an "Ah, there you are!" line. The audience, startled, was +so likely to laugh.</p> + +<p>At about this point she vanished, bound for Hollywood and the movies. +"She's the little fool, just," said Irish Mary. "What'll she be wantin' +with the movies, then, an' her mother connected with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> theayter for +years an' all, and her you might say brought up in it?"</p> + +<p>But she hadn't been out there a year before the world knew her as Lydia +Lissome. Starting as an extra girl earning twenty-five a week or less, +she had managed, somehow, to get the part of Betty in the screen version +of The Magician, probably because she struck the director as being the +type; or perhaps her gift of mimicry had something to do with it, and +the youth glow that was in her face. At any rate, when the picture was +finished and released, no one was more surprised than Lyddy at the +result. They offered her three thousand a week on a three-year contract. +She wired her mother, but Irish Mary wired back: "I don't believe a word +of it hold out for five am coming." She left for the Coast. +Incidentally, she got the five for Lyddy. Lyddy signed her name to the +contract—Lydia Lissome—in a hand that would have done discredit to an +eleven-year-old.</p> + +<p>Harrietta told Ken about it, not without some bitterness: "Which only +proves one can't be too careful about picking one's parents. If my +father had been a hod carrier instead of a minister of the Gospel and a +darling old dreamer, I'd be earning five thousand a week, too."</p> + +<p>They were dining together in Harrietta's little sitting room so high up +and quiet and bright with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> cream enamel and its log fire. Almost one +entire wall of that room was window, facing south, and framing such an +Arabian Nights panorama as only a New York eleventh-story window, facing +south, can offer.</p> + +<p>Ken lifted his right eyebrow, which was a way he had when being +quizzical. "What would you do with five thousand a week, just +supposing?"</p> + +<p>"I'd do all the vulgar things that other people do who have five +thousand a week."</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't enjoy them. You don't care for small dogs or paradise +aigrettes or Italian villas in Connecticut or diamond-studded cigarette +holders or plush limousines or butlers." He glanced comprehensively +about the little room—at the baby grand whose top was pleasantly +littered with photographs and bonbon dishes and flower vases; at the +smart little fire snapping in the grate; at the cheerful reds and blues +and ochres and sombre blues and purples and greens of the books in the +open bookshelves; at the squat clock on the mantelshelf; at the gorgeous +splashes of black and gold glimpsed through the many-paned window. +"You've got everything you really want right here"—his gesture seemed, +somehow, to include himself—"if you only knew it."</p> + +<p>"You talk," snapped Harrietta, "as the Rev. H. John Scoville used to." +She had never said a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> like that before. "I'm sick of what they +call being true to my art. I'm tired of having last year's suit relined, +even if it is smart enough to be good this year. I'm sick of having the +critics call me an intelligent comedienne who is unfortunate in her +choice of plays. Some day"—a little flash of fright was there—"I'll +pick up the <i>Times</i> and see myself referred to as 'that sterling +actress.' Then I'll know I'm through."</p> + +<p>"You!"</p> + +<p>"Tell me I'm young, Ken. Tell me I'm young and beautiful and +bewitching."</p> + +<p>"You're young and beautiful and bewitching."</p> + +<p>"Ugh! And yet they say the Irish have the golden tongues."</p> + +<p>Two months later Harrietta had an offer to go into pictures. It wasn't +her first, but it undeniably was the best. The sum offered per week was +what she might usually expect to get per month in a successful stage +play. To accept the offer meant the Coast. She found herself having a +test picture taken and trying to believe the director who said it was +good; found herself expatiating on the brightness, quietness, and +general desirability of the eleventh-floor apartment in Fifty-sixth +Street to an acquaintance who was seeking a six months' city haven for +the summer.</p> + +<p>"She'll probably ruin my enamel dressing table<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> with toilet water and +ring my piano top with wet glasses and spatter grease on the kitchenette +wall. But I'll be earning a million," Harrietta announced, recklessly, +"or thereabouts. Why should I care?"</p> + +<p>She did care, though, as a naturally neat and thrifty woman cares for +her household goods which have, through years of care of them and +association with them, become her household gods. The clock on the +mantel wasn't a clock, but a plump friend with a white smiling face and +a soothing tongue; the low, ample davenport wasn't a davenport only, but +a soft bosom that pillowed her; that which lay spread shimmering beneath +her window was not New York alone—it was her View. To a woman like +this, letting her apartment furnished is like farming out her child to +strangers.</p> + +<p>She had told her lessee about her laundress and her cleaning woman and +how to handle the balky faucet that controlled the shower. She had said +good-bye to Ken entirely surrounded by his books, magazines, fruit, and +flowers. She was occupying a Pullman drawing room paid for by the +free-handed filmers. She was crossing farm lands, plains, desert. She +was wondering if all those pink sweaters and white flannel trousers +outside the Hollywood Hotel were there for the same reason that she was. +She was surveying a rather warm little room shaded by a dense tree whose +name she did not know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> She was thinking it felt a lot like her old +trouping days, when her telephone tinkled and a voice announced Mrs. +Lissome. Lissome? Lesam. Irish Mary, of course. Harrietta's maid, +engaged for the trip, had failed her at the last moment. Now her glance +rested on the two massive trunks and the litter of smart, glittering +bags that strewed the room. A relieved look crept into her eyes. A knock +at the door. A resplendent figure was revealed at its opening. The look +in Harrietta's eyes vanished.</p> + +<p>Irish Mary looked like the mother of a girl who was earning five +thousand a week. She was marcelled, silk-clad, rustling, gold-meshed, +and, oh, how real in spite of it all as she beamed upon the dazzled +Harrietta.</p> + +<p>"Out with ye!" trumpeted this figure, brushing aside Harrietta's +proffered chair. "There'll be no stayin' here for you. You're coming +along with me, then, bag <i>and</i> baggage." She glanced sharply about. +"Where's your maid, dearie?"</p> + +<p>"Disappointed me at the last minute. I'll have to get someone——"</p> + +<p>"We've plenty. You're coming up to our place."</p> + +<p>"But, Mary, I can't. I couldn't. I'm tired. This room——"</p> + +<p>"A hole. Wait till you see The Place. Gardens and breakfast rooms and +statues and fountains and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> them Jap boys runnin' up and down like mice. +We rented it for a year from that Goya Ciro. She's gone back East. How +she ever made good in pictures I don't know, and her face like a +hot-water bag for expression. Lyddy's going to build next year. They're +drawin' up the plans now. The Place'll be nothin' compared to it when +it's finished. Put on your hat. The boys'll see to your stuff here."</p> + +<p>"I can't. I couldn't. You're awfully kind, Mary dear——"</p> + +<p>Mary dear was at the telephone. "Mrs. Lissome. That's who. Send up that +Jap boy for the bags."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Lissome's name and Mrs. Lissome's commands apparently carried +heavily in Hollywood. A uniformed Jap appeared immediately as though +summoned by a genie. The bags seemed to spring to him, so quickly was he +enveloped by their glittering surfaces. He was off with the burdens, +invisible except for his gnomelike face and his sturdy bow legs in their +footman's boots.</p> + +<p>"I can't," said Harrietta, feebly, for the last time. It was her +introduction to the topsy-turvy world into which she had come. She felt +herself propelled down the stairs by Irish Mary, who wasn't Irish Mary +any more, but a Force whose orders were obeyed. In the curved drive +outside the Hollywood Hotel the little Jap was stowing the last of the +bags into the great blue car whose length from nose to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> tail seemed to +span the hotel frontage. At the wheel, rigid, sat a replica of the +footman.</p> + +<p>Irish Mary with a Japanese chauffeur. Irish Mary with a Japanese +footman. Irish Mary with a great glittering car that was as commodious +as the average theatre dressing room.</p> + +<p>"Get in, dearie. Lyddy's using the big car to-day. They're out on +location. Shootin' the last of Devils and Men."</p> + +<p>Harrietta was saying to herself: "Don't be a nasty snob, Harry. This is +a different world. Think of the rotten time Alice would have had in +Wonderland if she hadn't been broad-minded. Take it as it comes."</p> + +<p>Irish Mary was talking as they sped along through the hot white +Hollywood sunshine.... "Stay right with us as long as you like, dearie, +but if after you're workin' you want a place of your own, I know of just +the thing you can rent furnished, and a Jap gardener and house man and +cook right on the places besides——"</p> + +<p>"But I'm not signed for five thousand a week, like Lydia," put in +Harrietta.</p> + +<p>"I know what you're signed for. 'Twas me put 'em up to it, an' who else! +'Easy money,' I says, 'an' why shouldn't she be gettin' some of it?' +Lyddy spoke to Gans about it. What Lyddy says goes. She's a good girl, +Lyddy is, an' would you believe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> the money an' all hasn't gone to her +brains, though what with workin' like a horse an' me to steady her, an' +shrewder than the lawyers themself, if I do say it, she ain't had much +chance. And here's The Place."</p> + +<p>And here was The Place. Sundials, rose gardens, gravel paths, dwarf +trees, giant trees, fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts, goldfish, +statues, verandas, sleeping porches, awnings, bird baths, pergolas.</p> + +<p>Inside more Japs. Maids. Rooms furnished like the interior of movie sets +that Harrietta remembered having seen. A bedroom, sitting room, dressing +room, and bath all her own in one wing of the great white palace, only +one of thousands of great white palaces scattered through the hills of +Hollywood. The closet for dresses, silk-lined and scented, could have +swallowed whole her New York bedroom.</p> + +<p>"Lay down," said Irish Mary, "an' get easy. Lyddy won't be home till six +if she's early, an' she'll prob'bly be in bed by nine now they're +rushin' the end of the picture, an' she's got to be on the lot made up +by nine or sooner."</p> + +<p>"Nine—in the morning!"</p> + +<p>"Well, sure! You soon get used to it. They've got to get all the +daylight they can, an' times the fog's low earlier, or they'd likely +start at seven or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> eight. You look a little beat, dearie. Lay down. I'll +have you unpacked while we're eatin'."</p> + +<p>But Harrietta did not lie down. She went to the window. Below a small +army of pigmy gardeners were doing expert things to flower beds and +bushes that already seemed almost shamelessly prolific. Harrietta +thought, suddenly, of her green-painted flower boxes outside the +eleventh-story south window in the New York flat. Outside her window +here a great scarlet hibiscus stuck its tongue out at her. Harrietta +stuck her tongue out at it, childishly, and turned away. She liked a +certain reticence in flowers, as in everything else. She sat down at the +desk, took up a sheet of lavender and gold paper and the great lavender +plumed pen. The note she wrote to Ken was the kind of note that only Ken +would understand, unless you've got into the way of reading it once a +year or so, too:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Ken, dear, I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole, and +yet—and yet—it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life.</p></div> + +<p>Two weeks later, when she had begun to get used to her new work, her new +life, the strange hours, people, jargon, she wrote him another cryptic +note:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Alice—"Well, in our country you'd generally get to somewhere +else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as I've been doing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> + +<p>Red Queen—"Here it takes all the running you can do to keep in the +same place."</p></div> + +<p>In those two weeks things had happened rather breathlessly. Harrietta +had moved from the splendours of The Place to her own rose-embowered +bungalow. Here, had she wanted to do any casement work with a white +rose, like that earlier heroine, she could easily have managed it had +not the early morning been so feverishly occupied in reaching the lot in +time to be made up by nine. She soon learned the jargon. "The lot" meant +the studio in which she was working, and its environs. "We're going to +shoot you this morning," meant that she would be needed in to-day's +scenes. Often she was in bed by eight at night, so tired that she could +not sleep. She wondered what the picture was about. She couldn't make +head or tail of it.</p> + +<p>They were filming J. N. Gardner's novel, Romance of Arcady, but they had +renamed it Let's Get a Husband. The heroine in the novel was the young +wife of twenty-seven who had been married five years. This was +Harrietta's part. In the book there had been a young girl, too—a +saccharine miss of seventeen who was the minor love interest. This was +Lydia Lissome's part. Slowly it dawned on Harrietta that things had been +nightmarishly tampered with in the film version, and that the change in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> +name was the least of the indignities to which the novel had been +subjected.</p> + +<p>It took Harrietta some time to realize this because they were not taking +the book scenes in their sequence. They took them according to light, +convenience, location. Indoor scenes were taken in one group, so that +the end of the story might often be the first to be filmed.</p> + +<p>For a week Harrietta was dressed, made up, and ready for work at nine +o'clock, and for a week she wasn't used in a single scene. The hours of +waiting made her frantic. The sun was white hot. Her little dressing +room was stifling. She hated her face with its dead-white mask and +blue-lidded eyes. When, finally, her time came she found that after +being dressed and ready from nine until five-thirty daily she was +required, at 4:56 on the sixth day, to cross the set, open a door, stop, +turn, appear to be listening, and recross the set to meet someone +entering from the opposite side. This scene, trivial as it appeared, was +rehearsed seven times before the director was satisfied with it.</p> + +<p>The person for whom she had paused, turned, and crossed was Lydia +Lissome. And Lydia Lissome, it soon became evident, had the lead in this +film. In the process of changing from novel to scenario, the Young Wife +had become a rather middle-aged wife, and the Flapper of seventeen had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> +become the heroine. And Harrietta Fuller, erstwhile actress of youthful +comedy parts for the stage, found herself moving about in black velvet +and pearls and a large plumed fan as a background for the white ruffles +and golden curls and sunny scenes in which Lydia Lissome held the +camera's eye.</p> + +<p>For years Harrietta Fuller's entrance during a rehearsal always had +created a little stir among the company. This one rose to give her a +seat; that one made her a compliment; Sam Klein, the veteran director, +patted her cheek and said: "You're going to like this part, Miss Fuller. +And they're going to eat it up. <i>You</i> see." The author bent over her in +mingled nervousness and deference and admiration. The Young Thing who +was to play the ingénue part said shyly: "Oh, Miss Fuller, may I tell +you how happy I am to be playing with you? You've been my ideal, etc."</p> + +<p>And now Harrietta Fuller, in black velvet, was the least important +person on the lot. No one was rude to her. Everyone was most kind, in +fact. Kind! To Harrietta Fuller! She found that her face felt stiff and +expressionless after long hours of waiting, waiting, and an elderly +woman who was playing a minor part showed her how to overcome this by +stretching her face, feature for feature, as a dancer goes through +limbering exercises in the wings. The woman had been a trouper in the +old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> days of one-night stands. Just before she stepped in front of the +camera you saw her drawing down her face grotesquely, stretching her +mouth to form an oval, dropping her jaw, twisting her lips to the right, +to the left, rolling her eyes round and round. It was a perfect lesson +in facial calisthenics, and Harrietta was thankful for it. Harrietta was +interested in such things—interested in them, and grateful for what +they taught her.</p> + +<p>She told herself that she didn't mind the stir that Lydia Lissome made +when she was driven up in the morning in her great blue limousine with +the two Japs sitting so straight and immobile in front, like twin +Nipponese gods. But she did. She told herself she didn't mind when the +director said: "Miss Fuller, if you'll just watch Miss Lissome work. She +has perfect picture tempo." But she did. The director was the +new-fashioned kind, who spoke softly, rehearsed you almost privately, +never bawled through a megaphone. A slim young man in a white shirt and +flannel trousers and a pair of Harvard-looking glasses. Everybody was +young. That was it! Not thirty, or thirty-two, or thirty-four, or +thirty-seven, but young. Terribly, horribly, actually young. That was +it.</p> + +<p>Harrietta Fuller was too honest not to face this fact squarely. When she +went to a Thursday-night dance at the Hollywood Hotel she found herself +in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> a ballroom full of slim, pliant, corsetless young things of +eighteen, nineteen, twenty. The men, with marcelled hair and slim feet +and sunburnt faces, were mere boys. As juveniles on the stage they might +have been earning seventy-five or one hundred or one hundred and fifty +dollars a week. Here they owned estates, motor cars in fleets, power +boats; had secretaries, valets, trainers. Their technique was perfect +and simple. They knew their work. When they kissed a girl, or entered a +room, or gazed after a woman, or killed a man in the presence of a woman +(while working) they took off their hats. Turned slowly, and took off +their hats. They were mannerly, too, outside working hours. They treated +Harrietta with boyish politeness—when they noticed her at all.</p> + +<p>"Oh, won't you have this chair, Miss Fuller? I didn't notice you were +standing."</p> + +<p>They didn't notice she was standing!</p> + +<p>"What are you doing, Miss—ah—Fuller? Yes, you did say Fuller. +Names—— Are you doing a dowager bit?"</p> + +<p>"Dowager bit?"</p> + +<p>"I see. You're new to the game, aren't you? I saw you working to-day. We +always speak of these black-velvet parts as dowager bits. Just excuse +me. I see a friend of mine——" The friend of mine would be a willow +wand with golden curls, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> what Harrietta rather waspishly called a +Gunga Din costume. She referred to that Kipling description in which:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The uniform 'e wore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Was nothin' much before,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"They're wearing them that way here in Hollywood," she wrote Ken. She +wrote Ken a good many things. But there were, too, a good many things +she did not write him.</p> + +<p>At the end of the week she would look at her check—and take small +comfort. "You've got everything you really want right here," Ken had +said, "if you only knew it."</p> + +<p>If only she had known it.</p> + +<p>Well, she knew it now. Now, frightened, bewildered, resentful. +Thirty-seven. Why, thirty-seven was old in Hollywood. Not middle-aged, +or getting on, or well preserved, but old. Even Lydia Lissome, at +twenty, always made them put one thickness of chiffon over the camera's +lens before she would let them take the close-ups. Harrietta thought of +that camera now as a cruel Cyclops from whose hungry eye nothing +escaped—wrinkles, crow's-feet—nothing.</p> + +<p>They had been working two months on the picture. It was almost finished. +Midsummer. Harrietta's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> little bungalow garden was ablaze with roses, +dahlias, poppies, asters, strange voluptuous flowers whose names she did +not know. The roses, plucked and placed in water, fell apart, petal by +petal, two hours afterward. From her veranda she saw the Sierra Madre +range and the foothills. She thought of her "unexcelled view of Park" +which could be had by flattening one ear and the side of your face +against the window jamb.</p> + +<p>The sun came up, hard and bright and white, day after day. Hard and +white and hot and dry. "Like a woman," Harrietta thought, "who wears a +red satin gown all the time. You'd wish she'd put on gingham just once, +for a change." She told herself that she was parched for a walk up +Riverside Drive in a misty summer rain, the water sloshing in her shoes.</p> + +<p>"Happy, my ducky?" Irish Mary would say, beaming upon her.</p> + +<p>"Perfectly," from Harrietta.</p> + +<p>"It's time, too. Real money you're pullin' down here. And a paradise if +ever there was one."</p> + +<p>"I notice, though, that as soon as they've completed a picture they take +the Overland back to New York and make dates with each other for lunch +at the Claridge, like matinée girls."</p> + +<p>Irish Mary flapped a negligent palm. "Ah, well, change is what we all +want, now and then." She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> looked at Harrietta sharply. "You're not +wantin' to go back, are ye?"</p> + +<p>"N-no," faltered Harrietta. Then, brazenly, hotly: "Yes, yes!" ending, +miserably, with: "But my contract. Six months."</p> + +<p>"You can break it, if you're fool enough, when they've finished this +picture, though why you should want to——" Irish Mary looked as +belligerent as her kindly Celtic face could manage.</p> + +<p>But it was not until the last week of the filming of Let's get a Husband +that Harrietta came to her and said passionately: "I do! I do!"</p> + +<p>"Do what?" Irish Mary asked, blankly.</p> + +<p>"Do want to break my contract. You said I could after this picture."</p> + +<p>"Sure you can. They hired you because I put Lyddy up to askin' them to. +I'd thought you'd be pleased for the big money an' all. There's no +pleasin' some."</p> + +<p>"It isn't that. You don't understand. To-day——"</p> + +<p>"Well, what's happened to-day that's so turrible, then?"</p> + +<p>But how could Harrietta tell her? "To-day——" she began again, +faltered, stopped. To-day, you must know, this had happened: It was the +Big Scene of the film. Lydia Lissome, in black lace night<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>gown and +ermine negligee, her hair in marcel waves, had just been "shot" for it.</p> + +<p>"Now then, Miss Fuller," said young Garvey, the director, "you come into +the garden, see? You've noticed Joyce go out through the French window +and you suspect she's gone to meet Talbot. We show just a flash of you +looking out of the drawing-room windows into the garden. Then you just +glance over your shoulder to where your husband is sitting in the +library, reading, and you slip away, see? Then we jump to where you find +them in the garden. Wait a minute"—He consulted the sheaf of +typewritten sheets in his hand—"yeh—here it says: 'Joyce is keeping +her tryst under the great oak in the garden with her lover.' Yeh. Wait a +minute ... 'tryst under tree with'—well, you come quickly forward—down +to about here—and you say: 'Ah, <i>there</i> you are!'"</p> + +<p>Harrietta looked at him for a long, long minute. Her lips were parted. +Her breath came quickly. She spoke: "I say—<i>what?</i>"</p> + +<p>"You say: 'Ah, <i>there</i> you are.'"</p> + +<p>"Never!" said Harrietta Fuller, and brought her closed fist down on her +open palm for emphasis. "Never!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>It was August when she again was crossing desert, plains, and farmlands. +It was the tail-end of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> dusty, hot, humid August in New York when Ken +stood at the station, waiting. As he came forward, raising one arm, her +own arm shot forward in quick protest, even while her glad eyes held +his.</p> + +<p>"Don't take it off!"</p> + +<p>"What off?"</p> + +<p>"Your hat. Don't take it off. Kiss me—but leave your hat on."</p> + +<p>She clutched his arm. She looked up at him. They were in the taxi bound +for Fifty-sixth Street. "She moved? She's out? She's gone? You told her +I'd pay her anything—a bonus——" Then, as he nodded, she leaned back, +relaxed. Something in her face prompted him.</p> + +<p>"You're young and beautiful and bewitching," said Ken.</p> + +<p>"Keep on saying it," pleaded Harrietta. "Make a chant of it." ...</p> + +<p>Sam Klein, the veteran, was the first to greet her when she entered the +theatre at that first September rehearsal. The company was waiting for +her. She wasn't late. She had just pleasantly escaped being unpunctual. +She came in, cool, slim, electric. Then she hesitated. For the fraction +of a second she hesitated. Then Sam Klein greeted her: "Company's +waiting, Miss Fuller, if you're ready." And the leading man came +forward, a flower in his buttonhole, carefully tailored and slightly +yellow as a lead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>ing man of forty should be at 10:30 <span class="smcap">A. M.</span> "How +wonderful you're looking, Harrietta," he said.</p> + +<p>Sam Klein took her aside. "You're going to make the hit of your career +in this part, Miss Fuller. Yessir, dear, the hit of your career. You +mark my words."</p> + +<p>"Don't you think," stammered Harrietta—"don't you think it will take +someone—someone—younger—to play the part?"</p> + +<p>"Younger than what?"</p> + +<p>"Than I."</p> + +<p>Sam Klein stared. Then he laughed. "Younger than you! Say, listen, do +you want to get the Gerry Society after me?"</p> + +<p>And as he turned away a Young Thing with worshipful eyes crept up to +Harrietta's side and said tremulously: "Oh, Miss Fuller, this is my +first chance on Broadway, and may I tell you how happy I am to be +playing with you? You've been my ideal ever since I was a—for a long, +long time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="HOME_GIRL" id="HOME_GIRL"></a>HOME GIRL</h2> + + +<p>Wilson avenue, Chicago, is not merely an avenue but a district; not only +a district but a state of mind; not a state of mind alone but a +condition of morals. For that matter, it is none of these things so much +as a mode of existence. If you know your Chicago—which you probably +don't—(<i>sotto voce</i> murmur, Heaven forbid!)—you are aware that, long +ago, Wilson Avenue proper crept slyly around the corner and achieved a +clandestine alliance with big glittering Sheridan Road; which escapade +changed the demure thoroughfare into Wilson Avenue improper.</p> + +<p>When one says "A Wilson Avenue girl," the mind—that is, the Chicago +mind—pictures immediately a slim, daring, scented, exotic creature +dressed in next week's fashions; wise-eyed; doll-faced; rapacious. When +chiffon stockings are worn Wilson Avenue's hosiery is but a film over +the flesh. Aigrettes and mink coats are its winter uniform. A feverish +district this, all plate glass windows and delicatessen dinners and +one-room-and-kitchenette<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> apartments, where light housekeepers take +their housekeeping too lightly.</p> + +<p>At six o'clock you are likely to see Wilson Avenue scurrying about in +its mink coat and its French heels and its crêpe frock, assembling its +haphazard dinner. Wilson Avenue food, as displayed in the ready-cooked +shops, resembles in a startling degree the Wilson Avenue ladies +themselves: highly coloured, artificial, chemically treated, tempting to +the eye, but unnutritious. In and out of the food emporia these dart, +buying dabs of this and bits of that. Chromatic viands. Vivid scarlet, +orange, yellow, green. A strip of pimento here. A mound of mayonnaise +there. A green pepper stuffed with such burden of deceit as no honest +green pepper ever was meant to hold. Two eggs. A quarter-pound of your +best creamery butter. An infinitesimal bottle of cream. "<i>And</i> what +else?" says the plump woman in the white bib-apron, behind the counter. +"<i>And</i> what else?" Nothing. I guess that'll be all. Mink coats prefer to +dine out.</p> + +<p>As a cripple displays his wounds and sores, proudly, so Wilson Avenue +throws open its one-room front door with a grandiloquent gesture as it +boasts, "Two hundred and fifty a month!" Shylock, purchasing a +paper-thin slice of pinky ham in Wilson Avenue, would know his own early +Venetian transaction to have been pure philanthropy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> + +<p>It took Raymond and Cora Atwater twelve years to reach this Wilson +Avenue, though they carried it with them all the way. They had begun +their married life in this locality before it had become a definite +district. Twelve years ago the neighbourhood had shown no signs of +mushrooming into its present opulence. Twelve years ago Raymond, +twenty-eight, and Cora, twenty-four, had taken a six-room flat at Racine +and Sunnyside. Six rooms. Modern. Light. Rental, $28.50 per month.</p> + +<p>"But I guess I can manage it, all right," Raymond had said. "That isn't +so terrible—for six rooms."</p> + +<p>Cora's full under lip had drawn itself into a surprisingly thin straight +line. Later, Raymond came to recognize the meaning of that labial +warning. "We don't need all those rooms. It's just that much more work."</p> + +<p>"I don't want you doing your own work. Not unless you want to. At first, +maybe, it'd be sort of fun for you. But after a while you'll want a girl +to help. That'll take the maid's room off the kitchen."</p> + +<p>"Well, supposing? That leaves an extra room, anyway."</p> + +<p>A look came into Raymond's face. "Maybe we'll need that, too—later. +Later on." He actually could have been said to blush, then, like a boy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> +There was much of the boy in Raymond at twenty-eight.</p> + +<p>Cora did not blush.</p> + +<p>Raymond had married Cora because he loved her; and because she was what +is known as a "home girl." From the first, business girls—those alert, +pert, confident little sparrows of office and shop and the street at +lunch hour—rather terrified him. They gave you as good as you sent. +They were always ready with their own nickel for carfare. You never knew +whether they were laughing at you or not. There was a little girl named +Calhoun in the binoculars (Raymond's first Chicago job was with the +Erwin H. Nagel Optical Company on Wabash). The Calhoun girl was smart. +She wore those plain white waists. Tailored, Raymond thought they called +them. They made her skin look fresh and clear and sort of downy-blooming +like the peaches that grew in his own Michigan state back home. Or +perhaps only girls with clear fresh skins could wear those plain white +waist things. Raymond had heard that girls thought and schemed about +things that were becoming to them, and then stuck to those things. He +wondered how the Calhoun girl might look in a fluffy waist. But she +never wore one down to work. When business was dull in the motor and +sun-glasses (which was where he held forth) Raymond would stroll over to +Laura<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> Calhoun's counter and talk. He would talk about the Invention. He +had no one else to talk to about it. No one he could trust, or who +understood.</p> + +<p>The Calhoun girl, polishing the great black eyes of a pair of field +glasses, would look up brightly to say, "Well, how's the Invention +coming on?" Then he would tell her.</p> + +<p>The Invention had to do with spectacles. Not only that, if you are a +wearer of spectacles of any kind, it has to do with you. For now, twelve +years later, you could not well do without it. The little contraption +that keeps the side-piece from biting into your ears—that's Raymond's.</p> + +<p>Knowing, as we do, that Raymond's wife is named Cora we know that the +Calhoun girl of the fresh clear skin, the tailored white shirtwaists, +and the friendly interest in the Invention, lost out. The reason for +that was Raymond's youth, and Raymond's vanity, and Raymond's +unsophistication, together with Lucy Calhoun's own honesty and +efficiency. These last qualities would handicap any girl in love, no +matter how clear her skin or white her shirtwaist.</p> + +<p>Of course, when Raymond talked to her about the Invention she should +have looked adoringly into his eyes and said, "How perfectly +<i>wonderful</i>! I don't see how you think of such things."</p> + +<p>What she said, after studying its detail thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>fully for a moment, +was: "Yeh, but look. If this little tiny wire had a spring +underneath—just a little bit of spring—it'd take all the pressure off +when you wear a hat. Now women's hats are worn so much lower over their +ears, d'you see? That'd keep it from pressing. Men's hats, too, for that +matter."</p> + +<p>She was right. Grudgingly, slowly, he admitted it. Not only that, he +carried out her idea and perfected the spectacle contrivance as you know +it to-day. Without her suggestion it would have had a serious flaw. He +knew he ought to be grateful. He told himself that he was grateful. But +in reality he was resentful. She was a smart girl, but—well—a fella +didn't feel comfortable going with a girl that knew more than he did. He +took her to the theatre—it was before the motion picture had attained +its present-day virulence. She enjoyed it. So did he. Perhaps they might +have repeated the little festivity and the white shirtwaist might have +triumphed in the end. But that same week Raymond met Cora.</p> + +<p>Though he had come to Chicago from Michigan almost a year before, he +knew few people. The Erwin H. Nagel Company kept him busy by day. The +Invention occupied him at night. He read, too, books on optometry. Don't +think that he was a Rollo. He wasn't. But he was naturally some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>what +shy, and further handicapped by an unusually tall lean frame which he +handled awkwardly. If you had a good look at his eyes you forgot his +shyness, his leanness, his awkwardness, his height. They were the +keynote of his gentle, studious, kindly, humorous nature. But Chicago, +Illinois, is too busy looking to see anything. Eyes are something you +see with, not into.</p> + +<p>Two of the boys at Nagel's had an engagement for the evening with two +girls who were friends. On the afternoon of that day one of the boys +went home at four with a well-developed case of grippe. The other +approached Raymond with his plea.</p> + +<p>"Say, Atwater, help me out, will you? I can't reach my girl because +she's downtown somewheres for the afternoon with Cora. That's her girl +friend. And me and Harvey was to meet 'em for dinner, see? And a show. +I'm in a hole. Help me out, will you? Go along and fuss Cora. She's a +nice girl. Pretty, too, Cora is. Will you, Ray? Huh?"</p> + +<p>Ray went. By nine-thirty that evening he had told Cora about the +Invention. And Cora had turned sidewise in her seat next to him at the +theatre and had looked up at him adoringly, awe-struck. "Why, how +perfectly <i>wonderful</i>! I don't see how you think of such things."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's nothing. I got a lot of ideas. Things I'm going to work out. +Say, I won't always be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> plugging down at Nagel's, believe me. I got a +lot of ideas."</p> + +<p>"Really! Why, you're an inventor, aren't you! Like Edison and those. My, +it must be wonderful to think of things out of your head. Things that +nobody's ever thought of before."</p> + +<p>Ray glowed. He felt comfortable, and soothed, and relaxed and +stimulated. And too large for his clothes. "Oh, I don't know. I just +think of things. That's all there is to it. That's nothing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't it! No, I guess not. I've never been out with a real inventor +before ... I bet you think I'm a silly little thing."</p> + +<p>He protested, stoutly. "I should say not." A thought struck him. "Do you +do anything? Work downtown somewheres, or anything?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. Her lips pouted. Her eyebrows made pained twin +crescents. "No. I don't do anything. I was afraid you'd ask that." She +looked down at her hands—her white, soft hands with little dimples at +the finger-bases. "I'm just a home girl. That's all. A home girl. Now +you <i>will</i> think I'm a silly stupid thing." She flashed a glance at him, +liquid-eyed, appealing.</p> + +<p>He was surprised (she wasn't) to find his hand closed tight and hard +over her soft dimpled one. He was terror-stricken (she wasn't) to hear +his voice saying, "I think you're wonderful. I think you're<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> the most +wonderful girl I ever saw, that's what." He crushed her hand and she +winced a little. "Home girl."</p> + +<p>Cora's name suited her to a marvel. Her hair was black and her colouring +a natural pink and white, which she abetted expertly. Cora did not wear +plain white tailored waists. She wore thin, fluffy, transparent things +that drew your eyes and fired your imagination. Raymond began to call +her Coral in his thoughts. Then, one evening, it slipped out. Coral. She +liked it. He denied himself all luxuries and most necessities and bought +her a strand of beads of that name, presenting them to her stammeringly, +clumsily, tenderly. Tender pink and cream, they were, like her cheeks, +he thought.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ray, for me! How darling! You naughty boy!... But I'd rather have +had those clear white ones, without any colouring. They're more stylish. +Do you mind?"</p> + +<p>When he told Laura Calhoun she said, "I hope you'll be very happy. She's +a lucky girl. Tell me about her, will you?"</p> + +<p>Would he! His home girl!</p> + +<p>When he had finished she said, quietly, "Oh, yes."</p> + +<p>And so Raymond and Cora were married and went to live in six-room +elegance at Sunnyside and Racine. The flat was furnished sumptuously in +Mission and those red and brown soft leather cush<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>ions with Indian heads +stamped on them. There was a wooden rack on the wall with six monks' +heads in coloured plaster, very life-like, stuck on it. This was a +pipe-rack, though Raymond did not smoke a pipe. He liked a mild cigar. +Then there was a print of Gustave Richter's "Queen Louise" coming down +that broad marble stair, one hand at her breast, her great girlish eyes +looking out at you from the misty folds of her scarf. What a lot of the +world she has seen from her stairway! The shelf that ran around the +dining room wall on a level with your head was filled with steins in +such shapes and colours as would have curdled their contents—if they +had ever had any contents.</p> + +<p>They planned to read a good deal, evenings. Improve their minds. It was +Ray's idea, but Cora seconded it heartily. This was before their +marriage.</p> + +<p>"Now, take history alone," Ray argued: "American history. Why, you can +read a year and hardly know the half of it. That's the trouble. People +don't know the history of their own country. And it's interesting, too, +let me tell you. Darned interesting. Better'n novels, if folks only knew +it."</p> + +<p>"My, yes," Cora agreed. "And French. We could take up French, evenings. +I've always wanted to study French. They say if you know French you can +travel anywhere. It's all in the accent;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> and goodness knows I'm quick +at picking up things like that."</p> + +<p>"Yeh," Ray had said, a little hollowly, "yeh, French. Sure."</p> + +<p>But, somehow, these literary evenings never did materialize. It may have +been a matter of getting the books. You could borrow them from the +public library, but that made you feel so hurried. History was something +you wanted to take your time over. Then, too, the books you wanted never +were in. You could buy them. But buying books like that! Cora showed her +first real display of temper. Why, they came in sets and cost as much as +twelve or fifteen dollars. Just for books! The literary evenings +degenerated into Ray's thorough scanning of the evening paper, followed +by Cora's skimming of the crumpled sheets that carried the department +store ads, the society column, and the theatrical news. Raymond began to +use the sixth room—the unused bedroom—as a workshop. He had perfected +the spectacle contrivance and had made the mistake of selling his rights +to it. He got a good sum for it.</p> + +<p>"But I'll never do that again," he said, grimly. "Somebody'll make a +fortune on that thing." He had unwisely told Cora of this transaction. +She never forgave him for it. On the day he received the money for it he +had brought her home a fur set of baum marten. He thought the stripe in +it beau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>tiful. There was a neckpiece known as a stole, and a large muff.</p> + +<p>"Oh, honey!" Cora had cried. "Aren't you <i>fun</i>-ny!" She often said that, +always with the same accent. "Aren't you <i>fun</i>-ny!"</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you let me pick it out? They're wearing Persian lamb sets."</p> + +<p>"Oh. Well, maybe the feller'll change it. It's all paid for, but maybe +he'll change it."</p> + +<p>"Do you mind? It may cost a little bit more. You don't mind my changing +it though, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No. No-o-o-o! Not a bit."</p> + +<p>They had never furnished the unused bedroom as a bedroom. When they +moved out of the flat at Racine and Sunnyside into one of those new +four-room apartments on Glengyle the movers found only a long rough +work-table and a green-shaded lamp in that sixth room. Ray's delicate +tools and implements were hard put to it to find a resting place in the +new four-room apartment. Sometimes Ray worked in the bathroom. He grew +rather to like the white-tiled place, with its look of a laboratory. But +then, he didn't have as much time to work at home as he formerly had +had. They went out more evenings.</p> + +<p>The new four-room flat rented at sixty dollars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> "Seems the less room +you have the more you pay," Ray observed.</p> + +<p>"There's no comparison. Look at the neighbourhood! And the living room's +twice as big."</p> + +<p>It didn't seem to be. Perhaps this was due to its furnishings. The +Mission pieces had gone to the second-hand dealer. Ray was assistant +manager of the optical department at Nagel's now and he was getting +royalties on a new smoked glass device. There were large over-stuffed +chairs in the new living room, and a seven-foot davenport, and oriental +rugs, and lamps and lamps and lamps. The silk lampshade conflagration +had just begun to smoulder in the American household. The dining room +had one of those built-in Chicago buffets. It sparkled with cut glass. +There was a large punch bowl in the centre, in which Cora usually kept +receipts, old bills, moth balls, buttons, and the tarnished silver top +to a syrup jug that she always meant to have repaired. Queen Louise was +banished to the bedroom where she surveyed a world of cretonne.</p> + +<p>Cora was a splendid cook. She had almost a genius for flavouring. Roast +or cheese soufflé or green apple pie—your sense of taste never +experienced that disappointment which comes of too little salt, too much +sugar, a lack of shortening. Expert as she was at it, Cora didn't like +to cook. That is, she didn't like to cook day after day. She rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> +liked doing an occasional meal and producing it in a sort of red-cheeked +triumph. When she did this it was an epicurean thing, savoury, hot, +satisfying. But as a day-after-day programme Cora would not hear of it. +She had banished the maid. Four rooms could not accommodate her. A woman +came in twice a week to wash and iron and clean. Often Cora did not get +up for breakfast and Ray got his at one of the little lunch rooms that +were springing up all over that section of the North Side. Eleven +o'clock usually found Cora at the manicure's, or the dressmaker's, or +shopping, or telephoning luncheon arrangements with one of the Crowd. +Ray and Cora were going out a good deal with the Crowd. Young married +people like themselves, living royally just a little beyond their +income. The women were well-dressed, vivacious, somewhat shrill. They +liked stories that were a little off-colour. "Blue," one of the men +called these stories. He was in the theatrical business. The men were, +for the most part, a rather drab-looking lot. Colourless, good-natured, +open-handed. Almost imperceptibly the Crowd began to use Ray as a target +for a certain raillery. It wasn't particularly ill-natured, and Ray did +not resent it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come on, Ray! Don't be a wet blanket.... Lookit him! I bet he's +thinking about those smoked glasses again. Eh, Atwater? He's in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> a daze +about that new rim that won't show on the glasses. Come out of it! First +thing you know you'll lose your little Cora."</p> + +<p>There was little danger of that. Though Cora flirted mildly with the +husbands of the other girls in the Crowd (they all did) she was true to +Ray.</p> + +<p>Ray was always talking of building a little place of their own. People +were beginning to move farther and farther north, into the suburbs.</p> + +<p>"Little place of your own," Ray would say, "that's the only way to live. +Then you're not paying it all out in rent to the other feller. Little +place of your own. That's the right idear."</p> + +<p>But as the years went by, and Ray earned more and more money, he and +Cora seemed to be getting farther and farther away from the right idear. +In the $28.50 apartment Cora's morning marketing had been an orderly +daily proceeding. Meat, vegetables, fruit, dry groceries. But now the +maidless four-room apartment took on, in spite of its cumbersome +furnishings, a certain air of impermanence.</p> + +<p>"Ray, honey, I haven't a scrap in the house. I didn't get home until +almost six. Those darned old street cars. I hate 'em. Do you mind going +over Jo Bauer's to eat? I won't go, because Myrtle served a regular +spread at four. I couldn't eat a thing. D'you mind?"</p> + +<p>"Why, no." He would get into his coat again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> and go out into the bleak +November wind-swept street to Bauer's restaurant.</p> + +<p>Cora was always home when Raymond got there at six. She prided herself +on this. She would say, primly, to her friends, "I make a point of being +there when Ray gets home. Even if I have to cut a round of bridge. If a +woman can't be there when a man gets home from work I'd like to know +what she's good for, anyway."</p> + +<p>The girls in the Crowd said she was spoiling Raymond. She told Ray this. +"They think I'm old-fashioned. Well, maybe I am. But I guess I never +pretended to be anything but a home girl."</p> + +<p>"That's right," Ray would answer. "Say, that's the way you caught me. +With that home-girl stuff."</p> + +<p>"Caught you!" The thin straight line of the mouth. "If you think for one +minute——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, now, dear. You know what I mean, sweetheart. Why, say, I never +could see any girl until I met you. You know that."</p> + +<p>He was as honestly in love with her as he had been nine years before. +Perhaps he did not feel now, as then, that she had conferred a favour +upon him in marrying him. Or if he did he must have known that he had +made fair return for such favour.</p> + +<p>Cora had a Hudson seal coat now, with a great kolinsky collar. Her vivid +face bloomed rosily in this soft frame. Cora was getting a little +heavier.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> Not stout, but heavier, somehow. She tried, futilely, to +reduce. She would starve herself at home for days, only to gain back the +vanished pounds at one afternoon's orgy of whipped-cream salad, and +coffee, and sweets at the apartment of some girl in the Crowd. Dancing +had come in and the Crowd had taken it up vociferously. Raymond was not +very good at it. He had not filled out with the years. He still was lean +and tall and awkward. The girls in the crowd tried to avoid dancing with +him. That often left Cora partnerless unless she wanted to dance again +and again with Raymond.</p> + +<p>"How can you expect the boys to ask me to dance when you don't dance +with their wives! Good heavens, if they can learn, you can. And for +pity's sake <i>don't count</i>! You're so <i>fun</i>-ny!"</p> + +<p>He tried painstakingly to heed her advice, but his long legs made a +sorry business of it. He heard one of the girls refer to him as "that +giraffe." He had put his foot through an absurd wisp of tulle that she +insisted on calling a train.</p> + +<p>They were spending a good deal of money now, but Ray jousted the +landlord, the victualler, the furrier, the milliner, the hosiery maker, +valiantly and still came off the victor. He did not have as much time as +he would have liked to work on the new invention. The invisible rim. It +was calculated so to blend with the glass of the lens as to be, in +ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>pearance, one with it, while it still protected the eyeglass from +breakage. "Fortune in it, girlie," he would say, happily, to Cora. +"Million dollars, that's all."</p> + +<p>He had been working on the invisible rim for five years. Familiarity +with it had bred contempt in Cora. Once, in a temper, "Invisible is +right," she had said, slangily.</p> + +<p>They had occupied the four-room apartment for five years. Cora declared +it was getting beyond her. "You can't get any decent help. The washwoman +acts as if she was doing me a favour coming from eight to four, for four +dollars and eighty-five cents. And yesterday she said she couldn't come +to clean any more on Saturdays. I'm sick and tired of it."</p> + +<p>Raymond shook a sympathetic head. "Same way down at the store. Seems +everything's that way now. You can't get help and you can't get goods. +You ought to hear our customers. Yesterday I thought I'd go clear out of +my nut, trying to pacify them."</p> + +<p>Cora inserted the entering wedge, deftly. "Goodness knows I love my +home. But the way things are now ..."</p> + +<p>"Yeh," Ray said, absently. When he spoke like that Cora knew that the +invisible rim was revolving in his mind. In another moment he would be +off to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> the little cabinet in the bathroom where he kept his tools and +instruments.</p> + +<p>She widened the opening. "I noticed as I passed to-day that those new +one-room kitchenette apartments on Sheridan will be ready for occupancy +October first." He was going toward the door. "They say they're +wonderful."</p> + +<p>"Who wants to live in one room, anyway?"</p> + +<p>"It's really two rooms—and the kitchenette. There's the living +room—perfectly darling—and a sort of combination breakfast room and +kitchen. The breakfast room is partitioned off with sort of cupboards so +that it's really another room. And so handy!"</p> + +<p>"How'd you know?"</p> + +<p>"I went in—just to look at them—with one of the girls."</p> + +<p>Until then he had been unconscious of her guile. But now, suddenly, +struck by a hideous suspicion—"Say, looka here. If you think——"</p> + +<p>"Well, it doesn't hurt to look at 'em, does it!"</p> + +<p>A week later. "Those kitchenette apartments on Sheridan are almost all +gone. One of the girls was looking at one on the sixth floor. There's a +view of the lake. The kitchen's the sweetest thing. All white enamel. +And the breakfast room thing is done in Italian."</p> + +<p>"What d'you mean—done in Italian?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why—uh—Italian period furniture, you know. Dark and rich. The living +room's the same. Desk, and table, and lamps."</p> + +<p>"Oh, they're furnished?"</p> + +<p>"Complete. Down to the kettle covers and the linen and all. The work +there would just be play. All the comforts of a home, with none of the +terrible aggravations."</p> + +<p>"Say, look here, Coral, we don't want to go to work and live in any one +room. You wouldn't be happy. Why, we'd feel cooped up. No room to +stretch.... Why, say, how about the beds? If there isn't a bedroom how +about the beds? Don't people sleep in those places?"</p> + +<p>"There are Murphy beds, silly."</p> + +<p>"Murphy? Who's he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, goodness, I don't know! The man who invented 'em, I suppose. +Murphy."</p> + +<p>Raymond grinned in anticipation of his own forthcoming joke. "I should +think they'd call 'em Morphy beds." Then, at her blank stare. "You +know—short for Morpheus, god of sleep. Learned about him at high +school."</p> + +<p>Cora still looked blank. Cora hardly ever understood Ray's jokes, or +laughed at them. He would turn, chuckling, to find her face a blank. Not +even bewildered, or puzzled, or questioning. Blank. Unheeding. +Disinterested as a slate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> + +<p>Three days later Cora developed an acute pain in her side. She said it +was nothing. Just worn out with the work, and the worry and the +aggravation, that's all. It'll be all right.</p> + +<p>Ray went with her to look at the Sheridan Road apartment. It was one +hundred and fifty dollars. "Phew!"</p> + +<p>"But look at what you save? Gas. Light. Maid service. Laundry. It's +really cheaper in the end."</p> + +<p>Cora was amazingly familiar with all the advantages and features of the +sixth-floor apartment. "The sun all morning." She had all the agent's +patter. "Harvey-Dickson ventilated double-spring mattresses. Dressing +room off the bathroom. No, it isn't a closet. Here's the closet. Range, +refrigerator, combination sink and laundry tub. Living room's all +panelled in ivory. Shower in the bathroom. Buffet kitchen. Breakfast +room has folding-leaf Italian table. Look at the chairs. Aren't they +darlings! Built-in book shelves——"</p> + +<p>"Book shelves?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, we can use them for fancy china and ornaments. Or—oh, +look!—you could keep your stuff there. Tools and all. Then the bathroom +wouldn't be mussy all the time."</p> + +<p>"Beds?"</p> + +<p>"Right here. Isn't that wonderful. Would you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> ever know it was there? +You can work it with one hand. Look."</p> + +<p>"Do you really like it, Coral?"</p> + +<p>"I love it. It's heavenly."</p> + +<p>He stood in the centre of the absurd living room, a tall, lank, awkward +figure, a little stooped now. His face was beginning to be furrowed with +lines—deep lines that yet were softening, and not unlovely. He made you +think, somehow, as he stood there, one hand on his own coat lapel, of +Saint-Gaudens' figure of Lincoln, there in the park, facing the Drive. +Kindly, thoughtful, harried.</p> + +<p>They moved in October first.</p> + +<p>The over-stuffed furniture of the four-room apartment was sold. Cora +kept a few of her own things—a rug or two, some china, silver, +bric-à-brac, lamps. Queen Louise was now permanently dethroned. Cora +said her own things—"pieces"—would spoil the effect of the living +room. All Italian.</p> + +<p>"No wonder the Italians sit outdoors all the time, on the steps and in +the street"—more of Ray's dull humour. He surveyed the heavy gloomy +pieces, so out of place in the tiny room. One of the chairs was black +velvet. It was the only really comfortable chair in the room but Ray +never sat in it. It reminded him, vaguely, of a coffin. The corridors of +the apartment house were long, narrow, and white-walled. You traversed +these like a convict,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> speaking to no one, and entered your own cubicle. +A toy dwelling for toy people. But Ray was a man-size man. When he was +working downtown his mind did not take temporary refuge in the thought +of the feverish little apartment to which he was to return at night. It +wasn't a place to come back to, except for sleep. A roost. Bedding for +the night. As permanent-seeming as a hay-mow.</p> + +<p>Cora, too, gave him a strange feeling of impermanence. He realized one +day, with a shock, that he hardly ever saw her with her hat off. When he +came in at six or six-thirty Cora would be busy at the tiny sink, or the +toy stove, her hat on, a cigarette dangling limply from her mouth. Ray +did not object to women smoking. That is, he had no moral objection. But +he didn't think it became them. But Cora said a cigarette rested and +stimulated her. "Doctors say all nervous women should smoke," she said. +"Soothes them." But Cora, cooking in the little kitchen, squinting into +a kettle's depths through a film of cigarette smoke, outraged his sense +of fitness. It was incongruous, offensive. The time, and occupation, and +environment, together with the limply dangling cigarette, gave her an +incredibly rowdy look.</p> + +<p>When they ate at home they had steak or chops, and, perhaps, a chocolate +éclair for dessert; and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> salad. Raymond began to eat mental meals. He +would catch himself thinking of breaded veal chops, done slowly, +simmeringly, in butter, so that they came out a golden brown on a +parsley-decked platter. With this mashed potatoes with brown butter and +onions that have just escaped burning; creamed spinach with egg grated +over the top; a rice pudding, baked in the oven, and served with a tart +crown of grape jell. He sometimes would order these things in a +restaurant at noon, or on the frequent evenings when they dined out. But +they never tasted as he had thought they would.</p> + +<p>They dined out more and more as spring drew on and the warm weather set +in. The neighbourhood now was aglitter with eating places of all sorts +and degrees, from the humble automat to the proud plush of the Sheridan +Plaza dining room. There were tea-rooms, cafeterias, Hungarian cafés, +chop suey restaurants. At the table d'hôte places you got a soup, +followed by a lukewarm plateful of meat, vegetables, salad. The meat +tasted of the vegetables, the vegetables tasted of the meat, and the +salad tasted of both. Before ordering Ray would sit down and peer about +at the food on the near-by tables as one does in a dining car when the +digestive fluids have dried in your mouth at the first whiff through the +doorway. It was on one of these evenings that he noticed Cora's hat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What do you wear a hat for all the time?" he asked, testily.</p> + +<p>"Hat?"</p> + +<p>"Seems to me I haven't seen you without a hat in a month. Gone bald, or +something?" He was often cross like this lately. Grumpy, Cora called it. +Hats were one of Cora's weaknesses. She had a great variety of them. +These added to Ray's feeling of restlessness and impermanence. Sometimes +she wore a hat that came down over her head, covering her forehead and +her eyes, almost. The hair he used to love to touch was concealed. +Sometimes he dined with an ingénue in a poke bonnet; sometimes with a +señorita in black turban and black lace veil, mysterious and +provocative; sometimes with a demure miss in a wistful little +turned-down brim. It was like living with a stranger who was always +about to leave.</p> + +<p>When they ate at home, which was rarely, Ray tried, at first, to dawdle +over his coffee and his mild cigar, as he liked to do. But you couldn't +dawdle at a small, inadequate table that folded its flaps and shrank +into a corner the minute you left it. Everything in the apartment +folded, or flapped, or doubled, or shot in, or shot out, or concealed +something else, or pretended to be something it was not. It was very +irritating. Ray took his cigar and his evening paper and wandered +uneasily into the Italian living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> room, doubling his lean length into +one of his queer, angular hard chairs.</p> + +<p>Cora would appear in the doorway, hatted. "Ready?"</p> + +<p>"Huh? Where you going?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Ray, aren't you <i>fun</i>-ny! You know this is the Crowd's poker night +at Lil's."</p> + +<p>The Crowd began to say that old Ray was going queer. Honestly, didja +hear him last week? Talking about the instability of the home, and the +home being the foundation of the state, and the country crumbling? +Cora's face was a sight! I wouldn't have wanted to be in his boots when +she got him home. What's got into him, anyway?</p> + +<p>Cora was a Wilson Avenue girl now. You saw her in and out of the shops +of the district, expensively dressed. She was almost thirty-six. Her +legs, beneath the absurdly short skirt of the day, were slim and shapely +in their chiffon hose, but her upper figure was now a little prominent. +The scant, brief skirt fore-shortened her; gave her a stork-like +appearance; a combination of girlishness and matronliness not pleasing.</p> + +<p>There were times when Ray rebelled. A peace-loving man, and gentle. But +a man. "I don't want to go out to eat. My God, I'm tired! I want to eat +at home."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Honey, dear, I haven't a thing in the house. Not a scrap."</p> + +<p>"I'll go out and get something, then. What d'you want?"</p> + +<p>"Get whatever looks good to you. I don't want a thing. We had tea after +the matinée. That's what made me so late. I'm always nagging the girls +to go home. It's getting so they tease me about it."</p> + +<p>He would go foraging amongst the delicatessen shops of the +neighbourhood. He saw other men, like himself, scurrying about with +moist paper packets and bags and bundles, in and out of Leviton's, in +and out of the Sunlight Bakery. A bit of ham. Some cabbage salad in a +wooden boat. A tiny broiler, lying on its back, its feet neatly trussed, +its skin crackly and tempting-looking, its white meat showing beneath +the brown. But when he cut into it at home it tasted like sawdust and +gutta-percha. "<i>And</i> what else?" said the plump woman in the white +bib-apron behind the counter. "<i>And</i> what else?"</p> + +<p>In the new apartment you rather prided yourself on not knowing your +next-door neighbours. The paper-thin walls permitted you to hear them +living the most intimate details of their lives. You heard them +laughing, talking, weeping, singing, scolding, caressing. You didn't +know them. You did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> even see them. When you met in the halls or +elevators you did not speak. Then, after they had lived in the new +apartment about a year Cora met the woman in 618 and Raymond met the +woman in 620, within the same week. The Atwaters lived in 619.</p> + +<p>There was some confusion in the delivery of a package. The woman in 618 +pressed the Atwaters' electric button for the first time in their year's +residence there.</p> + +<p>A plump woman, 618; blonde; in black. You felt that her flesh was +expertly restrained in tight pink satin brassières and long-hipped +corsets and many straps.</p> + +<p>"I hate to trouble you, but did you get a package for Mrs. Hoyt? It's +from Field's."</p> + +<p>It was five-thirty. Cora had her hat on. She did not ask the woman to +come in. "I'll see. I ordered some things from Field's to-day, too. I +haven't opened them yet. Perhaps yours ... I'll look."</p> + +<p>The package with Mrs. Hoyt's name on it was there. "Well, thanks so +much. It's some georgette crêpe. I'm making myself one those new +two-tone slip-over negligees. Field's had a sale. Only one sixty-nine a +yard."</p> + +<p>Cora was interested. She sewed rather well when she was in the mood. +"Are they hard to make?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, land, no! No trick to it at all. They just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> hang from the shoulder, +see? Like a slip-over. And then your cord comes round——"</p> + +<p>She stepped in. She undid the box and shook out the vivid folds of the +filmy stuff, vivid green and lavender. "You wouldn't think they'd go +well together but they do. Makes a perfectly stunning negligee."</p> + +<p>Cora fingered the stuff. "I'd get some. Only I don't know if I could cut +the——"</p> + +<p>"I'll show you. Glad to." She was very friendly. Cora noticed she used +expensive perfume. Her hair was beautifully marcelled. The woman folded +up the material and was off, smiling. "Just let me know when you get it. +I've got a lemon cream pie in the oven and I've got to run." She called +back over her shoulder. "Mrs. Hoyt."</p> + +<p>Cora nodded and smiled. "Mine's Atwater." She saw that the woman's +simple-seeming black dress was one she had seen in a Michigan Avenue +shop, and had coveted. Its price had been beyond her purse.</p> + +<p>Cora mentioned the meeting to Ray when he came home. "She seems real +nice. She's going to show me how to cut out a new negligee."</p> + +<p>"What'd you say her name was?" She told him. He shrugged. "Well, I'll +say this: she must be some swell cook. Whenever I go by that door at +dinner time my mouth just waters. One night last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> week there was +something must have been baked spare-ribs and sauerkraut. I almost broke +in the door."</p> + +<p>The woman in 618 did seem to cook a great deal. That is, when she +cooked. She explained that Mr. Hoyt was on the road a lot of the time +and when he was home she liked to fuss for him. This when she was +helping Cora cut out the georgette negligee.</p> + +<p>"I'd get coral colour if I was you, honey. With your hair and all," Mrs. +Hoyt had advised her.</p> + +<p>"Why, that's my name! That is, it's what Ray calls me. My name's really +Cora." They were quite good friends now.</p> + +<p>It was that same week that Raymond met the woman in 620. He had left the +apartment half an hour later than usual (he had a heavy cold, and had +not slept) and encountered the man and woman just coming out of 620.</p> + +<p>"And guess who it was!" he exclaimed to Cora that evening. "It was a +girl who used to work at Nagel's, in the binoculars, years ago, when I +started there. Calhoun, her name was. Laura Calhoun. Smart little girl, +she was. She's married now. And guess what! She gets a big salary +fitting glasses for women at the Bazaar. She learned to be an optician. +Smart girl."</p> + +<p>Cora bridled, virtuously. "Well, I think she'd better stay home and take +care of that child of hers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> I should think she'd let her husband earn +the living. That child is all soul alone when she comes home from +school. I hear her practising. I asked Mrs. Hoyt about her. She say's +she's seen her. A pindling scrawny little thing, about ten years old. +She leaves her alone all day."</p> + +<p>Ray encountered the Calhoun girl again, shortly after that, in the way +encounters repeat themselves, once they have started.</p> + +<p>"She didn't say much but I guess her husband is a nit-wit. Funny how a +smart girl like that always marries one of these sap-heads that can't +earn a living. She said she was working because she wanted her child to +have the advantages she'd missed. That's the way she put it."</p> + +<p>One heard the long-legged, melancholy child next door practising at the +piano daily at four. Cora said it drove her crazy. But then, Cora was +rarely home at four. "Well," she said now, virtuously, "I don't know +what she calls advantages. The way she neglects that kid. Look at her! I +guess if she had a little more mother and a little less education it'd +be better for her."</p> + +<p>"Guess that's right," Ray agreed.</p> + +<p>It was in September that Cora began to talk about the mink coat. A +combination anniversary and Christmas gift. December would mark their +twelfth anniversary. A mink coat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> + +<p>Raymond remembered that his mother had had a mink coat, back there in +Michigan, years ago. She always had taken it out in November and put it +away in moth balls and tar paper in March. She had done this for years +and years. It was a cheerful yellow mink, with a slightly darker marking +running through it, and there had been little mink tails all around the +bottom edge of it. It had spread comfortably at the waist. Women had had +hips in those days. With it his mother had carried a mink muff; a small +yellow-brown cylinder just big enough for her two hands. It had been her +outdoor uniform, winter after winter, for as many years as he could +remember of his boyhood. When she had died the mink coat had gone to his +sister Carrie, he remembered.</p> + +<p>A mink coat. The very words called up in his mind sharp winter days; the +pungent moth-bally smell of his mother's fur-coated bosom when she had +kissed him good-bye that day he left for Chicago; comfort; womanliness. +A mink coat.</p> + +<p>"How much could you get one for? A mink coat."</p> + +<p>Cora hesitated a moment. "Oh—I guess you could get a pretty good one +for three thousand."</p> + +<p>"You're crazy," said Ray, unemotionally. He was not angry. He was +amused.</p> + +<p>But Cora was persistent. Her coat was a sight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> She had to have +something. She never had had a real fur coat.</p> + +<p>"How about your Hudson seal?"</p> + +<p>"Hudson seal! Did you ever see any seals in the Hudson! Fake fur. I've +never had a really decent piece of fur in my life. Always some mangy +make-believe. All the girls in the Crowd are getting new coats this +year. The woman next door—Mrs. Hoyt—is talking of getting one. She +says Mr. Hoyt——"</p> + +<p>"Say, who are these Hoyts, anyway?"</p> + +<p>Ray came home early one day to find the door to 618 open. He glanced in, +involuntarily. A man sat in the living room—a large, rather red-faced +man, in his shirt-sleeves, relaxed, comfortable, at ease. From the open +door came the most tantalizing and appetizing smells of candied sweet +potatoes, a browning roast, steaming vegetables.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hoyt had run in to bring a slice of fresh-baked chocolate cake to +Cora. She often brought in dishes of exquisitely prepared food thus, but +Raymond had never before encountered her. Cora introduced them. Mrs. +Hoyt smiled, nervously, and said she must run away and tend to her +dinner. And went. Ray looked after her. He strode into the kitchenette +where Cora stood, hatted, at the sink.</p> + +<p>"Say, looka here, Cora. You got to quit seeing that woman, see?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What woman?"</p> + +<p>"One calls herself Mrs. Hoyt. That woman. Mrs. Hoyt! Ha!"</p> + +<p>"Why, Ray, what in the world are you talking about! Aren't you +<i>fun</i>-ny!"</p> + +<p>"Yeh; well, you cut her out. I won't have you running around with a +woman like that. Mrs. Hoyt! Mrs. Fiddlesticks!"</p> + +<p>They had a really serious quarrel about it. When the smoke of battle +cleared away Raymond had paid the first instalment on a three thousand +dollar mink coat. And, "If we could sub-lease," Cora said, "I think it +would be wonderful to move to the Shoreham. Lil and Harry are going +there in January. You know yourself this place isn't half respectable."</p> + +<p>Raymond had stared. "Shoreham! Why, it's a hotel. Regular hotel."</p> + +<p>"Yes," placidly. "That's what's so nice about it. No messing around in a +miserable little kitchenette. You can have your meals sent up. Or you +can go down to the dining room. Lil says it's wonderful. And if you +order for one up in your room the portions are big enough for two. It's +really economy, in the end."</p> + +<p>"Nix," said Ray. "No hotel in mine. A little house of our own. That's +the right idea. Build."</p> + +<p>"But nobody's building now. Materials are so high. It'll cost you ten +times as much as it would if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> you waited a few—a little while. And no +help. No maids coming over, hardly. I think you might consider me a +little. We could live at the Shoreham a while, anyway. By that time +things will be better, and we'd have money saved up and then we might +talk of building. Goodness knows I love my home as well as any +woman——"</p> + +<p>They looked at the Shoreham rooms on the afternoon of their anniversary. +They were having the Crowd to dinner, downtown, that evening. Cora +thought the Shoreham rooms beautiful, though she took care not to let +the room-clerk know she thought so. Ray, always a silent, inarticulate +man, was so wordless that Cora took him to task for it in a sibilant +aside.</p> + +<p>"Ray, for heaven's, sake say something. You stand there! I don't know +what the man'll think."</p> + +<p>"A hell of a lot I care what he thinks." Ray was looking about the +garish room—plush chairs, heavy carpets, brocade hangings, shining +table-top, silly desk.</p> + +<p>"Two hundred and seventy-five a month," the clerk was saying. "With the +yearly lease, of course. Otherwise it's three twenty-five." He seemed +quite indifferent.</p> + +<p>Ray said nothing. "We'll let you know," said Cora.</p> + +<p>The man walked to the door. "I can't hold it for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> you, you know. Our +apartments are practically gone. I've a party who practically has closed +for this suite already. I'd have to know."</p> + +<p>Cora looked at Ray. He said nothing. He seemed not to have heard. His +face was gaunt and haggard. "We'll let you know—to-morrow," Cora said. +Her full under lip made a straight thin line.</p> + +<p>When they came out it was snowing. A sudden flurry. It was already dark. +"Oh, dear," said Cora. "My hat!" Ray summoned one of the hotel taxis. He +helped Cora into it. He put money into the driver's hand.</p> + +<p>"You go on, Cora. I'm going to walk."</p> + +<p>"Walk! Why! But it's snowing. And you'll have to dress for dinner."</p> + +<p>"I've got a little headache. I thought I'd walk. I'll be home. I'll be +home."</p> + +<p>He slammed the door then, and turned away. He began to walk in the +opposite direction from that which led toward the apartment house. The +snow felt cool and grateful on his face. It stung his cheeks. Hard and +swift and white it came, blinding him. A blizzard off the lake. He +plunged through it, head down, hands jammed into his pockets.</p> + +<p>So. A home girl. Home girl. God, it was funny. She was a selfish, idle, +silly, vicious woman. She was nothing. Nothing. It came over him in a +sudden blinding crashing blaze of light. The wo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>man in 618 who wasn't +married to her man, and who cooked and planned to make him comfortable; +the woman in 620 who blindly left her home and her child every day in +order to give that child the thing she called advantages—either of +these was better than his woman. Honester. Helping someone. Trying to, +anyway. Doing a better job than she was.</p> + +<p>He plunged across the street, blindly, choking a little with the +bitterness that had him by the throat.</p> + +<p>Hey! Watcha!—--A shout rising to a scream.</p> + +<p>A bump. Numbness. Silence. Nothingness.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"Well, anyway, Cora," said the girls in the Crowd, "you certainly were a +wonderful wife to him. You can always comfort yourself with that +thought. My! the way you always ran home so's to be there before he got +in."</p> + +<p>"I know it," said Cora, mournfully. "I always was a home girl. Why, we +always had planned we should have a little home of our own some day. He +always said that was the right idear—idea."</p> + +<p>Lil wiped her eyes. "What are you going to do about your new mink coat, +Cora?"</p> + +<p>Cora brushed her hair away from her forehead with a slow, sad gesture. +"Oh, I don't know. I've hardly thought of such trifling things. The +woman next door said she might buy it. Hoyt, her name is. Of course I +couldn't get what we paid for it, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> I've hardly had it on. But +money'll count with me now. Ray never did finish that invisible rim he +was working on all those years. Wasting his time. Poor Ray.... I thought +if she took it, I'd get a caracul, with a black fox collar. After I +bought it I heard mink wasn't so good anyway, this year. Everything's +black. Of course, I'd never have said anything to Raymond about it. I'd +just have worn it. I wouldn't have hurt Ray for the world."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="AINT_NATURE_WONDERFUL" id="AINT_NATURE_WONDERFUL"></a>AIN'T NATURE WONDERFUL!</h2> + + +<p>When a child grows to boyhood, and a boy to manhood under the +soul-searing blight of a given name like Florian, one of two things must +follow. He will degenerate into a weakling, crushed beneath the +inevitable diminutive—Flossie; or he will build up painfully, inch by +inch, a barrier against the name's corroding action. He will boast of +his biceps, flexing them the while. He will brag about cold baths. He +will prate of chest measurements; regard golf with contempt; and speak +of the West as God's country.</p> + +<p>Florian Sykes was five feet three and a half, and he liked to quote +those red-blooded virile poems about the big open spaces out where the +West begins. The biggest open space in his experience was Madison +Square, New York; and Eighth Avenue spelled the Far West for him. When +Florian spoke or thought of great heights it was never in terms of +nature, such as mountains, but in artificial ones, like skyscrapers. Yet +his job depended on what he called the great outdoors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> + +<p>The call of the wild, by the time it had filtered into his city abode, +was only a feeble cheep. But he answered it daily from his rooms to the +store in the morning, from the store to his rooms in the evening. It +must have been fully ten blocks each way. There are twenty New York +blocks to the mile. He threw out his legs a good deal when he walked and +came down with his feet rather flat, and he stooped ever so little with +the easy slouch that came in with the one-button sack suit. It's the +walk you see used by English actors of the what-what school who come +over here to play gentlemanly juveniles.</p> + +<p>Down at Inverness & Heath's they called him Nature's Rival, but that was +mostly jealousy, with a strong dash of resentment. Two of the men in his +department had been Maine guides, and another boasted that he knew the +Rockies as he knew the palm of his hand. But Florian, whose +trail-finding had all been done in the subway shuttle, and who thought +that butter sauce with parsley was a trout's natural element, had been +promoted above their heads half a dozen times until now he lorded it +over the fifth floor.</p> + +<p>Not one of you, unless bedridden from birth, but has felt the influence +of the firm of Inverness & Heath. You may never have seen the great +establishment itself, rising story on story just off New York's main +shopping thoroughfare. But you have felt the call<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> of their catalogue. +Surely at one time or another, they have supplied you with tents or +talcum; with sleeping-bags or skis or skates; with rubber boots, or +resin or reels. On their fourth floor you can be hatted for Palm Beach +or booted for Skagway. On the third, outfitted for St. Moritz or San +Antonio. But the fifth floor is the pride of the store. There is the +camper's dream realized. There you will find man's most ingenious +devices for softening Mother Nature's flinty bosom. Mosquito-proof +tents; pails that will not leak; fleece-lined sleeping-bags; cooking +outfits made up of pots and pans of every size, each shaped to disappear +mysteriously into the next, like a conjurer's outfit, the whole +swallowed up by a magic leather case.</p> + +<p>Here Florian reigned. If you were a regular Inverness & Heath customer +you learned to ask for him as soon as the elevator tossed you up to his +domain. He met you with what is known in the business efficiency guides +as the strong personality greeting. It consisted in clasping your hand +with a grip that drove your ring into the bone, looking you straight in +the eye, registering alert magnetic force, and pronouncing your name +very distinctly. Like this: hand-clasp firm—straight in the eye—"How +do you do, Mr. Outertown. Haven't seen you since last June. How was the +trip?" He didn't mean to be a liar. And yet he lied daily and +magnificently for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> years, to the world and himself. When, for example, +in the course of purchasing rods, flies, tents, canoes, saddles, boots, +or sleeping-bags of him, you spoke of the delights of your contemplated +vacation, he would say, "That's the life. I'm a Western man, myself.... +God's country!" He said it with a deep breath, and an exhalation, as one +who pants to be free of the city's noisome fumes. You felt he must have +been born with an equipment of chaps, quirts, spurs, and sombrero. You +see him flinging himself on a horse and clattering off with a flirt of +hoofs as they do it in the movies. His very manner sketched in a +background of plains, mountains, six-shooters, and cacti.</p> + +<p>The truth of it was Florian Sykes had been born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. +At the age of three he had been brought to New York by a pair of +inexpert and migratory parents. Their reasons for migrating need not +concern us. They must, indeed, have been bad reasons. For Florian, at +thirteen, a spindle-legged errand-boy in over-size knickers, a cold sore +on his lip, and shoes chronically in need of resoling, had started to +work for the great sporting goods store of Inverness & Heath.</p> + +<p>Now, at twenty-nine, he was head of the fifth floor. The cold sore had +vanished permanently under a régime of health-food, dumb-bells, and icy +plunges. The shoes were bench-made and flawless.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> If the legs still were +somewhat spindling their correctly creased casings hid the fact.</p> + +<p>There's little doubt that if Florian had been named Bill, and if the +calves of his legs had bulged, and if, in his youth, he had gone to work +for a wholesale grocer, he would never have forged for himself a coat of +mail whose links were pretense and whose bolts were sham. He probably +would have been frankly content with the sight of an occasional +ball-game out at the Polo Grounds, and the newspaper bulletins of a +prizefight by rounds. But here he was at the base that supplied +America's outdoor equipment. He who outfitted mountaineers must speak +knowingly of glaciers, chasms, crevices, and peaks. He who advised +canoeists must assume wisdom of paddles, rapids, currents, and portages. +He whose sleeping hours were spangled with the clang of the street cars +must counsel such hardy ones as were preparing cheerfully to seek rest +rolled in blankets before a camp-fire's dying embers. And so, slowly, +year by year, in his rise from errand to stock boy, from stock boy to +clerk, from clerk to assistant manager, thence to his present official +position, he had built about himself a tissue of innocent lies. He +actually believed them himself.</p> + +<p>Sometimes a customer who in June had come in to purchase his vacation +supplies with the city pallor upon him, returned in September, brown, +hard,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> energized, to thank Florian for the comfort of the outfit +supplied him.</p> + +<p>"I just want to tell you, Sykes, that that was a great little outfit you +sold me. Yessir! Not a thing too much, and not a thing too little, +either. Remember how I kicked about that air mattress? Well, say, it +saved my life! I slept like a baby every night. And the trip! You've +been there, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>Florian would smile and nod his head. His grateful customer would clap +him on the shoulder. "Some pebble, that mountain!"</p> + +<p>"Get to the top?" Florian would ask.</p> + +<p>"Well, we didn't do the peak. That is, not right to the top. Started to +a couple of times, but the girls got tired, and we didn't want to leave +'em alone. Pretty stiff climb, let me tell you, young feller."</p> + +<p>"You should have made the top."</p> + +<p>"Been up, have you?"</p> + +<p>"A dozen times."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, that's your business, you might say. Next time, maybe, we'll +do it. The missus says she wants to go back there every year."</p> + +<p>Florian would shake his head. "Oh, you don't want to do that. Have you +been out to Glacier? Have you done the Yellowstone on horseback? Ever +been down the Grand Canyon?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why—no—but——"</p> + +<p>"You've got a few thrills coming to you then."</p> + +<p>The sunburned traveller would flush mahogany. "That's all right for you +to say. But I'm no chamois. But it was a great trip, just the same. I +want to thank you."</p> + +<p>Then, for example, Florian's clothes. He had adopted that careful +looseness—that ease of fit—that skilful sloppiness—which is the last +word in masculine sartorial smartness. In talking he dropped his final +g's and said "sportin'" and "mountain climbin'" and "shootin'." From +June until September he wore those Norfolk things with bow ties, and his +shirt patterns were restrained to the point of austerity. A signet ring +with a large scrolled monogram on the third finger of his right hand was +his only ornament, and he had worn a wrist watch long before the War. He +had never seen a mountain. The ocean meant Coney Island. He breakfasted +at Child's. He spent two hours over the Sunday papers. He was a +Tittlebat Titmouse without the whiskers. And Myra loved him.</p> + +<p>If Florian had not pretended to be something he wasn't; and if he had +not professed an enthusiastic knowledge of things of which he was +ignorant, he would, in the natural course of events, have loved Myra +quickly in return. In fact, he would have admitted that he had loved her +first, and desperately.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> And there would have been no story entitled, +"Ain't Nature Wonderful!"</p> + +<p>Myra worked in the women's and misses', third floor, and she didn't care +a thing about the big outdoors or the great open spaces. She didn't even +pretend to—at first. A clear-eyed, white-throated, capable young woman, +almost poignantly pretty. You sensed it was the kind of loveliness that +fades a bit with marriage. In its place come two sturdy babies to carry +on the torch of beauty. You sensed, too, that Myra would keep their +noses wiped, their knees scrubbed, and their buttons buttoned and that, +between a fresh blouse for herself and fresh rompers for them, the +blouse would always lose.</p> + +<p>She hated discomfort, did Myra, as does one who has always had too much +of it. After you have stood all day, from 8:30 <span class="smcap">A. M.</span> to 5:30 +<span class="smcap">P. M.</span>, selling sweaters, riding togs, golf clothes, and +trotteurs to athletic Dianas whose lines are more lathe than lithe, you +can't work up much enthusiasm about exercising for the pure joy of it. +Myra had never used a tennis-racket in her life, but daily she outfitted +for the sport bronzed young ladies who packed a nasty back-hand wallop +in their right. She wore (and was justly proud of) a 4-A shoe, and took +a good deal of comfort in the fact as she sold 7-Cs at $22.50 a pair to +behemothian damsels who possessed money in proportion to Myra's beauty. +Myra was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> only girl in her section who never tried to dress in +imitation of the moneyed ones whom she served. The other girls were wont +to wear severely tailored shirts, mannish ties, stocks, flat-heeled +shoes, rough tweed skirts. Not so Myra. That delicate cup-like hollow at +the base of her white throat was fittingly framed in a ruffle of frilly +georgette. She did her hair in soft undulations that flowed away from +forehead and temple, and she powdered her nose a hundred times a day. +Her little shoes were high-heeled and her hands were miraculously white, +and if you prefer Rosalind to Viola you'd better quit her now.</p> + +<p>"Anybody who wants to wear those cross-country clothes is welcome to +them," she said. "I'm a girl and I'm satisfied to be. I don't see why I +should wear a hard-boiled shirt and a necktie any more than a man should +wear a pink georgette trimmed with filet. By the end of the week, when +I've spent six solid days selling men's clothes to women, I feel's if +I'd die happy if I could take a milk bath and put on white satin and +pearls and a train six yards long from the shoulders—<i>you</i> know."</p> + +<p>Not the least of Myra's charm was a certain unexpected and pleasing +humour. It was as though, on opening a chocolate box, you were to find +it contained caviar.</p> + +<p>Of course by now you know that Myra is the girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> you used to see smiling +out at you from the Inverness & Heath catalogue entitled Sportswomen's +Apparel. The head of her department had soon discovered that Myra, +posing for illustrations to be used in the spring booklet, raised that +pamphlet's selling power about 100 per cent. Sunburned misses, with +wind-ravaged complexions, gazing at the picture of Myra, cool, slim, +luscious-looking, saw themselves as they would fain be—and bought the +Knollwood sweater depicted—in silk or wool—putty, maize, navy, rose, +copen, or white—$35. Myra posed in paddock coat and breeches—she who +had never been nearer a horse than the distance between sidewalk and +road. She smiled at you over her shoulder radiant in a white tricot Palm +Beach suit, who thought palms grew in jardinières only. On page 17 she +was revealed in the boyish impudence of our Aiken Polo Habit, complete, +$90. She was ravishing in her golf clothes, her small feet in sturdy, +flat-heeled boots planted far apart, and only the most carping would +have commented on the utter impossibility of her stance. Then there was +the Killiecrankie Travel Tog (background of assorted mountains) made of +Scotch tweed (she would never come nearer Scotland than oatmeal for +breakfast) only $140. To say nothing of motor clothes, woodland suits, +trap-shooting costumes, Yellowstone Park outfits, hunting habits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> She +wore brogues, and boots, and skating shoes, and puttees and tennis ties; +sou'westers, leather topcoats, Jersey silks, military capes. You saw her +fishing, hunting, boating, riding, golfing, snow-shoeing, swimming. She +was equally lovely in khaki with woollen stockings, or in a habit of +white linen and the shiniest of riding-boots. And as she peeled off the +one to put on the next she remarked wearily, "A kimono and felt slippers +and my hair down my back will look pretty good to me to-night, after +this."</p> + +<p>You see, Myra and Florian really had so much in common that if he had +been honest with himself the course of their love would have run too +smooth to be true. But Florian, in his effort to register as a +two-fisted, hard-riding, nature-taming male, made such a success of it +that for a long time he deceived even Myra who loved him. And during +that time she, too, lied in her frantic effort to match her step with +his. When he talked of riding and swimming; of long, hard mountain +hikes; of impenetrable woods, she looked at him with sparkling eyes. +(She didn't need to throw much effort into that, nature having supplied +her with the ground materials.) When, on their rare Sundays together, he +suggested a long tramp up the Palisades she agreed enthusiastically, +though she hated it. Not only that, she went, loathing it. The stones +hurt her feet. Her slender ankles ached. The sun burned her delicate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +skin. The wind pierced her thin coat. Florian strode along with the +exaggerated step of the short man who bitterly resents his lack of +stature. Every now and then he stood still, and breathed deeply, and +said, "Glorious!" And Myra looked at his straight back, and his +clear-cut profile, and his well-dressed legs and said, "Isn't it!" and +wished he would kiss her. But he never did.</p> + +<p>In between times he bemoaned his miserable two weeks' vacation which +made impossible the sort of thing he said he craved—a long, hard, rough +trip into a mountain interior. The Rockies, preferably, in their +jaggedest portions.</p> + +<p>"That's the kind of thing that makes a fellow over. Roughing it. You +forget about the city. In the saddle all day—nothing but sky and +mountains. God's big open spaces! That's the life!"</p> + +<p>Myra trudged along, painfully. "But isn't it awfully uncomfortable? You +know. Cold? And tents? I don't think I'd like——"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't give a cent for a person who was so soft they couldn't stand +roughing it a little. That's the trouble with you Easterners. Soft! No +red blood. Too many street cars, and high buildings, and restaurants. +Chop down a few trees and fry your own bacon, and make your own camp, +and saddle your own horses—that's what I call living. I'm going back to +it some day, see if I don't."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> + +<p>Myra looked down at her own delicate wrists, with the blue veins so +exquisitely etched against the white flesh. A little look of terror and +hopelessness came into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I—I couldn't chop down a tree," she said. She was panting a little in +keeping up with him, for he was walking very fast. "I'd be afraid to +saddle a horse. You have to stand right next to them, don't you? Most +girls can't chop——"</p> + +<p>Florian smiled a little superior smile. "Miss Jessie Heath can." Myra +looked up at him, quickly. "She's a wonder! She was in yesterday," he +went on. "Spent all of two hours up in my department, looking things +over. There's nothing she can't do. She won a blue ribbon at the Horse +Show in February. Saddle. She's climbed every peak that amounts to +anything in Europe. Did the Alps when she was a little girl. This summer +she's going to do the Rockies, because things are so mussed up in +Europe, she says. I'm selecting the outfit for the party. Gad, what a +trip!" He sighed, deeply.</p> + +<p>Myra was silent. She was not ungenerous toward women, as are so many +pretty girls. But she was human, after all, and she did love this +Florian, and Jessie Heath was old man Heath's daughter. Whenever she +came into the store she created a little furore among the clerks. Myra +could not resist a tiny flash of claws.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> + +<p>"She's flat, like a man. And she wears 7½-C. And her face looks as if +it had been rubbed with a scouring brick."</p> + +<p>"She's a goddess!" said Florian, striding along. Myra laughed, a little +high hysterical laugh. Then she bit her lip, and then she was silent for +a long time. He was silent, too, until suddenly he heard a little sound +that made him turn quickly to look at her stumbling along at his side. +And she was crying.</p> + +<p>"Why—what's the matter! What's!—--"</p> + +<p>"I'm tired," sobbed Myra, and sank in a little limp heap on a convenient +rock. "I'm tired. I want to go home."</p> + +<p>"Why"—he was plainly bewildered—"why didn't you tell me you were +tired!"</p> + +<p>"I'm telling you now."</p> + +<p>They took the nearest ferry across the river, and the Subway home. At +the entrance to the noisy, crowded flat in which she lived Myra turned +to face him. She was through with pretense. She was tired of +make-believe. She felt a certain relief in the thought of what she had +to say. She faced him squarely.</p> + +<p>"I've lived in the city all my life and I'm crazy about it. I love it. I +like to walk in the park a little maybe, Sundays, but I hate tramping +like we did this afternoon, and you might as well know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> it. I wouldn't +chop down a tree, not if I was freezing to death, and I'd hate to have +to sleep in a tent, so there! I hate sunburn, and freckles, and ants in +the pie, and blisters on my feet, and getting wet, and flat-heeled +shoes, and I never saddled a horse. I'd be afraid to. And what's more, I +don't believe you do, either."</p> + +<p>"Don't believe I do what?" asked Florian in a stunned kind of voice.</p> + +<p>But Myra had turned and left him. And as he stood there, aghast, +bewildered, resentful, clear and fair in the back of his mind, against +all the turmoil of thoughts that seethed there, was the picture of her +white, slim, exquisite throat with a little delicate pulse beating in it +as she cried out her rebellion. He wished—or some one inside him that +he could not control wished—that he could put his fingers there on her +throat, gently.</p> + +<p>It was very warm that evening, for May. And as he sat by the window in +his pajamas, just before going to bed, he thought about Myra, and he +thought about himself. But when he thought about himself he slammed the +door on what he saw. Florian's rooms were in Lexington Avenue in the old +brownstone district that used to be the home of white-headed +millionaires with gold-headed canes, who, on dying, left their millions +to an Alger newsboy who had once helped them across the street.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> +Millionaires, gold-headed canes, and newsboys had long vanished, and the +old brownstone fronts were rooming houses now, interspersed with +delicatessens, interior decorators, and dressmaking establishments. +Florian was fond of boasting when he came down to the store in the +morning, after a hot, muggy July night, "My place is like a summer +resort. Breeze just sweeps through it. I have to have the covers on."</p> + +<p>Sometimes Mrs. Pet, his landlady, made him a pitcher of lemonade and +brought it up to him, and he sipped it, looking out over the city, +soothed by its roar, fascinated by its glow and brilliance. Mrs. Pet +said it was a pleasure to have him around, he was so neat.</p> + +<p>Florian was neat. Not only neat, but methodical. He had the same +breakfast every week-day morning at Child's; half a grapefruit, one +three-minute egg, coffee, rolls. On Sunday morning he had bacon and +eggs. It was almost automatic. Speaking of automatics, he never took his +meals at one of those modern mechanical feeders. Though at Child's he +never really beheld the waitress with his seeing eye, he liked to have +her slap his dishes down before him with a genial crash. A gentleman has +his little foibles, and being waited on at meal-time was one of his. +Occasionally, to prove to himself that he wasn't one of those fogies who +get in a rut, he or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>dered wheat cakes with maple syrup for breakfast. +They always disagreed with him.</p> + +<p>She was a wise young woman, Myra.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Florian, as he sat by his window that Sunday night of Myra's +outburst, thought on these things. But he would not admit to himself +whither his thinking led. And presently he turned back the spread, +neatly, and turned out the light, and opened the window a little wider, +and felt of his chin, as men do, though the next shave is eight hours +distant, and slept, and did not dream of white throats as he had +secretly hoped he would.</p> + +<p>And next morning, at eleven, a very wonderful thing began to happen. +Next morning, at eleven, Miss Jessie Heath loped (well, it can't be +helped. That describes it exactly) into the broad aisles of the fifth +floor. She had been coming in a great deal, lately. The Western trip, no +doubt.</p> + +<p>Descriptions of people are clumsy things, at best, and stop one's story. +But Jessie Heath must have her paragraph. A half-dozen lines ought to do +it. Well—she was the kind of girl who always goes around with a couple +of Airedales, and in woollen stockings, low shoes and mannish shirts, +and shell-rimmed glasses, and you felt she wore Ferris waists. Her hair +was that ashen blonde with no glint of gold in it. You knew it would +become grey in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> middle age with no definite period of transition. She +never buttoned her heavy welted gloves but wore them back over her hand, +like a cuff, very English. You felt there must be a riding crop +concealed about her somewhere. Perhaps up her spine.</p> + +<p>As has been said, there was always a little flurry when she came into +the big store that had made millions for her father. It would be +nonsense to suppose that Jessie Heath ever deliberately set out to +attract a man who was an employee in that store. But it is pleasant and +soothing to be admired, and to have a fine pair of eyes look fine things +into one's own (shell-rimmed) ones. And, after all, the Jessie Heaths of +this world are walked with, and golfed with, and ridden with, and +tennised with, and told that they're wonderful pals. But it's the Myras +that are made love to. So now, when Florian Sykes looked at her, and +flushed a little, and said, "I suppose there are a lot of lucky ones +going along with you on this trip, Miss—Jessie," she flushed, too, and +flicked her boot with her riding crop—No, no! I forgot. She didn't have +a riding crop. Well, anyway she gave the effect of flicking her boot +with her riding crop, and said:</p> + +<p>"Would you like to go?"</p> + +<p>"Would I like to go——!" He choked over it. Then he sighed, and smiled +rather wistfully. "That's needlessly cruel of you, Miss Jessie."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Maybe it's not so cruel as you think," Jessie Heath answered. "Did you +make out that list?"</p> + +<p>"I spent practically all of yesterday on it." Which we know was a lie +because, look, wasn't he with Myra?</p> + +<p>They went over the list together. Fishing tackle, tents, pocket-flashes, +puttees, ponchos, chocolate, quirts, slickers, matches, medicine-case, +sweaters, cooking utensils, blankets. It grew longer, and longer. Their +heads came close together over it. And they trailed from department to +department, laughing and talking together. And the two Maine ex-guides +and the clerk who boasted he knew the Rockies like the palm of his hand, +said to one another, "Get on to Nature's Rival trying to make a hit with +Jessie."</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Jessie was saying, "Of course you know the Rockies, being a +Western man, and all."</p> + +<p>Florian smiled rather deprecatingly. "Queer part of it is I don't know +the Rockies so well—" with an emphasis on the word Rockies that led one +to think his more noteworthy feats of altitude had been accomplished +about the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Andes, and the lesser Appalachians.</p> + +<p>"But you've climbed them, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>He burned his bridges behind him. "Only the—ah—eastern slopes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, that's all right, then. We're going to do the west. It'll be +wonderful having you——"</p> + +<p>"Me!"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. Let's go on with the list. M-m-m—where were we? Oh, yes. Now +trout flies. Which do you honestly think best for mountain trout? The +Silver Doctor or the Gray Hackle or the Yellow Professor? U'm?"</p> + +<p>Inspiration comes to us at such times. It could have been nothing less +that prompted him to say, "Well—doesn't that depend a lot on the +weather and the depth of the—ahem!—water?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course. How silly of me. We'll take a lot of all kinds, and +then we'll be safe."</p> + +<p>He breathed again and smiled. He had a winning smile, Florian. Jessie +Heath smiled in return and they stood there, the two of them, lips +parted, eyes holding eyes.</p> + +<p>"My God!" said the man who boasted he knew the Rockies like the palm of +his own hand, "it looks as if he'd landed her, the stiff."</p> + +<p>Certainly it looked as if he had. For next morning old Heath, red-faced, +genial-looking (and not so genial as he looked) approached the head of +the fifth floor and said, "How long you been with us, Sykes?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I came here as errand boy at thirteen. That's +ten—twelve—fifteen—just about sixteen years next June. Yes, sir."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> + +<p>"How'd Jessie—how'd my daughter get the idea you were from the West, +and a regular mountain goat, and a peak-climber and all that?"</p> + +<p>He did look a little uncomfortable then, but it was too late for +withdrawal. "I am from the West, you know."</p> + +<p>"Have you had any long vacations since you've been with us?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir. You see, in the summer, of course—our busy season. I never +can get away then. So I've taken my two weeks in the fall."</p> + +<p>Old Heath's eyes narrowed musingly. "Well, you couldn't have done all +this mountain climbing before you were thirteen. And Jessie says——" He +paused, rather blankly. "You say you do know the Rockies, though, eh?"</p> + +<p>Florian drew himself up a little. "As well as I know any mountain."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, then, that's all right. Seems Jessie thinks you'd be a fine +fellow to have along on this trip. I can't go myself. I hate this +mountain climbing, anyway. Too darned hard work. But it's all right for +young folks. Well, now, what do you say? Want to go? You've earned a +vacation, after sixteen years. There's about eight in Jessie's crowd. +Not counting guides. What do you say? Like to go?"</p> + +<p>For a dazed moment Florian stared at him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> "Why, yessir. Yes, sir, +I'd—I'd like to go—very much." And he coughed to hide his joy and +terror.</p> + +<p>And two weeks later he went.</p> + +<p>The thing swept the store like a flame. In an hour everyone knew it from +the shipping-room to the roof-restaurant. Myra saw him the day he left. +She was game, that girl.</p> + +<p>"I hope you're going to have a beautiful time, Mr. Sykes."</p> + +<p>"Thanks, Myra." He could afford to be lenient with her, poor little +girl.</p> + +<p>She ventured a final wretched word or two. "It's—it's wonderful of Mr. +Heath and—Miss Heath—isn't it?" She was rubbing salt into her own +wound and taking a fierce sort of joy in it.</p> + +<p>"Wonderful! Say, they're a couple of God's green footstools, that's what +they are!" He was a little mixed, but very much in earnest. "A couple of +God's green footstools." And he went.</p> + +<p>He went, and Myra watched him go, and except for a little swelling gulp +in her white throat you'd never have known she'd been hit. He was going +with Jessie Heath. Now, Myra had no illusions about those things. Old +man Heath's wife, now dead, had been a girl with no money and no looks, +and yet he had married her. If Jessie Heath happened to take a fancy to +Florian, why—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>—</p> + +<p>Myra's little world stood still, and in it were small voices, far away, +asking for 6½-B; and have you it in brown, and other unimportant +things like that.</p> + +<p>Ten minutes after the train had started Florian Sykes knew he shouldn't +have come. He had suspected it before. He kept saying to himself, over +and over: "You've always wanted a mountain trip, and now you're going to +have it. You're a lucky guy, that's what you are. A lucky guy." But in +his heart he knew he was lying.</p> + +<p>In the first place, they were all so glib with their altitudes, and +their packs, and their trails, and their horses and their camps. It was +a rather mixed and raggle-taggle group that Miss Jessie Heath had +gathered about her for this expedition to the West. They ranged all the +way from a little fluffy witless golden-haired girl they all called Mud, +for some obscure reason, and who had been Miss Heath's room-mate at +college, surprisingly enough, to a lady of stern and rock-bound +countenance who looked like a stage chaperon made up for the part. She +was Miss Heath's companion in lieu of Mrs. Heath, deceased. In between +there were a couple of men of Florian's age; two youngsters of +twenty-one or two who talked of Harvard and asked Florian what his +university had been; an old girl whose name Florian never did learn; and +two others of Jessie Heath's age and general style. Florian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> found +himself as bewildered by their talk and views as though they had been +jabbering a foreign language. Every now and then, though, one of them +would turn to him for a bit of technical advice. If it happened to +concern equipment Florian could answer it readily enough. Ten years on +the fifth floor had taught him many things. But if the knowledge sought +happened to be of things geographical or of nature, he floundered, +struggled, sank. And it took them just about half a day to learn this. +The trip out takes four, from New York.</p> + +<p>At first they asked him things to see him suffer. But they tired of +that, after a bit. It was too easy. Queerly enough, Jessie Heath, +mountain-wise though she was, believed in him almost to the end. But +that only made the next three weeks the bitterer for Florian Sykes. For +when it came to leaping from peak to peak Jessie turned out to be the +young gazelle. And she liked to have Florian with her. On the trail she +was a mosquito afoot, a jockey ahorseback. A thousand times, in those +three weeks of torture, he would fix his eye on a tree ten feet away, up +the steep trail. And to himself he would say, "I'll struggle, somehow, +as far as that tree, and then die under it." And he would stagger +another ten feet, his heart pounding in the unaccustomed altitude, his +lungs bursting, his lips parted, his breath coming sobbingly, his eyes +starting from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> his head. Leaping lightly ahead of him, around the bend, +was Jessie, always. She had a way of calling to the laggard—hallooing, +I believe it's supposed to be. And she expected an answer. An answer! +When your lungs were bursting through your chest and your heart was +crowding your tonsils. When he reached her it was always to find her +perched on a seemingly inaccessible rock, demanding that he join her to +admire the view. Before three days had gone by the sound of that halloo +with its breeziness and breath-control and power, made him sick all +over. Sometimes she sang, going up the trail. He could not have croaked +a note if failure to do it had meant instant death. The Harvard hellions +(it is his own term) were indefatigable, simian, pitiless. At nine +thousand feet they aimed at ten. At ten they would have nothing less +than twelve. At twelve thousand they were all for making another drive +for it and having lunch at an altitude of thirteen thousand five +hundred. As he toiled painfully along hundreds of feet behind them, +Florian used to take a hideous pleasure in fancying how, on reaching the +ever-distant top, the Harvard hellions would be missing. And after +searching and hallooing he would peer over the edge (13,500 feet, at the +very least, surely) and there, at the bottom, would discern their +mangled forms, distorted, crushed, and quite, quite dead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yoo-o-o—hoo-oo-oo-oo!" Jessie, up the trail. His rosy dream would +vanish.</p> + +<p>He learned why seasoned mountain climbers make nothing of the ascent. He +learned, in bitterness and unshed tears, that it is the descent that +breaks the heart and shatters the already broken frame. That down-climb +with your toes crashing through your boots at every step; with your +knee-brakes refusing to work, your thighs creaking, your joints +spavined. The views were wonderful. But, oh, the price he paid! The air +was intoxicating. But what, he asked himself, was wine to a dead man! +Miserable little cockney that he was he told himself a hundred times a +day that if he ever survived this he'd never look at another view again, +unless from the Woolworth Tower, on a calm day. He thought of New York +as a traveller, dying of thirst in the desert, thinks of the lush green +oasis. New York in July! Dear New York in July, its furs in storage, its +collar unstarched, its coat unbuttoned; even its doormen and chauffeurs +almost human. Would he ever see it again? And then, as if in answer to +his question, there befell an incident so harrowing, so +nerve-shattering, as almost to make a negative answer seem inevitable.</p> + +<p>Florian got lost.</p> + +<p>It was the third week of the trip. Florian had answered Jessie's eleven +thousandth question about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> things of which he was quite, quite ignorant. +His brain felt queer and tight, as though something were about to snap.</p> + +<p>They were to climb the Peak next day. All that day they had been +approaching it. Florian looked at it. And he hated it. It was like a +colossal forbidding finger pointing upward, upward, taunting him, +menacing him. He wished that some huge cataclysm of nature would occur, +swallowing up this hideous mass of pitiless rock.</p> + +<p>Jessie Heath's none too classic nose had peeled long ere this and her +neck was like a choice cut of underdone beefsteak. Florian told himself +that there was something almost indecent about a girl who cared so +little about her skin, and hair, and eyes, and hands. He actually hated +her sturdy legs in their boots or puttees—those tireless, pitiless +legs, always twinkling ahead of him, up the trail.</p> + +<p>On the fateful day he was tired. He had often been tired to the point of +desperation during the past three weeks. But this was different. Every +step was torture. Every breath was pain. Jessie was a few hundred feet +up the trail, as always, and hallooing to him every dozen paces. The +Harvard hellions were doing the chamois ahead of her. The rest of the +party were toiling along behind. One guide was just ahead. Another, +leading two horses, bringing up the rear. Suddenly, desperately, +Flor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>ian knew he must rest. He would fling himself on a bed of moss by +the side of the trail, in the shade, near a stunted, wind-tortured +timber-line pine, and let the whole procession pass him, and then catch +up with them before they disappeared.</p> + +<p>He stepped to the side of the narrow trail, almost indiscernible at this +height, flung himself down with a little groan of relief, and shut his +sun-seared eyes. The voices of the others came to him. There was little +conversation. He heard Jessie's accursed halloo. Then the soft thud of +the pack-horses' hoofs, the creak of the saddles. He must get up and +follow now. In a minute. In a minute. In a m——</p> + +<p>He must have slept there for two hours. When he awoke the light had +changed and the air was chill. He sat up, bewildered. He rose. He looked +about, called, hallooed, shouted, did all the futile frenzied things +that a city man does who is lost in the mountains, and, knowing he is +lost, is panic-stricken. The trail, of course! He looked for it, and +there was no trail, to his town-wise eyes. He ran hither and thither, +and back to hither again. He went forward, seemingly, and found himself +back whence he started. He looked for cairns, for tree-blazes, for any +one of the signs of which he had learned in the last three weeks. He +found none. He called again, shrilly. A terror seized him. Terror of +those grim,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> menacing, towering mountain masses. He ran round and round +and round; darted backward and forward; called; stumbled; fell, and +subsided, beaten.</p> + +<p>He had a tiny box of matches with him, but little else. He had found the +trail difficult enough without being pack-burdened. Food? He bethought +himself of a little blue tin box in his coat pocket. He took it out and +looked at it. Its very name struck terror to his heart.</p> + +<p>U. S. Emergency Ration. It was printed on the box. Just below that he +made out:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Powdered sugar</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chocolate</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cocoa butter</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Malted milk</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Egg Albumin</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Casein.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Not to be opened except on command of officer.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>My God! He had come to this! He looked at it, wide-eyed. He was very +hungry. The ration, in its blue tin, like a box of shaving talcum, had +been handed to each of the party in a chorus of shouting and laughter. +And now it was to save his life. He managed to pry open the box, and ate +some of its contents, slowly. It was not agreeable.</p> + +<p>Dusk was coming on. There were mountain lions, he knew that. Those rocks +and crevices were peopled with all sorts of stealthy, snarling, +slinking,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> four-footed creatures. He would build a fire. They were +afraid of the flames, he had read somewhere, and would not come near. +Perhaps the others would see the light, and come back to find him. Curse +them! Why hadn't they come before now!</p> + +<p>It was dusk by the time he had his fire built. He had crouched over it +for a half-hour, blowing it, coaxing it, wheedling it. There were few +twigs or sticks at this height. He was very cold. His heavy sweater was +in the pack on the horse's back. Finally he was rewarded with a feeble +flicker, a tiny tongue of flame. He rose from his knees and passed his +hand over his forehead with a gesture of utter weariness and despair. +And then he stared, transfixed. For on the plateau above him rose a +great shaft of fire. The kind of fire that only Pete, the most expert +among guides, could build. And as he stared there burst out at him from +behind trees, rocks, crevices, a whole horde of imps shrieking with +fiendish laughter.</p> + +<p>"Ho, ho," laughed Jessie.</p> + +<p>And "Ha, ha!" howled the Harvard hellions.</p> + +<p>"Thought you were lost, didn'tcha?"</p> + +<p>"Gosh, you looked funny!"</p> + +<p>"Your face!—--"</p> + +<p>Florian stared at them. He did not smile. He went quietly over to his +tiny camp-fire and stamped it out, neatly, as he had been taught to do. +He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> took his can of emergency ration (not to be opened except on command +of officer) and hurled it far, far down the mountainside. Jessie Heath +laughed, contemptuously. And Florian, looking at her, didn't care. +Didn't care. Didn't care.</p> + +<p>The nightmare was over in August. Over, that is, for Florian. The rest +were to do another four weeks of it, farther into the interior. Florian +sickened at the thought of it. When he bade them farewell he was so glad +to be free of them that he almost loved them. When he found himself +actually on the little jerkwater train that was to connect him with the +main line he patted the dusty red plush seat, gratefully, as one would +stroke a faithful beast. When he came into the Grand Central station he +would have stooped and kissed the steps of the marble staircase if his +porter had not been on the point of vanishing with his bags. That night +on reaching home he stayed in the bathtub for an hour, just lying there +in the warm, soothing liquid, only moving to dapple his fingers now and +then as a lazy fish moves a languid fin. God's country! This was it.</p> + +<p>"My, it's nice to have you back again, Mr. Sykes," said Mrs. Pet.</p> + +<p>"Is your big two-room suite on the next floor vacant?" said Florian, +cryptically.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pet stared a little, wonderingly. "Yes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> that's vacant since the +Ostranders left, in July. Why do you ask, Mr. Sykes?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," Florian answered, airily. "Not a thing. Just asked."</p> + +<p>His train had come in at nine. It was eleven now, but he was restless, +and a little hungry, and very much exhilarated. "You certainly look +grand," Mrs. Pet had exclaimed, admiringly. "And my, how you're +sunburned!"</p> + +<p>He left the Lexington Avenue house, now, and strolled over to the +near-by white-tiled restaurant. There, in the window, was the +white-capped one, flapping pancakes. Florian could have kissed him. He +sat down. A waitress approached him.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," mused Florian. "I'm sort of hungry, but I don't +just——"</p> + +<p>"The pork and beans are elegant to-night," suggested the girl.</p> + +<p>And "Pork and beans! NO!" thundered Florian.</p> + +<p>The girl drew herself up icily. "I ain't deef. You don't need to yell."</p> + +<p>Florian looked up at her contritely, and smiled his winning smile. "I'm +sorry. I didn't mean—I—I never want to see beans again as long as I +live!"</p> + +<p>He was down at the store early, early next morning. His practised eye +swept the department for possible slackness, for changes, for needed +adjust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>ments. The two Maine ex-guides and the chap who knew the Rockies +like the palm of his hand welcomed him with Judas-like slaps on the +shoulder. "Like it?" they asked him. And, "God's country—the West," he +answered, mechanically. After that he ignored them. At nine he ran down +the two flights of stairs to the third floor. He did not wait for the +elevator.</p> + +<p>For a moment he could not find her and his heart sank. She might be away +on a vacation. Then he spied her in a corner half-hidden by a rack of +covert coats. She was hanging them up. The floor was empty of customers +thus early. He strode over to her. She turned. Into her eyes there +leaped a look which she quickly veiled as had been taught her by a +thousand thousand female ancestors.</p> + +<p>"I got your postals," she said.</p> + +<p>Florian said nothing.</p> + +<p>"My, you're brown!"</p> + +<p>Florian said nothing.</p> + +<p>"Did you—have a good time?"</p> + +<p>Florian said nothing.</p> + +<p>"What—what——" Her hand went to her throat, where his eyes were +fastened.</p> + +<p>Then Florian spoke. "How white your throat is!" he said. "How white your +throat is!"</p> + +<p>Myra stepped out, then, from among the covert coats on the rack. Her +head was lifted high on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> creamy column that supported it. She had +her pride, had Myra.</p> + +<p>"It's no whiter than it was a month ago, that I can see."</p> + +<p>"I know it." His tone was humble, with a little pleading note in it. "I +know a lot of things that I didn't know a month ago, Myra."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_SUDDEN_SIXTIES" id="THE_SUDDEN_SIXTIES"></a>THE SUDDEN SIXTIES</h2> + + +<p>Hannah Winter was sixty all of a sudden, as women of sixty are. Just +yesterday—or the day before, at most—she had been a bride of twenty in +a wine-coloured silk wedding gown, very stiff and rich. And now here she +was, all of a sudden, sixty.</p> + +<p>The actual anniversary that marked her threescore had had nothing to do +with it. She had passed that day painlessly enough—happily, in fact. +But now, here she was, all of a sudden, consciously, bewilderingly, +sixty. This is the way it happened!</p> + +<p>She was rushing along Peacock Alley to meet her daughter Marcia. Any one +who knows Chicago knows that smoke-blackened pile, the Congress Hotel; +and any one who knows the Congress Hotel has walked down that glittering +white marble crypt called Peacock Alley. It is neither so glittering nor +so white, nor, for that matter, so prone to preen itself as it was in +the hotel's palmy '90s. But it still serves as a convenient short cut on +a day when Chicago's lake wind makes Michigan Boulevard a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> hazard, and +thus Hannah Winter was using it. She was to have met Marcia at the +Michigan Boulevard entrance at two, sharp. And here it was 2.07. When +Marcia said two, there she was at two, waiting, lips slightly +compressed. When you came clattering up, breathless, at 2.07, she said +nothing in reproach. But within the following half hour bits of her +conversation, if pieced together, would have summed up something like +this:</p> + +<p>"I had to get the children off in time and give them their lunch first +because it's wash day and Lutie's busy with the woman and won't do a +single extra thing; and all my marketing for to-day and to-morrow +because to-morrow's Memorial Day and they close at noon; and stop at the +real estate agent's on Fifty-third to see them about the wall paper +before I came down. I didn't even have time to swallow a cup of tea. And +yet I was here at two. You haven't a thing to do. Not a blessed thing, +living at a hotel. It does seem to me ..."</p> + +<p>So then here it was 2.07, and Hannah Winter, rather panicky, was rushing +along Peacock Alley, dodging loungers, and bell-boys, and travelling +salesmen and visiting provincials and the inevitable red-faced delegates +with satin badges. In her hurry and nervous apprehension she looked, as +she scuttled down the narrow passage, very much like the Rabbit who was +late for the Duchess's dinner. Her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> rubber-heeled oxfords were pounding +down hard on the white marble pavement. Suddenly she saw coming swiftly +toward her a woman who seemed strangely familiar—a well-dressed woman, +harassed looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring +so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her +haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart +hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim +ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was +not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid +a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought +up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror +which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the +north end of Peacock Alley. Passersby and the loungers on near-by red +plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump +that remained black-and-blue for two weeks or more. The bump did not +bother her, nor did the slightly amused concern of those who had come to +her assistance. She stood there, her hat still askew, staring at this +woman—this woman with her stiff ankles, her slightly protruding eyes, +her nervous frown, her hat a little sideways—this stranger—this +murderess who had just slain, ruthlessly and forever, a sallow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> lively, +high-spirited girl of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown.</p> + +<p>Don't think that Hannah Winter, at sixty, had tried to ape sixteen. She +was not one of those grisly sexagenarians who think that, by wearing +pink, they can combat the ochre of age. Not at all. In dress, conduct, +mode of living she was as an intelligent and modern woman of sixty +should be. The youth of her was in that intangible thing called, +sentimentally, the spirit. It had survived forty years of buffeting, and +disappointment, and sacrifice and hard work. Inside this woman who wore +well-tailored black and small close hats and clean white wash gloves +(even in Chicago) was the girl, Hannah Winter, still curious about this +adventure known as living; still capable of bearing its disappointments +or enjoying its surprises. Still capable, even, of being surprised. And +all this is often the case, all unsuspected by the Marcias until the +Marcias are, themselves, suddenly sixty. When it is too late to say to +the Hannah Winters, "Now I understand."</p> + +<p>We know that Hannah Winter had been married in wine-coloured silk, very +stiff and grand. So stiff and rich that the dress would have stood alone +if Hannah had ever thought of subjecting her wedding gown to such +indignity. It was the sort of silk of which it is said that they don't +make such silk now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> It was cut square at the neck and trimmed with +passementerie and fringe brought crosswise from breast to skirt hem. +It's in the old photograph and, curiously enough, while Marcia thinks +it's comic, Joan, her nine-year-old daughter, agrees with her +grandmother in thinking it very lovely. And so, in its quaintness and +stiffness and bravery, it is. Only you've got to have imagination.</p> + +<p>While wine-coloured silk wouldn't have done for a church wedding it was +quite all right at home; and Hannah Winter's had been a home wedding +(the Winters lived in one of the old three-story red-bricks that may +still be seen, in crumbling desuetude, over on Rush Street) so that +wine-coloured silk for a twenty-year-old bride was quite in the mode.</p> + +<p>It is misleading, perhaps, to go on calling her Hannah Winter, for she +married Hermie Slocum and became, according to law, Mrs. Hermie Slocum, +but remained, somehow, Hannah Winter in spite of law and clergy, though +with no such intent on her part. She had never even heard of Lucy Stone. +It wasn't merely that her Chicago girlhood friends still spoke of her as +Hannah Winter. Hannah Winter suited her—belonged to her and was +characteristic. Mrs. Hermie Slocum sort of melted and ran down off her. +Hermie was the sort of man who, christened Herman, is called Hermie. +That all those who had known her before her marriage still spoke of her +as Hannah<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Winter forty years later was merely another triumph of the +strong over the weak.</p> + +<p>At twenty Hannah Winter had been a rather sallow, lively, fun-loving +girl, not pretty, but animated; and forceful, even then. The Winters +were middle-class, respected, moderately well-to-do Chicago citizens—or +had been moderately well-to-do before the fire of '71. Horace Winter had +been caught in the financial funk that followed this disaster and the +Rush Street household, almost ten years later, was rather put to it to +supply the wine-coloured silk and the supplementary gowns, linens, and +bedding. In those days you married at twenty if a decent chance to marry +at twenty presented itself. And Hermie Slocum seemed a decent chance, +undoubtedly. A middle-class, respected, moderately well-to-do person +himself, Hermie, with ten thousand dollars saved at thirty-five and just +about to invest it in business in the thriving city of Indianapolis. A +solid young man, Horace Winter said. Not much given to talk. That +indicated depth and thinking. Thrifty and far-sighted, as witness the +good ten thousand in cash. Kind. Old enough, with his additional fifteen +years, to balance the lively Hannah who was considered rather flighty +and too prone to find fun in things that others considered serious. A +good thing she never quite lost that fault. Hannah resolutely and +dutifully put out of her head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> (or nearly) all vagrant thoughts of Clint +Darrow with the crisp black hair and the surprising blue eyes thereto, +and the hat worn rakishly a little on one side, and the slender cane and +the pointed shoes. A whipper-snapper, according to Horace Winter. Not a +solid business man like Hermie Slocum. Hannah did not look upon herself +as a human sacrifice. She was genuinely fond of Hermie. She was fond of +her father, too; the rather harassed and hen-pecked Horace Winter; and +of her mother, the voluble and quick-tongued and generous Bertha Winter, +who was so often to be seen going down the street, shawl and +bonnet-strings flying, when she should have been at home minding her +household. Much of the minding had fallen to Hannah.</p> + +<p>And so they were married, and went to the thriving city of Indianapolis +to live, and Hannah Winter was so busy with her new household goods, and +the linens, and the wine-coloured silk and its less magnificent +satellites, that it was almost a fortnight before she realized fully +that this solid young man, Hermie Slocum, was not only solid but +immovable; not merely thrifty, but stingy; not alone taciturn but quite +conversationless. His silences had not proceeded from the unplumbed +depths of his knowledge. He merely had nothing to say. She learned, too, +that the ten thousand dollars, soon dispelled, had been made for him by +an energetic and shrewd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> business partner with whom he had quarrelled +and from whom he had separated a few months before.</p> + +<p>There never was another lump sum of ten thousand of Hermie Slocum's +earning.</p> + +<p>Well. Forty years ago, having made the worst of it you made the best of +it. No going home to mother. The word "incompatibility" had not come +into wide-spread use. Incompatibility was a thing to hide, not to +flaunt. The years that followed were dramatic or commonplace, depending +on one's sense of values. Certainly those years were like the married +years of many another young woman of that unplastic day. Hannah Winter +had her job cut out for her and she finished it well, and alone. No +reproaches. Little complaint. Criticism she made in plenty, being the +daughter of a voluble mother; and she never gave up hope of stiffening +the spine of the invertebrate Hermie.</p> + +<p>The ten thousand went in driblets. There never was anything dashing or +romantic about Hermie Slocum's failures. The household never felt actual +want, nor anything so picturesque as poverty. Hannah saw to that.</p> + +<p>You should have read her letters back home to Chicago—to her mother and +father back home on Rush Street, in Chicago; and to her girlhood +friends, Sarah Clapp, Vinie Harden, and Julia Pierce. They were letters +that, for stiff-lipped pride and brazen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> boasting, were of a piece with +those written by Sentimental Tommy's mother when things were going worst +with her.</p> + +<p>"My wine-coloured silk is almost worn out," she wrote. "I'm thinking of +making it over into a tea-gown with one of those new cream pongee panels +down the front. Hermie says he's tired of seeing me in it, evenings. He +wants me to get a blue but I tell him I'm too black for blue. Aren't men +stupid about clothes! Though I pretend to Hermie that I think his taste +is excellent, even when he brings me home one of those expensive beaded +mantles I detest."</p> + +<p>Bald, bare-faced, brave lying.</p> + +<p>The two children arrived with mathematical promptness—first Horace, +named after his grandfather Winter, of course; then Martha, named after +no one in particular, but so called because Hermie Slocum insisted, +stubbornly, that Martha was a good name for a girl. Martha herself fixed +all that by the simple process of signing herself Marcia in her twelfth +year and forever after. Marcia was a throw-back to her grandmother +Winter—quick-tongued, restless, volatile. The boy was an admirable +mixture of the best qualities of his father and mother; slow-going, like +Hermie Slocum, but arriving surely at his goal, like his mother. With +something of her driving force mixed with anything his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> father had of +gentleness. A fine boy, and uninteresting. It was Hannah Winter's boast +that Horace never caused her a moment's sorrow or uneasiness in all his +life; and so Marcia, the troublous, was naturally her pride and idol.</p> + +<p>As Hermie's business slid gently downhill Hannah tried with all her +strength to stop it. She had a shrewd latent business sense and this she +vainly tried to instil in her husband. The children, stirring in their +sleep in the bedroom adjoining that of their parents, would realize, +vaguely, that she was urging him to try something to which he was +opposed. They would grunt and whimper a little, and perhaps remonstrate +sleepily at being thus disturbed, and then drop off to sleep again to +the sound of her desperate murmurs. For she was desperate. She was +resolved not to go to her people for help. And it seemed inevitable if +Hermie did not heed her. She saw that he was unsuited for business of +the mercantile sort; urged him to take up the selling of insurance, just +then getting such a strong and wide hold on the country.</p> + +<p>In the end he did take it up, and would have made a failure of that, +too, if it had not been for Hannah. It was Hannah who made friends for +him, sought out prospective clients for him, led social conversation +into business channels whenever chance presented itself. She had the boy +and girl to think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> of and plan for. When Hermie objected to this or that +luxury for them as being stuff and nonsense Hannah would say, not +without a touch of bitterness, "I want them to have every advantage I +can give them. I want them to have all the advantages I never had when I +was young."</p> + +<p>"They'll never thank you for it."</p> + +<p>"I don't want them to."</p> + +<p>Adam and Eve doubtless had the same argument about the bringing up of +Cain and Abel. And Adam probably said, after Cain's shocking crime, +"Well, what did I tell you! Was I right or was I wrong? Who spoiled him +in the first place!"</p> + +<p>They had been married seventeen years when Hermie Slocum, fifty-two, +died of pneumonia following a heavy cold. The thirty-seven-year-old +widow was horrified (but not much surprised) to find that the insurance +solicitor had allowed two of his own policies to lapse. The company was +kind, but businesslike. The insurance amounted, in all, to about nine +thousand dollars. Trust Hermie for never quite equalling that ten again.</p> + +<p>They offered her the agency left vacant by her husband, after her first +two intelligent talks with them.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "not here. I'm going back to Chicago to sell insurance. +Everybody knows me there. My father was an old settler in Chicago.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> +There'll be my friends, and their husbands, and their sons. Besides, the +children will have advantages there. I'm going back to Chicago."</p> + +<p>She went. Horace and Bertha Winter had died five years before, within +less than a year of each other. The old Rush Street house had been sold. +The neighbourhood was falling into decay. The widow and her two children +took a little flat on the south side. Widowed, one might with equanimity +admit stress of circumstance. It was only when one had a husband that it +was disgraceful to show him to the world as a bad provider.</p> + +<p>"I suppose we lived too well," Hannah said when her old friends +expressed concern at her plight. "Hermie was too generous. But I don't +mind working. It keeps me young."</p> + +<p>And so, truly, it did. She sold not only insurance but coal, a thing +which rather shocked her south side friends. She took orders for tons of +this and tons of that, making a neat commission thereby. She had a desk +in the office of a big insurance company on Dearborn, near Monroe, and +there you saw her every morning at ten in her neat sailor hat and her +neat tailored suit. Four hours of work lay behind that ten o'clock +appearance. The children were off to school a little after eight. But +there was the ordering to do; cleaning; sewing; preserving, mending. A +woman came in for a few hours every day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> but there was no room for a +resident helper. At night there were a hundred tasks. She helped the boy +and girl with their home lessons, as well, being naturally quick at +mathematics. The boy Horace had early expressed the wish to be an +engineer and Hannah contemplated sending him to the University of +Wisconsin because she had heard that there the engineering courses were +particularly fine. Not only that, she actually sent him.</p> + +<p>Marcia showed no special talent. She was quick, clever, pretty, and +usually more deeply engaged in some school-girl love affair than Hannah +Winter approved. She would be an early bride, one could see that. No +career for Marcia, though she sketched rather well, sewed cleverly, +played the piano a little, sang just a bit, could trim a hat or turn a +dress, danced the steps of the day. She could even cook a commendable +dinner. Hannah saw to that. She saw to it, as well, that the boy and the +girl went to the theatre occasionally; heard a concert at rare +intervals. There was little money for luxuries. Sometimes Marcia said, +thoughtlessly, "Mother, why do you wear those stiff plain things all the +time?"</p> + +<p>Hannah, who had her own notion of humour, would reply, "The better to +clothe you, my dear."</p> + +<p>Her girlhood friends she saw seldom. Two of them had married. One was a +spinster of forty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> They had all moved to the south side during the +period of popularity briefly enjoyed by that section in the late '90s. +Hannah had no time for their afternoon affairs. At night she was too +tired or too busy for outside diversions. When they met her they said, +"Hannah Winter, you don't grow a day older. How do you do it!"</p> + +<p>"Hard work."</p> + +<p>"A person never sees you. Why don't you take an afternoon off some time? +Or come in some evening? Henry was saying only yesterday that he enjoyed +his talk with you so much, and that you were smarter than any man +insurance agent. He said you sold him I don't know how many thousand +dollars' worth before he knew it. Now I suppose I'll have to go without +a new fur coat this winter."</p> + +<p>Hannah smiled agreeably. "Well, Julia, it's better for you to do without +a new fur coat this winter than for me to do without any."</p> + +<p>The Clint Darrow of her girlhood dreams, grown rather paunchy and +mottled now, and with the curling black hair but a sparse grizzled +fringe, had belied Horace Winter's contemptuous opinion. He was a +moneyed man now, with an extravagant wife, but no children. Hannah +underwrote him for a handsome sum, received his heavy compliments with a +deft detachment, heard his complaints about his extravagant wife with a +sympathetic expression, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> no comment—and that night spent the ten +minutes before she dropped off to sleep in pondering the impenetrable +mysteries of the institution called marriage. She had married the solid +Hermie, and he had turned out to be quicksand. She had not married the +whipper-snapper Clint, and now he was one of the rich city's rich men. +Had she married him against her parents' wishes would Clint Darrow now +be complaining of her extravagance, perhaps, to some woman he had known +in his youth? She laughed a little, to herself, there in the dark.</p> + +<p>"What in the world are you giggling about, Mother?" called Marcia, who +slept in the bedroom near by. Hannah occupied the davenport couch in the +sitting room. There had been some argument about that. But Hannah had +said she preferred it; and the boy and girl finally ceased to object. +Horace in the back bedroom, Marcia in the front bedroom, Hannah in the +sitting room. She made many mistakes like that. So, then, "What in the +world are you giggling about, Mother?"</p> + +<p>"Only a game," answered Hannah, "that some people were playing to-day."</p> + +<p>"A new game?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my, no!" said Hannah, and laughed again. "It's old as the world."</p> + +<p>Hannah was forty-seven when Marcia married. Marcia married well. Not +brilliantly, of course, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> well. Edward was with the firm of Gaige & +Hoe, Importers. He had stock in the company and an excellent salary, +with prospects. With Horace away at the engineering school Hannah's +achievement of Marcia's trousseau was an almost superhuman feat. But it +was a trousseau complete. As they selected the monogrammed linens, the +hand-made lingerie, the satin-covered down quilts, the smart frocks, +Hannah thought, quite without bitterness, of the wine-coloured silk. +Marcia was married in white. She was blonde, with a fine fair skin, in +her father's likeness, and she made a picture-book bride. She and Ed +took a nice little six-room apartment on Hyde Park Boulevard, near the +Park and the lake. There was some talk of Hannah's coming to live with +them but she soon put that right.</p> + +<p>"No," she had said, at once. "None of that. No flat was ever built that +was big enough for two families."</p> + +<p>"But you're not a family, Mother. You're us."</p> + +<p>Hannah, though, was wiser than that.</p> + +<p>She went up to Madison for Horace's commencement. He was very proud of +his youthful looking, well-dressed, intelligent mother. He introduced +her, with pride, to the fellows. But there was more than pride in his +tone when he brought up Louise. Hannah knew then, at once. Horace had +said that he would start to pay back his mother for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> university +training with the money earned from his very first job. But now he and +Hannah had a talk. Hannah hid her own pangs—quite natural pangs of +jealousy and something very like resentment.</p> + +<p>"There aren't many Louises," said Hannah. "And waiting doesn't do, +somehow. You're an early marrier, Horace. The steady, dependable kind. +I'd be a pretty poor sort of mother, wouldn't I, if——" etc.</p> + +<p>Horace's first job took him out to South America. He was jubilant, +excited, remorseful, eager, downcast, all at once. He and Louise were +married a month before the time set for leaving and she went with him. +It was a job for a young and hardy and adventurous. On the day they +left, Hannah felt, for the first time in her life, bereaved, widowed, +cheated.</p> + +<p>There followed, then, ten years of hard work and rigid economy. She +lived in good boarding houses, and hated them. She hated them so much +that, toward the end, she failed even to find amusement in the +inevitable wall pictures of plump, partially draped ladies lounging on +couches and being tickled in their sleep by overfed cupids in mid-air. +She saved and scrimped with an eye to the time when she would no longer +work. She made some shrewd and well-advised investments. At the end of +these ten years she found herself possessed of a consider<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>able sum whose +investment brought her a sufficient income, with careful management.</p> + +<p>Life had tricked Hannah Winter, but it had not beaten her. And there, +commonplace or dramatic, depending on one's viewpoint, you have the +first sixty years of Hannah Winter's existence.</p> + +<p>This is the curious thing about them. Though heavy, these years had +flown. The working, the planning, the hoping, had sped them by, somehow. +True, things that never used to tire her tired her now, and she +acknowledged it. She was older, of course. But she never thought of +herself as old. Perhaps she did not allow herself to think thus. She had +married, brought children into the world, made their future sure—or as +sure as is humanly possible. And yet she never said, "My work is done. +My life is over." About the future she was still as eager as a girl. She +was a grandmother. Marcia and Ed had two children, Joan, nine, and +Peter, seven (strong simple names were the mode just then).</p> + +<p>Perhaps you know that hotel on the lake front built during the World's +Fair days? A roomy, rambling, smoke-blackened, comfortable old +structure, ringed with verandas, its shabby façade shabbier by contrast +with the beds of tulips or geraniums or canna that jewel its lawn. There +Hannah Winter went to live. It was within five minutes' walk of Marcia's +apartment. Rather expensive, but as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> homelike as a hotel could be and +housing many old-time Chicago friends.</p> + +<p>She had one room, rather small, with a bit of the lake to be seen from +one window. The grim, old-fashioned hotel furniture she lightened and +supplemented with some of her own things. There was a day bed—a narrow +and spindling affair for a woman of her height and comfortable +plumpness. In the daytime this couch was decked out with taffeta pillows +in rose and blue, with silk fruit and flowers on them, and gold braid. +There were two silk-shaded lamps, a shelf of books, the photographs of +the children in flat silver frames, a leather writing set on the desk, +curtains of pale tan English casement cloth at the windows. A cheerful +enough little room.</p> + +<p>There were many elderly widows like herself living in the hotel on +slender, but sufficient, incomes. They were well-dressed women in trim +suits or crêpes, and Field's special walking oxfords; and small smart +hats. They did a little cooking in their rooms—not much, they hastened +to tell you. Their breakfasts only—a cup of coffee and a roll or a +slice of toast, done on a little electric grill, the coffee above, the +toast below. The hotel dining room was almost free of women in the +morning. There were only the men, intent on their papers, and their eggs +and the 8.40 I. C. train. It was like a men's club, except, perhaps, for +an occasional business woman successful enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> or indolent enough to do +away with the cooking of the surreptitious matutinal egg in her own +room. Sometimes, if they were to lunch at home, they carried in a bit of +cold ham, or cheese, rolls, butter, or small dry groceries concealed in +muffs or handbags. They even had diminutive iceboxes in closets. The +hotel, perforce, shut its eyes to this sort of thing. Even permitted the +distribution of tiny cubes of ice by the hotel porter. It was a harmless +kind of cheating. Their good dinners they ate in the hotel dining room +when not invited to dine with married sons or daughters or friends.</p> + +<p>At ten or eleven in the morning you saw them issue forth, or you saw +"little" manicures going in. One spoke of these as "little" not because +of their size, which was normal, but in definition of their prices. +There were "little" dressmakers as well, and "little" tailors. In +special session they confided to one another the names or addresses of +any of these who happened to be especially deft, or cheap, or modish.</p> + +<p>"I've found a little tailor over on Fifty-fifth. I don't want you to +tell any one else about him. He's wonderful. He's making me a suit that +looks exactly like the model Hexter's got this year and guess what he's +charging!" The guess was, of course, always a triumph for the discoverer +of the little tailor.</p> + +<p>The great lake dimpled or roared not twenty feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> away. The park offered +shade and quiet. The broad veranda invited one with its ample armchairs. +You would have thought that peace and comfort had come at last to this +shrewd, knowledgeous, hard-worked woman of sixty. She was handsomer than +she had been at twenty or thirty. The white powdering her black hair +softened her face, lightened her sallow skin, gave a finer lustre to her +dark eyes. She used a good powder and had an occasional facial massage. +Her figure, though full, was erect, firm, neat. Around her throat she +wore an inch-wide band of black velvet that becomingly hid the chords +and sagging chin muscles.</p> + +<p>Yet now, if ever in her life, Hannah Winter was a slave.</p> + +<p>Every morning at eight o'clock Marcia telephoned her mother. The hotel +calls cost ten cents, but Marcia's was an unlimited phone. The +conversation would start with a formula.</p> + +<p>"Hello—Mama?... How are you?"</p> + +<p>"Fine."</p> + +<p>"Sleep all right?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. I never sleep all night through any more."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you probably just think you don't.... Are you doing anything +special this morning?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I——Why?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. I just wondered if you'd mind taking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> Joan to the dentist's. +Her brace came off again this morning at breakfast. I don't see how I +can take her because Elsie's giving that luncheon at one, you know, and +the man's coming about upholstering that big chair at ten. I'd call up +and try to get out of the luncheon, but I've promised, and there's +bridge afterward and it's too late now for Elsie to get a fourth. +Besides, I did that to her once before and she was furious. Of course, +if you can't ... But I thought if you haven't anything to do, really, +why——"</p> + +<p>Through Hannah Winter's mind would flash the events of the day as she +had planned it. She had meant to go downtown shopping that morning. +Nothing special. Some business at the bank. Mandel's had advertised a +sale of foulards. She hated foulards with their ugly sprawling patterns. +A nice, elderly sort of material. Marcia was always urging her to get +one. Hannah knew she never would. She liked the shops in their spring +vividness. She had a shrewd eye for a bargain. A bite of lunch +somewhere; then she had planned to drop in at that lecture at the +Woman's Club. It was by the man who wrote "Your Town." He was said to be +very lively and insulting. She would be home by five, running in to see +the children for a minute before going to her hotel to rest before +dinner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p> + +<p>A selfish day, perhaps. But forty years of unselfish ones had paid for +it. Well. Shopping with nine-year-old Joan was out of the question. So, +too, was the lecture. After the dentist had mended the brace Joan would +have to be brought home for her lunch. Peter would be there, too. It was +Easter vacation time. Hannah probably would lunch with them, in Marcia's +absence, nagging them a little about their spinach and chop and apple +sauce. She hated to see the two children at table alone, though Marcia +said that was nonsense.</p> + +<p>Hannah and Marcia differed about a lot of things. Hannah had fallen into +the bad habit of saying, "When you were children I didn't——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but things are different now, please remember, Mother. I want my +children to have all the advantages I can give them. I want them to have +all the advantages I never had."</p> + +<p>If Ed was present at such times he would look up from his paper to say, +"The kids'll never thank you for it, Marsh."</p> + +<p>"I don't want them to."</p> + +<p>There was something strangely familiar about the whole thing as it +sounded in Hannah's ears.</p> + +<p>The matter of the brace, alone. There was a tiny gap between Joan's two +front teeth and, strangely enough, between Peter's as well. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> seemed +to Hannah that every well-to-do child in Hyde Park had developed this +gap between the two incisors and that all the soft pink child mouths in +the district parted to display a hideous and disfiguring arrangement of +complicated wire and metal. The process of bringing these teeth together +was a long and costly one, totalling between six hundred and two +thousand dollars, depending on the reluctance with which the parted +teeth met, and the financial standing of the teeths' progenitors. +Peter's dental process was not to begin for another year. Eight was +considered the age. It seemed to be as common as vaccination.</p> + +<p>From Hannah: "I don't know what's the matter with children's teeth +nowadays. My children's teeth never had to have all this contraption on +them. You got your teeth and that was the end of it."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps if they'd paid proper attention to them," Marcia would reply, +"there wouldn't be so many people going about with disfigured jaws now."</p> + +<p>Then there were the dancing lessons. Joan went twice a week, Peter once. +Joan danced very well the highly technical steps of the sophisticated +dances taught her at the Krisiloff School. Her sturdy little legs were +trained at the practice bar. Her baby arms curved obediently above her +head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> or in fixed relation to the curve of her body in the dance. She +understood and carried into effect the French technical terms. It was +called gymnastic and interpretive dancing. There was about it none of +the spontaneity with which a child unconsciously endows impromptu dance +steps. But it was graceful and lovely. Hannah thought Joan a second +Pavlowa; took vast delight in watching her. Taking Joan and Peter to +these dancing classes was one of the duties that often devolved upon +her. In the children's early years Marcia had attended a child study +class twice a week and Hannah had more or less minded the two in their +mother's absence. The incongruity of this had never struck her. Or if it +had she had never mentioned it to Marcia. There were a good many things +she never mentioned to Marcia. Marcia was undoubtedly a conscientious +mother, thinking of her children, planning for her children, hourly: +their food, their clothes, their training, their manners, their +education. Asparagus; steak; French; health shoes; fingernails; dancing; +teeth; hair; curtseys.</p> + +<p>"Train all the independence out of 'em," Hannah said sometimes, grimly. +Not to Marcia, though. She said it sometimes to her friends Julia Pierce +or Sarah Clapp, or even to Vinie Harding, the spinster of sixty, for all +three, including<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> the spinster Vinie, who was a great-aunt, seemed to be +living much the same life that had fallen to Hannah Winter's lot.</p> + +<p>Hyde Park was full of pretty, well-dressed, energetic young mothers who +were leaning hard upon the Hannah Winters of their own families. You saw +any number of grey-haired, modishly gowned grandmothers trundling +go-carts; walking slowly with a moist baby fist in their gentle clasp; +seated on park benches before which blue rompers dug in the sand or +gravel or tumbled on the grass. The pretty young mothers seemed very +busy, too, in another direction. They attended classes, played bridge, +marketed, shopped, managed their households. Some of them had gone in +for careers. None of them seemed conscious of the frequency with which +they said, "Mother, will you take the children from two to five this +afternoon?" Or, if they were conscious of it, they regarded it as a +natural and normal request. What are grandmothers for?</p> + +<p>Hannah Winter loved the feel of the small velvet hands in her own palm. +The clear blue-white of their eyes, the softness of their hair, the very +feel of their firm, strong bare legs gave her an actual pang of joy. But +a half hour—an hour—with them, and she grew restless, irritable. She +didn't try to define this feeling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You say you love the children. And yet when I ask you to be with them +for half a day——"</p> + +<p>"I do love them. But they make me nervous."</p> + +<p>"I don't see how they can make you nervous if you really care about +them."</p> + +<p>Joan was Hannah's favourite; resembled her. The boy, Peter, was blond, +like his mother. In Joan was repeated the grandmother's sallow skin, +dark eyes, vivacity, force. The two, so far apart in years, were united +by a strong natural bond of sympathy and alikeness. When they were +together on some errand or excursion they had a fine time. If it didn't +last too long.</p> + +<p>Sometimes the young married women would complain to each other about +their mothers. "I don't ask her often, goodness knows. But I think she +might offer to take the children one or two afternoons during their +vacation, anyway. She hasn't a thing to do. Not a thing."</p> + +<p>Among themselves the grandmothers did not say so much. They had gone to +a sterner school. But it had come to this: Hannah was afraid to plan her +day. So often had she found herself called upon to forego an afternoon +at bridge, a morning's shopping, an hour's mending, even, or reading.</p> + +<p>She often had dinner at Marcia's, but not as often as she was asked. +More and more she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> longed for and appreciated the orderly quiet and +solitude of her own little room. She never analyzed this, nor did Marcia +or Ed. It was a craving for relaxation on the part of body and nerves +strained throughout almost half a century of intensive living.</p> + +<p>Ed and Marcia were always doing charming things for her. Marcia had made +the cushions and the silk lampshades for her room. Marcia was always +bringing her jellies, and a quarter of a freshly baked cake done in +black Lutie's best style. Ed and Marcia insisted periodically on her +going with them to the theatre or downtown for dinner, or to one of the +gardens where there was music and dancing and dining. This was known as +"taking mother out." Hannah Winter didn't enjoy these affairs as much, +perhaps, as she should have. She much preferred a mild spree with one of +her own cronies. Ed was very careful of her at street crossings and +going down steps, and joggled her elbow a good deal. This irked her, +though she tried not to show it. She preferred a matinée, or a good +picture or a concert with Sarah, or Vinie, or Julia. They could giggle, +and nudge and comment like girls together, and did. Indeed, they were +girls in all but outward semblance. Among one another they recognized +this. Their sense of enjoyment was un-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>dulled. They liked a double +chocolate ice cream soda as well as ever; a new gown; an interesting +book. As for people! Why, at sixty the world walked before them, these +elderly women, its mind unclothed, all-revealing. This was painful, +sometimes, but interesting always. It was one of the penalties—and one +of the rewards—of living.</p> + +<p>After some such excursion Hannah couldn't very well refuse to take the +children to see a Fairbanks film on a Sunday afternoon when Ed and +Marcia were spending the half-day at the country club. Marcia was very +strict about the children and the films. They were allowed the +saccharine Pickford, and of course Fairbanks's gravity-defying feats, +and Chaplin's gorgeous grotesqueries. You had to read the titles for +Peter. Hannah wasn't as quick at this as were Ed or Marcia, and Peter +was sometimes impatient, though politely so.</p> + +<p>And so sixty swung round. At sixty Hannah Winter had a suitor. Inwardly +she resented him. At sixty Clint Darrow, a widower now and reverent in +speech of the departed one whose extravagance he had deplored, came to +live at the hotel in three-room grandeur, overlooking the lake. A ruddy, +corpulent, paunchy little man, and rakish withal. The hotel widows made +much of him. Hannah, holding herself aloof, was often surprised to find +her girlhood flame hovering near now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> speaking of loneliness, of trips +abroad, of a string of pearls unused. There was something virgin about +the way Hannah received these advances. Marriage was so far from her +thoughts; this kindly, plump little man so entirely outside her plans. +He told her his troubles, which should have warned her. She gave him +some shrewd advice, which encouraged him. He rather fancied himself as a +Lothario. He was secretly distressed about his rotund waist line and, +theoretically, never ate a bite of lunch. "I never touch a morsel from +breakfast until dinner time." Still you might see him any day at noon at +the Congress, or at the Athletic Club, or at one of the restaurants +known for its savoury food, busy with one of the richer luncheon dishes +and two cups of thick creamy coffee.</p> + +<p>Though the entire hotel was watching her Hannah was actually unconscious +of Clint Darrow's attentions, or their markedness, until her son-in-law +Ed teased her about him one day. "Some gal!" said Ed, and roared with +laughter. She resented this indignantly; felt that they regarded her as +senile. She looked upon Clint Darrow as a fat old thing, if she looked +at him at all; but rather pathetic, too. Hence her kindliness toward +him. Now she avoided him. Thus goaded he actually proposed marriage and +repeated the items of the European trip, the pearls, and the un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>used +house on Woodlawn Avenue. Hannah, feeling suddenly faint and white, +refused him awkwardly. She was almost indignant. She did not speak of +it, but the hotel, somehow, knew. Hyde Park knew. The thing leaked out.</p> + +<p>"But why?" said Marcia, smiling—giggling, almost. "Why? I think it +would have been wonderful for you, Mother!"</p> + +<p>Hannah suddenly felt that she need not degrade herself to explain +why—she who had once triumphed over her own ordeal of marriage.</p> + +<p>Marcia herself was planning a new career. The children were seven and +nine—very nearly eight and ten. Marcia said she wanted a +chance at self-expression. She announced a course in landscape +gardening—"landscape architecture" was the new term.</p> + +<p>"Chicago's full of people who are moving to the suburbs and buying big +places out north. They don't know a thing about gardens. They don't know +a shrub from a tree when they see it. It's a new field for women—in the +country, at least—and I'm dying to try it. That youngest Fraser girl +makes heaps, and I never thought much of her intelligence. Of course, +after I finish and am ready to take commissions, I'll have to be content +with small jobs, at first. But later I may get a chance at grounds +around public libraries and hospitals and railway<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> stations. And if I +can get one really big job at one of those new-rich north shore places +I'll be made."</p> + +<p>The course required two years and was rather expensive. But Marcia said +it would pay, in the end. Besides, now that the war had knocked Ed's +business into a cocked hat for the next five years or more, the extra +money would come in very handy for the children and herself and the +household.</p> + +<p>Hannah thought the whole plan nonsense. "I can't see that you're +pinched, exactly. You may have to think a minute before you buy fresh +strawberries for a meringue in February. But you do buy them." She was +remembering her own lean days, when February strawberries would have +been as unattainable as though she had dwelt on a desert island.</p> + +<p>On the day of the mirror accident in Peacock Alley, Hannah was meeting +Marcia downtown for the purpose of helping her select spring outfits for +the children. Later, Marcia explained, there would be no time. Her class +met every morning except Saturday. Hannah tried to deny the little pang +of terror at the prospect of new responsibility that this latest move of +Marcia's seemed about to thrust upon her. Marcia wasn't covering her own +job, she told herself. Why take another! She had given up an afternoon +with Sarah because of this need of Marcia's to-day. Marcia depended upon +her mother's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> shopping judgment more than she admitted. Thinking thus, +and conscious of her tardiness (she had napped for ten minutes after +lunch) Hannah Winter had met, face to face, with a crash, this strange, +strained, rather haggard elderly woman in the mirror.</p> + +<p>It was, then, ten minutes later than 2.07 when she finally came up to +Marcia waiting, lips compressed, at the Michigan Avenue entrance, as +planned.</p> + +<p>"I bumped into that mirror——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mom! I'm sorry. Are you hurt? How in the world?... Such a morning +... wash day ... children their lunch ... marketing ... wall paper ... +Fifty-third Street ... two o'clock ..."</p> + +<p>Suddenly, "Yes, I know," said Hannah Winter, tartly. "I had to do all +those things and more, forty years ago."</p> + +<p>Marcia had a list.... Let's see ... Those smocked dresses for Joan would +probably be all picked over by this time ... Light-weight underwear for +Peter ... Joan's cape ...</p> + +<p>Hannah Winter felt herself suddenly remote from all this; done with it; +finished years and years ago. What had she to do with smocked dresses, +children's underwear, capes? But she went in and out of the shops, up +and down the aisles, automatically, gave expert opinion. By five it was +over. Hannah felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> tired, depressed. She was to have dinner at Marcia's +to-night. She longed, now, for her own room. Wished she might go to it +and stay there, quietly.</p> + +<p>"Marcia, I don't think I'll come to dinner to-night. I'm so tired. I +think I'll just go home——"</p> + +<p>"But I got the broilers specially for you, and the sweet potatoes +candied the way you like them, and a lemon cream pie."</p> + +<p>When they reached home they found Joan, listless, on the steps. One of +her sudden sore throats. Stomach, probably. A day in bed for her. By +to-morrow she would be quite all right. Hannah Winter wondered why she +did not feel more concern. Joan's throats had always thrown her into a +greater panic than she had ever felt at her own children's illnesses. +To-day she felt apathetic, indifferent.</p> + +<p>She helped tuck the rebellious Joan in bed. Joan was spluttering about +some plan for to-morrow. And Marcia was saying, "But you can't go +to-morrow, Joan. You know you can't, with that throat. Mother will have +to stay home with you, too, and give up her plans to go to the country +club with Daddy, and it's the last chance she'll have, too, for a long, +long time. So you're not the only one to suffer." Hannah Winter said +nothing.</p> + +<p>They went in to dinner at 6.30. It was a good dinner. Hannah Winter ate +little, said little. Inside Hannah Winter a voice—a great, strong +voice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> shaking with its own earnestness and force—was shouting in +rebellion. And over and over it said, to the woman in the mirror at the +north end of Peacock Alley: "Three score—and ten to go. That's what it +says—'and ten.' And I haven't done a thing I've wanted to do. I'm +afraid to do the things I want to do. We all are, because of our sons +and daughters. Ten years. I don't want to spend those ten years taking +care of my daughter's children. I've taken care of my own. A good job, +too. No one helped me. No one helped me. What's the matter with these +modern mothers, with their newfangled methods and their efficiency and +all? Maybe I'm an unnatural grandmother, but I'm going to tell Marcia +the truth. Yes, I am. If she asks me to stay home with Joan and Peter +to-morrow, while she and Ed go off to the country club, I'm going to +say, 'No!' I'm going to say, 'Listen to me, Ed and Marcia. I don't +intend to spend the rest of my life toddling children to the park and +playing second assistant nursemaid. I'm too old—or too young. I've only +got ten years to go, according to the Bible, and I want to have my fun. +I've sown. I want to reap. My teeth are pretty good, and so is my +stomach. They're better than yours will be at my age, for all your smart +new dentists. So are my heart and my arteries and my liver and my +nerves. Well. I don't want luxury. What I want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> is leisure. I want to do +the things I've wanted to do for forty years, and couldn't. I want, if I +feel like it, to start to learn French and read Jane Austen and stay in +bed till noon. I never could stay in bed till noon, and I know I can't +learn now, but I'm going to do it once, if it kills me. I'm too old to +bring up a second crop of children, I want to play. It's terrible to +realize that you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die; and, +then it's too late. I know I sound like a selfish old woman, and I am, +and I don't care. I don't care. I want to be selfish. So will you, too, +when you're sixty, Martha Slocum. You think you're young. But all of a +sudden you'll be sixty, like me. All of a sudden you'll realize——"</p> + +<p>"Mother, you're not eating a thing." Ed's kindly voice.</p> + +<p>Marcia, flushed of face, pushed her hair back from her forehead with a +little frenzied familiar gesture. "Eat! Who could eat with Joan making +that insane racket in there! Ed, will you tell her to stop! Can't you +speak to her just once! After all, she is your child, too, you know.... +Peter, eat your lettuce or you can't have any dessert."</p> + +<p>How tired she looked, Hannah Winter thought. Little Martha. Two babies, +and she only a baby herself yesterday. How tired she looked.</p> + +<p>"I wanna go!" wailed Joan, from her bedroom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> prison. "I wanna go +to-morrow. You promised me. You said I could. I wanna GO!"</p> + +<p>"And I say you can't. Mother has to give up her holiday, too, because of +you. And yet you don't hear me——"</p> + +<p>"You!" shouted the naughty Joan, great-granddaughter of her +great-grandmother, and granddaughter of her grandmamma. "<i>You</i> don't +care. Giving up's easy for you. You're an old lady."</p> + +<p>And then Hannah Winter spoke up. "I'll stay with her to-morrow, Marcia. +You and Ed go and have a good time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IF_I_SHOULD_EVER_TRAVEL" id="IF_I_SHOULD_EVER_TRAVEL"></a>IF I SHOULD EVER TRAVEL!</h2> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The fabric of my faithful love</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">No power shall dim or ravel</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">If I should ever travel!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">—Millay.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>If you've spent more than one day in Okoochee, Oklahoma, you've had +dinner at Pardee's. Someone—a business acquaintance, a friend, a +townsman—has said, "Oh, you stopping at the Okmulgee Hotel? +WON—derful, isn't it? Nothing finer here to the Coast. I bet you +thought you were coming to the wilderness, didn't you? You Easterners! +Think we live in tents and eat jerked venison and maize, huh? Never +expected, I bet, to see a twelve-story hotel with separate ice-water +faucet in every bathroom and a bath to every room. What'd you think of +the Peacock grill, h'm?"</p> + +<p>"Well—uh"—hesitatingly—"very nice, but why don't you have something +native ... Decorations and ... Peacock grill is New York, not Okla——"</p> + +<p>"Z'that so! Well, let me tell you you won't find any better food or +service in any restaurant, New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> York or I don't care where. But say, +hotel meals are hotel meals. You get tired of 'em. Ever eat at Pardee's, +up the street? Say, there's food! If you're going to be here in town any +time why'n't you call up there some evening before six—you have to +leave 'em know—and get one of Pardee's dinners? Thursday's chicken. And +when I say chicken I mean——Well, just try it, that's all.... And for +God's sake don't make a mistake and tip Maxine."</p> + +<p>Pardee's you find to be a plain box-like two-story frame house in a +quiet and commonplace residential district. Plainly—almost +scantily—furnished as to living room and dining room. The dining room +comfortably seats just twenty, but the Pardees "take" eighteen +diners—no more. This because Mrs. Pardee has eighteen of everything in +silver. And that means eighteen of everything from grapefruit spoons to +cheese knives; and finger bowls before and after until you feel like an +early Roman. As for Maxine—the friendly warning is superfluous. You +would as soon have thought of slipping Hebe a quarter on Olympus—a +rather severe-featured Hebe in a white silk blouse ordered through +<i>Vogue</i>.</p> + +<p>All this should have been told in the past tense, because Pardee's is no +more. But Okoochee, Oklahoma, is full of paradoxes like Pardee's. Before +you understand Maxine Pardee and her mother in the kitchen (dishing up) +you have to know Okoo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>chee. And before you know Okoochee you have to +know Sam Pardee, missing.</p> + +<p>There are all sorts of stories about Okoochee, Oklahoma—and almost +every one of them is true. Especially are the fantastic ones true—the +incredible ones. The truer they are the more do they make such Arabian +knights as Aladdin and Ali Baba appear dull and worthy gentlemen in the +retail lamp and oil business, respectively. Ali Baba's exploit in oil, +indeed, would have appeared too trivial for recounting if compared with +that of any one of a dozen Okoochee oil wizards.</p> + +<p>Take the tale of the Barstows alone, though it hasn't the slightest +bearing on this story. Thirteen years ago the Barstows had a parched +little farm on the outskirts of what is now the near-metropolis of +Okoochee, but what was then a straggling village in the Indian +Territory. Ma Barstow was a woman of thirty-five who looked sixty; +withered by child-bearing; scorched by the sun; beaten by the wind; +gnarled with toil; gritty with dust. Ploughing the barren little farm +one day Clem Barstow had noticed a strange oily scum. It seeped up +through the soil and lay there, heavily. Oil! Weeks of suspense, weeks +of disappointment, weeks of hope. Through it all Ma Barstow had washed, +scrubbed, cooked as usual, and had looked after the welfare of the +Barstow litter. Seventeen years of drudgery dull the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> imagination. When +they struck the great gusher—it's still known as Barstow's Old +Faithful—they came running to her with the news. She had been washing a +great tubful of harsh greasy clothes—overalls, shirts, drawers. As the +men came, shouting, she appeared in the doorway of the crazy wooden +lean-to, wiping her hands on her apron.</p> + +<p>"Oil!" they shouted, idiotically. "Millions! Biggest gusher yet! It'll +mean millions! You're a millionaire!" Then, as she looked at them, +dazedly, "What're you going to do, Mis' Barstow, huh? What're you going +to do with it?"</p> + +<p>Ma Barstow had brought one hand up to push back a straggling wisp of +damp hair. Then she looked at that hand as she brought it down—looked +at it and it's mate, parboiled, shrunken, big-knuckled from toil. She +wiped them both on her apron again, bringing the palms down hard along +her flat thighs. "Do?" The miracles that millions might accomplish burst +full force on her work-numbed brain. "Do? First off I'm a-going to have +the washing done out."</p> + +<p>Last week Mrs. Clement Barstow was runner-up in the women's amateur golf +tournament played on the Okoochee eighteen-hole course. She wore tweed +knickers. The Barstow place on the Edgecombe Road is so honeycombed with +sleeping porches, sun dials, swimming pools, bird baths, terraces, +sunken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> gardens, and Italian marble benches that the second assistant +Japanese gardener has to show you the way to the tennis courts.</p> + +<p>That's Okoochee.</p> + +<p>It was inevitable that Sam Pardee should hear of Okoochee; and, hearing +of it, drift there. Sam Pardee was drawn to a new town, a boom town, as +unerringly as a small boy scents a street fight. Born seventy-five years +earlier he would certainly have been one of those intrepid Forty-niners; +a fearless canvas-covered fleet crawling painfully across a continent, +conquering desert and plain and mountain; starving, thirsting, fighting +Indians, eating each other if necessity demanded, with equal dexterity +and dispatch. Perhaps a trip like this would have satisfied his +wanderlust. Probably not. He was like a child in a berry patch. The +fruit just beyond was always the ripest and reddest. The Klondike didn't +do it. He was one of the first up the Yukon in that mad rush. He +returned minus all the money and equipment with which he had started, +including the great toe of his right foot—tribute levied by the frozen +North. From boom town to boom town he went. The first stampede always +found him there, deep in blue-prints, engineering sheets, prospectuses. +But no sooner did the town install a water-works and the First National +Bank house itself in a Portland-cement Greek temple with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> Roman pillars +and a mosaic floor than he grew restless and was on the move.</p> + +<p>A swashbuckler, Sam Pardee, in tan shoes and a brown derby. An 1890 +Villon handicapped by a home-loving wife; an incurable romantic married +to a woman who judged as shiftless any housewife possessed of less than +two dozen bath towels, twelve tablecloths, eighteen wash cloths, and at +least three dozen dish towels, hand-hemmed. Milly Pardee's idea of +adventure was testing the recipes illustrated in the How To Use The +Cheaper Cuts page in the back of the woman's magazines.</p> + +<p>Perversely enough, they had been drawn together by the very attraction +of dissimilarity. He had found her feminine home-loving qualities most +appealing. His manner of wearing an invisible cloak, sword and buckler, +though actually garbed in ready-mades, thrilled her. She had come of a +good family; he of, seemingly, no family at all. When the two married, +Milly's people went through that ablutionary process known as washing +their hands of her. Thus ideally mismated they tried to make the best of +it—and failed. At least, Sam Pardee failed. Milly Pardee said, +"Goodness knows I tried to be a good wife to him." The plaint of all +unappreciated wives since Griselda.</p> + +<p>Theirs was a feast-and-famine existence. Sometimes Sam Pardee made +sudden thousands. Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> Pardee would buy silver, linen, and other +household furnishings ranging all the way from a grand piano to a patent +washing machine. The piano and the washing machine usually were whisked +away within a few weeks or months, at the longest. But she cannily had +the linen and silver stamped—stamped unmistakably and irrevocably with +a large, flourishing capital P, embellished with floral wreaths. +Eventually some of the silver went the way of the piano and washing +machine. But Milly Pardee clung stubbornly to a dozen and a half of +everything. She seemed to feel that if once she had less than eighteen +fish forks the last of the solid ground of family respectability would +sink under her feet. For years she carried that silver about wrapped in +trunks full of the precious linen, and in old underwear and cotton +flannel kimonos and Sam's silk socks and Maxine's discarded +baby-clothes. She clung to it desperately, as other women cling to +jewels, knowing that when this is gone no more will follow.</p> + +<p>When the child was born Milly Pardee wanted to name her Myrtle but her +husband had said, suddenly, "No, call her Maxine."</p> + +<p>"After whom?" In Mrs. Pardee's code you named a child "after" someone.</p> + +<p>He had seen Maxine Elliott in the heyday of her cold, clear, brainless +beauty, with her great, slightly protuberant eyes set so far apart, her +exquisitely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> chiselled white nose, and her black black hair. She had +thrilled him.</p> + +<p>"After my Uncle Max that lives in—uh—Australia."</p> + +<p>"I've never heard you talk of any Uncle Max," said Mrs. Pardee, coldly.</p> + +<p>But the name had won. How could they know that Maxine would grow up to +be a rather bony young woman who preferred these high-collared white +silk blouses; and said "eyether."</p> + +<p>Maxine had been about twelve when Okoochee beckoned Sam Pardee. They +were living in Chicago at the time; had been there for almost three +years—that is, Mrs. Pardee and Maxine had been there. Sam was in and +out on some mysterious business of his own. His affairs were always +spoken of as "deals" or "propositions." And they always, seemingly, +required his presence in a city other than that in which they were +living—if living can be said to describe the exceedingly impermanent +perch to which they clung. They had a four-room flat. Maxine was +attending a good school. Mrs. Pardee was using the linen and silver +daily. There was a linen closet down the hall, just off the dining room. +You could open the door and feast your eyes on orderly piles of neatly +laundered towels, sheets, tablecloths, napkins, tea towels. Mrs. Pardee +marketed and cooked, contentedly. She was more than a merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> good cook; +she was an alchemist in food stuffs. Given such raw ingredients as +butter, sugar, flour, eggs, she could evolve a structure of pure gold +that melted on the tongue. She could take an ocherous old hen, dredge +its parts in flour, brown it in fat sizzling with onion at the bottom of +an iron kettle, add water, a splash of tomato and a pinch of seasoning, +and bear triumphantly to the table a platter heaped with tender +fricassee over which a smooth, saddle-brown gravy simmered fragrantly. +She ate little herself, as do most expert cooks, and found her reward +when Sam or Maxine uttered a choked and appreciative "Mmm!"</p> + +<p>In the midst of creature comforts such as these Sam Pardee said, one +evening, "Oil."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pardee passed it, but not without remonstrance. "It's the same +identical French dressing you had last night, Sam. I mixed enough for +twice. And you didn't add any oil last night."</p> + +<p>Sam Pardee came out of his abstraction long enough to emit a roar of +laughter and an unsatisfactory explanation. "I was thinking of oil in +wells, not in cruets. Millions of barrels of oil, not a spoonful. Crude, +not olive."</p> + +<p>She saw her child, her peace, her linen closet threatened. "Sam Pardee, +you don't mean——"</p> + +<p>"Oklahoma. That's what I meant by oil. It's oozing with it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p> + +<p>Real terror leaped into Milly Pardee's eyes. "Not Oklahoma. Sam, I +couldn't stand——" Suddenly she stiffened with resolve. Maxine's report +card had boasted three stars that week. Oklahoma! Why, there probably +were no schools at all in Oklahoma. "I won't bring my child up in +Oklahoma. Indians, that's what! Scalped in our beds."</p> + +<p>Above Sam Pardee's roar sounded Maxine's excited treble. "Oo, Oklahoma! +I'd love it."</p> + +<p>Her mother turned on her, almost fiercely. "You wouldn't."</p> + +<p>The child had thrown out her arms in a wide gesture. "It sounds so far +away and different. I like different places. I like any place that isn't +here."</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee had stared at her. It was the father talking in the child. +Any place that isn't here. Different.</p> + +<p>Out of years of bitter experience she tried to convince the child of her +error; tried, as she had striven for years to convince Sam Pardee.</p> + +<p>"Places are just the same," she said, bitterly, "and so are people, when +you get to 'em."</p> + +<p>"They can't be," the child argued, stubbornly. "India and China and +Spain and Africa."</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee had turned accusing eyes on her amused husband. "I hope +you're satisfied."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p> + +<p>He shrugged. "Well, the kid's right. That's living."</p> + +<p>She disputed this, fiercely. "It is not. Living's staying in a place, +and helping it grow, and growing up with it and belonging. Belong!" It +was the cry of the rolling stone that is bruised and weary.</p> + +<p>Sam Pardee left for Oklahoma the following week. Milly Pardee refused to +accompany him. It was the first time she had taken this stand. "If you +go there, and like it, and want to settle down there, I'll come. I know +the Bible says, 'Whither thou goest, I will go,' but I guess even +What'shername would have given up at Oklahoma."</p> + +<p>For three years, then, Sam Pardee's letters reeked of oil: wells, +strikes, gushers, drills, shares, outfits. It was early Oklahoma in the +rough. This one was getting five hundred a day out of his well. That one +had sunk forty thousand in his and lost out.</p> + +<p>"Five hundred what?" Maxine asked. "Forty thousand what?"</p> + +<p>"Dollars, I guess," Milly Pardee answered. "That's the way your father +always talks. I'd rather have twenty-five a week, myself, and know it's +coming without fail."</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't. Where's the fun in that?"</p> + +<p>"Fun! There's more fun in twenty-five a week<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> in a pay envelope than in +forty thousand down a dry well."</p> + +<p>Maxine was fifteen now. "I wish we could live with Father in Oklahoma. I +think it's wrong not to."</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee was beginning to think so, too. Especially since her +husband's letters had grown rarer as the checks they contained had grown +larger. On his occasional trips back to Chicago he said nothing of their +joining him out there. He seemed to have grown accustomed to living +alone. Liked the freedom, the lack of responsibility. In sudden fright +and resolve Milly Pardee sold the furnishings of the four-room flat, +packed the peripatetic linen and silver, and joined a surprised and +rather markedly unenthusiastic husband in Okoochee, Oklahoma. A wife and +a fifteen-year-old daughter take a good deal of explaining on the part +of one who has posed for three years as a bachelor.</p> + +<p>The first thing Maxine said as they rode (in a taxi) to the hotel, was: +"But the streets are paved!" Then, "But it's all electric lighted with +cluster lights!" And, in final and utter disgust, "Why, there's a movie +sign that says, 'The Perils of Pauline.' That was showing at the Élite +on Forty-third Street in Chicago just the night before we left."</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee smiled grimly. "Palestine's paved,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> too," she observed. +"And they're probably running that same reel there next week."</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee and her husband had a plain talk. Next day Sam Pardee +rented the two-story frame house in which, for years, the famous Pardee +dinners were to be served. But that came later. The house was rented +with the understanding that the rent was to be considered as payment +made toward final purchase. The three lived there in comfort. Maxine +went to the new pressed-brick, many-windowed high school. Milly Pardee +was happier than she had been in all her wedded life. Sam Pardee had +made no fortune in oil, though he talked in terms of millions. In a +burst of temporary prosperity, due to a boom in some oil-stocks Sam +Pardee had purchased early in the game, they had paid five thousand +dollars down on the house and lot. That left a bare thousand to pay. +There were three good meals a day. Milly Pardee belonged to the Okoochee +Woman's Thursday Club. All the women in Okoochee seemed to have come +from St. Louis, Columbus, Omaha, Cleveland, Kansas City, and they spoke +of these as Back East. When they came calling they left cards, +punctiliously. They played bridge, observing all the newest rulings, and +speaking with great elaborateness of manner.</p> + +<p>"Yours, I believe, Mrs. Tutwiler."</p> + +<p>"Pardon, but didn't you notice I played the ace?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p> + +<p>Maxine graduated in white, with a sash. Mrs. Pardee was on the committee +to beautify the grounds around the M. K. & T. railroad station. When +relatives from Back East (meaning Nebraska, Kansas, or Missouri) visited +an Okoocheeite cards were sent out for an "At Home," and everything was +as formal as a court levee in Victoria's time. Mrs. Pardee began to talk +of buying an automobile. The town was full of them. There were the +flivvers and lower middle-class cars owned by small merchants, natives +(any one boasting twelve year's residence) and unsuccessful adventurers +of the Sam Pardee type. Then there were the big, high-powered scouting +cars driven by steely-eyed, wiry, cold-blooded young men from +Pennsylvania and New York. These young men had no women-folk with them. +Held conferences in smoke-filled rooms at the Okmulgee Hotel. The main +business street was called Broadway, and the curb on either side was +hidden by lines of cars drawn up slantwise at an angle of ninety. No +farmer wagons. A small town with all the airs of a big one; with none of +the charming informality of the old Southern small town; none of the +engaging ruggedness of the established Middle-Western town; none of the +faded gentility of the old New England town. A strident dame, this, in +red satin and diamonds, insisting that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> she is a lady. Interesting, +withal, and bulging with personality and possibility.</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee loved it. She belonged. She was chairman of this committee +and secretary of that. Okoochee was always having parades, with floats, +sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce of Okoochee and distinguished by +schoolgirls grouped on bunting-covered motor trucks, their hair loose +and lately relieved from crimpers, three or four inches of sensible +shirt-sleeve showing below the flowing lines of their cheesecloth +Grecian robes. Maxine was often one of these. Yes, Milly Pardee was +happy.</p> + +<p>Sam Pardee was not. He began, suddenly, to talk of Mexico. Frankly, he +was bored. For the first time in his life he owned a house—or nearly. +There was eleven hundred dollars in the bank. Roast on Sunday. Bathroom +shelf to be nailed Sunday morning. Y.M.C.A., Rotary Club, Knights of +Columbus, Kiwanis, Boy Scouts.</p> + +<p>"Hell," said Sam Pardee, "this town's no good."</p> + +<p>Milly Pardee took a last stand. "Sam Pardee, I'll never leave here. I'm +through traipsing up and down the world with you, like a gypsy. I want a +home. I want to be settled. I want to stay here. And I'm going to."</p> + +<p>"You're sure you want to stay?"</p> + +<p>"I've moved for the last time. I—I'm going to plant a Burbank clamberer +at the side of the porch,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> and they don't begin to flower till after the +first ten years. That's how sure I am."</p> + +<p>There came a look into Sam Pardee's eyes. He rubbed his neat brown derby +round and round with his coat sleeve. He was just going out.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's all right. I just wanted to know. Where's Max?"</p> + +<p>"She stayed late. They're rehearsing for the Pageant of Progress down at +the Library."</p> + +<p>Sam Pardee looked thoughtful—a little regretful, one might almost have +said. Then he clapped on the brown derby, paused on the top step of the +porch to light his cigar, returned the greeting of young Arnold Hatch +who was sprinkling the lawn next door, walked down the street with the +quick, nervous step that characterized him, boarded the outgoing train +for God knows where, and was never heard from again.</p> + +<p>"Well," said the worse-than-widowed (it was her own term), "we've got +the home."</p> + +<p>She set about keeping it. We know that she had a gift for cooking that +amounted almost to culinary inspiration. Pardee's dinners became an +institution in Okoochee. Mrs. Pardee cooked. Maxine served. And not even +the great new stucco palaces on the Edgecombe Road boasted finer silver, +more exquisite napery. As for the food—old Clem Barstow himself, who +had a chef and a butler and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> sent east for lobster and squabs weekly, +came to Pardee's when he wanted a real meal. From the first they charged +one dollar and fifty cents for their dinners. Okoochee, made mellow by +the steaming soup, the savoury meats, the bland sauces and rich dessert, +paid it ungrudgingly. They served only eighteen—no more, though +Okoochee could never understand why. On each dinner Mrs. Pardee made a +minimum of seventy-five cents. Eighteen times seventy-five ... naught +and carry the four ... naught ... five ... thirteen-fifty ... seven +times ... well, ninety-five dollars or thereabouts each week isn't so +bad. Out of this Mrs. Pardee managed to bank a neat sum. She figured +that at the end of ten or fifteen years....</p> + +<p>"I hate them," said Maxine, washing dishes in the kitchen. "Greedy +pigs."</p> + +<p>"They're nothing of the kind. They like good food, and I'm thankful they +do. If they didn't I don't know where I'd be."</p> + +<p>"We might be anywhere—so long as it could be away from here. Dull, +stupid, stick-in-the-muds, all of them."</p> + +<p>"Why, they're no such thing, Maxine Pardee! They're from all over the +world, pretty nearly. Why, just last Thursday they were counting there +were sixteen different states represented in the eighteen people that +sat down to dinner."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Pooh! States! That isn't the world."</p> + +<p>"What is, then?"</p> + +<p>Maxine threw out her arms, sprinkling dish-water from her dripping +finger tips with the wide-flung gesture. "Cairo! Zanzibar! Brazil! +Trinidad! Seville—uh—Samar—Samarkand."</p> + +<p>"Where's Samarkand?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. And I'm going to see it all some day. And the different +people. The people that travel, and know about what kind of wine with +the roast and the fish. You know—the kind in the novels that say, +'You've chilled this sauterne too much, Bemish."</p> + +<p>"And when you do see all these places," retorted Mrs. Pardee, with the +bitterness born of long years of experience, "you'll find that in every +one of them somebody's got a boarding house called Pardee's, or +something like that, where the people flock same's they do here, for a +good meal."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but what kind of people?"</p> + +<p>"Same kind that comes here." Sam Pardee had once taken his wife to see a +performance of The Man From Home when that comedy was at the height of +its popularity. A line from this play flashed into Mrs. Pardee's mind +now, and she paraphrased it deftly. "There are just as many kinds of +people in Okoochee as there are in Zanzibar."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well, it's so. And I'm thankful we've got the comforts of home."</p> + +<p>At this Maxine laughed a sharp little laugh that was almost a bark. +Perhaps she was justified.</p> + +<p>The eighteen straggled in between six and six-thirty, nightly. A mixture +of townspeople and strangers. While Maxine poured the water in the +dining room the neat little parlour became a mess. The men threw hats +and overcoats on the backs of the chairs. Their rubbers slopped under +them. They rarely troubled to take them off. While waiting avidly for +dinner to be served they struck matches and lighted cigarettes and +cigars. Sometimes they called in to Maxine, "Say, girlie, when'll supper +be ready? I'm 'bout gone."</p> + +<p>The women trotted upstairs, chattering, and primped and fussed in +Maxine's neat and austere little bedroom. They used Maxine's powder and +dropped it about on the tidy dresser and the floor. They brushed away +only what had settled on the front of their dresses. They forgot to +switch off the electric light, leaving Maxine to do it, thriftily, +between serving courses. Every penny counted. Every penny meant release.</p> + +<p>After dinner Maxine and her mother sat down to eat off the edge of the +kitchen table. It was often nine o'clock before the last straggling +diner, sprawling on the parlour davenport with his evening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> paper and +cigar, departed, leaving Maxine to pick up the scattered newspapers, +cigarette butts, ashes; straighten chairs, lock doors.</p> + +<p>Then the dishes. The dishes!</p> + +<p>When Arnold Hatch asked her to go to a movie she shook her head, +usually. "I'm too tired. I'm going to read, in bed."</p> + +<p>"Read, read! That's all you do. What're you reading?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, about Italy. La bel Napoli!" She collected travel folders and often +talked in their terms. In her mind she always said "brooding Vesuvius"; +"blue Mediterranean"; "azure coasts"; "Egypt's golden sands."</p> + +<p>Arnold Hatch ate dinner nightly at Pardee's. He lived in the house next +door, which he owned, renting it to an Okoochee family and retaining the +upstairs front bedroom for himself. A tall, thin, eye-glassed young man +who worked in the offices of the Okoochee Oil and Refining Company, +believed in Okoochee, and wanted to marry Maxine. He had twice kissed +her. On both these occasions his eyeglasses had fallen off, taking the +passion, so to speak, out of the process. When Maxine giggled, +uncontrollably, he said, "Go on—laugh! But some day I'm going to kiss +you and I'll take my glasses off first. Then look out!"</p> + +<p>You have to have a good deal of humour to stand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> being laughed at by a +girl you've kissed; especially a girl who emphasizes her aloofness by +wearing those high-collared white silk blouses.</p> + +<p>"You haven't got a goitre, have you?" said Arnold Hatch, one evening, +brutally. Then, as she had flared in protest, "I know it. I love that +little creamy satin hollow at the base of your throat."</p> + +<p>"You've never s——" The scarlet flamed up. She was human.</p> + +<p>"I know it. But I love it just the same." Pretty good for a tall thin +young man who worked in the offices of the Okoochee Oil and Refining +Company.</p> + +<p>Sometimes he said, "I'm darned certain you like me"—bravely—"love me. +Why won't you marry me? Cut out all this slaving. I could support you. +Not in much luxury, maybe, but——"</p> + +<p>"And settle down in Okoochee! Never see anything! Stuck in this +God-forsaken hole! This drab, dull, oil-soaked village! When there are +wonderful people, wonderful places, colour, romance, beauty! Damascus! +Mandalay! Singapore! Hongkong!... Hongkong! It sounds like a temple +bell. It thrills me."</p> + +<p>"Over in Hongkong," said Arnold Hatch, "I expect some Chinese Maxine +Pardee would say, Okoochee! It sounds like an Indian war drum. It +thrills me.'"</p> + +<p>Sometimes Maxine showed signs of melting. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> she always congealed +again under the influence of her resolve. One evening an out-of-town +diner, on hearing her name, said, "Pardee! Hm. Probably a corruption of +Pardieu. A French name originally, I suppose."</p> + +<p>After that there was no approaching her for a week. Maxine Pardieu. +Pardieu. "By God!" it meant. A chevalier he must have been, this +Pardieu. A musketeer! A swashbuckler, with lace falling over his slim +white hand, and his hand always ready on his sword. Red heels. Plumed +hat. Pardieu!</p> + +<p>How she hated anew the great oil tanks that rose on the town's +outskirts, guarding it like giant sentinels. The new houses. The new +country club. Twenty-one miles of asphalt road. Population in 1900, only +467. In 1920 over 35,000. Slogan, Watch Us Grow. Seventeen hundred oil +and gas wells. Fields of corn and cotton. Skyscrapers. The Watonga +Building, twelve stories. Haynes Block, fourteen stories. Come West, +young man! Ugh!</p> + +<p>Sometimes she made little rhymes in her mind.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">There's Singapore and Zanzibar,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And Cairo and Calais.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">There's Samarkand and Alcazar,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Rangoon and Mandalay.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"Yeh," said Arnold Hatch, one evening, when they were talking in the +Pardee back yard. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> nine o'clock. Dishes done. A moon. October. +Maxine had just murmured her little quatrain. They were standing by the +hedge of pampas grass that separated the Pardee yard from Hatch's next +door.</p> + +<p>"Yeh," said Arnold Hatch. "Likewise:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"There's Seminole and Shawnee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Apache, Agawam.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">There's Agua and Pawnee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Walonga, Waukeetom."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He knew his Oklahoma.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Maxine, in a little burst of fury; and stamped her foot +down hard. Squ-ush! said something underfoot. "Oh!" said Maxine again; +in surprise this time. October was a dry month. She peered down. Her +shoe was wet. A slimy something clung to it. A scummy something shone +reflected in the moonlight. She had not lived ten years in Oklahoma for +nothing. Arnold Hatch bent down. Maxine bent down. The greasy wet patch +lay just between the two back yards. They touched it, fearfully, with +their forefingers. Then they straightened and looked at each other. Oil. +Oil!</p> + +<p>Things happened like that in Oklahoma.</p> + +<p>You didn't try to swing a thing like that yourself. You leased your land +for a number of years. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> well cost between forty and sixty thousand +dollars. You leased to a company represented by one or two of those +cold-blooded steely-eyed young men from Pennsylvania or New York. There +was a good deal of trouble about it, too. This was a residence +district—one of the oldest in this new town. But they bought the Pardee +place and the Hatch place. And Arnold Hatch, who had learned a thing or +two in the offices of the Okoochee Oil and Refining Company, drove a +hard bargain for both. The yard was overrun with drillers, lawyers, +engineers, superintendents, foremen, machinery.</p> + +<p>Arnold came with papers to sign. "Five hundred a day," he said, "and a +percentage." He named the percentage. Maxine and her mother repeated +this after him, numbly.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pardee had been the book-keeper in the Pardee ménage. She tried +some mathematical gymnastics now and bumped her arithmetical nose.</p> + +<p>"Five hundred a day. Including Sundays, Arnold?"</p> + +<p>"Including Sundays."</p> + +<p>Her lips began to move. "Seven times five ... thirty-five hundred a ... +fifty-two times thirty——"</p> + +<p>She stopped, overcome. But she began again, wildly, as a thought came to +her. "Why, I could build a house. A house, up on Edgecombe. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> house +like the Barstows' with lawns, and gardens, and sleeping porches, and +linen closets!... Oh, Maxine! We'll live there——"</p> + +<p>"Not I," said Maxine, crisply. Arnold, watching her, knew what she was +going to say before she said it. "I'm going to see the world. I want to +penetrate a civilization so old that its history wanders down the +centuries and is lost in the dim mists of mythology." [See Baedeker.]</p> + +<p>Sudden wealth had given Arnold a new masterfulness. "Marry me before you +go."</p> + +<p>"Not at all," replied Maxine. "On the boat going over——"</p> + +<p>"Over where?"</p> + +<p>"Honolulu, on my way to Japan, I'll meet a tall bearded stranger, +sunburned, with the flame of the Orient in his eyes, and on his thin, +cruel, sensual mouth——"</p> + +<p>Arnold Hatch took off his glasses. Maxine stiffened. "Don't you d——" +But she was too late.</p> + +<p>"There," said Arnold, "he'll have to have some beard, and some flame, +and some thin, cruel, sensual mouth to make you forget that one."</p> + +<p>Maxine started, alone, against her mother's remonstrances. After she'd +picked out her boat she changed to another because she learned, at the +last minute, that the first boat was an oil-burner. Being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> an +inexperienced traveller she took a good many trunks and was pretty +unpopular with the steward before he could make her understand that one +trunk to the stateroom was the rule. On the first two days out on the +way to the Hawaiian Islands she spent all her time (which was +twenty-four hours a day in her bed) hoping that Balboa was undergoing +fitting torment in punishment for his little joke about discovering the +so-called Pacific Ocean. But the swell subsided, and the wind went down, +and Maxine appeared on deck and in another twelve hours had met everyone +from the purser to the honeymoon couple, in the surprising way one does +on these voyages. She looked for the tall bearded stranger with the +sunburn of the Orient and the thin, cruel, sensual lips. But he didn't +seem to be about. Strangely enough, everyone she talked to seemed to be +from Nebraska, or Kansas, or Iowa, or Missouri. Not only that, they all +were very glib with names and places that had always seemed mythical and +glamorous.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, Mr. Tannenbaum and I went to India last year, and Persia and +around. Real interesting. My, but they're dirty, those towns. We used to +kick about Des Moines, now that they use so much soft coal, and all the +manufacturing and all. But my land, it's paradise compared to those +places. And the food! Only decent meals we had in Egypt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> was a place in +Cairo called Pardee's, run by a woman whose husband's left her or died, +or something. Real home-loving woman she was. Such cooking.... Why, +that's so! Your name's Pardee, too, isn't it! Well, I always say to Mr. +Tannenbaum, it's a small world, after all. No relation, of course?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not." How suddenly safe Oklahoma seemed. And Arnold Hatch.</p> + +<p>"Where you going from Honolulu, Miss Pardee?"</p> + +<p>"Samarkand."</p> + +<p>"Beg pardon?"</p> + +<p>"Samarkand."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yeh. Samar—le' see now, where is that, exactly? I used to know, +but I'm such a hand for forgetting——"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Maxine, distinctly.</p> + +<p>"Don't—but I thought you said you were going——"</p> + +<p>"I am. But I don't know where it is."</p> + +<p>"Then how——"</p> + +<p>"You just go to an office, where there are folders and a man behind the +desk, and you say you want to go to Samarkand. He shows you. You get on +a boat. That's all."</p> + +<p>The people from Iowa, and Kansas, and Nebraska and Missouri said, Oh, +yes, and there was nothing like travel. So broadening. Maxine asked them +if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> they knew about the Vale of Kashmir and one of them, astoundingly +enough, did. A man from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who had spent a year there +superintending the erection of a dredge. A plump man, with eyeglasses +and perpetually chewing a dead cigar.</p> + +<p>Gold and sunlight, myrrh and incense, the tinkling of anklets. Maxine +clung to these wildly, in her mind.</p> + +<p>But Honolulu, the Moana Hotel on Waikiki Beach, reassured her. It was +her dream come true. She knew it would be so when she landed and got her +first glimpse of the dark-skinned natives on the docks, their hats and +necks laden with leis of flowers. There were palm trees. There were +flaming hibiscus hedges. Her bed was canopied with white netting, like +that of a princess (the attendant explained it was to keep out the +mosquitoes).</p> + +<p>You ate strange fruits (they grew a little sickening, after a day or +two). You saw Duke, the Hawaiian world champion swimmer, come in on a +surf-board, standing straight and slim and naked like a god of bronze, +balancing miraculously on a plank carried in on the crest of a wave with +the velocity of a steam engine. You saw Japanese women in tight kimonos +and funny little stilted flapping footgear running to catch a street +car; and you laughed at the incongruity of it. You made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> three-day +trip to the living volcano at Hilo and sat at the crater's brink +watching the molten lava lake tossing, hissing, writhing. You hung +there, between horror and fascination.</p> + +<p>"Certainly a pretty sight, isn't it?" said her fellow travellers. "Makes +the Grand Canyon look sick, I think, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I've never seen it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, really!"</p> + +<p>On her return from Hilo she saw him. A Vandyke beard; smouldering eyes; +thin red lips; lean nervous hands; white flannel evening clothes; +sunburned a rich brown. Maxine drew a long breath as if she had been +running. It was after dinner. The broad veranda was filled with gayly +gowned women; uniformed officers from the fort; tourists in white. They +were drinking their after-dinner coffee, smoking, laughing. The Hawaiian +orchestra made ready to play for the dancing on the veranda. They began +to play. Their ukeleles throbbed and moaned. The musicians sang in their +rich, melodious voices some native song of a lost empire and a dead +king. It tore at your heart. You ached with the savage beauty of it. It +was then she saw him. He was seated alone, smoking, drinking, watching +the crowd with amused, uneager glance. She had seen him before. It was a +certainty, this feeling. She had known him—seen him—before. Perhaps +not in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> life. Perhaps only in her dreams. But they had met.</p> + +<p>She stared at him until her eye caught his. It was brazen, but she was +shameless. Nothing mattered. This was no time for false modesty. Her +eyes held his. Then, slowly, she rose, picked up her trailing scarf, and +walked deliberately past him, glancing down at him as she passed. He +half rose, half spoke. She went down the steps leading from the veranda +to the court-yard, down this walk to the pier, down the pier to the very +end, where the little roofed shelter lay out in the ocean, bathed in +moonlight, fairylike, unreal. The ocean was a thing of molten silver. +The sound of the wailing voices in song came to her on the breeze, +agonizing in its beauty. There, beyond, lay Pearl Harbour. From the +other side, faintly, you heard the music and laughter from the Yacht +Club.</p> + +<p>Maxine seated herself. The after-dinner couples had not yet strolled +out. They were waiting for the dancing up there on the hotel veranda. +She waited. She waited. She saw the glow of his cigar as he came down +the pier, a tall, slim white figure in the moonlight. It was just like a +novel. It was a novel, come to life. He stood a moment at the pier's +edge, smoking. Then he tossed his cigar into the water and it fell with +a little s-st! He stood another moment, irresolutely. Then he came over +to her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Nice night."</p> + +<p>In Okoochee you would have said, "Sir!" But not here. Not now. Not +Maxine Pardieu. "Yes, isn't it!"</p> + +<p>The mellow moon fell full on him—bronzed, bearded, strangely familiar.</p> + +<p>At his next question she felt a little faint. "Haven't we—met before?"</p> + +<p>She toyed with the end of her scarf. "You feel that, too?"</p> + +<p>He nodded. He took a cigarette from a flat platinum case. "Mind if I +smoke? Perhaps you'll join me?" Maxine took a cigarette, uncertainly. +Lighted it from the match he held. Put it to her lips. Coughed, gasped. +"Maybe you're not used to those. I smoke a cheap cigarette because I +like 'em. Dromedaries, those are. Eighteen cents a package."</p> + +<p>Maxine held the cigarette in her unaccustomed fingers. Her eyes were on +his face. "You said you thought—you felt—we'd met before?"</p> + +<p>"I may be mistaken, but I never forget a face. Where are you from, may I +ask?"</p> + +<p>Maxine hesitated a moment. "Oklahoma."</p> + +<p>He slapped his leg a resounding thwack. "I knew it! I'm hardly ever +mistaken. Name's—wait a minute—Pardee, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. But how——"</p> + +<p>"One of the best meals I ever had in my life, Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> Pardee. Two years +ago, it was. I was lecturing on Thibet and the Far East."</p> + +<p>"Lecturing?" Her part of the conversation was beginning to sound a good +deal like the dialogue in a badly written play.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm Brainerd, you know. I thought you knew, when you spoke up +there on the veranda."</p> + +<p>"Brainerd?" It was almost idiotic.</p> + +<p>"Brainerd. Paul Brainerd, the travelogue man. I remember I gave you and +your mother complimentary tickets to the lecture. I've got a great +memory. Got to have, in my business. Let's see, that town was——"</p> + +<p>"Okoochee," faintly.</p> + +<p>"Okoochee! That's it! It's a small world after all, isn't it? Okoochee. +Why, I'm on my way to Oklahoma now. I'm going to spend two months or +more there, taking pictures of the vast oil fields, the oil wells. A new +country. An Aladdin country; a new growth; one of the most amazing and +picturesque bits in the history of our amazing country. History in the +making. An empire over-night. Oklahoma! Well! What a relief, after +war-torn Europe and an out-worn civilization."</p> + +<p>"But you—you're from——?"</p> + +<p>"I'm from East Orange, New Jersey, myself. Got a nice little place down +there that I wouldn't swap for all the palaces of the kings. No sir!...<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> +Already? Well, yes, it is a little damp out here, so close to the water. +Mrs. Brainerd won't risk it. I'll walk up with you. I'd like to have you +meet her."</p> + +<h4>THE END</h4> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gigolo, by Edna Ferber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIGOLO *** + +***** This file should be named 20419-h.htm or 20419-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/4/1/20419/ + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +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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