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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75334-0.txt b/75334-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..abbbc8f --- /dev/null +++ b/75334-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9134 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75334 *** + + + + + + THE GIRLS + + BY EDNA FERBER + + GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + 1921 + + COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION + INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN + + COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY + + PRINTED AT GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A. + + TO + LILLIAN ADLER + WHO SHIES AT BUTTERFLIES + BUT NOT AT LIFE + + + + + THE GIRLS + + + + + CHAPTER I + + +It is a question of method. Whether to rush you up to the girls +pellmell, leaving you to become acquainted as best you can; or, with +elaborate slyness, to slip you so casually into their family life that +they will not even glance up when you enter the room, or leave it; or +to present the three of them in solemn order according to age, epoch, +and story. This last would mean beginning with great-aunt Charlotte +Thrift, spinster, aged seventy-four; thence to her niece and namesake +Lottie Payson, spinster, aged thirty-two; finishing with Lottie's niece +and namesake Charley Kemp, spinster, aged eighteen and a half--you +may be certain nobody ever dreamed of calling _her_ Charlotte. +If you are led by all this to exclaim, aghast, "A story about old +maids!"--you are right. It is. Though, after all, perhaps one couldn't +call great-aunt Charlotte an old maid. When a woman has achieved +seventy-four, a virgin, there is about her something as sexless, as +aloof and monumental, as there is about a cathedral or a sequoia. +Perhaps, too, the term is inappropriate to the vigorous, alert, and +fun-loving Lottie. For that matter, a glimpse of Charley in her white +woolly sweater and gym pants might cause you to demand a complete +retraction of the term. Charley is of the type before whom this era +stands in amazement and something like terror. Charley speaks freely +on subjects of which great-aunt Charlotte has never even heard. Words +obstetrical, psychoanalytical, political, metaphysical and eugenic +trip from Charley's tongue. Don't think that Charley is a highbrow (to +use a word fallen into disuse). Not at all. Even her enemies admit, +grudgingly, that she packs a nasty back-hand tennis wallop; and that +her dancing is almost professional. Her chief horror is of what she +calls sentiment. Her minor hatreds are "glad" books, knitted underwear, +corsets, dirt both physical and mental, lies, fat minds and corporeal +fat. She looks her best in a white fuzzy sweater. A shade too slim and +boyish, perhaps, for chiffons. + +The relationship between Charlotte, Lottie, and Charley is a simple +one, really, though having, perhaps, an intricate look to the outsider. +Great-aunt, niece, grand-niece: it was understood readily enough in +Chicago's South Side, just as it was understood that no one ever called +Lottie "Charlotte," or Charley "Lottie," though any of the three might +be designated as "one of the Thrift girls." + +The Thrifts had been Chicago South Siders since that September in 1836 +when Isaac Thrift had traveled tediously by rail, Sound steamer, river +boat, canal boat, lake ship, and horse wagon from his native New York +State to the unkempt prairie settlement on the banks of the sluggish +stream that the Pottawatamie Indians called Che-ca-gou. Their reason +for having thus named a city after the homely garlic plant was plain +enough whenever the breeze came pungently from the prairies instead of +from Lake Michigan. + +Right here is the start of Aunt Charlotte. And yet the temptation +is almost irresistible to brush rudely past her and to hurry on to +Lottie Payson, who is herself hurrying on home through the slate and +salmon-pink Chicago sunset after what is known on the South Side as +"spending the afternoon." + +An exhilarating but breathless business--this catching up with Lottie; +Lottie of the fine straight back, the short sturdy legs, the sensible +shoes, the well-tailored suit and the elfish exterior. All these items +contributed to the facility with which she put the long Chicago blocks +behind her--all, that is, except the last. An unwed woman of thirty-odd +is not supposed to possess an elfish exterior; she is expected to +be well-balanced and matter-of-fact and practical. Lottie knew this +and usually managed to keep the imp pretty well concealed. Yet she +so often felt sixteen and utterly irresponsible that she had to take +brisk walks along the lake front on blustery days, when the spray +stung your cheeks; or out Bryn Mawr way or even to Beverly Hills where +dwellings were sparse and one could take off one's hat and venture +to skip, furtively, without being eyed askance. This was supposed to +help work off the feeling--not that Lottie wanted to work it off. +She liked it. But you can't act Peter Pannish at thirty-two without +causing a good deal of action among conservative eyebrows. Lottie's +mother, Mrs. Carrie Payson, would have been terribly distressed at +the thought of South Side eyebrows elevated against a member of her +household. Sixty-six years of a full life had taught Mrs. Carrie Payson +little about the chemistry of existence. Else she must have known +how inevitably a disastrous explosion follows the bottling up of the +Lotties of this world. + +On this particular March day the elf was proving obstreperous. An +afternoon spent indoors talking to women of her own age and position +was likely to affect Lottie Payson thus. Walking fleetly along now, +she decided that she hated spending afternoons; that they were not +only spent but squandered. Beck Schaefer had taken the others home in +her electric. Lottie, seized with a sudden distaste for the glittering +enameled box with its cut-glass cornucopia for flowers (artificial), +its gray velvet upholstery and tasseled straps, had elected to walk, +though she knew it would mean being late. + +"Figger?" Beck Schaefer had asked, settling her own plump person in the +driver's seat. + +"Air," Lottie had answered, not altogether truthfully; and drew a long +breath. She turned away from the curb. The electric trundled richly +off, its plate-glass windows filled with snugly tailored shoulders, +furs, white gloves, vivid hats. Lottie held a hand high in farewell, +palm out, as the gleaming vehicle sped silently away, lurched fatly +around a corner, and was gone. + +So she strode home now, through the early evening mist, the zany +March wind buffeting her skirts--no, skirt: it is 1916 and women are +knicker-bockered underneath instead of petticoated--and the fishy +smell that was Lake Michigan in March; the fertilizer smell that was +the Stockyards when the wind was west; and the smoky smell that was +soft coal from the I. C. trains and a million unfettered chimneys, +all blending and mellowing to a rich mixture that was incense to her +Chicago-bred nostrils. + +She was walking rapidly and thinking clearly, if disconnectedly: + +"How we lied to each other this afternoon! Once or twice, though, +we came nearer the truth than was strictly comfortable.... Beck's +bitter.... There! I forgot Celia's recipe for that icebox cake after +all.... Beck's legs ... I never saw such--uh--tumultuous legs ... gray +silk stockings ought to be prohibited on fat legs; room seemed to be +full of them.... That's a nice sunset. I'd love to go over to the lake +just for a minute.... No, guess I'd better not with the folks coming +to dinner.... People always saying Chicago's ugly when it's really.... +Of course the Loop is pretty bad.... Tomorrow'd be a good day to go +downtown and look at blue serges ... a tricotine I think.... I wonder +if mother will want to go.... I do hope this once...." + +Here Lottie drew a deep breath; the kind of breathing that relieves +stomach nerves. She was so sure that mother would want to go. She +almost always did. + +Here we are, striding briskly along with Lottie Payson, while +great-aunt Charlotte, a wistful black-silk figure, lingers far behind. +We are prone to be impatient of black-silk figures, quite forgetting +that they once were slim and eager white young figures in hoop-skirts +that sometimes tilted perilously up behind, displaying an unseemly +length of frilled pantalette. Great-aunt Charlotte's skirts had shaped +the course of her whole life. + +Charlotte Thrift had passed eighteen when the Civil War began. There +is a really beautiful picture of her in her riding habit, taken at the +time. She is wearing a hard-boiled hat with a plume, and you wonder +how she ever managed to reconcile that skirt with a horse's back. The +picture doesn't show the color of the plume but you doubtless would +know. It is a dashing plume anyway, and caresses her shoulder. In one +hand she is catching up the folds of her voluminous skirt, oh, ever so +little; and in the other, carelessly, she is holding a rose. Her young +face is so serious as to be almost severe. That is, perhaps, due to her +eyebrows which were considered too heavy and dark for feminine beauty. +And yet there is a radiance about the face, and an effect of life and +motion about the young figure that bespeaks but one thing. Great-aunt +Charlotte still has the picture somewhere. Sometimes, in a mild orgy +of "straightening up" she comes upon it in its pasteboard box tucked +away at the bottom of an old chest in her bedroom. At such times she is +likely to take it out and look at it with a curiously detached air, as +though it were the picture of a stranger. It is in this wise, too, that +her dim old eyes regard the world--impersonally. It is as though, at +seventy-four, she no longer is swayed by emotions, memories, people, +events. Remote, inaccessible, immune, she sees, weighs, and judges with +the detached directness of a grim old idol. + +Fifty-five years had yellowed the photograph of the wasp-waisted girl +in the billowing riding skirt when her grand-niece, Charley Kemp, +appeared before her in twentieth century riding clothes: sleeveless +jacket ending a little below the hips; breeches baggy in the seat but +gripping the knees. Great-aunt Charlotte had said, "So that's what it's +come to." You could almost hear her agile old mind clicking back to +that other young thing of the plume, and the rose and the little booted +foot peeping so demurely from beneath the folds of the sweeping skirt. + +"Don't you like it?" Charley had looked down at her slim self and had +flicked her glittering tan boots with her riding whip because that +seemed the thing to do. Charley went to matinees. + +Great-aunt Charlotte had pursed her crumpled old lips, whether in +amusement or disapproval--those withered lips whose muscles had long +ago lost their elasticity. "Well, it's kind of comical, really. And +ugly. But you don't look ugly in it, Charley, or comical either. You +look like a right pretty young boy." + +Her eyes had a tenderly amused glint. Those eyes saw less now than +they used to: an encroaching cataract. But they had a bright and +piercing appearance owing to the heavy brows which, by some prank of +nature, had defied the aging process that had laid its blight upon +hair, cheek, lips, skin, and frame. The brows had remained jetty black; +twin cornices of defiance in the ivory ruin of her face. They gave her +a misleadingly sinister and cynical look. Piratical, almost. + +Perhaps those eyebrows indicated in Charlotte Thrift something of the +iron that had sustained her father, Isaac Thrift, the young Easterner, +throughout his first years of Middle-Western hardship. Chicago to-day +is full of resentful grandsons and -daughters who will tell you that if +their grandsire had bought the southwest corner of State and Madison +Streets for $2,050 in cash, as he could have, they would be worth their +millions to-day. And they are right. Still, if all those who tell you +this were granted their wish Chicago now would be populated almost +wholly by millionaire real estate holders; and the southwest corner of +State and Madison would have had to be as the loaves and the fishes. + +Isaac Thrift had been one of these inconsiderate forebears. He had +bought real estate, it is true, but in the mistaken belief that the +city's growth and future lay along the south shore instead of the +north. Chicago's South Side in that day was a prairie waste where +wolves howled on winter nights and where, in the summer, flowers grew +so riotously as to make a trackless sea of bloom. Isaac Thrift had +thought himself very canny and far-sighted to vision that which his +contemporaries could not see. They had bought North Side property. +They had built their houses there. Isaac Thrift built his on Wabash, +near Madison, and announced daringly that some day he would have +a real country place, far south, near Eighteenth Street. For that +matter, he said, the time would come when they would hear of houses +thick in a street that would be known as Thirtieth, or even Fortieth. +How they laughed at that! Besides, it was pretty well acknowledged by +the wiseacres that St. Charles, a far older town, would soon surpass +Chicago and become the metropolis of the West. + +In books on early Chicago and its settlers you can see Isaac Thrift +pictured as one of the stern and flinty city fathers, all boots and +stock and massive watch-chain and side-whiskers. It was neither a time +nor a place for weaklings. The young man who had come hopefully out +of New York state to find his fortune in the welter of mud, swamp, +Indians, frame shanties and two-wheeled carts that constituted Chicago, +had needed all his indomitability. + +It is characteristic of him that until his marriage he lived at the +New Temperance Hotel (board and lodging $2.00 a week; clothes washed +extra), instead of at the popular Saugenash Hotel on Market and Lake, +where the innkeeper, that gay and genial Frenchman and pioneer, +Mark Beaubien, would sometimes take down his fiddle and set feet to +twinkling and stepping in the square-dance. None of this for Isaac +Thrift. He literally had rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Little +enough use he made of the fine bottle-green broadcloth coat with the +gilt buttons, the high stock, and the pale gray pantaloons brought from +the East. But in two years he had opened a sort of general store and +real estate office on Lake Street, had bought a piece of ground for a +house on Wabash (which piece he later foolishly sold) and had sent back +East for his bride. That lady left her comfortable roof-tree to make +the long and arduous trip that duplicated the one made earlier by her +husband-to-be. It is to her credit that she braved it; but she had a +hard time trying to adjust her New England viewpoint to the crude rough +setting in which she now found herself. Her letters back East are so +typical and revealing that extracts, at least, are imperative. + +"... The times are exceedingly dull in this city of Chicago; there is +little business, no balls, no parties, some shooting, some riding, +and plenty of loafers, and to-day, after the rain, a plenty of mud +which completes the picture.... The water here is first-rate bad and +the only way we get along is by drinking a great deal of tea and +coffee--two coffees to one tea.... The weather has been very mild. +There has not been snow enough to stop the burning of the prairies.... +If the waters of Lake Michigan continue to rise for a year or two +more Chicago and all the surrounding country will be covered with one +vast sheet of water, and the inhabitants of this place must find a +home elsewhere--and I, for one, will find said home farther East.... +Everyone admires my pretty things from New York; my cherry-colored +scarf; my gingham dress with the silk stripe in it, my Thibet cloth +cloak of dark mulberry color; and my fine velvet bonnet which cost +only $3.50 in New York. It is prettier than any I have seen here. A +milliner here said that it would have cost $8.00 in Chicago but I think +that is exaggerated. The ladies here wear only one flounce to their +skirts. Even my third best--the brown-and-white plaid merino--has +three.... The mud here is so bad that the men wear hip boots and we +women must go about in two-wheeled carts that sink to the hubs in many +places. There are signs stuck up in the mud with the warning, 'No +bottom here'.... Our new furniture has come. A beautiful flowered red +and green carpet in the chamber and parlor. When the folding doors +are open the stove will heat both rooms.... They have most excellent +markets in this place. We can get meat of every description for four +cents a pound, such as sausages, venison, beef, pork--everything except +fowls. Of fruit there is little. I saw some grapes yesterday in the +market, all powdered over with sawdust. They had come from Spain. They +made my mouth water.... Every day great prairie schooners, as they call +them, go by the house. They have come all the way from the East.... I +am terrified of the Indians though I have said little to Isaac. They +are very dirty and not at all noble as our history and geography books +state...." + +She bore Isaac Thrift two children, accomplishing the feat as +circumspectly and with as much reticence as is possible in the +achievement of so physical a rite. Girls, both. I think she would have +considered a man-child indelicate. + +Charlotte had been the first of these girls. Carrie, the second, +came a tardy ten years later. It was a time and a city of strange +contradictions and fluctuations. Fortunes were made in the boom of 1835 +and lost in the panic of '37. Chicago was a broken-down speculative +shanty village one day and an embryo metropolis the next. The Firemen's +Ball was the event of the social season, with Engine No. 3, glittering +gift of "Long John" Wentworth, set in the upper end of the dance-hall +and festooned with flowers and ribbons. All the worth-while beaux of +the town belonged to the volunteer fire brigade. The names of Chicago's +firemen of 1838 or '40, if read aloud to-day, would sound like the +annual list of box-holders at the opera. The streets of the town were +frequently impassable; servants almost unknown; quiltings and church +sociables noteworthy events. The open prairie, just beyond town, teemed +with partridges, quail, prairie chicken. Fort Dearborn, deserted, was a +playground for little children. Indians, dirty, blanketed, saturnine, +slouched along the streets. "Long John" Wentworth was kinging it in +Congress. Young ladies went to balls primly gowned in dark-colored +merinos, long-sleeved, high-necked. Little girls went to school in +bodices low-cut and nearly sleeveless; toe-slippers; and manifold +skirts starched to stand out like a ballerina's. + +These stiffly starched skirts, layer on layer, first brought romance +into Charlotte Thrift's life. She was thirteen, a rather stocky little +girl, not too obedient of the prim maternal voice that was forever +bidding her point her toes out, hold her shoulders back and not talk at +table. She must surely have talked at table this morning, or, perhaps, +slouched her shoulders and perversely toed in once safely out of sight +of the house, because she was late for school. The horrid realization +of this came as Charlotte reached the Rush Street ferry--a crude +ramshackle affair drawn from one side of the river to the other with +ropes pulled by hand. Charlotte attended Miss Rapp's school on the +North Side though the Thrifts lived South. This makeshift craft was +about to leave the south shore as Charlotte, her tardiness heavy upon +her, sighted the river. With a little cry and a rush she sped down the +path, leaped, slipped, and landed just short of the ferry in the slimy +waters of the Chicago River. Landed exactly expresses it. Though, on +second thought, perhaps settled is better. Layer on layer of stiffly +starched skirts sustained her. She had fallen feet downward. There she +rested on the water, her skirts spread petal-like about her, her toes, +in their cross-strapped slippers, no doubt pointing demurely downward. +She looked like some weird white river-lily afloat on its pad in the +turbid stream. Her eyes were round with fright beneath the strongly +marked black brows. Then, suddenly and quite naturally, she screamed, +kicked wildly, and began to sink. Sank, in fact. It had all happened +with incredible swiftness. The ferry men had scarcely had time to open +their mouths vacuously. Charlotte's calliope screams, so ominously +muffled now, wakened them into action. But before their clumsy wits +and hands had seized on ropes a slim black-and-white line cleft +the water, disappeared, and reappeared with the choking struggling +frantic Charlotte, very unstarched now and utterly unmindful of toes, +shoulders, and vocal restraint. + +The black-and-white line had been young Jesse Dick, of the +"Hardscrabble" Dicks; the black had been his trousers, the white his +shirt. He swam like a river rat--which he more or less was. Of all the +Chicago male inhabitants to whom Mrs. Thrift would most have objected +as the rescuer of her small daughter, this lounging, good-for-nothing +young Jesse Dick would have been most prominently ineligible. +Fortunately (or unfortunately) she did not even know his name until +five years later. Charlotte herself did not know it. She had had one +frantic glimpse of a wet, set face above hers, but it had been only a +flash in a kaleidoscopic whole. Young Dick, having towed her ashore, +had plumped her down, retrieved his coat, and lounged off unmissed +and unrecognized in the ensuing hubbub. The rescue accomplished, +his seventeen-year-old emotions found no romantic stirrings in the +thought of this limp and dripping bundle of corded muslin, bedraggled +pantalettes, and streaming, stringy hair. + +Charlotte, put promptly to bed of course, with a pan at her feet and +flannel on her chest and hot broth administered at intervals--though +she was no whit the worse for her ducking--lay very flat and still +under the gay calico comfortable, her hair in two damp braids, her eyes +wide and thoughtful. + +"But who was he?" insisted Mrs. Thrift, from the foot of the bed. + +And "I don't know," replied Charlotte for the dozenth time. + +"What did he look like?" demanded Isaac Thrift (hastily summoned from +his place of business so near the scene of the mishap). + +"I--don't know," replied Charlotte. And that, bafflingly enough, was +the truth. Only sometimes in her dreams she saw his face again, white, +set, and yet with something almost merry about it. From these dreams +Charlotte would wake shivering deliciously. But she never told them. +During the next five years she never went to a dance, a sleigh-ride, +walked or rode, that she did not unconsciously scan the room or the +street for his face. + +Five years later Charlotte was shopping on Lake Street in her +second-best merino, voluminously hooped. Fortunately (she thought +later, devoutly) she had put on her best bonnet of sage green velvet +with the frill of blond lace inside the face. A frill of blond lace is +most flattering when set inside the bonnet. She had come out of her +father's store and was bound for the shop of Mr. Potter Palmer where, +the week before, she had flirted with a plum-colored pelisse and had +known no happiness since then. She must feel it resting on her own +sloping shoulders. Of course it was--but then, Mr. Palmer, when he +waited on you himself, often came down in his price. + +Chicago sidewalks were crazy wooden affairs raised high on rickety +stilts, uneven, full of cracks for the unwary, now five steps up, now +six steps down, with great nails raising their ugly heads to bite at +unsuspecting draperies. Below this structure lay a morass of mud, and +woe to him who stepped into it. + +Along this precarious eminence Charlotte moved with the gait that +fashion demanded; a mingling of mince, swoop and glide. Her mind was on +the plum pelisse. A malicious nail, seeing this, bit at her dipping and +voluminous skirt with a snick and a snarl. R-r-rip! it went. Charlotte +stepped back with a little cry of dismay--stepped back just too far, +lost her footing and tumbled over the edge of the high boardwalk into +the muck and slime below. + +For the second time in five years Jesse Dick's lounging habit served a +good purpose. There he was on Lake Street idly viewing the world when +he should have been helping to build it as were the other young men +of that hard-working city. He heard her little cry of surprise and +fright; saw her topple, a hoop-skirted heap, into the mire. Those same +ridiculous hoops, wire traps that they were, rendered her as helpless +as a beetle on its back. Jesse Dick's long legs sprang to her rescue, +though he could not suppress a smile at her plight. This before he +caught a glimpse of the face set off by the frill of blond lace. He +picked her up, set her on her feet--little feet in cloth-gaitered side +boots and muddied white stockings--and began gently to wipe her sadly +soiled second-best merino with his handkerchief, with his shabby coat +sleeve, with his coat-tail and, later, with his heart. + +"Oh, don't--please--you mustn't--please--oh--" Charlotte kept +murmuring, the color high in her cheeks. She was poised at that +dangerous pinnacle between tears and laughter; between vexation and +mirth. "Oh, please----" + +Her vaguely protesting hand, in its flutterings, brushed his blond +curly head. He was on his knees tidying her skirts with great deftness +and thoroughness. There was about the act an intimacy and a boyish +delicacy, too, that had perhaps startled her into her maidenly protest. +He had looked up at her then, as she bent down. + +"Why, you're the boy!" gasped Charlotte. + +"What boy?" No wonder he failed to recognize her as she did him. Her +mouth, at the time of the rescue five years before, had been wide open +to emit burbles and strangled coughs; her features had been distorted +with fright. + +"The boy who pulled me out of the river. Long ago. I was going to +school. Rush Street. You jumped in. I never knew. But you're the boy. I +mean--of course you're grown now. But you are, aren't you? The boy, I +mean. The----" + +She became silent, looking down at him, her face like a rose in the +blond lace frill. He was still on his knees in the mud, brushing at her +skirts with a gesture that now was merely mechanical; brushing, as we +know, with his heart in his hand. + +So, out of the slime of the river and the grime of Lake Street had +flowered their romance. + + + + + CHAPTER II + + +A short-lived and tragic enough romance. It wasn't that the Dicks +were rowdy, or of evil repute. They were nobodies. In a day when +social lines were so elastic as to be nearly all-inclusive the Dicks +were miles outside the pale. In the first place, they lived out +"Hardscrabble" way. That definitely placed them. The name designated a +mean, tumble-down district southwest of town, inhabited by poor whites. +A welter of mud, curs, barefoot babies, slatternly women, shirt-sleeved +men lounging slackly against open doorways, acrid pipe in mouth. + +Young Jesse Dick, sprung from this soil, still was alien to it; a +dreamer; a fawn among wallowing swine; an idler with nothing of the +villain about him and the more dangerous because of that. Isaac Thrift +and his prim wife certainly would sooner have seen their daughter +Charlotte dead than involved with one of the Dick clan. But they were +unaware of the very existence of the riffraff Dicks. The Thrifts lived +in two-story-and-basement elegance on Wabash near Madison, and kept +their own cow. + +There was a fine natural forest between Clark and Pine Streets, north, +on the lake shore. Along its grassy paths lay fallen and decayed +trees. Here the two used to meet, for it came to that. Charlotte had +an Indian pony which she rode daily. Sometimes they met on the prairie +to the south of town. The picture of Charlotte in the sweeping skirt, +the stiff little hat, the caressing plume, and the rose must have +been taken at about this time. There was in her face a glow, a bloom, +a radiance such as comes to a woman--with too heavy eyebrows--who is +beloved for the first time. + +It was, as it turned out, for the last time as well. Charlotte had the +courage for clandestine meetings in spite of a girlhood hedged about +with prim pickets of propriety: but when she thought of open revolt, +of appearing with Jesse Dick before the priggish mother and the flinty +father, she shrank and cowered and was afraid. To them she was little +more than a fresh young vegetable without emotions, thoughts, or +knowledge of a kind which they would have considered unmaidenly. + +Charlotte was sitting in the dining room window-nook one day, sewing. +It was a pleasant room in which to sit and sew. One could see +passers-by on Madison Street as well as Wabash, and even, by screwing +around a little, get glimpses of State Street with its great trees and +its frame cottages. Mrs. Thrift, at the dining room table, was casting +up her weekly accounts. She closed the little leather-bound book now +and sat back with a sigh. There was a worried frown between her eyes. +Mrs. Thrift always wore a worried frown between her eyes. She took +wife-and-motherhood hard. She would have thought herself unwifely and +unmotherly to take them otherwise. She wore her frown about the house +as she did her cap--badge of housewifeliness. + +"I declare," she said now, "with beef six cents the pound--and not a +very choice cut, either--a body dreads the weekly accounts." + +"M-m-m," murmured Charlotte remotely, from the miles and miles that +separated them. + +Mrs. Thrift regarded her for a moment, tapping her cheek thoughtfully +with the quill in her hand. Her frown deepened. Charlotte was wearing +a black sateen apron, very full. Her hair, drawn straight back from +her face, was gathered at the back into a chenille net. A Garibaldi +blouse completed the hideousness of her costume. There quivered about +her an aura--a glow--a roseate something--that triumphed over apron, +net, and blouse. Mrs. Thrift sensed this without understanding it. Her +puzzlement took the form of nagging. + +"It seems to me, Charlotte, that you might better be employed with +your plain sewing than with fancywork such as that." + +Charlotte's black sateen lap was gay with scraps of silk; cherry +satin, purple velvet, green taffetas, scarlet, blue. She was making a +patchwork silk quilt of an intricate pattern (of which work of art more +later). + +"Yes, indeed," said she now, unfortunately. And hummed a little tune. + +Mrs. Thrift stood up with a great rustling of account-book leaves, and +of skirts; with all the stir of outraged dignity. "Well, miss, I'll +thank you to pay the compliment of listening when I talk to you. You +sit there smiling at nothing, like a simpleton, I do declare!" + +"I was listening, mother." + +"What did I last say?" + +"Why--beef--six--" + +"Humph! What with patchwork quilts and nonsense like that, and out on +your pony every day, fine or not, I sometimes wonder, miss, what you +think yourself. Beef indeed!" + +She gathered up her books and papers. It was on her tongue's tip to +forbid the afternoon's ride. Something occult in Charlotte sensed this. +She leaned forward. "Oh, mother, Mrs. Perry's passing on Madison and +looking at the house. I do believe she's coming in. Wait. Yes, she's +turning in. I think I'll just----" + +"Stay where you are," commanded Mrs. Thrift. Charlotte subsided. She +bent over her work again, half hidden by the curtains that hung stiffly +before the entrance to the window-nook. You could hear Mrs. Perry's +high sharp voice in speech with Cassie, the servant. "If she's in the +dining room I'll go right in. Don't bother about the parlor." She came +sweeping down the hall. It was evident that news was on her tongue's +tip. Her bonnet was slightly askew. Her hoops swayed like a hill in +a quake. Mrs. Thrift advanced to meet her. They shook hands at arm's +length across the billows of their outstanding skirts. + +"Such news, Mrs. Thrift! What do you think! After all these years Mrs. +Holcomb's going to have a ba----" + +"My _dear_!" interrupted Mrs. Thrift, hastily; and raised a +significant eyebrow in the direction of the slim figure bent over her +sewing in the window-nook. + +Mrs. Perry coughed apologetically. "Oh! I didn't see----" + +"Charlotte dear, leave the room." + +Charlotte gathered up the bits of silk in her apron. Anxious as she was +to be gone, there was still something in the manner of her dismissal +that offended her new sense of her own importance. She swooped and +stooped for bits of silk and satin, thrusting them into her apron +and work-bag. Though she seemed to be making haste her progress +was maddeningly slow. The two ladies, eying her with ill-concealed +impatience, made polite and innocuous conversation meanwhile. + +"And have you heard that the Empress Eugénie has decided to put aside +her crinoline?" + +Mrs. Thrift made a sound that amounted to a sniff. "So the newspapers +said last year. You remember she appeared at a court ball without a +crinoline? Yes. Well, fancy how ridiculous she must have looked! She +put them on again fast enough, I imagine, after that." + +"Ah, but they do say she didn't. I have a letter from New York written +by my friend Mrs. Hollister who comes straight from Paris and she says +that the new skirts are quite flat about the--below the waist, to the +knees----" + +Charlotte fled the room dutifully now, with a little curtsey for Mrs. +Perry. In the dark passageway she stamped an unfilial foot. Then, it +is to be regretted, she screwed her features into one of those unadult +contortions known as making a face. Turning, she saw regarding her from +the second-story balustrade her eight-year-old sister Carrie. Carrie, +ten years her sister's junior, never had been late to school; never +had fallen into the Chicago River, nor off a high wooden sidewalk; +always turned her toes out; held her shoulders like a Hessian. + +"_I_ saw you!" cried this true daughter of her mother. + +Charlotte, mounting the stairs to her own room, swept past this +paragon with such a disdainful swishing of skirts, apron, and squares +of bright-colored silk stuff as to create quite a breeze. She even +dropped one of the gay silken bits, saw it flutter to the ground at her +tormentor's feet, and did not deign to pick it up. Carrie swooped for +it. "You dropped a piece." She looked at it. "It's the orange-colored +silk one!" (Destined to be the quilt's high note of color.) "Finding's +keeping." She tucked it into her apron pocket. Charlotte entered her +own room. "_I_ saw you, miss." Charlotte slammed her chamber door +and locked it. + +She was not as magnificently aloof and unconcerned as she seemed. She +knew the threat in the impish Carrie's "_I_ saw you." In the +Thrift household a daughter who had stamped a foot and screwed up a +face in contempt of maternal authority did not go unpunished. Once +informed, an explanation would be demanded. How could Charlotte explain +that one who has been told almost daily for three weeks that she is the +most enchanting, witty, beauteous, and intelligent woman in the world +naturally resents being ignominiously dismissed from a room, like a +chit. + +That night at supper she tried unsuccessfully to appear indifferent and +at ease under Carrie's round unblinking stare of malice. Carrie began: + +"Mama, what did Mrs. Perry have to tell you when she came calling this +afternoon?" + +"Nothing that would interest you, my pet. You haven't touched your +potato." + +"Would it interest Charlotte?" + +"No." + +"Is that why you sent her out of the room?" + +"Yes. Now eat your p----" + +"Charlotte didn't like being sent out of the room, did she? H'm, mama?" + +"Isaac, will you speak to that child. I don't know what----" + +Charlotte's face was scarlet. She knew. Her father would speak sternly +to the too inquisitive Carrie. That crafty one would thrust out a moist +and quivering nether lip and, with tears dropping into her uneaten +potato, snivel, "But I only wanted to know because Charlotte--" and out +would come the tale of Charlotte's foot-stamping and face-making. + +But Isaac Thrift never framed the first chiding sentence; and Carrie +got no further than the thrusting out of the lip. For the second time +that day news appeared in the form of a neighbor. A man this time, one +Abner Rathburn. His news was no mere old-wives' gossip of births and +babies. He told it, white-faced. Fort Sumter had been fired on. War! + +Chicago's interest in the soldiery, up to now, had been confined +to that ornamental and gayly caparisoned group known as Colonel +Ellsworth's Zouaves. In their brilliant uniforms these gave exhibition +drills, flashing through marvelous evolutions learned during evenings +of practice in a vacant hall above a little brick store near Rush +Street bridge. They had gone on grand tours through the East, as +well. The illustrated papers had had their pictures. Now their absurd +baggy trousers and their pert little jackets and their brilliant-hued +sashes took on a new, grim meaning. Off they trotted, double-quick, +to Donelson and death, most of them. Off went the boys of that +socially elect group belonging to the Fire Engine Company. Off went +brothers, sons, fathers. Off went Jesse Dick from out Hardscrabble +way, and fought his brief fight, too, at Donelson, with weapons so +unfit and ineffectual as to be little better than toys; and lost. But +just before he left, Charlotte, frantic with fear, apprehension and +thwarted love publicly did that which branded her forever in the eyes +of her straitlaced little world. Or perhaps her little world would +have understood and forgiven her had her parents shown any trace of +understanding or forgiveness. + +In all their meetings these two young things--the prim girl with the +dash of daring in her and the boy who wrote verses to her and read them +with telling effect, quite as though they had not sprung from the mire +of Hardscrabble--had never once kissed or even shyly embraced. Their +hands had met and clung. Touching subterfuges. "That's a funny ring you +wear. Let's see it. My, how little! It won't go on any of my--no, sir! +Not even this one." Their eyes had spoken. His fingers sometimes softly +touched the plume that drooped from her stiff little hat. When he +helped her mount the Indian pony perhaps he pressed closer in farewell +than that fiery little steed's hoof quite warranted. But that was +all. He was over-conscious of his social inferiority. Years of narrow +nagging bound her with bands of steel riveted with turn-your-toes-out, +hold-your-shoulders-back, you-mustn't-play-with-them, ladylike, +ladylike. + +A week after Sumter, "I've enlisted," he told her. + +"Of course," Charlotte had replied, dazedly. Then, in sudden +realization, "When? When?" + +He knew what she meant. "Right away I reckon. They said--right away." +She looked at him mutely. "Charlotte, I wish you'd--I wish your father +and mother--I'd like to speak to them--I mean about us--me." There was +little of Hardscrabble about him as he said it. + +"Oh, I couldn't. I'm afraid! I'm afraid!" + +He was silent for a long time, poking about with a dried stick in +the leaves and loam and grass at their feet as they sat on a fallen +tree-trunk, just as for years and years despairing lovers have poked in +absent-minded frenzy; digging a fork's prong into the white defenceless +surface of a tablecloth; prodding the sand with a cane; rooting into +the ground with an umbrella ferrule; making meaningless marks on gravel +paths. + +At last: "I don't suppose it makes any real difference; but the Dicks +came from Holland. I mean a long time ago. With Hendrik Hudson. And my +great-great-grandmother was a Pomroy. You wouldn't believe, would you? +that a shiftless lot like us could come from stock like that. I guess +it's run thin. Of course my mother----" he stopped. She put a timid +hand on his arm then, and he made as though to cover it with his own, +but did not. He went on picking at the ground with his bit of stick. +"Sometimes when my father's--if he's been drinking too much--imagines +he's one of his own ancestors. Sometimes it's a Dutch ancestor and +sometimes it's an English one, but he's always very magnificent about +it, and when he's like that even my mother can't--can't scream him +down. You should hear then what he thinks of all you people who live +in fine brick houses on Wabash and on Michigan, and over on the North +Side. My brother Pom says----" + +"Pom?" + +"Pomroy. Pomroy Dick, you see. Both the.... I've been thinking that +perhaps if your father and mother knew about--I mean we're not--that is +my father----" + +She shook her head gently. "It isn't that. You see, it's business men. +Those who have stores or real estate and are successful. Or young +lawyers. That's the kind father and mother----" + +They were not finishing their sentences. Groping for words. Fearful of +hurting each other. + +He laughed. "I guess there won't be much choice among the lot of us +when this is over." + +"Why, Jesse, it'll only last a few months--two or three. Father says +it'll only last a few months. + +"It doesn't take that long to----" + +"To what?" + +"Nothing." + +He was whisked away after that. Charlotte saw him but once again. That +once was her undoing. She did not even know the time set for his going. +He had tried to get word to her, and had failed, somehow. With her +father and mother, Charlotte was one of the crowd gathered about the +Court House steps to hear Jules Lombard sing The Battle Cry of Freedom. +George Root, of Chicago, George, whom they all knew, had written it. +The ink was scarcely dry on the manuscript. The crowds gathered in the +street before the Court House. Soon they were all singing it. Suddenly, +through the singing, like a dull throb, throb, came the sound of +thudding feet. Soldiers. With a great surge the crowd turned its face +toward the street. Still singing. Here they came. In marching order. +Their uniforms belied the name. Had they been less comic they would +have been less tragic. They were equipped with muskets altered from +flintlocks; with Harper's Ferry and Deneger rifles; with horse pistols +and musketoons--deadly sounding but ridiculous. With these they faced +Donelson. They were hardly more than boys. After them, trailed women, +running alongside, dropping back breathless. Old women, mothers. Young +women, sweethearts, wives. This was no time for the proprieties, for +reticence. + +They were passing. The first of them had passed. Then Charlotte saw +him. His face flashed out at her from among the lines. His face, +under the absurd pancake hat, was white, set. And oh, how young! He +was at the end of his line. Charlotte watched him coming. She felt +a queer tingling in her fingertips, in the skin around her eyes, in +her throat. Then a great surge of fear, horror, fright, and love +shook her. He was passing. Someone, herself and yet not herself, was +battling a way through the crowd, was pushing, thrusting with elbows, +shoulders. She gained the roadway. She ran, stumblingly. She grasped +his arm. "You didn't let me know! You didn't let me know!" Someone +took hold of her elbow--someone in the crowd on the sidewalk--but she +shook them off. She ran on at his side. Came the double-quick command. +With a little cry she threw her arms about him and kissed him. Her +lips were parted like a child's. Her face was distorted with weeping. +There was something terrible about her not caring; not covering it. +"You didn't let me know! You didn't let me know!" The ranks broke into +double-quick. She ran with them a short minute, breathlessly, sobbing. + + + + + CHAPTER III + + +It was a submissive enough little figure that they had hustled home +through the crowded streets, up the front stoop and into the brick +house on Wabash Avenue. Crushed and rumpled. + +The crudest edge of the things they said to her was mercifully dulled +by the time it penetrated her numbed consciousness. She hardly seemed +to hear them. At intervals she sobbed. It was more than a sob. It was +a dry paroxysm that shook her whole body and jarred her head. Her +handkerchief, a wet gray ball, she opened, and began to stare at its +neatly hemstitched border, turning it corner for corner, round and +round. + +Who was he? Who was he? + +She told them. + +At each fresh accusation she seemed to shrink into smaller compass; to +occupy less space within the circle of her outstanding hoop-skirts, +until finally she was just a pair of hunted eyes in a tangle of +ringlets, handkerchief, and crinoline. She caught fragments of what +they were saying ... ruined her life ... brought down disgrace ... +entire family ... never hold head up ... common lout like a Dick ... +Dick!... Dick!... + +Once Charlotte raised her head and launched a feeble something that +sounded like "... Hendrik Hudson," but it was lost in the torrent of +talk. It appeared that she had not only ruined herself and brought +lifelong disgrace upon her parents' hitherto unsullied name, but she +had made improbable any future matrimonial prospects for her sister +Carrie--then aged eight. + +That, unfortunately, struck Charlotte as being humorous. Racked though +she was, one remote corner of her mind's eye pictured the waspish +little Carrie, in pinafore and strapped slippers, languishing for love, +all forlorn--Carrie, who still stuck her tongue out by way of repartee. +Charlotte giggled suddenly, quite without meaning to. Hysteria, +probably. At this fresh exhibition of shamelessness her parents were +aghast. + +"Well! And you can laugh!" shouted Isaac Thrift through the soft +and unheeded susurrus of his wife's Sh-sh-sh! "As if I hadn't +enough trouble, with this war"--it sounded like a private personal +grievance--"and business what it is, and real estate practically +worth----" + +"Sh-sh-sh! Carrie will hear you. The child mustn't know of this." + +"Know! Everyone in town knows by now. My daughter running after a +common soldier in the streets--a beggar--worse than a beggar--and +kissing him like a--like a----" + +Mrs. Thrift interrupted with mournful hastiness. "We must send her +away. East. For a little visit. That would be best, for a few months." + +At that Isaac Thrift laughed a rather terrible laugh. "Away! That +_would_ give them a fine chance to talk. Away indeed, madam! A few +months, h'm? Ha!" + +Mrs. Thrift threw out her palms as though warding off a blow. "Isaac! +You don't mean they'd think--Isaac!" + +Charlotte regarded them both with wide, uncomprehending eyes. + +Her mother looked at her. Charlotte raised her own tear-drenched face +that was so mutely miserable, so stricken, so dumbly questioning. +Marred as it was, and grief-ravaged, Mrs. Thrift seemed still to find +there something that relieved her. She said more gently, perhaps, than +in any previous questioning: + +"Why did you do it, Charlotte?" + +"I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it." + +Isaac Thrift snorted impatiently. Hetty Thrift compressed her lips a +little and sighed. "Yes, but why did you do it, Charlotte? Why? You +have been brought up so carefully. How could you do it?" + +Now, the answer that lay ready in Charlotte's mind was one that could +have explained everything. And yet it would have explained nothing; +at least nothing to Hetty and Isaac Thrift. The natural reply on +Charlotte's tongue was simply, "Because I love him." But the Thrifts +did not speak of love. It was not a ladylike word. There were certain +words which delicacy forbade. "Love" was one of them. From the manner +in which they shunned it--shrank from the very mention of it--you might +almost have thought it an obscenity. + +Mrs. Thrift put a final question. She had to. "Had you ever kissed him +before?" + +"Oh, no!" cried Charlotte so earnestly that they could not but believe. +Then, quiveringly, as one bereaved, cheated, "Oh, no! No! Never! Not +once.... Not once." + +The glance that Mrs. Thrift shot at her husband then was a mingling of +triumph and relief. + +Isaac Thrift and his wife did not mean to be hard and cruel. They had +sprung from stern stock. Theirs was the narrow middle-class outlook of +members of a small respectable community. According to the standards of +that community Charlotte Thrift had done an outrageous thing. War, in +that day, was a grimmer, though less bloody and wholesale, business +than it is to-day. An army whose marching song is Where Do We Go From +Here? attaches small significance to the passing kiss of an hysterical +flapper, whether the object of the kiss be buck private or general. But +an army that finds vocal expression in The Battle Cry of Freedom and +John Brown's Body is likely to take its bussing seriously. The publicly +kissed soldier on his way to battle was the publicly proclaimed +property of the kissee. And there in front of the Court House steps, in +full sight of her world--the Addison Canes, the Thomas Holcombs, the +Lewis Fullers, the Clapps--Charlotte Thrift, daughter of Isaac Thrift, +had run after, had thrown her arms about, and had kissed a young man +so obscure, so undesirable, so altogether an unfitting object for a +gently-bred maiden's kisses (public or private) as to render valueless +her kisses in future. + +Of Charlotte's impulsive act her father and mother made something +repulsive and sinister. She was made to go everywhere, but was duennaed +like a naughty Spanish princess. Her every act was remarked. Did she +pine she was berated and told to rouse herself; did she laugh she was +frowned down. Her neat little escritoire frequently betrayed traces +of an overhauling by suspicious alien fingers. There was little need +of that after the first few days. The news of Jesse Dick's death at +Donelson went almost unnoticed but for two Chicago households--one out +Hardscrabble way, one on Wabash Avenue. It was otherwise as unimportant +as an uprooted tree in the path of an avalanche that destroys a +village. At Donelson had fallen many sons of Chicago's pioneer +families; young men who were to have carried on the future business +of the city; boys who had squired its daughters to sleigh-rides, to +dances, to church sociables and horseback parties; who had drilled with +Ellsworth's famous Zouaves. A Dick of Hardscrabble could pass unnoticed +in this company. + +There came to Charlotte a desperate and quite natural desire to go to +his people; to see his mother; to talk with his father. But she never +did. Instinctively her mother sensed this (perhaps, after all, she had +been eighteen herself, once) and by her increased watchfulness made +Hardscrabble as remote and unattainable as Heaven. + +"Where are you going, Charlotte?" + +"Just out for a breath of air, mother." + +"Take Carrie with you." + +"Oh, mother, I don't want----" + +"Take Carrie with you." + +She stopped at home. + +She had no tangible thing over which to mourn; not one of those bits of +paper or pasteboard or linen or metal over which to keen; nothing to +hold in her two hands, or press to her lips or wear in her bosom. She +did not even possess one of those absurd tintypes of the day showing +her soldier in wrinkled uniform and wooden attitude against a mixed +background of chenille drapery and Versailles garden. She had only her +wound and her memory and perhaps these would have healed and grown +dim had not Isaac Thrift and his wife so persistently rubbed salt in +the one and prodded the other. After all, she was little more than +eighteen, and eighteen does not break so readily. If they had made +light of it perhaps she would soon have lifted her head again and even +cast about for consolation. + +"Moping again!" + +"I'm not moping, father." + +"What would you call it then?" + +"Why, I'm just sitting by the window in the dusk. I often do. Even +before--before----" + +"There's enough and to spare for idle hands to do, I dare say. Haven't +you seen to-day's paper nor heard of what's happened again at Manassas +that you can sit there like that!" + +She knew better than to explain that for her Jesse Dick died again with +the news of each fresh battle. + +She became curiously silent for so young a girl. During those four +years she did her share with the rest of them; scraped lint, tore +and rolled bandages, made hospital garments, tied comforters, knitted +stockings and mittens, put up fruit and jellies and pickles for the +soldiers. Chicago was a construction camp. Regiments came marching +in from all the states north. Camp Douglas, south of Thirty-first +Street, was at first thick with tents, afterward with wooden barracks. +Charlotte even helped in the great Sanitary Fairs that lasted a week +or more. You would have noticed no difference between this girl and +the dozens of others who chirped about the flag-decked booths. But +there was a difference. That which had gone from her was an impalpable +something difficult to name. Only if you could have looked from her +face to that of the girl of the old photograph--that girl in the +sweeping habit, with the plume, and the rose held carelessly in one +hand--you might have known. The glow, the bloom, the radiance--gone. + +People forget, gradually. After all, there was so little to remember. +Four years of war change many things, including perspective. +Occasionally some one said, "Wasn't there something about that older +Thrift girl? Charlotte, isn't it? Yes. Wasn't she mixed up with a queer +person, or something?" + +"Charlotte Thrift! Why, no! There hasn't been a more self-sacrificing +worker in the whole--wait a minute. Now that you speak of it, I do +believe there was--let's see--in love with a boy her folks didn't +approve and made some kind of public scene, but just what it was----" + +But Isaac and Hetty Thrift did not forget. Nor Charlotte. Sometimes, +in their treatment of her, you would have thought her still the +eighteen-year-old innocent of the photograph. When Black Crook came +to the new Crosby Opera House in 1870, scandalizing the community and +providing endless food for feminine (and masculine) gossip, Charlotte +still was sent from the room to spare her maidenly blushes, just as +though the past ten years had never been. + +"I hear they wear tights, mind you, without skirts!" + +"Not all the way!" + +"Not an inch of skirt. Just--ah--trunks I believe they call them. A +horrid word in itself." + +"Well, really, I don't know what the world's coming to. Shouldn't you +think that after the suffering and privation of this dreadful war we +would all turn to higher things?" + +But Mrs. Thrift's caller shook her head so emphatically that her +long gold filigree earrings pranced. "Ah, but they do say a wave of +immorality always follows a war. The reaction it's called. That is the +word dear Dr. Swift used in his sermon last Sunday. + +"Reactions are all very well and good," retorted Mrs. Thrift, tartly, +"but they don't excuse tights, I hope." + +Her visitor's face lighted up eagerly and unbeautifully. She leaned +still closer. "I hear that this Eliza Weathersby, as she's called, +plays the part of Stalacta in a pale blue bodice all glittering with +silver passamenterie; pale blue satin trunks, mind you! And pale blue +tights with a double row of tiny buttons all down the side of the l----" + +Again, as ten years before, Mrs. Thrift raised signaling eyebrows. +She emitted an artificial and absurd, "Ahem!" Then--"Charlotte, run +upstairs and help poor Carrie with her English exercise." + +"She's doing sums, mother. I saw her at them not ten minutes ago." + +"Then tell her to put her sums aside. Do you know, dear Mrs. Strapp, +Carrie is quite amazing at sums, but I tell her she is not sent to +Miss Tait's finishing school under heavy expense to learn to do sums. +But she actually likes them. Does them by way of amusement. Can add +a double column in her head, just like her father. But her English +exercise is always a sorry affair.... M-m-m-m.... There, now, you were +saying tiny buttons down the side of the leg----" Charlotte had gone. + +When the war ended Charlotte was twenty-two. An unwed woman +of twenty-two was palpably over-fastidious or undesirable. +Twenty-five was the sere and withered leaf. And soon Charlotte was +twenty-five--twenty-eight--thirty. Done for. + +The patchwork silk quilt, laid aside unfinished in '61, was taken up +again in '65. It became quite famous; a renowned work of art. Visitors +who came to the house asked after it. "And how is the quilt getting +on, dear Charlotte?" as a novelist is sounded about an opus with which +he is struggling or a painter his canvas. Mrs. Hannan, the Lake Street +milliner, saved all her pieces for Charlotte. Often there was a peck +of them at a time. The quilt was patterned in blocks. Charlotte, very +serious, would explain to the caller the plan of the block upon which +she was at the moment engaged. + +"This one has a purple satin center, you see. I always think purple +is so rich, don't you? Then the next row will be white uncut velvet. +Doesn't it have a sumptuous sound! Next blue velvet and the last +row orange-colored silk." (No; not the same piece. Carrie had never +relinquished her booty.) "Now, this next block is to be quite gay. +It is almost my favorite. Cherry satin center--next, white velvet +again--next, green velvet--and last, pink satin. Don't you think it +will be sweet! I can scarcely wait until I begin that block." + +The winged sweep of the fine black brows was ruffled by a frown of +earnest concentration as she bent intently over the rags and scraps of +shimmering stuffs. Her cheated fingers smoothed and caressed the satin +surfaces as tenderly as though they lingered on a baby's cheek. + +When, finally, it was finished--lined with turkey red and bound +with red ribbon--Charlotte exhibited it at the Fair, following much +persuasion by her friends. It took first prize among twenty-five silk +quilts. A day of great triumph for Charlotte Thrift. The prize was a +basket worth fully eight dollars. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + + +When Charlotte was thirty Carrie--twenty--married. After all, the +innocent little indiscretion which had so thoroughly poisoned +Charlotte's life was not to corrupt Carrie's matrimonial future, in +spite of Mrs. Thrift's mournful prediction. Carrie, whose philosophy of +life was based on that same finding's-keeping plan with which she had +filched the bit of orange silk from her sister so many years before, +married Samuel Payson, junior member of the firm of Thrift and Payson, +Real Estate, Bonds and Mortgages. Charlotte, it may be remembered, +had disdained to pick up the scrap of orange silk on which Carrie had +swooped. Just so with Samuel Payson. + +Samuel Payson was destined to be a junior partner. Everything about +him was deferential, subservient. The very folds of his clothes +slanted away from you. He was as oblique and evasive as Isaac Thrift +was upright and forthright. In conversation with you he pronounced +your name at frequent intervals. Charlotte came to dread it: "Yes, +Miss Charlotte.... Do you think so, Miss Charlotte?... Sit here, Miss +Charlotte...." It was like a too-intimate hand on your shrinking arm. + +The fashion for men of parting the hair in the middle had just come +in. Samuel Payson parted his from forehead to nape of neck. In some +mysterious way it gave to the back of his head an alert facial +expression very annoying to the beholder. He reminded Charlotte of +someone she had recently met and whom she despised; but for a long +time she could not think who this could be. She found herself staring +at him, fascinated, trying to trace the resemblance. Samuel Payson +misinterpreted her gaze. + +Isaac and Hetty Thrift had too late relaxed their vigilant watch over +Charlotte. It had taken them all these years to realize that they were +guarding a prisoner who hugged her chains. Wretched as she was (in a +quiet and unobtrusive way) there is the possibility that she would +have been equally wretched married to a Hardscrabble Dick. Charlotte's +submission was all the more touching because she had nothing against +which to rebel. Once, in the very beginning, Mrs. Thrift, haunted by +something in Charlotte's eyes, had said in a burst of mingled spleen +and self-defense: + +"And why do you look at me like that, I should like to know! I'm sure I +didn't kill your young man at Donelson. You're only moping like that to +aggravate me; for something that never could have been, anyway--thank +goodness!" + +"He wouldn't have been killed," Charlotte said, unreasonably, and with +conviction. + +Had they been as wise and understanding as they were well-meaning, +these two calvinistic parents might have cured Charlotte by one visit +to the Dicks' Hardscrabble kitchen, with a mangy cur nosing her skirts; +a red-faced hostess at the washtub; and a ruined, battered travesty of +the slim young rhyme-making Jesse Dick there in the person of old Pete +Dick squatting, sodden, in the doorway. + +As the years went on they had, tardily, a vague and sneaking hope that +something might happen among the G.A.R. widowers of Chicago's better +families. During the reunions of Company I and Company E Charlotte +generally assisted with the dinner or the musical program. She had +a sweet, if small, contralto with notes in it that matched the fine +dark eyebrows. She sang a group of old-fashioned songs: When You and +I Were Young, Maggie; The Belle of Mohawk Vale; and Sleeping I Dream, +Love. Charlotte never suspected her parents' careful scheming behind +these public appearances of hers. Her deft capable hands at the G.A.R. +dinners, her voice lifted in song, were her offerings to Jesse Dick's +memory. Him she served. To him she sang. And gradually even Isaac +and Hetty Thrift realized that the G.A.R. widowers were looking for +younger game; and that Charlotte, surrounded by blue-uniformed figures, +still was gazing through them, past them, into space. Her last public +appearance was when she played the organ and acted as director for +_Queen Esther_, a cantata, which marked rather an epoch in the +amateur musical history of the town. After that she began to devote +herself to her sister's family and to her mother. + +But all this was later. Charlotte, at thirty, still had a look of +vigor, and of fragrant (if slightly faded) bloom, together with a +little atmosphere of mystery of which she was entirely unconscious; +born, doubtless, of years of living with a ghost. Attractive qualities, +all three; and all three quite lacking in her tart-tongued and +acidulous younger sister, despite that miss's ten-year advantage. +Carrie was plain, spare, and sallow. Her mind marched with her +father's. The two would discuss real estate and holdings like two men. +Hers was the mathematical and legal-thinking type of brain rarely +found in a woman. She rather despised her mother. Samuel Payson used +to listen to her with an air of respectful admiration and attention. +But it was her older sister to whom he turned at last with, "I thought +perhaps you might enjoy a drive to Cleaversville, since the evening's +so fine, Miss Charlotte. What do you say, Miss Charlotte?" + +"Oh, thank you--I'm not properly dressed for driving--perhaps +Carrie----" + +"Nonsense!" Mrs. Thrift would interpose tartly. + +"But Miss Charlotte, you are quite perfectly dressed. If I may be so +bold, that is a style which suits you to a marvel." + +There he was right. It did. Hoops were history. The form-fitting +basque, the flattering neck-frill, the hip sash, and the smart +(though grotesque) bustle revealed, and even emphasized, lines of the +feminine figure--the swell of the bust, the curve of the throat--that +the crinoline had for years concealed. This romantic, if somewhat +lumpy, costume well became Charlotte's slender figure and stern sad +young face. In it Carrie, on the other hand, resembled a shingle in a +flower's sheath. + +This obstacle having been battered down, Charlotte raised another. +"They say the Cleaversville road is a sea of mud and no bottom to it +in places. The rains." + +"Then," said Samuel Payson, agreeably, "we shall leave that for another +time"--Charlotte brightened--"and go boating in the lagoon instead. Eh, +Miss Charlotte?" + +Charlotte, born fifty years later, would have looked her persistent and +unwelcome suitor in the eye and said, "I don't want to go." Charlotte, +with the parental eyes upon her, went dutifully upstairs for bonnet and +mantle. + +The lagoon of Samuel Payson's naming was a basin of water between the +narrow strip of park on Michigan Avenue and the railway that ran along +the lake. It was much used for boating of a polite and restricted +nature. + +It was a warm Sunday evening in the early summer. The better to get +the breeze the family was sociably seated out on what was known as the +platform. On fine evenings all Chicago sat out on its front steps--"the +stoop" it was called. The platform was even more informal than the +stoop. It was made of wooden planks built across the ditches that ran +along each side of the street. Across it carriages drove up to the +sidewalk when visitors contemplated alighting. All down Wabash Avenue +you saw families comfortably seated in rockers on these platforms, +enjoying the evening breeze and watching the world go by. Here the +Thrifts--Isaac, Hetty, and their daughter Carrie--were seated when the +triumphant Samuel left with the smoldering Charlotte. Here they were +seated when the two returned. + +The basin reached, they had hired a boat and Samuel had paddled about +in a splashy and desultory way, not being in the least an oarsman. He +talked, Miss-Charlotteing her so insistently that in ten minutes she +felt thumbed all over. She looked out across the lake. He spoke of his +loneliness, living at the Tremont House. Before being raised to junior +partner he had been a clerk in Isaac Thrift's office. It was thus that +Charlotte still regarded him--when she regarded him at all. She looked +at him now, bent to the oars, his flat chest concave, his lean arms +stringy; panting a little with the unaccustomed exercise. + +"It must be lonely," murmured Charlotte, absentmindedly if +sympathetically. + +"Your father and mother have been very kind"--he bent a melting look on +her--"far kinder than you have been, Miss Charlotte." + +"It's chilly, now that the sun's gone," said Charlotte. "Shall we row +in? This mantle is very light." + +It cannot be said that he flushed then, but a little flood of dark +color came into his pallid face. He rowed for the boat-house. He +maneuvered the boat alongside the landing. Twilight had come on. The +shed-like place was too dim for safety, lighted at the far end with +one cobwebby lantern. He hallooed to the absent boatman, shipped his +oars, and stepped out none too expertly. Charlotte stood up, smiling. +She was glad to be in. Sitting opposite him thus, in the boat, it had +been impossible to evade his red-rimmed eyes. Still smiling a little, +with relief she took his proffered hand as he stood on the landing, +stepped up, stumbled a little because he had pulled with unexpected +(and unnecessary) strength, and was horrified suddenly to see him +thrust his head forward like a particularly nasty species of bird, and +press moist clammy lips to the hollow of her throat. Her reaction was +as unfortunate as it was unstudied. "Uriah Heep!" she cried (at last! +the resemblance that had been haunting her all these days), "Heep! +Heep!" and pushed him violently from her. The sacred memories of the +past twelve years, violated now, were behind that outraged push. It +sent him reeling over the edge of the platform, clutching at a post +that was not there, and into the shallow water on the other side. The +boatmen, running tardily toward them, fished him out and restored +him to a curiously unagitated young lady. He was wet but uninjured. +Thus dripping he still insisted on accompanying her home. She had not +murmured so much as, "I'm sorry." They walked home in hurried silence, +his boots squashing at every step. The Thrifts--father, mother, and +daughter--still were seated on the platform before the house, probably +discussing real estate values--two of them, at least. Followed +exclamations, explanations, sympathy, flurry. + +"I fell in. A bad landing place. No light. A wretched hole." + +Charlotte turned abruptly and walked up the front steps and into the +house. "She's upset," said Mrs. Thrift, automatically voicing the +proper thing, flustered though she was. "Usually it's Charlotte that +falls into things. You must get that coat off at once. And the.... +Isaac, your pepper-and-salt suit. A little large but.... Come in.... +Dear, dear!... I'll have a hot toddy ready.... Carrie...." + + * * * * * + +It was soon after the second Chicago fire that Isaac Thrift and his +son-in-law built the three-story-and-basement house on Prairie avenue, +near 29th Street. The old man recalled the boast made almost forty +years before, that some day he would build as far south as Thirtieth +Street; though it was not, as he had then predicted, a country home. + +"I was a little wrong there," he admitted, "but only because I was +too conservative. They laughed at me. Well, you can't deny the truth +of it now. It'll be as good a hundred years from now as it is to-day. +Only the finest houses because of the cost of the ground. No chance of +business ever coming up this way. From Sixteenth to Thirtieth it's a +residential paradise. Yes sir! A res-i-den-tial paradise!" + +A good thing that he did not live the twenty-five years, or less, +that transformed the paradise into a smoke-blackened and disreputable +inferno, with dusky faces, surmounted by chemically unkinked though +woolly heads, peering from every decayed mansion and tumble-down +rooming house. Sixteenth Street became a sore that would not +heal--scrofulous, filthy. Thirty-first Street was the centre of the +Black Belt. Of all that region Prairie Avenue alone resisted wave +after wave of the black flood that engulfed the streets south, east, +and west. There, in Isaac Thrift's day, lived much of Chicago's +aristocracy; millionaire if mercantile; plutocratic though porcine. And +there its great stone and brick mansions with their mushroom-topped +conservatories, their porte-cochères, their high wrought-iron fences, +and their careful lawns still defied the years, though ruin, dirt, and +decay waited just outside to destroy them. The window-hangings of any +street are its character index. The lace and silk draperies before +the windows of these old mansions still were immaculate, though the +Illinois Central trains, as they screeched derisively by, spat huge +mouthsful of smoke and cinders into their very faces. + +Isaac Thrift had fallen far behind his neighbours in the race for +wealth. They had started as he had, with only courage, ambition, and +foresight as capital. But they--merchants, pork-packers--had dealt +in food and clothing on an increasingly greater scale, while Isaac +Thrift had early given up his store to devote all his time to real +estate. There had been his mistake. Bread and pork, hardware and +clothing--these were fundamental needs, changing little with the years. +Millions came to the man who, starting as a purveyor of these, stayed +with them. At best, real estate was a gamble. And Isaac Thrift lost. + +His own occasional short-sightedness was not to blame for his most +devastating loss, however. This was dealt him, cruelly and criminally, +by his business partner and son-in-law, the plausible Payson. + +The two families dwelt comfortably enough together in the new house on +Prairie. There was room and to spare, even after two children--Belle, +and then Lottie--were born to the Paysons. The house was thought a +grand affair, with its tin bathtub and boxed-in wash-bowl on the second +floor, besides an extra washroom on the first, off the hall; a red +and yellow stained-glass window in the dining room; a butler's pantry +(understand, no butler; Chicago boasted no more than half a dozen of +these); a fine furnace in the lower hall just under the stairway; +oilcloth on the first flight of stairs; Brussels on the second; ingrain +on the third; a liver-colored marble mantel in the front parlor, with +anemic replicas in the back parlor and the more important bedrooms. +It was an age when every possible article of household furniture +was disguised to represent something it was not. A miniature Gothic +cathedral was really a work-basket; a fauteuil was, like as not, a +music box. The Thrifts' parlor carpet was green, woven to represent a +river flowing along from the back parlor folding doors to the street +windows, with a pattern of full-sailed ships on it, and, by way of +variety, occasional bunches of flowers strewn carelessly here and +there, between the ships. On rare and thrilling occasions, during their +infancy, Belle and little Lottie were allowed to crawl down the carpet +river and poke a fascinated finger into a ship's sail or a floral +garland. + +Carrie's two children were born in this house. Isaac and Hetty Thrift +died in it. And in it Carrie was left worse than widowed. + +Samuel Payson must have been about forty-six when, having gathered +together in the office of Thrift & Payson all the uninvested +moneys--together with negotiable bonds, stocks, and securities--on +which he could lay hands, he decamped and was never seen again. He +must have been planning it for years. It was all quite simple. He had +had active charge of the business. Again and again Isaac Thrift had +turned over to Payson money entrusted him for investment by widows of +lifelong friends; by the sons and daughters of old Chicago settlers; by +lifelong friends themselves. This money Payson had taken, ostensibly +for investment. He had carefully discussed its investment with his +father-in-law, had reported such investments made. In reality he had +invested not a penny. On it had been paid one supposed dividend, +or possibly two. The bulk of it remained untouched. When his time +came Samuel Payson gathered together the practically virgin sums and +vanished to live some strange life of his own of which he had been +dreaming behind that truckling manner and the Heepish face, with its +red-rimmed eyes. + +He had been a model husband, father, and son-in-law. Chess with old +Isaac, evenings; wool-windings for Mrs. Thrift; games with the two +little girls; church on Sundays with Carrie. Between him and Charlotte +little talk was wasted, and no pretense. + +A thousand times, in those years of their dwelling together, Mrs. +Thrift's eyes had seemed to say to Charlotte, "You see! This is what a +husband should be. This is a son-in-law. No Dick disgracing us here." + +The blow stunned the two old people almost beyond realising its +enormity. The loss was, altogether, about one hundred and fifty +thousand dollars. Isaac Thrift set about repaying it. Real estate on +Indiana, Wabash, Michigan, Prairie was sold and the money distributed +to make good the default. They kept the house on Prairie; clung to it. +Anything but that. After it was all over Isaac Thrift was an old man +with palsied hands. Hair and beard whose color had defied the years +were suddenly white. Hetty Thrift's tongue lost its venomous bite. +After Isaac Thrift's death she turned to Charlotte. Charlotte alone +could quell her querulousness. Carrie acted as an irritant, naturally. +They were so much alike. It was Charlotte who made broths and jellies, +milk-toast and gruel with which to tempt the mother's appetite. +Carrie, the mathematical, was a notoriously poor cook. Her mind was +orderly and painstaking enough when it came to figuring on a piece of +property, or a depreciated bond. But it lacked that peculiar patience +necessary to the watching of a boiling pot or a simmering pan. + +"Oh, it's done by now," she would cry, and dump a pan's contents into a +dish. Oftener than not it was half-cooked or burned. + +Charlotte announced, rather timidly, that she would give music +lessons; sewing lessons; do fine embroidery. But her tinkling tunes +were ghostly echoes of a bygone day. People were even beginning to say +that perhaps, after all, this madman Wagner could be played so that one +might endure listening. Hand embroidery was little appreciated at a +time when imitations were the craze. + +Carrie it was who became head of that manless household. It was well +she had wasted her time in doing sums instead of being more elegantly +occupied while at Miss Tait's Finishing School, in the old Wabash +Avenue days. She now juggled interest, simple and compound, with ease; +took charge of the few remaining bits of scattered property saved from +the ruins; talked glibly of lots, quarter-sections, sub-divisions. +All through their childhood Belle and Lottie heard reiterated: "Run +away. Can't you see mother's busy! Ask Aunt Charlotte." So then, it +was Aunt Charlotte who gave them their bread-and-butter with sugar on +top. Gradually the whole household revolved about Carrie, though it was +Charlotte who kept it in motion. When Carrie went to bed the household +went to bed. She must have her rest. Meals were timed to suit Carrie's +needs. She became a business woman in a day when business women were +practically unheard of. She actually opened an office in one of the +new big Clark Street office buildings, near Washington, and had a sign +printed on the door: + + MRS. CARRIE PAYSON + REAL ESTATE + + BONDS MORTGAGES + + _Successor to late Isaac Thrift_ + +Later she changed this to "Carrie Thrift Payson." Change came easily +to Carrie. Adaptability was one of her gifts. In 1893 (World's Fair +year) she was one of the first to wear the new Eton jacket and separate +skirt of blue serge (it became almost a uniform with women); and the +shirtwaist, a garment that marked an innovation in women's clothes. She +worked like a man, ruled the roost, was as ruthless as a man. She was +neither a good housekeeper nor marketer, but something perverse in her +made her insist on keeping a hand on the reins of household as well as +business. It was, perhaps, due to a colossal egotism and a petty love +of power. Charlotte could have marketed expertly and thriftily but +Carrie liked to do it on her way downtown in the morning, stopping at +grocer's and butcher's on Thirty-first Street and prefacing her order +always with, "I'm in a hurry." The meat, vegetables, and fruit she +selected were never strictly first-grade. A bargain delighted her. If +an orange was a little soft in one spot she reckoned that the spot +could be cut away. Such was her system of false economy. + +With the World's Fair came a boom in real estate and Carrie Payson rode +on the crest of it. There still were heart-breaking debts to pay and +she paid them honestly. She was too much a Thrift to do otherwise. She +never became rich, but she did manage a decent livelihood. Fortunately +for all of them, old Isaac Thrift had bought some low swampy land far +out in what was considered the wilderness, near the lake, even beyond +the section known as Cottage Grove. With the Fair this land became +suddenly valuable. + +There's no denying that Carrie lacked a certain feminine quality. If +one of the children chanced to fall ill, their mother, bustling home +from the office, had no knack of smoothing a pillow or cooling a hot +little body or easing a pain. "Please, mother, would you mind not doing +that? It makes my headache worse." Her fingers were heavy, clumsy, +almost rough, like a man's. Her maternal guidance of her two daughters +took the form of absent-minded and rather nagging admonitions: + +"Belle, you're reading against the light." + +"Lottie, did you change your dress when you came home from school?" + +"Don't bite that thread with your teeth!" Or, as it became later, +merely, "Your teeth!" + +Slowly, but inevitably, the Paysons dropped out of the circle made up +of Chicago's rich old families--old, that is, in a city that reckoned +a twenty-year building a landmark. The dollar sign was beginning to be +the open sesame and this symbol had long been violently erased from +the Thrift-Payson escutcheon. To the ladies in landaus with the little +screw-jointed sun parasols held stiffly before them, Carrie Payson and +Charlotte Thrift still were "Carrie" and "Charlotte dear." They--and +later Belle and Lottie--were asked to the big, inclusive crushes +pretty regularly once a year. But the small smart dinners that were +just coming in; the intimate social gayeties; the clubby affairs, knew +them not. "One of the Thrift girls" might mean anyone in the Prairie +Avenue household, but it was never anything but a term of respect and +meant much to anyone who was native to Chicago. Other Prairie Avenue +mansions sent their daughters to local private schools, or to the +Eastern finishing schools. Belle and Lottie attended the public grammar +school and later Armour Institute for the high school course only. +Middle-aged folk said to Lottie, "My, how much like your Aunt Charlotte +you do look, child!" They never exclaimed in Belle's presence at the +likeness they found in her face. Belle's family resemblance could be +plainly traced to one of whom friends did not speak in public. Belle +was six years her sister's senior, but Lottie, with her serious brow +and her clear, steady eyes, looked almost Belle's age. Though Belle +was known as the flighty one there was more real fun in Lottie. In +Lottie's bedroom there still hangs a picture of the two of them, framed +in passepartout. It was taken--arm in arm--when Lottie was finishing +high school and Belle was about to marry Henry Kemp; high pompadours +over enormous "rats," the whole edifice surmounted by a life-size +_chou_ of ribbon; shirtwaists with broad Gibson tucks that gave +them shoulders of a coal-heaver; plaid circular skirts fitting snugly +about the hips and flaring out in great bell-shaped width at the hem; +and trailing. + +"What in the world do you keep that comic valentine hanging up for!" +Belle always exclaimed when she chanced into Lottie's room in later +years. + +Often and often, during these years, you might have heard Carrie Payson +say, with bitterness, "I don't want my girls to have the life I've had. +I'll see to it that they don't." + +"How are you going to do it?" Charlotte would ask, with a curious smile. + +"I'll stay young with them. And I'll watch for mistakes. I know the +world. I ought to. For that matter, I'd as soon they never married." + +Charlotte would flare into sudden and inexplicable protest. "You let +them live their own lives, the way they want to, good or bad. How do +you know the way it'll turn out! Nobody knows. Let them live their own +lives." + +"Nonsense," from Carrie, crisply. "A mother knows. One uses a little +common sense in these things, that's all. Don't you think a mother +knows?" a rhetorical question, plainly, but: + +"No," said Charlotte. + + + + + CHAPTER V + + +Anyone who has lived in Chicago knows that you don't live on the South +Side. You simply do not live on the South Side. And yet Chicago's +South Side is a pleasant place of fine houses and neat lawns (and +this when every foot of lawn represents a tidy fortune); of trees, +and magnificent parks and boulevards; of stately (if smoke-blackened) +apartment houses; of children, and motor cars; of all that makes for +comfortable, middle-class American life. More than that, booming its +benisons upon the whole is the astounding spectacle of Lake Michigan +forming the section's eastern boundary. And yet Fashion had early +turned its back upon all this as is the way of Fashion with natural +beauty. + +We know that the Paysons lived south; and why. We know, too, that +Carrie Payson was the kind of mother who would expect her married +daughter to live near her. Belle had had the courage to make an early +marriage as a way of escape from the Prairie avenue household, but +it was not until much later that she had the temerity to broach the +subject of moving north. She had been twenty when she married Henry +Kemp, ten years her senior. A successful marriage. Even now, nearing +forty, she still said, "Henry, bring me a chair," and Henry brought it. +Not that Henry was a worm. He was merely the American husband before +whom the foreign critic stands aghast. A rather silent, gray-haired, +eye-glassed man with a slim boyish waistline, a fair mashie stroke, a +keen business head, and a not altogether blind devotion to his selfish, +pampered semi-intellectual wife. There is no denying his disappointment +at the birth of his daughter Charlotte. He had needed a son to stand by +him in this family of strong-minded women. It was not altogether from +the standpoint of convenience that he had called Charlotte "Charley" +from the first. + +Thwarted in her secret ambition to move north, Belle moved as far south +as possible from the old Prairie Avenue dwelling; which meant that +the Kemps were residents of Hyde Park. Between the two families--the +Kemps in Hyde Park and the Paysons in Prairie Avenue--there existed +a terrible intimacy, fostered by Mrs. Carrie Payson. They telephoned +each other daily. They saw one another almost daily. Mrs. Payson +insisted on keeping a finger on the pulse of her married daughter's +household as well as her own. During Charley's babyhood the innermost +secrets of the nursery, the infant's most personal functions, were +discussed daily via the telephone. Lottie, about sixteen at that time, +and just finishing at Armour, usually ate her hurried breakfast to the +accompaniment of the daily morning telephone talk carried on between +her mother and her married sister. + +"How are they this morning?... Again!... Well then give her a little +oil.... Certainly not! I didn't have the doctor in every time you two +girls had a little something wrong.... Oh, you're always having that +baby specialist in every time she makes a face. We never heard of baby +specialists when I was a.... Well, but the oil won't hurt her.... If +they're not normal by to-morrow get him but.... You won't be able to go +to the luncheon, of course.... You are! But if Charley's.... Well, if +she's sick enough to have a doctor she's sick enough to need her mother +at home.... Oh, all right. Only, if anything happens.... How was the +chicken you bought yesterday?... Didn't I tell you it was a tough one! +You pay twice as much over there in Hyde Park.... What are you going to +wear to the luncheon?..." + +Throughout her school years Lottie had always had a beau to squire +her about at school parties and boy-and-girl activities. He was +likely to be a rather superior beau, too. No girl as clear-headed as +Lottie, and as intelligently fun-loving and merry, would tolerate +a slow-witted sweetheart. The word sweetheart is used for want of +a better. Of sweethearting there was little among these seventeen- +and eighteen-year-olds. Viewed through the wise eyes of to-day's +adolescents they would have seemed as quaint and stiff as their +pompadours and high collars. + +In a day when organised Social Work was considered an original and +rather daring departure for women Lottie Payson seemed destined by +temperament and character to be a successful settlement worker. But she +never became one. Lottie had too much humour and humaneness for the +drab routine of school-teaching; not enough hardness and aggressiveness +for business; none of the creative spark that marks the genius in +art. She was sympathetic without being sentimental; just and fair +without being at all stern or forbidding. Above all she had the gift of +listening. The kind of woman who is better-looking at thirty-five than +at twenty. The kind of woman who learns with living and who marries +early or never. With circumstance and a mother like Mrs. Carrie Payson +against her, Lottie's chances of marrying early were hardly worth +mentioning. Lottie was the kind of girl who "is needed at home." + +Don't think that she hadn't young men to walk home with her from +school. She had. But they were likely to be young men whose collars +were not guiltless of eraser marks; who were active in the debating +societies; and whose wrists hung, a red oblong, below their too-short +sleeves. The kind of young man destined for utter failure or great +success. The kind of young man who tries a pecan grove in Carolina, +or becomes president of a bank in New York. None of these young men +ever kissed Lottie. I think that sometimes, looking at her serious +pretty lips closed so firmly over the white teeth, they wanted to. I'm +sure that Lottie, though she did not know it, wished they would. But +they never did. Lottie absolutely lacked coquetry as does the woman +who tardily develops a sense of sex power. In Lottie's junior year +these gawky and studious young men narrowed down to one. His name +was Rutherford Hayes Adler and he was a Jew. There is no describing +him without the use of the word genius, and in view of his novels of +to-day (R. H. Adler) there is no need to apologise for the early use +of the word. He was a living refutation of the belief that a brilliant +mathematician has no imagination. His Armour report cards would have +done credit to young Euclid; and he wrote humorous light verse to +Lottie and sold insurance on the side. Being swarthy, black-haired, and +black-eyed he was cursed with a taste for tan suits and red neckties. +These, with the high choker collar of the period, gave him the look +of an end-man strayed from the minstrel troupe. Being naturally shy, +he assumed a swagger. He was lovable and rather helpless, and his +shoe strings were always coming untied. His humour sense was so keen, +so unerring, so fastidious as to be almost a vice. Armour students who +did not understand it said, "He's a funny fellow. I don't know--kind of +batty, isn't he?" + +This young man it was who walked home with Lottie Payson all through +her junior and senior years; sat next to her at meetings of the +debating society; escorted her to school festivities; went bicycling +with her on Saturday afternoons. The Payson household paid little +attention to him or to Lottie. Belle was busy with her love affair. +Henry Kemp had just appeared on her horizon. Mrs. Payson was deep in +her real estate transactions. On the few occasions when Rutherford +Hayes actually entered the house and sat down to await Lottie the two +were usually on their way to some innocuous entertainment or outing. +So that it was Aunt Charlotte, if anybody, who said "How do you do, +young man. Oh yes, you're Mr. Adler. Lottie'll be right down." A little +silence. Then kindly, from Aunt Charlotte, "H'm! How do you like your +school work?" Years afterwards Adler put Aunt Charlotte into one of +his books. And Lottie. And Mrs. Carrie Payson, too. He had reason to +remember Mrs. Carrie Payson. + +It was at the end of Lottie's senior year that Mrs. Payson became +aware of this young man whose swart face seemed always to be just +appearing or disappearing around the corner with Lottie either smiling +in greeting or waving a farewell. End-of-the-year school festivities +were accountable for this. Then, too, Belle must have registered some +objection. When next young Adler appeared at the Prairie Avenue house +it was Mrs. Payson who sailed down the rather faded green river of the +parlor carpet. + +"How do you do," said Mrs. Payson; her glance said, "What are you doing +here, in this house?" + +Rutherford Hayes Adler wanted to get up from the chair into which +his lank length was doubled. He knew he should get up. But a hideous +shyness kept him there--bound him with iron bands. When finally, with +a desperate effort, he broke them and stumbled to his feet it was too +late. Mrs. Payson had seated herself--if being seated can describe the +impermanent position which she now assumed on the extreme edge of the +stiffest of the stiff parlor chairs. + +The sallow, skinny little Carrie Thrift had mellowed--no, that word +won't do--had developed into an erect, dignified, white-haired woman of +rather imposing mien. The white hair, in particular, was misleadingly +softening. + +"May I ask your father's name?" she said. Just that. + +The boy had heard that tone used many times in the past nineteen +hundred years. "Adler," he replied. + +"Yes, I know. But his first name. What is his first name, please?" + +"His first name was Abraham--Abraham I. Adler. The I stands for Isaac." + +"Abraham--Isaac--Adler," repeated Mrs. Payson. As she uttered the words +they were an opprobrium. + +"Your father's name was Isaac too, wasn't it?" said the boy. + +"His name was Isaac Thrift." An altogether different kind of Isaac, you +would have thought. No relation to the gentleman in the Bible. A New +England Isaac not to be confused with the Levantine of that name. + +"Yes. I remember I used to hear my grandfather speak of him." + +"Indeed! In what connection, may I ask?" + +"Why, he came to Chicago in '39, just about the time your father +came, I imagine. They were young men together. Grandfather was an old +settler." + +Mrs. Payson's eyebrows doubted it. "I don't remember ever having seen +him mentioned in books on early Chicago." + +"You wouldn't," said Adler; "he isn't." + +"And why not?" + +"Jew," said Rutherford Hayes, pleasantly, and laconically. + +Mrs. Payson stood up. So did the boy. He had no difficulty in +rising now. No self-consciousness, no awkwardness. There was about +him suddenly a fluid grace, an easy muscular rhythm. "Of course, +grandfather has been dead a good many years now," he went on politely, +"and father, too." + +"I'm afraid Lottie won't be able to go this evening," Mrs. Payson said. +"She has been going out too much. It is bad for her school work. Young +girls nowadays----" + +"I see. I'm sorry." There was nothing of humility in the little bow he +made from the waist. Ten minutes earlier you would never have thought +him capable of so finished an act as that bow. He walked to the folding +doors that led to the hall. On the way his glance fell on the portrait +of old Isaac Thrift over the liver-coloured marble mantel. It was a +fine portrait. One of Healy's. Adler paused a moment before it. "Is +that a good portrait of your father?" + +"It is considered very like him." + +"It must be. I can see now why my grandfather took his part to the +last." + +"Took his part!" But her tone was a shade less corroding. "In what, if +you please?" + +"Grandfather lost his fortune when a firm he trusted proved--well, when +a member of it proved untrustworthy." + +When he grew older he was always ashamed of having thus taken a mean +advantage of a woman. But he was so young at the time; and she had +hurt him so deeply. He turned again now, for the door. And there stood +Lottie, brave, but not quite brave enough. She was not wearing her +white dress--her party dress, for the evening. Her mother had forbidden +her to come down. And yet here she was. Braver--not much, but still +braver--than Charlotte had been before her. + +"I--I can't go, Ford," she faltered. + +"It's all right," he said, then. And there, before the white-haired, +relentless, and disapproving Carrie Payson he went up to her, put one +lean dark hand on her shoulder, drew her to him and kissed her, a funny +little boyish peck on the forehead. "Good-bye, Lottie," he said. And +was gone. + +Lottie's being needed at home began before the failure of Aunt +Charlotte's sight. Aunt Charlotte had to go to the eye specialist's +daily. Lottie took her. This was even before the day of the ramshackle +electric. Lottie never begrudged Aunt Charlotte the service. Already +between these two women, the one hardly more than twenty, the other +already past sixty, there existed a curious and unspoken understanding. +They were not voluble women, these two. Lottie never forgot those two +hours in the waiting room of the famous specialist. Every chair was +occupied, always. Silent, idle, waiting figures with something more +crushed and apprehensive about them than ordinarily about the waiting +ones in a doctor's outer room. The neat little stack of magazines on +the centre table remained untouched. Sometimes, if the wait was a long +one, Lottie would run out for an hour's shopping; or would drop in at +her mother's office. Mrs. Payson usually was busy with a client; maps, +documents, sheafs of blue-bound papers. But if one of her daughters +came downtown without dropping in at the office she took it as a +deliberate slight; or as a disregard of parental authority. Lottie +hated the door marked: + + CARRIE THRIFT PAYSON + + REAL ESTATE + + BONDS MORTGAGES + +"Oh, you're busy." + +Mrs. Payson would glance up. There was nothing absent-minded about the +glance. For the moment her attention was all on Lottie. "Sit down. Wait +a minute." + +"I'll come back." + +"Wait." + +Lottie waited. Finally, "Aunt Charlotte will be wondering----" + +"We're through now." She would sit back in her desk chair, her hands +busy with the papers, her eyes on her client. "Now, if you'll come +in again on Monday, say, at about this time, I'll have the abstract +for you, and the trust deed. In the meantime I'll get in touch with +Spielbauer----" + +She would rise, as would her client, a man, usually. With the +conclusion of the business in hand she effected a quick change of +manner; became the woman in business instead of the business woman. +Sometimes the client happened to be an old time acquaintance, in which +case Carrie Payson would put a hand on Lottie's shoulder. "This is my +baby." + +The client would laugh genially, "Quite a baby!" This before the word +had taken on its slang significance. + +"I wouldn't know what to do without her," Mrs. Payson would say. "I +have to be here all day." + +"Yes, they're a great help. Great help. Well--see you Monday, Mrs. +Payson. Same time. If you'll just see Spielbauer----" + +The door closed, Mrs. Payson would turn again to Lottie. "What was the +girl doing when you left?" + +"Why--she was still ironing." + +"How far had she got?" + +"All the fancy things. She was beginning on the sheets." + +"Well, I should think so! At that hour." + +Lottie turned toward the door. "Aunt Charlotte'll be waiting." + +Mrs. Payson must have a final thumb on the clay. "Be very careful +crossing the streets." And yet there was pride and real affection in +her eyes as she looked after the sturdy vigorous figure speeding down +the corridor toward the elevator. + +Once, when Lottie returned to the oculist's after a longer absence +than usual Aunt Charlotte had gone. "How long?" The attendant thought +it must be fifteen minutes. Chicago's downtown streets, even to the +young and the keen-sighted, were a maelstrom dotted at intervals by +blue-uniformed figures who held up a magic arm and blew a shrill blast +just when a swirl and torrent of drays, cabs, street-cars, and trucks +with plunging horses threatened completely to engulf them. Added to +this was the thunderous roar of the Wabash Avenue L trains. Even when +the crossing was comparatively safe and clear the deafening onrush of +a passing L train above always caused Aunt Charlotte to scuttle back +to the curb from which she was about to venture forth. The roar seemed +to be associated in her mind with danger; it added to her confusion. +Leading a horse out of a burning barn was play compared with ushering +Aunt Charlotte across a busy downtown street. + +"Just let me take my time," she would say, tremulously but stubbornly +immovable. + +"But Aunt Charlotte if we don't go now we'll be here forever. Now's the +time." + +Aunt Charlotte would not budge. Then, at the wrong moment, she would +dart suddenly across to the accompaniment of the startled whoop or +curse of a driver, chauffeur, or car conductor obliged to draw a quick +rein or jam on an emergency brake to avoid running her down. + +Lottie, knowing all this, sped toward Wabash Avenue with fear in her +heart, and a sort of anger born of fear. "Oh, dear! It does seem to me +she might have waited. Mother didn't want a thing. Not a thing. I told +her----" + +She came to the corner of Wabash and Madison where they always took the +Indiana Avenue car. She saw a little group of people near the curb and +her heart contracted as she sped on, but when she came up to them it +was only a balky automobile engine that had drawn their attention. She +looked across at the corner which was their car-stop. There stood Aunt +Charlotte. At once cowering, brave; terrified, courageous. At sight of +that timorous, peering, black-garbed figure Lottie gave a little sob. +The blood rushed back to her heart as though it had lain suspended in +her veins. + +"Aunt Charlotte, why did you do it?" + +"I got across alone." + +"But why didn't you wait for me? You knew----" + +"I got across alone. But the street car--the wagons never stopping so +a body can get out to the street car. And no way of telling whether it +was an Indiana or a Cottage Grove. But I got across alone." She had her +five-cent piece in her black-gloved trembling hand. + +Safely in the car, Lottie waxed stern again. "Why didn't you wait, Aunt +Charlotte? You knew I'd be back as soon as I could. I didn't mean to be +late. That was awfully naughty of you, Charlotte Thrift." + +Aunt Charlotte was looking out of the car window. What she saw must +have been little more than a blur to her. But something told Lottie +that in the dim eyes turned away from her was still another blur--a +blur of hot mist. Lottie leaned forward, covering with her own firm +cool young grasp the hand that lay so inertly in the black silk lap. +"What is it? Why----" + +Aunt Charlotte turned and Lottie saw that what she had sensed was +true. "It isn't right!" said Aunt Charlotte almost fiercely, and yet +in a half-whisper, for the car was crowded and she had a horror of +attracting public notice. + +"What isn't?" + +"Your calling for me, and bringing me back. Every day. Every day." + +"Now! You're just a little blue to-day; but the doctor said you'd only +have to come down for treatment a week or two more." + +"It isn't me. It's you. Your life! Your life!" + +A little flush crept into Lottie's face. "It's all right, dear." + +"It isn't all right. Don't you think I know!" Aunt Charlotte's voice +suddenly took on a deep and resonant note--the note of exhortation. +"Lottie, you're going to be eaten alive by two old cannibal women. I +know. I know. Don't you let 'em! You've got your whole life before you. +Live it the way you want to. Then you'll have only yourself to blame. +Don't you let somebody else live it for you. Don't you." + +"How about mother, slaving down in that office all day, when all the +other women of her age are taking it easy--a nap at noon, and afternoon +parties, and a husband to work for them?" + +"Slaving fiddlesticks! She likes it. Your mother'd rather read the real +estate transfers than a novel. Besides, she doesn't need to. We could +live on the rents. Nothing very grand, maybe. But we could live. And +why not let you do something? That's what I'd like to know! Why not----" + +"Oh, I'd love it. All the girls--that is, all the girls I like--are +doing some kind of work. But mother says----" + +Aunt Charlotte sniffed. It was almost a snort. "I know what your mother +says. 'No daughter of mine is going to work for her living.' Hmph!" +(Which is not expressing it, but nearly.) "Calls herself modern. She's +your grandfather over again and he thought he was a whole generation +ahead of his generation. Wasn't, though. Little behind, if anything." + +Sometimes Aunt Charlotte, the subdued, the vaguely wistful, had a +sparkling pugnacity, a sudden lift of spirits that showed for a +brief moment a glimpse of the girl of fifty years ago. A tiff with +Carrie Payson (in which Charlotte, strangely enough, usually came off +victorious) often brought about this brief phenomenon. At such times +she had even been known to sing, in a high off-key falsetto, such +ghostly, but rakish, echoes as: Champagne Charley Was His Name, or, +Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, or even, Up in a Balloon Boys. +Strangely enough as she grew older this mood became more and more +familiar. It was a sort of rebirth. At times she assumed an almost +jaunty air. It was as though life, having done its worst, was no longer +feared by her. + +In spite of objections, Lottie made sporadic attempts to mingle in the +stream of life that was flowing so swiftly past her--this new life of +service and self-expression into which women were entering. Settlement +work; folk dancing, pageantry, juvenile and girls' court work; social +service; departmental newspaper work. Lottie was attracted by all of +these and to any one of them she might have given valuable service. A +woman, Emma Barton, not yet fifty, had been appointed assistant judge +of the new girls' court. No woman had held a position such as that. +Lottie had met her. The two had become friends--close friends in spite +of the disparity in their ages. + +"I need you so badly up here," Emma Barton often told Lottie. "You've +got a way with girls; and you're not school-teachery or judicial with +them. That's the trouble with the regular court worker. And they talk +to you, don't they? Why, I wonder? + +"Maybe it's because I listen," Lottie replied. "And they think I'm sort +of simple. Maybe I am. But not so simple as they think." She laughed. +A visit to Judge Barton's court always stimulated her, even while it +saddened. + +Chicagoans, for the most part, read in the papers of Judge Barton and +pictured in their minds a stout and pink-jowled judiciary in a black +coat, imposing black-ribboned eyeglasses, and careful linen. These +people, if they chanced to be brought face to face with Judge Barton, +were generally seen to smile uncertainly as though a joke were being +played on them without success. They saw a small, mild-faced woman +with graying hair and bright brown eyes--piercing eyes that yet had a +certain liquid quality. She was like a wise little wren who has seen +much of life and understands more than she has seen, and forgives more +than she understands. A blue cloth dress with, probably, some bright +embroidery worked on it. A modern workaday dress on a modern woman. +Underneath, characteristically enough, a black sateen petticoat with a +pocket in it, like a market woman. A morning spent in Judge Barton's +court was life with the cover off. It was a sight vouchsafed to few. +Emma Barton discouraged the curious and ousted the morbidly prying. +Besides, there was no space in her tiny room for more than the persons +concerned. It was less like a court room than your own office, perhaps. + +Then there was Winnie Steppler, who wrote for Chicago's luridest +newspaper under the nom de plume of "Alice Yorke." A pink-cheeked, +white-haired, Falstaffian woman with the look and air of a picture-book +duchess and the wit and drollery of a gamin. Twice married, twice +widowed; wise with a terrible wisdom; seeing life so plainly that she +could not write of what she saw. There were no words. Or perhaps the +gift of words had kindly been denied her. Her "feature stuff" was +likely to be just that. Her conversation was razor-keen and as Irish as +she cared to make it. People were always saying to her, "Why don't you +write the way you talk?" + +"It's lucky for my friends I don't talk the way I write." + +Perhaps these two women, more than anything or anyone else, had +influenced Lottie to intolerance of aimless diversion. Not that Lottie +had much time for her own aimless diversion even if she had fancied it. +Rheumatism of a painful and crippling kind had laid its iron fingers +upon Carrie Payson. Arthritis, the doctors called it. It affected only +the fingers of the left hand--but because of it the downtown real +estate office was closed. The three women were home together now in the +big old house on Prairie, and Mrs. Payson was talking of selling it +and moving into an apartment out south. It was about this time, too, +that she bought the electric--one of the thousands that now began to +skim Chicago's boulevards--and to which Lottie became a galley slave. +She sometimes thought humorously of the shiny black levers as oars and +the miles of boulevard as an endless sea to which she was condemned. +Don't think that Lottie Payson was sorry for herself. If she had been +perhaps it would have been better for her. For ten years or more she +had been so fully occupied in doing her duty--or what she considered +her obvious duty--that she had scarcely thought of her obligations +toward herself. If you had disturbing thoughts you put them out of +your mind. And slammed the door on them. When she was twenty-nine, or +thereabouts, she had read a story that stuck in her memory. It was +Balzac's short story of the old maid who threw herself into the well. +She went to Aunt Charlotte with it. + +"Now that's a morbid, unnatural kind of story, isn't it?" she said. + +Aunt Charlotte's forefinger made circles, round and round, on her +black-silk knee. Lottie had read the story aloud to her. "No. It's +true. And it's natural." + +"I don't see how you can say so. Now, when you were about forty----" + +"When I was thirty-five or forty I had you and Belle. To tend to, I +mean, and look after. If I hadn't had you I don't say that I would have +gone off with the butcher boy, but I don't say that I wouldn't. Every +time I wiped your noses or buttoned you up or spatted your hands when +you were naughty it was a--well--a----" + +"A sort of safety valve, you mean?" Lottie supplied the figure for her. + +"Yes. Between thirty-five and forty--that's the time to look out for. +You can fool nature just so long, and then she turns around and hits +back." + +"But look at all the girls I know--women of my age, and older--who are +happy, and busy and contented." + +There came a soft look into the dark eyes beneath the heavy black +brows. From the vantage point of her years and experience she +pronounced upon her sex. "Women are wonderful, Lottie," she said. "Just +wonderful. A good thing for the race that men aren't like 'em. In +self-control, I mean, and that. Wouldn't _be_ any race, I reckon." + + + + + CHAPTER VI + + +Lottie Payson was striding home through the early evening mist, the +zany March wind buffeting her skirts--no: skirt; it is 1916 and women +are knicker-bockered underneath instead of petticoated. She had come +from what is known on the South Side as "spending the afternoon." + +Of late years Lottie had given up this spending of afternoons. Choice +and circumstances had combined to bring this about. Her interests had +grown away from these women who had been her school-girl friends. The +two women with whom she lived made her the staff on which they leaned +more and more heavily. Lottie Payson was head of the household in +everything but authority. Mrs. Carrie Payson still held the reins. + +The afternoons had started as a Reading Club when Lottie was about +twenty-five and the others a year or two older or younger. Serious +reading. Yes, indeed. Effie Case had said, "We ought to improve our +minds; not just read anything. I think it would be fine to start with +the German poets; Gerty and those." + +So they had started with Goethe and those but found the going +rather rough. This guttural year had been followed by one of French +conversation led by a catarrhal person who turned out to be Vermontese +instead of Parisian, which accounted for their having learned to +pronounce _le_ as "ler." After this they had turned to Modern +American Literature; thence, by a process of degeneration, to Current +Topics. They had a leader for the Current Topics Class, a retired Madam +Chairman. She grafted the front-page headlines onto the _Literary +Digest_ and produced a brackish fruit tasting slightly of politics, +invention, scandal, dress, labor, society, disease, crime, and royalty. +One day, at the last minute, when she had failed to appear for the +regular meeting--grip, or a heavy cold--someone suggested, "How about +two tables of bridge?" After that the Reading Class alternated between +bridge and sewing. The sewing was quite individual and might range all +the way from satin camisoles to huckaback towels; from bead bags to +bedspreads. The talk, strangely enough, differed little from that of +the personally-conducted Current Topics Class days. They all attended +lectures pretty regularly; and symphony concerts and civic club +meetings. + +In the very beginning they had made a rule about refreshments. "No +elaborate serving," they had said. "Just tea or coffee, and toast. +And perhaps a strawberry jam or something like that. But that's all. +Nobody does it any more." The salads, cakes, and ices of an earlier +period were considered vulgar for afternoons. Besides, banting had come +in, and these women were nearing thirty; some of them had passed it--an +age when fat creeps slyly about the hips and arms and shoulder-blades +and stubbornly remains, once ensconced. Still, this rule had slowly +degenerated as had the club's original purpose. As they read less +during these afternoons they ate more. Beck Schaefer discovered and +served a new fruit salad with Hawaiian pineapple and marshmallows as +its plot. When next they met at Effie Case's she served her salad +in little vivid baskets made of oranges hollowed out, with one half +of the skin cut away except for a strip across the top to form the +basket's handle. After that there was no more tea and toast. After +that, too, the attendance of certain members of the erstwhile Reading +Club became more and more irregular and finally ceased altogether. +These delinquents were the more serious-minded ones of the group. +One became a settlement worker. Another went into the office of an +advertising agency and gave all her time and thought to emphasising +the desirability of certain breakfast foods, massage creams, chewing +gum, and garters. Still another had become a successful Science +Practitioner, with an office in the Lake Building and a waiting room +always full of claims. As for Lottie Payson--her youth and health, +her vigor and courage all went into the service of two old women. Of +these the one took selfishly; the other reluctantly, protestingly. The +Reading Club had long ago ceased to exist for Lottie. + +In the morning she drove her mother to market in the ramshackle old +electric. Mrs. Payson seldom drove it herself. The peculiar form of +rheumatism from which she suffered rendered her left hand almost +useless. The electric had been a fine piece of mechanism in its day +but years of service had taken the spring from its joints and the life +from its batteries. Those batteries now were as uncertain as a tired +old heart that may stop its labored beating any moment. A balky starter +and an unreliable starter, its two levers needed two strong hands +with muscle-control behind them. Besides, one had to be quick. As the +Paysons rumbled about in this rheumatic coach, haughty and contemptuous +gas cars were always hooting impatiently behind them, nosing them +perilously out of the way in the traffic's flood, their drivers +frequently calling out ribald remarks about hearses. + +In this vehicle drawn up at the curb outside the market Lottie would +sit reading the _Survey_ (Judge Barton's influence there) while +her mother carried on a prolonged and acrimonious transaction with +Gus. Thirty-first Street, then Thirty-fifth Street, had become +impossible for the family marketing. There groceries and meat markets +catered frankly to the Negro trade. Prosperous enough trade it seemed, +too, with the windows piled with plump broilers and juicy cuts of ham. +The Payson electric waited in Forty-third Street now. + +Gus's red good-natured face above the enveloping white apron became +redder and less good-natured as Mrs. Payson's marketing progressed. New +potatoes. A piece of rump for a pot-roast. A head of lettuce. A basket +of peaches. Echoes floated out to Lottie waiting at the curb. + +"Yeh, but looka here, Mis' Payson, I ain't makin' nothin' on that stuff +as it is. Two three cents at the most. Say _I_ gotta live too, +you know.... Oh, you don't want _that_, Mis' Payson. Tell you the +truth, they're pretty soft. Now here's a nice fresh lot come in from +Michigan this morning. I picked 'em out myself down on South Water." + +Mrs. Payson's decided tones: "They'll do for stewing." + +"All right. 'S for you to say. You got to eat 'em, not me. On'y don't +come around to-morrow tellin' me they was no good." + +Her purchases piled on the leather-upholstered front seat of the +electric, Mrs. Payson would be driven home, complaining acidly. This +finished Gus for her. Robber! Twenty-seven cents for lamb stew! + +"But mama, Belle paid thirty-two cents last week. I remember hearing +her say that lamb stew was seven or eight cents two or three years ago +and now it's thirty-two or thirty----" + +"Oh, Belle! I'm surprised she ever has lamb stew. Always running short +on her allowance with her sirloins and her mushrooms and her broilers. +I ran a household for a whole month on what she uses in a week, when I +was her age. I don't know how Henry stands it." + +This ceremony of marketing took half the morning. It should have +required little more than an hour. On arriving home Mrs. Payson usually +complained of feeling faint. Her purchases piled on the kitchen table, +she would go over them with Hulda, the maid-servant. "Put that lettuce +in a damp cloth." The maid was doing it. "Rub a little salt and vinegar +into that pot roast." The girl had intended to. "You'll have to stew +those peaches." That had been apparent after the first disdainful +pressing with thumb and forefinger. By this time Hulda's attitude was +the bristling one natural to any human being whose intelligence has +been insulted by being told to do that which she already had meant +to do. Mrs. Payson, still wearing her hat (slightly askew now) would +accept the crackers and cheese, or the bit of cold lamb and slice of +bread, proffered by Lottie to fend off the "faintness." Often Mrs. +Payson augmented this with a rather surprising draught of sherry in a +tumbler, from the supply sent by her son-in-law Henry Kemp. + +On fine afternoons Lottie often drove her mother and Aunt Charlotte to +Jackson Park, drawing up at the curb along the lake walk. A glorious +sight, that panorama. It was almost like being at sea, minus the +discomfort of travel. The great blue inland ocean stretched before +them, away, and away, and away until it met the sky. For the most part +the three women did nothing. Mrs. Payson had always hated sewing. +Great-aunt Charlotte sometimes knitted. Her eyes were not needed for +that. But oftenest she sat there gazing out upon the restless expanse +of Lake Michigan, her hands moving as restlessly as the shifting +ageless waters. Great-aunt Charlotte's hands were seldom still. Always +they moved over her lap, smoothing a bit of cloth, tracing an imaginary +pattern with a wrinkled parchment forefinger; pleating a fold of her +napkin when at table. Hands with brown splotches on the backs. Moving, +moving, and yet curiously inactive. Sometimes Lottie read aloud, but +not often. Her mother was restless at being read aloud to; besides, she +liked stories with what is known as a business interest. Great-aunt +Charlotte liked romance. No villain too dastardly--no heroine too +lovely and misunderstood--no hero too ardent and athletic for Aunt +Charlotte's taste. She swallowed them, boots, moonlight, automobiles, +papers and all. "Such stuff!" Mrs. Carrie Payson would say. + +The conversation of the three women sitting there in the little +glass-enclosed box was desultory, unvital. They had little to say +to one another. Yet each would have been surprised to learn what a +reputation for liveliness and wit the other had in her own circle. +Lottie was known among "the girls" to be mischievous and gay; Carrie +Payson could keep a swift and keen pace in conversation with a +group of business men, or after a hand at bridge with women younger +than she (Mrs. Payson did not care for the company of women of her +own age); Great-aunt Charlotte's sallies and observations among +her septuagenarian circle often brought forth a chorus of cackling +laughter. Yet now: + +"Who's that coming along past the Iowa building?" (Relic of World's +Fair days.) + +"I can't tell from here, mama." + +"Must be walking to reduce, with that figure, on a day like this. It's +that Mrs. Deffler, isn't it, that lives near Belle's? No, it isn't. +She's too dark. Yes it ... no...." + +Lottie said aloud, "No, it isn't." And within: "If I could only jump +out of this old rattle-trap and into a boat--a boat with sails all +spread--and away to that place over there that's the horizon. Oh, God, +how I'd ... but I suppose I'd only land at Indiana Harbor instead of at +the horizon." Then aloud again, "If you and Aunt Charlotte think you'll +be comfortable here for twenty minutes or so I'll just walk up as far +as the pier and back." + +"That's right," from Aunt Charlotte. "Do you good. What's more"--she +chuckled an almost wicked chuckle--"I'd never come back, if I were you." + +Mrs. Carrie Payson eyed her sister witheringly. "Don't be childish, +Charlotte." + +Out on the walk, her face toward the lake, her head lifted, her hands +jammed into her sweater pockets, Lottie was off. + +A voice was calling her. + +"What?" + +"Your hat! You forgot your hat!" + +"I don't want it." She turned resolutely away from the maternal voice +and the hat. Her mother's head was stuck out of the car door. Lottie +heard, unheeding, a last faint "Sunburn!" and "Complexion." A half +mile up, a half mile back. Walking gave her a sense of freedom, of +exhilaration; helped her to face the rest of the day. + +In the evening they often drove round to Belle's; or about the park +again on warm summer nights. + +But on this particular March afternoon the Reading Club once more +claimed Lottie. One of the Readers had married. This was her +long-planned afternoon at home for the girls. Her newly-furnished +four-room apartment awaited their knowing inspection. Her wedding +silver and linen shone and glittered for them. Celia Sprague was a +bride at thirty-six, after a ten-years' engagement. + +"Now, Lottie," she had said, over the telephone, "you've just got to +come. Every one of the girls will be here. It's my first party in my +new home. Oh, I notice you find time for your new highbrow friends. +It won't hurt you to come slumming this once. Well, but your mother +can do without you for one afternoon can't she! Good heavens, you've +_some_ right to your----" + +Lottie came. She came and brought her knitting as did every other +member of the Reading Club. Satin camisoles, lingerie, hemstitching, +and bead bags had been abandoned for hanks of wool. The Reading Club, +together with the rest of North America, was swaddling all Belgium in +a million pounds of gray and olive-drab sweaters, mufflers, socks, +caps, mittens, helmets, stomach bands. Purl and knit, purl and knit, +the Reading Club scarcely dropped a stitch as it exclaimed, and cooed +and _ah'd_ and _oh'd_ over Celia Sprague Horner's ("Oh now, +that's all right! Just call me Celia Sprague. Everybody does. I can't +get used to it myself, after all the years I've been--Why just last +week at Shield's, when I was giving my charge, I told the clerk--") new +four-room apartment on Fifty-first Street--now more elegantly known +as Hyde Park Boulevard. Curiously enough Celia, who had been rather +a haggard and faded fiancée of thirty-six, was now, by some magic +process, a well-preserved and attractive young matron of thirty-six. A +certain new assurance in her bearing; a blithe self-confidence in her +conversation; a look in her eyes. The beloved woman. + +"This is the bedroom. Weren't we lucky to get two windows! The sun just +pours in all day--in fact, every room is sunny, even the kitchen." The +Reading Club regarded the bedroom rather nervously. Celia Sprague had +been one of them, so long. And now.... Two small French beds of dark +mahogany, with a silken counterpane on each. "No, just you put your +things right down on the beds, girls. It won't hurt the spreads a bit. +Everything in this house is going to be used. That's what it's for." +On the bed nearest the wall a little rosy mound of lingerie pillows, +all afroth with filet, and Irish, and eyelet embroidery and cut work. +Celia had spent countless Reading Club afternoons on this handiwork. +The rosy mound served no more practical purpose than the velvet and +embroidered slippers that used to hang on the wall in her grandmother's +day. Two silver-backed military brushes on the dull mahogany chest of +drawers--"chiffo-robe," Celia would tell you. The Reading Club eyed +them, smiling a little. Celia opened a closet door to dilate upon its +roominess. A whole battalion of carefully-hung trousers leaped out +at them from the door-rack. The Reading Club actually stepped back a +little, startled. "Orville's clothes take up more room than mine, I +always tell him. And everything just so. I never saw such a man!" She +talked as one to whom men and their ways were an old, though amusing, +story. "He's the neatest thing." + +Out to the living room. "Oh, Celia this _is_ sweet! I love your +desk. It's so different." The room was the conventional bridal living +room; a plum-coloured velvet davenport, its back against a long, very +retiring table whose silk-shaded lamp showed above the davenport's +broad back like someone playing hide-and-seek behind a hedge. There +were lamps, and lamps, and lamps--a forest of them. The book-shelves +on either side of the gas-log grate held a rather wistful library, the +wedding gift "sets" of red and gold eked out with such school-girl +fillers as the Pepper Books, Hans Brinker, and Louisa Alcott. + +"A woman twice a week--one day to clean and one to wash and iron. +Orville wants me to have a maid but I say what for? She'd have to sleep +out and you never can depend--besides, it's just play. We have dinner +out two or three nights----" + +They were seated now, twittering, each with her knitting. A +well-dressed, alert group of women, their figures trim in careful +corsets, their hair, teeth, complexions showing daily care and +attention. The long slim needles--ebony, amber, white--flew and flashed +in the sunlight. + +"... This is my sixth sweater. I do 'em in my sleep." + +"... It's the heel that's the trick. Once I've passed that----" + +"... My brother says we'll never go in. We're a peace-loving nation, he +says. We simply don't believe in war. Barbaric." + +The handiwork of each was a complete character index. The bride was +painstaking and bungling. Her knitting showed frequent bunches and +lumps. Beck Schaefer's needles were swift, brilliant, and slovenly. +Effie Case's sallow sensual face, her fragile waxen fingers, showed her +distaste for the coarse fabric with which she was expertly occupied. +Amy Stattler, the Social Service worker, knitted as though she +found knitting restful. A plume of white showed startlingly in the +soft black of her hair. Prim sheer white cuffs and collar finished +her black gown at wrists and throat. Beck Schaefer, lolling on the +other side of the room, her legs crossed to show plump gray silk +calves, her feet in gray suede slippers ornamented with huge cut-steel +buckles, seemed suddenly showy and even vulgar in comparison. She was, +paradoxically, good-hearted and unpopular. This last because she was +given to indulging in that dangerous pastime known as "being perfectly +frank." Instinctively you shrank when Beck Schaefer began a sentence +with, "Now, I'm going to be perfectly frank with you." She was rarely +perfectly frank with the men, however. She had a way of shaking a +coquettish forefinger at the more elderly of these and saying, "Will +you never grow up!" People said of Beck that she lighted up well in the +evening. + +Lottie Payson was knitting a sleeveless, olive-drab sweater. Row after +row, inch after inch, it grew and lengthened, a flawless thing. Lottie +hated knitting. As she bent over the work her face wore a look for +definition of which you were baffled. Not a sullen look nor brooding, +but bound. That was it! Not free. + +The talk at first was casual, uninteresting. + +"Lot, is that the skirt to the suit Heller made you last winter?... +His things are as good the second season as they are the first. Keep +their shape. And he certainly does know how to get a sleeve in. His +shoulder line...." + +"... the minute I begin to gain I can tell by my waistbands----" + +"... if you purl three knit two----" + +Beck Schaefer had ceased to knit. She was looking at the intent little +group. She represented a certain thwarted type of unwed woman in whom +the sensual is expressed, pitifully enough, in terms of silk and lacy +lingerie; in innuendo; in a hungry roving eye; in a little droop at the +corners of the mouth; in an over-generous display of plump arms, or +bosom, or even knees. Beck's married friends often took her with them +in the evenings as a welcome third to relieve the tedium of a wedded +tête-à-tête. They found a vicarious pleasure in giving Beck a good time. + +Suddenly, in the midst of the brittle chatter and laughter, was thrust +the steel edge of Beck Schaefer's insolent voice, high, shrill. + +"Well, Cele, tell us the truth: are you happy?" + +The bride, startled, dropped a stitch, looked up, looked down, flushed. +"Why yes, of course, you bad thing!" + +"Ye-e-es, but I mean really happy. Come on now, give us the truth. Come +on. Let's all tell the truth, for once. Are you really happy, Cele?" + +The others laughed a little uncomfortably. Celia's face was red. +Lottie's voice, rather deeper than most women's, and with a contralto +note in it., was heard through the staccato sounds. + +"Well, at least, Beck, she won't have to listen to her married friends +saying, 'What's the matter with the men nowadays! What do they mean by +letting a wonderful girl like you stay single, h'm?'" + +They laughed at that. The atmosphere cleared a little. But Beck +Schaefer's eyes were narrowed. "Now I'm looking for information. We're +all friends here. We're all in the same boat--all except Celia, and +she's climbed out of the boat and onto a raft. I want to know if it was +worth the risk of changing. Here we all are--except Celia--failures. +Any unmarried woman is a self-confessed failure." + +A babel of protest. "How about Jane Addams!... Queen Elizabeth.... Joan +of Arc!" + +"Queen Elizabeth was a hussy. Jane Addams is a saint. Joan of +Arc--well----" + +Lottie Payson looked up from her knitting. "Joan of Arc had the courage +to live her own life, which is more than any of us have. She called +it listening to the voices, but I suppose what she really wanted was +to get away from home. If she had weakened and said, 'Ma, I know I +oughtn't to leave you. You need me to tend the geese,' her mother +might have been happier, and Joan would have lived a lot longer, but +the history of France would have been different." + +Beck Schaefer frankly cast aside her knitting, hugged one knee with her +jewel-decked hands, and waited for the laughter to subside. "You're +all afraid of the truth--_that's_ the truth. I'm willing to come +through----" + +"Goodness, Beck, where do you pick up that low talk!" + +"I'm willing to come through if the rest of you are. We're all such +a lot of liars. We all know Cele there had to wait ten years for her +Orville because he had to support two selfish sisters and an invalid +mother; and even after the mother died the two cats wouldn't go to +live in two rooms as they should have, so that Celia and Orville could +afford to be happy together. No! They wanted all the comforts he'd +given them for years and so Celia----" + +"Beck Schaefer I won't have----" the bride's face was scarlet. She bit +her lip. + +"Now I know you're going to say I'm a guest in your house and so you +can't--and all that. But I'm not ashamed to say what you all know. That +I'd be married to-day if it weren't for Sam Butler's mother who ought +to have died fifteen years ago." + +"Beck, you're crazy! Now stop it! If you're trying to be funny----" + +"But I'm not. I'm trying to be serious. And you're all scared. Old +Lady Butler--'Madame Butler' she insists on it! I could die!--is +almost eighty-six, and Sam's crowding fifty. He's a smart business +man--splendid mind--a whole lot superior to mine; I know that. And yet +when he's with her--which is most of his spare time--he's like a baby +in her hands. She makes a slave of him. She hates any girl he looks +at. She's as jealous as a maniac. She tells him all sorts of things +about me. Lies. He has to go out of the house to telephone me. Once I +called him up at the house and he had to have the doctor in for her. +That's the way she works it; tells him that if she dies it will be on +his head, or something Biblical like that. Imagine! In this day! And +Sam pays every cent of the household expenses and dresses his mother +like a duchess. Look at me and my mother. We're always going around to +summer resorts together. Just two pals! M-m-m! 'Don't tell me you're +the mother of a big girl like that! Why, you look like sisters!' Big +girl--me! That ought to have five chil--not that I want 'em ... now. +But whenever I see one of those young mothers with her old daughter on +a summer resort veranda I want to go up to the tired old daughter and +say, 'Listen, gal. Run away with the iceman, or join a circus, or take +up bare-legged dancing--anything to express yourself before it's too +late.'" + +They had frankly stopped their knitting now. The bride's lip was caught +nervously between her teeth. Even thus her face still wore a crooked +and uncertain smile--the smile of the harassed hostess whose party had +taken an unmanageable turn for the worse. + +It was Amy Stattler who first took up her knitting again, her face +serene. "How about those of us who are doing constructive work? I +suppose we're failures too!" She straightened a white cuff primly. "I +have my Work." + +"All right. Have it. But I notice that didn't keep you from wanting +to marry that brainy little kike Socialist over on the West Side; and +it didn't keep your people from interfering and influencing you, and +making your life so miserable that you hadn't the spirit left to----" + +But Amy Stattler's face was so white and drawn and haggard--she was +suddenly so old--that even Beck Schaefer's mad tongue ceased its cruel +lashing for a moment; but only for a moment. + +Lottie Payson rolled her work into a neat bundle and jabbed a needle +through it. She sat forward, her fine dark eyebrows gathered into a +frown of pain and decent disapproval. + +"Beck, dear, you're causing a lot of needless discomfort. You're +probably nervous to-day, or something----" + +"I'm nothing of the kind. Makes me furious to be told I'm nervous when +I'm merely trying to present some interesting truths." + +"The truth isn't always helpful just because it hurts, you know." + +"A little truth certainly wouldn't hurt you, Lottie Payson. I suppose +it wouldn't help any, either, to acknowledge that you're a kind of +unpaid nurse-companion to two old women who are eating you alive!--when +your friend Judge Barton herself says that you've got a knack with +delinquent girls that would make you invaluable on her staff. And now +that you're well past thirty I suppose your mother doesn't sometimes +twit you with your maiden state, h'm? Don't tell _me_! As for +Effie Case there----" + +"Oh, my goodness Beck, spare muh! I've been hiding behind my knitting +needle hoping you wouldn't see me. I know what's the matter with you. +You've been sneaking up to those psycho-analysis lectures that old +Beardsley's giving at Harper Hall. Shame on you! Nice young gal like +you." + +"Yes--and I know what's the matter with you, too, Effie. Why you're +always lolling around at massage parlors and beauty specialists, +sleeping away half the day in some stuffy old----" + +With lightning quickness Effie Case wadded her work into a ball, lifted +her arm, and hurled the tight bundle full at Beck Schaefer's head. It +struck her in the face, rebounded, unrolled softly at her feet. Effie +laughed her little irritating hysterical laugh. Beck Schaefer kicked +the little heap of wool with a disdainful suede slipper. + +"Well, I wouldn't have spilled all this if Cele had been willing to +tell the truth. I said we were failures and we are because we've +allowed some one or something to get the best of us--to pile up +obstacles that we weren't big enough to tear down. We've all gone in +for suffrage, and bleeding Belgium, and no petticoats, and uplift work, +and we think we're modern. Well, we're not. We're a past generation. +We're the unselfish softies. Watch the eighteen-year-olds. They've got +the method. They're not afraid." + +Lottie Payson laughed. Her face was all alight. "You ought to hear +my niece Charley talk to me. You'd think I was eighteen and she +thirty-two." + +Beck Schaefer nodded vehemently. "I know those girls--the Charley +kind. Scared to death of 'em. They're so sorry for me. And sort of +contemptuous. Catch Charley marrying ten years too late, like Celia +here, and missing all the thrill." + +"I haven't!" cried the harassed Celia, in desperation. "I haven't! +Orville's the grandest----" + +"Of course he is. But you can't have any thrill about a man you've +waited ten years for. Why won't you be honest!" + +And suddenly the plump little silk-clad hostess stood up, her face +working, her eyes bright with tears that would not wink away. + +"All right, I'll tell you the truth." + +"No, Cele--no!" + +"Sit down, Celia. Beck's a little off to-day." + +"Don't pay any attention to her. Waspish old girl, that's what----" + +Beck regarded her victim between narrowed lids. "You're afraid." + +"I'm not. Why should I be. Orville's the kindest man in the world. I +thought so before I married him, and now I know it." + +"Oh--kind!" scoffed Beck. "But what's that got to do with happiness? +Happiness!" + +"If you mean transports--no. Orville's fifty. He's set in his ways. +I--I'm nearer thirty-seven than thirty-six. And at that I've only lied +one year about my age--don't tell Orville. He's crazy about me. He just +follows me around this flat like a--like a child. And I suppose that's +really what he is to me now--a kind of big, wonderful child. I have to +pamper him, and reason with him, and punish him, and coax, and love, +and--tend him. I suppose ten years ago we'd--he'd----" + +She stopped suddenly, with a little broken cry. + +"Beck, you're a pig!" Lottie Payson's arms were about Celia. "In her +own house, too, and her first party. Really you're too----" + +A coloured maid stood in the doorway--a South Side Hebe--her ebony face +grotesque between the lacy cap and apron with which Celia had adorned +her for the day. She made mysterious signals in Celia's direction. + +"'F yo' ladies come in ev'thin's all--" She smiled; a sudden gash of +white in the black. The tantalizing scent of freshly made coffee filled +the little flat. They moved toward the dining room, talking, laughing, +pretending. + +"Oh, how pretty!... Cele! A real party! Candles and everything.... What +a stunning pattern--your silver. So plain and yet so rich.... My word! +Chicken salad! Bang goes another pound!" + +Chicken salad indeed. Little hot flaky biscuits, too, bearing pools of +golden butter within. Great black oily ripe olives. Salted almonds in +silver dishes. Coffee with rich yellow cream. A whipped-cream covered +icebox cake. + +"I think we ought to spank Beck and send her from the table. She +doesn't deserve this." + +At five-thirty, as they stood, hatted and ready for the street, +chorusing their good-byes in the little hallway, a key clicked in the +lock. Orville! + +They looked a little self-conscious. + +"Well, well, well! I've run into a harem!" + +"We haven't left a thing for your dinner. And it was so good." + +"Not running away because I'm home, are you?" His round face beamed on +them. He smelled of the fresh outdoors, and of strong cigars, and of a +vaguely masculine something that was a blending of business office and +barber's lotion and overcoat. The Reading Club scented it, sensitively. +Celia came over to him swiftly, there in the little hall, and slid one +arm about his great waist. A plump man, Orville, with a round, kindly, +commonplace face. He patted her silken shoulder. She faced the Reading +Club defiantly, triumphantly. "What have you girls been talking about, +h'mm?" Orville laughed a tolerant chuckling laugh. "You girls. Settled +the war yet?" + +Beck Schaefer threw up her chin a little. "We've been talking about +you, if you really want to know." + +He reeled. "Oh, my God! Cele, did you take the old man's part?" + +Celia moved away from him then a little, her face flushing. Constraint +fell upon the group. Lottie Payson stepped over to him then and put +one hand on his broad shoulder. "She didn't need to take your part, +Orville. We were all for you." + +"Except me!" shrilled Beck. + +"Oh, you!" retorted Orville, heavily jocular. "You're jealous." He +rubbed his chin ruefully. "Wait till I've shaved, Beck, and I'll give +you a kiss to make you happy." + +"Orville!" But Celia's bearing was again that of the successful +matron--the fortunate beloved woman. + +Beck Schaefer took the others home in her electric. Lottie, seized with +a sudden distaste for the glittering enamelled box elected to walk, +though she knew it would mean being late. + +"Figger?" Beck Schaefer asked, settling her own plump person in the +driver's seat. + +"Air," Lottie answered, not altogether truthfully; and drew a long +breath. She turned away from the curb. The electric trundled richly +off, its plate glass windows filled with snugly tailored shoulders, +furs, white gloves, vivid hats. Lottie held one hand high in farewell, +palm, out, as the glittering vehicle sped silently away, lurched fatly +around a corner and was gone. + + + + + CHAPTER VII + + +Lottie was late. Shockingly late. Even though, tardily +conscience-stricken, she had deserted walk, sunset, and lake mist for +a crowded and creeping Indiana Avenue car at Forty-seventh Street, she +was unforgivably late, according to her mother's stern standards. This +was Friday night. Every Friday night Henry, Belle, and Charley Kemp +took dinner with the Paysons in the old house on Prairie Avenue. Every +Friday night. No matter what else the Kemps might prefer to do on that +night, they didn't do it. Each Friday morning Belle Kemp would say to +her husband, "This is Friday, Henry. We're having dinner at mama's, +remember." + +"I might have to work to-night, Belle. We're taking inventory this +week." + +"Henry, you _know_ how mama feels about Friday dinner." + +"M-hmph," Henry would grunt; and make a mental note about an extra +supply of cigars for the evening. His favorite nightmare was that in +which he might slap his left-hand vest pocket only to find it empty +of cigars at 8:30 on a Friday evening at Mother Payson's. The weekly +gathering was a tradition meaninglessly maintained. The two families +saw quite enough of one another without it. Mrs. Payson was always +"running over to Belle's for a minute." But these Friday dinners had +started before Charley was born. Now they constituted an iron-clad +custom. Mrs. Payson called it "keeping up the family life." + +Lottie, hospitable by nature, welcomed dinner guests; but she rather +dreaded these Friday nights. There was so little of spontaneity about +them, and so much of family frankness. Some time during the evening +Belle would say, "Lottie, that dress is at least two inches too long. +No wonder you never look smart. Your clothes are always so ladylike." + +Lottie would look ruefully down her own length, a mischievous smile +crinkling the corners of her eyes. "And I thought I looked so nice! Not +chic, perhaps, but nice!" Her slim, well-shod feet, her neat silken +ankles, her sensible skirt, her collars and cuffs, or blouses and +frills were always so admirably trim, so crisply fresh where freshness +was required. Looking at her you had such confidence in the contents of +her bureau drawers. + +"Oh--nice! Who wants to look nice, nowadays!" + +Mrs. Payson always insisted on talking business with her courteous but +palpably irked son-in-law. Her views and methods were not his. When, in +self-defense, he hinted this to her she resented it spiritedly with, +"Well, I ran a successful business and supported a household before you +had turned your first dollar, Henry Kemp. I'm not a fool." + +"I should think not, Mother Payson. But things have changed since your +time. Methods." + +He knew his wife was tapping a meaningful foot; and that Charley's +mischievous intelligent eyes held for him a message of quick +understanding and sympathy. Great friends, he and Charley, though in +rare moments of anger he had been known to speak of her to his wife as +"your daughter." + +Mrs. Payson was always ready with a suggestion whereby Henry Kemp +could improve his business. Henry Kemp's business was that of +importing china, glassware, and toys. Before the war he had been on +the road to a more than substantial fortune. France, Italy, Bohemia, +and Bavaria meant, to Henry Kemp, china from Limoges; glassware +from Venice and Prague; toys from Nürnberg and Munich. But Zeppelin +bombs, long-distance guns, and U-boats had shivered glass, china, +and toys into fragments these two years past. The firm had turned to +America for these products and found it sadly lacking. American dolls +were wooden-faced; American china was heavy, blue-white; American +glass-blowing was a trade, not an art. Henry Kemp hardly dared think of +what another year of war would mean to him. + +Lottie thought of these things as the Indiana Avenue car droned along. +Her nerves were pushing it vainly. She'd be terribly late. And she +had told Hulda that she'd be home in time to beat up the Roquefort +dressing that Henry liked. Oh, well, dinner would be delayed a few +minutes. Anyway, it was much better than dinner alone with mother and +Aunt Charlotte. Dinner alone with mother and Aunt Charlotte had grown +to be something of a horror. Lottie dreaded and feared the silence that +settled down upon them. Sometimes she would realize that the three of +them had sat almost through the meal without speaking. Lottie struggled +to keep up the table-talk. There was something sodden and deadly about +these conversationless dinners. Lottie would try to chat brightly +about the day's happenings. But when these happenings had just been +participated in by all three, as was usually the case, the brightness +of their recounting was likely to be considerably tarnished. + +Silence. A sniff from Mrs. Payson. "That girl's making coffee again for +herself. If she's had one cup to-day she's had ten. I get a pound of +coffee every three days, on my word." + +"They all do that, mother--all the Swedish girls." + +Silence. + +"The lamb's delicious, isn't it, Aunt Charlotte?" + +Mrs. Payson disagreed before Aunt Charlotte could agree. "It's tough. +I'm going to have a talk with that Gus to-morrow." + +Silence. + +The swinging door squeaking at the entrance of Hulda with a dish. + +"No; not for me." Aunt Charlotte refusing another helping. + +Silence again except for the sound of food being masticated. Great-aunt +Charlotte had an amazingly hearty appetite. Its revival had dated from +the acquisition of the new teeth. Now, when Aunt Charlotte smiled, her +withered lips drew away to disclose two flawless rows of blue-white +teeth. They flashed, incongruously perfect, in contrast with the sere +and wrinkled fabric of her face. There had been talk of drawing Mrs. +Payson's teeth as a possible cure for her rheumatic condition, but she +had fought the idea stubbornly. + +"They make me tired. When they don't know what else to do they pull +your teeth. They pull your teeth for everything from backache to +diabetes. And when it doesn't help they say, 'Pardon me. My mistake,' +and there you are without your teeth and with your aches. Fads!" + +She had aired these views most freely during the distressing two weeks +following Aunt Charlotte's dental operation, when soft, slippery +shivery concoctions had had to be specially prepared for her in the +Payson kitchen. + +Lottie would scurry about in her mind for possible table-talk. +Anything--anything but this sodden silence. + +"How would you two girls like to see a picture this evening, h'm? If we +go early and get seats well toward the front, so that Aunt Charlotte +can see, I'll drive you over to Forty-third. I wonder what's at the +Vista. I'll look in the paper. I hope Hulda saved the morning paper. +Perhaps Belle will drive over and meet us for the first show--no, +she can't either, I remember; she and Henry are having dinner north +to-night. Most of Belle's friends are moving north. Do you know, I +think--" + +"The South Side's always been good enough for me and always will be. I +don't see any sense in this fad for swarming over to the north shore. +If they'd improve the acres and acres out Bryn Mawr way----" + +Mrs. Payson was conversationally launched on South Side real estate. +Lottie relaxed with relief. + +Sometimes she fancied that she caught Great-aunt Charlotte's +misleadingly bright old eyes upon her with a look that was at +once knowing and sympathetic. On one occasion that surprising +septuagenarian had startled and mystified Mrs. Payson and Lottie by +the sudden and explosive utterance of the word, "Game-fish!" It was at +dinner. + +"What? What's that?" Mrs. Payson had exclaimed; and had looked about +the table and then at her sister as though that thoughtful old lady had +taken leave of her senses. "What!" They were undeniably having tongue +with spinach. + +"Game-fish!" repeated Aunt Charlotte Thrift, gazing straight at Lottie. +Lottie waited, expectantly. "Your Grandfather Thrift had a saying: +'Only the game-fish swim upstream.'" + +"Oh," said Lottie; and even coloured a little, like a girl. + +Mrs. Payson had regarded her elder sister pityingly. "Well, how +did you happen to drag that in, Charlotte?" In a tone which meant, +simply--"Childish! Senile!" + +On this particular Friday night the Kemps were indeed there as Lottie +ran quickly up the front steps of the house on Prairie. The Kemp car, +glossy and substantial, stood at the curb. Charley drove it with +dashing expertness. At the thought of Charley the anxious frown between +Lottie Payson's fine brows smoothed itself out. Between aunt and niece +existed an affection and understanding so strong, so deep, so fine as +to be more than a mere blood bond. Certainly no such feeling had ever +existed between Lottie and her sister Belle; and no such understanding +united Belle and her daughter Charley. + +The old walnut and glass front door slammed after Lottie. They were in +the living room--the back parlor of Isaac Thrift's day. + +"Lottie!" Mrs. Payson's voice; metallic. + +"Yes." + +"Well!" + +Mrs. Payson was standing, facing the door as Lottie came in. She was +using her cane this evening. She always walked with her cane when she +was displeased with Lottie or Belle; some obscure reason existed for +it. She reminded you of one of these terrifying old dowagers of the +early English novels. + +"Hello, Belle! Hello, Henry! Sorry I'm late." + +Charley Kemp came over to Lottie in the doorway. Niece and aunt clasped +hands--a strange, brief, close grip, like that between two men. No +words. + +"Late! I should think you are late. You knew this was Friday night." + +"Now, now mother." Henry Kemp had a man's dread of a scene. "Lottie's +not a child. We've only been here a few minutes." + +"She might as well be--" ignoring his second remark. "Tell Hulda we're +all here. Call Aunt Charlotte." + +"I'll just skip back and beat up the Roquefort dressing first. Hulda +gets it so lumpy.... Minute...." + +"Lottie!" Mrs. Payson's voice was iron. "Lottie Payson, you change your +good suit skirt first!" + +Henry Kemp shouted. Mrs. Payson turned on him. "Well, what's funny +about that!" He buried his face in the evening paper. + +Belle's rather languid tones were heard now for the first time. "Lot, +is that your winter hat you're still wearing?" + +"Winter?--You don't mean to tell me I ought to be wearing a summer one! +Already!" Lottie turned to go upstairs, dutifully. The suit skirt. + +"Already! Why, it's March. Everybody----" + +"I slipped and almost fell on the ice at the corner of twenty-ninth," +Lottie retorted, laughingly, leaning over the balustrade. + +"What earthly difference does that make!" + +A rather grim snort here from Charley who was leaping up the stairs +after her aunt, like a handsome young colt. + +Lottie's room was at the rear of the second floor looking out upon the +back yard. A drear enough plot of ground now, black with a winter's +dregs of snow and ice. In the spring and summer Lottie and Great-aunt +Charlotte coaxed it into a riot of colour that defied even the South +Side pall of factory smoke and Illinois Central cinders. A border of +old-fashioned flowers ran along either side of the high board fence. +There were daisies and marigolds, phlox and four-o'clocks, mignonette +and verbenas, all polka-dotted with soot but defiantly lovely. + +On her way up the stairs, Lottie had been unfastening coat and skirt +with quick, sure fingers. She tossed the despised hat on the bed. Now, +as Charley entered, her aunt stepped out of the suit skirt and stood in +her knickers, a trim, well set-up figure, neatly articulated, hips flat +and well back; bust low and firm; legs sturdy and serviceable, the calf +high and not too prominent. She picked up the skirt, opened her closet +door, snatched another skirt from the hook. + +Mrs. Payson's voice from the foot of the stairway. "Lottie, put on a +dress--the blue silk one. Ben Gartz is coming over. He telephoned." + +"Oh _dear_!" said Lottie; hung the skirt again on its hook; took +out the blue silk. + +"Do you mean," demanded Charley, "that Grandma made an engagement for +you without your permission?" (You ought to hear Charley on the subject +of personal freedom). + +"Oh, well--Ben Gartz. He and mother talk real estate, or business." + +"But he comes to see you." + +Charley had swung herself up to the footboard of the old walnut bed +that Lottie herself had cream-enamelled. A slim, pliant young thing, +this Charley, in her straight dark blue frock. She was so misleadingly +pink and white and golden that you neglected to notice the fine brow, +the chin squarish in spite of its soft curves, the rather deep-set +eyes. From her perch Charley's long brown-silk legs swung friendlily. +You saw that her stockings were rolled neatly and expertly just below +knees as bare and hardy as a Highlander's. She eyed her aunt critically. + +"Why in the world do you wear corsets, Lotta?" (This "Lotta" was a form +of affectation and affection.) + +"Keep the ol' tum in, of course. I'm no lithe young gazelle like you." + +"Gained a little, haven't you--this winter?" + +"I'm afraid I have." Lottie was stepping into the blue silk and dancing +up and down as she pulled it on to keep from treading on it. "I don't +get enough exercise, that's the trouble. That darned old electric!" + +Charley faced her sternly from the footboard. "Well, if you will insist +on being the Family Sacrifice. Making a 'bus line of yourself between +here and the market--the market and the park--the park and our house. +The city ought to make you pay for a franchise." + +"Now--Charley----" + +"Oh, you're disgusting, that's what you are, Lotta Payson! You +practically never do anything you really want to do. You're so nobly +self-sacrificing that it's sickening. It's a weakness. It's a vice." + +"Yes ma'am," said Lotta gravely. "And if you kids don't do, say, and +feel everything that comes into your heads you go around screaming +about inhibitions. If you new-generation youngsters don't yield to +every impulse you think you're being stunted." + +"Well, I'd rather try things and find they're bad for me than never try +them at all. Look at Aunt Charlotte!" + +Lottie at the mirror was dabbing at her nose with a hasty powder-pad. +She regarded Charley now, through the glass. "Aunt Charlotte's +more--more understanding than mother is." + +"Yes, but it's been pretty expensive knowledge for her, I'll just bet. +Some day I'm going to ask her why she never married. Great-grandmother +Thrift had a hand in it; you can tell that by looking at that picture +of her in the hoops trimmed with bands of steel, or something. Gosh!" + +"You wouldn't ask her, Charley!" + +"I would too. She's probably dying to tell. Anybody likes to talk +of their love affairs. I'm going to cultivate Aunt Charlotte, I am. +Research work." + +"Yes," retorted Lottie, brushing a bit of powder from the front of the +blue silk, "do. And lend her your Havelock Ellis and Freud first, so +that she'll at least have a chance to be shocked, poor dear. Otherwise +she won't know what you're driving at." + +"You're a worm," said Charley. She jumped off the footboard, took +her aunt in her strong young arms and hugged her close. An unusual +demonstration for Charley, a young woman who belonged to the modern +school that despises sentiment and frowns upon weakly emotional +display; to whom rebellion is a normal state; clear-eyed, remorseless, +honest, fearless, terrifying; the first woman since Eve to tell the +truth and face the consequences. Lottie, looking at her, often felt +puerile and ineffectual. "You don't have half enough fun. And no +self-expression. Come on and join a gymnastic dancing class. You'd make +a dancer. Your legs are so nice and muscular. You'd love it. Wonderful +exercise." + +She sprang away suddenly and stood poised for a brief moment in what is +known as First Position in dancing. "Tour jeté--" she took two quick +sliding steps, turned and leaped high and beautifully--"tour jeté--" +and again, bringing up short of the wall, her breathing as regular as +though she had not moved. "Try it." + +Lottie eyed her enviously. Charley had had lessons in gymnastic dancing +since the age of nine. Her work now was professional in finish, +technique, and beauty. She could do Polish Csárdás in scarlet boots, +or Psyche in wisps of pink chiffon and bare legs, or Papillons d'Amour +in flesh tights, ballet skirts aflare and snug pink satin bodice, with +equal ease and brilliance. She was always threatening to go on the +stage and more than half meant it. Charley would no more have missed a +performance of the latest Russian dancers, or of Pavlova, or the Opera +on special ballet nights than a student surgeon would miss an important +clinic. In the earlier stages of her dancing career her locomotion +had been accomplished entirely by the use of the simpler basic forms +of gymnastic dance steps. She had jeté-d and coupé-d and sauté-d and +turné-d in and out of bed, on L train platforms, at school, on the +street. + +Lottie, regarding her niece now, said, "Looks easy, so I suppose it +isn't. Let's see." She lifted her skirt tentatively. "Look out!" + +"No, no! Don't touch your skirts. Arms free. Out. Like this. Hands are +important in dancing. As important as feet. Now! Tour jeté! Higher! +That's it. _Tou_----" + +"Lot-_tie_!" Mrs. Payson's voice at the foot of the staircase. + +"Oh, my goodness!" All the light, the fun, the eagerness that had +radiated Lottie's face vanished now. She snatched a handkerchief from +the dresser and made for the stairs, snapping a fastener at her waist +as she went. "Call Aunt Charlotte for dinner," she flung over her +shoulder at Charley. + +"All right. Can I have a drop of your perfume on my hank?" (Not quite +so grown-up, after all.) + +As she flew past the living room on her way to the pantry Lottie heard +her mother's decided tones a shade more decisive than usual as she +administered advice to her patient son-in-law. + +"Put in a side-line then, until business picks up. Importing won't +improve until this war is over, that's sure. And when will it be over? +Maybe years and years----" + +Henry Kemp's amused, tolerant voice. "What would you suggest, Mother +Payson? Collar buttons--shoe strings--suspenders. They're always +needed." + +"You may think you're very funny, but let me tell you, young man, if I +were in your shoes to-day I'd----" + +The pantry door swung after Lottie. As she ranged oil, vinegar, salt, +pepper, paprika on the shelf before her and pressed the pungent cheese +against the bottom and sides of the shallow bowl with her fork, her +face had the bound look that it had worn earlier in the day at Celia's. +She blended and beat the dressing into a smooth creamy consistency. + +They were all at table when Great-aunt Charlotte finally came down. +She entered with a surprisingly quick light step. To-night she looked +younger than her sister in spite of ten years' seniority. Great-aunt +Charlotte was undeniably dressy--a late phase. At the age of seventy +she had announced her intention of getting no more new dresses. She +had, she said, a closet full of black silks and more serviceable cloth +dresses collected during the last ten or more years. "We Thrifts," she +said, "aren't long livers. I'll make what I've got do." + +The black silks and mohairs had stood the years bravely, but on Aunt +Charlotte's seventy-fifth birthday even the mohairs, most durable of +fabrics, began to protest. The dull silks became shiny; the shiny +mohairs grew dull. Cracks and splits showed in the hems and seams and +folds of the taffetas. Great-aunt Charlotte at three-score ten and +five had looked them over, sniffed, and had cast them off as an embryo +butterfly casts off its chrysalis. She took a new lease on life, +ordered a complete set of dresses that included a figured foulard, sent +her ancient and massive pieces of family jewelry to be cleaned, and +went shopping with Lottie for a hat instead of the bonnet to which she +had so long clung. + +She looked quite the grande dame as she entered the dining room now, +in one of the more frivolous black silks, her white hair crimped, a +great old-fashioned cabachon gold and diamond brooch fastening the +lace at her breast, a band of black velvet ribbon about her neck, her +eyes brightly interested beneath the strongly marked black brows. +Belle came over and dutifully kissed one withered old cheek. She and +Aunt Charlotte had never been close. Henry patted her shoulder as he +pulled out her chair. Charley gave her a quick hug to which Great-aunt +Charlotte said, "Ouch!"--but smiled. "Dear me, I haven't kept you +waiting!" + +"You know you have," retorted Mrs. Carrie Payson; and dipped her spoon +in the plate of steaming golden fragrant soup before her. Whereupon +Great-aunt Charlotte winked at Henry Kemp. + +The Friday night dinner was always a good meal, though what is known as +"plain." Soup, roast, a vegetable, salad, dessert. + +"Well," said Mrs. Carrie Payson, "and how've you all been? I suppose +I'd never see you if it weren't for Friday nights." + +Charley looked up quickly. "Oh, Gran, I'm sorry but I shan't be able to +come to dinner any more on Fridays." + +"Why not?" + +"My dancing class." + +Mrs. Payson laid down her spoon and sat back, terribly composed. +"Dancing class! You can change your dancing class to some other night, +I suppose? You know very well this is the only night possible for the +family. Hulda's out Thursdays; your father and mother play bridge on +Wednesdays; Lottie----" + +"Yes, I know. But there's no other night." + +"You must dance, I suppose?" This Charley took to be a purely +rhetorical question. As well say to her, "You must breathe, I +suppose?" Mrs. Payson turned to her daughter Belle. "This is with your +permission?" + +Belle nibbled celery tranquilly. "We talked it over. But Charley makes +her own decisions in matters like this you know, mother." + +As with one accord Great-aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lottie turned and +regarded Charley. A certain awe was in their faces, unknown to them. + +"But why exactly Friday night?" persisted Mrs. Payson. "Lottie, ring." +Lottie rang, obediently. Hulda entered. + +"That was mighty good soup, mother," said Henry Kemp. + +Mrs. Payson refused to be mollified. Ignored the compliment. "Why +exactly Friday night, if you please?" + +Charley wiggled a little with pleasure. "I hoped you'd ask me that. +I'm dying to talk about it. Oo! Roast chickens! All brown and crackly! +Well, you see, my actual class-work in merchandising and business +efficiency will be about finished at the end of the month. After that, +the university places you, you know." + +"Places you!" + +Mrs. Carrie Payson had always had an uneasy feeling about her +granddaughter's choice of a career. That she would have a career +Charley never for a moment allowed them to doubt. She never called it +a career. She spoke of it as "a job." In range her choice swung from +professional dancing (for which she was technically and temperamentally +fitted) to literature (for the creating of which she had no talent). +Between these widely divergent points she paused briefly to consider +the fascinations of professions such as licensed aviatrix (she had +never flown); private secretary to a millionaire magnate (again the +influence of the matinee); woman tennis champion (she held her own in +a game against the average male player but stuck her tongue between her +teeth when she served); and Influence for Good or Evil (by which she +meant vaguely something in the Madame de Staël and general salon line). +She had never expressed a desire to be a nurse. + +In the middle of her University of Chicago career this young paradox +made up of steel and velvet, of ruthlessness and charm, had announced, +to the surprise of her family and friends, her intention of going +in for the University's newest course--that in which young women +were trained to occupy executive positions in retail mercantile +establishments. Quite suddenly western co-educational universities and +eastern colleges for women--Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr--were +training girl students for business executive positions. Salaries of +ten--twenty--twenty-five thousand a year were predicted, together with +revolutionary changes in the conduct of such business. Until now such +positions had been occupied, for the most part, by women who had worked +their way up painfully, hand over hand, from a cash or stock-girl's +job through a clerkship to department head; thence, perhaps, to the +position of buyer and, later, office executive. On the way they +acquired much knowledge of human nature and business finesse, but it +was a matter of many years. These were, usually, shrewd, hard-working, +successful women; but limited and often devoid of education other than +that gained by practical experience. This new course would introduce +into business the trained young woman of college education. Business +was to be a profession, not a rough-and-tumble game. + +Charley's grandmother looked on this choice of career with mingled +gratification and disapproval. Plainly it was the Isaac Thrift +in Charley asserting itself. But a Thrift--a woman Thrift--in a +shop!--even though ultimately occupying a mahogany office, directing +large affairs, and controlling battalions of push buttons and +secretaries. Was it ladylike? Was it quite nice? What would the South +Side say? + +So, then--"Places you?" Mrs. Payson had echoed uneasily, at dinner. + +"For beginning practical experience. We learn the business from the +ground up as an engineer does, or an interne. I've just heard to-day +they've placed me at Shield's, in the blouses. I'm to start Monday." + +"You don't say!" exclaimed Henry Kemp, at once amused and pleased. +He could not resist treating Charley and her job as a rare joke. +"Saleswoman, I suppose, to begin with. Clerk, h'm? Say, Charley, I'm +coming in and ask about----" + +"Clerk?" repeated Mrs. Payson, almost feebly for her. She saw herself +sliding around corners and fleeing up aisles to avoid Shield's blouse +section so that her grandchild need not approach her with a softly +insinuating "Is there something, Madam?" + +"Saleswoman! I should say not!" Charley grinned at their ignorance. +"No--no gravy, thanks--" to Hulda at her elbow. Charley ate like an +athlete in training, avoiding gravies, pastries, sweets. Her skin was a +rose-petal. "I'm to start in Monday as stock-girl--if I'm in luck." + +Mrs. Payson pushed her plate aside sharply as Henry Kemp threw back his +head and roared. "Belle! Henry, stop that laughing! It's no laughing +matter. No grandchild of mine is going to be allowed to run up and down +Shield's blouse department as a stock-girl. The idea! Stock----" + +"Now, now Mother Payson," interrupted Henry, soothingly, as he +supposed, "you didn't expect them to start Charley in as foreign buyer +did you?" + +Belle raised her eyebrows together with her voice. "The thing Charley's +doing is considered very smart nowadays, mother. That Emery girl who +has just finished at Vassar is in the veilings at Farson's, and if +ever there was a patrician-looking girl--Henry dear, please don't take +another helping of potatoes. You told me to stop you if you tried. +Well, then, have some more chicken. That won't hurt your waistline." + +"Why can't girls stay home?" Mrs. Payson demanded. "It's all very well +if you have to go out into the world, as I did. I was unfortunate and I +had the strength to meet my trial. But when there's no rhyme nor reason +for it, I do declare! Surely there's enough for you at home. Look at +Lottie! What would I do without her!" + +Lottie smiled up at her mother then. It was not often that Mrs. Payson +unbent in her public praise. + +Great-aunt Charlotte, taking no part in the discussion, had eaten every +morsel on her plate down to the last crumb of sage dressing. Now she +looked up, blinking brightly at Charley. She put her question. + +"Suppose, after you've tried it, with your education, and the time, +and money you've spent on it, and all, you find you don't like it, +Charley--then what? H'm? What then?" + +"If I'm quite sure I don't like it I'll stop it and do something else," +replied Charley. + +Great-aunt Charlotte leaned back in her chair with a sigh of +satisfaction. It was as though she found a vicarious relaxation and a +sense of ease in Charley's freedom. She beamed upon the table. "It's a +great age," she announced, "this century. If I'd died at seventy, as I +planned, I'd be madder'n a hornet now to think of all I'd missed." She +giggled a little falsetto note. "I've a good mind to step out and get a +job myself." + +"Don't be childish Charlotte!"--sister Carrie, of course. + +Charley leaped to her defense. "I'd get one this minute if I were you, +Aunt Charlotte, yes I would. If you feel like it. Look at mother! +Always having massages and taking gentle walks in the park, and going +to concerts, when there's the whole world to wallop." + +Belle was not above a certain humourous argument. "I consider that I've +walloped my world, Miss Kemp. I've married; I manage a household; I've +produced a--a family." + +"Gussie runs your household, and you know it. Being married to father +isn't a career--it's a recreation. And as for having produced a family: +one child isn't a family; it's a crime. I'm going to marry at twenty, +have five children one right after the other----" + +The inevitable "Charley!" from Mrs. Carrie Payson. + +"--and handle my job besides. See if I don't." + +"Why exactly five?" inquired Henry Kemp. + +"Well, four is such a silly number; too tidy. And six is too many. +That's half a dozen. Five's just nice. I like odd numbers. Three +would be too risky in case anything should happen to one of them, and +seven----" + +"Oh, my God!" from Henry Kemp before he went off into roars again. + +"I never heard such talk!" Mrs. Payson almost shouted. "When I was +your age I'd have been sent from the room for even listening to such +conversation, much less----" + +"That's where they were wrong," Charley went on; and she was so much in +earnest that one could not call her pert. "Look at Lottie! The maternal +type absolutely, or I don't know my philosophy and biology. That's what +makes her so corking in the Girls' Court work that she never has time +to do--" she stopped at a sudden recollection. "Oh, Lotta, Gussie's +having trouble with that sister of hers again." + +Gussie was the Kemp's cook, and a pearl. Even Mrs. Payson was hard +put to it to find a flaw in her conduct of the household. But she +interposed hastily here with her weekly question, Hulda being safely +out of the room. + +"Is your Gussie out to-night, Belle?" + +"She was still there when we left--poor child." + +"And why 'poor child!' You treat her like a princess. No washing, and a +woman to clean. I don't see what she does all day long. And why can't +she go home for her dinner when you're out? You're always getting her +extra pork chops and things." + +Henry Kemp wagged his head. "She's the best little cook we ever had, +Gussie is. Neat and pleasant. Has my breakfast on the table, hot, the +minute I sit down. Coffee's always hot. Bacon's always crisp without +being burned. Now most girls----" + +"Henry, she was crying in her room when I left the house to-night. +Charley told me." A little worried frown marred the usual serenity of +Mrs. Kemp's forehead. + +"Crying, was she?" + +"That sister of hers again," explained Charley. "And Gussie's got so +much pride. Jennie--that's the sister--ran away from home. Took some +money, I think. It's a terrible family. Her case comes up in Judge +Barton's court to-morrow." + +Lottie nodded understandingly. She and Gussie had had many unburdening +talks in the Kemp kitchen. "I think Judge Barton could straighten +things out for Gussie. That sister, anyway." + +Belle grasped at that eagerly. "Oh, Lottie, if she could. Gussie's mind +isn't on her work. And I've got that luncheon next Tuesday." + +Lottie ranged it all swiftly. "I'll tell you what. I'll come over to +your house to-morrow morning, early, and talk with Gussie. To-morrow's +the last day of the week and the Girls' Court doesn't convene again +until Tuesday. Perhaps if I speak for this Jennie when her case comes +up to-morrow----" + +"Oh, dear, Tuesday wouldn't do!" from Belle. + +"Yes, I know. So I'll see Gussie to-morrow, and then go right down to +Judge Barton's before the session opens. Gussie can come with me, if +you want her to, or----" + +Mrs. Payson's voice, hard, high, interrupted. "Not to-morrow, Lottie. +It's my day for collecting the rents. You know that perfectly well +because I spoke of it this morning. And all my Sunday marketing to do, +too. It's Saturday." + +Lottie fingered her spoon nervously. An added colour crept into her +cheeks. "I'll be back by eleven-thirty--twelve at the latest. Judge +Barton will see me first, I know. We'll drive over to collect the rents +as soon as I get back and then market on the way home." + +"After everything's picked over on Saturday afternoon!" + +Lottie looked down at her plate. Her hands were clasped in her lap, +beneath the tablecloth, but there was a tell-tale tenseness about her +arms, a rigidity about her whole body. "I thought just this once, +mother, you wouldn't mind. Gussie----" + +"Are the affairs of Belle's kitchen maid more important than your own +mother's! Are they?" + +Lottie looked up, slowly. It was as though some force impelled her. +Her eyes met Charley's, intent on her. Her glance went from them to +Aunt Charlotte--Aunt Charlotte, a spare little figure, erect in her +chair--and Aunt Charlotte's eyes were on her too, intent. Those two +pairs of eyes seemed to will her to utter that which she now found +herself saying to her own horror: + +"Why, yes, mother, I think they are in this case. Yes." + + + + + CHAPTER VIII + + +The family rose from the table and moved into the living room, a little +constraint upon them. Mrs. Payson stayed behind to give directions to +Hulda. Hulda, who dined in a heap off the end of the kitchen table, was +rarely allowed to consume her meal in peace. Between Hulda and Mrs. +Payson there was waged the unending battle of the coffee-pot. After +breakfast, luncheon, dinner the mistress of the house would go into the +kitchen, take the coffee-pot off the gas stove and peer into its dark +depths. + +"My goodness, Hulda, you've made enough coffee for a regiment! That's +wasteful. It'll only have to be thrown away." + +"Ay drink him." + +"You can't drink all this, girl. You'll be sick. You drink altogether +too much coffee. Coffee makes you nervous, don't you know that? Yellow!" + +Hulda munched a piece of bread and took another long gulp of her +beloved beverage, her capable red hand wrapped fondly about the +steaming cup. "Naw Mrs. Pay-son. My grandfather he was drink twenty cup +a day in old country." + +"Yes, but what happened to him? He'd be living to-day----" + +"He ban living to-day. Ninety years and red cheeks like apples." + +In the living room Lottie took up her knitting again. The front parlor +was unlighted but Charley went in and sat down at the old piano. She +did not play particularly well and she had no voice. Lottie, knitting +as she went, walked into the dim front room and sat down near Charley +at the piano. Charley did not turn her head. + +"That you, Lotta?" She went on playing. + +"Yes, dear." + +A little silence. "Now you stick to it!" + +"I will." + +In the living room Henry Kemp leaned over and kissed his wife. +Straightening, he took a cigar out of his vest pocket and eyed it +lovingly. He pressed its resilient oily black sides with a tender +thumb and finger. He lighted it, took a deep pull at it, exhaled with +a long-drawn _pf-f-f_, and closed his eyes for a moment, a little +sigh of content breathing from him. He glanced, then, at his watch. +Only seven-fifty. Good Lord! He strolled over to Great-aunt Charlotte +who was seated near the front parlour doorway and the music. Her head +was cocked. He patted her black-silk shoulder, genially. + +"That cigar smells good, Henry." + +"Good cigar, Aunt Charlotte." He rolled it between his lips. + +Aunt Charlotte's fingers tapped the arm of her chair. She waggled her +head a little in time with the music. "It's nice to have something that +smells like a man in the house." + +"You vamp!" shouted Henry Kemp. He came over to Belle again who was +seated in the most gracious chair the room boasted, doing nothing with +a really charming effect. "Say, listen Belle, we don't have to stay so +very late this evening, do we? I'm all tired out. I worked like a horse +to-day downtown." + +Before Belle could answer Charley called in from the other room, "Oh, +mother, I'm going to be called for, you know." + +Belle raised her voice slightly. "The poet?" + +"Yes." + +"In the flivver?" Her father's question. + +"Yes. Now roar, Dad, you silly old thing. Imagine a girl like me being +cursed with a father who thinks poets and flivvers are funny. If you'd +ever tried to manage either of them you'd know there's nothing comic +about them." + +"There is too," contended Henry Kemp. "Either one of 'em's funny; and +the combination's killing. The modern--uh--what's this horse the poets +are supposed to ride?" + +His wife supplied the classicism, "Pegasus." + +"Pegasus!" he called in to Charley. + +"You stick to your importing, Henry," retorted his gay young daughter, +"and leave the book larnin' to mother and me." + +Henry Kemp, suddenly serious, strolled over to his wife again. He +lowered his voice. "About nine o'clock, anyway, can't we? Eh, Belle?" + +"Not before nine-thirty. You know how mama----" + +Henry sighed, resignedly. He stood a moment, balancing from heel to +toe. "Lot's a peach, that's what she is," he confided irrelevantly to +his wife. He puffed a moment in silence, his eyes squinting up through +the smoke. "And it's a damn shame, that's what. Damn shame." + +He picked up the discarded newspaper and seated himself in the buffalo +chair. The buffalo chair was a hideous monstrosity whose arms, back, +and sides were made of buffalo horns ingeniously put together. +Fortunately, their tips curved away from the sitter. The chair had been +presented to old Isaac Thrift by some lodge or real estate board or +society. It was known to the family as Ole Bull. The women never sat +in it and always warned feminine callers away from it. Its horns had +a disastrous way with flounces, ruffles, plackets, frills. It was one +of those household encumbrances which common sense tells you to cast +off at every housecleaning and sentiment bids you retain. Thus far +sentiment had triumphed on Prairie Avenue. Once you resigned yourself +to him Ole Bull was unexpectedly comfortable. Here Henry Kemp sat +reading, smoking, glancing up over the top of his paper at the women +folk of his family--at his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, +thoughtfully through the soothing haze of his cigar. He pondered on +many things during these family Friday evenings, did Henry Kemp. And +said little. + +The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to +families whose members see each other too often and know one another +too well. Belle to Lottie, for example: + +"Oh, why don't you get something a little different! You've been +wearing blue for ten years." + +"Yes, but it's so practical; and it always looks well." + +"Cut loose and be impractical for a change. They're going to wear a lot +of that fawn colour this spring--sand, I think they call it.... How did +Mrs. Hines get along with that old taffeta she made over for you?" + +"I don't know; it kind of draws across the front, and the sleeves--I +have to remember to keep my arms down. I wish you'd look at it." + +"You'd have to put it on. How can I tell?" + +"Too much trouble." + +"Well, then, go on looking frumpy. These home dressmakers!" + +Lottie did not look frumpy, as a matter of fact. No one with a figure +so vigorous and erect, a back so straight, a head so well set on its +fine column of a throat, a habit of such fastidious cleanliness of +person, could be frumpy. But she resorted to few feminine wiles of +clothing, as of speech or manner. Lottie's laces, and silks and fine +white garments, like her dear secret thoughts and fancies, were worn +hidden, by the world unsuspected. All the dearer to Lottie for that. + +To-night Belle sat dangling her slipper at the end of her toe, her +knees crossed. She had a small slim foot and a trick of shooting +her pump loose at the heel so that it hung half on half off as she +waggled her foot in its fine silk stocking. Henry Kemp had found +it an entrancing trick when first they were married. He found it +less fascinating now, after twenty years. Sometimes the slipper +dropped--accidentally. "Henry dear, my slipper." Well, even the Prince +must have remonstrated with Cinderella if she made a practice of the +slipper-dropping business after their marriage. Twenty years after. + +Belle, dangling the slipper, called in now to Lottie: "Nice party, +Lot?" + +"Oh, nice enough." + +"Who was there?" + +"The girls. You know." + +"Is her flat pretty? What did she serve?" + +"Chicken salad with aspic--hot biscuits--olives--a cake----" + +"Really!" + +"Oh, yes. A party." + +"Is she happy with her Orville--now that she's waited ten years for +him?" + +"Yes--at least, she was until this afternoon." + +"Until!--Oh, come in here, Lottie. I can't shout at you like----" + +Lottie, knitting as she walked, came back into the living room. Charley +followed her after a moment; came over to her father, perched herself +on a slippery arm of Ole Bull and leaned back, her shoulder against his. + +Lottie stood, still knitting. She smiled a little. "Beck Schaefer was +on one of her reckless rampages. She teased Celia until Celia cried." + +"About what? Teased her about what? Pretty kind of guest, I must say." + +"Oh, marriage. Marriage and happiness and--she said every unmarried +woman was a failure." + +"That shouldn't have bothered Celia. She's married, safe enough. She +certainly had Beck there." + +"Beck intimated that Orville wasn't worth waiting ten years for." + +"Most men aren't," spoke up great-aunt Charlotte from her corner, "and +their wives don't know it until after they've been married ten years; +and then it's too late. Celia had plenty of time to find it out first +and she married him anyway. That's better. She'll be happy with him." + +"Charlotte Thrift!" called Charley, through the laughter. "You +_couldn't_ be so wise just living to be seventy-four. Oh, you +hoop-skirted gals weren't so prunes-and-prismy. You've had a past. I'm +sure of it." + +"How d'you suppose I could have faced the future all these years if I +hadn't had!" retorted Aunt Charlotte. + +"That Schaefer girl had better go slow." Henry Kemp blew a whole flock +of smoke-rings for Charley's edification at which Charley, unedified, +announced that she could blow better rings than any of these in size, +number, and velocity with a despised gold-tipped perfumed cigarette and +cold-sore on the upper lip. "Some day," he predicted, "some day she'll +run away with a bell-hop. Just the type." + +"Who's run away with a bell-hop?" Mrs. Payson chose this unfortunate +moment to enter the living room after her kitchen conference. + +"Beck Schaefer," said Charley, mischievously. + +You should have seen, then, the quick glance of terror that Mrs. Payson +darted at Lottie. You might almost have thought that Lottie had been +the one who had succumbed to the lure of youth in blue suit and brass +buttons. + +"Beck! She hasn't! She didn't! Beck Schaefer!" + +"No mama, she hasn't. Henry just thinks she will--in time." + +Mrs. Payson turned on the overhead electric lights (they had been +sitting in the soothing twilight of the lamps), signified that Charley +was to hand her the evening paper that lay at the side of Henry's +chair, and seated herself in an ancient rocker--the only rocker the +house contained. It squeaked. She rocked. Glaring lights, rustling +paper, squeaking chair. The comfort of the room, of the group, was +dispelled. + +"I'd like to know why!" demanded Mrs. Payson, turning to the stock +market page. "A good family. Money. And Beck Schaefer's a fine looking +girl." + +One thought flashed through the minds of all of them. The others looked +at Lottie and left the thought unspoken. Lottie herself put it into +words then. Bluntly: "She isn't a girl, mother. She's thirty-five." + +"Thirty-five's just a nice age." The paper crackled as she passed +to the real estate transfers. "If this keeps on I'd like to know +what they're going to do about building. Material's so high now it's +prohibitive." More rustling of paper and squeaking of chair. "Beck +Schaefer's got her mother to look out for her." + +"That's why," said Aunt Charlotte, suddenly. Lottie looked at her, +knitting needles poised a moment. + +"Why what?" asked Mrs. Payson. Then, as her sister Charlotte did not +answer, "You don't even know what we're talking about, Charlotte. Sit +there in the corner half asleep." + +"It's you who're asleep," snapped great-aunt Charlotte tartly. "With +your eyes wide open." + +When the doorbell rang then, opportunely, they all sighed a little, +whether in relief or disappointment. + +"I'll go," said Lottie. So it was she who opened the door to admit Ben +Gartz. + +You heard him as Lottie opened the door. "Hello! Well, Lottie! How's +every little thing with you?... _That's_ good! You cer'nly look +it." + +Ben Gartz came into the living room, rubbing his hands and smiling +genially. A genial man, Ben, and yet you did not warm yourself at his +geniality. A little too anxious, he was. Not quite spruce. Looking his +forty-nine years. A pale and mackerel eye in a rubicund countenance, +had Ben Gartz. Combed his thinning hair in careful wisps across the +top of his head to hide the spreading bald spot. The kind of man who +says, "H'are you, sir!" on meeting you, and offers you a cigar at +once; who sits in the smokers of Pullmans; who speaks of children +always as "Kiddies." He toed in a little as he walked. A plumpish man +and yet with an oddly shrunken look about him somehow. The flame had +pretty well died out in him. He and his kind fought a little shy of +what they called "the old girls." But he was undoubtedly attracted to +Lottie. Ben Gartz had been a good son to his mother. She had regarded +every unmarried woman as her possible rival. She always had said, "Ben +ought to get married, I'd like to see him settled." But it was her one +horror. The South Side, after her death, said as one voice, "Well, +Ben, you certainly have nothing to reproach yourself with. You were a +wonderful son to her." And the South Side was right. + +Once Mrs. Payson said of him, "He's a good boy." + +Aunt Charlotte had cocked an eye. "He's uninteresting enough to be +good. But I don't know. He looks to me as if he was just waiting for +a chance to be bad." She had caught in Ben Gartz's face a certain +wistfulness--a something unfulfilled--that her worldly-wise sister had +mistaken for mildness. + +Henry Kemp brightened at the visitor's entrance as well he might in +this roomful of women. "Well, Ben, glad to see you. Come into the +harem." + +Ben shook hands with Mrs. Payson, with Aunt Charlotte, with Belle, with +Charley. "My, my, look at this kiddy! Why, she's a young lady! Better +look out, Miss Lottie; you'll be letting your little niece get ahead of +you." Shook hands with Henry Kemp. Out came the cigar. + +"No, no!" protested Henry. "You've got to smoke one of mine." They +exchanged cigars, eyed them, tucked them in vest pockets and lighted +one of their own, according to the solemn and ridiculous ritual of men. +Ben Gartz settled back in a chair and crossed his chubby knees. "This +is mighty nice, let me tell you, for an old batch living in a hotel +room. The family circle, like this. Mighty nice." He glanced at Lottie. +He admired Lottie with an admiration that had in it something of fear, +so he always assumed a boisterous bluffness with her. Sometimes he +felt, vaguely, that she was laughing at him. But she wasn't. She was +sorry for him. He was to her as obvious as a child to its mother. + +"You might have come for dinner," Lottie said, kindly, "if I'd known, +earlier. The folks had dinner here." + +"Oh, no!" protested Ben as though the invitation were now being +tendered. "I couldn't think of troubling you. Mighty nice of you, +though, to think of me. Maybe some other time----" + +Mrs. Carrie Payson said nothing. She did not issue dinner invitations +thus, helter-skelter. She did not look displeased, though. + +"Well, how's business?" + +Great-aunt Charlotte made a little clucking sound between tongue and +palate and prepared to drift from the room. She had a knack of drifting +out of the room--evaporating, almost. You looked up, suddenly, and she +was not there. Outside there sounded the sharp bleat of a motor horn--a +one-lung motor horn. Two short staccato blasts followed by a long one. +A signal, certainly. + +"The poet, Charley," said Henry Kemp; and laughed his big kind laugh. + +"Ask him in," Mrs. Payson said. "Aren't you going to ask your young man +to come in?" Charley was preparing to go. + +"What for?" she asked now. + +"To meet the family. Unless you're ashamed of him. When I was a +girl----" + +Great-aunt Charlotte sat back again, waiting. + +"All right," said Charley. "He'll hate it." She walked across the room +smiling; opened the door and called out to the bleat in the blackness: + +"Come on in!" + +"What for?" + +"Meet the family." + +"Oh, say, listen----" + +You heard them talking and giggling a little together in the hall. +Then they came down the hall and into the living room, these two young +things; these two beautiful young things. And suddenly the others in +the room felt old--old and fat and futile and done with life. The two +stood there in the doorway a moment. The very texture of their skin; +the vitality of their vigorous hair as it sprang away in a fine line +from their foreheads; the liquid blue-white clearness of the eyeball; +the poise of their slim bodies--was youth. + +She was tall but he was taller. His hair had a warmer glint; it was +almost red. In certain lights it was red. The faun type. Ears a little +pointed. Contemptuous of systems, you could see that; metric or +rhythmic. A good game of tennis, probably. Loathing golf. So graceful +as to seem almost slouchy. Lean, composed, self-possessed. White +flannel trousers for some athletic reason (indoor tennis, perhaps, at +the gym); a loose great-coat buttoned over what seemed to be no shirt +at all. Certainly not a costume for a Chicago March night. He wore it +with a full dress air. And yet a certain lovable shyness. + +Charley waved a hand in a gesture that somehow united him with the +room--the room full of eyes critical, amused, appraising, speculative, +disapproving. + +"Mother and Dad you know, of course. Grandmother Payson, my Aunt +Lottie--Lotta for short. Mr. Ben Gartz.... Oh, forgive me, Aunt +Charlotte, I thought you'd gone. There in the corner--my great-aunt +Charlotte Thrift.... This is Jesse Dick." + +It is a terrible thing to see an old woman blush. The swift, dull +almost thick red surged painfully to great-aunt Charlotte's face +now, and her eyes were suddenly wide and dark, like a young girl's, +startled. Then the red faded and left her face chalky, ghastly. It was +as though a relentless hand had wrapped iron fingers around her heart +and squeezed it and wrenched it once--tight and hard!--and then relaxed +its grip. She peered at the boy standing there in the doorway; peered +at him with dim old eyes that tried to pierce the veil of years and +years and years. The others were talking. Charley had got her wraps +from the hall, and was getting into her galoshes. This cumbersome and +disfiguring footgear had this winter become the fad among university +co-eds and South Side flappers. They wore galoshes on stormy days +and fair. The craze had started during a blizzardy week in January. +It was considered chic to leave the two top clasps or the two lower +clasps open and flapping. The origin of this could readily be traced to +breathless co-eds late for classes. All young and feminine Hyde Park +now clumped along the streets, slim silken shins ending grotesquely in +thick black felt-and-rubber. + +Jesse Dick stooped now to assist in the clasping of Charley's galoshes. +He was down on one knee. Charley, teetering a little, put one hand on +his head to preserve her balance. He looked up at her, smiling; she +looked down at him, smiling. Almost sixty years of life swept back over +great-aunt Charlotte Thrift and left her eighteen again; eighteen, and +hoop-skirted in her second-best merino, with a green-velvet bonnet and +a frill of blond lace, and little muddied boots and white stockings. + +She could not resist the force that impelled her now. She got up from +her corner and came over to them. The talk went on in the living room. +They did not notice her. + +"I knew your--I knew a Jesse Dick," she said, "years ago." + +The boy stood up. "Yes? Did you?" + +"He died in the Civil War. At Donelson. He was killed--at Donelson." + +The boy spatted his hands together a little, briskly, to rid them of a +bit of dried mud that had clung to the galoshes. "That must have been +my grandfather's brother," he said politely. "I've heard them speak of +him." + +He had heard them speak of him. Charlotte Thrift, with seventy-four +years of a ruined life heavy upon her, looked at him. He had heard them +speak of him. "Pomroy Dick? Your grandfather? Pomroy Dick?" + +"Why, yes! Yes. Did you know him, too? He wasn't--we Dicks aren't--How +did you happen to know him?" + +"I didn't know your grandfather Pomroy Dick," said Great-aunt +Charlotte, and smiled so that the withered lips drew away from the +blue-white, even teeth. "It was Jesse I knew." She looked up at him. +"Jesse Dick." + +Charley leaned over and pressed her fresh dewy young lips to the +parchment cheek. "Now isn't that interesting! Good-bye dear." She +stopped and flashed a mischievous glance at the boy. "Was he a poet +too, Aunt Charlotte?" + +"Yes." + +Jesse Dick turned his head quickly at that. "He was? I didn't know +that. Are you sure? No one in our family ever said----" + +"I'm sure," Great-aunt Charlotte Thrift said, quietly. "Families don't +always know. About each other, I mean." + +"No, indeed," both he and Charley agreed, politely. They were anxious +to be off. They were off, with a good-bye to the group in the living +room. Charlotte Thrift turned to go upstairs. "Jesse Dick----" she +heard, from the room where the others sat. "Dick----" She turned and +came back swiftly, and seated herself again in the dim corner. Henry +Kemp was speaking, his face all agrin. + +"She's a case, that kid. We never know. Some weeks it's the son of +one of the professors, with horn glasses and no hat. And then it'll +be a millionaire youngster she's met at a dance, and the place will +be cluttered up with his Stutz and his orchids and Plow's candy for +awhile. Now it's this young Dick." + +Ben Gartz waggled his head. "These youngsters!" he remarked, +meaninglessly. "These youngsters!" + +But Mrs. Carrie Payson spoke with meaning. "Who is he? Dick? I've never +heard the name. Who're his folks?" + +An uneasy rustle from Belle. "He is a poet," she said. "Quite a good +one, too. Some of his stuff is really----" + +"Who're his folks?" demanded Mrs. Carrie Payson. "They're not poets +too, are they?" + +Henry Kemp's big laugh burst out again, then, in spite of Belle's +warning rustle. "His father's 'Delicatessen Dick,' over on Fifty-third. +We get all our cold cuts there, and the most wonderful pickled herring. +They say they're put up in some special way from a recipe that's been +in the family for years. Holland Dutch, I guess----" + +But Mrs. Carrie Payson had heard enough. "Well, I must say, Belle, +you're overdoing this freedom business with Charley. 'Delicatessen +Dick!' I suppose the poet sells the herrings over the counter? I +suppose he gives you an extra spoonful of onions when you----" + +Belle spoke up tartly: "He isn't in the store, mother. His people have +loads of money. They're very thrifty and nice respectable people. Of +course--everybody in Hyde Park goes to Dick's for their Sunday night +supper things." + +"His mother's a fine looking woman," Henry Kemp put in. "She's the +smart one. Practically runs the business, I hear. Old Dick is kind of a +dreamer. I guess dreaming doesn't go in the delicatessen business." + +"It'll be nice for Charley," Mrs. Payson remarked, grimly. "With her +training at college. I shouldn't wonder if they'd put her in charge of +all the cold meats, maybe. Or the cheese." + +"Now Mother Payson, Charley's only a kid. Don't you go worrying----" + +Belle spoke with some hauteur. "He does not live at home. He has a room +near the University. He's fond of his parents but not in sympathy with +the business. His work appears regularly in _Poetry_, and they +accept only the best. He worked his way through college without a penny +from his people. And," as a triumphant finish--"he has a book coming +out this spring." + +"Ha!" laughed Henry Kemp, jovially. Then suddenly sobering, regarded +the glowing end of his cigar. "But they do say it's darned good +poetry. People who know. Crazy--but good. I read one of 'em. It's +all about dead horses and entrails and----" he stopped and coughed +apologetically. "His new book is going to be called----" Here he went +off into a silent spasm of laughter. + +"Henry, you know that's just because you don't understand. It's the new +verse." + +"His new book," Henry Kemp went on, gravely, "is called 'White Worms.'" + +He looked at Ben Gartz. The two men laughed uproariously. + +Mrs. Payson sat forward stiffly in her rocking chair. "And you let +Charley go about with this person!" + +"Oh, mother, please. Let's not discuss Charley's affairs. Mr. Gartz +can't be interested." + +"Oh, but I am! Aren't you, Miss Lottie? Young folks----" + +"Besides, all the girls are quite mad about him. Charley's the envy of +them all. He's the most sought-after young man in Hyde Park. He wrote +a poem to Charley that appeared in _Poetry_ last month." Belle +dismissed the whole affair with a little impatient kick of her foot +that sent the dangling slipper flying. "Oh, Henry--my slipper!" Henry +retrieved it. "Besides they're only children. Charley's a baby." + +Mrs. Carrie Payson began to rock in the squeaky chair, violently. "You +heard what she said about the five." + +"The five?" + +"About the five--you know." + +In the laughter that followed great-aunt Charlotte slipped out of the +room, vanished up the stairs. + +Then the War, of course. Ben Gartz was the sort that kept a map in his +office, with coloured pins stuck everywhere in it. They began to talk +about the War. They say it'll go on for years and years; it can't, the +Germans are starving; don't you believe it, they've prepared for this +for forty years; aren't the French wonderful, would you believe it to +look at them so shrimpy; it's beginning to look pretty black for them +just the same; we'll be in it yet, you mark my words; should have gone +in a year ago, that was the time; if ever we do--zowie. + +Lottie sat knitting. Ben Gartz reached over and fingered the soft +springy mass of wool. There was an intimacy about the act. "If we +go into it and I go off to war will you knit me some of these, Miss +Lottie? H'm?" + +Lottie lifted her eyes. "If you go off to fight I'll knit you a whole +outfit, complete: socks, muffler, helmet, wristlets, sweater." + +"'Death, where is thy sting'!" Ben Gartz rolled a pale blue eye. + +Henry Kemp was not laughing now. His face looked a little drawn and +old. He had allowed his cigar to go dead in the earnestness of the war +talk. "You're safe, Lottie. It'll be over before we can ever go into +it." + +Ben Gartz flapped a hand in disagreement. "Don't you be too sure of +that. I've heard it pretty straight that we'll be in by this time +next year--if not before. I've had an offer to go into the men's +watch-bracelet business on the strength of it. And if we do I'm going +to take it. Fortune in it." + +"Men's watch bracelets! Real men don't wear them. Mollycoddles!" + +"Oh, don't they! No I guess not! Only engineers, and policemen and +aviators and soldiers, that's all. Mollycoddles like that. They say +they aren't wearing any kind _but_ wrist watches over there. Well, +if we go into the war I go into the men's watch-bracelet business, +that's what. Fortune in it." + +"Yeh," said Henry Kemp, haggardly. "If we go into the war I go into the +poor-house." + +Belle stood up, decisively. "It's getting late, Henry." + +Mrs. Payson bristled. "It's only a little after nine. You only come +once a week. I should think you needn't run off right after dinner." + +"But it isn't right after dinner, mother. Besides Henry has been +working terribly hard. He's worn out." + +Mrs. Payson, who knew the state of Henry's business, sniffed in +unbelief. But they went. In the hall: + +"Then you'll be in to-morrow morning, Lottie?" + +"Yes." Lottie seemed a little pale. + +Mrs. Payson's face hardened. + +You heard a roar outside. Henry warming up the engine. Snorts and +chugs, then a gigantic purr. They were off. + +The three settled down again in the living room. Mrs. Payson liked to +talk to men. Years of business intercourse had accustomed her to them. +She liked the way their minds worked, clear and hard. When Lottie +had company she almost always sat with them. Lottie had never hinted +that this was not quite as it should be. She never even told herself +that perhaps this might have had something to do with her being Lottie +Payson still. + +She was glad enough to have her mother remain in the room this evening. +She sat, knitting. She was thinking of Orville Sprague, and of Ben +Gartz. Of Charley and this boy--this Jesse Dick. How slim the boy +was, and how young, and how--vital! That was it, vital. His jaw made +such a clean, clear line. It almost hurt you with its beauty.... Beck +Schaefer.... Bell hop.... So that was what Henry had meant. Youth's +appeal to women of her age. A morbid appeal.... + +She shook herself a little. Her mother and Ben Gartz were talking. + +"That's a pretty good proposition you got there, Mrs. Payson, if you +can swing it. I wouldn't be in any hurry, if I was you. You hang on to +it." + +There always was talk of "propositions" and "deals" when Mrs. Payson +conversed with one of Lottie's callers. + +"I think a good deal of your advice, Mr. Gartz. After all, I'm only a +woman alone. I haven't got anyone to advise me." + +"You don't need anybody, Mrs. Payson. You're as shrewd as that Rolfe +is, any day. He's waiting to see how this war's going to go. Well, you +wait too. You've got a good proposition there----" + +Lottie rose. "I'll get you something to drink," she said. + +He caught her arm. "Now don't you bother, Miss Lottie." He always +called her "Miss Lottie" when others were there, and "Lottie" when they +were alone. + +But she went, and came back with ginger ale, and some cookies. +Something in his face as he caught sight of these chaste viands +smote her kindly and understanding heart. She knew her mother would +disapprove, would oppose it. But the same boldness that had prompted +her to speak at dinner now urged her to fresh flights of daring. + +"What would you say to a cup of nice hot coffee and some cold chicken +sandwiches!" + +"Oh, say, Miss Lottie! I couldn't think--this is all right." But his +eyes brightened. + +"Nonsense, Lottie!" said Mrs. Payson, sharply. "Mr. Gartz doesn't want +coffee." + +"Yes he does. Don't you? Come on in the kitchen while I make it. We'll +all have a bite at the dining room table. I'll cut the bread if you'll +butter it." + +Ben Gartz got up with alacrity. "No man who lives in a hotel could +resist an offer like that, Miss Lottie." He frisked heavily off to +the kitchen in her wake. Mrs. Payson stood a moment, tasting the +unaccustomed bitter pill of opposition. Then she took her stout cane +from a corner where she had placed it and followed after them to the +kitchen, sniffing the delicious scent of coffee-in-the-making as though +it were poison gas. Later they played dummy bridge. Lottie did not play +bridge well. She failed to take the red and black spots seriously. +Mrs. Payson would overbid regularly. If you had told her that this +was a form of dishonesty she would have put you down as queer. Ben +Gartz squinted through his cigar smoke, slapped the cards down hard, +roared at Mrs. Payson's tactics (he had been a good son to his mother, +remember) and sought Lottie's knee under the table. + +"... going to marry at twenty and have five children, one right after +the other----" + +"Lottie Payson, what are you thinking of!" Her mother's outraged voice. + +"Why--what----" + +"You trumped my ace!" + + + + + CHAPTER IX + + +Every morning between eight-thirty and nine a boy from the Élite +Garage on Twenty-sixth Street brought the Payson electric to the door. +He trundled it up to the curb with the contempt that it deserved. +Your self-respecting garage mechanic is contemptuous of all electric +conveyances, but this young man looked on the Payson's senile vehicle +as a personal insult. He manipulated its creaking levers and balky +brakes as a professional pitcher would finger a soft rubber ball--thing +beneath pity. As he sprang out of it in his jersey and his tight +pants and his long-visored green cap he would slam its ancient door +behind him with such force as almost to set it rocking on its four +squat wheels. Then he would pass round behind it, kick one of its +asphalt-gnawed rubber tires with a vindictive boot and walk off +whistling back to the Élite Garage. Lottie had watched this performance +a thousand times, surely. She was always disappointed if he failed to +kick the tire. It satisfied something in her to see him do it. + +This morning Lottie was up, dressed, and telephoning the Élite Garage +before eight o'clock. She wanted to make an early start. She meant to +use the electric in order to save time. Without it the trip between the +Payson's house on Prairie Avenue and the Kemp's on Hyde Park Boulevard +near the lake was a pilgrimage marked by dreary waits on clamorous +corners for dirty yellow cars that never came. + +Early as she was Lottie had heard Aunt Charlotte astir much earlier. +She had not yet come down, however. Mrs. Payson had already breakfasted +and read the paper. After Mrs. Payson had finished with a newspaper its +page-sequence was irrevocably ruined for the next reader. Its sport +sheet mingled with the want ads; its front page lay crumpled upon Music +and the Drama. Lottie sometimes wondered if her own fondness for a +neatly folded uncrumpled morning paper was only another indication of +chronic spinsterhood. Aunt Charlotte had once said, as she smoothed +the wrinkled sheets with her wavering withered fingers, "Reading a +newspaper after you've finished with it, Carrie, is like getting the +news three days stale. No flavour to it." + +Lottie scarcely glanced at the headlines as she drank her coffee this +morning. Her mother was doing something or other at the sideboard. Mrs. +Payson was the sort of person who does slammy flappy things in a room +where you happened to be breakfasting, or writing, or reading; things +at which you could not express annoyance and yet which annoyed you to +the point of frenzy. She lifted dishes and put them down. She rattled +silver in the drawer. She tugged at a sideboard door that always stuck. +She made notes on a piece of wrapping paper with a hard pencil and +tapping sounds. All interspersed with a spasmodic conversation carried +on in a high voice with Hulda in the kitchen, the swinging door of the +pantry between them. + +"Need any rice?" + +"W'at?" + +"Rice!" + +"We got yet." + +More tapping of the pencil accompanied by a sotto voce murmur--"Soap +... kitchen cleanser ... new potatoes ... see about electric light +bulbs ... coffee----" she raised her voice again: "We've got plenty of +coffee I know." + +Silence from the kitchen. + +"Hulda, we've got plenty of coffee! I got a pound on Wednesday." + +Silence. Then--"He don't last over Sunday." + +"Not--why my dear young woman----" the swinging door whiffed and +whoofed with the energy of her exit as she passed into the kitchen to +do battle with the coffee-toper. + +Lottie was quite unconscious of the frown that her rasped nerves had +etched between her eyes. She was so accustomed to these breakfast +irritations that she did not know they irritated her. She was even +smiling a little, grimly amused. + +It was a lowering Chicago March morning, gray, foggy, sodden, with +a wet blanket wind from the lake that was more chilling than a walk +through water and more penetrating than severe cold. The months-old +soot-grimed snow and ice lay everywhere. The front page predicted +rain. Not a glint of sunlight filtered through the yellow pane of the +stained-glass window in the Payson dining room. "Ugh!" thought Lottie +picturing the downtown streets a morass of mud trampled to a pudding +consistency. And yet she smiled. She was to have the morning alone; the +morning from eight until almost noon. There was Gussie to interview. +There was Judge Barton to confer with--dear Emma Barton. There was poor +Jennie to dispose of. There was work to do. Real work. Lottie rose from +the table and stood in the pantry doorway holding the swinging door +open with one foot as she was getting into her coat. + +"I'll be back by noon, mother, surely. Perhaps earlier. Then we'll go +right over to your buildings and collect the rents and market on the +way back." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Payson only. Her mouth was pursed. + +"For that matter, I think it's so foolish to bother about Sunday +dinner. We always get up later on Sunday, and eat more for breakfast. +Let's just have lunch this once. Let's try it. Forget about the leg of +lamb or the roast beef----" + +Mrs. Payson raised her eyebrows in the direction of the listening +Hulda. "I'll leave that kind of thing to your sister Belle--this new +idea of getting up at noon on Sunday and then having no proper Sunday +dinner. We've always had Sunday dinners in this house and we always +will have as long as I'm head of the household." + +"Well, I just thought----" Lottie released the swinging door. She came +back into the dining room and glanced at herself in the sideboard +mirror. Lottie was the kind of woman who looks well in the morning. +A clear skin, a clear eye, hair that springs cleanly away from the +temples. This morning she looked more than usually alert. A little +half-smile of anticipation was on her lips. The lowering weather, her +mother's dourness, Hulda's slightly burned toast--she had allowed none +of these things to curdle the cream of her morning's adventure. She was +wearing her suit and furs and the small velvet hat whose doom Belle had +pronounced the evening before. As she drew on her gloves her mother +entered the dining room. + +"I'll be back by noon, surely." Mrs. Payson did not answer. Lottie went +down the long hall toward the front door. Her mother followed. + +"Going to Belle's?" + +"Yes. I'll have to hurry." + +At the door Mrs. Payson flung a final command. + +"You'd better go South Park to Grand." + +Lottie had meant to. It was the logical route to Belle's. She had taken +it a thousand times. Yet now, urged by some imp of perversity, she +was astonished to hear herself saying, "No, I'm going up Prairie to +Fifty-first." The worst possible road. + +She did not mind the wet gray wind as she clanked along in the +little box-like contrivance, up Prairie Avenue, over Thirty-first, +past gray stone and brick mansions whose former glory of façade and +stone-and-iron fence and steps showed the neglect and decay following +upon negro occupancy. It was too bad, she thought. Chicago was like a +colossal and slovenly young woman who, possessing great natural beauty, +is still content to slouch about in greasy wrapper and slippers run +down at heel. + +The Kemps lived in one of the oldest of Hyde Park's apartment houses +and one as nearly aristocratic as a Chicago South Side apartment house +can be. It was on Hyde Park Boulevard, near Jackson Park and the lake. +When Belle had married she had protested at an apartment. She had never +lived in one, she said. She didn't think she could. She would stifle. +No privacy. Everything huddled together on one floor and everybody +underfoot. People upstairs; people downstairs. But houses were scarce +in Hyde Park and she and Henry had compromised on an apartment much too +large for them and as choice as anything for miles around. There were +nine rooms. The two front rooms were a parlour and sitting room but not +many years had passed before Belle did away with this. Belle had caused +all sorts of things to be done to the apartment--at Henry's expense, +not the landlord's. Year after year partitions had been removed; old +fixtures torn out and modern ones installed; dark woodwork had been +cream enamelled; the old parlour and sitting room had been thrown +into one enormous living room. They had even built a "sun-parlour" +without which no Chicago apartment is considered complete. As it eats, +sleeps, plays bridge, reads, sews, writes, and lounges in those little +many-windowed peep-shows all Chicago's family life is an open book to +its neighbour. + +Belle's front room was a carefully careless place--livable, +inviting--with its books, and lamps, and plump low chairs mothering +unexpected tables nestled at their elbows--tantalising little tables +holding the last new novel, face downward; a smart little tooled +leather box primly packed with cigarettes; a squat wooden bowl, +very small, whose tipped cover revealed a glimpse of vivid scrunchy +fruit-drops within. Splashes of scarlet and orange bitter-sweet in +lustre bowls, loot of Charley's autumn days at the dunes. A roll +of watermelon-pink wool and a ball of the same shade in one corner +of the deep davenport, with two long amber needles stuck through +prophesied the first rainbow note of Charley's summer wardrobe. The +grand piano holding a book of Chopin and a chromo-covered song-hit +labeled, incredibly enough, Tya-da-dee. It was as unlike the Prairie +Avenue living room as Charley was unlike Mrs. Carrie Payson. Belle had +recently had the sun-parlour done in the new Chinese furniture--green +enameled wood with engaging little Chinese figures and scenes painted +on it; queer gashes of black here and there and lamp shades shaped +like some sort of Chinese head-gear; no one knew quite what. Surely +no Mongolian--coolie or mandarin--would have recognised the origin of +anything in the Chinese sun-parlour. + +Gussie answered the door. An admirable young woman, Gussie, capable, +self-contained, self-respecting. Sprung from a loose-moraled slovenly +household, she had, somehow, got the habit of personal cleanliness and +of straight thinking. Gussie's pastry hand was a light, deft, clean +one. Gussie's bedroom had none of the kennel stuffiness of the average +kitchen-bedroom. Gussie's pride in her own bathroom spoke in shining +tiles and gleaming porcelain. + +"Oo, Miss Lottie! How you are early! Mrs. ain't up at all yet. Miss +Charley she is in bathtub." + +"That's all right, Gussie. I came to see you." + +Gussie's eyes were red-rimmed. "Yeh ... Jennie...." She led the way +back to the kitchen; a sturdy young woman facing facts squarely. Her +thick-tongued speech told of her Slavic origin. She went on with her +morning's work as she talked and Lottie listened. Hers was a no-good +family. Her step-father she dismissed briefly as a bum. Her mother was +always getting mixed up with the boarders--that menace of city tenement +life. And now Jennie. Jennie wasn't bad. Only she liked a good time. +The two brothers (rough, lowering fellows) were always a-jumping on +Jennie. It was fierce. They wouldn't let her go out with the fellas. +In the street they yelled at her and shamed Jennie for Jennie's crowd +right out. They wanted she should marry one of the boarders. Well, say, +he had money sure, but old like Jennie's own father. Jennie was only +seventeen. All this while Gussie was slamming expertly from table to +sink, from sink to stove. + +"Seventeen! Why doesn't she leave home and work out as you do, Gussie? +Housework." + +Jennie, it appeared was too toney for housework. "Like this Jennie is." +Gussie took a smudged envelope from her pocket and opened it with damp +fingers. With one blunt finger-tip she pointed to the signature. It was +a pencil-scrawled letter from Jennie to her sister and it was signed, +flourishingly, "Jeannette." + +"Oh," said Lottie. "I see." + +Jennie, then, worked by factory. She paid board at home. She helped +with the housework evenings and Sundays. But always they yelled at her. +And then Jennie had taken one hundred dollars and had run away from +home. + +"Jennie is smart," Gussie said, in conclusion, "she is smart like +machine. She can make in her head figgers. She finished school, she +wanted she should go by business college for typewriter and work in +office, but ma and my brothers they won't let. They yell and they yell +and so Jennie works by factory." + +It was all simple enough to Lottie. She had sat in many sessions of +Judge Barton's court. "You'd rather not go with me, Gussie?" + +Gussie shook a vehement head. "Better you should go alone. Right away I +cry and yell for scared, Jennie she begin cry and yell, ma she begin +cry and----" + +"All right, Gussie.... Whose hundred dollars was it?" + +"Otto. He is big brother. He is mad like everything. He say he make +Jennie go by jail----" + +"Oh, no, Gussie. He can't do that without Judge Barton, and she'll +never----" + +Gussie vanished into her bedroom. She emerged again with a stout roll +of grimy bills in her hand. These she proffered Lottie. "Here is more +as fifty dollar. I save'm. You should give to judge he shouldn't send +Jennie to jail." Gussie was of the class that never quite achieves one +hundred dollars. Seventy--eighty--eighty-five--and then the dentist or +doctor. + +Lottie gave the girl's shoulder a little squeeze. "Oh, Gussie, you +funny dear child. The judge is a woman. And besides it isn't right to +bribe the----" + +"No-o-o-o! A woman! In my life I ain't heard how a woman is judge." + +"Well, this one is. And Jennie won't go by jail. I promise you." + +Down the hall sped a figure in a pongee bathrobe, corded at the waist, +slim and sleek as a goldfish. Charley. + +"I heard you come in. Finished? Then sit and talk sociable while I +dress. You can speed a bit on the way downtown and make it. Step on the +ol' batteries. Please! Did you fix things with Gussie?" + +"Yeh," Gussie answered, comfortably, but she wore a puzzled frown. "She +fix. Judge is woman. Never in my life----" + +"Gussie, ma'am, will you let me have my breakfast tray in the +sun-parlour? It's such a glummy morning. That's a nice girl. About five +minutes." + +And it wasn't more than five. Lottie, watching Charley in the act of +dressing wondered what that young woman's grandmother or great-aunt +would have thought of the process. She decided that her dead-and-gone +great-grandmother--that hoop-skirted, iron-stayed, Victorian lady all +encased in linings, buckram, wool, wire, merino, and starch--would have +swooned at the sight. Charley's garments were so few and scant as to be +Chinese in their simplicity. She wore, usually, three wispy garments, +not counting shoes and stockings. She proceeded to don them now. First +she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just +below the knee. This cuff she then twisted deftly round, caught the +slack of it, twisted that rope-like, caught the twist neatly under a +fold, rolled the fold down tight and hard three inches below the knee +and left it there, an ingenious silken bracelet. There it stayed, fast +and firm, unaided by garter, stay, or elastic. Above this a pair of +scant knickers of jersey silk or muslin; a straight little shirt with +straps over the shoulders or, sometimes, just a brassière that bound +the young breasts. Over this slight foundation went a slim scant frock +of cloth. That was all. She was a pliant wheat-sheaf, a gracile blade, +a supple spear (see verses "To C.K." in _Poetry Magazine_ for +February, signed Jesse Dick). She twisted her hair into a knot that, +worn low on the neck, would have been a test for anyone but Charley. +She now pursed her lips a little critically, and leaned forward close +to her mirror. Charley's lips were a little too full, the carping said; +the kind of lips known as "bee-stung." Charley hated her mouth; said it +was coarse and sensual. Others did not think so. (See poem "Your Lips" +in _Century Magazine_, June.) + +"There!" she said and turned away from the mirror. The five minutes +were just up. + +"Meaning you're dressed?" + +"Dressed. Why of----" + +"Sketchy, I calls it. But I suppose it's all right. You're covered, +anyway. Only I hope your grandmother'll never witness the sight I've +seen this morning. You make me feel like an elderly Esquimau sewed up +for the winter." + +Charley shrugged luxuriously. "I hate a lot of clothes." + +Her tray awaited her on the table in the sun-parlour--fruit, toast, +steaming hot chocolate. "I've got to go," Lottie kept murmuring and +leaned in the doorway watching her. Charley attacked the food with +a relish that gave you an appetite. She rolled an ecstatic eye at +the first sip of chocolate. "Oo, hot! Sure you won't have some?" She +demolished the whole daintily and thoroughly. As she sat there in +the cruel morning light of the many-windowed little room she was as +pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and scrubbed-looking as a Briggs boy ready +for supper. You could see the fine pores of her skin. + +Lottie began to button her coat. Charley chased a crumb of toast around +her plate. "What, if any, do you think of him?" + +Lottie had seen and met shoals of Charley's young men. "Suitors" was +the official South Side name for them. But Charley had never asked +Lottie's opinion of one of them. + +"Charming youngster. I grew quite mooney, after you'd gone, thinking +about him, and trumped mother's ace. He doesn't look like a poet--that +is, poet." + +"They never do. Good poets, I mean. I've often thought it was all for +the best that Rupert Brooke--that Byron collar of his. Fancy by the +time he became forty ... you really think he's charming?" + +"So does your mother. Last night she was enthusiastic--about his work." + +"M-m-m. Mother's partial to young poets." + +Between Charley and her mother there existed an unwritten code. +Charley commanded whole squads of devoted young men in assorted sizes, +positions, and conditions. Young men who liked country hikes and +wayside lunches; young men who preferred to dance at the Blackstone +on Saturday afternoons; young men who took Charley to the Symphony +concerts; young men who read to her out of books. And Mrs. Henry +Kemp, youngish, attractive, almost twenty years of married life with +Henry Kemp behind her, relished a chat with these slim youngsters. A +lean-flanked graceful crew they were, for the most part, with an almost +feline co-ordination of muscle. When they shook hands with you their +grip drove the rings into your fingers. They looked you in the eye--and +blushed a little. Their profiles would have put a movie star to shame. +Their waists were slim as a girl's (tennis and baseball). They drove +low-slung cars around Hyde Park corners with death-defying expertness. +Nerveless; not talkative and yet well up on the small-talk of the +younger set--Labour, Socialism, sex, baseball, Freud, psychiatry, +dancing and--just now--the War. Some were all for dashing across to +join the Lafayette Escadrille. Belle Kemp would have liked to sit and +talk with these young men--talk, and laugh, and dangle her slipper on +the end of her toe. Charley knew this. And her mother knew she knew. No +pulling the wool over Charley's eyes. No pretending to play the chummy +young mother with her. "Pal stuff." + +So, then, "M-m-m," said Charley, sipping the last of her chocolate. +"Mother's partial to young poets." + +Lottie had to be off. She cast a glance down the hall. "Do you suppose +she's really asleep still? I'd like to talk to her just a minute." + +"You might tap once at the door. I never disturb her in the morning. +But I don't think she's sleeping." + +Another code rule. These two--mother and daughter--treated one another +with polite deference. Never intruded on each other's privacy. Rarely +interfered with each other's engagements. Mrs. Kemp liked her breakfast +in bed--a practice Charley loathed. Once a week a strapping Swedish +damsel came to the apartment to give Mrs. Kemp a body massage and what +is known as a "facial." You should have heard Mrs. Carrie Payson on the +subject. Belle defended the practice, claiming that it benefited some +obscure digestive ailment from which she suffered. + +Lottie tapped at Belle's door. A little silence. Then an unenthusiastic +voice bade her enter. Belle was in bed, resting. Belle looked her age +in bed in the morning. Slightly haggard and a little yellow. + +"I thought it must be you." + +"It is." + +Belle rolled a languid eye. "I woke up feeling wretched. How about this +Gussie business?" + +"I'm just going downtown. It'll turn out all right, I think." + +"Just arrange things so that Gussie won't be upset for Tuesday. You +wouldn't think she was nervous, to look at her. Great huge creature. +But when she's upset! And I do so want that luncheon to be just right. +Mrs. Radcliffe Phelps----" + +Lottie could not restrain a little smile. "Oh, Belle." + +Belle turned her head pettishly on the pillow. "Oh, Belle!" she +mimicked in an astonishingly un-grown-up manner. Indeed, she sounded +amazingly like the school-girl of Armour Institute days. "You're more +like mother every day, Lottie." Lottie closed the door softly. + +Charley was waiting for her at the end of the hall. "Don't say I didn't +warn you. Here--I'll give you a chocolatey kiss. Are you lunching +downtown? There's a darling new tea-room just opened in the Great +Lakes Building----" + +"I've promised to be home by noon, at the latest." + +"What for?" + +"To take mother marketing and over to the West Side----" + +"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" + +"You have your job, Charley. This is mine." + +"Oh, is it? Do you like it?" + +"N-n-no." + +"Then it isn't." + +Lottie flung a final word at the door. "Even a free untrammelled spirit +like you will acknowledge that such a thing as duty does exist, I +suppose?" + +Charley leaned over the railing to combat that as Lottie flew +downstairs. "There is no higher duty than that of self-expression." + +"Gabble-gabble!" laughed Lottie, at the vestibule door. + +"Coward!" shouted Charley over the railing. + + + + + CHAPTER X + + +When she came out the fog was beginning to lift over the lake and +there was even an impression of watery lemon-coloured sunshine behind +the bank of gray. Lottie's spirits soared. As she stepped into the +swaying old electric there came over her a little swooping sensation of +freedom. It was good to be going about one's business thus, alone. No +one to say, "Slower! Not so fast!" No one to choose the maelstrom of +State and Madison streets as the spot in which to ask her opinion as to +whether this sample of silk matched this bit of cloth. A licorice lane +of smooth black roadway ahead. Down Hyde Park Boulevard and across to +Drexel. Down the long empty stretch of that fine avenue at a spanking +speed--spanking, that is, for the ancient electric whose inside +protested at every revolution of the wheels. She negotiated the narrows +of lower Michigan Avenue and emerged into the gracious sweep of that +street as it widened at Twelfth. She always caught her breath a little +at the spaciousness and magnificence of those blocks between Twelfth +and Randolph. The new Field Columbian museum, a white wraith, rose out +of the lake mist at her right. Already it was smudged with the smoke +of the I. C. engines. A pity, Lottie thought. She always felt civic +when driving down Michigan. On one side Grant Park and the lake beyond; +on the other the smart shops. You had to keep eyes ahead, but now and +then, out of the corner of them, you caught tantalising glimpses of a +scarlet velvet evening wrap in the window of the Blackstone shop; a +chic and trickily simple poiret twill in Vogue; the glint of silver as +you flashed past a jeweller's; the sooted façade of the Art Institute. +She loved it. It exhilarated her. She felt young, and free, and rather +important. The sombre old house on Prairie ceased to dominate her +for the time. What fun it would be to stay down for lunch with Emma +Barton--wise, humourous, understanding Emma Barton. Maybe they could +get hold of Winnie Steppler, too. Then, later, she might prowl around +looking at the new cloth dresses for spring. + +Well, she couldn't. That was all there was to it. + +She parked the electric and entered the grim black pile that was the +City Hall and County Building, threaded her way among the cuspidors of +the dingy entrance hall, stepped out of the elevator on the floor that +held Judge Barton's court: the Girls' Court. The attendant at the door +knew her. There was no entering Judge Barton's court as a public place +of entertainment. In the ante-room red-eyed girls and shawled mothers +were watching the closed door in mingled patience and fear. Girls. +Sullen girls, bold girls, frightened girls. Girls who had never heard +of the Ten Commandments and who had broken most of them. Girls who +had not waited for the apple of life to drop ripe into their laps but +had twisted it off the tree and bitten deep into the fruit and found +the taste of gall in their mouths. Tear-stained, bedraggled, wretched +girls; defiant girls; silk-clad, contemptuous, staring girls. Girls +who had rehearsed their rôles, prepared for stern justice in uniform. +Girls who bristled with resentment against life, against law, against +maternal authority. They did not suspect how completely they were to be +disarmed by a small woman with a misleadingly mild face, graying hair, +and eyes that--well, it was hard to tell about those eyes. They looked +at you--they looked at you and through you.... What was that you had +planned to say ... what was that you had.... Oh, for God's sakes, ma, +shut up your crying! Between the girls in their sleazy silk stockings +and the mothers in their shapeless shawls lay the rotten root of the +trouble. New America and the Old World, out of sympathy with each +other, uncomprehending, resentful. The girls in the outer room rustled, +and twisted, and jerked, and sobbed, and whispered, and shrugged, +and scowled; and stared furtively at each other. But the shawled and +formless older women stood or sat animal-like in their patience, their +eyes on the closed door. + +Lottie wondered if she could pick Jennie from among them. She even +thought of asking for her, but she quickly decided against that. Better +to see Emma Barton first. + +It lacked just five minutes of ten. Lottie nodded to the woman who +guarded the door and passed through the little room in which Judge +Barton held court, to the private office beyond. Never was less +official-looking hall of justice than that little court room. It +resembled a more than ordinarily pleasant business office. A long flat +table on a platform four or five inches above the floor. Half a dozen +chairs ranged about the wall. A vase of spring flowers--jonquils, +tulips, mignonette--on the table. Not a carefully planned "woman's +touch." Someone was always sending flowers to Judge Barton. She +was that kind of woman. You were struck with the absence of +official-looking papers, documents, files. All the paraphernalia of red +tape was absent. + +Judge Barton sat in the cubby-hole of an office just beyond this, a +girl stenographer at her elbow. Outside the great window the City Hall +pigeons strutted and purled. Bright-eyed and alert as an early robin, +the judge looked up as Lottie came in. She took Lottie's hand in her +own firm fingers. + +"Well!" Then they smiled at each other, these two women. "You'll stay +down and have lunch with me. I've the whole afternoon--Saturday." + +"I can't." + +"Of course you can. Why not?" + +"I've got to be home by noon to take mother to market and to----" + +"It sounds like nonsense to me," Emma Barton said, gently. And, +somehow, it did sound like nonsense. + +Lottie flushed like a school-girl. "I suppose it does----" she broke +off, abruptly. "I came down to talk to you about Jennie. Jennie's the +sister of Belle's housemaid, Gussie, and she's in trouble. Her case +comes up before you this morning." + +Emma Barton's eyes travelled swiftly over the charted sheets before +her. "Jennie? Jennie?--Jeannette Kromek?" + +"Jeannette." + +"I see," said Judge Barton, just as Lottie had before her in Belle's +kitchen that morning. She glanced at the chart of Jennie's case. +A common enough case in that court. She listened as Lottie talked +briefly. She knew the Jennie kind; Jennie in rebellion against a +treadmill of working and eating and sleeping. Jennie, the grub, vainly +trying to transform herself into Jeannette the butterfly. Excitement, +life, admiration, pretty clothes, "a chance." That was what the +Jeannettes vaguely desired: a chance. + +Judge Barton did not waste any time on sentiment. She did not walk +to the window and gaze out upon the great gray city stretched +below. She did not say, "Poor little broken butterfly." She had not +become head of this judicature thus. She said, "The world's full of +Jennie--Jeannettes. I wonder there aren't more of them." The soft +bright eyes were on Lottie. They said, "You're one, you know." But she +did not utter the thought aloud. She glanced at her watch then (it +actually hung from an old-fashioned chatelaine pinned near her right +shoulder), rose and led the way into the larger room, followed by +Lottie and the girl stenographer. She mounted the low platform, slipped +into the chair at the desk. + +She had placed the chart of Jennie's case uppermost on the table, was +about to have the case summoned when the door flew open and Winnie +Steppler entered. Doors always flew open before Winnie's entrance. +White-haired, pink-cheeked as a girl, looming vast and imposing in +her blue cloak and gray furs, she looked more the grande dame on an +errand of mercy than a newspaper reporter on the job. She rarely got +a story in Judge Barton's court because Judge Barton's girls' names +were carefully kept out of the glare of publicity. The human quality +in the place drew her; and her friendship and admiration for Emma +Barton; and the off-chance. There might be a story for her. She ranged +the city, did Winnie Steppler, for her stuff. Her friends were firemen +and policemen, newsboys and elevator starters; movie ticket-sellers, +news-stand girls, hotel clerks, lunch-room waitresses, manicures, +taxi-drivers, street-sweepers, doormen, waiters, Greek boot-blacks--all +that vast stratum of submerged servers over whom the flood of humanity +sweeps in a careless torrent leaving no one knows what sediment of rich +knowledge. + +At sight of Lottie, Winnie Steppler's Irish blue eyes blazed. She +affected a brogue, inimitable. "Och, but you're the grand sight and me +a-sickening for ye these weeks and not a glimpse. You'll have lunch +with me--you and Her Honour there." + +"I can't," said Lottie. + +"And why not, then!" + +It really was beginning to sound a little foolish. Lottie hesitated. +She fidgeted with her fingers, looked up smiling uncertainly. +"I've"--with a rush--"I've got to be home by twelve to drive mother to +market and to the West Side." + +"Telephone her. Say you won't be home till two. It's no life-and-death +matter, is it--the market and the West Side?" + +Lottie tried to picture that driving force at home waiting complacently +until she should return at two. "Oh, I can't! I can't!" + +Winnie Steppler, the world-wise, stared at her a moment curiously. +There had been a note resembling hysteria in Lottie's voice. "Why, look +here, girl----" + +"Order in the court!" said Judge Barton, with mock dignity. But she +meant it. It was ten o'clock. Two probation officers came in. A bailiff +opened the door and stuck his head in. Judge Barton nodded to him. He +closed the door. You heard his voice in the outer room. "Jeannette +Kromek! Mrs. Kromek! Otto Kromek!" + +A girl in a wrinkled blue cloth dress, a black velvet tam o'shanter, +slippers and (significant this) black cotton stockings. At sight of +those black cotton stockings Lottie Payson knew, definitely, that +beneath the top tawdriness of Jeannette was Jennie, sound enough. A +sullen, lowering, rather frightened girl of seventeen. Her hair was +bobbed. The style went oddly with the high-cheek-boned Slavic face, the +blunt-fingered factory hands. With her was a shawled woman who might +have been forty or sixty. She glanced about dartingly beneath lowered +lids with quick furtive looks. An animal, trapped, has the same look +in its eyes. The two stood at the side of the table facing Judge Barton. + +"Where is Otto Kromek?" + +"He didn't show up," the bailiff reported. + +No case, then. But Judge Barton did not so state. She leaned forward a +little toward the girl whose face was blotched and swollen with weeping. + +"What's the trouble, Jennie?" + +Jennie set her jaw. She looked down, looked up again. The brown eyes +were still upon her, questioningly. "I----" + +The shawled woman plucked at the girl's skirt and whispered fiercely in +her own tongue. + +"Le' me alone," hissed the girl, and jerked away. + +Judge Barton turned toward the woman. "Mrs. Kromek, just stand away +from Jennie. Let her talk to me. Afterward you can talk." + +The two separated, glaring. + +"Now then, Jennie, how did it all happen?" + +The girl begins to speak. The older woman edges closer again to catch +what the low voice says. + +"We went ridin' with a couple fellas." + +"Did you know them? Were they boys you knew?" + +"No." + +"How did you happen to go riding with them, Jennie?" + +"We was walkin'----" + +"We?" + +"Me an' my girl friend. We was walkin'. These fellas was driving 'round +slow. We seen 'em. An' they come up to the curb where we was passin' by +an' asked us would we like to take a ride. Well, we didn't have nothin' +else to do so----" + +I-sez-to-him and he-sez-to-me. The drive. Terror. A fight in the car, +the sturdy girls defending themselves fiercely. Home safe but so late +that the usual tirade became abuse. They had said things at home ... +well ... she'd show'm. She'd run away. She had taken the hundred to +spite him--Otto. + +"Why did you go, Jennie? You knew, didn't you?" + +The girl's smouldering resentment flared into open hatred. "It's her. +She's always a-yellin' at me. They're all yellin' all the time. I come +home from work and right away they jump on me. Nothin' I do ain't +right. I'm good and sick of it, that's what. Good and sick----" She +was weeping again, wildly, unrestrainedly. The older woman broke into +a torrent of talk in her own thick tongue. She grasped the girl's arm. +Jennie wrenched herself free. "Yeh, you!" She turned again to Judge +Barton, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She made no attempt to +wipe them away. The Jennies of Judge Barton's court, so prone to +tears, were usually poorly equipped for the disposal of them. + +Emma Barton did not say, "Don't cry, Jennie." Without taking her eyes +from the girl she opened the upper right-hand drawer of her desk, and +from a neatly stacked pile of plain white handkerchiefs she took the +topmost one, shook it out of its folds and handed it wordlessly to +Jennie. As wordlessly Jennie took it and wiped her streaming eyes and +blew her nose, and mopped her face. Emma Barton had won a thousand +Jennies with a thousand neat white handkerchiefs extracted in the nick +of time from that upper right-hand drawer. + +"Now then, Mrs. Kromek. What's the trouble between you and Jennie? Why +don't you get along, you two?" + +Mrs. Kromek, no longer furtive, squared herself to state her grievance. +Hers was a polyglot but pungent tongue. She made plain her meaning. +Jennie was a bum, a no-good, a stuck-up. The house wasn't clean enough +for Jennie. Always she was washing. Evenings she was washing herself +always with hot water it was enough to make you sick. And Jennie was +sassy on the boarders. + +And, "I see," said Judge Barton encouragingly, at intervals, as the +vituperative flood rolled on. "I see." Jennie's eyes, round with +hostility, glared at her accuser over the top of the handkerchief. +Finally, when the poison stream grew thinner, trickled, showed signs +of stopping altogether, Judge Barton beamed understandingly upon the +vixenish Mrs. Kromek. "I understand perfectly now. Just wait here, +Mrs. Kromek. Jennie, come with me." She beckoned to Lottie. The three +disappeared into the inner office. Judge Barton laid a hand lightly on +the girl's shoulder. "Now then, Jennie, what would you like to do, h'm? +Just talk to me. Tell me, what would you like to do?" + +Jennie's hands writhed in the folds of her skirt. She twisted her +fingers. She sobbed final dry, racking sobs. And then she rolled the +judicial handkerchief into a tight, damp, hard little ball and began to +talk. She talked as she had never talked to Ma Kromek. Translated, it +ran thus: + +At home there was no privacy. The house was full of hulking men; +pipe-smoke; the smell of food eternally stewing on the stove; shrill +or guttural voices; rough jests. Book-reading, bathing, reticence on +Jennie's part were all shouted down as attempts at being "toney." When +she came home from the factory at night, tired, nerve-worn, jaded, the +house was as cluttered and dirty as it had been when she left it in the +morning. The mother went with the boarders (this Jennie told as evenly +and dispassionately as the rest). She had run away from home after +the last hideous family fracas. She had taken the money in a spirit +of hatred and revenge. She'd do it again. If they had let her go to +school, as she had wanted to--she used to talk English all right, like +the teacher--but you heard the other kind of talk around the house and +at the factory and pretty soon you couldn't talk the right way. They +made fun of you if you did. A business college course. That was what +she wanted. She could spell. At school she could spell better than +anyone in the room. Only they had taken her out in the sixth grade. + +What to do with Jennie? + +The two older women looked at each other over Jennie's head. The +course in stenography could be managed simply enough. Judge Barton met +such problems hourly. But what to do with Jennie in the meantime? She +shrank from consigning to a detention home or a Girls' Refuge this +fundamentally sound and decent young creature. + +Suddenly, "I'll take her," said Lottie. + +"How do you mean?" + +"I'll take her home with me. We've got rooms and rooms in that barracks +of ours. The whole third floor. She can stay for awhile. Anyway, she +can't go back to that house." + +The girl sat looking from one to the other, uncomprehending. Her hands +were clutching each other tightly. Emma Barton turned to her. "What do +you say, Jennie? Would you like to go home with Miss Payson here? Just +for awhile, until we think of something else? I think we can manage the +business college course." + +The girl seemed hardly to comprehend. Lottie leaned toward her. "Would +you like to come to my house, Jeannette?" And at that the first stab of +misgiving darted through Lottie. "My house?" She thought of her mother. + +"Yes," answered Jennie with the ready acquiescence of her class. "Yes." + +And so it was settled, simply. Ma Kromek accepted the decision with +dumb passiveness. One of the brothers would bring Jennie's clothes to +the Prairie Avenue house. Jennie had only spent half of the stolen +hundred. The unspent half she had returned to him. The rest she would +pay back, bit by bit, out of her earnings. Winnie Steppler bemoaned her +inability to make a feature story of Jennie--Jeannette. Lottie smiled +at Jennie, and propelled her down the corridor and into the elevator, +to the street. In her well-fitting tailor suit, and her good furs +and her close little velvet hat, she looked the Lady Bountiful. The +girl, shabby, tear-stained, followed. Lottie was racked with horrid +misgivings. Why had she suggested it! What a mad idea! Her mother! She +tried to put the thought out of her mind. She couldn't face it. And +all the while she was unlocking the door of the electric, settling +herself in the seat, holding out a hand to help Jennie's entrance. The +watery sunshine of the early morning had been a false promise. It was +raining again. + +Out of the welter of State Street and Wabash, and into the clear +stretch of Michigan once more she turned suddenly to look at Jennie +and found Jennie looking fixedly at her. Jennie's eyes did not drop +shiftily at this unexpected encounter. That was reassuring. + +"Gussie works at my sister's," she told the girl, bluntly. "That's how +I happened to be in court this morning when your case came up." + +"Oh," said Jennie, accepting this as of a piece with all the rest of +the day's happenings. Then, after a moment, "Is that why you said you'd +take me? Gussie?" + +"No, I didn't even think of Gussie at the time. I just thought of you. +I didn't even think of myself." She smiled a little grimly. "I'm going +to call you Jeannette, shall I?" + +"Yeh. Jennie's so homely. What's your name?" + +"Lottie." + +Jeannette politely made no comment. Lottie found herself defending the +name. "It's short for Charlotte, you know. My Aunt Charlotte lives +with us. We'd get mixed up. My niece is named Charlotte, too. We call +her Charley." + +Jeannette nodded briskly. "I know. I seen her once. I was at Gussie's. +Gussie told me. She's awful pretty.... She's got it swell.... You like +my hair this way?" She whisked off the dusty velvet tam. + +"I think I'd like it better the other way. Long." + +"I'll let it grow. I can do it in a net so it looks like long." They +rode along in silence. + +What to say to her mother! She glanced at her watch. Eleven. Well, at +least she wasn't late. They were turning into Prairie at Sixteenth. She +was terrified at what she had done; furious that this should be so. She +argued fiercely with herself, maintaining all the while her outwardly +composed and dignified demeanour. "Don't be a silly fool. You're a +woman of thirty-two--almost thirty-three. You ought to be at the head +of your own household. If you were, this is what you'd have done. Well, +then!" But she was sick with apprehension, even while she despised +herself because it was so. + +Jeannette was speaking again. "The houses around here are swell, ain't +they?" + +"Yes," Lottie agreed, absently. Her own house was a block away. + +Jeannette's mind grasshoppered to another topic. "I can talk good if +you keep telling me. I forget. Home and in the works everybody talks +bum English. I learn quick." + +"Well, then," said Lottie. "I shouldn't say 'swell' nor 'ain't'." + +Jeannette thought a moment. +"The--houses--around--here--are--grand--are--they--not?" + +Suddenly Lottie reached over and covered the girl's hand with her own. + +Jeannette smiled back at her. She thought her a fine looking +middle-aged person. Not a very swell dresser but you could see she had +class. + +"Here we are!" said Lottie aloud. The direct, clear-headed woman +who had acted with authority and initiative only an hour before in +the court room was now thinking, "Oh, dear! Oh, _dear_!" in +anticipative agony. She stepped out of the electric. "Gussie'll be +glad." + +"Yeh--Gussie!" Jeannette's tone was not without venom. "She's her own +boss. She's got it good. Sometimes for a whole month she didn't come +home." She stared curiously at the grim old Prairie Avenue house. It +was raining hard now. Lottie glanced quickly up at the parlour window. +Sometimes her mother stood there, watching for her, impatient of any +waiting. She was not there now. She opened the front door, the two +entered--Jeannette the braver of the two. + +"Yoo-hoo!" called Lottie with an airy assumption of cheeriness. +Jeannette stood looking up and down the long dim hallway with wide +ambient eyes. There was no answer to Lottie's call. She sped back to +the kitchen. + +"Where's mother?" + +"She ban gone out." + +"Out! Where? It's raining. Pouring!" + +"She ban gone out." + +Even in her horror at the thought of her rheumatism-stricken mother +in the downpour she was conscious of a feeling of relief. It was the +relief a condemned murderer feels whose hanging is postponed from +to-day until to-morrow. + +She came back to Jeannette. Oh, _dear_! "Come upstairs with me, +Jeannette." Lottie ran up the stairs quickly, Jeannette at her heels. +She went straight to Aunt Charlotte's room. Aunt Charlotte was asleep +in her old plush armchair by the window. She often napped like that in +the morning. She dropped off to sleep easily, sometimes dozing almost +immediately after breakfast. It was light, fitful sleep. She started +up, wide awake, as Lottie came in. + +"Where's mother?" + +Aunt Charlotte smiled grimly. "She bounced out the minute you left." + +"But where?" + +"Her rents and the marketing." + +"But it's raining. She can't be out in the rain. Way over there!" + +"She said she was going to take the street car.... What time is it, +Lottie? I must have.... Who's that in the hall?" She stopped in the +middle of a yawn. + +"Jeannette, come here. This is Jeannette, Aunt Charlotte. Gussie's +sister. You know--Gussie who works for Belle. I've brought Jeannette +home with me." + +"That's nice," said Aunt Charlotte, pleasantly. + +"To live, I mean." + +"Oh! Does your mother know?" + +"No. I just--I just brought her home." Lottie put a hand on Aunt +Charlotte's withered cheek. She was terribly near to tears. "Dear +Aunt Charlotte, won't you take care of Jeannette; I'm going out after +mother. Show her her room--upstairs; you know. And give her some hot +lunch. On the third floor you know--the room." + +Jeannette spoke up, primly. "I don't want to make nobody trouble." + +"Trouble!" echoed Aunt Charlotte. She rose spryly to her feet, asked no +explanation. "You come with me, Jeannette. My, my! How pretty your hair +is cut short like that. So Gussie is your sister, h'm? Well, well." She +actually pinched Jeannette's tear-stained cheek. + +"The dear thing!" Lottie thought, harassed as she was. "The darling old +thing!" And then, suddenly: "_She_ should have been my mother." + +Lottie ran downstairs and into the electric. She jerked its levers so +that the old vehicle swayed and cavorted on the slippery pavement. + +She would drive straight over to the one-story buildings on west +Halsted, near Eighteenth. Her mother usually went there first. It was +a Polish settlement. Mrs. Payson owned a row of six stores occupied +by a tobacconist, a shoemaker, a delicatessen, a Chinese laundry, a +grocer, a lunch room. She collected the rents herself, let out bids for +repairs, kept her own books. Lottie had tried to help with these last +but she was not good at accounts. Unless carefully watched she mixed +things up hopelessly. Mrs. Payson juggled account books, ledgers, check +books, rental lists like an expert accountant. Eighteenth Street, as +Lottie drove across it now, was a wallow of liquid mud, rain, drays, +spattered yellow street-cars, dim drab-looking shops. The slippery +car tracks were a menace to drivers. She had to go slowly. The row of +Halsted Street buildings reached at last, Lottie ran in one store and +out the other. + +"Is my mother here?" + +"She's gone." + +"Has Mrs. Payson been here?" + +"Long. She left an hour ago." + +There were the other buildings on Forty-third Street. But she couldn't +have gone way up there, Lottie told herself. But she decided to try +them. On the way she stopped at the house. Her mother had not yet +come in. She went on up to Forty-third, the spring rain lashing the +glassed-in hood of the electric. Yes, her mother had been there and +gone. Lottie was conscious of a little hot flame of anger rising, +rising in her. It seemed to drum in her ears. It made her eyelids smart +and sting. She set her teeth. She swung the car over to Gus's market on +Forty-third. Her hands gripped the levers so that the ungloved knuckles +showed white. + +"It's a damned shame, that's what it is!" she said, aloud; and sobbed a +little. "It's a damned shame, that's what it is. She could have waited. +It's just pure meanness. She could have waited. I wish I was dead!" + +It was as though the calm, capable, resourceful woman of the ten +o'clock court room scene had never been. + +"Gus, has my mother----?" + +"She's just went. You can ketch her yet. I told her to wait till it let +up a little. She was wetter'n a drowned rat. But not her! You know your +ma! Wait nothin'." + +Lottie headed toward Indiana Avenue and the car line. Her eyes +searched the passers-by beneath their dripping umbrellas. Then she +spied her, a draggled black-garbed figure, bundle laden, waiting on the +corner for her car. Her left arm--the bad one--was held stiffly folded +in front of her, close to her body. That meant pain. Her shoulders were +hunched a little. Her black hat was slightly askew. Lottie noted, with +the queer faculty one has for detail at such times, that her colour +was slightly yellow. But as she peered up the street in vain hope +of an approaching street car, her glance was as alert as ever. She +walked forward toward the curb to scan the empty car tracks. Lottie +noticed her feet. In the way she set them down; in their appearance of +ankle-weakness and a certain indescribable stiffness that carried with +it a pathetic effort at spryness there was, somehow, a startling effect +of age, of feebleness. She toed in a little with weariness. A hot blur +sprang to Lottie's eyes. She drew up sharply at the curb, flung open +the door, was out, had seized the bundles and was propelling her mother +toward the electric almost before Mrs. Payson had realised her presence. + +"Mother dear, why didn't you wait!" + +For a moment it looked as if Mrs. Payson meant to resist stubbornly. +She even jerked her arm away, childishly. But strong as her will was, +her aching body protested still more strongly. Lottie hoisted her +almost bodily into the electric. She looked shrunken and ocherous as +she huddled in a corner. But her face was set, implacable. The car sped +down the rain-swept street. Lottie glanced sideways at her mother. Her +eyes were closed. They seemed strangely deep-set in their sockets. + +"Oh, mama----" Lottie's voice broke; the tears, hot, hurt, repentant, +coursed down her cheeks--"why did you do it! You knew--you knew----" + +Mrs. Carrie Payson opened her eyes. "You said Belle's hired girl's +sister was more important than I, didn't you? Well!" + +"But you knew I didn't----" she stopped short. She couldn't say she +hadn't meant it. She had. She couldn't explain to her mother that she +had meant that her effort to help Jeannette was her protest against +stifled expression. Her mother would not have understood. It sounded +silly and pretentious even in her unspoken thought. But deeper than +this deprecatory self-consciousness was a new and growing consciousness +of Self. + +She remembered Jeannette; Jeannette installed in the third floor room, +a member of the household. At the thought of breaking the news of her +presence to her mother Lottie felt a wild desire to giggle. It was a +task too colossal, too hopeless for seriousness. You had to tackle it +smilingly or go down to defeat at once. Lottie braced herself for the +effort. She told herself, dramatically, that if Jeannette went she, +too, would go. + +"I brought Jeannette home with me." + +"Who?" + +"Jeannette--Gussie's sister. The one who's had trouble with the family." + +"Home! What for!" + +"She's--she's a nice little thing, and bright. There wasn't any place +to send her. We've got so much room." + +"You must be crazy." + +"Are you going to turn her out into the storm, mom, like the girl in +the melodrama?" + +Mrs. Payson was silent a moment. Then, "Does she know anything about +housework? Belle's always saying her Gussie's such a treasure. I'm +about sick of that Hulda. Wastes more every week than we eat. I don't +see what they _do_ with it--these girls. If we used a pound of +butter this last week we used five and I hardly touch----" + +"Jeannette doesn't want to do housework. She wants to go to business +college." + +"Well, of course, if you're running a reform school." + +But she made no further protest now. Lottie, peeling off her mother's +wet clothing as soon as they entered the house, pleaded with her to go +to bed. + +She was startled when her mother agreed. Mrs. Payson had always said, +"When I go to bed in the middle of the day you can know I'm sick." Now +she crept stiffly between the covers of her big old-fashioned walnut +bed with a groan that she tried to turn into a cough. An hour later +they sent for the doctor. An acute arthritis attack. Lottie reproached +herself grimly, unsparingly. + +"I'll get up around four o'clock," Mrs. Payson said. "You don't find +me staying in bed. Belle does enough of that for the whole family." At +four she said, "I'll get up in time for dinner.... Where's that girl? +Where's that girl that was so important, h'm? I want to see her." + +She was in bed for a week. Lottie covered herself with reproaches. + + + + + CHAPTER XI + + +No one quite knew when or how Jeannette had become indispensable to the +Payson household; but she had. Most of all had she become indispensable +to Mrs. Carrie Payson. Between the two there existed a lion-and-mouse +friendship. Jeannette's ebullient spirits had not undergone years of +quenching from the acid stream of Mrs. Payson's criticism. Jeannette's +perceptions and valuations were the straightforward simple peasant +sort, unhampered by fine distinctions or involved reasoning. To her +Mrs. Carrie Payson was not a domineering and rather terrible person +whose word was law and whose will was adamant, but a fretful, funny, +and rather bossy old woman who generally was wrong. Jeannette was +immensely fond of her and did not take her seriously for a moment. +About the house Jeannette was as handy as a man. And this was a manless +household. She could conquer a stubborn window-shade; adjust a loose +castor in one of the bulky old chairs or bedsteads; drive a nail; put +up a shelf; set a mouse-trap. + +In the very beginning she and Mrs. Payson had come to grips. Mrs. +Payson's usual attitude of fault-finding and intolerance had brought +about the situation. Jeannette had rebelled at once. + +"I guess I'll have to leave to-day," she had said. "I'm going back to +the factory." + +"Why?" + +"I can't have nobody giving me board and room for nothing. I always +paid for what I got." She began to pack her scant belongings in the +little room on the third floor next to Hulda's. A council was summoned. +It was agreed that Jeannette should help with the household tasks; +assist Hulda with the dishes; flip-flop the mattresses; clean the +silver, perhaps. This silver-cleaning was one of Mrs. Payson's fixed +ideas. It popped into her mind whenever she saw Hulda momentarily idle. +Hulda did endless yards of coarse and hideous tatting and crocheting +intended ultimately for guimpes, edgings, bands and borders on +nightgowns, corset covers, and pillow slips. Pressed, she admitted an +Oscar in the offing. She had mounds of stout underwear, crochet-edged, +in her queer old-world trunk. When, in a leisure hour, she sat in her +room or in the orderly kitchen she was always busy with a gray and +grimy ball of this handiwork. Mrs. Payson would slam in and out of the +kitchen. "There she sits, doing nothing. Crocheting!" + +"But mother," Lottie would say, "her work's all done. The kitchen's +like a pin. She cleaned the whole front of the house to-day. It isn't +time to start dinner." + +"Let her clean the silver, then." + +Jeannette ate her meals with Hulda and before a week had passed she +had banished the grubby and haphazard feeding off one end of the +kitchen table. She got hold of a rickety old table in the basement, +straightened its wobbly legs, painted it white, and set it up against +the kitchen wall under the window facing the back yard. In a pantry +drawer she found a faded lunch cloth of the Japanese variety, with +bluebirds on it. This she spread for their meals. They had proper +knives, forks, and spoons. The girl was friendly, good-natured, +helpful. Hulda could not resent her--even welcomed her companionship +in that rather grim household. Hulda showed Jeannette her dream-book +without which no Swedish houseworker can exist; told her her dreams +in detail. "It vos like I vos walking and yet I didn't come nowheres. +It seems like I vos in Chicago and same time it vos old country where +I ban come from and all the flowers vos blooming in fields and all of +sudden a old man comes walking and I look and it vos----" etc., ad lib. + +Jeannette's business college hours were from nine to four. She went +downtown in one of Charley's straight smart tailor suits, revamped, +and a sailor with an upturned brim that gave her face a piquant look. +She did not seem to care much for what she called "the fellas." Perhaps +her searing experience of the automobile ride had scarred that side of +her. Lottie encouraged her to bring her "boy friends" to the house, but +Jeannette had not yet taken advantage of the offer. One day, soon after +her induction into the Prairie Avenue household, she had turned her +attention to the electric. Lottie had just come in from an errand with +Mrs. Payson. Jeannette waylaid her. + +"Listen. If you would learn me to--huh? oh--teach me to run that thing +you ride around in, I bet I could catch on quick--quickly. Then I could +take your ma around Saturday mornings when I ain't at school; and +evenings, and you wouldn't have to, see? Will you?" + +With the magic adaptability of youth she learned to drive with +incredible ease. She had no nerves; a sense of the road; an eye for +distances. After she had mastered the old car's idiosyncrasies she +became adept at it. She had a natural mechanical sense, and after +one or two encounters with the young man from the Élite Garage the +electric's motive powers were noticeably improved. Often, now, it was +Jeannette who drove Mrs. Payson to her buildings on the West Side, or +to her appointments with contractors, plumbers, carpenters, and the +like. Heretofore, on such errands, Mrs. Payson had always insisted that +Lottie wait in the electric at the curb. Seated thus, Lottie would +watch her mother with worried anxious eyes as she whisked in and out of +store doors, alleys, and basements followed by a heavy-footed workman +or contractor whose face grew more sullen and resentful each time it +appeared around a corner. Mrs. Payson's voice came floating back to +Lottie. "Now what's the best you'll do on that job. Remember, I'll have +a good deal of work later in the year if you'll do this reasonably." + +Now Jeannette calmly followed Mrs. Payson in her tour of inspection. +Once or twice Mrs. Payson actually consulted her about this fence or +that floor or partition. The girl was good at figures, too; a natural +aptitude for mathematics. + +Lottie found herself possessed of occasional leisure. She could spend +a half-day in the country. She could lunch in the park and stroll over +to the Wooded Island to watch and wonder at the budding marvel of trees +and shrubs and bushes. She even thought, boldly, of getting a Saturday +job of some sort--perhaps in connection with Judge Barton's court, +but hesitated to appropriate Jeannette's time permanently thus. The +atmosphere of the old Prairie Avenue home was less turbid, somehow. +Jeannette was a dash of clear cold water in the muddy sediment of their +existence. Sometimes the thought came to Lottie that she hadn't been +needed in the household after all. That is, she--Lottie Payson--to the +exclusion of anyone else. Anyone else would have done as well. She had +merely been the person at hand. Looking back on the past ten years +she hated to believe this. If she had merely been made use of thus, +then those ten years had been wasted, thrown away, useless--she put +the thought out of her mind as morbid. Sometimes, too, of late, Lottie +took a hasty fearful glance into the future and there saw herself a +septuagenarian like Aunt Charlotte; living out her life with Belle. +"No! No! No!" protested a voice within her rising to a silent shriek. +"No!" + +Lottie was thirty-three the last week in April. "Now Lottie!" her +mother's friends said to her, wagging a chiding forefinger, "you're not +going to let your little niece get ahead of you, are you!" + +She rarely saw the Girls now. She heard that Beck Schaefer had taken +to afternoon tea dancing. She was seen daily at hotel tea rooms in +company with pallid and incredibly slim youths of the lizard type, +their hair as glittering as their boots; lynx-eyed; exhaling a last +hasty puff of cigarette smoke as they rose from the table for the next +dance; inhaling a grateful lungful before they so much as sat down +again after that dance was finished. They wore very tight pants and +slim-waisted coats, and their hats came down over their ears as if they +were too big for their heads. Beck, smelling expensively of L'Origan +and wearing very palpable slippers and stockings was said to pay the +checks proffered by the waiter at the close of these afternoons. +Lottie's informant further confided to her that Beck was known in +tea-dance circles as The Youth's Companion. + +The last week in April Mrs. Carrie Payson went to French Lick Springs +with Belle--Mrs. Payson for her rheumatism, Belle for her digestive +trouble. Henry, looking more worried and distrait than ever, was to +follow them at the end of the week. You rarely heard his big booming +laugh now. Mrs. Payson and her daughter Belle had never before gone +away together. Always it had been Lottie who had accompanied her +mother. Lottie was rather apprehensive about the outcome of the +proximity of the two. Belle did not appear to relish the prospect +particularly; but she said she needed the cure, and Henry had finally +convinced her of the utter impossibility of his going. He was rather +alarmingly frank about it. "Can't afford it, Belle," he said, "and +that's the God's truth. Business is--well, there isn't any, that's all. +You need the rest and all and I want you to go. I'll try to come down +for Saturday and Sunday but don't count on me. I may have to go to New +York any day now." + +He did leave for New York that week, before the French Lick trip. +Lottie and Charley took them down to the station in the Kemps' big car +with the expert Charley at the wheel. Mrs. Payson kept up a steady +stream of admonition, reminder, direction, caution, advice. The house +was to undergo the April semiannual cleaning during her absence. + +"Call up Amos again about the rugs and mattresses ... in the yard, +remember; and you've got to watch him every minute ... every inch +of the woodwork with warm water--not hot! ... a little ammonia ... +the backs of the pictures ... a pot-roast and cut it up cold for the +cleaning woman's lunch and give her plenty of potatoes ... the parlour +curtains...." + +The train was gone. Lottie and Charley stood looking at each other +for a moment, wordlessly. They burst into rather wild laughter. Then +they embraced. People in the station must have thought one of them a +traveller just returned from afar. They clasped hands and raced for the +car. + +"Let's go for a drive," said Charley. It was ten-thirty at night. + +"All right," agreed Lottie. Charley swung the car back into Michigan, +then up Michigan headed north. The air was deliciously soft and +balmy for April in Chicago. They whisked up Lake Shore Drive and into +Lincoln Park. Lottie was almost ashamed of the feeling of freedom, of +relaxation, of exaltation that flooded her whole being. She felt alive, +and tingling and light. She was smiling unconsciously. On the way back +Charley drew up at the curb along the outside drive at the edge of +Lincoln Park, facing the lake. They sat wordlessly for a brief space in +the healing quiet and peace and darkness, with the waves lipping the +stones at their feet. + +"Nice," from Charley. + +"Mm." + +Silence again. An occasional motor sped past them in the darkness. +To the south the great pier, like a monster sea-serpent, stretched +its mile-length into the lake. A freighter, ore-laden, plying its +course between some northern Michigan mine and an Indiana steel +mill was transformed by the darkness and distance into a barge of +beauty--mystic, silent, glittering. + +"What are you going to do with your week, Lotta?" + +"H'm? Oh! Well, there's the housecleaning----" + +"Oh!" Charley slammed her fist down on the motor horn. It squawked in +chorus with her protest. "If what the Bible promises is true then +you're the heiress of the ages, you are." + +"Heiress?" + +"'The meek shall inherit the earth.'" + +"I'm not meek. I'm just the kind of person that things don't happen to." + +"You don't let them happen. When everything has gone wrong, and you're +feeling stifled and choked, and you've just been forbidden, as if +you were a half-wit of sixteen, to do something that you've every +right to do, what's your method! Instead of blowing up with a loud +report--instead of asserting yourself like a free-born white woman--you +put on your hat and take a long walk and work it off that way. Then +you come home with that high spiritual look on your face that makes me +want to scream and slap you. You're exactly like Aunt Charlotte. When +she and Grandma have had a tiff she sails upstairs and starts to clean +out her bureau drawers and wind old ribbons, and fold things. Well, +some day in a crisis she'll find that her bureau drawers have all been +tidied the day before. _Then_ what'll she do!" + +"Muss 'em up." + +"So will you--muss things up. You mark the words of a gal that's been +around." + +"You kids to-day are so sure of yourselves. I wonder if your method is +going to work out any better than ours. You haven't proved it yet. You +know, always, exactly what you want to do and then you go ahead and do +it. It's so simple that there must be a catch in it somewhere." + +"It's full of catches. That's what makes it so fascinating. All these +centuries we've been told to profit by the advice of our elders. What's +living for if not to experience? How can anyone know whether you're +right or wrong? Oh, I don't mean about small things. Any stranger can +decide for you that blue is more becoming than black. But the big +things--those things I want to decide for myself. I'm entitled to my +own mistakes. I've the right to be wrong. How many middle-aged people +do you know whose lives aren't a mess this minute! The thing is to be +able to say, 'I planned this myself and my plans didn't work. Now I'll +take my medicine.' You can't live somebody else's life without your +own getting all distorted in the effort. Now I'll probably marry Jesse +Dick----" + +"Charley Kemp! You don't know what you're saying. You're a +nineteen-year-old infant." + +"I'm a lot older than you. Of course he hasn't asked me. I don't +suppose he ever will. I mean they don't put a hand on the heart and say +will-you-be-mine. But he hadn't kissed me twice before I knew." + +A faint, "Charley!" + +"And he's the only man I've ever met that I can fancy still caring for +when he's forty-three and I'm forty. He'll never be snuffy and settled +and taken-for-granted. He talks to children as if they were human +beings and not nuisances or idiots. I've heard him. He's darling with +them. Sort of solemn and answers their questions intelligently. I know +that when I'm forty he'll still be able to make me laugh by calling me +'Mrs. Dick, ma'am.' We'll probably disagree, as we do now, about the +big empty things like war and politics. But we're in perfect accord +about the small things that make up everyday life. And they're the +things that count, in marriage." + +"But Charley, child, does your mother know all this?" + +"Oh, no. Mother thinks she's the modern woman and that she makes +up the younger generation. She doesn't realize that I'm the +younger generation. She's really as old-fashioned as any of them. +She is superior in a lot of ways, mother is. But she's like all +the rest in most. She's been so used all these years to having +people exclaim with surprise when she said she had a daughter of +sixteen--seventeen--eighteen--that now, when I'm nineteen she still +expects people to exclaim over her having a big girl. I'm not a big +girl. I'm not even what the cheap novels used to call a 'child-woman.' +Mother'll have to wake up to that." + +Lottie laughed a little at a sudden recollection. "When I got this hat +last week mother went with me." + +"She would," sotto voce, from Charley. + +"The saleswoman brought a little pile of them--four or five--and I +tried them on; but they weren't the thing, quite. And then mother, who +was sitting there, watching me, said to the girl: 'Oh, no, those won't +do. Show us something more girlish.'" + +"There!" + +"Yes, but wasn't it kind of sweet? The clerk stared, of course. I heard +her giggling about it afterward to one of the other saleswomen. You +see, mother thinks I'm still a girl. When I leave the house she often +asks me if I have a clean handkerchief." + +"Yes, go on, be sentimental about it. That'll help. You've let Grandma +dominate your life. That's all right--her wanting to, I mean. That's +human nature. The older generation trying to curb the younger. But your +letting her do it--that's another thing. That's a crime against your +own generation and indicates a weakness in you, not in her. The younger +generation has got to rule. Those of us who recognize that and act on +it, win. Those who don't go under." + +"You're a dreadful child!" exclaimed Lottie. She more than half meant +it. "It's horrible to hear you. Where did you learn all this--this +ruthlessness?" + +"I learned it at school--and out of school. Those are the things we +talk about. What did you suppose boys and girls talk about these days!" + +"I don't know," Lottie replied, weakly. She thought of the girl of +the old Armour Institute days--the girl who used to go bicycling +on Saturdays with the boy in the jersey sweater. They had talked +about school, and books, and games, and dreams, and even hopes--very +diffidently and shyly--but never once about reality or life. If they +had perhaps things would have been different for Lottie Payson, she +thought now. "Let's go home, Chas." + +On the drive home Charley talked of her new work. She was full of +shop stories. Nightly she brought home some fresh account of the +happenings in her department; a tale of a buyer, or customer, or clerk, +or department head. Henry Kemp called these her stock of stock-girl +stories. Following her first week at Shield's she had said grimly: +"Remember that girl O. Henry used to write about, the one who kept +thinking about her feet all the time? That's me. I'm that little +shop-girl, I am." + +Her father encouraged her dinner-table conversation and roared at her +rather caustic comment: + +"Our buyer came back from New York to-day. Her name's Healy. She has +her hair marcelled regularly and wears the loveliest black crêpe de +chine frocks with collars and cuffs that are simply priceless, and I +wish you could hear her pronounce 'voile.' Like this--'vwawl.' It isn't +a mouthful; it's a meal. Don't glare, mother. I know I'm vulgar. When +a North Shore customer comes in you say, 'Do let me show you a little +import that came in yesterday. It's too sweet.' All high-priced blouses +are 'little imports.' They're as precious as jewels since the war, of +course. Healy used to be a stock-girl. They say her hair is gray but +she dyes it the most fetching raspberry shade. Her salary is twelve +thousand a year and she could get eighteen at any one of the other big +stores. She stays at Shield's because she thinks it has distinction. +'Class,' she calls it, unless she's talking to a customer or someone +else she's trying to impress. Then she says 'atmosphere.' She supports +her mother and a good for-nothing brother. I like her. Her nails +glitter something grand. She calls me girlie. I wonder if her pearls +are real." + +Lottie listened now, fascinated, amused, and yet wondering, as Charley +gave an account of the meeting of the Ever Upward Club. Charley was +driving with one hand on the steering wheel. She was slumped low down +on her spine. Lottie thought how relaxed she looked and almost babyish, +and yet how vital and how knowing. The Ever Upward Club, she explained, +was made up of the women workers in Shield's. There had been a meeting +of the club this morning, before the store opened at nine. It was the +club's twenty-fifth anniversary. Charley, on the subject, was vitriol. + +"There they sat, in their black dresses and white collars. Some of the +collars weren't so white. I suppose, after a few years, washing out +white collars at night when you get home from work loses its appeal. +First Kiesing made a speech about the meaning of Shield's, and the +loftiness of its aim. I don't know where he got his information but I +gathered that to have the privilege of clerking there makes you one +of the anointed. Kiesing's general manager, you know. Then he brought +forward Mrs. Hough. She's pretty old and her teeth sort of stick out +and her voice is high and what they call querulous, I suppose. Anyway +it never drops at the end of a sentence. She told how she had started +the Ever Upward Club with a membership of only fifteen, and now look +at it. Considering that you have to belong to it, and pay your dues +automatically when you enter the store, I don't see why she feels so +set up about it. But anyway, she does. You'd think she had gone around +converting the heathen to Christianity. She told us in that nasal +rasping voice that it was the spirit of cheer and good-will that made +tasks light. Yes, indeed. And when we got home at night we were to help +our mothers with the dishes in a spirit of cheer and with a right good +will. Then she read one of those terrible vim-and-vigour poems. You +know. Something like this: + + If you think you are beaten, you are. + If you think you dare not, you don't. + If you like to win and don't think you can + It's almost a cinch you won't. + +There was a lot more to it, about Life's battles and the man who wins. +Most of the girls looked half-dead in their chairs. They had been +working over-time for the spring opening. Then a girl sprang to the +platform--she's the club athletic director, a college girl, big, husky, +good-looking brute, too. 'Three rousing cheers for Mrs. Hough! Hip +hip--' We all piped up. And I couldn't think of anything but Oliver +Twist and the beadle--what was his name?--Bumble. Then this girl told +us about the value of games and the Spirit of Play, and how we should +leap and run about--after you've done the dinner dishes with a right +good will, I suppose, having previously walked eleven thousand miles +in your department showing little imports and trying to convince a +woman with a forty-two bust that a thirty-eight blouse is a little +snug.... 'The romance of business.' Ha!" + +"But you like it, don't you Charley?" + +"Yes. Goodness knows why. Certainly I don't want to turn out a Healy, +or a Hough--or even a female Kiesing. Jesse did a poem about it all." + +"A good one?" + +"Good--yes. And terrible. One of his sledge-hammer things. He calls it +'Merchandise.' The girls, of course." + +They stopped at a corner drug store and had ice cream sodas. Charley +was to spend the night at the Prairie Avenue house. She had a brilliant +thought. "Let's bring a chocolate soda home to Aunt Charlotte." They +ordered two in pressed paper cartons and presented them at midnight to +Aunt Charlotte and Jeannette. Jeannette, looking like a rose baby, ate +hers in a semi-trance, her lids weighted with sleep. But great-aunt +Charlotte was wide-awake immediately, as though a midnight chocolate +ice cream soda were her prescribed night-cap. She sipped and blinked +and scraped the bottom of the container with her spoon. Then, with an +appreciative sigh, she lay back on her pillow. + +"What time is it, Lottie?" + +"After midnight. Twelve-twenty." + +"That's nice," said Aunt Charlotte. "Let's have waffles for breakfast." + +The mice were playing. + +It was Lottie's idea that they accomplish the spring house cleaning in +three volcanic days instead of devoting a week or more to it, as was +Mrs. Payson's habit. "Let's all pitch in," she said, "and get it over +with. Then we'll have a week to play in." Mrs. Payson was to remain ten +days at French Lick. + +There followed such an orgy of beating, pounding, flapping, brushing, +swashing, and scrubbing as no corps of able-bodied men could have +survived. The women emerged from it with shrivelled fingers, broken +nails, and aching spines, but the Prairie Avenue house was clean, +even to the backs of the pictures. After it was over Lottie had a +Turkish bath, a manicure, and a shampoo and proclaimed herself socially +accessible. + +Hulda drank coffee happily, all day. Great-aunt Charlotte announced +that she thought she'd have some of the girls in for the afternoon. She +invited a group of ancients whose names sounded like the topmost row +of Chicago's social register. Their sons or grandsons were world-powers +in banking, packing, grain-distribution. Some of them Aunt Charlotte +had not seen in years. They rolled up in great fat black limousines +and rustled in black silks as modish as Aunt Charlotte's own. +Lottie saw to the tea and left them absolutely alone. She heard them +snickering and gossiping in their high plangent voices. They bragged +in a well-bred way about their sons or grandsons or sons-in-law. They +gossiped. They reminisced. + +"And do you remember when the Palmer House barber shop floor was paved +at intervals with silver dollars and the farmers used to come from +miles around to see it?" + +"There hasn't been a real social leader in Chicago since Mrs. Potter +Palmer died." + +"Yes, I know. She's tried. But charm--that's the thing she hasn't got. +No. She thinks her money will do it. Never." + +"Well, it seems----" + +What a good time they were having, Lottie thought. She had set the +table in the dining room. There were spring flowers and candles. She +saw that they were properly served, but effaced herself. She sensed +that her presence would, somehow, mar Aunt Charlotte's complete sense +of freedom, of hospitality, of hostesship. + +They did not leave until six. After they were gone Aunt Charlotte +stepped about the sitting room putting the furniture to rights. She was +tired, but too stimulated to rest. Her cheeks were flushed. + +"Minnie Parnell is beginning to show her age, don't you think? Did you +see the hat Henrietta Grismore wore? Well, I should think, with all her +money! But then, she always was a funny girl. No style." + +When, two days later, Lottie had Emma Barton and Winnie Steppler +to dinner Aunt Charlotte kept her room. She said she felt a little +tired--the spring weather perhaps. She'd have just a bite on a tray if +Jeannette would bring it up to her; and then she'd go to bed. Do her +good. Lottie, understanding, kissed her. + +Lottie and her two friends had one of those long animated talks. Lottie +had lighted a fire in the sitting room fireplace. There were flowers in +the room--jonquils, tulips. The old house was quiet, peaceful. Lottie +made a charming hostess. They laughed a good deal from the very start +when Winnie Steppler had come up the stairs panting apologies for her +new head-gear. + +"Don't say it's too youthful. I know it. I bought it on that fine day +last week--the kind of spring day that makes you go into a shop and buy +a hat that's too young for you." Her cheeks were rosy. When she laughed +she opened her mouth wide and stuck her tongue out so that she reminded +you of the talcum baby picture so familiar to everyone. A woman of +tremendous energy--magnetic, witty, zestful. + +"Fifty's the age!" she announced with gusto, as dinner progressed. "At +fifty you haven't a figger any more than you have legs--except, of +course, for purposes of locomotion. At fifty you can eat and drink what +you like. Chocolate with whipped-cream at four in the afternoon. Who +cares! A second helping of dessert. It's a grand time of life. At fifty +you don't wait for the telephone to ring. Will he call me! Won't he +call me! A telephone's just a telephone at fifty--a convenience without +a thrill to it. Many's the time that bell has stabbed me. But not now. +Nothing more can happen to you at fifty--if you've lived your life as +you should. Here I sit, stays loosened, savouring life. I wouldn't +change places with any young sprat I know." + +Emma Barton smiled, calm-eyed. Winnie Steppler had been twice married, +once widowed, once divorced. Emma Barton had never married. Yet both +knew peace at fifty. + +"Well," said Lottie, as they rose from the table, "perhaps, by the +time I'm fifty--but just now I've such a frightened feeling as though +everything were passing me by; all the things that matter. I want to +grab at life and say, 'Heh, wait a minute! Aren't you forgetting me?'" + +Winnie Steppler glanced at her sharply. "Look out, my girl, that it +doesn't rush back at your call and drop the wrong trick into your lap." + +A little flash of defiance came into Lottie's eyes. "The wrong trick's +better than no trick at all." + +Emma Barton looked at Lottie curiously, with much the same glance that +she bestowed upon the girls who came before her each morning. "What do +you need to keep you happy, Lottie?" + +Lottie did not hesitate a moment. "Work that's congenial; books; music +occasionally; a picnic in the woods; a five-mile hike, a well-fitting +suit, a thirteen-dollar corset, Charley--I didn't mean to place her +last. She should be up at the beginning somewhere." + +"How about this superstition they call love?" inquired Winnie Steppler. +Lottie shrugged her shoulders. Winnie persisted. "There must have been +somebody, some time." + +"Well, when I was seventeen or eighteen--but there never was anything +serious about it, really. Since then--you wouldn't believe how +rarely women of my type meet men--interesting men. You have to make +a point of meeting them, I suppose. And I've been here at home. I'm +thirty-three. Not bad looking. I've kept my figure, and hair, and +skin. Walking, I suppose. The men I know are snuffy bachelors nearing +fifty, or widowers with three children. They'd rather go to a musical +show than a symphony concert; they'll tell you they do enough walking +in their business. I don't mind their being bald--though why should +they be?--but I do mind their being snuffy. I suppose there are men of +about my own age who like the things I like; whose viewpoint is mine. +But attractive men of thirty-five marry girls of twenty. I don't want +to marry a boy of twenty; but neither can I work up any enthusiasm +for a man of fifty who tells me that what he wants is a home, and who +would no more take a tramp in the country for enjoyment than he would +contemplate a trip to Mars." + +Emma Barton interposed. "What were you doing at twenty-five?" + +Lottie glanced around the room. Her hand came out in a little gesture +that included the house and its occupants. "Just what I'm doing now. +But not even thinking about it--as I do now! I think I had an idea I +was important. Now that I look back on it, it seems to me I've just +been running errands for the last ten years or more. Running errands up +and down, while the world has gone by." + +Two days before her mother's return Lottie prevailed upon Jeannette +to invite a half dozen or more of her business college acquaintances +to spend the evening at the house. Jeannette demurred at first, but +it was plain the idea fascinated her. Seven of them arrived at the +time appointed. Their ages ranged between seventeen and twenty-two. +The girls were amazingly well dressed in georgettes and taffetas and +smart slippers and silk stockings. The boys were, for the most part, +of the shipping-clerk type. They were all palpably impressed with the +big old house on Prairie, its massive furniture and pictures, its +occupants. Lottie met them all, as did Aunt Charlotte who had donned +her second-best black silk and her jewelry and had crimped her hair for +the occasion. She sensed that what Jeannette needed was background. +Aunt Charlotte vanished before nine and Lottie did likewise, to appear +again only for the serving of the ice cream and cake. They danced, +sang, seemed really to enjoy the evening. After they had gone Jeannette +turned to Lottie and catching up one of her hands pressed it against +her own glowing cheek. Her eyes were very bright. They--and the +gesture--supplied the meaning that her inarticulate speech lacked. "It +was grand!" + +It was typical of Charley and indicative of the freedom with which she +lived, that her existence during the ten days of her mother's absence +did not vary at all from the usual. She would have been torn between +laughter and fury could she have realised the sense of boldness and +freedom with which Lottie, her aunt, and Charlotte, her great-aunt, +set about planning their innocent maidenly revels. + +Mrs. Payson and Belle returned from French Lick the first week in +May. Mrs. Payson, divesting herself of her wraps, ran a quick and +comprehensive eye over the room, over Lottie, over Aunt Charlotte, +Jeannette, Hulda. It was as though she read Coffee! Tea Party! Dinner! +Dance! in their faces. Her first question seemed to carry with it a +hidden meaning. "Well, what have you been doing while I've been gone? +Did Brosch call up about the plastering? Did you have Henry and Charley +to dinner? Any letters? How many days did you have Mrs. Schlagel for +the cleaning? Lottie, get me a cup of tea. I feel kind of faint--not +hungry, but a faint feeling. Oh--Ben Gartz was in French Lick. Did I +write you? He was very attentive. Very. Every inch the gentleman. I +don't know what Belle and I would have done without him." + + + + + CHAPTER XII + + +For fifteen years Mrs. Carrie Payson's bitterness at the outcome of +her own unfortunate marriage had been unconsciously expressed in +her attitude toward the possible marriage of her daughter Lottie. +Confronted with this accusation, she would have denied it and her +daughter Lottie would have defended her in the denial. Nevertheless, +it was true. During the years when all Mrs. Payson's energy, thought, +and time were devoted to the success of the real estate and bond +business, her influence had been less markedly felt than later. In some +indefinable way the few men who came within Lottie's ken were startled +and repelled by the grim white-haired woman who regarded them with eyes +of cold hostility. One or two of them had said, uncomfortably, in one +of Mrs. Payson's brief absences, "Your mother doesn't like me." + +"What nonsense! Why shouldn't she?" + +"I don't know. She looks at me as if she had something on me." Then +as Lottie stiffened perceptibly, "Oh, I didn't mean that exactly. No +offence, I hope. I just meant----" + +"Mother's like I am. She isn't demonstrative but her likes and dislikes +are very definite." Lottie, remember, was only twenty-three or +thereabouts at this time. Still, she should have known better. + +"You don't say!" the young man would exclaim, thoughtfully. + +Now, suddenly, Mrs. Payson had about-faced. Perhaps this in turn was as +unconscious as her previous attitude had been. Perhaps the thought of +a spinster daughter of thirty-three pricked her vanity. Perhaps she, +like Lottie, had got a sudden glimpse into the future in which she saw +Lottie a second Aunt Charlotte, tremulous and withered, telling out her +days in her sister Belle's household. It was slowly borne in on Lottie +that her mother regarded Ben Gartz favourably as a possible son-in-law. +Her first sensation on making this discovery was one of amusement. Her +mother in the rôle of match-maker wore a humourous aspect, certainly. +As the weeks went on this amusement gave way to something resembling +terror. Mrs. Payson usually achieved her own ends. Lottie had never +defined the relationship that existed between her mother and herself. +She did not suspect that they were united by a strong bond of affection +and hate so complexly interwoven that it was almost impossible to tell +which strand was this and which that. Mrs. Payson did not dream that +she had blocked her daughter's chances for a career or for marital +happiness. Neither did she know that she looked down upon that daughter +for having failed to marry. But both were true in some nightmarish and +indefinable way. Mrs. Carrie Payson, the coarser metal, had beat upon +Lottie, the finer, and had moulded and shaped her as iron beats upon +gold. + +Lottie was still in the amused stage when Mrs. Payson remarked: + +"I understand that Ben Gartz is going into that business he spoke +of last spring. Men's wrist watches. We all thought he was making a +mistake but it seems he's right. He's going in with Beck and Diblee +this fall. I shouldn't wonder if Ben Gartz should turn out to be a very +rich man some day. A ve-ry rich man. Especially if this war----" + +"That'll be nice," said Lottie. + +"I wish Henry had some of his push and enterprise." + +Lottie looked up quickly at that, prompt in defense of Henry. "Henry +isn't to blame for the war. His business was successful enough until +two years ago--more than successful. It just happens to be the kind +that has been hardest hit." + +"Why doesn't he take up a new business, then! Ben Gartz is going into +something new." + +"Ben's mother left him a little money when she died. I suppose he's +putting that into the new business. Besides, he hasn't a family to +think of. He can take a chance. If it doesn't turn out he'll be the +only one to suffer." + +"Ben Gartz is an unusual boy." (Boy!) "He was a wonderful son to his +mother.... I'd like to know what you have against him." + +"Against him! Why, not a thing, mama. Only----" + +Lottie hesitated. Then, regrettably, she giggled. "Only he has never +heard of Alice in Wonderland, and he thinks the Japs are a wonderful +little people but look out for 'em!, and he speaks of summer as the +heated term, and he says 'not an iota.'" + +"Not an iota!" echoed Mrs. Payson almost feebly. + +"Yes. You know--'not an iota of truth in it'; 'not an iota of +difference.'" + +"Lottie Payson, sometimes I think you're downright idiotic! Alice in +Wonderland! The idea! Woman your age! Ben Gartz is a business man." + +"Indeed he is--strictly." + +"I suppose you'd prefer going around with some young fool like this +poet Charley has picked up from behind the delicatessen counter. I +don't know what your sister Belle can be thinking of." + +Sister Belle was thinking of a number of things, none of them pleasant; +and none of them connected with Charley or Charley's poet. Henry Kemp +had sold the car--the big, luxurious, swift-moving car. He had hinted +that the nine-room apartment on Hyde Park Boulevard might soon be +beyond his means. + +"If this keeps up much longer," he had said one day to Charley, "your +old dad will be asking you for a job as bundle boy at Shield's." His +laugh, as he said it, had been none too robust. + +Charley had been promoted from stock-girl to saleswoman. She said she +supposed now she'd have to save up for black satin slippers, a French +frock, a string of pearls, and filet collars and cuffs--the working +girl's costume. She announced, further, that her education had reached +a point where any blouse not hand made and bearing a thirty-nine dollar +price tag was a mere rag in her opinion. + +Charley's Saturday afternoons and Sundays were spent in the country +about Chicago--at the Indiana sand dunes; at Palos Park when May +transformed its trees into puff-balls of apple blossoms; in the woods +about Beverly; along the far North Shore. Both she and Lottie were +hardened trampers. Lottie was expert at what she called "cooking out." +She could build a three-section fire with incredibly little fuel and +only one match. Just as you were becoming properly ravenous she had +the coffee steaming in one section, the bacon sizzling in another, +the sausages boiling in another. Now that the Kemp car was gone these +country excursions became fewer for Lottie. She missed them. The +electric was impossible for country travel. It often expired even on +the boulevards and had to be towed back to the garage. Charley said +that Jesse Dick's flivver saved her life and youth these spring days. +Together they ranged the countryside in it, a slim volume of poetry +(not his own) in Jesse Dick's pocket and a plump packet of sandwiches +and fruit in a corner of the seat. You were beginning to see reviews of +Jesse Dicks' poems in _The Dial_, in the _New Republic_, in +the weekly literary supplements of the newspapers. They spoke of his +work as being "virile and American." They said it had a "warm human +quality." He sang everyday life--the grain-pit, the stockyards, the +steel mill, the street corner, the movies. Some of the reviews said, +"But this isn't poetry!" Perhaps they had just been reading the thing +he called "Halsted Street." You know it: + + Halsted street. All the nations of the world. + Mill end sales; _shlag_ stores; Polack women gossiping. + Look at the picture of the bride in her borrowed wedding dress + Outside the Italian photograph gallery---- + +Perhaps they were right. + +Still, while he did not write spring poetry of the May-day variety it +is certain that not a peach-pink petal on a wild-crab tree blossoming +by the roadway bloomed in vain as Jesse and Charley passed by. Not +that they were rhapsodic about it. These two belonged to the new order +to whom lyricism was loathsome, adjective anathema. Fine and moving +things were received with a trite or even an uncouth word or phrase. +After a Brahms symphony you said, "Gee!" It was considered "hickey" or +ostentatious to speak of a thing as being exquisite or wonderful. They +even revived that humourously vulgar and practically obsolete word, +"swell." A green and gold and pink May-day landscape was "elegant." +Struck by the beauty of a scene, the majesty of a written passage, the +magnificence of the lake in a storm, the glory of an orchard in full +bloom, they used the crude and rustic "Gosh!" This only when deeply +stirred. + +Late in May, Ben Gartz bought a car of unimpressive make but florid +complexion. He referred to it always as "the bus." As soon as he had +mastered it he drove round to the Paysons' and proposed a Sunday +morning ride to Lottie. + +"Go on, Lottie," Mrs. Payson said, "it'll do you good." + +The devil of perversity seized Lottie. "I hate driving in town. I've +trundled that electric of ours over these fifty miles--or is it one +hundred?--of boulevards until I could follow the route blindfolded. +Jackson Park to the Midway--the Midway to Washington Park--Washington +to Garfield--Garfield----" + +"Well, then, how about a drive in the country? Anywhere you say, Miss +Lottie. The little old bus is yours to command." + +"All right," said Lottie. "Let's take Charley." + +"Fine!" Ben's tone was sufficiently hearty, if somewhat hollow. "Great +little kid, Charley. What do you say to having lunch at one of those +road-houses along the way? Chicken dinner." + +"Oh, no! Let's cook out." Ben, looking dubious, regarded the end of his +cigar. But Lottie was already on her way to the kitchen. He clapped on +his derby hat and went out to look over the bus. Aside from keeping +it supplied with oil and gasoline its insides were as complete a +mystery to him as the workings of the solar system. Lottie, flushed and +animated, was slicing bacon, cutting sandwiches, measuring out coffee. +She loved a day in the country, Ben or no Ben. They telephoned Charley. +She said, "Can I take Jesse? His fliv's got something the matter with +its insides. We had planned to go to Thornton." + +"Sure," Ben agreed again when Lottie put this to him. On the way to +the Kemp apartment they stopped at a delicatessen and bought cream, +fruit, wieners, cheese, salad. As she stepped out of the car Lottie +saw that the fat gold letters on the window spelled "DICK'S +DELICATESSEN--AND BAKERY." She was conscious of a little shock. +Immediately she was ashamed that this should be so. Dick's delicatessen +was white-tiled, immaculate, smelling of things spiced and fruity and +pickled. A chubby florid man with a shock of curly rust-red hair waited +on her. He was affable, good-natured. + +"Going on a picnic, h'm?" he said. He gave her good measure--too good +for his own profit, Lottie thought. She glanced about for the wife. She +must be the business man of this concern. Mrs. Dick was not there. + +"Are you Mr. Dick?" Lottie asked. + +"Yes _ma'am_! I sure am." He began to total the sales, +using the white marble counter as a tablet for his pencil. +"Cheese--wieners--tongue--pickles--cream--that'll be one dollar and +forty-three cents. If you bring back the cream bottle with this ticket +you get five cents refund." + +She thought of the slim and exquisite Charley; of Belle, the +fastidious. "Oh, pooh!" she said to herself as she went out to the +car with Ben, bundle-laden, "she's only a kid. A temporary case on a +near-poet, that's all." + +When they reached the Hyde Park apartment Charley and the poet were +seated on the outer steps in the sun. The poet wore becoming shabby +gray tweeds, a soft shirt and no hat. Lottie admitted to herself that +he looked charming--even distinguished. + +"Don't you own one?" she asked. He quirked one eyebrow. "A hat, I mean." + +"Oh." He glanced at Ben's derby. Then he took from one capacious pocket +a soft cloth cap and put it on. He glanced then at his hands, affecting +great embarrassment. "My gloves!--stick!" He glanced frantically up and +down the street. "My spats!" + +The three laughed. Ben joined in a little late, and evidently +bewildered. + +Charley presented her contribution to the picnic lunch. Gussie had +baked a caramel cake the day before. Sweaters, boxes, coats, baskets, +bundles--they were off. + +They headed for Palos Park. Hideous as is the countryside about Chicago +in most directions, this spot to the southwest is a thing of loveliness +in May and in October. Gently sloping hills relieve the flat monotony +of the Illinois prairie landscape. The green of the fields and trees +was so tender as to carry with it a suggestion of gold. Jesse and +Charley occupied the back seat. Lottie sat in front with Ben Gartz. He +drove badly, especially on the hills. The two in the back seat politely +refrained from comment or criticism. But on the last steep hill +the protesting knock of the tortured engine wrung interference from +Charley. To her an engine was a precious thing. She could no more have +mistreated it than she could have kicked a baby. "Shift to second!" she +cried now, in actual pain. "Can't you hear her knocking!" + +They struck camp on a wooded knoll a little ways back from the road and +with a view of the countryside for miles around. Ben Gartz presented +that most pathetic and incongruous of human spectacles--a fat man, in a +derby, at a picnic. + +He made himself useful, gathered wood, produced matches, carried water, +arranged seats made up of cushions and robes from the car and was not +at all offended when the others expressed a preference for the ground. + +"Say, this is great!" he exclaimed, again and again, "Yessir! Nothing +like getting away from the city, let me tell you, into God's big +outdoors." The three smiled at what they took to be an unexpected burst +of humour and were startled to see that he was quite serious. Ben +tucked a napkin under his vest and played the waiter. He praised the +wieners, the coffee, the bacon, the salad. He ate prodigiously, and +smiled genially on Lottie and winked an eye in her direction at the +same time nodding toward Charley and Jesse to indicate that he was a +party to some very special secret that Lottie shared with him. He sat +cross-legged on the ground and suffered. When the luncheon was finished +he fell upon his cigar with almost a groan of relief. + +"Have a cigar, sir?" He proffered a plump brown cylinder to Jesse Dick. + +"No thanks," Jesse replied; and took from his own pocket a paper packet. + +"A cigarette boy, eh? Well, let me tell you something, youngster. A +hundred of those'll do you more harm than a barrel of these. Yessir! +You take a fella smokes a mild cigar after his meal, why, when he's +through with that cigar he's through--for awhile, anyway. He don't +light another right away. But start to smoke a cigarette and first +thing you know where's the package!" + +Jesse appeared to consider this gravely. Ben Gartz leaned back +supported by one hand, palm down, on the ground. His left was hooked in +the arm-hole of his vest. One leg was extended stiffly in front of him, +the other drawn up. He puffed at his cigar. + +Lottie rose abruptly. "I'll clear these things away." She smiled at +Jesse and Charley. "You two children go for a walk. I know you're dying +to. I'll have everything slicked up in a jiffy." + +"Oh, I think not," the two answered. They knew what was sporting and +rigidly followed certain forms of conduct. Having eaten, they expected +to pay. They scraped, cleared, folded, packed with the deftness of +practiced picnickers. Jesse Dick's eye was caught by the name on the +cover of a discarded pasteboard box. + +"Oh, say! You got this stuff at father's." + +"Yes; we stopped on the way----" + +The boy tapped the cover of the box and grinned. "Best delicatessen +in Chicago, Illinois, ladies and gents, if I say it as shouldn't. +Dad certainly pickles a mean herring." His face sobered. "He's an +artist in his line--father. Did you ever see one of his Saturday night +windows? He'll have a great rugged mountain of Swiss cheese in the +background, with foothills of Roquefort and Edam. Then there'll be a +plateau of brown crackly roasted turkeys and chickens, and below this, +like flowers in the valley, all the pimento and mayonnaise things, the +salads, and lettuces and deviled eggs and stuffed tomatoes." (His poem +"Delicatessen Window" is now included in the volume called "Roughneck.") + +"I understand you're a poet," Ben Gartz remarked, quizzically. For him +there was humour in the very word. + +"Yes." + +"Now that's funny, ain't it--with your father in the delicatessen +business and all?" + +Again Jesse Dick seemed to ponder seriously. "Maybe it is. But I know +of quite a good poet who was apprenticed to a butcher." + +"Butcher! No!" Ben roared genially. "What poet was that?" + +Jesse Dick glanced at Charley then. He looked a little shame-faced; and +yet, having begun, he went through with it. "Shakespeare, his name was. +Will Shakespeare." + +"Oh, say, what's this you're giving me!" But the faces of the three +were serious. "Say, is that right?" He appealed to Lottie. + +"It's supposed to be true," she said, gently, "though it has been +doubted." Lottie had brought along the olive-drab knitting in a little +flowered cretonne bag. She sat on the ground now, in the sunlight, her +back against a tree, knitting. + +Jesse and Charley rose, wordlessly, as though with one thought and +glanced across the little meadow beyond. It was a Persian carpet of +spring flowers--little pink, and mauve, and yellow chalices. Charley +gazed at it a moment, her head thrown back. She began to walk toward +it, through the wood. Jesse stopped to light a cigarette. His eyes were +on Charley. He called out to her. "See your whole leg through that +dress of yours, Charley." + +She glanced down carelessly. "Yes? That's because I'm standing in the +sun, I suppose." It was a slim little wool jersey frock. "I never wear +a petticoat with this." They strolled off together across the meadow. + +"Well!" exploded Ben Gartz, "that young fella certainly is a free +talker." He looked after them, his face red. "Young folks nowdays----" + +"Young folks nowdays are wonderful," Lottie said. She remembered an +expression she had heard somewhere. "They're sitting on top of the +world." + +Out on the flower-strewn carpet of meadow-grass Charley was doing a +dance in the sunlight all alone--a dance that looked like an inspired +improvisation and that probably represented hours of careful technical +training. If a wood-nymph had ever worn a wool jersey frock she would +have looked as Charley looked now. Ben, almost grudgingly, admitted +something like this. "Gosh, that kid certainly can dance! Where'd she +pick it up?" + +"She's had years of training--lessons. Boys and girls do nowdays, you +know. They have everything. We never used to. I wish we had. If their +teeth aren't perfect they're straightened. Everything's made perfect +that's imperfect. And they're taught about music, and they know books, +and they look the world in the eye. They're free!" + +Ben dug in the soft ground with a bit of wood. "How d'you mean--free?" + +"Why I mean--free," she said again, lamely. "Honest. Not afraid." + +"Afraid of what?" + +She shook her head then, and went on with her knitting. Lottie looked +very peaceful and pleasant there in the little sun-dappled wood, with +the light shining on her hair, her firm strong shoulders resting +against the black trunk of the tree, her slim black-silk ankles crossed +primly. Ben regarded her appreciatively. + +"Well, you're perfect enough to suit me," he blurted. + +"Oh, Mr. Gartz, sir! You're a-flattering of me, so you are!" Inside she +was thinking, "Oh, my goodness, stop him!" + +But Ben himself was a little terrified at what he had said. After all, +the men's watch bracelet business was still in the venturesome stage. + +"Well, I'm not a man to flatter. I mean we're not so bad off, older +folks like us. I'm not envying those kids anything. I guess I'm a kind +of a funny fella, anyway. Different from most." + +"Do you think so?" Lottie encouraged him, knitting. ("You're exactly +like a million others--a million billion others.") + +"I think so--yes. I've been around a good deal. I've had my ups and +downs. I know this little old world from the cellar to the attic, and +I don't envy anybody anything." + +Lottie smiled a little, and looked at him, and wondered. How smug he +was, and oily, and plausible. What seepage was there beneath the placid +surface of his dull conversation. Adventure! No, not adventure. Yet +this kindly paunchy bachelor knew phases of life that she had never +even approached. + +"What do you mean when you say you've been around? Around where?" + +"Oh, around. You know what I mean. Men--well, a nice girl like +you wouldn't just understand how it is with a man, but I mean I +been--uh--now--subject to the same temptations other men have. But I +know there's nothing in it. Give me a nice little place of my own, my +own household, a little bus to run around in and I wouldn't change +places with a king. No sir. Nor a poet either." He laughed largely at +that, and glanced across the meadow. "I don't know. I guess I'm a funny +fella. Different. That's me. Different." + +Barren as Lottie's experience with men had been she still knew, as +does any woman, that there are certain invariable reactions to certain +given statements. These were scientific in their chemical precision. +In conversation with the average man you said certain things and +immediately got certain results. It was like fishing in a lively trout +stream. This dialogue, for example, she or any other woman could have +written before it had been spoken. She felt that she could see what was +going on inside his head as plainly as though its working were charted. +She thought: "He has his mind made up to propose to me but caution +tells him to wait. He isn't quite sure of his business yet. He'd really +prefer a younger woman but he has told himself that that's foolishness. +The thing to do is to settle down. He thinks I'm not bad looking. He +isn't crazy about me at all, but he thinks he could work himself up +to a pretty good state of enthusiasm. He didn't have what they call +his 'fling' in his youth; and he secretly regrets it. If I wanted to I +could make him forget his caution and ask me to marry him right now." + +He was talking. "I haven't said much about this new business I'm going +into. I'm not a fella that talks much. Go ahead and do it, I always +say, and then you don't have to talk. What you've done'll talk for you. +Yessir!" + +Lottie looked at him--at his blunt square hands and the big spatulate +thumbs--the little pouches under his eyes--at the thinning hair that +he allowed to grow long at the sides so that he could plaster it over +the crown, deceiving no one. And she thought, "This is a kind man. What +they call a good provider. Generous. Decent, as men go. On the way to +fairly certain business success. He'll make what is known as a good +husband. You're not so much, Lottie. You're an old girl, with no money; +nothing much to look at. Who are you to turn up your nose at him! +You're probably a fool to do it----" + +"--not an iota of difference to me what other people say or do. I do +what I think's right and that's all anybody can do, isn't that true?" +He was laboriously following some dull thought of his own. + +Lottie jumped up quickly--leapt up, almost, so that the knitting +bounded toward him, startled him, as did her sudden movement. "I'm +going to get the infants," she said, hurriedly. "It's time we +were starting back." Even as he stared up at her she was off. She +ran through the little wood, down the knoll full pelt, across the +field, her sturdy legs flashing beneath her short skirt, her arms +out-stretched. Halfway across the flower-strewn meadow she called to +Jesse and Charley. They stood up. Something of her feeling communicated +itself to them. They sensed her protest. They ran to meet her, +laughing; laughing, they met, joined hands, circled round and round, +straining away from each other at arm's length like three mad things +there in the May meadow until with a final shout and whoop and +high-flung step they dropped panting to the ground. + +Lottie, still breathing fast, was the first to rise. "I had to," she +explained, "or bust." + +"Sure," said the poet and Charley, together. Charley continued. "Lotta, +I'll sit in the front seat going home. You and Jesse can get chummy in +the back----" + +"Oh, no--" But when they were ready to go it had, somehow, arranged +itself in that way. Charley invariably gained her own end thus. "Will +you let me drive part of the way, Mr. Gartz? Please!" + +He shook a worried head. "Why, say, I'd like to, Miss Charley, but I'm +afraid you don't understand this little ol' bus of mine. I'm afraid I'd +be nervous with anybody else running it. You'd better just let me----" + +But in the end it was Charley's slim strong hands that guided the +wheel. Ben Gartz sat beside her, tense, watchful, working brakes that +were not there. Under the girl's expert guidance the car took the +hills like a hawk, swooped, flew, purred. "Say, you better slow down a +little," Ben cautioned her again and again. Then, grudgingly, glancing +sideways at her lovely young profile, vivid, electric, laughing, +"You're _some_ driver, kid!" + +Lottie, in the back seat, was being charmed by Jesse Dick. She felt +as if she had known him for years. He talked little--that is, he +would express himself with tremendous enthusiasm on a topic so that +you caught the spark of his warmth. Then he would fall silent and his +silence was a glowing thing. He sat slumped down on the middle of his +spine in a corner of the seat. He rarely glanced at Charley. His eyes +flattered Lottie. She found herself being witty and a little hard. She +thought now: "Here's one that's different enough. And I haven't an idea +of what's going on in _his_ handsome head. Not an idea. Not--" she +giggled a little and Jesse Dick was so companionable that he did not +even ask her what she was laughing at--"not an iota of an idea." + +In August Lottie accompanied her mother and Aunt Charlotte up to +one of the Michigan lake resorts. They went there every summer. The +food was good, the air superb, the people typical of any Michigan +first-class resort. Jeannette had gone to spend ten days in a girls' +camp in Wisconsin. She had a job promised for September. The Paysons +had a three-room cottage near the hotel and under the hotel's +management; took their meals in the hotel dining room. The cottage +boasted a vine-covered porch and a tiny garden. The days were not half +bad. Mrs. Payson played bridge occasionally. Aunt Charlotte rocked +and knitted and watched the young girls in their gay sweaters and +flat-heeled white shoes and smart loud skirts. Lottie even played +golf occasionally, when her mother and Aunt Charlotte were napping or +resting, or safely disposed of on their own cottage porch or hotel +veranda. There were few men during the week. On Fridays husbands and +fiancés swarmed down on train and boat for the week-end. On Saturday +night there was a dance. Lottie, sitting on the porch of their little +cottage, could hear the music. Her mother and Aunt Charlotte were +always in bed by ten-thirty, at the latest. Often it was an hour +earlier than that. The evenings were terrible beyond words. Long, +black, velvety nights during which she sat alone on the little porch +guarding the two sleeping occupants of the cottage; staring out into +the darkness. The crickets cheeped and chirped. A young girl's laugh +rang out from the hotel veranda beyond. A man's voice sounded, low, +resonant, as two quiet figures wound their way along one of the little +paths that led down to the water. A blundering moth bumped its head +against the screen door. A little group of hotel kitchen-girls and +dish-washers skirted the back of the cottage on their way to their +quarters, talking gutturally. The evenings were terrible beyond words. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII + + +It was Lottie Payson's last August of that sort. When next August +came round there she was folding gauze, rolling bandages, stitching +pneumonia jackets with the rest of them at the Michigan Avenue Red +Cross shop and thinking to herself that the conversation of the women +busy about the long tables or at the machines was startlingly like +that of the old Reading Club. The Reading Club was, in fact, there +almost in its entirety. The Girls' faces, framed in the white linen +folds of their Red Cross coifs, looked strangely purified and aloof. +Beck Schaefer alone wore her cap with a certain diablerie. She was +captain of her section and her official coif was scarlet. She looked +like Carmen strayed into a nunnery. A strange new spirit had come upon +Chicago that summer. People talked high, and worked hard, prayed a +good deal, gave their money away liberally and did not go to northern +Michigan to escape the heat. Lottie sewed at the Red Cross shop three +days every week. Even Mrs. Carrie Payson seemed to realize that driving +about the parks and boulevards on summer afternoons was not quite the +thing. When autumn came she was selling Liberty Bonds in the sure-fire +manner of a professional. As for great-aunt Charlotte--the hand that +had sewed and folded and stitched during the four years of the '60s +and that had fashioned the prize-winning patchwork silk quilt in the +'70s had not lost its cunning. She knitted with a speed and perfection +nothing short of miraculous, turning out a sweater in three days, a +pair of socks in two. The dip, bite, and recovery of her needles was +machine-like in its regularity. She folded and rolled bandages as +well, having enrolled in a Red Cross shop established in the parlours +of a near-by hotel. Even Jeannette had been caught by the spirit of +the new order. Her wage as stenographer was a queenly sum these days; +and while she could not resist silk stockings, new hats, expensive +blouses, and gloves, and talked of a fur coat for the coming winter +(every self-respecting stenographer boasted one by December) she still +had enough left to contribute freely to every drive, fund, association, +and relief committee connected with the war. She had long ago paid back +the hundred dollars to that Otto who had been whisked away in the first +draft. Even Hulda in the kitchen had deserted her yards of crochet for +a hank of wool. Henry Kemp worked nights as a member of the district +draft board. Charley danced in benefits all the way from Lake Forest +to South Chicago, and enrolled as Emergency Driver for Sunday work. +Alone, of all the family, Belle remained aloof. True, she knitted now +and then, languidly. But the Red Cross sewing gave her a headache, she +said; the excitement affected her digestive disorder. She was anti-war, +anti-draft, anti-Wilson. + +And Ben Gartz thrived. If anyone had ever doubted Ben Gartz's business +foresight that person was forever silenced now. On every martial male +left arm--rookie or general, gob or admiral--reposed a wrist watch. +And now when Ben Gartz offered Henry a plump brown cylinder with the +customary "Have a cigar!" Henry took it reluctantly, if reverently, +eyed its scarlet and gold belly-band with appreciation, and knew better +than to proffer one of his own inferior brand in return. "I'll smoke +it after dinner," he would say, and tuck it away in his vest pocket. +Henry Kemp had aged in the last year. His business was keeping its head +barely above water with the makeshift of American manufactured products. + +It had been during the winter before the war--February, 1917--that +Charley Kemp had announced one evening to her father and mother that +she intended to marry Jesse Dick when she was twenty. That would be in +June. He had got a job as feature writer with the Chicago News Bureau +and he was acting as motion picture critic for one of the afternoon +papers. His comment was caustic but highly readable. His writing in +this new field was characterised by the same crude force that made his +poetry a living thing. + +"Well, was I right or wasn't I?" demanded Mrs. Payson of her daughter +Belle. "Talking about her five children like a--like a hussy!" + +"Hussies don't have five children," Belle retorted, meaninglessly. + +Mrs. Payson endeavoured to arouse her daughter to the necessity for +immediate action against this proposed madness of Charley's. "You've +got to stop it, that's all." + +"Stop it how?" + +"How! By forbidding it, that's how." + +Belle could even smile at that. "Oh, mother, aren't you quaint! +Nowadays parents don't forbid girls marrying this man or that, +any more than they lock them up in a high tower like the princess +What's-her-name in the fairy tale." + +"You let me talk to her," said Mrs. Carrie Payson. "I'll do a little +plain speaking." + +Her plain speaking consisted in calling Jesse Dick a butcher's boy and +a good-for-nothing scribbler who couldn't earn a living. Charley heard +her out, a steely light in her eyes. + +She spoke quietly and with deadly effect. "You're my grandmother, but +that doesn't entitle you to talk to me with the disrespect you've just +shown." + +"Disrespect! To you! Well, upon my word!" + +"Yes, I know it strikes you as extraordinary. If it had been written +'Honor thy sons and thy daughters' along with 'Honor Thy Father and +Thy Mother' there'd have been a lot less trouble in the world. You +never did respect your own people--your own family. You've never shown +respect to Lottie or to mother, or to father or to Aunt Charlotte, for +that matter. So why should I expect you to respect me. I'm marrying +Jesse Dick because he's the man I want to marry. I may be making a +mistake but if I am I'm willing to pay for it. At least I'll have only +myself to reproach." + +"You children to-day think you know everything, but you don't. You +wait. You'll see. I know." + +"No you don't. You didn't know when you married. You thought you +were making a good match and your husband turned out to be a +good-for-nothing rogue. I'm sorry to hurt you but you make me do it. +If I'm wrong I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I went into it with +my eyes open. I know all Jesse Dick's weaknesses and I love them. Five +years from now he'll be a famous American poet--if not the most famous. +I know just what he needs. He needs me, for one thing. In time he may +go off with other women----" + +"Charley Kemp how can you sit there and talk like that!" + +"--but he'll come back to me. I know. I'll keep on with my job at +Shields'. In two or three years I'll be making a very respectable +number of thousands a year." + +"And in the meantime you'll live where, may I ask? Your father's in +no position, goodness knows, to have a poet son-in-law dumped on his +hands. Unless you're planning to live in the rear of the delicatessen, +perhaps." + +"We've got a three-room cottage in Hubbard Woods. Some time, when +you're feeling stronger, I'd like to have you see it. It belongs to +Dorn, the landscape painter. He built it when Hubbard Woods was a +wilderness. It's got a fireplace that doesn't draw and a sink that +doesn't drain and windows that don't fit. It's right on the edge of the +big ravine and the very thought of it makes me happy all over. And now +I'm going to kiss you, grandma, which I think is awfully sweet of me, +all things considered, you dear mistaken old-fashioned darling." Which +she did, on the tip of Mrs. Payson's nose. + +At the word "old-fashioned" Mrs. Carrie Payson had bristled; then, +inexplicably, had slumped without voicing a word in her own defense. +She seemed momentarily uncertain, bewildered almost. Still, she did +allow herself a last javelin. "'In five years he'll be a famous poet.' +That's a sensible reason for marrying a man! Huh!" + +"But that's not my reason," Charley explained with charming good +humour, "any more than because his hair is sort of red in lights, or +his ears a little pointed, or his hands slim and brown or his ties +always terrible." + +"What is your reason?" snapped Mrs. Payson. But an honest curiosity +lighted her eye. + +"The same thing strikes us funny at the same time. We like the same +kind of book though we may disagree about it. We like to be outdoors a +lot, and we understand each other's language and we're not sentimental +and we don't snarl if food is delayed and we don't demand explanations, +and any one of those reasons would make marriage between two people a +reasonably safe bet." + +Mrs. Payson forced herself to a tremendous effort. "You haven't even +said you're----" she gulped--"you're----" with a rush--"in love with +him." + +"I haven't said anything else." + + * * * * * + +But next June, when she was twenty, Charley was saying, "But a man who +won't fight----!" + +"I haven't said I won't fight. I said I wouldn't enlist, and I won't. I +hate war. It's against every principle I've got. If I'm drafted I'll +go into the damn thing as a private and if I find that shooting a gun +or jabbing a bayonet into another fellow's guts is going to stop his +doing the same to me I'll shoot and jab. I don't pretend to be fired +with the martial spirit simply because a European nation, grown too big +for its clothes, tried to grab off a new lot and failed in the first +attempt." + +"I believe you're afraid." + +"Of course I'm afraid. Any man who says he isn't lies. I hate living in +filth and mud and lice and getting an eye shot out. But that isn't my +reason for not going, and you know it. I won't voluntarily further this +thing." + +Charley did know it. She knew, too, that the instinct that made her +want to send her man to war was a thing of low derivation yet terribly +human. She did not say, definitely. "I can't marry a man who feels +as you do." It was the first time in her life that she had lacked +the courage to say definitely the thing she thought. But the family +realised that the June wedding was no longer a thing to be combated. +June came and went. The Hyde Park Boulevard apartment had not known the +young poet for a month. + +Jesse Dick was called in the first draft. Charley kept doggedly at +her work all summer, riding back and forth in the dirt and cinders +of the I. C. trains. It was a summer of intense heat. Daily Charley +threatened to appear at Shields' in her bathing suit or in one of the +Greekest of her dancing costumes. But it was surprising to see how +roselike she could look as she emerged after dinner in a last year's +organdie. Everyone was dancing. Sometimes Charley went to the Midway +Garden at the entrance to Washington Park or over to the old Bismarck +(now known as the Marigold Gardens) there to dance and dine outdoors +in the moonlight. Always she was squired by a dashing blue-and-gold +or white duck uniform from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, or +olive-drab and shiny tan boots from Fort Sheridan. + +Jesse Dick came home just before he sailed for France. He wore an +issue uniform which would have rendered grotesque a Captain Jinks +or a D'Artagnan. The sleeves were too short; the collar too large; +the jacket too brief. Spiral puttees wrapped his slim shanks. Army +brogans--yellow--were on his feet. + +Bairnsfather's drawings had already achieved a popularity in America. +Charley hung between laughter and tears when Jesse struck a pose and +said, "Alf." + +They drove to the Marigold Gardens on the North Side. Jesse had not +sold his little flivver. The place was a fairyland of lights, music, +flower-banked terraces. Hundreds were dining outdoors under the +moonlight, the women in pale-coloured organdies and chiffons, the men +in Palm Beach suits or in uniforms. No where else in America could one +find just this sort of thing--nor, for that matter, in Europe even in +the days before the war. In a city constantly referred to as crude, +commercial, and unlovely there flourished two garden spots unique, +exquisite and unproclaimed. + +Jesse ordered a dinner that brought a look of wonder to the face of the +waiter (Swiss, of course) who had gauged his prospective order after +one glance at the ill-fitting issue uniform. + +"Dance?" said Jesse. + +"Yes." They danced, wordlessly. They danced before and after the hors +d'œuvres, the fowl, the salad, the dessert, the coffee. They talked +little. The boy glanced about with cold wise young eyes. "God!" + +"Yes, I know," Charley said, as if in answer to a long speech, "but +after all what good would it do if they all stayed home! They're +probably all doing their share. They hate it as much as you do. Moping +won't help." + +"Dance?" + +"Yes." + +They rose and wound their way among the little green tables to the +dancing platform. Charley raised her eyes to his as they danced. "Will +you marry me to-morrow, Jesse? Before you go?" + +"No." + +"Why not?" + +"That's all right for truck drivers and for sloppy emotionalists. But +it's a poor plan. You're only suggesting it because of the music and +my nearness and the fact that I'm leaving day after to-morrow. I'm no +different than I was three months ago. I hate war as much as I ever +did. If you think three months of camp training----" + +"Will you marry me to-morrow, Jesse?" + +"No." + +"I'm afraid, Jesse." + +"So am I. But not as scared as that." His cheek rested against hers. +Her fingers clutched tight a fold of the bunchy cloth of his rough +uniform. She could not bring herself to name the fear she felt. All the +way home she pressed close to the rough sleeve--the good tangible rough +cloth of the sleeve--and the muscle-hard arm within it. + +Hyde Park is cut through by the Illinois Central tracks. All that +summer and autumn and winter Charley would start up in her sleep at the +sound of high shrill voices like the voices of children. Lottie Payson +heard them, too, at night in the old house on Prairie and could not +sleep again. The Illinois Central and Michigan Central trains were +bringing boys to the training camps, or from the training camps to the +points of embarkation. They were boys from Illinois farms, Wisconsin +towns, Minnesota and Michigan villages. "Yee-ow!" they yelled as +their trains passed through the great sleeping city. "Whoo-ee! Yip!" +Keeping their courage up. Yelling defiance at a world gone mad. All +that summer you heard them, and through the autumn and winter, and the +next spring and summer and autumn. High young voices they were, almost +like the voices of children. "Berlin or Bust" was scrawled in chalk on +the outside of their cars--scrawled by some raw youth from Two Rivers, +Wisconsin, who was going to camp and to war in a baseball cap and his +Sunday pants and a red sweater. + +Charley would pull the covers over her head and cover her ears with her +hands until the last yip had died away. But Lottie would sit up in bed, +her head thrown back, listening--listening as if they were calling to +her. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV + + +One Saturday morning Lottie, just returned from marketing with her +mother, answered the telephone and recognised with difficulty Beck +Schaefer's voice, high-pitched and hysterical as it was. + +"Lot, is this you?" + +"Yes." + +"Lot--Lot--listen. Listen!" + +"I'm listening." + +"Lot, listen. You know I've always liked you better than any of the +other girls, don't you? You're so sincere--so sincere and fair and +everything. You know that, don't you, Lot?" + +"What's the matter," parried Lottie. + +"Oh, Lot darling, Sam Butler and I--Sam--you know--Sam and I, we're----" + +"Not!" + +"Yes! Oh, Lottie, isn't it wonderful! This afternoon. Don't breathe it. +I'm scared to death. Will you be my bridesmaid? Lottie _dear_. +Sam goes to Camp Funston to-morrow. He's got a captaincy you know. I'm +going with him. We're to live in a shack with a tin roof and they say +it's hotter than hell down there in the summer and, oh, Lottie, I'm so +happy! We're to be married at the parsonage--Dr. Little. Mother doesn't +know a thing about it. Neither does Sam's mother. Sam's going to tell +his mother's companion after it's all over this afternoon, and then +we'll go up there. I hate to think.... Mama said she wanted to go to +California again this fall because it was going to be so uncomfortable +here this winter, and Lottie, when she said that something in me just +went kind of crazy.... Can you hear me? I don't want to talk any +louder.... I called up Sam and began to cry and we met downtown and +we decided to get married right away ... goodness knows I don't +deserve ... and oh, Lottie, I feel so _religious_! You'll come, won't +you? Won't you!" + +Lottie came. + +Beck had taken a room at the Blackstone Hotel and there she had packed, +written letters, dressed for her wedding. Lottie joined her there. Beck +had lost her telephone hysteria and was fairly calm and markedly pale. +She wore a taffeta frock and a small blue hat and none of her jewelry. +"I haven't even got an engagement ring," she said almost in triumph to +Lottie. "We didn't have time. Sam's going to buy it now--or after we're +married. I spent the whole morning on Michigan Avenue, shopping. Look." + +"How's the Camp Funston laundress going to handle that, Beck dear?" + +"I don't care. I wanted it nice. I've waited so long. But I'd have +been willing to go away with one shirtwaist and a knitted union suit, +honestly I would. It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I got +back here at twelve and had a bath and a bite of lunch and I packed and +dressed, and then, Lottie, I knelt down by the bed and prayed. I don't +know why I knelt down by the bed, exactly. I suppose because that's the +way you see them kneeling in the pictures or something. But anyway I +liked doing it. Lot, do you think I'm too pale? H'm? I put on quite a +lot of rouge and then I took it all off and now----" + +A message from the hotel office announced Sam. They went down. +With Sam was a nervous and jocular best man, Ed Morrow. They drove +to the minister's study adjoining the church. It was an extremely +unbridal-looking party. Lottie, in her haste, was wearing an old +Georgette dress and a sailor hat recently rained on (no one was buying +new clothes these days) and slightly out of shape. The best man waxed +facetious. "Cheer up, Sam old boy! The worst is yet to come." He mopped +his face and winked at Lottie. + +They were ushered into the minister's little study. He was not yet +there. They laughed and talked nervously. There was a warm-looking +bottle of mineral water on the window ledge; a bookcase full of well +bound books with an unread look about them; a bust of Henry Ward +Beecher; a brown leather chair scuffed, dented, and shiny with much +use; a little box of digestive tablets on the flat-topped desk. Sam, +in his smartly tailored uniform, seemed to fill the room. Beck did not +take her eyes from him. He was not at all the chubby middle-aged person +that Lottie had known. He looked a magnificently martial figure. The +fact that he was in the ordnance department did not detract from the +fit, cut, and becomingness of his uniform. + +Dr. Little came in, a businesslike figure in gray tweed. A little +silence fell upon the four. The wedding service began. Dr. Little's +voice was not the exhorting voice of the preacher. Its tone, Lottie +thought, was blandly conversational. All of a sudden he was saying +"pronounce you man and wife" and Lottie was kissing the bride and the +groom and even the best man who, immediately afterward, looked startled +and then suspicious. + +Beck had a calm and matronly air. It had descended upon her, complete, +like an all-enveloping robe. + +And so they were married. After it was over Lottie went back to the +Red Cross shop. Three days later she had a letter from Beck. It was not +one of the remote and carefully impersonal letters of the modern bride. +It was packed with all the old-fashioned terms in which honeymoon +brides of a less sophisticated day used to voice their ecstasy. + +"... Most wonderful man ... happiest girl in the world ... I thought I +knew him but I never dreamed he was so ... makes me feel so humble ... +wonder what I have ever done to deserve such a prince among...." + +Lottie told her mother and Aunt Charlotte about it that evening at +dinner. It was very hot. Lottie had been ashamed of her own waspishness +and irritability before dinner. She attributed it to the weather. +Sometimes, nowadays, she wondered at her own manner. Was she growing +persnickety, she asked herself, and fault-finding and crabbed? It +seemed to her that the two old women were calmer, more tolerant, less +fault-finding than she. She was the crotchety one. It annoyed Lottie to +see Aunt Charlotte munching chocolates just before dinner. "Oh, Aunt +Charlotte, for heaven's sake! Can't you wait until after dinner? You +won't eat a thing." + +"It doesn't matter if I don't, Lottie," Aunt Charlotte returned, +mildly. Aunt Charlotte, at seventy-five, and rapidly approaching +seventy-six, was now magnificently free. She defied life. What could +it do to her! Nothing that it had not already done. So she ate, slept, +talked as she pleased. A second youth seemed to have come upon her. + +To-night, after Lottie's story of Beck Schaefer's marriage Mrs. Carrie +Payson had said, with apparent irrelevance, "I won't be here always, +Lottie. Neither will Aunt Charlotte." A little pause, then, "I wish you +were settled, too." + +Lottie deliberately pretended to misunderstand. "Settled, mama! My +goodness I should think I'm settled enough!" She glanced about the +quiet old room. But she knew what her mother meant, and resented it. +Settled. Shelved. Her mother was thinking of Ben Gartz, Lottie knew. + +Amazing things had happened to Ben Gartz in the last six months. +He had sold the bus. In its place was a long, low, smooth-running, +powerful gray car with special wheels and special tires and special +boxes and flaps and rods. Ben Gartz was transformed from a wistful, +fusty, and almost shabby middle-aged bachelor into a dapper beau in a +tailored Palm Beach suit, saw-edge sailor, and silk hose. He carried a +lemon-coloured cane. He had two rooms at an expensive Hyde Park hotel +near the lake. He had had the Paysons and the Kemps to dinner there. +There were lamps in the sitting room, and cushions, and a phonograph +with opera records. Ben put on some of these after dinner and listened, +his head on one side. He said it was the only way to live--with your +own things around you. "My books," he said, and waved a hand toward +a small sectional bookcase, in which thirty or forty volumes leaned +limply against each other. One or two had slipped down and now lay +supine on the roomy shelves. Lottie strolled over to the bookcase +and glanced at the titles. The Mystery of the Purple Shroud. One +Hundred Ways to Use the Chafing Dish. Eat and Grow Thin. Ben Gartz's +waist line had been one of the first things about him to register a +surprising change. Though his method of living had expanded his girth +had decreased. He made no secret of his method. "A Turkish bath once +a week," he said. "No sugar, no butter, no sweets or starches of any +kind. And I feel better for it. Yessir! I never felt so well in my +life. Sleep better. Walk better. Twenty-five pounds off already and +I'll do another twenty-five before I'm through. I don't even miss the +sugar in my coffee. I used to take saccharine. Not now. I don't even +miss it. Take my coffee black. Got so now I think you miss the real +flavour and spoil it using sugar and cream." + +His face was a trifle jaundiced and haggard, one thought. The surprised +muscles were showing their resentment at the suddenly withdrawn +supports and cushions of fat. + +Ben Gartz loved to play the host. He talked about the War, about +business, about Chicago's part in the War, about his own part in it. He +had bought bonds, sold bonds, given to this, that, the other. "Now take +these Eyetalians, for instance. How long do you suppose they'd held out +against the Austrians? Or the French, either, for that matter against +the Germans? They were just about all in, now I'm here to tell you." +His conversational facts were gleaned from the front-page headlines, +yet he expounded them with a fervour and an assurance that gave them +the effect of being inside information. + +Of all his listeners Aunt Charlotte was the grimmest. + +"Wasn't he interesting about the War?" Mrs. Carrie Payson had asked, +after they had left. + +"About as interesting as a bill-of-lading," Aunt Charlotte had snapped. + +Henry Kemp had laughed one of his hearty laughs so rare now. "What do +you know about bills-of-lading, Aunt Charlotte?" + +"Not a thing, Henry. I don't even rightly know what a bill-of-lading +is. But it always sounded to me like about the dullest thing in the +world." + +Ben Gartz had escorted them to the very elevator and had said, with a +final wave of the hand, just as they were descending, "Now that you've +found the way, come often." + +Charley and Lottie, looking at each other, had given way completely. + +Just after dinner, on the evening of Beck Schaefer's wedding day, Ben +Gartz telephoned. The telephone call had followed less than a minute +after Lottie's rebellious thoughts about him. "I hope my thinking of +him didn't do it," she said to herself as she answered the telephone. + +Would she go driving? No, she didn't feel like it. Oh come on! Do you +good. We'll drop in at the Midway. There's a new revue there that's a +winner. She pleaded a headache. Then it's just what you need. Won't +take no for an answer. She went. + +She wore her white wash-satin skirt and the pink sports coat and her +big hat and looked very well indeed. They drove to the Midway Gardens +in Ben's new car. Ben, parking the car, knew the auto starter. "H'are +you, Eddie." He knew the uniformed doorman. "H'are you, Jo." He knew +the head waiter. "H'are you, Al. Got a nice table for me?" + +"Always find a table for you, Mr. Gartz. Yes, Mr. Gartz." Ben surveyed +the Gardens largely from the top of the terrace. They were worth +surveying. Your Chicago South Side dweller bores you with details. +"Look at that! Notice anything queer about this place?" he asks you. + +You survey its chaste white beauty. "Queer? No, it's lovely----" + +"Not a curved line in it!" announces the South Sider, largely. "Frank +Lloyd Wright designed it. Not a curved line in it--roof, balcony, +pillars, statues--anywhere." + +Your surprised and grateful eyes confirm this boast as you glance about +at the scene before you. + +Ben Gartz was fussy about his table. Near one of three dancing +platforms--but not too near. Near the music--but not too near. On the +terrace where one could see and be seen--but not too exposed to the +public gaze. At last they found it. + +It was deliciously cool there in that great unroofed space. There was +even a breeze, miraculously caught within the four walls of the Garden. +They ordered iced drinks. There was a revue, between the general +dancing numbers. Ben applauded this revue vigorously. He seemed to +know a good deal about the girls who took part in it. Very young girls +they were, and exquisitely slim. Some of them had almost the angular +lines of adolescence. In one number they were supposed to represent +Light--Candle Light, Gas Light, Lamp Light, Electricity, Moonlight, +Sunlight, Starlight. Their costumes were bizarre, scanty to a degree +that would have been startling had they been less young and reticent of +flesh. + +"I see you've got a couple of new ones," Ben remarked to Albert, the +head waiter, as that urbane individual passed their table. + +"Yes," said Albert; and again, "Yes," in order not to seem less than +unctuous. + +Lottie said to herself, "Oh, Lottie, don't be so magnificent. He isn't +so bad. He's enjoying himself, that's all. You're just a middle-aged +old gal who ought to be glad of the chance to spend a cool evening in +the Midway Garden, drinking claret lemonade. Glad of the chance." + +But she wasn't. + +Ben was all for dancing, of course. He had become amazingly proficient +at it, as does your plump middle-aged playboy. Lottie liked to dance, +too. She discovered that she didn't particularly like to dance with +Ben, though he was light, expert, and skillful at avoiding collisions +even on that crowded floor. Proximity proved him moist, soft, and +protuberant. + +Seated at their table it was cool and almost restful. A row of slim +trees showed a fairy frieze above the tiled balcony that enclosed the +garden. The lights of the garden fell on them and gave them an unreal +quality. They seemed weird, dazzling. Lottie thought they looked like +trees in a Barrie fantasy. She opened her lips to utter this thought. +Then, "He won't know what I mean," she said to herself. Ben was eating +an ice out of a tall silver goblet. "Take a fruit ice like this," he +had explained, "there's nothing fattening in it. Now ice cream, that's +different. Not for me. Ice is all right, though. Raspberry ice." + +"Those trees," said Lottie, and nodded toward them. Ben turned heavily, +a spoonful of raspberry ice poised halfway. "They're like fairy trees +in a Barrie play. Fantastic." + +"Yeh," said Ben, and carried the laden spoon to his mouth. "Light's bad +for 'em, I guess, shining on 'em that way. Look how yellow the leaves +are already." + +"There!" shouted Lottie, not aloud, but to her inner self. "You can't +expect me to marry a man who doesn't know what I'm talking about, can +you?" + +"What are you smiling at, you little rascal!" Ben was saying. "Tell me +the joke." + +"Was I smiling? I didn't know----" You little rascal! No one had ever +called Lottie a little rascal. She tried, now, to think of herself as +a little rascal and decided that the term was one that Ben had found +useful, perhaps, in conversation with the young ladies of the Light +revue. She did not resent being called a little rascal. She resented +the fact that Ben could not see the absurdity of applying the term +to a staid-appearing, conventionally-dressed, rather serious woman of +thirty-three or -four. She thought of Beck. Beck, in the old days, +would have shaken a forefinger at him and said, "Will you never grow +up, you bad boy!" Suddenly Lottie felt a little sick. "Let's go," she +said. "Do you mind? I'm--I've had a trying day." + +On the way home Ben grew expansive. "Some fellas in my position would +have a shofe but I like to drive my own bus. I come home in the evening +and have my bath and my dinner and go out in the little wagon and it +rests me. Yessir! Rests me.... I'm thinking of moving north. A little +flat, maybe, and a housekeeper. A fella gets pretty sick of hotels." + +"That would be nice. Everyone seems to be moving to the North Side." + +"It's the place to live. The South Side is getting worse all the +time--dirt, and the I. C. smoke and all. And now that they've brought +all these niggers up from the South to work over at the Yards since the +war it isn't fit to live in, that's what. Why, look at Grand Boulevard! +Black way up to Forty-third Street. All those old houses. It's a shame!" + +He was driving with one hand, expertly. The other was hung negligently +over the back of the seat. Lottie could feel it touching her shoulder +blades. It was touching them so lightly that she could not resent the +contact by moving slightly. Besides, she did not want to move. She +had a little amused curiosity about the arm. She wanted to know what +it would do next. She made up her mind that she would see the evening +through. She smiled to herself in the warm darkness. She relaxed a +little. She took off her hat and held it in her lap. The cool breeze on +her brow was like a drink of water to one thirsting. + +They were driving slowly through Washington Park on the way home. +Lottie closed her eyes. How deliciously cool it was. Her bedroom at +home would be hot, she thought. It faced east, and to-night the scant +breeze was from the west. The car stopped. She opened her eyes. They +were parked by the roadside near the sunken gardens. The negligent +arm behind her suddenly tightened into a band of bone and muscle. The +loose-hung hand grasped her shoulder tight and hard. Ben Gartz was bent +over her. She was conscious of a smell of cigarettes and shaving lotion +and whiskey (he had had a highball earlier in the evening). Ben Gartz +was kissing Lottie with a good deal of vehemence and little restraint +and no finesse. It was an unexpected and open-mouthed kiss, mucous, +moist, and loathsome. She didn't enjoy it. Lottie felt besmeared, +befouled. Still, she did none of those statuesque or dramatic things +that ladies are supposed to do who have been unhandsomely kissed +against their will. For that matter, it had not been against her will. +She had not expected it, true, but she had had a mild and amused +curiosity about its possibility. She was now seized with a violent and +uncontrollable shudder. She had released herself with a push of her +strong hand against Ben's chest. Her eyes were wide and rather staring. +She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, hard. + +"I want to go home," she said. + +"Oh, say, Lottie, honestly, you're not mad! I don't know what made +me--say, on the square----" + +Lottie put on her hat. "I'm not a bit angry, Ben. I just want to go +home. I'm sleepy." + +But he refused to believe her, even while he shifted gears and drove +home at a sharp clip through the almost deserted park and down the +boulevard. It was almost as if he felt she should be resentful. "Say, +you must think I'm a bum, that's what. Why, Lottie, I didn't mean +anything. Why, I think you're one of the grandest girls I know. A fine +girl. There isn't a girl I respect more." + +"Do you?" She said nothing more. She had nothing to more to say. She +felt calm, and almost happy. It was as though that kiss had cleansed +her, even while it soiled. She sensed that he was thinking hard. She +could almost hear his baffled mind scurrying about for words. She +sensed, too, that he had almost spoken of marriage but had cautiously +thought better of it in time. + +They were at the curb outside the Prairie Avenue house. "Lottie, you're +sore; and I don't blame you. I'm dead sorry. On the square. I'm--say, +you'll prob'ly never speak to me again." He was as argumentative as +though he had trod on her toe. + +She smiled as she turned at the steps. "I'm glad you kissed me, Ben. I +didn't like it. But I'm glad you kissed me." + +She left him staring. She let herself into the house, ran quietly up +the stairs to the second floor. She went into the bathroom and turned +on the cold water faucet and washed her mouth inside and out with cold +water. Then with listerine. Then she saw a bottle marked peroxide and +took a mouthful. I think that if there had been a carbolic in the house +she might have taken a gargle of that, as a final cleanser, in her zeal +to be rid of the taste of the wet red kiss. She spat forcefully and +finally now, made a wry face and went into her bedroom. She took off +her clothes, came back and washed with soap and a rough cloth, brushed +her hair, put on a fresh nightgown and went to bed. + +Lottie's middle-aged romance with Ben Gartz was over. + + + + + CHAPTER XV + + +The Paysons and the Kemps, together with the rest of the world, were +to be tossed about now like straws in a storm. But Mrs. Carrie Payson, +reading the paper next morning in the dining room window, after +breakfast, was the dispassionately interested spectator. Though this +was a manless household it received its morning and evening paper +regularly. You saw Mrs. Payson in that. She had no patience with women +who did not read the newspapers. Sometimes when Belle said, "What +wedding?" or "What murder?" or "What sale?" Mrs. Payson would exclaim, +"For heaven's sake, don't you read the papers! How do you expect to +know what's going on!" + +Mrs. Payson knew what was going on. She knew the price of coal, and the +whereabouts of the Cingalese troops, and the closing Steel quotations, +and whether duvetyne was going to be good this winter, and how much the +Claflin estate amounted to, and why the DeWitts dropped their divorce +proceedings. More than this, she read aloud extracts from these items +and commented thereon. She was the kind of woman who rarely breakfasts +in a kimono. When she did it was so restrained and somber in cut and +colour that the Nipponese would have failed to recognise its origin. +Her white hair was primly dressed. Through spectacles worn at a rakish +angle and set rather low down on her nose she surveyed the antics of +the world and pronounced upon them as a judge upon a day's grist of +cases. To one who preferred to get the first-page news first-hand it +was a maddening practice. + +"I see they predict a coal famine. I don't know what we'll do in this +house. If I didn't know I'd practically have to give it away I'd +sell and move into a flat out south.... They're going to wear those +capes again next winter. I should think they'd freeze in 'em. Though +I remember we used to wear them altogether--dolmans, we called them. +I see your friend Winnie Steppler has gone to France for her paper. +Woman of her age! I should think she'd stay home.... H'm! Ben Gartz +is captain of the Manufacturing Jewelers' Liberty Loan committee.... +What time did you come in last night, Lottie? I didn't hear you." Aunt +Charlotte, breakfasting across the table, looked up. + +Lottie poured herself another cup of coffee. She was drinking a +great deal of coffee lately; using it frankly as a stimulant. "About +midnight." + +"Did you have a nice time?" + +"Interesting," Lottie said, gravely. She sensed that her mother was +listening intently behind the newspaper. "Did you mean what you just +said about wanting to sell the house and moving into a flat out south?" + +Mrs. Payson's spectacles showed, half-moons, above the paper's horizon. +"I might. Hulda's going to marry that man. He doesn't want to go to +war. They say you can't get a girl now for less than fifteen dollars a +week. Fifteen! Well! I see myself! And now this coal shortage--and a +four-story house. Still, we'd need a pretty big apartment." + +Lottie made her tone casual. "You ought to marry off Jeannette--and me." + +She knew that Ben Gartz leaped from a position of doubt to one of hope +in her mother's mind. She knew, too, that her mother could no more +force herself to speak of this hope than she could wear a pink silk and +lace negligee. She would have considered both, somehow, indecent. She +turned a page of the paper, elaborately careless. "I'd move out of this +barn fast enough if there was only Charlotte and me to keep it up for." + +Lottie laughed a little. "You'd have to have a special room for Ole +Bull, and your walnut bed and the hall hatrack. No modern flat----" + +"I'd sell them. For that matter, I might even take rooms in a hotel, +and give up housekeeping altogether. It's too hard these days." + +"Why mama, you talk as if you had it all planned out! You know +perfectly well you couldn't get along without me." + +"Oh, couldn't I! I'd like to know why not! Jeannette thinks more of +my comfort this minute than you do." She folded the sheets of the +paper into an untidy mass and slapped the crumpled whole down on the +breakfast table. + +"You oughtn't to expect Jeannette to act as a sort of unpaid companion." + +"Companion! I'm not in my dotage yet. I don't need a companion, paid or +unpaid. I don't need anybody for that matter. You're not so terribly +important. Don't think it. I'd manage to live without you, very well." + +"Do you really mean that, mama?" + +At her tone Mrs. Payson stopped, one hand out-stretched toward the +pantry door. "That I could get along without you? I certainly----" + +"That if I hadn't been here to run the electric and take you to market +and shopping when you or Aunt Charlotte needed clothes, or hats, or +corsets--you wouldn't have missed me? All these years?" + +"I'd have got along. So would your Aunt Charlotte. Nobody's so +important that the world can't get along without them. I'd have +managed." + +"I suppose you would," Lottie said, dully. "I suppose you would." + +Her mother passed into the kitchen. Aunt Charlotte, across the table, +reached for the mangled newspaper and began to smooth it out sheet by +sheet, and to fold it painstakingly into its original creasings. At +the apprehensive look in her eyes Lottie smiled reassuringly, got up +and came round to her. She patted the shrivelled cheek. "Don't look +so disappointed in your maiden niece, Charlotte Thrift. She isn't as +desperate as that. Don't think it." + +"Well, just for a minute----" there was relief in her voice--"I +thought--but you've got some plan in your head?" + +"Yes." + +"Don't let anybody stop you then, whatever it is. Don't let anybody +stop you. It's your last chance, Lottie." + +The pantry door swung open. "What's her last chance?" demanded +Mrs. Payson, entering. She had a way of making timely--or +untimely--entrances with the precision of a character in a badly +written play. + +"Oh, nothing." Aunt Charlotte smiled and nodded coquettishly and her +sister thought of Ben Gartz, as Aunt Charlotte had meant she should. +Lottie knew this. At the knowledge a hot little flame of wrath swept +over her. + +Then for three weeks the household went about its business. Lottie +sewed at the Red Cross shop; Aunt Charlotte knitted; Mrs. Payson talked +Liberty Bonds, managed her household, protested at the increased cost +of living, berated Belle for what she termed her extravagance, quizzed +Henry about his business at the Friday night family dinner. At the end +of the month Hulda left to marry her unmartial Oscar. Though she and +Mrs. Payson had carried on guerilla warfare for years, Hulda, packing +her trunk, wept into the crochet-edged trousseau and declared that Mrs. +Payson had been, of all mistresses, the kindest. Mrs. Payson, on her +part, facing the prospect of breaking in a pert new incompetent at a +weekly wage far beyond that of the departing and highly capable Hulda, +forgave her everything, including her weakness for coffee. She even +plied her with a farewell cup of that black brew as Hulda, dressed for +departure, sat waiting red-eyed in the kitchen for the drayman. + +With the advent of a new maid Jeannette began to take her meals with +the family. Somehow the kitchen was no longer the place for Jeannette. +She had acquired a pretty manner, along with a certain comeliness of +feature and figure. It had been a sudden blossoming. Hers were the +bright-eyed assurance, the little upward quirk at the corners of the +mouth, the preenings and flutterings of the duckling who is transformed +miraculously into a swan. Jeannette had a "boy friend." Jeannette had +invitations for every night in the week (censored by Mrs. Payson). +Jeannette went to the War Camp Community dances on Saturday nights at +the Soldiers' and Sailors' Club and was magically transformed from +a wall-flower into a rose. Jeannette, the erstwhile plain, bloomed +into beauty--the beauty that comes of being told one is beautiful and +desirable. She danced expertly and gracefully (private sessions with +Charley had accomplished this) and she had endless patience with the +wistful lads from the near-by naval training station and camps who +swarmed into the city on leave, seeking diversion where they could find +it. At these carefully supervised Community affairs Jeannette danced +with boys from Texas and boys from Massachusetts; boys from Arizona and +Kansas and Ohio and Washington. But though she danced with them all +with indefatigable patience and good-humour it was Nebraska's step that +perfectly matched her own after the first few weeks and it was Nebraska +who took her home at a gallop in order not to overstay his shore leave. +Nebraska was an embryo ensign. He talked of the sea as only a boy can +who has known but the waves of the wheat rippling before the wind +across miles of inland prairie. When Lottie suggested that Jeannette +invite Nebraska to dinner on Sunday Mrs. Payson, surprisingly enough, +agreed. They made conversation. + +"And where is your home?" + +"I'm from Nebraska, ma'am." + +"Oh, Nebraska!" + +"Yes, ma'am." + +"How do you like Chicago?" + +"I like it fine." A quick glance at Jeannette. "Everybody here is +certainly grand." + +Now that Jeannette was regularly at dinner the silences that had +tortured Lottie's nerves were banished quite. The girl chattered +endlessly but engagingly, too. One of the girls at the office had +gone and got married during the noon hour--did you see the parade on +Michigan to-day?--that actress with the Liberty Loan speaker at the +corner of Monroe and State had given a signed photograph with every +bond purchased--there was a fur coat in Olson's window for only one +hundred and fifty--all the girls were going to buy those short fur +coats this winter. + +"Mercy on us!" from Aunt Charlotte. Jeannette and Aunt Charlotte were +great friends. Aunt Charlotte's room had, for Jeannette, something +of the attraction of a museum. In it were all those treasures +accumulated by a lonely woman throughout almost half a century of +living in one house. Ribbons, flowers, buttons, photographs, scraps of +lace, old hats, mounds of unused handkerchiefs and bottles of perfume +and boxes of time-yellowed writing paper representing the birthdays +and Christmases of years; old candy boxes; newspaper clippings; baby +pictures of Lottie, Belle, Charley; family albums. There was always +a bag of candy of the more durable sort--hard peppermints, or fruit +drops. And, treasured of all, the patchwork silk quilt. When Belle and +Lottie were little girls the patchwork quilt had been the covering of +convalescence during the milder periods of childhood indispositions. +At very sight of its prismatic folds now Lottie was whisked back +twenty-five years to days of delicious languor on the sitting room +sofa, the silk quilt across her knees, cups of broth and quivering +rosy gelatines to tempt the appetite, and the button box for endless +stringing and unstringing. + +To-day, as Lottie passed Aunt Charlotte's room just before dinner she +saw her sitting by the window with the silk quilt in her lap. Of late +it had been packed away in one of the room's treasure boxes and brought +out only for purposes of shaking and dusting. + +Lottie entered and stood over Aunt Charlotte as she sat there in her +chair by the window looking out on the ornate old houses across the +way. "I haven't seen it in years." She passed her fingers over the +shining surface of the silk and satin. Frayed squares and triangles +marred many of the blocks now. A glistening butterfly still shone in +yellow silk in one corner; a spider wove an endless web in another. +Time had mellowed the vivid orange and purple and scarlet and pink +until now the whole had the vague softness and subdued gleam of an +ancient Persian carpet or an old cathedral window. + +Aunt Charlotte looked down at it. One tremulous finger traced the +pattern of wheels and circles and blocks. "I always thought I'd give it +to the first one of the family that married. But Belle--of course not, +in that grand apartment. For awhile I thought Charley and that young +lad--I'd have liked to tell them how I came to make it. The boy would +have liked to hear it. Jesse Dick. He'd have understood. But he's gone +to war again. Jesse Dick has gone to war again. Oh, dear! Why didn't +Charlotte marry him before he went?" + +"She's wandering a little," Lottie thought, with a pang. "After all, +she's very old. We haven't realised." Aloud she said, smiling, "And how +about me, Charlotte Thrift? You're forgetting your old niece entirely." + +"No, I haven't forgotten you, Lottie. I think I got it out because of +you to-day. A curious feeling. Something's going to happen. I've lived +a long time, Lottie. Nearly seventy-six years. Old maids usually don't +live that long. Did you know that? Short-lived, they are--unmarried +women. Here I am, nearing seventy-six. And every now and then I get +the feeling--that unsettled feeling as if something might still happen +in my life. I don't know. It's like listening for a bell to ring. +Something's going to happen." + +Lottie looked at her strangely, almost fearfully. She stooped, +suddenly, and gathered Aunt Charlotte and the silk quilt into her arms. +"Oh, Aunt Charlotte! Aunt Charlotte! I've done something terrible. I'm +scared, I'm----" + +"Lot-tie!" from the foot of the stairs. "Lottie! What's the matter with +you and Aunt Charlotte! Dinner's waiting." + +"You don't say!" Aunt Charlotte stood up facing Lottie, suddenly alert, +vitalised. "You don't say!" Something about the commonplaceness of her +expression of approval seemed to restore Lottie's balance. "Don't let +her scare you. They always try and if you're weak you give in. But +don't you. Don't you!" A sudden suspicion--"It isn't that pink fat man!" + +"Ben? No. It's something I never thought I'd----" + +"What's it matter? Only don't give in." She propelled her almost +fiercely ahead of her to the stairway and down to the dining room. It +was as though she feared Lottie would change her mind if they paused on +the way. All through dinner Aunt Charlotte glowed and beamed upon her. +Occasionally she shook her head vehemently to convey encouragement to +the silent Lottie. + +Jeannette was full of plans for the evening. "If we don't start early +we won't get there in time for the first show and then we'll have to +stand and wait. They say it's a wonderful picture. The man who takes +the part of the Kaiser looks exactly like him." Evidently she and Mrs. +Payson were going Hunning among the films. + +Aunt Charlotte looked up from her dessert. "I thought you wanted me to +show you that new block stitch this evening." Jeannette's knitting was +more ambitious than expert. + +"I do. But I've got a date with my girl friend to go to the movie +first." She grinned at the stately white-haired companion of her revels +and the two giggled like school girls. Jeannette's rollicking peasant +humour appealed to Mrs. Payson. She seemed to draw new life from the +abounding health and spirits of Jeannette. + +They had eaten their dessert. In another moment they would leave the +table. Jeannette and Mrs. Payson would get their wraps and clank off +in the old electric toward the Arcadia. Lottie sat back in her chair +and gave a little indrawn gasp like a swimmer who plunges into icy +water. + +"I had my first inoculation to-day, and my vaccination." + +The minds of the three other women at the table, busy with their own +small projects, refused to grasp the meaning of this statement thrust +so suddenly upon them. "Vaccination?" Mrs. Payson had caught this one +familiar word and now held it dully, awaiting an explanation. + +"I'm going to France two weeks from to-day," said Lottie. She braced +herself, one hand clutching her napkin tight as if that would sustain +her. + +But there was no storm. Not yet. Mrs. Carrie Payson's will refused to +accept the message that her ears had flashed to her brain. + +"Don't be silly, Lottie," she said. She brushed a cooky crumb from the +front of her waist. + +Lottie leaned forward. "Mama, don't you understand? I'm going to +France. I'm going in two weeks. I've signed. It's all arranged. I'm +going. In two weeks." + +"Oh golly!" cried Jeannette, "how perfectly grand!" Aunt Charlotte's +hand was weaving nervous palsied circles on the tablecloth, round and +round. She champed her teeth as always when she was terribly excited. +But Mrs. Payson sat suddenly waxen and yellow. You saw odd lines etched +in her face that had not been there a moment before. She stared at +Lottie. The whites of her eyes showed below the iris. + +"This is a stroke," Lottie said to herself in a moment of hideous +detachment. "She's going to have a stroke, and I've done it." + +The red surged up into Mrs. Payson's face. "Well, you're not going, +that's all. You're not going." + +"Yes I am, mama," Lottie said then, quietly. + +"And I say you won't. France! What for! What for!" + +Aunt Charlotte stood up, her face working, her head shaking. She +pointed a lean aspen finger at her sister. "Carrie Thrift, don't you +stand in the way of her going. Don't you! Don't you!" + +Even then Mrs. Payson's middle-class horror of being overheard by the +servant in the kitchen triumphed over her anger. "Come on into the +sitting room. I'm not going to have that girl listening." She went to +the swinging door. "We're through, Liela. You can clear off." She eyed +the girl sharply before the door swung back. + +They marched into the sitting room in silence. + +In the two weeks that followed Mrs. Payson never once relaxed her +opposition. Yet she insisted on accompanying Lottie throughout +the orgy of shopping that followed--scouring the stores for such +commonplace articles as woollen stockings, woollen underwear, heavy +shoes, bed socks, flannel bloomers, soap, hot water bag, candles, +sugar, pins, needles. Sometimes her mother barely spoke to Lottie +for hours. Yet strangely enough, Lottie had twice heard her say to a +sympathetic clerk when she did not know Lottie was listening: "Yes, +they are for my daughter who's going to France.... Yes, it is hard, but +we've got to do our share." There had even been a ring of pride in her +voice. Lottie heard her speaking at the telephone. "We'll miss her; but +they need her more than we do." One could almost call it bragging. + +She had a strangely detached feeling about it all. When Henry spoke +gravely of U-boats she felt immune, as when one hears of typhus in +China. This person who was going to France was not Lottie Payson at +all--Lottie Payson, aged thirty-three, of Prairie Avenue, Chicago, +Illinois. This was some new, selfish, driven being to whom all the old +familiar things and people--the house, the decrepit electric, Aunt +Charlotte, her mother, Emma Barton--were remote and inconsequential. + +She and Charley had had one brief honest moment together. "I wanted +to go too," Charley had said. "I do still. But I'm not going. I want +to see Jesse. I want him so much that sometimes I find myself doing +things that I thought only women in novels did. Stretching out my +arms to him in the dark.... The girls of my sort who are going are +going for the excitement of it--for the trip, you might almost say. +Oh, I know a lot of women--thousands--are moved by the finest kind of +patriotism. But--well, for example, that pretty Olive Banning who's in +our advertising department. She's going. She says all the men are over +there." + +The night before leaving, Lottie Payson suffered that agony of +self-reproach and terror which unaccustomed travellers feel who are +leaving all that is dear and safe and familiar. She lay there in bed in +her quiet room and great waves of fear and dread swept over her--not +fear of what she was going to, but of what she was leaving behind. + +She sat up in bed. Listened. If only she might hear some sound to +break the stillness--the grinding of a Cottage Grove avenue car--the +whistle of an Illinois Central train. Suddenly she swung her legs over +the side of the bed, thrust her feet into slippers and stole down the +hall to her mother's room. She wanted to talk to her. She'd be awake; +awake and sitting up, alone and fearful, just as she herself was. Her +mother's door was open. The room was dark, quite. Lottie peered in, +sure of a little breathless silence that should precede her mother's +whispered, "Is that you, Lottie?" But from within the room came a +sleeper's breathing, deep, full, regular. Her mother was asleep. Her +mother was asleep! The knowledge hurt her, angered her. She ought to be +awake--awake and fearful. Lottie leaned against the doorsill and pitied +herself a little. An occasional strangled snore came from the bed. "I +should have gone years ago," Lottie told herself. + +She turned back to her room, not taking the trouble to tiptoe now. Past +Aunt Charlotte's room. + +"Lottie! Is that you?" + +Lottie groped in the darkness for the bed and that shrill whisper. +"Yes. I--I couldn't sleep.----" + +"I should think not. Come here to Auntie." That was what she had always +said in the first years, long ago, when Lottie and Belle were children, +afraid or hurt. "Come here to Auntie." Her hand was on Lottie's +shoulder, warm and comforting. "Child alive, you haven't got a thing +around you! Here, get the silk quilt. It's over the foot of the bed. I +didn't put it away." + +"I've got it." Lottie hunched it gratefully about her chilly shoulders. +They were talking in guilty whispers. Lottie huddled at the side of the +bed. "I can't go, Aunt Charlotte. I can't go." + +"Fiddlesticks! That's the middle of the night talking. Wait till you've +had a cup of coffee at eight to-morow morning and see how you feel +about going." + +Lottie knew she was right. Yet she must justify her own terror. "It +isn't fair to Jeannette. I've been thinking of her." + +Great-aunt Charlotte snickered a little. "Never you mind about +Jeannette." + +"But I do. I brought her here. I'm responsible----" + +"Listen to me, Lottie. I went up to Jeannette's room a few nights ago +to bring her that little brooch I gave her. The garnet one. She was +standing in front of the mirror in her nightgown--don't say a word to +your ma--you know how Jeannette always brushes her hair and leaves it +loose when she goes to bed? Well, there she was, doing it different +ways to see which was most becoming in bed. I saw her. And tying it +with a big pink bow." She snickered again, wickedly. + +"Why Aunt Charlotte Thrift?" + +"Yes _ma'am_! She'll probably marry that boy before he's off for +service. And stay right on here until he comes back. So don't you worry +about her being a human sacrifice, Lottie Payson. It's the Jeannettes +that make the world go round. They don't stop to think. They just act." + +Lottie went back to bed feeling reassured, almost light-hearted. Next +morning at breakfast her mother said, "I didn't close my eyes all +night." + +They made a good-sized group at the station. Her mother, Aunt +Charlotte, Jeannette, Belle, Henry, Charley, of course. Then, all The +Girls. And Emma Barton was there. Winnie Steppler was in France for +her syndicate of papers sending back stories about the Kansas and +Nebraska and Wyoming lads in Paris--the best stories of her career. +And Ben Gartz was at the station. He was there in spats, and a check +suit, and what is known as a trench coat, with a belt and full skirt; +and a little green soft hat with a tiny scarlet feather stuck in the +band, toward the back. He had regained some of his former weight, and +though he was dapper and spruce he looked plump and pink-jowled and +prime. Surprisingly young, too. It was said that, quite outside the +flourishing wrist-watch business, he had just made a little fortune in +War Steel. He joked with Charley. "You little rascal!" Lottie heard +him say; and Charley had laughed and looked arch. When he came over to +Lottie his admiring eyes were still on Charley's slim young figure. +"That little niece of yours is a card! She's a wonder, that kid." +Ben and The Girls had brought books, candy, flowers, magazines. Ben +had taken the name of the New York hotel at which she was to stop +overnight. She saw, in anticipation, more books, flowers, candy. She +wished he wouldn't. Effie Case's eyes were red. Lottie wished that the +train would start. They were standing round, with nothing more to say. +How old Henry looked. What a dear he was. Fine. Too fine and good. + +The train gave a tremendous jerk. She stood on the car steps, looking +down on them. They, on the platform, waved hands, handkerchiefs, their +faces upturned to her. + +"Cable the minute you land." + +"Good-bye! Good-bye!" + +"If you see Vernon Hatch tell him----" + +"Stationed at Nancy I think--or maybe it's Soissons." + +"Woollen stockings when you get----" + +"Good-bye!... 'Bye!" + +The train gathered speed. They dwindled. Ben Gartz, standing just +beside Charley, took hold of her arm above the elbow and leaning over +her looked down into her face, laughing and saying something. Dimly, +Lottie saw the little group turning away. Ben's arm still grasped +Charley's, proprietorially. + +A wave of fear and apprehension so violent as to be almost dizzying +swept over Lottie. "Wait a minute!" she cried to the astonished porter +who was carrying in bags and boxes piled on the car platform. "Wait a +minute!" + +"Too late now, lady. Ef yo' fo'got som'hum Ah kin sen' yo' wiah at +Elkhart. Elkhart's nex' stop, lady." + + + + + CHAPTER XVI + + +The family thought that Ben Gartz was being heavily attentive. A man +who paid court to a woman through her family was an attentive man. +But after the first few weeks following Lottie's departure it was +unmistakably plain that his attentions were concentrating on the Kemp +branch of the family rather than on the Payson. The first box of candy +sent to Charley, for example, came a week after Lottie's sailing. It +was one of those large satin, brocade, lace-and-gold affairs. You have +seen them in the two-dollar-a-pound shops and have wondered who might +be so fatuous or so rich or so much in love as to buy them. Charley, +coming from work on a cool autumn day, found a great square package +on the dressing table in her bedroom. Her letters and packages and +telephone calls always were placed there, ready for homecoming. + +"Any mail?" she said, to-day. Her quick eye had seen there was none. +And yet she so wanted some--one letter in particular--that she asked, +hopefully. Mail, to Charley, meant, those days, one of those thin +envelopes with a strip pasted over one end to show where the censor +had opened it. Then she had seen the box. It was an unavoidable box +holding, as it did, five pounds of Wood's most intricate sweets. +In these self-sacrificing days candy was one of the things you had +learned to forego. Therefore, "Wood's!" exclaimed Charley, removing the +wrappers. "Who do you suppose?--Oh, my goodness! It looks like a parlor +davenport; or a dressy coffin. Why, it's from that Ben Gartz! Well! +Lotta can't say I'm not keeping the home-fires burning." + +She gave the brocade box to Jeannette for her dresser and more +than half its contents to her grandmother and Aunt Charlotte, both +of whom ate sweets in appalling quantities, the flickering flame +of their bodily furnaces doubtless calling for this quick form of +fuel. She herself scarcely tasted it, thinking more of a clear skin +than a pleased palate. She meant to write Ben a note of thanks. She +even started one; addressed one of her great square stiff art-paper +envelopes in her dashing hand. But something called her away and +she never finished it. He called at the house a week later, after +dinner--just dropped in as he was driving by--and mentioned it +delicately. + +"Oh, Miss Charley, I sent you a little--I wondered if you got it----" + +Then she was honestly ashamed. "Oh, Mr. Gartz, what a pig you must +think me! I started a note to you. Really----" She even ran back to her +room and returned with the envelope and the sheet of paper on which she +had written his name, and the date. He said he was going to keep the +piece of paper, and tucked it into his left-hand vest pocket with a +soulful look. + +The box containing his second gift made the first one seem +infinitesimal. Mrs. Kemp was the recipient. She had said, +characteristically, that she didn't mind doing without white bread, +or sugar in her coffee, or new clothes, but it was hard not being +able to have flowers. She had always had flowers in the living room +until now--a standing order at the florist's. The box held two dozen +American Beauties whose legs stuck out through a slit in the end. It +was November, and American Beauties were fifteen dollars a dozen. +There weren't enough tall vases in the house to accommodate them all. +Their scarlet heads glowed in the jade-green background of the sun +parlour and all over the living room and even spilled back into Belle +Kemp's bedroom. Charley told her father that he ought to realise the +seriousness of it. "Where's your pride and manhood, Henry Kemp! Two +dozen American Beauties! It's equivalent to jewelry." + +Henry, eyeing them, rubbed a rueful hand over his chin, even while he +grinned. "Next time I wish old Ben'd send the cash." + +Things had come to a bad pass with Henry Kemp. It was no longer +necessary for him to say that business was not going. Business, for +him, was gone. Importing was as dead as war and U-boats could make it. +His house, together with many less flourishing and important ones, had +closed for lack of goods. It had been wiped out so completely that +there remained of it nothing to tell the tale except the exquisite +collection of Venetian glass, and Bohemian liqueur sets, and French +enamel opera glasses and toilette table pieces, and Hungarian china +and embroidery which Belle had acquired during the years in which her +husband had dealt in these precious things. Sometimes you saw Henry +looking at them--picking up a fine old piece of French china or Italian +glass from the buffet or dresser and turning it over to scan its +familiar stamp. He knew them as an expert knows diamonds. His eye could +detect any flaw in glaze or colour. + +Now, at fifty, Henry Kemp, for years a successful merchant and +importer, was looking about for an opening. He would get something. +The young men were being drawn away by the hundreds of thousands. He +had been offered a position which would require his travelling for +six months in the year. He had no illusions about it. On the road, a +travelling salesman, at fifty. It was a bitter pill for Henry Kemp. He +could not yet force himself to swallow it. + +His day stretched, empty, before him, but he made himself busy. Each +morning he rose at the hour to which his business had accustomed him +for years. He bathed and shaved and dressed carefully, as usual. He +breakfasted and glanced at the paper, doing both with the little air of +hurry that had meant the car waiting outside, or the 8:45 I. C. train +to catch. For twenty-five years he had gone downtown daily at a certain +time, his face alight with the eager alert expression which meant the +anticipation of a heavy mail and a day crowded with orders. He still +followed out this programme. But the eager look was absent. His springy +step was suddenly heavy, lagging. Belle sometimes wondered where he +went--how he filled his day. He belonged to clubs--big, comfortable, +prosperous clubs housed on Michigan Boulevard. But clubs, to American +business men, meant a place for a quiet business talk at luncheon. +During the day they were, for the most part, deserted. Sometimes +Charley said, "Lunch with me, father?" + +"I've got to see a man at twelve. It's a conference. I can't tell how +long it'll last." + +Henry Kemp presented that most tragic of spectacles, the American +business man at leisure. + +In fairness to Belle Kemp it must be said that she did not nag him, +or reproach him, or bewail her lot or mope. He would get something, +she knew. He had a reputation for business acumen; a standing in the +community; hosts of influential friends. Besides, there was money for +present needs. They had lived well, the Kemps. Henry had denied his +wife and daughter nothing. Still Henry Kemp sensed that his wife was +thinking, "Failure." Failure at fifty. She was too much her mother's +daughter to think otherwise. So he walked off, jauntily, every morning, +with a haste that deceived no one, least of all himself. + +Ben Gartz got into the way of sending tickets to the Kemps. Tickets for +concerts, tickets for war benefits, for the theatre. "I wonder if you +wouldn't like to use these? I can't go and I thought----" + +He heard Charley speak of a book she had tried to get, and failed. +He sent to New York for it and had it mailed to her. It was the Bab +Ballads. He did not know that she wanted them for Jesse. She and Jesse +had read them together often. Now she thought that if she could send +them to him if only to amuse him for a day, or an hour even, in the +trenches or back of the lines, it would be something. Ben Gartz had +never heard of the book but he had written down the name, carefully, in +his little leather notebook. When Charley told him that she had sent +the volume ($4.50 net) to Jesse, in France, his face wore the strangest +look. + +When Mrs. Payson heard of these things, as she inevitably did, she +looked a little aggrieved. "He's been here once since Lottie left--just +once. I can't blame him. Lottie treated him like a dog. If ever there +was an attentive man. But what's he come to your house so much for?" + +"Oh, he and Henry----" Belle said lamely. + +Aunt Charlotte spoke up from the silence which now enveloped her more +and more. "I suppose there's nothing Henry needs just now more than +candy and roses and theatre tickets and one thing and another." + +Following these attentions--rather, breaking into the midst of them as +they came, thick and fast--the Kemps had Ben Gartz in to dinner. They +had had few dinner guests of late. Belle made a very special effort +and the dinner was delicious; a thing to tempt Ben's restaurant-jaded +appetite. The meat sauce was smooth, rich, zestful; the dressing for +the salad properly piquant, but suave; the sweet just light enough to +satisfy without cloying. Ben Gartz had become a connoisseur in these +things as does your fleshly man who learns late in life of gastronomic +delights. + +After dinner he and Henry talked business. "Have a cigar, Henry." + +"Thanks, but I don't smoke those heavy ones any more. They don't agree +with me. Try one of these." + +Ben took it, eyed it, tucked it into his vest pocket and lighted one +of his own. He rolled it between his lips. He squinted up through the +smoke. + +"Well now, Kemp, you hold on for awhile longer, will you? There may be +something pretty big breaking for you." + +"How do you mean, breaking for me?" + +"I don't want to say, right now. But I mean--well, I mean in our +business. We knew we had a big thing but we didn't know what we really +had. Why, it's colossal. There's only me--and Beck and Diblee. Beck's +getting pretty old. He's a pioneer among the jewelry manufacturers. +Crowding seventy, Beck is. Diblee's all right but he doesn't do for the +trade. He hasn't got the trick of mixing. He wears those eyeglasses +with a black ribbon, you know, and talks about the east, where he came +from, and they get sore, the wholesalers do.... Got any capital, Henry? +Not that we need capital, y'understand. Lord no! What we need is brains +and business experience and a mixer. I've got all three but say, I +can't be everywhere." + +As if by magic Henry Kemp's face filled out, became firm where it +had sagged, glowed where it had been sallow with the jaundice of +discouragement. + +"Why, say Ben--look here--you don't mean--" + +"I don't mean anything, Kemp. Not yet. And perhaps I oughtn't to have +said anything. Of course old Beck and Diblee've got to be considered. +But I think I could swing it--if I pushed hard enough. The business is +getting to be enormous, I'm telling you. Four million kids in service, +every one of 'em with a watch on his wrist, y'understand, from doughboy +to general; and millions and millions more to come. Why, say, before +we're through with this thing----" + +He gave Henry a tip on war stocks. + +"No thanks," Henry said. "I can't afford to take any chances just now." + +"But this isn't a chance, you chump. Where's your nerve! Can't you +trust a fellow that's giving it to you straight!" + +Henry was tempted, but privately decided against it. It wasn't fair +to Belle and Charley to take the chance, he thought. A week later Ben +telephoned him. + +"Sell out on that stuff Henry--you know--that I told you about." + +"I didn't buy." + +"Didn't----!" + +"No." + +"Why you darned fool, I just cleaned up twenty-five thousand on it, +that's all. My God, why----" + +Henry put it out of his mind, grimly. He told himself he had done the +right thing. Sometimes Henry Kemp thought of his insurance. He carried +a big insurance. When he died it would amount to a tidy fortune for +Belle and Charley. But it had to be kept up. It was all clear now but +it had to be kept up.... He put that thought out of his mind. An ugly +thought. + +Ben was just as good a sport about small stakes as he was about big +ones. He made a bet with Charley, for example. He seemed so certainly +on the losing side that Charley said, "But I won't bet on that. I'm +sure of it. You haven't a sporting chance." + +"Oh, haven't I! That's what everybody thinks before the other fellow +wins. I'm just as sure as you are. I'm so sure that I'll bet you a +pair of gloves to a set of dice. What size do you wear? Understand, +I'm only asking to observe the formalities, that's all. I'm safe." He +laughed a fat chuckling laugh and took Charley's slim strong young +fingers in his own pulpy clasp. Charley was surprised to find herself +snatching her hand away, hotly. She hadn't meant to. It was purely +involuntary. The reaction against something distasteful. She won the +bet. He sent her half a dozen pairs of finest French glacé gloves. +Charley fingered them, thoughtfully. There was nothing pleased about +her expression. She was not a fool, Charley. But she told herself that +she was; poo-pood'd the idea that was growing in her mind. But now, +steadily, when he called at the house, telephoned, wrote, sent flowers +or candy she was out; did not answer; ignored the gifts. He found out +that she and her mother had arranged to meet at a tea-room for lunch +during Charley's noon hour one day, intercepted them, carried them +off almost bodily to the Blackstone. There, in the rich splendour of +the rose-and-cream dining room looking out upon the boulevard and the +lake beyond, he was in his element. A table by the window--the centre +window. Well, Maurice, what have you got out of season, h'm? Lobster? +Japanese persimmons? Artichokes? Corn on the cob? He remembered that +Charley had once said she adored Lobster Thermidor as the Blackstone +chef prepared it. "But none of your little crab-sized lobsters now, +Maurice! This young lady may be a baby vamp but she doesn't want your +little measly baby lobster, remember. A good big one. And hot. And +plenty of sauce.... Now then, Mrs. Kemp. How about you?" + +Charley ate two bites of the big succulent crustacean and left the +rest disdainfully as a reproach and a punishment for him. She talked +little, and then of Lottie. Her manner was frigid, remote, baffling. A +baby vamp--she, Charley Kemp! who loathed cheapness, and bobbed hair, +and wriggling ways, and the whole new breed of her contemporaries who +were of the hard-drinking, stairway kissing, country-club petting +class. She thought of Jesse, looked out across the broad avenue to the +great blue expanse of lake as though it were in reality the ocean that +lay between them; and left her sweet untouched on her plate. + +Mrs. Kemp did not speak to Charley of Ben Gartz's insistent attentions. +Probably she did not even admit to herself the meaning of them, at +first. But there is no doubt that she began, perhaps unconsciously, a +process of slow poisoning. + +"They all say this will go on for years. There won't be a young man +left in the world--nor a middle-aged man, for that matter. Nothing but +old men and children. Look at France, and Poland, and Germany! I don't +know what the women are going to do." + +"Do?" queried Charley, maliciously; she knew perfectly well what her +mother meant. + +"Do for husbands. Girls must marry, you know." + +"I don't see the necessity," said Charley, coolly. (Charley, who +stretched out her arms in the dark.) + +"Well I do. How would you like to be another Aunt Charlotte? Or a +Lottie, for that matter?" + +"There are worse fates, mother dear. For that matter, I know a lot of +married women who envy me my independence. I don't know any married +women I envy." + +"That's complimentary to your father, I must say." + +"Now, don't be personal, mother. I'd rather have Dad for a father than +any father I've ever seen. Why, he's darling. I love the way he doesn't +get me; and his laugh; and his sweetness with you; and his fineness +and dignity; and the way he's kept his waistline; and his fondness for +the country. Oh, everything about him as a father. But as the type of +husband for me Dad lacks the light touch.... What a conversation! I'm +surprised at you, Belle Kemp!" + +One day, in mid-winter, Henry Kemp came home looking more lined and +careworn than usual. It was five o'clock. His wife was in their +bedroom. He always whistled an enquiring note or two when he let +himself in at the front door. It was a little conjugal call that meant, +"Are you home?" In her babyhood days Charley always used to come +pattering and staggering down the long hall at the sound of it. But +though he caught the child up in his arms he always kissed his wife +first. Not that Belle had always been there. She was not the kind of +wife who makes a point of being home to greet her lord when he returns +weary from the chase. As often as not a concert, or matinee, or late +bridge delayed her beyond her husband's homecoming time. Then the +little questioning whistle sounded plaintively in the empty apartment, +and Henry went about his tidying up for dinner with one ear cocked for +the click of the front-door lock. + +To-night he whistled as usual. You almost felt the effort he made to +pucker his lips for the sound that used to be so blithe. Belle answered +him. "Yoo-hoo!" For the first time he found himself wishing she had +been out. He came into their bedroom. A large, gracious, rose-illumined +room it was. Belle was standing before the mirror doing something +to her hair. Her arms were raised. She smiled at him in the mirror. +"You're home early." + +He came over to her, put his arm about her and kissed her rather +roughly. He was still in love with his somewhat selfish wife, was Henry +Kemp. And this kiss was a strange mixture of passion, of fear, and +defiance and protest against the cruel circumstance that was lashing +him now. Here he was, the lover, the generous provider, the kind and +tolerant husband and father, suddenly transformed by a malicious force +he was powerless to combat, into a mendicant; an asker instead of a +giver; a failure who had grown used to the feel of success. So now +he looked at this still-pretty woman who was his wife, and his arm +tightened about her and he kissed her hard, as though these things held +for him some tangible assurance. + +"Henry!" she shrugged him away. "Now look at my hair!" He looked at it. +He looked at its reflection in the mirror; at her face, unlined and +rosy; at his own face near hers. He was startled at the contrast, so +sallow and haggard he seemed. + +He rubbed a hand over his cheek and chin. "Gosh! I look seedy." + +"You need a shave," Belle said, lightly. She turned away from the +mirror. He caught her arm, faced her, his face almost distorted with +pain. + +"Belle, we'll have to get out of here." + +"Out of--how do you mean?" + +"Our lease is up in May. We'd have to go then, anyway. But I was +talking to a fellow to-day--Leach, of the David, Anderson company. +They've made a pile in war contracts. His wife's looking for an +apartment about this size and neighborhood. They'd take it off our +hands--the lease I mean." + +"Now? You mean now!" + +"Yes. We could take something smaller. We--we'll have to, Belle." + +She threw a terrified glance around the room. It was a glance that +encompassed everything, as though she were seeing it all for the +first time. It was the look one gives a cherished thing that is about +to be snatched away. A luxurious room with its silken bed-covers and +rosy hangings. The room of a fastidious luxury-loving woman. Its +appointments were as carefully chosen as her gowns. The beds were +rich dark walnut, magnificently marked--not at all the walnut of Mrs. +Payson's great cumbersome edifice in the old Prairie Avenue house--but +exquisite pieces of bijouterie; plump, inviting; beds such as queens +have slept in. The reading lamp on the small table between gave just +the soothing subdued glow to make one's eleven o'clock printed page a +narcotic instead of a stimulant. Beside it a little clock of finest +French enamel picked out with platinum ticked almost soundlessly. + +Terror lay in her eyes as they turned from their contemplation of this +to the man who stood before her. "Oh, Henry, can't we hold out just for +awhile? This war can't last much longer. Everybody says it'll be over +soon--the spring, perhaps--" She who had just spoken to Charley of its +endlessness. + +"It's no use, Belle. No one knows how long it'll last. I hate to give +it up. But we've got to, that's all. We might as well face it." + +"How about Ben Gartz? He promised to take you into the business--that +wonderful business." + +"He didn't promise. He sort of hinted. He didn't mean any harm. He's a +big talker, Ben." + +"But he meant it. I know he did. I know he did." A sudden thought came +to her. "How long has it been since he talked to you about--since he +last mentioned it to you?" + +"Oh, it's been three weeks anyway." + +She calculated quickly. It was three weeks since the Blackstone +luncheon when Charley had been so rude to him. She tucked this away in +the back of her mind; fenced for time. "Couldn't we sublet? I'd even be +willing to rent it furnished, to reliable people." + +"Furnished? What good would that do? Where would we live?" + +She had thought of that, too. "We could go to mother's to live for +awhile. There's loads of room. We could have the whole third floor, for +that matter, until this blows over. Lots of families----" + +But at that his jaws came together and the lower one jutted out a +little in the line she had seen so seldom and yet knew so well. It +meant thus far and no farther. + +"No, Belle. I may be broke, but I'm not that broke--yet. I'll provide +a home for my family. Maybe it won't be quite what we're used to; but +it'll be of my own providing. When I let you go back to your mother's +to live you can know I'm licked, beaten, done. But not until then, +understand." + +She understood. + +"Well, dear, we'll just have to do the best we can. When do you have to +give Leach your answer?" + +"Within the week, I should say. Yes." + +She smiled up at him, brightly. She patted his lean cheek with her soft +cool scented hand. "Well, you never can tell. Something may happen." +She left him to shave and dress. + +He thought, "What a child she is. Women are." + +She thought. "He's like a child. All men are.... Well, I've got to +manage this." + +There were two telephone connections in that big apartment--one in the +front hall, another in the dining room at the rear. She went down the +hall, closed the dining room door carefully, called Ben Gartz's office +number in a low tense voice. It was not yet five-thirty. He might still +be there. He must be, she told herself. + +He was. His tone, when he heard her name, was rather sulky. But she had +ways. We haven't seen a thing of you. Forgotten your old friends since +you've made all that horrid money. Talking of you only yesterday. Who? +Charley. Why not come up for dinner to-night. Just a plain family meal +but there was a rather special deep dish pie. + +He would come. You could hear that it was against his better judgment. +But he would come. When she had hung up the receiver she sat for a +minute, breathing fast, as if she had been running a close race. Then +she went into the kitchen and began feverish preparations. Halfway, +she stopped suddenly, went back into the dining room, picked up the +receiver and gave her own telephone number, hung up quickly, opened +the door that led from the dining room to the long hall, and let the +telephone bell ring three times before she answered it. The maid opened +the swinging door that led to the kitchen but Belle shook her head. +"Never mind. I'll answer it." She said "hello," then hung up again, +once the buzzing had ceased. Then, carefully, she carried on a brief +conversation with some one who was not there--some one who evidently +wanted to come to see them all; and wouldn't he like to run in to +dinner. She went to the hall door and called. "Henry! Oh, Henry!" + +A mumble from the direction of the bathroom meant that he was +handicapped by shaving lather. + +"I just wanted to tell you. That was Ben Gartz who just called up. He +wanted to come up so I asked him to dinner. Is that all right?" + +"'S'all right with me." + +Grapefruit. Olives. A can of mushrooms to be opened. For over half an +hour she worked furiously. At six Charley came home. + +"Hello, Dad. Where's mother?" He was reading the evening paper under +the amber-silk light of the living room. Charley kissed the top of his +head, patted his shoulder once, and went back to her room. A little +subdued these days was Charley--for Charley. "Any mail? I wonder what's +the matter with Lotta. I haven't had a letter in a month." + +Her bedroom was down the long hall, halfway between the living room +and dining room. Her mother was already there, waiting. "Any mail?... +How pretty you look, mother! Your cheeks are all pink." But her eyes +went past her mother to the little sheaf of envelopes that lay on her +dressing table. She went toward them, quickly. But her mother stopped +her. + +"Listen, Charley. Ben Gartz is coming to dinner to-night." Charley's +eyebrows went up ever so slightly. She said nothing. "Charley, Ben +Gartz could do a great deal for your father--and for all of us--if he +wanted to." + +"Doesn't he want to?" + +"Well, after all, why should he? It isn't as if we were related--or as +if he were one of the family." + +"Lottie, you mean?" She knew what her mother meant. And yet she wanted +to give her a chance--a chance to save herself from this final infamy. + +"N-n-no." Her voice had the rising inflection. "I don't think he cares +about Lottie any more." + +"Then that snatches him definitely out of the family clutches, doesn't +it? Unless Aunt Charlotte----" + +"Don't be funny, Charley. He's a man to be respected. He's +good-looking, not old; more than well-to-do--rich, really." + +Charley's eyes were cold and hard. And they were no longer mother and +daughter, but two women, battle-locked. "M-m-m.... A little old and fat +though, don't you think, for most purposes? And just a wee bit common? +H'm?" + +"Common! Well, when it comes to being common, my dear child, I don't +think there was anything fastidious about the choice you made last +June. After all, Delicatessen Dick isn't exactly----" + +"Just a minute, mother. I want to get this thing straight. I'm to marry +your chubby little friend in order to save the family fortunes--is that +it?" + +"N-no. I don't mean just that. I merely----" + +"What do you mean, then? I want to hear you say it." + +"You could do a really big thing for your father. You must have seen +how old he's grown in the last six months. I don't see how you can +stand by and not want to help. He had a chance. Ben Gartz practically +offered to take him into the business. But you were deliberately rude +to him. No man with any pride----" + +Charley began to laugh then; not prettily. "Oh, mother, you quaint old +thing!" Belle stiffened. "I don't want to insult you, don't you know, +but I can't make a thing out of what you've said except that if I +marry this chubby little ridiculous old sport he'll take Dad into the +business and we'll all live happily ever after and I'll be just like +the noble heroine who sells herself to the rich old banker to pay the +muggidge. Oh mother!" She was laughing again; and then, suddenly, she +was crying, her face distorted. She was crying terribly. + +"Sh-sh-sh! Your father'll hear you! There's nothing to make a scene +about." + +"No scene!" said Charley, through her tears. "If you can't cry when +your mother dies when can you cry!" + +She turned away from her then. Belle Kemp looked a little frightened. +But at the door she said what she still had to say. "He's coming here +to dinner to-night." + +Charley, lifting heavy arms to take off her hat, seemed not to +hear. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment--stared at the +tear-stained red-eyed girl. At what she saw she began to sob again, +weakly. Then she shook herself angrily, and pushed her hair back from +her forehead with a hand that was closed into a fist. She went into the +living room, stood before her father reading there. + +"Dad." + +He looked up from his paper; stiffened. "Why, Charley, what's----" +Charley almost never cried. He was as disturbed as if this had been a +man standing there before him, red-eyed and shaken. + +"Listen, Dad. You know that thing Ben Gartz spoke to you about a little +while ago? The business. Taking you into it, I mean?" + +"That? Yes. What of it?" + +"He hasn't said anything lately, has he?" + +"Well, he--he--wasn't sure, you know. I thought at the time it was a +little wild. Ben's good-hearted, but he's a gabby boy. Doesn't mean +quite all he says." + +"He meant it all right, Dad. But you see he--he'd like to have me marry +him first." + +He stared, half willing to laugh if she gave him any encouragement. But +she did not. His newspaper came down with a crash, then, as his fingers +crushed it and threw it to the floor. "Gartz! You marry Ben Gartz!" She +was crying again, helplessly. His two hands gripped her shoulders. +"Why, the damned old l----" he stopped himself, shaking a little. + +"That's it," said Charley, and she was smiling as she sobbed. "That's +the word.... I knew I could count on you, Dad. I knew." + +His arms were about her. Her face was pressed against the good rough +cloth of his coat. "Sh-sh-sh Charley. Don't let your mother hear you. +We mustn't let her know. She'd be wild. He's coming here to dinner, the +oily old fox. Gosh, Charley, are you sure you----" + +"I'm sure." + +"We won't say anything to mother, will we?" + +"No, Dad." + +"She'd be sick, that's what. Sick. We'll fix him and his business, all +right." + +"Yes. Talk about Jesse. Talk about Jesse a lot. And make it plain. +About Jesse. Then see what he has to say about his business." + +The doorbell sounded. Charley was out of his arms and off to her room. +Belle came swiftly down the hall and darted into her bedroom for a +hasty dab at her flushed face with the powder-pad. Henry opened the +door. Ben's voice boomed. Henry's answered with hollow geniality. + +"Come in, come in! Here, let me have that. Belle'll be here in a +minute." + +Belle was there becomingly flushed, cordial. Ben was pressing her +hand. "It was mighty nice of you, let me tell you, to call me----" + +She was panic-stricken but Henry had not heard, apparently. He had +interrupted with a foolish remark of his own. + +"It's probably the last time in this place anyway, Ben. We're giving up +this flat, you know. End of the month." + +"How's that?" + +"Can't afford it." + +Ben pursed his lips, drummed with his fingers on the arm of the deep +comfortable chair. "Well, now, perhaps----" + +Charley came in, smiling a watery smile and palpably red-eyed. Her +father caught her and hugged the slender shoulder with a paternal and +yet quizzical gesture. "Nobody's supposed to notice that Charley's been +crying a little. She didn't get a letter from her boy in France and +she doesn't feel happy about it." She looked up at him, gratefully. He +patted her shoulder, turned pridefully to Ben. "Charley and her poet +are going to be married, you know, when this war's over--if it ever +_is_ over. Look at her blush! I guess these new-fangled girls have +got some old-fashioned ways left, after all, eh, Chas?" + +"Yes, Dad." + + + + + CHAPTER XVII + + +They were in the midst of packing and moving when the news came of +Jesse Dick's death. She had no formal warning. No official envelope +prepared her. And yet she received it with a dreadful calm, as though +she had expected it, and had braced herself for it. She and her father +were at breakfast surrounded by wooden packing boxes and burlap rolls. +Charley, in peril of missing the 8:35 I. C. train, contented herself +with the morning's news second-hand. Henry Kemp had the paper. + +"What's the daily _schrecklichkeit_, Dad?" + +He had not answered. Suddenly the weight of his silence struck her. She +looked up as though he had spoken her name. The open newspaper shielded +his face. Something in the way he held it. You do not hold a paper thus +when you are reading. "Dad!" The paper came down slowly. She saw his +face. + +"Dead?" + +"Yes." + +He stood up. She came around to him. She wanted to see it on paper, +printed. + +That morning she actually caught the 8:35 as usual. She sold little +imports all that morning, went out at the lunch hour and never returned +to Shields'. Outwardly she practised the stoicism of her kind. She +cried herself to sleep night after night, indeed; beat on her pillow +with an impotent fist; sat up, feverish and wakeful, to rage at life. +But she was up next morning, as usual, pale and determined. + +There was a curious scene with great-aunt Charlotte. At news of Jesse +Dick's death she had summoned Charley; had insisted that she must +see her; had been so mysteriously emphatic that Charley had almost +rebelled, anticipating a garrulous hour of senile sympathy and decayed +advice. Still she went, ascended the stairs to Aunt Charlotte's room +(she came downstairs more and more rarely now) and at Aunt Charlotte's +first words, "I knew he'd never come back, Charley," would have fled +incontinently if something in the grim earnestness of the black-browed +old countenance had not held her. There was no soft sentimentality +in great-aunt Charlotte's word or look. Rather she seemed eager, +vitalised, as though she had an important message to convey. Charley +did groan a little, inwardly, when Aunt Charlotte brought out the +yellow old photograph of the girl in the full-skirted wasp-waisted +riding habit, with the plume and the rose. And she said vaguely, "Oh, +yes," as she took it in her hand, and wished that she had not come. And +then, "Why, Aunt Charlotte! You lovely thing! You never showed me this +picture before! You're the family beauty. Your face is--the look--it +sort of glows----" + +"Just for a little while. Jesse Dick brought that look to it." + +"How do you mean--Jesse Dick?" + +And quietly, masterfully, with the repression of more than fifty years +swept away before the urgence of this other Charlotte's need, she told +her own brief stark story. "I was eighteen, Charley, when the Civil War +began. That's the picture of me, taken at the time----" + +Charley listened. Sometimes her eyes dwelt on the withered old +countenance before her; sometimes she looked down, mistily, at the +glowing face of the girl in the picture. But her attention never +wandered. For the first time she was hearing the story of the first +Jesse Dick. For the first time great-aunt Charlotte was telling it. +She was telling it, curiously enough, with the detachment of an +outsider--without reproach, without regret, without bitterness. When +she had finished she sat back and glanced about the bedroom--the neat, +shabby, rather close-smelling bedroom of an old, old woman--and then +she opened her hands on her knees, palms out, as though in exposition. +"And this is I," said the open palms and dim old eyes. "This is I, +Charlotte Thrift." + +As though in answer--in defense of her--Charley leaned forward, +impetuously, and pressed her fresh young cheek against the sallow +withered one. "You've been wonderful, Aunt Charlotte. You have! What +would Grandma Payson have done without you!--or Lottie, or mother, for +that matter." + +But great-aunt Charlotte shook her head. She seemed to be waiting for +something. And then Charley said, "I'll be all right. I'm the kind that +goes on. You know. I'm too curious about life to want to miss any of +it. I'll keep on trying things and people and I'll probably find the +combination. Not the perfect combination, like Jesse. You don't, twice. +But I suppose I'll marry--sometime." + +"That's it. Don't you give in. You're twenty. Don't you give in. I was +scared when you left your work----" + +"Oh, that. I couldn't stay. I don't know. Restless." + +"That's all right," said Aunt Charlotte, satisfied. "Restless is all +right. Restless is better than resigned." + +Of Jesse Dick's poems, two made a little furore. The reviewers all +had a line or two or three about his having been one of the most +promising of the younger poets of the virile school. They said his was +American poetry, full of crude power. One poem--the one called "Chemin +des Dames"--they even learned in the schools, mispronouncing its +title horribly, of course. They took it seriously, solemnly. Charley +alone knew that it had been written in satire and derision. It was +his protest against all the poems about scarlet poppies and Flanders +fields. Taken seriously, it was indeed a lovely lyric thing. Taken as +Charley knew he had meant it, it was scathing, terrible. + +People thought the one called "Death" was a little too bitter. +Good--but bitter, don't you think? That part beginning: + + "They said you were majestic, Death. + Majestic! You! + I know you for the foolish clown you are; + A drooling zany, mouth agape and legs asprawl, + A grotesque scarecrow on a barbed wire fence. + ...." + +When Charley read that one, as she often did, she would beat with her +hard young fist on her knee and cry impotent tears of rage at the +uselessness of it all. + +They made a book of his poems and brought it out in the autumn, just +before the armistice. A slim book of poems. There had been so few of +them. + + + + + CHAPTER XVIII + + +Charley was away when Lottie came home in February, following that +historic hysteric November. Charley was in Cincinnati, Ohio, dancing +with the Krisiloff Russian ballet. They were playing Cincinnati all +that week, and the future bookings included Columbus, Cleveland, +Toledo, Akron. Charley wrote that they would be back in Chicago for two +weeks at the end of March, showing one week at the Palace and one at +the Majestic. + +"... And what's all this," she wrote Lottie, "about your having brought +back a French war orphan? There never was such a gal for orphans. +Though I must say you did pretty well with Jeannette. Mother wrote me +about her wedding. But this orphan sounds so young. And a girl, too. +I'm disappointed. While you were about it it seems to me you might have +picked a gentleman orphan. We certainly need some men in our family. +Send me a picture, won't you? I hope she isn't one of those awfully +brune French babies that look a mixture of Italian and Yiddish and +Creole. In any case I'm going to call her Coot. Are you really going +to adopt her? That would be nice, but mad. Did Grandmother raise an +awful row? I'm sorry she's feeling no better. Mother wrote you have a +trained nurse now...." + +Lottie's homecoming had been a subdued affair. She had slipped back +into the family life of the old house on Prairie Avenue as if those +months of horror and exaltation and hardship had never been. But there +was a difference. Lottie was the head of the household now. + +Mrs. Carrie Payson lay upstairs in the second-floor front bedroom, a +strangely flat outline beneath the covers of the great walnut bed. She +made a bad patient. The eyes in the pointed sallow face were never +still. The new nurse said, almost automatically now, "Don't try to +talk, Mrs. Payson. You want to save your strength." + +"Strength! How can I ever get my strength lying here! I never stayed in +bed. I'll get up to-morrow, doctor or no doctor. Everything's going to +rack and ruin. I engaged the painters for the first of March. There's +repairing to do on everything in the spring. Did they send in the bill +for fixing the shed?" + +But when next day came she threatened to get up to-morrow. And next +day. Her will still burned, indomitable, but the heart refused to do +its bidding. The thing they called rheumatism had leaped and struck +deep with claws and fangs, following a series of disturbing events. + +Mrs. Payson had looked upon the Kemp's removal from the Hyde Park +apartment to the small Fifty-third Street flat as a family disgrace. +The Thrifts, she said, had always gone forward, never back. She tried +vainly to shake Henry's determination not to take advantage of the +roominess of the Prairie Avenue house. Henry had remained firm. He +had a position as manager of the china and glass department in a big +wholesale house whose specialty was the complete equipment of hotels, +restaurants, and country clubs. His salary was less than one-fourth +of what his income had been in the old days. He said it would have +to do. The Hyde Park Boulevard furnishings fitted strangely into the +cheap-woodwork-and-wall-paper background of the new apartment. Belle +refused to part with any of them. She said that some day they would be +back where they belonged. What she could not use she stored in the top +floor of her mother's house. By early spring she was white-enamelling +almost happily, and dickering with the dour landlord as to his possible +share of the expense of plain plaster in the living room. She had the +gift of making a house habitable in spite of herself. + +The Friday night family dinners persisted. Mrs. Payson even continued +to administer business advice to the long-suffering Henry. Things +that had seemed unbearable in prospect now adjusted themselves well +enough. And then Charley had horrified them all by discarding the black +uniform of a Shields' employee for the chiffon and fleshings of the +Krisiloff Ballet. Belle and even Henry opposed it from the first moment +of surprise and disapproval, but Mrs. Carrie Payson fought it like a +tigress. They had all thought she would return to Shields'. But she had +announced, calmly, her decision never to return. "Go back? Why should I +go back there? The thought makes me ill." + +Her father and mother had received this with amazement. "But Charley, +you were promoted just last week. You said you liked it. Let me tell +you three thousand a year isn't to be sneezed at by a kid of twenty. In +another five----" + +"Yes, I know. In another five I'll be earning five thousand. I'll be +twenty-five then. And in another five I'll be earning ten, and I'll +be thirty. And in another five and another five and another five!... +And then I'll colour my hair a beautiful raspberry shade, too, just +like Healy, and wear imported black charmeuse and maybe my pearls will +be real and my manicure grand and glittering, and while I shan't call +the stock-girls 'girlie,' I'll have that hard finish. You get it in +business--if you're in it for business." + +"Well, what _were_ you in it for?" + +"For Jesse, I suppose." + +They were at dinner at home. Belle left the table, weeping. Charley +and her father went on with their meal and their discussion like two +men, though Charley did become a little dramatic toward the end. +Later Belle, overcome by curiosity at the sound of their low-voiced +conversation, crept back, red-eyed, to know the rest. + +Henry Kemp, wise enough in the ways of women-folk, as well he might +be--the one man in that family of women--groped bewildered for a motive +in Charley's sudden revolt. "But you liked it well enough, Charley. You +liked it real well. You said so. You seemed to be getting a lot of fun +out of it. Maybe something's happened down there. Anything wrong?" + +"Not a thing, Dad. I'm not interested in it any more. It's just +that--it's just that--well, you see, Jesse furnished enough colour and +light and poetry for both of us. When I say poetry I don't mean verses +on paper. I mean rhythm and motion and joy. Does that sound silly to +you?" + +"Why no, Charley, it doesn't sound silly. I guess maybe I get what you +mean, sort of." + +"Well--" Then it was that Belle came creeping back into the room, +sniffling. Charley looked up at her calm-eyed. "Mother, I'd like to +have you understand this, too. I've been thinking about it quite a lot. +I don't want you to imagine I'm just popping off, suddenly." + +"Off!" Belle snatched at the word. + +Charley nodded. "You see I've got to have colour and motion and life. +And beauty. You don't find them at Shields'. But before Jesse--went--I +knew I could hit it off beautifully down there and that he'd furnish +me with enough of the other thing. One of us had to buckle down, and I +was the one. I wanted to be. We were both going to be married and free +at the same time. The little house in Hubbard Woods was there to come +to, every day or once a week. It was going to be every day for me. But +a man like Jesse can't write--couldn't write--his kind of stuff without +feeling free to come and go. So there I was going to be. And I'd have +my job, and some babies in between.... Well, there's nothing in it for +me now. Plodding away. It's ridiculous. What for! Oh, it's interesting +enough. It's all right if.... I want a change. Dancing! Krisiloff's +going out with his company. He's got forty-two solid weeks booked. I'm +going with them. He's going to let me do the Gypsy Beggar dance alone." +She pushed her plate away, got up from the table. "It'll be good to +dance again." She raised her arms high above her head. "'Can I show you +something in blouses, madam?' Ugh!" + +Mrs. Payson, when she heard of it, was aroused to a point +that alarmed them all. "A grandchild of mine--Isaac Thrift's +great-granddaughter--dancing around the country on the stage! What did +I tell you, Belle! Haven't I always told you! But no, she had to take +dancing lessons. Esthetic dancing. Esthetic! I'd like to know what's +esthetic about a lot of dirty Russians slapping about in their bare +feet. I won't have it. I won't have it. Colour, huh? Life and beauty! +I'd show her colour if I were you. A spanking--that's what she needs. +That'd show her a little life and colour. She shan't go. Hear me!" + +When Charley refused to discuss it with her grandmother Mrs. Payson +forbade her the house. The excitement had given her tremendous energy. +She stamped about the house and down the street, scorning the electric. + +Charley joined the Krisiloffs in August. Her letters home omitted many +details that would have justified Mrs. Payson in the stand she had +taken. But Charley was only slightly disgusted and often amused at +the manners and morals of the Krisiloffs. She hated the stuffy hotels +and the uninviting food but loved exploring the towns. Audiences in +medium-sized Middle West towns were rather startled by the fury and +fire which she flung into the Gypsy Beggar dance. Her costume of satin +breeches and chiffon shirt was an ingenious imitation of a street +beggar's picturesque rags and tatters. As she finished her dance, and +flung herself on her knees, holding out her tambourine for alms, the +audiences would stare at her uncomfortably, shifting in their seats, +so haggard and piteous and feverish was her appeal. But always there +was a crash of applause, sharp and spontaneous. She had some unpleasant +moments with other women of the company who were jealous of the favour +with which her dance was received. + +When the rest of the company was sleeping, or eating, or cooking messes +over furtive alcohol stoves in hotel bedrooms, Charley was prowling +about book-shops, or walking in the town's outskirts, or getting a +quiet private enjoyment out of its main street. She missed Lottie. She +often wanted to write her many of the things that the other members of +the family would not have understood. In the life and colour and beauty +she had craved she had found, as well, much drudgery, and sordidness +and hardship. But she loved the dancing. The shifting from town to +town, from theatre to theatre, numbed her pain. She caught herself +looking at beauty through Jesse Dick's eyes. In her Cincinnati letter +to Lottie she dismissed dancing in ten words and devoted three pages to +a description of the Nürnberg quality of the turreted buildings on the +hill overlooking the river, from the park. The money she earned, aside +from that which she needed for her own actual wants, she sent regularly +to the Red Cross. Before she had left, "I suppose I could be cutting +sandwiches," she had said, "and dancing with the kids passing through +Chicago; or driving an emergency car. I'd rather not. There are fifty +girls to every job of that kind." + +Contrary to Aunt Charlotte's prediction, Jeannette's Nebraska sailor +had not become Jeannette's Nebraska husband until after the armistice. +She was married at Christmas and left for the West with him. The +wedding was held in the Prairie Avenue house. It turned out to be +rather a grim affair, in spite of Jeannette's high spirits and her +Bohemian relatives and the post-war reaction and the very good supper +provided by Mrs. Payson. For Belle and Henry thought of Charley; and +Mrs. Payson thought of Lottie; and Aunt Charlotte thought of both, and +of the girl of sixty years ago. And Jeannette said bluntly: "You look +as if it was a funeral instead of a wedding." She herself was a little +terrified at the thought of this great unknown prairie land to which +she was going, with her smart fur coat and her tricotine dress and her +silk stockings and gray kid shoes. As well she might be. + +After it was over, an unnatural quiet settled down upon the house. +The two old women told each other that it was a blessed relief after +the flurry and fuss of the wedding, but looked at each other rather +fearfully during the long evenings and awaited Lottie's return with +such passionate eagerness as neither would have admitted to the other. +They expected her to pop in, somehow, the day after the armistice. + +"Well, Lottie'll be home now," Mrs. Payson would say, "most any day." +She took to watching for the postman, as she used to watch at the +parlour window for Lottie on the rare occasions when she was late. +When he failed to appear at what she considered the proper time she +would fume and fuss. Then, at his ring, she would whisk into the front +vestibule with surprising agility and, poking her head out of the door, +berate him. + +"You're getting later and later, Mail Man. Yesterday it was nine +o'clock. To-day it's almost half-past." + +Mail Man was a chromic individual, his grayish hair blending into the +grayish uniform above which his grayish face rose almost indefinably. +He was lopsided from much service. "Well, everything's late these +days, M'z. Payson. Since the war we haven't had any regular----" + +"Oh, the war! You make me tired with your war. The war's over!" + +Mail Man did not defend himself further. Mail men have that henpecked +look by virtue of their calling which lays them open to tirade and +abuse from every disappointed sweetheart, housemaid, daughter, wife, +and mother. + +"Expecting a letter from Miss Lottie, I suppose?" + +"Yes. Have you----" + +"Don't see it here this morning, M'z. Payson. Might be in on the eleven +o'clock mail. Everything's late these days since the war." + +They confidently expected her in December. In December she wrote that +it would be January. The letter was postmarked Paris. In January she +set the date of her homecoming for February and it was that letter +which contained the astounding news of the impending French orphan. + +The two old women stared at each other, their mouths open ludicrously, +their eyes wide. Mrs. Payson had read the letter aloud to Aunt +Charlotte there in the living room. + +"A French child--a French orphan." It was then that Mrs. Payson had +looked up, her face as blank of expression as that of a dead fish. She +plunged back into the letter, holding the page away from her as though +distance would change the meaning of the black letters on the white +flimsy page. + +"Well," said Aunt Charlotte, the first to recover, "that'll be kind of +nice, now Jeannette's gone and all. Young folks around the house again. +It's been kind of spooky. French child, h'm? That'll be odd. I used to +know some French. Had it, when I was a girl, at Miss Rapp's school, +across the river. Remember Miss Rapp's s----" + +"Charlotte Thrift, you're crazy! So's Lottie, crazy. A French orphan!" +Another dart at the letter--"Why, it's a baby--a French baby. One of +those war babies, I'll be bound.... Where's Belle? I'll get Belle. I'll +telephone Belle." Later, at the telephone--"Yes, I tell you that's what +it says. A French baby and she's bringing it home. Well, come here and +read it for yourself then. I guess I can read. You telephone Henry +right away, d'you hear! You tell him to telegraph her, or cable her, or +whatever it is, that she can't bring any French baby here. The idea! +Why! Girls nowdays! Look at Charley.... Excited? Don't you tell me not +to be excited, Belle Payson! I guess you'd be excited----" + +Henry cabled. He agreed with Mother Payson that it was a little too +much. Let the French take care of their own orphans. America'd furnish +the money but no wet-nursing. + +Winnie Steppler had returned from France in December. To her Mrs. +Payson appealed for information. "Did you know anything about this +crazy notion of Lottie's? Did she say anything to you when you were +together there?" + +"Yes, indeed. I saw her." + +"Saw who?" + +"The baby. The French baby. She's awfully cute. Fair.... No, they're +not all dark, you know.... Well, now, Mrs. Payson, I wouldn't say that. +It's a nice humane thing to do, I think. All those poor little things +left fatherless. Lots of Americans are bringing home.... You have? +Well, I don't think even that will change her now. She seems to have +her mind made up. Maybe when you see it----" + +"But where'd she get it? Where did she find it? How did she happen----" + +Winnie Steppler explained. "Well, you know, after St. Mihiel, when the +Germans were retreating and our boys were advancing, the Germans took +prisoner all the young French men and women--all they could lay hands +on. Regular slavery. They took parents from their children, and all. +This baby was found in a little town called Thiaucourt, all alone, +in a kind of cellar. They took care of her, and sent her back to the +American relief." + +"But the father and mother? They may be alive, looking for her." + +"The father was killed. That's proved. The mother died----" + +It was at this point that the accumulation of family eccentricities +proved too much for Mrs. Payson. The "faint feeling" mushroomed into a +full-sized faint from which they thought she would never recover. Aunt +Charlotte had come upon her younger sister seated saggingly in a chair +in the living room. Her face was livid. She was breathing stertorously. +They put her to bed. For a long time she did not regain consciousness. +But almost immediately on doing so she tried to get up. + +"Well! I'm not staying in bed. What's the matter! What's the matter! +Don't you think you can keep me in bed." + +Followed another attack. The doctor said that a third would probably +prove the last. So she stayed in bed now, rebellious still, and +indomitable. One could not but admire the will that still burned so +bright in the charred ruin of the body. + +So it was a subdued homecoming that Lottie met. When she stepped off +the train at the Twelfth Street station with an unmistakable bundle +in her arms, Belle and Henry kissed her across the bundle and said, +almost simultaneously, "Mother's been quite sick, Lottie. You can't +keep her at the house, you know." + +"Mother sick? How sick?" + +They told her. And again, "You see, there can't be a baby in the house." + +"Oh, yes," said Lottie, not in argument, but almost amusedly, as though +it were too ridiculous to argue. "Don't you want to see her?" + +"Yes," said Belle, nervously. And "W-what's its name?" asked Henry. + +"I think Claire would be nice, don't you?" Lottie turned back the flap +of the downy coverlet and Claire blinked up at them rosily and caught +this unguarded opportunity to shoot a wanton fist in the air. + +"Why, say, she's a cute little tyke," said Henry, and jiggled her +chin, and caught the velvet fist. "Claire, huh? That isn't so terribly +French." + +Belle gave a gasp. "Why, Lottie, she's so little! She's just a tiny +baby! Almost new. You must be crazy. Mother's too sick to have----" + +Lottie replaced the flap and captured the waving fist expertly, tucking +it back into warmth. "She's not little. She's really large for her age. +Those are all my bags, Henry, and things. There's a frightful lot of +them. And here's my trunk check. Perhaps you'd better tend to them. +Here, I'll take this, and that. Give them to the boy. Perhaps Belle +and I had better go ahead in a taxi while you straighten out the mess." + +She was calm, alert, smiling. Henry thought she looked handsome, and +told her so. "War certainly agrees with you, Lottie. Gosh, you look +great. Doesn't she, Belle? Darned pretty, if you ask me, Lot." + +Belle, eyeing Lottie's clear fine skin, and the vital line of her +shoulders and back and a certain set of the head, and a look that was +at once peaceful and triumphant, nodded in agreement, vaguely puzzled. +"I thought you'd be a wreck.... What do you think of Charley?... Oh, +well, and now mother. And here you come complicating things still more. +How did you happen to do such a crazy thing, Lottie?" + +"I'll tell you all about it on the way home." Later, in the taxi, the +heaving bundle fitting graciously into the hollow of her arm: "Well, +you know, after St. Mihiel, when the Germans were retreating and +retreating and our boys were advancing, the Germans took with them in +their retreat all the young men and young women they could lay their +hands on. Prisoners, you know. They meant to use them for work. Well, +often, parents were taken from their children. Babies were left alone. +When our men got to Thiaucourt--that's a little town of about three +hundred--in September, it was a deserted ruined heap of stone. They +were right up on the retreat. And there, in what had been a kitchen, +without any roof to it, was a baby. They sent her back, of course, to +us." + +"Yes, but Lottie, perhaps the----" + +"No. The father was killed in the war. They traced the mother. She died +in November. I adopted her legally----" + +"You didn't!" + +"But I did." + +"Claire--what?" + +Lottie looked down at the bundle; squeezed it with a gentle pressure. +"Claire Payson, I suppose, now." + + + + + CHAPTER XVIII + + +The Girls all came to see the baby. They exclaimed and cooed and +_ah_'d and _oh_'d. "Of course it's wonderful and all. But it +is a big responsibility, Lottie. How in the world did you happen----" + +"Well, you know, after St. Mihiel, when the Germans were retreating and +our boys were advancing----" + +She was asked to lecture before some of the women's clubs, but declined. + +Beck Schaefer, grown a trifle too plump now in the rôle of Mrs. Sam +Butler, insisted on holding the struggling Claire. "I never can tell +whether I like a baby or not until I've held it--her. 'Scuse. Though +this one certainly is a darling. Come to your Aunt Beck, sweetie. Oh, +Lottie! Look at her! She put her little hand right up on my cheek! +S'e is a tunnin' ol' sin, izzen s'e!" This last addressed directly to +the object of her admiration. "Sam and I want to adopt a baby. That's +what comes of marrying late. Though I suppose you heard about Celia. +Imagine! But he looks just like Orville. Good thing he's a boy. I +don't see why you didn't take a boy, while you were about it. Though, +after all, when you've brought up a girl you know where she is, but a +boy! Well! They leave you and then where are you! They don't even thank +you for your trouble. And girls are such fun to dress. Oh, _what_ +did you think of Ben Gartz marrying a chorus girl! Didn't you nearly +die! I saw her in the Pompeiian Room with him one night after the +theatre. She's a common looking little thing and young enough to be his +daughter. She was ordering things under glass. Poor Ben. He was awfully +sweet on you, Lottie, at one time. What happened, anyway?" + +Against the doctor's orders and the nurse's advice and manœuverings, +Mrs. Payson had insisted on seeing the baby immediately on Lottie's +entering the house. They prepared Lottie. "It can't be much worse for +her to see you--and the baby--now than not to see you. She's so worked +up that we can't do anything with her anyway. But don't argue; and +don't oppose her in anything. Lie, if you have to, about sending the +baby away." + +"Away! Oh! no!" + +"But Lottie, you don't understand how sick she is. Any shock might----" + +Lottie had scarcely divested herself of hat and wraps when she entered +her mother's bedroom, the child in her arms. Mrs. Payson's eyes +were on the door--had been from the moment she heard the flurry of +homecoming downstairs. As Lottie stood in the doorway a moment the sick +woman's eyes dilated. She made as though to sit up. The nurse took the +child from Lottie as she bent over to kiss her mother. Then, suddenly, +she dropped to her knees at the side of the bed. "Oh, mama, it's so +good to be home." She took one of the flaccid hands in her own firm +vital grasp. + +"H'm. Well, that's some good come of your leaving, anyway. You look +handsome, Lottie. How've you got your hair done?" + +"Just as I always had it, mama." + +"Your face looks fuller, somehow. Let's see the young one." + +The nurse turned and leaned over the bed. But at this final test of her +good nature Claire, travel worn, bewildered, hungry, failed them. She +opened wide her mouth, lurched in muscular rebellion, and emitted a +series of ear-piercing screams against the world; against this strange +person in white who held her; against that which stared at her from the +bed. + +"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Payson. "Take it away. I knew it. Don't you +think for one minute I'm going to have any foreign baby screaming +around this house, sick as I am. Not for a minute. I hope you're +satisfied, Lottie. Running an orphan asylum in this house. Well, I've +still got something to say." + +But strangely enough she had little to say, after that. She showed +small interest in the newcomer and they kept the baby out of the sick +room. The little world of her bedside interested the sick woman more. +She fancied them all in league against her. She would call Lottie to +her bedside and send the nurse out of the room on some pretext or other +that deceived no one. + +"Lottie, come here. Listen. That woman has got to go. Why, she won't +let me get up! I'm perfectly well." + +"But perhaps you haven't quite got your strength, mama. You know it +takes a while." + +"I'll never get my strength back lying here. Was I ever a person to +stay in bed?" + +"No, mama. You've always been wonderful." + +"A lot of thanks I've got for it, too. Now, Lottie, you see that I +get another doctor. This man's a fool. He doesn't understand my case. +Palavering young hand-holder, that's what he is." + +"Don't you think you'd better try him a little longer? He hasn't had +time, really." + +"Time! I've been three mortal months in this bed. You're like all the +rest of them. Glad if I died. Well, I'm not going to please you just +yet. You'll see me up to-morrow, early." + +They had heard this threat so regularly and so often that they scarcely +heeded it now; or, if they did, only to say, soothingly, "We'll see how +you feel by to-morrow, shall we?" + +So that when, finally, she made good her threat the nurse came in early +one morning from where she slept in the alcove just off the big front +bedroom to find her half-lying, half-sitting in the big chair by the +window. She had got up stealthily, had even fumbled about in bureau +and closet for the clothes she had not worn in months. In one hand she +grasped her corsets. She had actually meant to put them on as she had +done every morning before her illness, regarding corsetless kimonoed +women with contempt. She must have dragged herself up to the chair by +an almost super-human effort of will. So they found her. A born ruler, +defying them all to the last. + +Charley came home for the funeral. She was not to rejoin the Krisiloff +company until its arrival in Chicago for the two-weeks' engagement +there. "If ever," said Henry Kemp privately to Lottie. "I don't think +she's so crazy about this trouping any more. You ought to have heard +her talking about the fresh eggs at breakfast this morning. I asked +her what she'd been eating on the road and she said, 'Vintage oofs.'" + +Mrs. Carrie Payson's funeral proved an enlightening thing. There came +to it a queer hodge-podge of people; representatives of Chicago's South +Side old families who had not set foot in the Prairie Avenue house +in half a century; real estate men who had known her in the days of +her early business career; Brosch, the carpenter and contractor, with +whom she had bickered and bartered for years; some of the Polish and +Italian tenants from over Eighteenth Street way; women in shawls of +whom Lottie had never heard, and who owed Mrs. Payson some unnamed debt +of gratitude. Lottie wondered if she had ever really understood her +mother; if the indomitability that amounted almost to ruthlessness had +not been, after all, a finer quality than a certain fluid element in +herself, in Aunt Charlotte, in Charley, which had handicapped them all. + +Aunt Charlotte mourned her sister sincerely; seemed even to miss her +tart-tongued goading. No one to find fault with her clothes, her +habits, her ideas, her conversation. Lottie humoured her outrageously. +The household found itself buying as Mrs. Payson had bought; thinking +as she had thought; regulating its hours as they had been regulated +for her needs. Her personality was too powerful to fade so soon after +the corporeal being had gone. + +More easily than any of them Aunt Charlotte had accepted the advent +of the French baby. To her the sound and sight of a baby in the old +Prairie Avenue house seemed an accustomed and natural thing. She had +a way of mixing names, bewilderingly. Often as not she called Claire +"Lottie," or Charley "Claire." She clapped her hands at the baby and +wagged her head at her tremulously, and said, "No, no, no! Auntie +punish!" and "Come to Auntie Charlotte," exactly as she had done forty +years before to Belle. Once she put the child down on the floor for a +moment and Claire began to wriggle her way down the faded green stream +of the parlor carpet river, and to poke a finger into the sails of the +dim old ships and floral garlands, just as Lottie and Belle had done +long ago. + +There was much talk of selling the old house; but it never seemed to +amount to more than talk. In proper time Claire was cutting her teeth +and soothing her hot swollen gums on the hard surface of Ole Bull's +arms, just as Belle and Lottie had done before her. This only, of +course, when Aunt Charlotte was holding her. Lottie and Charley both +put down the practice as highly unhygienic. + +"Fiddlesticks! You and Belle did it with all your teeth. And you're +living." + +Charley came daily--often twice daily--to see the baby. She was +fascinated by her, made herself Claire's slave, insisted on trundling +her up and down Prairie Avenue in the smart English pram, though Lottie +said she much preferred to have her sleep or take her airing in the +back garden undisturbed. Charley and Aunt Charlotte opposed this. +Charley said, "Oh, but look how ducky she is in that bonnet! Everybody +stops to look at her, and then I brag. Yesterday I told a woman she was +mine. I expected her to say, 'And you so young!' but she didn't." + +Aunt Charlotte said, "This new fad of never talking to babies and never +picking 'em up! It makes idiots of them. How can you ever expect them +to learn anything? Lie there like wooden images. Or else break their +hearts crying, when all they want is a little petting.... Her want her +ol' Auntie to p'ay wis her, yes her does, doesn't her?" to the baby. + +Claire was one of those fair, rose-leaf babies, and possessed, at eight +months, of that indefinable thing known as style. She was the kind of +baby, Charley said, that looks dressy in a flannel nightgown. "Those +French gals," Charley explained. "Chic. That's what she's got. Haven't +you, _ma petite? Ma bébé_--or is it _mon bébé_, Lotta? +I get so mixed." Charley's was the American college girl's French, +verbless, scant, and faltering. She insisted on addressing Claire in +it, to that young person's wide-eyed delight. "_Tu est mon chou--ma +chou_--say, Lotta, you're a girl that's been around. Do they really +call each other cabbages over there?" + +One of the big bedrooms on the second floor had been cleared and +refurnished as a nursery. Here, almost nightly at six o'clock, you +found Lottie, Charley, and Aunt Charlotte. The six o'clock bottle was a +vital affair. It just preceded sleeping time. It must be taken quietly +for some dietetic reason. The three women talked low, in the twilight, +watching Claire in her small bed. Claire lay rolling her eyes around at +them ecstatically as she pulled at the bottle. She exercised tremendous +suction and absorbed the bottle's contents almost magically unless +carefully watched. + +This evening the talk centred on the child, as always. Trivial talk, +and yet vital. + +"She's growing so I'll have to let her hems down again. And some new +stockings. The heels of those she has come under the middle of her +foot." + +"Look at her Lotta! She's half asleep. There, now she's awake again and +pulling like mad. Swoons off and shows the whites of her eyes and then +remembers and goes at it again. Now she's--I never saw such a snoozey +old thing. Sleeps something chronic, all day and all night. What good +are you, anyway, h'm?" + +Aunt Charlotte grew reminiscent. "Time you and Belle were babies you +wore long dresses--great long trailing bunchy things, and yards and +yards of petticoats--flannel and white. It used to take the girl hours +to do 'em up. Nowadays, seems the less they put on 'em the healthier +they are." + +Charley was seated cross-legged on the floor, her back against a fat +old armchair. "How about the babies in France, Lotta? I suppose they're +still bundling them up over there. What did the Coot have on when they +found her, h'm?" + +Lotta rose to take the empty bottle away, gently. Claire's eyes were +again showing two white slits. + +Aunt Charlotte, in the window chair, leaned forward. Her tremulous +forefinger made circles, round and round, on her black-silk knee. "Yes, +Lotta. Now what did she have on, poor little forlorn lamb!" + +"Why--I don't remember, Aunt Charlotte." She tucked the coverlet in +at the sides of the crib firmly. Claire was sound asleep now, her two +fists held high above her head, as a healthy baby sleeps. Lottie stood +a moment looking down at the child. The old, old virgin in the chair by +the window and the young girl seated cross-legged on the floor watched +her intently. Suddenly the quiet peaceful air of the nursery was +electric. The child made a little clucking sound with tongue and lips, +in her sleep. Charley sat forward, her eyes on Lottie. + +"Lotta, do you remember my five--my five----" she broke off with a +half-sob. Then she threw up her head. "I'll have them yet." + +It was then Aunt Charlotte put into brave words the thought that was +in the minds of the three women. "Don't you want to tell us about him, +Lottie? Don't you?" + +For one instant terror leaped into Lottie's eyes as they went from Aunt +Charlotte's face to Charley's. But at what they saw there the terror +faded and in its place came relief--infinite relief. "Yes." + +"Well, then, just you do." + +But Lottie hesitated yet another moment, looking at them intently. "Did +you both know--all the time." Aunt Charlotte nodded. But Charley shook +her head slightly. "Not until just now, Lotta ... something in your +face as you stood there looking down at her." + +Lottie came away from the crib, sat down in a low chair near Aunt +Charlotte. Charley scuttled crab-wise over to her across the floor and +settled there against her, her arm flung across Lottie's knee. The old +Prairie Avenue house was quiet, quiet. You could hear the child's +regular breathing. Lottie's voice was low, so that the baby's sleep +might not be disturbed, yet clear, that Aunt Charlotte might hear. They +could have gone downstairs, or to another chamber, but they did not. +The three women sat in the dim room. + +"We met--I met him--in Paris, the very first week. He had gone over +there in the beginning as a correspondent. Then he had come all the +way back to America and had enlisted for service. He hated it, as +every intelligent man did. But he had to do it, he said. We--liked +each other right away. I'd never met a man like that before. I didn't +know there were any. Oh, I suppose I did know; but they had never come +within my range. He had only a second-lieutenancy. There was nothing +of the commander about him. He always said so. He used to say he had +never learned to 'snap into it' properly. You know what I mean? He was +thirty-seven. Winnie Steppler introduced us. She had known him in his +Chicago cub reporter days. He went to New York, later. Well, that first +week, when I was waiting to be sent out, he and Winnie and I--she met +me in Paris, you know, when I came--went everywhere together and it +was glorious. I can't tell you. Paris was being shelled but it refused +to be terrorised. The streets and the parks and the restaurants were +packed. You've no idea what it was, going about with him. He was like +a boy about things--simple things, I mean--a print in a window, or a +sauce in a restaurant, or a sunset on the Bois. We used to laugh at +nothing--foolish, wonderful, private jokes like those families have +that are funny to no one outside the family. The only other person +I'd ever known like that was a boy at school when I went to Armour. I +haven't seen him since I was eighteen, and he's an important person +now. But he had that same quality. They call it a sense of humour, I +suppose, but it's more than that. It's the most delightful thing in +the world, and if you have it you don't need anything else.... Four +months later he was wounded. Not badly. He was in the hospital for six +weeks. In that time I didn't see him. Then he went back into it but he +wasn't fit. We used to write regularly. I don't know how I can make you +understand how things were--things----" + +Charley looked up at her. "I know what you mean. The--the state of mind +that people got into over there--nice people--nice girls. Is that what +you mean?" + +"Yes. Do you know?" + +"Well, I can imagine----" + +"No, you can't. The world was rocking and we over there were +getting the full swing of it. It seemed that all the things we had +considered so vital and fundamental didn't matter any more. Life +didn't count. A city to-day was a brick-heap to-morrow. Night and day +were all mixed up. Terror and work. Exhaustion and hysteria. A lot +of us were girls--women, I mean--who had never known freedom. Not +license--freedom. Ordinary freedom of will, or intellect, or action. +Men, too, who had their noses to the grindstone for years. You know +there's a lot more to war than just killing, and winning battles, and +patching people up. It does something to you--something chemical and +transforming--after you've been in it. The reaction isn't always noble. +I'm just trying to explain what I mean. There were a lot of things +going around--especially among the older and more severe looking of us +girls. It's queer. There was one girl--she'd been a librarian in some +little town up in Michigan. She told me once that there were certain +books they kept in what they called 'The Inferno,' and only certain +people could have them. They weren't on the shelves, for the boys and +girls, or the general public. When she spoke of them she looked like a +librarian. Her mouth made a thin straight line. You could picture her +sitting in the library, at her desk, holding that pencil they use with +a funny little rubber stamp thing attached to it, and refusing to allow +some school-girl to take out 'Jennie Gerhardt.' She was discharged and +sent home for being what they called promiscuous.... I just wanted you +to know how things were.... He got three days' leave. Winnie Steppler +was in Paris at the time. I was to try for leave--I'd have gone A. W. +O. L. if I hadn't got it--and we three were to meet there. Winnie had +a little two-room flat across the river. She'd been there for almost a +year, you know. She made it her headquarters. The concierge knew me. +When I got there Robert was waiting for me. Winnie had left a note. +She had been called to Italy by her paper. I was to use her apartment. +We stayed there together.... I'm not excusing it. There is no excuse. +They were the happiest three days of my life--and always will be.... +There are two kinds of men, you know, who make the best soldiers. The +butcher-boy type with no nerves and no imagination. And the fine, +high-strung type that fears battle and hates war and who whips himself +into courage and heroism because he's afraid he'll be afraid.... He +hated to go back, though he never said so.... He was killed ten days +later.... I went to Switzerland for a while when.... Winnie was with +me.... She was wonderful. I think I should have died without her.... I +wanted to at first.... But not now. Not now." + +Stillness again. You heard only the child's breathing, gentle, +rhythmical. + +Aunt Charlotte's wavering tremulous forefinger traced circles round +and round on her knee--round and round. The heavy black brows were +drawn into a frown. She looked an age-old seeress sitting there in her +black. "Well." She got up slowly and came over to the crib. She stood +there a moment. "It's a brave lie, Lottie. You stick to it, for her. A +topsy-turvy world she's come into. Perhaps she'll be the one to work +out what we haven't done--we Thrift girls. She's got a job ahead of +her. A job." + +Lottie leaned forward in the darkness. "I'll never stand in her way. +She's going to be free. I know. I'll never hamper her. Not in word, or +look, or thought. You'll see." + +"You probably will, Lottie. You're human. But I won't be here to see. +Not I. And I'm not sorry. I've hardly been away from the spot where I +was born, but I've seen the world. I've seen the world.... Well...." + +She went toward the door with her slow firm step, putting each foot +down flat; along the hall she went, her black silk skirts making a soft +susurrus. Lottie rose, opened a window to the sharp spring air. Then, +together, she and Charley tiptoed out, stopping a moment, hand in hand +at the crib. The nursery room was quiet except for the breathing of the +child. + + + THE END + + * * * * * + + THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS + + GARDEN CITY, N. Y. + +[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed. Chapter +XVIII used twice. The second occurrence changed to Chapter XIX.] + + * * * * * + + _Books by_ + + EDNA FERBER + + + BUTTERED SIDE DOWN + CHEERFUL, BY REQUEST + EMMA MCCHESNEY & CO. + DAWN O'HARA + FANNY HERSELF + HALF PORTIONS + PERSONALITY PLUS + ROAST BEEF MEDIUM + THE GIRLS + + + _With Newman Levy_ + + $1200 A YEAR + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75334 *** diff --git a/75334-h/75334-h.htm b/75334-h/75334-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0e9dcd --- /dev/null +++ b/75334-h/75334-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9318 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + The Girls | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } +hr.full {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%; margin-right: 2.5%;} +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +x-ebookmaker-drop {display: none;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap { font-variant:small-caps; } + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +div.titlepage { + text-align: center; + page-break-before: always; + page-break-after: always; +} + +div.titlepage p { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + font-weight: bold; + line-height: 1.5; + margin-top: 3em; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td, +table.autotable th { padding: 4px; } + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +/* Poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} + +.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph1 { font-size: x-large; margin: .83em auto; } + +.ph2 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } +.ph2 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75334 ***</div> + +<div class="titlepage"> + +<h1>THE GIRLS</h1> + +<p class="ph1">BY EDNA FERBER</p> + +<p><i>GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO<br> +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br> +1921</i></p> + +<p>COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY<br> +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY</p> + +<p>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION<br> +INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</p> + +<p>COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY</p> + +<p>PRINTED AT GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>TO<br> +LILLIAN ADLER<br> +WHO SHIES AT BUTTERFLIES<br> +BUT NOT AT LIFE</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<hr class="chap"> + + +<h2>THE GIRLS</h2> + + + +<hr class="chap"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</h2> +</div> + + +<p>It is a question of method. Whether to rush you up to the girls +pellmell, leaving you to become acquainted as best you can; or, with +elaborate slyness, to slip you so casually into their family life that +they will not even glance up when you enter the room, or leave it; or +to present the three of them in solemn order according to age, epoch, +and story. This last would mean beginning with great-aunt Charlotte +Thrift, spinster, aged seventy-four; thence to her niece and namesake +Lottie Payson, spinster, aged thirty-two; finishing with Lottie's niece +and namesake Charley Kemp, spinster, aged eighteen and a half—you +may be certain nobody ever dreamed of calling <i>her</i> Charlotte. +If you are led by all this to exclaim, aghast, "A story about old +maids!"—you are right. It is. Though, after all, perhaps one couldn't +call great-aunt Charlotte an old maid. When a woman has achieved +seventy-four, a virgin, there is about her something as sexless, as +aloof and monumental, as there is about a cathedral or a sequoia. +Perhaps, too, the term is inappropriate to the vigorous, alert, and +fun-loving Lottie. For that matter, a glimpse of Charley in her white +woolly sweater and gym pants might cause you to demand a complete +retraction of the term. Charley is of the type before whom this era +stands in amazement and something like terror. Charley speaks freely +on subjects of which great-aunt Charlotte has never even heard. Words +obstetrical, psychoanalytical, political, metaphysical and eugenic +trip from Charley's tongue. Don't think that Charley is a highbrow (to +use a word fallen into disuse). Not at all. Even her enemies admit, +grudgingly, that she packs a nasty back-hand tennis wallop; and that +her dancing is almost professional. Her chief horror is of what she +calls sentiment. Her minor hatreds are "glad" books, knitted underwear, +corsets, dirt both physical and mental, lies, fat minds and corporeal +fat. She looks her best in a white fuzzy sweater. A shade too slim and +boyish, perhaps, for chiffons.</p> + +<p>The relationship between Charlotte, Lottie, and Charley is a simple +one, really, though having, perhaps, an intricate look to the outsider. +Great-aunt, niece, grand-niece: it was understood readily enough in +Chicago's South Side, just as it was understood that no one ever called +Lottie "Charlotte," or Charley "Lottie," though any of the three might +be designated as "one of the Thrift girls."</p> + +<p>The Thrifts had been Chicago South Siders since that September in 1836 +when Isaac Thrift had traveled tediously by rail, Sound steamer, river +boat, canal boat, lake ship, and horse wagon from his native New York +State to the unkempt prairie settlement on the banks of the sluggish +stream that the Pottawatamie Indians called Che-ca-gou. Their reason +for having thus named a city after the homely garlic plant was plain +enough whenever the breeze came pungently from the prairies instead of +from Lake Michigan.</p> + +<p>Right here is the start of Aunt Charlotte. And yet the temptation +is almost irresistible to brush rudely past her and to hurry on to +Lottie Payson, who is herself hurrying on home through the slate and +salmon-pink Chicago sunset after what is known on the South Side as +"spending the afternoon."</p> + +<p>An exhilarating but breathless business—this catching up with Lottie; +Lottie of the fine straight back, the short sturdy legs, the sensible +shoes, the well-tailored suit and the elfish exterior. All these items +contributed to the facility with which she put the long Chicago blocks +behind her—all, that is, except the last. An unwed woman of thirty-odd +is not supposed to possess an elfish exterior; she is expected to +be well-balanced and matter-of-fact and practical. Lottie knew this +and usually managed to keep the imp pretty well concealed. Yet she +so often felt sixteen and utterly irresponsible that she had to take +brisk walks along the lake front on blustery days, when the spray +stung your cheeks; or out Bryn Mawr way or even to Beverly Hills where +dwellings were sparse and one could take off one's hat and venture +to skip, furtively, without being eyed askance. This was supposed to +help work off the feeling—not that Lottie wanted to work it off. +She liked it. But you can't act Peter Pannish at thirty-two without +causing a good deal of action among conservative eyebrows. Lottie's +mother, Mrs. Carrie Payson, would have been terribly distressed at +the thought of South Side eyebrows elevated against a member of her +household. Sixty-six years of a full life had taught Mrs. Carrie Payson +little about the chemistry of existence. Else she must have known +how inevitably a disastrous explosion follows the bottling up of the +Lotties of this world.</p> + +<p>On this particular March day the elf was proving obstreperous. An +afternoon spent indoors talking to women of her own age and position +was likely to affect Lottie Payson thus. Walking fleetly along now, +she decided that she hated spending afternoons; that they were not +only spent but squandered. Beck Schaefer had taken the others home in +her electric. Lottie, seized with a sudden distaste for the glittering +enameled box with its cut-glass cornucopia for flowers (artificial), +its gray velvet upholstery and tasseled straps, had elected to walk, +though she knew it would mean being late.</p> + +<p>"Figger?" Beck Schaefer had asked, settling her own plump person in the +driver's seat.</p> + +<p>"Air," Lottie had answered, not altogether truthfully; and drew a long +breath. She turned away from the curb. The electric trundled richly +off, its plate-glass windows filled with snugly tailored shoulders, +furs, white gloves, vivid hats. Lottie held a hand high in farewell, +palm out, as the gleaming vehicle sped silently away, lurched fatly +around a corner, and was gone.</p> + +<p>So she strode home now, through the early evening mist, the zany +March wind buffeting her skirts—no, skirt: it is 1916 and women are +knicker-bockered underneath instead of petticoated—and the fishy +smell that was Lake Michigan in March; the fertilizer smell that was +the Stockyards when the wind was west; and the smoky smell that was +soft coal from the I. C. trains and a million unfettered chimneys, +all blending and mellowing to a rich mixture that was incense to her +Chicago-bred nostrils.</p> + +<p>She was walking rapidly and thinking clearly, if disconnectedly:</p> + +<p>"How we lied to each other this afternoon! Once or twice, though, +we came nearer the truth than was strictly comfortable.... Beck's +bitter.... There! I forgot Celia's recipe for that icebox cake after +all.... Beck's legs ... I never saw such—uh—tumultuous legs ... gray +silk stockings ought to be prohibited on fat legs; room seemed to be +full of them.... That's a nice sunset. I'd love to go over to the lake +just for a minute.... No, guess I'd better not with the folks coming +to dinner.... People always saying Chicago's ugly when it's really.... +Of course the Loop is pretty bad.... Tomorrow'd be a good day to go +downtown and look at blue serges ... a tricotine I think.... I wonder +if mother will want to go.... I do hope this once...."</p> + +<p>Here Lottie drew a deep breath; the kind of breathing that relieves +stomach nerves. She was so sure that mother would want to go. She +almost always did.</p> + +<p>Here we are, striding briskly along with Lottie Payson, while +great-aunt Charlotte, a wistful black-silk figure, lingers far behind. +We are prone to be impatient of black-silk figures, quite forgetting +that they once were slim and eager white young figures in hoop-skirts +that sometimes tilted perilously up behind, displaying an unseemly +length of frilled pantalette. Great-aunt Charlotte's skirts had shaped +the course of her whole life.</p> + +<p>Charlotte Thrift had passed eighteen when the Civil War began. There +is a really beautiful picture of her in her riding habit, taken at the +time. She is wearing a hard-boiled hat with a plume, and you wonder +how she ever managed to reconcile that skirt with a horse's back. The +picture doesn't show the color of the plume but you doubtless would +know. It is a dashing plume anyway, and caresses her shoulder. In one +hand she is catching up the folds of her voluminous skirt, oh, ever so +little; and in the other, carelessly, she is holding a rose. Her young +face is so serious as to be almost severe. That is, perhaps, due to her +eyebrows which were considered too heavy and dark for feminine beauty. +And yet there is a radiance about the face, and an effect of life and +motion about the young figure that bespeaks but one thing. Great-aunt +Charlotte still has the picture somewhere. Sometimes, in a mild orgy +of "straightening up" she comes upon it in its pasteboard box tucked +away at the bottom of an old chest in her bedroom. At such times she is +likely to take it out and look at it with a curiously detached air, as +though it were the picture of a stranger. It is in this wise, too, that +her dim old eyes regard the world—impersonally. It is as though, at +seventy-four, she no longer is swayed by emotions, memories, people, +events. Remote, inaccessible, immune, she sees, weighs, and judges with +the detached directness of a grim old idol.</p> + +<p>Fifty-five years had yellowed the photograph of the wasp-waisted girl +in the billowing riding skirt when her grand-niece, Charley Kemp, +appeared before her in twentieth century riding clothes: sleeveless +jacket ending a little below the hips; breeches baggy in the seat but +gripping the knees. Great-aunt Charlotte had said, "So that's what it's +come to." You could almost hear her agile old mind clicking back to +that other young thing of the plume, and the rose and the little booted +foot peeping so demurely from beneath the folds of the sweeping skirt.</p> + +<p>"Don't you like it?" Charley had looked down at her slim self and had +flicked her glittering tan boots with her riding whip because that +seemed the thing to do. Charley went to matinees.</p> + +<p>Great-aunt Charlotte had pursed her crumpled old lips, whether in +amusement or disapproval—those withered lips whose muscles had long +ago lost their elasticity. "Well, it's kind of comical, really. And +ugly. But you don't look ugly in it, Charley, or comical either. You +look like a right pretty young boy."</p> + +<p>Her eyes had a tenderly amused glint. Those eyes saw less now than +they used to: an encroaching cataract. But they had a bright and +piercing appearance owing to the heavy brows which, by some prank of +nature, had defied the aging process that had laid its blight upon +hair, cheek, lips, skin, and frame. The brows had remained jetty black; +twin cornices of defiance in the ivory ruin of her face. They gave her +a misleadingly sinister and cynical look. Piratical, almost.</p> + +<p>Perhaps those eyebrows indicated in Charlotte Thrift something of the +iron that had sustained her father, Isaac Thrift, the young Easterner, +throughout his first years of Middle-Western hardship. Chicago to-day +is full of resentful grandsons and -daughters who will tell you that if +their grandsire had bought the southwest corner of State and Madison +Streets for $2,050 in cash, as he could have, they would be worth their +millions to-day. And they are right. Still, if all those who tell you +this were granted their wish Chicago now would be populated almost +wholly by millionaire real estate holders; and the southwest corner of +State and Madison would have had to be as the loaves and the fishes.</p> + +<p>Isaac Thrift had been one of these inconsiderate forebears. He had +bought real estate, it is true, but in the mistaken belief that the +city's growth and future lay along the south shore instead of the +north. Chicago's South Side in that day was a prairie waste where +wolves howled on winter nights and where, in the summer, flowers grew +so riotously as to make a trackless sea of bloom. Isaac Thrift had +thought himself very canny and far-sighted to vision that which his +contemporaries could not see. They had bought North Side property. +They had built their houses there. Isaac Thrift built his on Wabash, +near Madison, and announced daringly that some day he would have +a real country place, far south, near Eighteenth Street. For that +matter, he said, the time would come when they would hear of houses +thick in a street that would be known as Thirtieth, or even Fortieth. +How they laughed at that! Besides, it was pretty well acknowledged by +the wiseacres that St. Charles, a far older town, would soon surpass +Chicago and become the metropolis of the West.</p> + +<p>In books on early Chicago and its settlers you can see Isaac Thrift +pictured as one of the stern and flinty city fathers, all boots and +stock and massive watch-chain and side-whiskers. It was neither a time +nor a place for weaklings. The young man who had come hopefully out +of New York state to find his fortune in the welter of mud, swamp, +Indians, frame shanties and two-wheeled carts that constituted Chicago, +had needed all his indomitability.</p> + +<p>It is characteristic of him that until his marriage he lived at the +New Temperance Hotel (board and lodging $2.00 a week; clothes washed +extra), instead of at the popular Saugenash Hotel on Market and Lake, +where the innkeeper, that gay and genial Frenchman and pioneer, +Mark Beaubien, would sometimes take down his fiddle and set feet to +twinkling and stepping in the square-dance. None of this for Isaac +Thrift. He literally had rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Little +enough use he made of the fine bottle-green broadcloth coat with the +gilt buttons, the high stock, and the pale gray pantaloons brought from +the East. But in two years he had opened a sort of general store and +real estate office on Lake Street, had bought a piece of ground for a +house on Wabash (which piece he later foolishly sold) and had sent back +East for his bride. That lady left her comfortable roof-tree to make +the long and arduous trip that duplicated the one made earlier by her +husband-to-be. It is to her credit that she braved it; but she had a +hard time trying to adjust her New England viewpoint to the crude rough +setting in which she now found herself. Her letters back East are so +typical and revealing that extracts, at least, are imperative.</p> + +<p>"... The times are exceedingly dull in this city of Chicago; there is +little business, no balls, no parties, some shooting, some riding, +and plenty of loafers, and to-day, after the rain, a plenty of mud +which completes the picture.... The water here is first-rate bad and +the only way we get along is by drinking a great deal of tea and +coffee—two coffees to one tea.... The weather has been very mild. +There has not been snow enough to stop the burning of the prairies.... +If the waters of Lake Michigan continue to rise for a year or two +more Chicago and all the surrounding country will be covered with one +vast sheet of water, and the inhabitants of this place must find a +home elsewhere—and I, for one, will find said home farther East.... +Everyone admires my pretty things from New York; my cherry-colored +scarf; my gingham dress with the silk stripe in it, my Thibet cloth +cloak of dark mulberry color; and my fine velvet bonnet which cost +only $3.50 in New York. It is prettier than any I have seen here. A +milliner here said that it would have cost $8.00 in Chicago but I think +that is exaggerated. The ladies here wear only one flounce to their +skirts. Even my third best—the brown-and-white plaid merino—has +three.... The mud here is so bad that the men wear hip boots and we +women must go about in two-wheeled carts that sink to the hubs in many +places. There are signs stuck up in the mud with the warning, 'No +bottom here'.... Our new furniture has come. A beautiful flowered red +and green carpet in the chamber and parlor. When the folding doors +are open the stove will heat both rooms.... They have most excellent +markets in this place. We can get meat of every description for four +cents a pound, such as sausages, venison, beef, pork—everything except +fowls. Of fruit there is little. I saw some grapes yesterday in the +market, all powdered over with sawdust. They had come from Spain. They +made my mouth water.... Every day great prairie schooners, as they call +them, go by the house. They have come all the way from the East.... I +am terrified of the Indians though I have said little to Isaac. They +are very dirty and not at all noble as our history and geography books +state...."</p> + +<p>She bore Isaac Thrift two children, accomplishing the feat as +circumspectly and with as much reticence as is possible in the +achievement of so physical a rite. Girls, both. I think she would have +considered a man-child indelicate.</p> + +<p>Charlotte had been the first of these girls. Carrie, the second, +came a tardy ten years later. It was a time and a city of strange +contradictions and fluctuations. Fortunes were made in the boom of 1835 +and lost in the panic of '37. Chicago was a broken-down speculative +shanty village one day and an embryo metropolis the next. The Firemen's +Ball was the event of the social season, with Engine No. 3, glittering +gift of "Long John" Wentworth, set in the upper end of the dance-hall +and festooned with flowers and ribbons. All the worth-while beaux of +the town belonged to the volunteer fire brigade. The names of Chicago's +firemen of 1838 or '40, if read aloud to-day, would sound like the +annual list of box-holders at the opera. The streets of the town were +frequently impassable; servants almost unknown; quiltings and church +sociables noteworthy events. The open prairie, just beyond town, teemed +with partridges, quail, prairie chicken. Fort Dearborn, deserted, was a +playground for little children. Indians, dirty, blanketed, saturnine, +slouched along the streets. "Long John" Wentworth was kinging it in +Congress. Young ladies went to balls primly gowned in dark-colored +merinos, long-sleeved, high-necked. Little girls went to school in +bodices low-cut and nearly sleeveless; toe-slippers; and manifold +skirts starched to stand out like a ballerina's.</p> + +<p>These stiffly starched skirts, layer on layer, first brought romance +into Charlotte Thrift's life. She was thirteen, a rather stocky little +girl, not too obedient of the prim maternal voice that was forever +bidding her point her toes out, hold her shoulders back and not talk at +table. She must surely have talked at table this morning, or, perhaps, +slouched her shoulders and perversely toed in once safely out of sight +of the house, because she was late for school. The horrid realization +of this came as Charlotte reached the Rush Street ferry—a crude +ramshackle affair drawn from one side of the river to the other with +ropes pulled by hand. Charlotte attended Miss Rapp's school on the +North Side though the Thrifts lived South. This makeshift craft was +about to leave the south shore as Charlotte, her tardiness heavy upon +her, sighted the river. With a little cry and a rush she sped down the +path, leaped, slipped, and landed just short of the ferry in the slimy +waters of the Chicago River. Landed exactly expresses it. Though, on +second thought, perhaps settled is better. Layer on layer of stiffly +starched skirts sustained her. She had fallen feet downward. There she +rested on the water, her skirts spread petal-like about her, her toes, +in their cross-strapped slippers, no doubt pointing demurely downward. +She looked like some weird white river-lily afloat on its pad in the +turbid stream. Her eyes were round with fright beneath the strongly +marked black brows. Then, suddenly and quite naturally, she screamed, +kicked wildly, and began to sink. Sank, in fact. It had all happened +with incredible swiftness. The ferry men had scarcely had time to open +their mouths vacuously. Charlotte's calliope screams, so ominously +muffled now, wakened them into action. But before their clumsy wits +and hands had seized on ropes a slim black-and-white line cleft +the water, disappeared, and reappeared with the choking struggling +frantic Charlotte, very unstarched now and utterly unmindful of toes, +shoulders, and vocal restraint.</p> + +<p>The black-and-white line had been young Jesse Dick, of the +"Hardscrabble" Dicks; the black had been his trousers, the white his +shirt. He swam like a river rat—which he more or less was. Of all the +Chicago male inhabitants to whom Mrs. Thrift would most have objected +as the rescuer of her small daughter, this lounging, good-for-nothing +young Jesse Dick would have been most prominently ineligible. +Fortunately (or unfortunately) she did not even know his name until +five years later. Charlotte herself did not know it. She had had one +frantic glimpse of a wet, set face above hers, but it had been only a +flash in a kaleidoscopic whole. Young Dick, having towed her ashore, +had plumped her down, retrieved his coat, and lounged off unmissed +and unrecognized in the ensuing hubbub. The rescue accomplished, +his seventeen-year-old emotions found no romantic stirrings in the +thought of this limp and dripping bundle of corded muslin, bedraggled +pantalettes, and streaming, stringy hair.</p> + +<p>Charlotte, put promptly to bed of course, with a pan at her feet and +flannel on her chest and hot broth administered at intervals—though +she was no whit the worse for her ducking—lay very flat and still +under the gay calico comfortable, her hair in two damp braids, her eyes +wide and thoughtful.</p> + +<p>"But who was he?" insisted Mrs. Thrift, from the foot of the bed.</p> + +<p>And "I don't know," replied Charlotte for the dozenth time.</p> + +<p>"What did he look like?" demanded Isaac Thrift (hastily summoned from +his place of business so near the scene of the mishap).</p> + +<p>"I—don't know," replied Charlotte. And that, bafflingly enough, was +the truth. Only sometimes in her dreams she saw his face again, white, +set, and yet with something almost merry about it. From these dreams +Charlotte would wake shivering deliciously. But she never told them. +During the next five years she never went to a dance, a sleigh-ride, +walked or rode, that she did not unconsciously scan the room or the +street for his face.</p> + +<p>Five years later Charlotte was shopping on Lake Street in her +second-best merino, voluminously hooped. Fortunately (she thought +later, devoutly) she had put on her best bonnet of sage green velvet +with the frill of blond lace inside the face. A frill of blond lace is +most flattering when set inside the bonnet. She had come out of her +father's store and was bound for the shop of Mr. Potter Palmer where, +the week before, she had flirted with a plum-colored pelisse and had +known no happiness since then. She must feel it resting on her own +sloping shoulders. Of course it was—but then, Mr. Palmer, when he +waited on you himself, often came down in his price.</p> + +<p>Chicago sidewalks were crazy wooden affairs raised high on rickety +stilts, uneven, full of cracks for the unwary, now five steps up, now +six steps down, with great nails raising their ugly heads to bite at +unsuspecting draperies. Below this structure lay a morass of mud, and +woe to him who stepped into it.</p> + +<p>Along this precarious eminence Charlotte moved with the gait that +fashion demanded; a mingling of mince, swoop and glide. Her mind was on +the plum pelisse. A malicious nail, seeing this, bit at her dipping and +voluminous skirt with a snick and a snarl. R-r-rip! it went. Charlotte +stepped back with a little cry of dismay—stepped back just too far, +lost her footing and tumbled over the edge of the high boardwalk into +the muck and slime below.</p> + +<p>For the second time in five years Jesse Dick's lounging habit served a +good purpose. There he was on Lake Street idly viewing the world when +he should have been helping to build it as were the other young men +of that hard-working city. He heard her little cry of surprise and +fright; saw her topple, a hoop-skirted heap, into the mire. Those same +ridiculous hoops, wire traps that they were, rendered her as helpless +as a beetle on its back. Jesse Dick's long legs sprang to her rescue, +though he could not suppress a smile at her plight. This before he +caught a glimpse of the face set off by the frill of blond lace. He +picked her up, set her on her feet—little feet in cloth-gaitered side +boots and muddied white stockings—and began gently to wipe her sadly +soiled second-best merino with his handkerchief, with his shabby coat +sleeve, with his coat-tail and, later, with his heart.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't—please—you mustn't—please—oh—" Charlotte kept +murmuring, the color high in her cheeks. She was poised at that +dangerous pinnacle between tears and laughter; between vexation and +mirth. "Oh, please——"</p> + +<p>Her vaguely protesting hand, in its flutterings, brushed his blond +curly head. He was on his knees tidying her skirts with great deftness +and thoroughness. There was about the act an intimacy and a boyish +delicacy, too, that had perhaps startled her into her maidenly protest. +He had looked up at her then, as she bent down.</p> + +<p>"Why, you're the boy!" gasped Charlotte.</p> + +<p>"What boy?" No wonder he failed to recognize her as she did him. Her +mouth, at the time of the rescue five years before, had been wide open +to emit burbles and strangled coughs; her features had been distorted +with fright.</p> + +<p>"The boy who pulled me out of the river. Long ago. I was going to +school. Rush Street. You jumped in. I never knew. But you're the boy. I +mean—of course you're grown now. But you are, aren't you? The boy, I +mean. The——"</p> + +<p>She became silent, looking down at him, her face like a rose in the +blond lace frill. He was still on his knees in the mud, brushing at her +skirts with a gesture that now was merely mechanical; brushing, as we +know, with his heart in his hand.</p> + +<p>So, out of the slime of the river and the grime of Lake Street had +flowered their romance.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</h2> +</div> + + +<p>A short-lived and tragic enough romance. It wasn't that the Dicks +were rowdy, or of evil repute. They were nobodies. In a day when +social lines were so elastic as to be nearly all-inclusive the Dicks +were miles outside the pale. In the first place, they lived out +"Hardscrabble" way. That definitely placed them. The name designated a +mean, tumble-down district southwest of town, inhabited by poor whites. +A welter of mud, curs, barefoot babies, slatternly women, shirt-sleeved +men lounging slackly against open doorways, acrid pipe in mouth.</p> + +<p>Young Jesse Dick, sprung from this soil, still was alien to it; a +dreamer; a fawn among wallowing swine; an idler with nothing of the +villain about him and the more dangerous because of that. Isaac Thrift +and his prim wife certainly would sooner have seen their daughter +Charlotte dead than involved with one of the Dick clan. But they were +unaware of the very existence of the riffraff Dicks. The Thrifts lived +in two-story-and-basement elegance on Wabash near Madison, and kept +their own cow.</p> + +<p>There was a fine natural forest between Clark and Pine Streets, north, +on the lake shore. Along its grassy paths lay fallen and decayed +trees. Here the two used to meet, for it came to that. Charlotte had +an Indian pony which she rode daily. Sometimes they met on the prairie +to the south of town. The picture of Charlotte in the sweeping skirt, +the stiff little hat, the caressing plume, and the rose must have +been taken at about this time. There was in her face a glow, a bloom, +a radiance such as comes to a woman—with too heavy eyebrows—who is +beloved for the first time.</p> + +<p>It was, as it turned out, for the last time as well. Charlotte had the +courage for clandestine meetings in spite of a girlhood hedged about +with prim pickets of propriety: but when she thought of open revolt, +of appearing with Jesse Dick before the priggish mother and the flinty +father, she shrank and cowered and was afraid. To them she was little +more than a fresh young vegetable without emotions, thoughts, or +knowledge of a kind which they would have considered unmaidenly.</p> + +<p>Charlotte was sitting in the dining room window-nook one day, sewing. +It was a pleasant room in which to sit and sew. One could see +passers-by on Madison Street as well as Wabash, and even, by screwing +around a little, get glimpses of State Street with its great trees and +its frame cottages. Mrs. Thrift, at the dining room table, was casting +up her weekly accounts. She closed the little leather-bound book now +and sat back with a sigh. There was a worried frown between her eyes. +Mrs. Thrift always wore a worried frown between her eyes. She took +wife-and-motherhood hard. She would have thought herself unwifely and +unmotherly to take them otherwise. She wore her frown about the house +as she did her cap—badge of housewifeliness.</p> + +<p>"I declare," she said now, "with beef six cents the pound—and not a +very choice cut, either—a body dreads the weekly accounts."</p> + +<p>"M-m-m," murmured Charlotte remotely, from the miles and miles that +separated them.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Thrift regarded her for a moment, tapping her cheek thoughtfully +with the quill in her hand. Her frown deepened. Charlotte was wearing +a black sateen apron, very full. Her hair, drawn straight back from +her face, was gathered at the back into a chenille net. A Garibaldi +blouse completed the hideousness of her costume. There quivered about +her an aura—a glow—a roseate something—that triumphed over apron, +net, and blouse. Mrs. Thrift sensed this without understanding it. Her +puzzlement took the form of nagging.</p> + +<p>"It seems to me, Charlotte, that you might better be employed with +your plain sewing than with fancywork such as that."</p> + +<p>Charlotte's black sateen lap was gay with scraps of silk; cherry +satin, purple velvet, green taffetas, scarlet, blue. She was making a +patchwork silk quilt of an intricate pattern (of which work of art more +later).</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed," said she now, unfortunately. And hummed a little tune.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Thrift stood up with a great rustling of account-book leaves, and +of skirts; with all the stir of outraged dignity. "Well, miss, I'll +thank you to pay the compliment of listening when I talk to you. You +sit there smiling at nothing, like a simpleton, I do declare!"</p> + +<p>"I was listening, mother."</p> + +<p>"What did I last say?"</p> + +<p>"Why—beef—six—"</p> + +<p>"Humph! What with patchwork quilts and nonsense like that, and out on +your pony every day, fine or not, I sometimes wonder, miss, what you +think yourself. Beef indeed!"</p> + +<p>She gathered up her books and papers. It was on her tongue's tip to +forbid the afternoon's ride. Something occult in Charlotte sensed this. +She leaned forward. "Oh, mother, Mrs. Perry's passing on Madison and +looking at the house. I do believe she's coming in. Wait. Yes, she's +turning in. I think I'll just——"</p> + +<p>"Stay where you are," commanded Mrs. Thrift. Charlotte subsided. She +bent over her work again, half hidden by the curtains that hung stiffly +before the entrance to the window-nook. You could hear Mrs. Perry's +high sharp voice in speech with Cassie, the servant. "If she's in the +dining room I'll go right in. Don't bother about the parlor." She came +sweeping down the hall. It was evident that news was on her tongue's +tip. Her bonnet was slightly askew. Her hoops swayed like a hill in +a quake. Mrs. Thrift advanced to meet her. They shook hands at arm's +length across the billows of their outstanding skirts.</p> + +<p>"Such news, Mrs. Thrift! What do you think! After all these years Mrs. +Holcomb's going to have a ba——"</p> + +<p>"My <i>dear</i>!" interrupted Mrs. Thrift, hastily; and raised a +significant eyebrow in the direction of the slim figure bent over her +sewing in the window-nook.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Perry coughed apologetically. "Oh! I didn't see——"</p> + +<p>"Charlotte dear, leave the room."</p> + +<p>Charlotte gathered up the bits of silk in her apron. Anxious as she was +to be gone, there was still something in the manner of her dismissal +that offended her new sense of her own importance. She swooped and +stooped for bits of silk and satin, thrusting them into her apron +and work-bag. Though she seemed to be making haste her progress +was maddeningly slow. The two ladies, eying her with ill-concealed +impatience, made polite and innocuous conversation meanwhile.</p> + +<p>"And have you heard that the Empress Eugénie has decided to put aside +her crinoline?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Thrift made a sound that amounted to a sniff. "So the newspapers +said last year. You remember she appeared at a court ball without a +crinoline? Yes. Well, fancy how ridiculous she must have looked! She +put them on again fast enough, I imagine, after that."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but they do say she didn't. I have a letter from New York written +by my friend Mrs. Hollister who comes straight from Paris and she says +that the new skirts are quite flat about the—below the waist, to the +knees——"</p> + +<p>Charlotte fled the room dutifully now, with a little curtsey for Mrs. +Perry. In the dark passageway she stamped an unfilial foot. Then, it +is to be regretted, she screwed her features into one of those unadult +contortions known as making a face. Turning, she saw regarding her from +the second-story balustrade her eight-year-old sister Carrie. Carrie, +ten years her sister's junior, never had been late to school; never +had fallen into the Chicago River, nor off a high wooden sidewalk; +always turned her toes out; held her shoulders like a Hessian.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> saw you!" cried this true daughter of her mother.</p> + +<p>Charlotte, mounting the stairs to her own room, swept past this +paragon with such a disdainful swishing of skirts, apron, and squares +of bright-colored silk stuff as to create quite a breeze. She even +dropped one of the gay silken bits, saw it flutter to the ground at her +tormentor's feet, and did not deign to pick it up. Carrie swooped for +it. "You dropped a piece." She looked at it. "It's the orange-colored +silk one!" (Destined to be the quilt's high note of color.) "Finding's +keeping." She tucked it into her apron pocket. Charlotte entered her +own room. "<i>I</i> saw you, miss." Charlotte slammed her chamber door +and locked it.</p> + +<p>She was not as magnificently aloof and unconcerned as she seemed. She +knew the threat in the impish Carrie's "<i>I</i> saw you." In the +Thrift household a daughter who had stamped a foot and screwed up a +face in contempt of maternal authority did not go unpunished. Once +informed, an explanation would be demanded. How could Charlotte explain +that one who has been told almost daily for three weeks that she is the +most enchanting, witty, beauteous, and intelligent woman in the world +naturally resents being ignominiously dismissed from a room, like a +chit.</p> + +<p>That night at supper she tried unsuccessfully to appear indifferent and +at ease under Carrie's round unblinking stare of malice. Carrie began:</p> + +<p>"Mama, what did Mrs. Perry have to tell you when she came calling this +afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing that would interest you, my pet. You haven't touched your +potato."</p> + +<p>"Would it interest Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Is that why you sent her out of the room?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Now eat your p——"</p> + +<p>"Charlotte didn't like being sent out of the room, did she? H'm, mama?"</p> + +<p>"Isaac, will you speak to that child. I don't know what——"</p> + +<p>Charlotte's face was scarlet. She knew. Her father would speak sternly +to the too inquisitive Carrie. That crafty one would thrust out a moist +and quivering nether lip and, with tears dropping into her uneaten +potato, snivel, "But I only wanted to know because Charlotte—" and out +would come the tale of Charlotte's foot-stamping and face-making.</p> + +<p>But Isaac Thrift never framed the first chiding sentence; and Carrie +got no further than the thrusting out of the lip. For the second time +that day news appeared in the form of a neighbor. A man this time, one +Abner Rathburn. His news was no mere old-wives' gossip of births and +babies. He told it, white-faced. Fort Sumter had been fired on. War!</p> + +<p>Chicago's interest in the soldiery, up to now, had been confined +to that ornamental and gayly caparisoned group known as Colonel +Ellsworth's Zouaves. In their brilliant uniforms these gave exhibition +drills, flashing through marvelous evolutions learned during evenings +of practice in a vacant hall above a little brick store near Rush +Street bridge. They had gone on grand tours through the East, as +well. The illustrated papers had had their pictures. Now their absurd +baggy trousers and their pert little jackets and their brilliant-hued +sashes took on a new, grim meaning. Off they trotted, double-quick, +to Donelson and death, most of them. Off went the boys of that +socially elect group belonging to the Fire Engine Company. Off went +brothers, sons, fathers. Off went Jesse Dick from out Hardscrabble +way, and fought his brief fight, too, at Donelson, with weapons so +unfit and ineffectual as to be little better than toys; and lost. But +just before he left, Charlotte, frantic with fear, apprehension and +thwarted love publicly did that which branded her forever in the eyes +of her straitlaced little world. Or perhaps her little world would +have understood and forgiven her had her parents shown any trace of +understanding or forgiveness.</p> + +<p>In all their meetings these two young things—the prim girl with the +dash of daring in her and the boy who wrote verses to her and read them +with telling effect, quite as though they had not sprung from the mire +of Hardscrabble—had never once kissed or even shyly embraced. Their +hands had met and clung. Touching subterfuges. "That's a funny ring you +wear. Let's see it. My, how little! It won't go on any of my—no, sir! +Not even this one." Their eyes had spoken. His fingers sometimes softly +touched the plume that drooped from her stiff little hat. When he +helped her mount the Indian pony perhaps he pressed closer in farewell +than that fiery little steed's hoof quite warranted. But that was +all. He was over-conscious of his social inferiority. Years of narrow +nagging bound her with bands of steel riveted with turn-your-toes-out, +hold-your-shoulders-back, you-mustn't-play-with-them, ladylike, +ladylike.</p> + +<p>A week after Sumter, "I've enlisted," he told her.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Charlotte had replied, dazedly. Then, in sudden +realization, "When? When?"</p> + +<p>He knew what she meant. "Right away I reckon. They said—right away." +She looked at him mutely. "Charlotte, I wish you'd—I wish your father +and mother—I'd like to speak to them—I mean about us—me." There was +little of Hardscrabble about him as he said it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I couldn't. I'm afraid! I'm afraid!"</p> + +<p>He was silent for a long time, poking about with a dried stick in +the leaves and loam and grass at their feet as they sat on a fallen +tree-trunk, just as for years and years despairing lovers have poked in +absent-minded frenzy; digging a fork's prong into the white defenceless +surface of a tablecloth; prodding the sand with a cane; rooting into +the ground with an umbrella ferrule; making meaningless marks on gravel +paths.</p> + +<p>At last: "I don't suppose it makes any real difference; but the Dicks +came from Holland. I mean a long time ago. With Hendrik Hudson. And my +great-great-grandmother was a Pomroy. You wouldn't believe, would you? +that a shiftless lot like us could come from stock like that. I guess +it's run thin. Of course my mother——" he stopped. She put a timid +hand on his arm then, and he made as though to cover it with his own, +but did not. He went on picking at the ground with his bit of stick. +"Sometimes when my father's—if he's been drinking too much—imagines +he's one of his own ancestors. Sometimes it's a Dutch ancestor and +sometimes it's an English one, but he's always very magnificent about +it, and when he's like that even my mother can't—can't scream him +down. You should hear then what he thinks of all you people who live +in fine brick houses on Wabash and on Michigan, and over on the North +Side. My brother Pom says——"</p> + +<p>"Pom?"</p> + +<p>"Pomroy. Pomroy Dick, you see. Both the.... I've been thinking that +perhaps if your father and mother knew about—I mean we're not—that is +my father——"</p> + +<p>She shook her head gently. "It isn't that. You see, it's business men. +Those who have stores or real estate and are successful. Or young +lawyers. That's the kind father and mother——"</p> + +<p>They were not finishing their sentences. Groping for words. Fearful of +hurting each other.</p> + +<p>He laughed. "I guess there won't be much choice among the lot of us +when this is over."</p> + +<p>"Why, Jesse, it'll only last a few months—two or three. Father says +it'll only last a few months.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't take that long to——"</p> + +<p>"To what?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>He was whisked away after that. Charlotte saw him but once again. That +once was her undoing. She did not even know the time set for his going. +He had tried to get word to her, and had failed, somehow. With her +father and mother, Charlotte was one of the crowd gathered about the +Court House steps to hear Jules Lombard sing The Battle Cry of Freedom. +George Root, of Chicago, George, whom they all knew, had written it. +The ink was scarcely dry on the manuscript. The crowds gathered in the +street before the Court House. Soon they were all singing it. Suddenly, +through the singing, like a dull throb, throb, came the sound of +thudding feet. Soldiers. With a great surge the crowd turned its face +toward the street. Still singing. Here they came. In marching order. +Their uniforms belied the name. Had they been less comic they would +have been less tragic. They were equipped with muskets altered from +flintlocks; with Harper's Ferry and Deneger rifles; with horse pistols +and musketoons—deadly sounding but ridiculous. With these they faced +Donelson. They were hardly more than boys. After them, trailed women, +running alongside, dropping back breathless. Old women, mothers. Young +women, sweethearts, wives. This was no time for the proprieties, for +reticence.</p> + +<p>They were passing. The first of them had passed. Then Charlotte saw +him. His face flashed out at her from among the lines. His face, +under the absurd pancake hat, was white, set. And oh, how young! He +was at the end of his line. Charlotte watched him coming. She felt +a queer tingling in her fingertips, in the skin around her eyes, in +her throat. Then a great surge of fear, horror, fright, and love +shook her. He was passing. Someone, herself and yet not herself, was +battling a way through the crowd, was pushing, thrusting with elbows, +shoulders. She gained the roadway. She ran, stumblingly. She grasped +his arm. "You didn't let me know! You didn't let me know!" Someone +took hold of her elbow—someone in the crowd on the sidewalk—but she +shook them off. She ran on at his side. Came the double-quick command. +With a little cry she threw her arms about him and kissed him. Her +lips were parted like a child's. Her face was distorted with weeping. +There was something terrible about her not caring; not covering it. +"You didn't let me know! You didn't let me know!" The ranks broke into +double-quick. She ran with them a short minute, breathlessly, sobbing.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</h2> +</div> + + +<p>It was a submissive enough little figure that they had hustled home +through the crowded streets, up the front stoop and into the brick +house on Wabash Avenue. Crushed and rumpled.</p> + +<p>The crudest edge of the things they said to her was mercifully dulled +by the time it penetrated her numbed consciousness. She hardly seemed +to hear them. At intervals she sobbed. It was more than a sob. It was +a dry paroxysm that shook her whole body and jarred her head. Her +handkerchief, a wet gray ball, she opened, and began to stare at its +neatly hemstitched border, turning it corner for corner, round and +round.</p> + +<p>Who was he? Who was he?</p> + +<p>She told them.</p> + +<p>At each fresh accusation she seemed to shrink into smaller compass; to +occupy less space within the circle of her outstanding hoop-skirts, +until finally she was just a pair of hunted eyes in a tangle of +ringlets, handkerchief, and crinoline. She caught fragments of what +they were saying ... ruined her life ... brought down disgrace ... +entire family ... never hold head up ... common lout like a Dick ... +Dick!... Dick!...</p> + +<p>Once Charlotte raised her head and launched a feeble something that +sounded like "... Hendrik Hudson," but it was lost in the torrent of +talk. It appeared that she had not only ruined herself and brought +lifelong disgrace upon her parents' hitherto unsullied name, but she +had made improbable any future matrimonial prospects for her sister +Carrie—then aged eight.</p> + +<p>That, unfortunately, struck Charlotte as being humorous. Racked though +she was, one remote corner of her mind's eye pictured the waspish +little Carrie, in pinafore and strapped slippers, languishing for love, +all forlorn—Carrie, who still stuck her tongue out by way of repartee. +Charlotte giggled suddenly, quite without meaning to. Hysteria, +probably. At this fresh exhibition of shamelessness her parents were +aghast.</p> + +<p>"Well! And you can laugh!" shouted Isaac Thrift through the soft +and unheeded susurrus of his wife's Sh-sh-sh! "As if I hadn't +enough trouble, with this war"—it sounded like a private personal +grievance—"and business what it is, and real estate practically +worth——"</p> + +<p>"Sh-sh-sh! Carrie will hear you. The child mustn't know of this."</p> + +<p>"Know! Everyone in town knows by now. My daughter running after a +common soldier in the streets—a beggar—worse than a beggar—and +kissing him like a—like a——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Thrift interrupted with mournful hastiness. "We must send her +away. East. For a little visit. That would be best, for a few months."</p> + +<p>At that Isaac Thrift laughed a rather terrible laugh. "Away! That +<i>would</i> give them a fine chance to talk. Away indeed, madam! A few +months, h'm? Ha!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Thrift threw out her palms as though warding off a blow. "Isaac! +You don't mean they'd think—Isaac!"</p> + +<p>Charlotte regarded them both with wide, uncomprehending eyes.</p> + +<p>Her mother looked at her. Charlotte raised her own tear-drenched face +that was so mutely miserable, so stricken, so dumbly questioning. +Marred as it was, and grief-ravaged, Mrs. Thrift seemed still to find +there something that relieved her. She said more gently, perhaps, than +in any previous questioning:</p> + +<p>"Why did you do it, Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it."</p> + +<p>Isaac Thrift snorted impatiently. Hetty Thrift compressed her lips a +little and sighed. "Yes, but why did you do it, Charlotte? Why? You +have been brought up so carefully. How could you do it?"</p> + +<p>Now, the answer that lay ready in Charlotte's mind was one that could +have explained everything. And yet it would have explained nothing; +at least nothing to Hetty and Isaac Thrift. The natural reply on +Charlotte's tongue was simply, "Because I love him." But the Thrifts +did not speak of love. It was not a ladylike word. There were certain +words which delicacy forbade. "Love" was one of them. From the manner +in which they shunned it—shrank from the very mention of it—you might +almost have thought it an obscenity.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Thrift put a final question. She had to. "Had you ever kissed him +before?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!" cried Charlotte so earnestly that they could not but believe. +Then, quiveringly, as one bereaved, cheated, "Oh, no! No! Never! Not +once.... Not once."</p> + +<p>The glance that Mrs. Thrift shot at her husband then was a mingling of +triumph and relief.</p> + +<p>Isaac Thrift and his wife did not mean to be hard and cruel. They had +sprung from stern stock. Theirs was the narrow middle-class outlook of +members of a small respectable community. According to the standards of +that community Charlotte Thrift had done an outrageous thing. War, in +that day, was a grimmer, though less bloody and wholesale, business +than it is to-day. An army whose marching song is Where Do We Go From +Here? attaches small significance to the passing kiss of an hysterical +flapper, whether the object of the kiss be buck private or general. But +an army that finds vocal expression in The Battle Cry of Freedom and +John Brown's Body is likely to take its bussing seriously. The publicly +kissed soldier on his way to battle was the publicly proclaimed +property of the kissee. And there in front of the Court House steps, in +full sight of her world—the Addison Canes, the Thomas Holcombs, the +Lewis Fullers, the Clapps—Charlotte Thrift, daughter of Isaac Thrift, +had run after, had thrown her arms about, and had kissed a young man +so obscure, so undesirable, so altogether an unfitting object for a +gently-bred maiden's kisses (public or private) as to render valueless +her kisses in future.</p> + +<p>Of Charlotte's impulsive act her father and mother made something +repulsive and sinister. She was made to go everywhere, but was duennaed +like a naughty Spanish princess. Her every act was remarked. Did she +pine she was berated and told to rouse herself; did she laugh she was +frowned down. Her neat little escritoire frequently betrayed traces +of an overhauling by suspicious alien fingers. There was little need +of that after the first few days. The news of Jesse Dick's death at +Donelson went almost unnoticed but for two Chicago households—one out +Hardscrabble way, one on Wabash Avenue. It was otherwise as unimportant +as an uprooted tree in the path of an avalanche that destroys a +village. At Donelson had fallen many sons of Chicago's pioneer +families; young men who were to have carried on the future business +of the city; boys who had squired its daughters to sleigh-rides, to +dances, to church sociables and horseback parties; who had drilled with +Ellsworth's famous Zouaves. A Dick of Hardscrabble could pass unnoticed +in this company.</p> + +<p>There came to Charlotte a desperate and quite natural desire to go to +his people; to see his mother; to talk with his father. But she never +did. Instinctively her mother sensed this (perhaps, after all, she had +been eighteen herself, once) and by her increased watchfulness made +Hardscrabble as remote and unattainable as Heaven.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going, Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>"Just out for a breath of air, mother."</p> + +<p>"Take Carrie with you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, mother, I don't want——"</p> + +<p>"Take Carrie with you."</p> + +<p>She stopped at home.</p> + +<p>She had no tangible thing over which to mourn; not one of those bits of +paper or pasteboard or linen or metal over which to keen; nothing to +hold in her two hands, or press to her lips or wear in her bosom. She +did not even possess one of those absurd tintypes of the day showing +her soldier in wrinkled uniform and wooden attitude against a mixed +background of chenille drapery and Versailles garden. She had only her +wound and her memory and perhaps these would have healed and grown +dim had not Isaac Thrift and his wife so persistently rubbed salt in +the one and prodded the other. After all, she was little more than +eighteen, and eighteen does not break so readily. If they had made +light of it perhaps she would soon have lifted her head again and even +cast about for consolation.</p> + +<p>"Moping again!"</p> + +<p>"I'm not moping, father."</p> + +<p>"What would you call it then?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I'm just sitting by the window in the dusk. I often do. Even +before—before——"</p> + +<p>"There's enough and to spare for idle hands to do, I dare say. Haven't +you seen to-day's paper nor heard of what's happened again at Manassas +that you can sit there like that!"</p> + +<p>She knew better than to explain that for her Jesse Dick died again with +the news of each fresh battle.</p> + +<p>She became curiously silent for so young a girl. During those four +years she did her share with the rest of them; scraped lint, tore +and rolled bandages, made hospital garments, tied comforters, knitted +stockings and mittens, put up fruit and jellies and pickles for the +soldiers. Chicago was a construction camp. Regiments came marching +in from all the states north. Camp Douglas, south of Thirty-first +Street, was at first thick with tents, afterward with wooden barracks. +Charlotte even helped in the great Sanitary Fairs that lasted a week +or more. You would have noticed no difference between this girl and +the dozens of others who chirped about the flag-decked booths. But +there was a difference. That which had gone from her was an impalpable +something difficult to name. Only if you could have looked from her +face to that of the girl of the old photograph—that girl in the +sweeping habit, with the plume, and the rose held carelessly in one +hand—you might have known. The glow, the bloom, the radiance—gone.</p> + +<p>People forget, gradually. After all, there was so little to remember. +Four years of war change many things, including perspective. +Occasionally some one said, "Wasn't there something about that older +Thrift girl? Charlotte, isn't it? Yes. Wasn't she mixed up with a queer +person, or something?"</p> + +<p>"Charlotte Thrift! Why, no! There hasn't been a more self-sacrificing +worker in the whole—wait a minute. Now that you speak of it, I do +believe there was—let's see—in love with a boy her folks didn't +approve and made some kind of public scene, but just what it was——"</p> + +<p>But Isaac and Hetty Thrift did not forget. Nor Charlotte. Sometimes, +in their treatment of her, you would have thought her still the +eighteen-year-old innocent of the photograph. When Black Crook came +to the new Crosby Opera House in 1870, scandalizing the community and +providing endless food for feminine (and masculine) gossip, Charlotte +still was sent from the room to spare her maidenly blushes, just as +though the past ten years had never been.</p> + +<p>"I hear they wear tights, mind you, without skirts!"</p> + +<p>"Not all the way!"</p> + +<p>"Not an inch of skirt. Just—ah—trunks I believe they call them. A +horrid word in itself."</p> + +<p>"Well, really, I don't know what the world's coming to. Shouldn't you +think that after the suffering and privation of this dreadful war we +would all turn to higher things?"</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Thrift's caller shook her head so emphatically that her +long gold filigree earrings pranced. "Ah, but they do say a wave of +immorality always follows a war. The reaction it's called. That is the +word dear Dr. Swift used in his sermon last Sunday.</p> + +<p>"Reactions are all very well and good," retorted Mrs. Thrift, tartly, +"but they don't excuse tights, I hope."</p> + +<p>Her visitor's face lighted up eagerly and unbeautifully. She leaned +still closer. "I hear that this Eliza Weathersby, as she's called, +plays the part of Stalacta in a pale blue bodice all glittering with +silver passamenterie; pale blue satin trunks, mind you! And pale blue +tights with a double row of tiny buttons all down the side of the l——"</p> + +<p>Again, as ten years before, Mrs. Thrift raised signaling eyebrows. +She emitted an artificial and absurd, "Ahem!" Then—"Charlotte, run +upstairs and help poor Carrie with her English exercise."</p> + +<p>"She's doing sums, mother. I saw her at them not ten minutes ago."</p> + +<p>"Then tell her to put her sums aside. Do you know, dear Mrs. Strapp, +Carrie is quite amazing at sums, but I tell her she is not sent to +Miss Tait's finishing school under heavy expense to learn to do sums. +But she actually likes them. Does them by way of amusement. Can add +a double column in her head, just like her father. But her English +exercise is always a sorry affair.... M-m-m-m.... There, now, you were +saying tiny buttons down the side of the leg——" Charlotte had gone.</p> + +<p>When the war ended Charlotte was twenty-two. An unwed woman +of twenty-two was palpably over-fastidious or undesirable. +Twenty-five was the sere and withered leaf. And soon Charlotte was +twenty-five—twenty-eight—thirty. Done for.</p> + +<p>The patchwork silk quilt, laid aside unfinished in '61, was taken up +again in '65. It became quite famous; a renowned work of art. Visitors +who came to the house asked after it. "And how is the quilt getting +on, dear Charlotte?" as a novelist is sounded about an opus with which +he is struggling or a painter his canvas. Mrs. Hannan, the Lake Street +milliner, saved all her pieces for Charlotte. Often there was a peck +of them at a time. The quilt was patterned in blocks. Charlotte, very +serious, would explain to the caller the plan of the block upon which +she was at the moment engaged.</p> + +<p>"This one has a purple satin center, you see. I always think purple +is so rich, don't you? Then the next row will be white uncut velvet. +Doesn't it have a sumptuous sound! Next blue velvet and the last +row orange-colored silk." (No; not the same piece. Carrie had never +relinquished her booty.) "Now, this next block is to be quite gay. +It is almost my favorite. Cherry satin center—next, white velvet +again—next, green velvet—and last, pink satin. Don't you think it +will be sweet! I can scarcely wait until I begin that block."</p> + +<p>The winged sweep of the fine black brows was ruffled by a frown of +earnest concentration as she bent intently over the rags and scraps of +shimmering stuffs. Her cheated fingers smoothed and caressed the satin +surfaces as tenderly as though they lingered on a baby's cheek.</p> + +<p>When, finally, it was finished—lined with turkey red and bound +with red ribbon—Charlotte exhibited it at the Fair, following much +persuasion by her friends. It took first prize among twenty-five silk +quilts. A day of great triumph for Charlotte Thrift. The prize was a +basket worth fully eight dollars.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</h2> +</div> + + +<p>When Charlotte was thirty Carrie—twenty—married. After all, the +innocent little indiscretion which had so thoroughly poisoned +Charlotte's life was not to corrupt Carrie's matrimonial future, in +spite of Mrs. Thrift's mournful prediction. Carrie, whose philosophy of +life was based on that same finding's-keeping plan with which she had +filched the bit of orange silk from her sister so many years before, +married Samuel Payson, junior member of the firm of Thrift and Payson, +Real Estate, Bonds and Mortgages. Charlotte, it may be remembered, +had disdained to pick up the scrap of orange silk on which Carrie had +swooped. Just so with Samuel Payson.</p> + +<p>Samuel Payson was destined to be a junior partner. Everything about +him was deferential, subservient. The very folds of his clothes +slanted away from you. He was as oblique and evasive as Isaac Thrift +was upright and forthright. In conversation with you he pronounced +your name at frequent intervals. Charlotte came to dread it: "Yes, +Miss Charlotte.... Do you think so, Miss Charlotte?... Sit here, Miss +Charlotte...." It was like a too-intimate hand on your shrinking arm.</p> + +<p>The fashion for men of parting the hair in the middle had just come +in. Samuel Payson parted his from forehead to nape of neck. In some +mysterious way it gave to the back of his head an alert facial +expression very annoying to the beholder. He reminded Charlotte of +someone she had recently met and whom she despised; but for a long +time she could not think who this could be. She found herself staring +at him, fascinated, trying to trace the resemblance. Samuel Payson +misinterpreted her gaze.</p> + +<p>Isaac and Hetty Thrift had too late relaxed their vigilant watch over +Charlotte. It had taken them all these years to realize that they were +guarding a prisoner who hugged her chains. Wretched as she was (in a +quiet and unobtrusive way) there is the possibility that she would +have been equally wretched married to a Hardscrabble Dick. Charlotte's +submission was all the more touching because she had nothing against +which to rebel. Once, in the very beginning, Mrs. Thrift, haunted by +something in Charlotte's eyes, had said in a burst of mingled spleen +and self-defense:</p> + +<p>"And why do you look at me like that, I should like to know! I'm sure I +didn't kill your young man at Donelson. You're only moping like that to +aggravate me; for something that never could have been, anyway—thank +goodness!"</p> + +<p>"He wouldn't have been killed," Charlotte said, unreasonably, and with +conviction.</p> + +<p>Had they been as wise and understanding as they were well-meaning, +these two calvinistic parents might have cured Charlotte by one visit +to the Dicks' Hardscrabble kitchen, with a mangy cur nosing her skirts; +a red-faced hostess at the washtub; and a ruined, battered travesty of +the slim young rhyme-making Jesse Dick there in the person of old Pete +Dick squatting, sodden, in the doorway.</p> + +<p>As the years went on they had, tardily, a vague and sneaking hope that +something might happen among the G.A.R. widowers of Chicago's better +families. During the reunions of Company I and Company E Charlotte +generally assisted with the dinner or the musical program. She had +a sweet, if small, contralto with notes in it that matched the fine +dark eyebrows. She sang a group of old-fashioned songs: When You and +I Were Young, Maggie; The Belle of Mohawk Vale; and Sleeping I Dream, +Love. Charlotte never suspected her parents' careful scheming behind +these public appearances of hers. Her deft capable hands at the G.A.R. +dinners, her voice lifted in song, were her offerings to Jesse Dick's +memory. Him she served. To him she sang. And gradually even Isaac +and Hetty Thrift realized that the G.A.R. widowers were looking for +younger game; and that Charlotte, surrounded by blue-uniformed figures, +still was gazing through them, past them, into space. Her last public +appearance was when she played the organ and acted as director for +<i>Queen Esther</i>, a cantata, which marked rather an epoch in the +amateur musical history of the town. After that she began to devote +herself to her sister's family and to her mother.</p> + +<p>But all this was later. Charlotte, at thirty, still had a look of +vigor, and of fragrant (if slightly faded) bloom, together with a +little atmosphere of mystery of which she was entirely unconscious; +born, doubtless, of years of living with a ghost. Attractive qualities, +all three; and all three quite lacking in her tart-tongued and +acidulous younger sister, despite that miss's ten-year advantage. +Carrie was plain, spare, and sallow. Her mind marched with her +father's. The two would discuss real estate and holdings like two men. +Hers was the mathematical and legal-thinking type of brain rarely +found in a woman. She rather despised her mother. Samuel Payson used +to listen to her with an air of respectful admiration and attention. +But it was her older sister to whom he turned at last with, "I thought +perhaps you might enjoy a drive to Cleaversville, since the evening's +so fine, Miss Charlotte. What do you say, Miss Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you—I'm not properly dressed for driving—perhaps +Carrie——"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" Mrs. Thrift would interpose tartly.</p> + +<p>"But Miss Charlotte, you are quite perfectly dressed. If I may be so +bold, that is a style which suits you to a marvel."</p> + +<p>There he was right. It did. Hoops were history. The form-fitting +basque, the flattering neck-frill, the hip sash, and the smart +(though grotesque) bustle revealed, and even emphasized, lines of the +feminine figure—the swell of the bust, the curve of the throat—that +the crinoline had for years concealed. This romantic, if somewhat +lumpy, costume well became Charlotte's slender figure and stern sad +young face. In it Carrie, on the other hand, resembled a shingle in a +flower's sheath.</p> + +<p>This obstacle having been battered down, Charlotte raised another. +"They say the Cleaversville road is a sea of mud and no bottom to it +in places. The rains."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Samuel Payson, agreeably, "we shall leave that for another +time"—Charlotte brightened—"and go boating in the lagoon instead. Eh, +Miss Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>Charlotte, born fifty years later, would have looked her persistent and +unwelcome suitor in the eye and said, "I don't want to go." Charlotte, +with the parental eyes upon her, went dutifully upstairs for bonnet and +mantle.</p> + +<p>The lagoon of Samuel Payson's naming was a basin of water between the +narrow strip of park on Michigan Avenue and the railway that ran along +the lake. It was much used for boating of a polite and restricted +nature.</p> + +<p>It was a warm Sunday evening in the early summer. The better to get +the breeze the family was sociably seated out on what was known as the +platform. On fine evenings all Chicago sat out on its front steps—"the +stoop" it was called. The platform was even more informal than the +stoop. It was made of wooden planks built across the ditches that ran +along each side of the street. Across it carriages drove up to the +sidewalk when visitors contemplated alighting. All down Wabash Avenue +you saw families comfortably seated in rockers on these platforms, +enjoying the evening breeze and watching the world go by. Here the +Thrifts—Isaac, Hetty, and their daughter Carrie—were seated when the +triumphant Samuel left with the smoldering Charlotte. Here they were +seated when the two returned.</p> + +<p>The basin reached, they had hired a boat and Samuel had paddled about +in a splashy and desultory way, not being in the least an oarsman. He +talked, Miss-Charlotteing her so insistently that in ten minutes she +felt thumbed all over. She looked out across the lake. He spoke of his +loneliness, living at the Tremont House. Before being raised to junior +partner he had been a clerk in Isaac Thrift's office. It was thus that +Charlotte still regarded him—when she regarded him at all. She looked +at him now, bent to the oars, his flat chest concave, his lean arms +stringy; panting a little with the unaccustomed exercise.</p> + +<p>"It must be lonely," murmured Charlotte, absentmindedly if +sympathetically.</p> + +<p>"Your father and mother have been very kind"—he bent a melting look on +her—"far kinder than you have been, Miss Charlotte."</p> + +<p>"It's chilly, now that the sun's gone," said Charlotte. "Shall we row +in? This mantle is very light."</p> + +<p>It cannot be said that he flushed then, but a little flood of dark +color came into his pallid face. He rowed for the boat-house. He +maneuvered the boat alongside the landing. Twilight had come on. The +shed-like place was too dim for safety, lighted at the far end with +one cobwebby lantern. He hallooed to the absent boatman, shipped his +oars, and stepped out none too expertly. Charlotte stood up, smiling. +She was glad to be in. Sitting opposite him thus, in the boat, it had +been impossible to evade his red-rimmed eyes. Still smiling a little, +with relief she took his proffered hand as he stood on the landing, +stepped up, stumbled a little because he had pulled with unexpected +(and unnecessary) strength, and was horrified suddenly to see him +thrust his head forward like a particularly nasty species of bird, and +press moist clammy lips to the hollow of her throat. Her reaction was +as unfortunate as it was unstudied. "Uriah Heep!" she cried (at last! +the resemblance that had been haunting her all these days), "Heep! +Heep!" and pushed him violently from her. The sacred memories of the +past twelve years, violated now, were behind that outraged push. It +sent him reeling over the edge of the platform, clutching at a post +that was not there, and into the shallow water on the other side. The +boatmen, running tardily toward them, fished him out and restored +him to a curiously unagitated young lady. He was wet but uninjured. +Thus dripping he still insisted on accompanying her home. She had not +murmured so much as, "I'm sorry." They walked home in hurried silence, +his boots squashing at every step. The Thrifts—father, mother, and +daughter—still were seated on the platform before the house, probably +discussing real estate values—two of them, at least. Followed +exclamations, explanations, sympathy, flurry.</p> + +<p>"I fell in. A bad landing place. No light. A wretched hole."</p> + +<p>Charlotte turned abruptly and walked up the front steps and into the +house. "She's upset," said Mrs. Thrift, automatically voicing the +proper thing, flustered though she was. "Usually it's Charlotte that +falls into things. You must get that coat off at once. And the.... +Isaac, your pepper-and-salt suit. A little large but.... Come in.... +Dear, dear!... I'll have a hot toddy ready.... Carrie...."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>It was soon after the second Chicago fire that Isaac Thrift and his +son-in-law built the three-story-and-basement house on Prairie avenue, +near 29th Street. The old man recalled the boast made almost forty +years before, that some day he would build as far south as Thirtieth +Street; though it was not, as he had then predicted, a country home.</p> + +<p>"I was a little wrong there," he admitted, "but only because I was +too conservative. They laughed at me. Well, you can't deny the truth +of it now. It'll be as good a hundred years from now as it is to-day. +Only the finest houses because of the cost of the ground. No chance of +business ever coming up this way. From Sixteenth to Thirtieth it's a +residential paradise. Yes sir! A res-i-den-tial paradise!"</p> + +<p>A good thing that he did not live the twenty-five years, or less, +that transformed the paradise into a smoke-blackened and disreputable +inferno, with dusky faces, surmounted by chemically unkinked though +woolly heads, peering from every decayed mansion and tumble-down +rooming house. Sixteenth Street became a sore that would not +heal—scrofulous, filthy. Thirty-first Street was the centre of the +Black Belt. Of all that region Prairie Avenue alone resisted wave +after wave of the black flood that engulfed the streets south, east, +and west. There, in Isaac Thrift's day, lived much of Chicago's +aristocracy; millionaire if mercantile; plutocratic though porcine. And +there its great stone and brick mansions with their mushroom-topped +conservatories, their porte-cochères, their high wrought-iron fences, +and their careful lawns still defied the years, though ruin, dirt, and +decay waited just outside to destroy them. The window-hangings of any +street are its character index. The lace and silk draperies before +the windows of these old mansions still were immaculate, though the +Illinois Central trains, as they screeched derisively by, spat huge +mouthsful of smoke and cinders into their very faces.</p> + +<p>Isaac Thrift had fallen far behind his neighbours in the race for +wealth. They had started as he had, with only courage, ambition, and +foresight as capital. But they—merchants, pork-packers—had dealt +in food and clothing on an increasingly greater scale, while Isaac +Thrift had early given up his store to devote all his time to real +estate. There had been his mistake. Bread and pork, hardware and +clothing—these were fundamental needs, changing little with the years. +Millions came to the man who, starting as a purveyor of these, stayed +with them. At best, real estate was a gamble. And Isaac Thrift lost.</p> + +<p>His own occasional short-sightedness was not to blame for his most +devastating loss, however. This was dealt him, cruelly and criminally, +by his business partner and son-in-law, the plausible Payson.</p> + +<p>The two families dwelt comfortably enough together in the new house on +Prairie. There was room and to spare, even after two children—Belle, +and then Lottie—were born to the Paysons. The house was thought a +grand affair, with its tin bathtub and boxed-in wash-bowl on the second +floor, besides an extra washroom on the first, off the hall; a red +and yellow stained-glass window in the dining room; a butler's pantry +(understand, no butler; Chicago boasted no more than half a dozen of +these); a fine furnace in the lower hall just under the stairway; +oilcloth on the first flight of stairs; Brussels on the second; ingrain +on the third; a liver-colored marble mantel in the front parlor, with +anemic replicas in the back parlor and the more important bedrooms. +It was an age when every possible article of household furniture +was disguised to represent something it was not. A miniature Gothic +cathedral was really a work-basket; a fauteuil was, like as not, a +music box. The Thrifts' parlor carpet was green, woven to represent a +river flowing along from the back parlor folding doors to the street +windows, with a pattern of full-sailed ships on it, and, by way of +variety, occasional bunches of flowers strewn carelessly here and +there, between the ships. On rare and thrilling occasions, during their +infancy, Belle and little Lottie were allowed to crawl down the carpet +river and poke a fascinated finger into a ship's sail or a floral +garland.</p> + +<p>Carrie's two children were born in this house. Isaac and Hetty Thrift +died in it. And in it Carrie was left worse than widowed.</p> + +<p>Samuel Payson must have been about forty-six when, having gathered +together in the office of Thrift & Payson all the uninvested +moneys—together with negotiable bonds, stocks, and securities—on +which he could lay hands, he decamped and was never seen again. He +must have been planning it for years. It was all quite simple. He had +had active charge of the business. Again and again Isaac Thrift had +turned over to Payson money entrusted him for investment by widows of +lifelong friends; by the sons and daughters of old Chicago settlers; by +lifelong friends themselves. This money Payson had taken, ostensibly +for investment. He had carefully discussed its investment with his +father-in-law, had reported such investments made. In reality he had +invested not a penny. On it had been paid one supposed dividend, +or possibly two. The bulk of it remained untouched. When his time +came Samuel Payson gathered together the practically virgin sums and +vanished to live some strange life of his own of which he had been +dreaming behind that truckling manner and the Heepish face, with its +red-rimmed eyes.</p> + +<p>He had been a model husband, father, and son-in-law. Chess with old +Isaac, evenings; wool-windings for Mrs. Thrift; games with the two +little girls; church on Sundays with Carrie. Between him and Charlotte +little talk was wasted, and no pretense.</p> + +<p>A thousand times, in those years of their dwelling together, Mrs. +Thrift's eyes had seemed to say to Charlotte, "You see! This is what a +husband should be. This is a son-in-law. No Dick disgracing us here."</p> + +<p>The blow stunned the two old people almost beyond realising its +enormity. The loss was, altogether, about one hundred and fifty +thousand dollars. Isaac Thrift set about repaying it. Real estate on +Indiana, Wabash, Michigan, Prairie was sold and the money distributed +to make good the default. They kept the house on Prairie; clung to it. +Anything but that. After it was all over Isaac Thrift was an old man +with palsied hands. Hair and beard whose color had defied the years +were suddenly white. Hetty Thrift's tongue lost its venomous bite. +After Isaac Thrift's death she turned to Charlotte. Charlotte alone +could quell her querulousness. Carrie acted as an irritant, naturally. +They were so much alike. It was Charlotte who made broths and jellies, +milk-toast and gruel with which to tempt the mother's appetite. +Carrie, the mathematical, was a notoriously poor cook. Her mind was +orderly and painstaking enough when it came to figuring on a piece of +property, or a depreciated bond. But it lacked that peculiar patience +necessary to the watching of a boiling pot or a simmering pan.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's done by now," she would cry, and dump a pan's contents into a +dish. Oftener than not it was half-cooked or burned.</p> + +<p>Charlotte announced, rather timidly, that she would give music +lessons; sewing lessons; do fine embroidery. But her tinkling tunes +were ghostly echoes of a bygone day. People were even beginning to say +that perhaps, after all, this madman Wagner could be played so that one +might endure listening. Hand embroidery was little appreciated at a +time when imitations were the craze.</p> + +<p>Carrie it was who became head of that manless household. It was well +she had wasted her time in doing sums instead of being more elegantly +occupied while at Miss Tait's Finishing School, in the old Wabash +Avenue days. She now juggled interest, simple and compound, with ease; +took charge of the few remaining bits of scattered property saved from +the ruins; talked glibly of lots, quarter-sections, sub-divisions. +All through their childhood Belle and Lottie heard reiterated: "Run +away. Can't you see mother's busy! Ask Aunt Charlotte." So then, it +was Aunt Charlotte who gave them their bread-and-butter with sugar on +top. Gradually the whole household revolved about Carrie, though it was +Charlotte who kept it in motion. When Carrie went to bed the household +went to bed. She must have her rest. Meals were timed to suit Carrie's +needs. She became a business woman in a day when business women were +practically unheard of. She actually opened an office in one of the +new big Clark Street office buildings, near Washington, and had a sign +printed on the door:</p> + +<p class="ph2">MRS. CARRIE PAYSON<br> +<span class="smcap">Real Estate</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Bonds</span> <span class="smcap">Mortgages</span><br> +<i>Successor to late Isaac Thrift</i></p> + +<p>Later she changed this to "Carrie Thrift Payson." Change came easily +to Carrie. Adaptability was one of her gifts. In 1893 (World's Fair +year) she was one of the first to wear the new Eton jacket and separate +skirt of blue serge (it became almost a uniform with women); and the +shirtwaist, a garment that marked an innovation in women's clothes. She +worked like a man, ruled the roost, was as ruthless as a man. She was +neither a good housekeeper nor marketer, but something perverse in her +made her insist on keeping a hand on the reins of household as well as +business. It was, perhaps, due to a colossal egotism and a petty love +of power. Charlotte could have marketed expertly and thriftily but +Carrie liked to do it on her way downtown in the morning, stopping at +grocer's and butcher's on Thirty-first Street and prefacing her order +always with, "I'm in a hurry." The meat, vegetables, and fruit she +selected were never strictly first-grade. A bargain delighted her. If +an orange was a little soft in one spot she reckoned that the spot +could be cut away. Such was her system of false economy.</p> + +<p>With the World's Fair came a boom in real estate and Carrie Payson rode +on the crest of it. There still were heart-breaking debts to pay and +she paid them honestly. She was too much a Thrift to do otherwise. She +never became rich, but she did manage a decent livelihood. Fortunately +for all of them, old Isaac Thrift had bought some low swampy land far +out in what was considered the wilderness, near the lake, even beyond +the section known as Cottage Grove. With the Fair this land became +suddenly valuable.</p> + +<p>There's no denying that Carrie lacked a certain feminine quality. If +one of the children chanced to fall ill, their mother, bustling home +from the office, had no knack of smoothing a pillow or cooling a hot +little body or easing a pain. "Please, mother, would you mind not doing +that? It makes my headache worse." Her fingers were heavy, clumsy, +almost rough, like a man's. Her maternal guidance of her two daughters +took the form of absent-minded and rather nagging admonitions:</p> + +<p>"Belle, you're reading against the light."</p> + +<p>"Lottie, did you change your dress when you came home from school?"</p> + +<p>"Don't bite that thread with your teeth!" Or, as it became later, +merely, "Your teeth!"</p> + +<p>Slowly, but inevitably, the Paysons dropped out of the circle made up +of Chicago's rich old families—old, that is, in a city that reckoned +a twenty-year building a landmark. The dollar sign was beginning to be +the open sesame and this symbol had long been violently erased from +the Thrift-Payson escutcheon. To the ladies in landaus with the little +screw-jointed sun parasols held stiffly before them, Carrie Payson and +Charlotte Thrift still were "Carrie" and "Charlotte dear." They—and +later Belle and Lottie—were asked to the big, inclusive crushes +pretty regularly once a year. But the small smart dinners that were +just coming in; the intimate social gayeties; the clubby affairs, knew +them not. "One of the Thrift girls" might mean anyone in the Prairie +Avenue household, but it was never anything but a term of respect and +meant much to anyone who was native to Chicago. Other Prairie Avenue +mansions sent their daughters to local private schools, or to the +Eastern finishing schools. Belle and Lottie attended the public grammar +school and later Armour Institute for the high school course only. +Middle-aged folk said to Lottie, "My, how much like your Aunt Charlotte +you do look, child!" They never exclaimed in Belle's presence at the +likeness they found in her face. Belle's family resemblance could be +plainly traced to one of whom friends did not speak in public. Belle +was six years her sister's senior, but Lottie, with her serious brow +and her clear, steady eyes, looked almost Belle's age. Though Belle +was known as the flighty one there was more real fun in Lottie. In +Lottie's bedroom there still hangs a picture of the two of them, framed +in passepartout. It was taken—arm in arm—when Lottie was finishing +high school and Belle was about to marry Henry Kemp; high pompadours +over enormous "rats," the whole edifice surmounted by a life-size +<i>chou</i> of ribbon; shirtwaists with broad Gibson tucks that gave +them shoulders of a coal-heaver; plaid circular skirts fitting snugly +about the hips and flaring out in great bell-shaped width at the hem; +and trailing.</p> + +<p>"What in the world do you keep that comic valentine hanging up for!" +Belle always exclaimed when she chanced into Lottie's room in later +years.</p> + +<p>Often and often, during these years, you might have heard Carrie Payson +say, with bitterness, "I don't want my girls to have the life I've had. +I'll see to it that they don't."</p> + +<p>"How are you going to do it?" Charlotte would ask, with a curious smile.</p> + +<p>"I'll stay young with them. And I'll watch for mistakes. I know the +world. I ought to. For that matter, I'd as soon they never married."</p> + +<p>Charlotte would flare into sudden and inexplicable protest. "You let +them live their own lives, the way they want to, good or bad. How do +you know the way it'll turn out! Nobody knows. Let them live their own +lives."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense," from Carrie, crisply. "A mother knows. One uses a little +common sense in these things, that's all. Don't you think a mother +knows?" a rhetorical question, plainly, but:</p> + +<p>"No," said Charlotte.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Anyone who has lived in Chicago knows that you don't live on the South +Side. You simply do not live on the South Side. And yet Chicago's +South Side is a pleasant place of fine houses and neat lawns (and +this when every foot of lawn represents a tidy fortune); of trees, +and magnificent parks and boulevards; of stately (if smoke-blackened) +apartment houses; of children, and motor cars; of all that makes for +comfortable, middle-class American life. More than that, booming its +benisons upon the whole is the astounding spectacle of Lake Michigan +forming the section's eastern boundary. And yet Fashion had early +turned its back upon all this as is the way of Fashion with natural +beauty.</p> + +<p>We know that the Paysons lived south; and why. We know, too, that +Carrie Payson was the kind of mother who would expect her married +daughter to live near her. Belle had had the courage to make an early +marriage as a way of escape from the Prairie avenue household, but +it was not until much later that she had the temerity to broach the +subject of moving north. She had been twenty when she married Henry +Kemp, ten years her senior. A successful marriage. Even now, nearing +forty, she still said, "Henry, bring me a chair," and Henry brought it. +Not that Henry was a worm. He was merely the American husband before +whom the foreign critic stands aghast. A rather silent, gray-haired, +eye-glassed man with a slim boyish waistline, a fair mashie stroke, a +keen business head, and a not altogether blind devotion to his selfish, +pampered semi-intellectual wife. There is no denying his disappointment +at the birth of his daughter Charlotte. He had needed a son to stand by +him in this family of strong-minded women. It was not altogether from +the standpoint of convenience that he had called Charlotte "Charley" +from the first.</p> + +<p>Thwarted in her secret ambition to move north, Belle moved as far south +as possible from the old Prairie Avenue dwelling; which meant that +the Kemps were residents of Hyde Park. Between the two families—the +Kemps in Hyde Park and the Paysons in Prairie Avenue—there existed +a terrible intimacy, fostered by Mrs. Carrie Payson. They telephoned +each other daily. They saw one another almost daily. Mrs. Payson +insisted on keeping a finger on the pulse of her married daughter's +household as well as her own. During Charley's babyhood the innermost +secrets of the nursery, the infant's most personal functions, were +discussed daily via the telephone. Lottie, about sixteen at that time, +and just finishing at Armour, usually ate her hurried breakfast to the +accompaniment of the daily morning telephone talk carried on between +her mother and her married sister.</p> + +<p>"How are they this morning?... Again!... Well then give her a little +oil.... Certainly not! I didn't have the doctor in every time you two +girls had a little something wrong.... Oh, you're always having that +baby specialist in every time she makes a face. We never heard of baby +specialists when I was a.... Well, but the oil won't hurt her.... If +they're not normal by to-morrow get him but.... You won't be able to go +to the luncheon, of course.... You are! But if Charley's.... Well, if +she's sick enough to have a doctor she's sick enough to need her mother +at home.... Oh, all right. Only, if anything happens.... How was the +chicken you bought yesterday?... Didn't I tell you it was a tough one! +You pay twice as much over there in Hyde Park.... What are you going to +wear to the luncheon?..."</p> + +<p>Throughout her school years Lottie had always had a beau to squire +her about at school parties and boy-and-girl activities. He was +likely to be a rather superior beau, too. No girl as clear-headed as +Lottie, and as intelligently fun-loving and merry, would tolerate +a slow-witted sweetheart. The word sweetheart is used for want of +a better. Of sweethearting there was little among these seventeen- +and eighteen-year-olds. Viewed through the wise eyes of to-day's +adolescents they would have seemed as quaint and stiff as their +pompadours and high collars.</p> + +<p>In a day when organised Social Work was considered an original and +rather daring departure for women Lottie Payson seemed destined by +temperament and character to be a successful settlement worker. But she +never became one. Lottie had too much humour and humaneness for the +drab routine of school-teaching; not enough hardness and aggressiveness +for business; none of the creative spark that marks the genius in +art. She was sympathetic without being sentimental; just and fair +without being at all stern or forbidding. Above all she had the gift of +listening. The kind of woman who is better-looking at thirty-five than +at twenty. The kind of woman who learns with living and who marries +early or never. With circumstance and a mother like Mrs. Carrie Payson +against her, Lottie's chances of marrying early were hardly worth +mentioning. Lottie was the kind of girl who "is needed at home."</p> + +<p>Don't think that she hadn't young men to walk home with her from +school. She had. But they were likely to be young men whose collars +were not guiltless of eraser marks; who were active in the debating +societies; and whose wrists hung, a red oblong, below their too-short +sleeves. The kind of young man destined for utter failure or great +success. The kind of young man who tries a pecan grove in Carolina, +or becomes president of a bank in New York. None of these young men +ever kissed Lottie. I think that sometimes, looking at her serious +pretty lips closed so firmly over the white teeth, they wanted to. I'm +sure that Lottie, though she did not know it, wished they would. But +they never did. Lottie absolutely lacked coquetry as does the woman +who tardily develops a sense of sex power. In Lottie's junior year +these gawky and studious young men narrowed down to one. His name +was Rutherford Hayes Adler and he was a Jew. There is no describing +him without the use of the word genius, and in view of his novels of +to-day (R. H. Adler) there is no need to apologise for the early use +of the word. He was a living refutation of the belief that a brilliant +mathematician has no imagination. His Armour report cards would have +done credit to young Euclid; and he wrote humorous light verse to +Lottie and sold insurance on the side. Being swarthy, black-haired, and +black-eyed he was cursed with a taste for tan suits and red neckties. +These, with the high choker collar of the period, gave him the look +of an end-man strayed from the minstrel troupe. Being naturally shy, +he assumed a swagger. He was lovable and rather helpless, and his +shoe strings were always coming untied. His humour sense was so keen, +so unerring, so fastidious as to be almost a vice. Armour students who +did not understand it said, "He's a funny fellow. I don't know—kind of +batty, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>This young man it was who walked home with Lottie Payson all through +her junior and senior years; sat next to her at meetings of the +debating society; escorted her to school festivities; went bicycling +with her on Saturday afternoons. The Payson household paid little +attention to him or to Lottie. Belle was busy with her love affair. +Henry Kemp had just appeared on her horizon. Mrs. Payson was deep in +her real estate transactions. On the few occasions when Rutherford +Hayes actually entered the house and sat down to await Lottie the two +were usually on their way to some innocuous entertainment or outing. +So that it was Aunt Charlotte, if anybody, who said "How do you do, +young man. Oh yes, you're Mr. Adler. Lottie'll be right down." A little +silence. Then kindly, from Aunt Charlotte, "H'm! How do you like your +school work?" Years afterwards Adler put Aunt Charlotte into one of +his books. And Lottie. And Mrs. Carrie Payson, too. He had reason to +remember Mrs. Carrie Payson.</p> + +<p>It was at the end of Lottie's senior year that Mrs. Payson became +aware of this young man whose swart face seemed always to be just +appearing or disappearing around the corner with Lottie either smiling +in greeting or waving a farewell. End-of-the-year school festivities +were accountable for this. Then, too, Belle must have registered some +objection. When next young Adler appeared at the Prairie Avenue house +it was Mrs. Payson who sailed down the rather faded green river of the +parlor carpet.</p> + +<p>"How do you do," said Mrs. Payson; her glance said, "What are you doing +here, in this house?"</p> + +<p>Rutherford Hayes Adler wanted to get up from the chair into which +his lank length was doubled. He knew he should get up. But a hideous +shyness kept him there—bound him with iron bands. When finally, with +a desperate effort, he broke them and stumbled to his feet it was too +late. Mrs. Payson had seated herself—if being seated can describe the +impermanent position which she now assumed on the extreme edge of the +stiffest of the stiff parlor chairs.</p> + +<p>The sallow, skinny little Carrie Thrift had mellowed—no, that word +won't do—had developed into an erect, dignified, white-haired woman of +rather imposing mien. The white hair, in particular, was misleadingly +softening.</p> + +<p>"May I ask your father's name?" she said. Just that.</p> + +<p>The boy had heard that tone used many times in the past nineteen +hundred years. "Adler," he replied.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. But his first name. What is his first name, please?"</p> + +<p>"His first name was Abraham—Abraham I. Adler. The I stands for Isaac."</p> + +<p>"Abraham—Isaac—Adler," repeated Mrs. Payson. As she uttered the words +they were an opprobrium.</p> + +<p>"Your father's name was Isaac too, wasn't it?" said the boy.</p> + +<p>"His name was Isaac Thrift." An altogether different kind of Isaac, you +would have thought. No relation to the gentleman in the Bible. A New +England Isaac not to be confused with the Levantine of that name.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I remember I used to hear my grandfather speak of him."</p> + +<p>"Indeed! In what connection, may I ask?"</p> + +<p>"Why, he came to Chicago in '39, just about the time your father +came, I imagine. They were young men together. Grandfather was an old +settler."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson's eyebrows doubted it. "I don't remember ever having seen +him mentioned in books on early Chicago."</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't," said Adler; "he isn't."</p> + +<p>"And why not?"</p> + +<p>"Jew," said Rutherford Hayes, pleasantly, and laconically.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson stood up. So did the boy. He had no difficulty in +rising now. No self-consciousness, no awkwardness. There was about +him suddenly a fluid grace, an easy muscular rhythm. "Of course, +grandfather has been dead a good many years now," he went on politely, +"and father, too."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid Lottie won't be able to go this evening," Mrs. Payson said. +"She has been going out too much. It is bad for her school work. Young +girls nowadays——"</p> + +<p>"I see. I'm sorry." There was nothing of humility in the little bow he +made from the waist. Ten minutes earlier you would never have thought +him capable of so finished an act as that bow. He walked to the folding +doors that led to the hall. On the way his glance fell on the portrait +of old Isaac Thrift over the liver-coloured marble mantel. It was a +fine portrait. One of Healy's. Adler paused a moment before it. "Is +that a good portrait of your father?"</p> + +<p>"It is considered very like him."</p> + +<p>"It must be. I can see now why my grandfather took his part to the +last."</p> + +<p>"Took his part!" But her tone was a shade less corroding. "In what, if +you please?"</p> + +<p>"Grandfather lost his fortune when a firm he trusted proved—well, when +a member of it proved untrustworthy."</p> + +<p>When he grew older he was always ashamed of having thus taken a mean +advantage of a woman. But he was so young at the time; and she had +hurt him so deeply. He turned again now, for the door. And there stood +Lottie, brave, but not quite brave enough. She was not wearing her +white dress—her party dress, for the evening. Her mother had forbidden +her to come down. And yet here she was. Braver—not much, but still +braver—than Charlotte had been before her.</p> + +<p>"I—I can't go, Ford," she faltered.</p> + +<p>"It's all right," he said, then. And there, before the white-haired, +relentless, and disapproving Carrie Payson he went up to her, put one +lean dark hand on her shoulder, drew her to him and kissed her, a funny +little boyish peck on the forehead. "Good-bye, Lottie," he said. And +was gone.</p> + +<p>Lottie's being needed at home began before the failure of Aunt +Charlotte's sight. Aunt Charlotte had to go to the eye specialist's +daily. Lottie took her. This was even before the day of the ramshackle +electric. Lottie never begrudged Aunt Charlotte the service. Already +between these two women, the one hardly more than twenty, the other +already past sixty, there existed a curious and unspoken understanding. +They were not voluble women, these two. Lottie never forgot those two +hours in the waiting room of the famous specialist. Every chair was +occupied, always. Silent, idle, waiting figures with something more +crushed and apprehensive about them than ordinarily about the waiting +ones in a doctor's outer room. The neat little stack of magazines on +the centre table remained untouched. Sometimes, if the wait was a long +one, Lottie would run out for an hour's shopping; or would drop in at +her mother's office. Mrs. Payson usually was busy with a client; maps, +documents, sheafs of blue-bound papers. But if one of her daughters +came downtown without dropping in at the office she took it as a +deliberate slight; or as a disregard of parental authority. Lottie +hated the door marked:</p> + +<p class="ph2">CARRIE THRIFT PAYSON<br> +<span class="smcap">Real Estate</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Bonds</span> <span class="smcap">Mortgages</span></p> + +<p>"Oh, you're busy."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson would glance up. There was nothing absent-minded about the +glance. For the moment her attention was all on Lottie. "Sit down. Wait +a minute."</p> + +<p>"I'll come back."</p> + +<p>"Wait."</p> + +<p>Lottie waited. Finally, "Aunt Charlotte will be wondering——"</p> + +<p>"We're through now." She would sit back in her desk chair, her hands +busy with the papers, her eyes on her client. "Now, if you'll come +in again on Monday, say, at about this time, I'll have the abstract +for you, and the trust deed. In the meantime I'll get in touch with +Spielbauer——"</p> + +<p>She would rise, as would her client, a man, usually. With the +conclusion of the business in hand she effected a quick change of +manner; became the woman in business instead of the business woman. +Sometimes the client happened to be an old time acquaintance, in which +case Carrie Payson would put a hand on Lottie's shoulder. "This is my +baby."</p> + +<p>The client would laugh genially, "Quite a baby!" This before the word +had taken on its slang significance.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't know what to do without her," Mrs. Payson would say. "I +have to be here all day."</p> + +<p>"Yes, they're a great help. Great help. Well—see you Monday, Mrs. +Payson. Same time. If you'll just see Spielbauer——"</p> + +<p>The door closed, Mrs. Payson would turn again to Lottie. "What was the +girl doing when you left?"</p> + +<p>"Why—she was still ironing."</p> + +<p>"How far had she got?"</p> + +<p>"All the fancy things. She was beginning on the sheets."</p> + +<p>"Well, I should think so! At that hour."</p> + +<p>Lottie turned toward the door. "Aunt Charlotte'll be waiting."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson must have a final thumb on the clay. "Be very careful +crossing the streets." And yet there was pride and real affection in +her eyes as she looked after the sturdy vigorous figure speeding down +the corridor toward the elevator.</p> + +<p>Once, when Lottie returned to the oculist's after a longer absence +than usual Aunt Charlotte had gone. "How long?" The attendant thought +it must be fifteen minutes. Chicago's downtown streets, even to the +young and the keen-sighted, were a maelstrom dotted at intervals by +blue-uniformed figures who held up a magic arm and blew a shrill blast +just when a swirl and torrent of drays, cabs, street-cars, and trucks +with plunging horses threatened completely to engulf them. Added to +this was the thunderous roar of the Wabash Avenue L trains. Even when +the crossing was comparatively safe and clear the deafening onrush of +a passing L train above always caused Aunt Charlotte to scuttle back +to the curb from which she was about to venture forth. The roar seemed +to be associated in her mind with danger; it added to her confusion. +Leading a horse out of a burning barn was play compared with ushering +Aunt Charlotte across a busy downtown street.</p> + +<p>"Just let me take my time," she would say, tremulously but stubbornly +immovable.</p> + +<p>"But Aunt Charlotte if we don't go now we'll be here forever. Now's the +time."</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte would not budge. Then, at the wrong moment, she would +dart suddenly across to the accompaniment of the startled whoop or +curse of a driver, chauffeur, or car conductor obliged to draw a quick +rein or jam on an emergency brake to avoid running her down.</p> + +<p>Lottie, knowing all this, sped toward Wabash Avenue with fear in her +heart, and a sort of anger born of fear. "Oh, dear! It does seem to me +she might have waited. Mother didn't want a thing. Not a thing. I told +her——"</p> + +<p>She came to the corner of Wabash and Madison where they always took the +Indiana Avenue car. She saw a little group of people near the curb and +her heart contracted as she sped on, but when she came up to them it +was only a balky automobile engine that had drawn their attention. She +looked across at the corner which was their car-stop. There stood Aunt +Charlotte. At once cowering, brave; terrified, courageous. At sight of +that timorous, peering, black-garbed figure Lottie gave a little sob. +The blood rushed back to her heart as though it had lain suspended in +her veins.</p> + +<p>"Aunt Charlotte, why did you do it?"</p> + +<p>"I got across alone."</p> + +<p>"But why didn't you wait for me? You knew——"</p> + +<p>"I got across alone. But the street car—the wagons never stopping so +a body can get out to the street car. And no way of telling whether it +was an Indiana or a Cottage Grove. But I got across alone." She had her +five-cent piece in her black-gloved trembling hand.</p> + +<p>Safely in the car, Lottie waxed stern again. "Why didn't you wait, Aunt +Charlotte? You knew I'd be back as soon as I could. I didn't mean to be +late. That was awfully naughty of you, Charlotte Thrift."</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte was looking out of the car window. What she saw must +have been little more than a blur to her. But something told Lottie +that in the dim eyes turned away from her was still another blur—a +blur of hot mist. Lottie leaned forward, covering with her own firm +cool young grasp the hand that lay so inertly in the black silk lap. +"What is it? Why——"</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte turned and Lottie saw that what she had sensed was +true. "It isn't right!" said Aunt Charlotte almost fiercely, and yet +in a half-whisper, for the car was crowded and she had a horror of +attracting public notice.</p> + +<p>"What isn't?"</p> + +<p>"Your calling for me, and bringing me back. Every day. Every day."</p> + +<p>"Now! You're just a little blue to-day; but the doctor said you'd only +have to come down for treatment a week or two more."</p> + +<p>"It isn't me. It's you. Your life! Your life!"</p> + +<p>A little flush crept into Lottie's face. "It's all right, dear."</p> + +<p>"It isn't all right. Don't you think I know!" Aunt Charlotte's voice +suddenly took on a deep and resonant note—the note of exhortation. +"Lottie, you're going to be eaten alive by two old cannibal women. I +know. I know. Don't you let 'em! You've got your whole life before you. +Live it the way you want to. Then you'll have only yourself to blame. +Don't you let somebody else live it for you. Don't you."</p> + +<p>"How about mother, slaving down in that office all day, when all the +other women of her age are taking it easy—a nap at noon, and afternoon +parties, and a husband to work for them?"</p> + +<p>"Slaving fiddlesticks! She likes it. Your mother'd rather read the real +estate transfers than a novel. Besides, she doesn't need to. We could +live on the rents. Nothing very grand, maybe. But we could live. And +why not let you do something? That's what I'd like to know! Why not——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'd love it. All the girls—that is, all the girls I like—are +doing some kind of work. But mother says——"</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte sniffed. It was almost a snort. "I know what your mother +says. 'No daughter of mine is going to work for her living.' Hmph!" +(Which is not expressing it, but nearly.) "Calls herself modern. She's +your grandfather over again and he thought he was a whole generation +ahead of his generation. Wasn't, though. Little behind, if anything."</p> + +<p>Sometimes Aunt Charlotte, the subdued, the vaguely wistful, had a +sparkling pugnacity, a sudden lift of spirits that showed for a +brief moment a glimpse of the girl of fifty years ago. A tiff with +Carrie Payson (in which Charlotte, strangely enough, usually came off +victorious) often brought about this brief phenomenon. At such times +she had even been known to sing, in a high off-key falsetto, such +ghostly, but rakish, echoes as: Champagne Charley Was His Name, or, +Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, or even, Up in a Balloon Boys. +Strangely enough as she grew older this mood became more and more +familiar. It was a sort of rebirth. At times she assumed an almost +jaunty air. It was as though life, having done its worst, was no longer +feared by her.</p> + +<p>In spite of objections, Lottie made sporadic attempts to mingle in the +stream of life that was flowing so swiftly past her—this new life of +service and self-expression into which women were entering. Settlement +work; folk dancing, pageantry, juvenile and girls' court work; social +service; departmental newspaper work. Lottie was attracted by all of +these and to any one of them she might have given valuable service. A +woman, Emma Barton, not yet fifty, had been appointed assistant judge +of the new girls' court. No woman had held a position such as that. +Lottie had met her. The two had become friends—close friends in spite +of the disparity in their ages.</p> + +<p>"I need you so badly up here," Emma Barton often told Lottie. "You've +got a way with girls; and you're not school-teachery or judicial with +them. That's the trouble with the regular court worker. And they talk +to you, don't they? Why, I wonder?</p> + +<p>"Maybe it's because I listen," Lottie replied. "And they think I'm sort +of simple. Maybe I am. But not so simple as they think." She laughed. +A visit to Judge Barton's court always stimulated her, even while it +saddened.</p> + +<p>Chicagoans, for the most part, read in the papers of Judge Barton and +pictured in their minds a stout and pink-jowled judiciary in a black +coat, imposing black-ribboned eyeglasses, and careful linen. These +people, if they chanced to be brought face to face with Judge Barton, +were generally seen to smile uncertainly as though a joke were being +played on them without success. They saw a small, mild-faced woman +with graying hair and bright brown eyes—piercing eyes that yet had a +certain liquid quality. She was like a wise little wren who has seen +much of life and understands more than she has seen, and forgives more +than she understands. A blue cloth dress with, probably, some bright +embroidery worked on it. A modern workaday dress on a modern woman. +Underneath, characteristically enough, a black sateen petticoat with a +pocket in it, like a market woman. A morning spent in Judge Barton's +court was life with the cover off. It was a sight vouchsafed to few. +Emma Barton discouraged the curious and ousted the morbidly prying. +Besides, there was no space in her tiny room for more than the persons +concerned. It was less like a court room than your own office, perhaps.</p> + +<p>Then there was Winnie Steppler, who wrote for Chicago's luridest +newspaper under the nom de plume of "Alice Yorke." A pink-cheeked, +white-haired, Falstaffian woman with the look and air of a picture-book +duchess and the wit and drollery of a gamin. Twice married, twice +widowed; wise with a terrible wisdom; seeing life so plainly that she +could not write of what she saw. There were no words. Or perhaps the +gift of words had kindly been denied her. Her "feature stuff" was +likely to be just that. Her conversation was razor-keen and as Irish as +she cared to make it. People were always saying to her, "Why don't you +write the way you talk?"</p> + +<p>"It's lucky for my friends I don't talk the way I write."</p> + +<p>Perhaps these two women, more than anything or anyone else, had +influenced Lottie to intolerance of aimless diversion. Not that Lottie +had much time for her own aimless diversion even if she had fancied it. +Rheumatism of a painful and crippling kind had laid its iron fingers +upon Carrie Payson. Arthritis, the doctors called it. It affected only +the fingers of the left hand—but because of it the downtown real +estate office was closed. The three women were home together now in the +big old house on Prairie, and Mrs. Payson was talking of selling it +and moving into an apartment out south. It was about this time, too, +that she bought the electric—one of the thousands that now began to +skim Chicago's boulevards—and to which Lottie became a galley slave. +She sometimes thought humorously of the shiny black levers as oars and +the miles of boulevard as an endless sea to which she was condemned. +Don't think that Lottie Payson was sorry for herself. If she had been +perhaps it would have been better for her. For ten years or more she +had been so fully occupied in doing her duty—or what she considered +her obvious duty—that she had scarcely thought of her obligations +toward herself. If you had disturbing thoughts you put them out of +your mind. And slammed the door on them. When she was twenty-nine, or +thereabouts, she had read a story that stuck in her memory. It was +Balzac's short story of the old maid who threw herself into the well. +She went to Aunt Charlotte with it.</p> + +<p>"Now that's a morbid, unnatural kind of story, isn't it?" she said.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte's forefinger made circles, round and round, on her +black-silk knee. Lottie had read the story aloud to her. "No. It's +true. And it's natural."</p> + +<p>"I don't see how you can say so. Now, when you were about forty——"</p> + +<p>"When I was thirty-five or forty I had you and Belle. To tend to, I +mean, and look after. If I hadn't had you I don't say that I would have +gone off with the butcher boy, but I don't say that I wouldn't. Every +time I wiped your noses or buttoned you up or spatted your hands when +you were naughty it was a—well—a——"</p> + +<p>"A sort of safety valve, you mean?" Lottie supplied the figure for her.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Between thirty-five and forty—that's the time to look out for. +You can fool nature just so long, and then she turns around and hits +back."</p> + +<p>"But look at all the girls I know—women of my age, and older—who are +happy, and busy and contented."</p> + +<p>There came a soft look into the dark eyes beneath the heavy black +brows. From the vantage point of her years and experience she +pronounced upon her sex. "Women are wonderful, Lottie," she said. "Just +wonderful. A good thing for the race that men aren't like 'em. In +self-control, I mean, and that. Wouldn't <i>be</i> any race, I reckon."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Lottie Payson was striding home through the early evening mist, the +zany March wind buffeting her skirts—no: skirt; it is 1916 and women +are knicker-bockered underneath instead of petticoated. She had come +from what is known on the South Side as "spending the afternoon."</p> + +<p>Of late years Lottie had given up this spending of afternoons. Choice +and circumstances had combined to bring this about. Her interests had +grown away from these women who had been her school-girl friends. The +two women with whom she lived made her the staff on which they leaned +more and more heavily. Lottie Payson was head of the household in +everything but authority. Mrs. Carrie Payson still held the reins.</p> + +<p>The afternoons had started as a Reading Club when Lottie was about +twenty-five and the others a year or two older or younger. Serious +reading. Yes, indeed. Effie Case had said, "We ought to improve our +minds; not just read anything. I think it would be fine to start with +the German poets; Gerty and those."</p> + +<p>So they had started with Goethe and those but found the going +rather rough. This guttural year had been followed by one of French +conversation led by a catarrhal person who turned out to be Vermontese +instead of Parisian, which accounted for their having learned to +pronounce <i>le</i> as "ler." After this they had turned to Modern +American Literature; thence, by a process of degeneration, to Current +Topics. They had a leader for the Current Topics Class, a retired Madam +Chairman. She grafted the front-page headlines onto the <i>Literary +Digest</i> and produced a brackish fruit tasting slightly of politics, +invention, scandal, dress, labor, society, disease, crime, and royalty. +One day, at the last minute, when she had failed to appear for the +regular meeting—grip, or a heavy cold—someone suggested, "How about +two tables of bridge?" After that the Reading Class alternated between +bridge and sewing. The sewing was quite individual and might range all +the way from satin camisoles to huckaback towels; from bead bags to +bedspreads. The talk, strangely enough, differed little from that of +the personally-conducted Current Topics Class days. They all attended +lectures pretty regularly; and symphony concerts and civic club +meetings.</p> + +<p>In the very beginning they had made a rule about refreshments. "No +elaborate serving," they had said. "Just tea or coffee, and toast. +And perhaps a strawberry jam or something like that. But that's all. +Nobody does it any more." The salads, cakes, and ices of an earlier +period were considered vulgar for afternoons. Besides, banting had come +in, and these women were nearing thirty; some of them had passed it—an +age when fat creeps slyly about the hips and arms and shoulder-blades +and stubbornly remains, once ensconced. Still, this rule had slowly +degenerated as had the club's original purpose. As they read less +during these afternoons they ate more. Beck Schaefer discovered and +served a new fruit salad with Hawaiian pineapple and marshmallows as +its plot. When next they met at Effie Case's she served her salad +in little vivid baskets made of oranges hollowed out, with one half +of the skin cut away except for a strip across the top to form the +basket's handle. After that there was no more tea and toast. After +that, too, the attendance of certain members of the erstwhile Reading +Club became more and more irregular and finally ceased altogether. +These delinquents were the more serious-minded ones of the group. +One became a settlement worker. Another went into the office of an +advertising agency and gave all her time and thought to emphasising +the desirability of certain breakfast foods, massage creams, chewing +gum, and garters. Still another had become a successful Science +Practitioner, with an office in the Lake Building and a waiting room +always full of claims. As for Lottie Payson—her youth and health, +her vigor and courage all went into the service of two old women. Of +these the one took selfishly; the other reluctantly, protestingly. The +Reading Club had long ago ceased to exist for Lottie.</p> + +<p>In the morning she drove her mother to market in the ramshackle old +electric. Mrs. Payson seldom drove it herself. The peculiar form of +rheumatism from which she suffered rendered her left hand almost +useless. The electric had been a fine piece of mechanism in its day +but years of service had taken the spring from its joints and the life +from its batteries. Those batteries now were as uncertain as a tired +old heart that may stop its labored beating any moment. A balky starter +and an unreliable starter, its two levers needed two strong hands +with muscle-control behind them. Besides, one had to be quick. As the +Paysons rumbled about in this rheumatic coach, haughty and contemptuous +gas cars were always hooting impatiently behind them, nosing them +perilously out of the way in the traffic's flood, their drivers +frequently calling out ribald remarks about hearses.</p> + +<p>In this vehicle drawn up at the curb outside the market Lottie would +sit reading the <i>Survey</i> (Judge Barton's influence there) while +her mother carried on a prolonged and acrimonious transaction with +Gus. Thirty-first Street, then Thirty-fifth Street, had become +impossible for the family marketing. There groceries and meat markets +catered frankly to the Negro trade. Prosperous enough trade it seemed, +too, with the windows piled with plump broilers and juicy cuts of ham. +The Payson electric waited in Forty-third Street now.</p> + +<p>Gus's red good-natured face above the enveloping white apron became +redder and less good-natured as Mrs. Payson's marketing progressed. New +potatoes. A piece of rump for a pot-roast. A head of lettuce. A basket +of peaches. Echoes floated out to Lottie waiting at the curb.</p> + +<p>"Yeh, but looka here, Mis' Payson, I ain't makin' nothin' on that stuff +as it is. Two three cents at the most. Say <i>I</i> gotta live too, +you know.... Oh, you don't want <i>that</i>, Mis' Payson. Tell you the +truth, they're pretty soft. Now here's a nice fresh lot come in from +Michigan this morning. I picked 'em out myself down on South Water."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson's decided tones: "They'll do for stewing."</p> + +<p>"All right. 'S for you to say. You got to eat 'em, not me. On'y don't +come around to-morrow tellin' me they was no good."</p> + +<p>Her purchases piled on the leather-upholstered front seat of the +electric, Mrs. Payson would be driven home, complaining acidly. This +finished Gus for her. Robber! Twenty-seven cents for lamb stew!</p> + +<p>"But mama, Belle paid thirty-two cents last week. I remember hearing +her say that lamb stew was seven or eight cents two or three years ago +and now it's thirty-two or thirty——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Belle! I'm surprised she ever has lamb stew. Always running short +on her allowance with her sirloins and her mushrooms and her broilers. +I ran a household for a whole month on what she uses in a week, when I +was her age. I don't know how Henry stands it."</p> + +<p>This ceremony of marketing took half the morning. It should have +required little more than an hour. On arriving home Mrs. Payson usually +complained of feeling faint. Her purchases piled on the kitchen table, +she would go over them with Hulda, the maid-servant. "Put that lettuce +in a damp cloth." The maid was doing it. "Rub a little salt and vinegar +into that pot roast." The girl had intended to. "You'll have to stew +those peaches." That had been apparent after the first disdainful +pressing with thumb and forefinger. By this time Hulda's attitude was +the bristling one natural to any human being whose intelligence has +been insulted by being told to do that which she already had meant +to do. Mrs. Payson, still wearing her hat (slightly askew now) would +accept the crackers and cheese, or the bit of cold lamb and slice of +bread, proffered by Lottie to fend off the "faintness." Often Mrs. +Payson augmented this with a rather surprising draught of sherry in a +tumbler, from the supply sent by her son-in-law Henry Kemp.</p> + +<p>On fine afternoons Lottie often drove her mother and Aunt Charlotte to +Jackson Park, drawing up at the curb along the lake walk. A glorious +sight, that panorama. It was almost like being at sea, minus the +discomfort of travel. The great blue inland ocean stretched before +them, away, and away, and away until it met the sky. For the most part +the three women did nothing. Mrs. Payson had always hated sewing. +Great-aunt Charlotte sometimes knitted. Her eyes were not needed for +that. But oftenest she sat there gazing out upon the restless expanse +of Lake Michigan, her hands moving as restlessly as the shifting +ageless waters. Great-aunt Charlotte's hands were seldom still. Always +they moved over her lap, smoothing a bit of cloth, tracing an imaginary +pattern with a wrinkled parchment forefinger; pleating a fold of her +napkin when at table. Hands with brown splotches on the backs. Moving, +moving, and yet curiously inactive. Sometimes Lottie read aloud, but +not often. Her mother was restless at being read aloud to; besides, she +liked stories with what is known as a business interest. Great-aunt +Charlotte liked romance. No villain too dastardly—no heroine too +lovely and misunderstood—no hero too ardent and athletic for Aunt +Charlotte's taste. She swallowed them, boots, moonlight, automobiles, +papers and all. "Such stuff!" Mrs. Carrie Payson would say.</p> + +<p>The conversation of the three women sitting there in the little +glass-enclosed box was desultory, unvital. They had little to say +to one another. Yet each would have been surprised to learn what a +reputation for liveliness and wit the other had in her own circle. +Lottie was known among "the girls" to be mischievous and gay; Carrie +Payson could keep a swift and keen pace in conversation with a +group of business men, or after a hand at bridge with women younger +than she (Mrs. Payson did not care for the company of women of her +own age); Great-aunt Charlotte's sallies and observations among +her septuagenarian circle often brought forth a chorus of cackling +laughter. Yet now:</p> + +<p>"Who's that coming along past the Iowa building?" (Relic of World's +Fair days.)</p> + +<p>"I can't tell from here, mama."</p> + +<p>"Must be walking to reduce, with that figure, on a day like this. It's +that Mrs. Deffler, isn't it, that lives near Belle's? No, it isn't. +She's too dark. Yes it ... no...."</p> + +<p>Lottie said aloud, "No, it isn't." And within: "If I could only jump +out of this old rattle-trap and into a boat—a boat with sails all +spread—and away to that place over there that's the horizon. Oh, God, +how I'd ... but I suppose I'd only land at Indiana Harbor instead of at +the horizon." Then aloud again, "If you and Aunt Charlotte think you'll +be comfortable here for twenty minutes or so I'll just walk up as far +as the pier and back."</p> + +<p>"That's right," from Aunt Charlotte. "Do you good. What's more"—she +chuckled an almost wicked chuckle—"I'd never come back, if I were you."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson eyed her sister witheringly. "Don't be childish, +Charlotte."</p> + +<p>Out on the walk, her face toward the lake, her head lifted, her hands +jammed into her sweater pockets, Lottie was off.</p> + +<p>A voice was calling her.</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Your hat! You forgot your hat!"</p> + +<p>"I don't want it." She turned resolutely away from the maternal voice +and the hat. Her mother's head was stuck out of the car door. Lottie +heard, unheeding, a last faint "Sunburn!" and "Complexion." A half +mile up, a half mile back. Walking gave her a sense of freedom, of +exhilaration; helped her to face the rest of the day.</p> + +<p>In the evening they often drove round to Belle's; or about the park +again on warm summer nights.</p> + +<p>But on this particular March afternoon the Reading Club once more +claimed Lottie. One of the Readers had married. This was her +long-planned afternoon at home for the girls. Her newly-furnished +four-room apartment awaited their knowing inspection. Her wedding +silver and linen shone and glittered for them. Celia Sprague was a +bride at thirty-six, after a ten-years' engagement.</p> + +<p>"Now, Lottie," she had said, over the telephone, "you've just got to +come. Every one of the girls will be here. It's my first party in my +new home. Oh, I notice you find time for your new highbrow friends. +It won't hurt you to come slumming this once. Well, but your mother +can do without you for one afternoon can't she! Good heavens, you've +<i>some</i> right to your——"</p> + +<p>Lottie came. She came and brought her knitting as did every other +member of the Reading Club. Satin camisoles, lingerie, hemstitching, +and bead bags had been abandoned for hanks of wool. The Reading Club, +together with the rest of North America, was swaddling all Belgium in +a million pounds of gray and olive-drab sweaters, mufflers, socks, +caps, mittens, helmets, stomach bands. Purl and knit, purl and knit, +the Reading Club scarcely dropped a stitch as it exclaimed, and cooed +and <i>ah'd</i> and <i>oh'd</i> over Celia Sprague Horner's ("Oh now, +that's all right! Just call me Celia Sprague. Everybody does. I can't +get used to it myself, after all the years I've been—Why just last +week at Shield's, when I was giving my charge, I told the clerk—") new +four-room apartment on Fifty-first Street—now more elegantly known +as Hyde Park Boulevard. Curiously enough Celia, who had been rather +a haggard and faded fiancée of thirty-six, was now, by some magic +process, a well-preserved and attractive young matron of thirty-six. A +certain new assurance in her bearing; a blithe self-confidence in her +conversation; a look in her eyes. The beloved woman.</p> + +<p>"This is the bedroom. Weren't we lucky to get two windows! The sun just +pours in all day—in fact, every room is sunny, even the kitchen." The +Reading Club regarded the bedroom rather nervously. Celia Sprague had +been one of them, so long. And now.... Two small French beds of dark +mahogany, with a silken counterpane on each. "No, just you put your +things right down on the beds, girls. It won't hurt the spreads a bit. +Everything in this house is going to be used. That's what it's for." +On the bed nearest the wall a little rosy mound of lingerie pillows, +all afroth with filet, and Irish, and eyelet embroidery and cut work. +Celia had spent countless Reading Club afternoons on this handiwork. +The rosy mound served no more practical purpose than the velvet and +embroidered slippers that used to hang on the wall in her grandmother's +day. Two silver-backed military brushes on the dull mahogany chest of +drawers—"chiffo-robe," Celia would tell you. The Reading Club eyed +them, smiling a little. Celia opened a closet door to dilate upon its +roominess. A whole battalion of carefully-hung trousers leaped out +at them from the door-rack. The Reading Club actually stepped back a +little, startled. "Orville's clothes take up more room than mine, I +always tell him. And everything just so. I never saw such a man!" She +talked as one to whom men and their ways were an old, though amusing, +story. "He's the neatest thing."</p> + +<p>Out to the living room. "Oh, Celia this <i>is</i> sweet! I love your +desk. It's so different." The room was the conventional bridal living +room; a plum-coloured velvet davenport, its back against a long, very +retiring table whose silk-shaded lamp showed above the davenport's +broad back like someone playing hide-and-seek behind a hedge. There +were lamps, and lamps, and lamps—a forest of them. The book-shelves +on either side of the gas-log grate held a rather wistful library, the +wedding gift "sets" of red and gold eked out with such school-girl +fillers as the Pepper Books, Hans Brinker, and Louisa Alcott.</p> + +<p>"A woman twice a week—one day to clean and one to wash and iron. +Orville wants me to have a maid but I say what for? She'd have to sleep +out and you never can depend—besides, it's just play. We have dinner +out two or three nights——"</p> + +<p>They were seated now, twittering, each with her knitting. A +well-dressed, alert group of women, their figures trim in careful +corsets, their hair, teeth, complexions showing daily care and +attention. The long slim needles—ebony, amber, white—flew and flashed +in the sunlight.</p> + +<p>"... This is my sixth sweater. I do 'em in my sleep."</p> + +<p>"... It's the heel that's the trick. Once I've passed that——"</p> + +<p>"... My brother says we'll never go in. We're a peace-loving nation, he +says. We simply don't believe in war. Barbaric."</p> + +<p>The handiwork of each was a complete character index. The bride was +painstaking and bungling. Her knitting showed frequent bunches and +lumps. Beck Schaefer's needles were swift, brilliant, and slovenly. +Effie Case's sallow sensual face, her fragile waxen fingers, showed her +distaste for the coarse fabric with which she was expertly occupied. +Amy Stattler, the Social Service worker, knitted as though she +found knitting restful. A plume of white showed startlingly in the +soft black of her hair. Prim sheer white cuffs and collar finished +her black gown at wrists and throat. Beck Schaefer, lolling on the +other side of the room, her legs crossed to show plump gray silk +calves, her feet in gray suede slippers ornamented with huge cut-steel +buckles, seemed suddenly showy and even vulgar in comparison. She was, +paradoxically, good-hearted and unpopular. This last because she was +given to indulging in that dangerous pastime known as "being perfectly +frank." Instinctively you shrank when Beck Schaefer began a sentence +with, "Now, I'm going to be perfectly frank with you." She was rarely +perfectly frank with the men, however. She had a way of shaking a +coquettish forefinger at the more elderly of these and saying, "Will +you never grow up!" People said of Beck that she lighted up well in the +evening.</p> + +<p>Lottie Payson was knitting a sleeveless, olive-drab sweater. Row after +row, inch after inch, it grew and lengthened, a flawless thing. Lottie +hated knitting. As she bent over the work her face wore a look for +definition of which you were baffled. Not a sullen look nor brooding, +but bound. That was it! Not free.</p> + +<p>The talk at first was casual, uninteresting.</p> + +<p>"Lot, is that the skirt to the suit Heller made you last winter?... +His things are as good the second season as they are the first. Keep +their shape. And he certainly does know how to get a sleeve in. His +shoulder line...."</p> + +<p>"... the minute I begin to gain I can tell by my waistbands——"</p> + +<p>"... if you purl three knit two——"</p> + +<p>Beck Schaefer had ceased to knit. She was looking at the intent little +group. She represented a certain thwarted type of unwed woman in whom +the sensual is expressed, pitifully enough, in terms of silk and lacy +lingerie; in innuendo; in a hungry roving eye; in a little droop at the +corners of the mouth; in an over-generous display of plump arms, or +bosom, or even knees. Beck's married friends often took her with them +in the evenings as a welcome third to relieve the tedium of a wedded +tête-à-tête. They found a vicarious pleasure in giving Beck a good time.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, in the midst of the brittle chatter and laughter, was thrust +the steel edge of Beck Schaefer's insolent voice, high, shrill.</p> + +<p>"Well, Cele, tell us the truth: are you happy?"</p> + +<p>The bride, startled, dropped a stitch, looked up, looked down, flushed. +"Why yes, of course, you bad thing!"</p> + +<p>"Ye-e-es, but I mean really happy. Come on now, give us the truth. Come +on. Let's all tell the truth, for once. Are you really happy, Cele?"</p> + +<p>The others laughed a little uncomfortably. Celia's face was red. +Lottie's voice, rather deeper than most women's, and with a contralto +note in it., was heard through the staccato sounds.</p> + +<p>"Well, at least, Beck, she won't have to listen to her married friends +saying, 'What's the matter with the men nowadays! What do they mean by +letting a wonderful girl like you stay single, h'm?'"</p> + +<p>They laughed at that. The atmosphere cleared a little. But Beck +Schaefer's eyes were narrowed. "Now I'm looking for information. We're +all friends here. We're all in the same boat—all except Celia, and +she's climbed out of the boat and onto a raft. I want to know if it was +worth the risk of changing. Here we all are—except Celia—failures. +Any unmarried woman is a self-confessed failure."</p> + +<p>A babel of protest. "How about Jane Addams!... Queen Elizabeth.... Joan +of Arc!"</p> + +<p>"Queen Elizabeth was a hussy. Jane Addams is a saint. Joan of +Arc—well——"</p> + +<p>Lottie Payson looked up from her knitting. "Joan of Arc had the courage +to live her own life, which is more than any of us have. She called +it listening to the voices, but I suppose what she really wanted was +to get away from home. If she had weakened and said, 'Ma, I know I +oughtn't to leave you. You need me to tend the geese,' her mother +might have been happier, and Joan would have lived a lot longer, but +the history of France would have been different."</p> + +<p>Beck Schaefer frankly cast aside her knitting, hugged one knee with her +jewel-decked hands, and waited for the laughter to subside. "You're +all afraid of the truth—<i>that's</i> the truth. I'm willing to come +through——"</p> + +<p>"Goodness, Beck, where do you pick up that low talk!"</p> + +<p>"I'm willing to come through if the rest of you are. We're all such +a lot of liars. We all know Cele there had to wait ten years for her +Orville because he had to support two selfish sisters and an invalid +mother; and even after the mother died the two cats wouldn't go to +live in two rooms as they should have, so that Celia and Orville could +afford to be happy together. No! They wanted all the comforts he'd +given them for years and so Celia——"</p> + +<p>"Beck Schaefer I won't have——" the bride's face was scarlet. She bit +her lip.</p> + +<p>"Now I know you're going to say I'm a guest in your house and so you +can't—and all that. But I'm not ashamed to say what you all know. That +I'd be married to-day if it weren't for Sam Butler's mother who ought +to have died fifteen years ago."</p> + +<p>"Beck, you're crazy! Now stop it! If you're trying to be funny——"</p> + +<p>"But I'm not. I'm trying to be serious. And you're all scared. Old +Lady Butler—'Madame Butler' she insists on it! I could die!—is +almost eighty-six, and Sam's crowding fifty. He's a smart business +man—splendid mind—a whole lot superior to mine; I know that. And yet +when he's with her—which is most of his spare time—he's like a baby +in her hands. She makes a slave of him. She hates any girl he looks +at. She's as jealous as a maniac. She tells him all sorts of things +about me. Lies. He has to go out of the house to telephone me. Once I +called him up at the house and he had to have the doctor in for her. +That's the way she works it; tells him that if she dies it will be on +his head, or something Biblical like that. Imagine! In this day! And +Sam pays every cent of the household expenses and dresses his mother +like a duchess. Look at me and my mother. We're always going around to +summer resorts together. Just two pals! M-m-m! 'Don't tell me you're +the mother of a big girl like that! Why, you look like sisters!' Big +girl—me! That ought to have five chil—not that I want 'em ... now. +But whenever I see one of those young mothers with her old daughter on +a summer resort veranda I want to go up to the tired old daughter and +say, 'Listen, gal. Run away with the iceman, or join a circus, or take +up bare-legged dancing—anything to express yourself before it's too +late.'"</p> + +<p>They had frankly stopped their knitting now. The bride's lip was caught +nervously between her teeth. Even thus her face still wore a crooked +and uncertain smile—the smile of the harassed hostess whose party had +taken an unmanageable turn for the worse.</p> + +<p>It was Amy Stattler who first took up her knitting again, her face +serene. "How about those of us who are doing constructive work? I +suppose we're failures too!" She straightened a white cuff primly. "I +have my Work."</p> + +<p>"All right. Have it. But I notice that didn't keep you from wanting +to marry that brainy little kike Socialist over on the West Side; and +it didn't keep your people from interfering and influencing you, and +making your life so miserable that you hadn't the spirit left to——"</p> + +<p>But Amy Stattler's face was so white and drawn and haggard—she was +suddenly so old—that even Beck Schaefer's mad tongue ceased its cruel +lashing for a moment; but only for a moment.</p> + +<p>Lottie Payson rolled her work into a neat bundle and jabbed a needle +through it. She sat forward, her fine dark eyebrows gathered into a +frown of pain and decent disapproval.</p> + +<p>"Beck, dear, you're causing a lot of needless discomfort. You're +probably nervous to-day, or something——"</p> + +<p>"I'm nothing of the kind. Makes me furious to be told I'm nervous when +I'm merely trying to present some interesting truths."</p> + +<p>"The truth isn't always helpful just because it hurts, you know."</p> + +<p>"A little truth certainly wouldn't hurt you, Lottie Payson. I suppose +it wouldn't help any, either, to acknowledge that you're a kind of +unpaid nurse-companion to two old women who are eating you alive!—when +your friend Judge Barton herself says that you've got a knack with +delinquent girls that would make you invaluable on her staff. And now +that you're well past thirty I suppose your mother doesn't sometimes +twit you with your maiden state, h'm? Don't tell <i>me</i>! As for +Effie Case there——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my goodness Beck, spare muh! I've been hiding behind my knitting +needle hoping you wouldn't see me. I know what's the matter with you. +You've been sneaking up to those psycho-analysis lectures that old +Beardsley's giving at Harper Hall. Shame on you! Nice young gal like +you."</p> + +<p>"Yes—and I know what's the matter with you, too, Effie. Why you're +always lolling around at massage parlors and beauty specialists, +sleeping away half the day in some stuffy old——"</p> + +<p>With lightning quickness Effie Case wadded her work into a ball, lifted +her arm, and hurled the tight bundle full at Beck Schaefer's head. It +struck her in the face, rebounded, unrolled softly at her feet. Effie +laughed her little irritating hysterical laugh. Beck Schaefer kicked +the little heap of wool with a disdainful suede slipper.</p> + +<p>"Well, I wouldn't have spilled all this if Cele had been willing to +tell the truth. I said we were failures and we are because we've +allowed some one or something to get the best of us—to pile up +obstacles that we weren't big enough to tear down. We've all gone in +for suffrage, and bleeding Belgium, and no petticoats, and uplift work, +and we think we're modern. Well, we're not. We're a past generation. +We're the unselfish softies. Watch the eighteen-year-olds. They've got +the method. They're not afraid."</p> + +<p>Lottie Payson laughed. Her face was all alight. "You ought to hear +my niece Charley talk to me. You'd think I was eighteen and she +thirty-two."</p> + +<p>Beck Schaefer nodded vehemently. "I know those girls—the Charley +kind. Scared to death of 'em. They're so sorry for me. And sort of +contemptuous. Catch Charley marrying ten years too late, like Celia +here, and missing all the thrill."</p> + +<p>"I haven't!" cried the harassed Celia, in desperation. "I haven't! +Orville's the grandest——"</p> + +<p>"Of course he is. But you can't have any thrill about a man you've +waited ten years for. Why won't you be honest!"</p> + +<p>And suddenly the plump little silk-clad hostess stood up, her face +working, her eyes bright with tears that would not wink away.</p> + +<p>"All right, I'll tell you the truth."</p> + +<p>"No, Cele—no!"</p> + +<p>"Sit down, Celia. Beck's a little off to-day."</p> + +<p>"Don't pay any attention to her. Waspish old girl, that's what——"</p> + +<p>Beck regarded her victim between narrowed lids. "You're afraid."</p> + +<p>"I'm not. Why should I be. Orville's the kindest man in the world. I +thought so before I married him, and now I know it."</p> + +<p>"Oh—kind!" scoffed Beck. "But what's that got to do with happiness? +Happiness!"</p> + +<p>"If you mean transports—no. Orville's fifty. He's set in his ways. +I—I'm nearer thirty-seven than thirty-six. And at that I've only lied +one year about my age—don't tell Orville. He's crazy about me. He just +follows me around this flat like a—like a child. And I suppose that's +really what he is to me now—a kind of big, wonderful child. I have to +pamper him, and reason with him, and punish him, and coax, and love, +and—tend him. I suppose ten years ago we'd—he'd——"</p> + +<p>She stopped suddenly, with a little broken cry.</p> + +<p>"Beck, you're a pig!" Lottie Payson's arms were about Celia. "In her +own house, too, and her first party. Really you're too——"</p> + +<p>A coloured maid stood in the doorway—a South Side Hebe—her ebony face +grotesque between the lacy cap and apron with which Celia had adorned +her for the day. She made mysterious signals in Celia's direction.</p> + +<p>"'F yo' ladies come in ev'thin's all—" She smiled; a sudden gash of +white in the black. The tantalizing scent of freshly made coffee filled +the little flat. They moved toward the dining room, talking, laughing, +pretending.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how pretty!... Cele! A real party! Candles and everything.... What +a stunning pattern—your silver. So plain and yet so rich.... My word! +Chicken salad! Bang goes another pound!"</p> + +<p>Chicken salad indeed. Little hot flaky biscuits, too, bearing pools of +golden butter within. Great black oily ripe olives. Salted almonds in +silver dishes. Coffee with rich yellow cream. A whipped-cream covered +icebox cake.</p> + +<p>"I think we ought to spank Beck and send her from the table. She +doesn't deserve this."</p> + +<p>At five-thirty, as they stood, hatted and ready for the street, +chorusing their good-byes in the little hallway, a key clicked in the +lock. Orville!</p> + +<p>They looked a little self-conscious.</p> + +<p>"Well, well, well! I've run into a harem!"</p> + +<p>"We haven't left a thing for your dinner. And it was so good."</p> + +<p>"Not running away because I'm home, are you?" His round face beamed on +them. He smelled of the fresh outdoors, and of strong cigars, and of a +vaguely masculine something that was a blending of business office and +barber's lotion and overcoat. The Reading Club scented it, sensitively. +Celia came over to him swiftly, there in the little hall, and slid one +arm about his great waist. A plump man, Orville, with a round, kindly, +commonplace face. He patted her silken shoulder. She faced the Reading +Club defiantly, triumphantly. "What have you girls been talking about, +h'mm?" Orville laughed a tolerant chuckling laugh. "You girls. Settled +the war yet?"</p> + +<p>Beck Schaefer threw up her chin a little. "We've been talking about +you, if you really want to know."</p> + +<p>He reeled. "Oh, my God! Cele, did you take the old man's part?"</p> + +<p>Celia moved away from him then a little, her face flushing. Constraint +fell upon the group. Lottie Payson stepped over to him then and put +one hand on his broad shoulder. "She didn't need to take your part, +Orville. We were all for you."</p> + +<p>"Except me!" shrilled Beck.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you!" retorted Orville, heavily jocular. "You're jealous." He +rubbed his chin ruefully. "Wait till I've shaved, Beck, and I'll give +you a kiss to make you happy."</p> + +<p>"Orville!" But Celia's bearing was again that of the successful +matron—the fortunate beloved woman.</p> + +<p>Beck Schaefer took the others home in her electric. Lottie, seized with +a sudden distaste for the glittering enamelled box elected to walk, +though she knew it would mean being late.</p> + +<p>"Figger?" Beck Schaefer asked, settling her own plump person in the +driver's seat.</p> + +<p>"Air," Lottie answered, not altogether truthfully; and drew a long +breath. She turned away from the curb. The electric trundled richly +off, its plate glass windows filled with snugly tailored shoulders, +furs, white gloves, vivid hats. Lottie held one hand high in farewell, +palm, out, as the glittering vehicle sped silently away, lurched fatly +around a corner and was gone.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Lottie was late. Shockingly late. Even though, tardily +conscience-stricken, she had deserted walk, sunset, and lake mist for +a crowded and creeping Indiana Avenue car at Forty-seventh Street, she +was unforgivably late, according to her mother's stern standards. This +was Friday night. Every Friday night Henry, Belle, and Charley Kemp +took dinner with the Paysons in the old house on Prairie Avenue. Every +Friday night. No matter what else the Kemps might prefer to do on that +night, they didn't do it. Each Friday morning Belle Kemp would say to +her husband, "This is Friday, Henry. We're having dinner at mama's, +remember."</p> + +<p>"I might have to work to-night, Belle. We're taking inventory this +week."</p> + +<p>"Henry, you <i>know</i> how mama feels about Friday dinner."</p> + +<p>"M-hmph," Henry would grunt; and make a mental note about an extra +supply of cigars for the evening. His favorite nightmare was that in +which he might slap his left-hand vest pocket only to find it empty +of cigars at 8:30 on a Friday evening at Mother Payson's. The weekly +gathering was a tradition meaninglessly maintained. The two families +saw quite enough of one another without it. Mrs. Payson was always +"running over to Belle's for a minute." But these Friday dinners had +started before Charley was born. Now they constituted an iron-clad +custom. Mrs. Payson called it "keeping up the family life."</p> + +<p>Lottie, hospitable by nature, welcomed dinner guests; but she rather +dreaded these Friday nights. There was so little of spontaneity about +them, and so much of family frankness. Some time during the evening +Belle would say, "Lottie, that dress is at least two inches too long. +No wonder you never look smart. Your clothes are always so ladylike."</p> + +<p>Lottie would look ruefully down her own length, a mischievous smile +crinkling the corners of her eyes. "And I thought I looked so nice! Not +chic, perhaps, but nice!" Her slim, well-shod feet, her neat silken +ankles, her sensible skirt, her collars and cuffs, or blouses and +frills were always so admirably trim, so crisply fresh where freshness +was required. Looking at her you had such confidence in the contents of +her bureau drawers.</p> + +<p>"Oh—nice! Who wants to look nice, nowadays!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson always insisted on talking business with her courteous but +palpably irked son-in-law. Her views and methods were not his. When, in +self-defense, he hinted this to her she resented it spiritedly with, +"Well, I ran a successful business and supported a household before you +had turned your first dollar, Henry Kemp. I'm not a fool."</p> + +<p>"I should think not, Mother Payson. But things have changed since your +time. Methods."</p> + +<p>He knew his wife was tapping a meaningful foot; and that Charley's +mischievous intelligent eyes held for him a message of quick +understanding and sympathy. Great friends, he and Charley, though in +rare moments of anger he had been known to speak of her to his wife as +"your daughter."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson was always ready with a suggestion whereby Henry Kemp +could improve his business. Henry Kemp's business was that of +importing china, glassware, and toys. Before the war he had been on +the road to a more than substantial fortune. France, Italy, Bohemia, +and Bavaria meant, to Henry Kemp, china from Limoges; glassware +from Venice and Prague; toys from Nürnberg and Munich. But Zeppelin +bombs, long-distance guns, and U-boats had shivered glass, china, +and toys into fragments these two years past. The firm had turned to +America for these products and found it sadly lacking. American dolls +were wooden-faced; American china was heavy, blue-white; American +glass-blowing was a trade, not an art. Henry Kemp hardly dared think of +what another year of war would mean to him.</p> + +<p>Lottie thought of these things as the Indiana Avenue car droned along. +Her nerves were pushing it vainly. She'd be terribly late. And she +had told Hulda that she'd be home in time to beat up the Roquefort +dressing that Henry liked. Oh, well, dinner would be delayed a few +minutes. Anyway, it was much better than dinner alone with mother and +Aunt Charlotte. Dinner alone with mother and Aunt Charlotte had grown +to be something of a horror. Lottie dreaded and feared the silence that +settled down upon them. Sometimes she would realize that the three of +them had sat almost through the meal without speaking. Lottie struggled +to keep up the table-talk. There was something sodden and deadly about +these conversationless dinners. Lottie would try to chat brightly +about the day's happenings. But when these happenings had just been +participated in by all three, as was usually the case, the brightness +of their recounting was likely to be considerably tarnished.</p> + +<p>Silence. A sniff from Mrs. Payson. "That girl's making coffee again for +herself. If she's had one cup to-day she's had ten. I get a pound of +coffee every three days, on my word."</p> + +<p>"They all do that, mother—all the Swedish girls."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"The lamb's delicious, isn't it, Aunt Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson disagreed before Aunt Charlotte could agree. "It's tough. +I'm going to have a talk with that Gus to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>The swinging door squeaking at the entrance of Hulda with a dish.</p> + +<p>"No; not for me." Aunt Charlotte refusing another helping.</p> + +<p>Silence again except for the sound of food being masticated. Great-aunt +Charlotte had an amazingly hearty appetite. Its revival had dated from +the acquisition of the new teeth. Now, when Aunt Charlotte smiled, her +withered lips drew away to disclose two flawless rows of blue-white +teeth. They flashed, incongruously perfect, in contrast with the sere +and wrinkled fabric of her face. There had been talk of drawing Mrs. +Payson's teeth as a possible cure for her rheumatic condition, but she +had fought the idea stubbornly.</p> + +<p>"They make me tired. When they don't know what else to do they pull +your teeth. They pull your teeth for everything from backache to +diabetes. And when it doesn't help they say, 'Pardon me. My mistake,' +and there you are without your teeth and with your aches. Fads!"</p> + +<p>She had aired these views most freely during the distressing two weeks +following Aunt Charlotte's dental operation, when soft, slippery +shivery concoctions had had to be specially prepared for her in the +Payson kitchen.</p> + +<p>Lottie would scurry about in her mind for possible table-talk. +Anything—anything but this sodden silence.</p> + +<p>"How would you two girls like to see a picture this evening, h'm? If we +go early and get seats well toward the front, so that Aunt Charlotte +can see, I'll drive you over to Forty-third. I wonder what's at the +Vista. I'll look in the paper. I hope Hulda saved the morning paper. +Perhaps Belle will drive over and meet us for the first show—no, +she can't either, I remember; she and Henry are having dinner north +to-night. Most of Belle's friends are moving north. Do you know, I +think—"</p> + +<p>"The South Side's always been good enough for me and always will be. I +don't see any sense in this fad for swarming over to the north shore. +If they'd improve the acres and acres out Bryn Mawr way——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson was conversationally launched on South Side real estate. +Lottie relaxed with relief.</p> + +<p>Sometimes she fancied that she caught Great-aunt Charlotte's +misleadingly bright old eyes upon her with a look that was at +once knowing and sympathetic. On one occasion that surprising +septuagenarian had startled and mystified Mrs. Payson and Lottie by +the sudden and explosive utterance of the word, "Game-fish!" It was at +dinner.</p> + +<p>"What? What's that?" Mrs. Payson had exclaimed; and had looked about +the table and then at her sister as though that thoughtful old lady had +taken leave of her senses. "What!" They were undeniably having tongue +with spinach.</p> + +<p>"Game-fish!" repeated Aunt Charlotte Thrift, gazing straight at Lottie. +Lottie waited, expectantly. "Your Grandfather Thrift had a saying: +'Only the game-fish swim upstream.'"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lottie; and even coloured a little, like a girl.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson had regarded her elder sister pityingly. "Well, how +did you happen to drag that in, Charlotte?" In a tone which meant, +simply—"Childish! Senile!"</p> + +<p>On this particular Friday night the Kemps were indeed there as Lottie +ran quickly up the front steps of the house on Prairie. The Kemp car, +glossy and substantial, stood at the curb. Charley drove it with +dashing expertness. At the thought of Charley the anxious frown between +Lottie Payson's fine brows smoothed itself out. Between aunt and niece +existed an affection and understanding so strong, so deep, so fine as +to be more than a mere blood bond. Certainly no such feeling had ever +existed between Lottie and her sister Belle; and no such understanding +united Belle and her daughter Charley.</p> + +<p>The old walnut and glass front door slammed after Lottie. They were in +the living room—the back parlor of Isaac Thrift's day.</p> + +<p>"Lottie!" Mrs. Payson's voice; metallic.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson was standing, facing the door as Lottie came in. She was +using her cane this evening. She always walked with her cane when she +was displeased with Lottie or Belle; some obscure reason existed for +it. She reminded you of one of these terrifying old dowagers of the +early English novels.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Belle! Hello, Henry! Sorry I'm late."</p> + +<p>Charley Kemp came over to Lottie in the doorway. Niece and aunt clasped +hands—a strange, brief, close grip, like that between two men. No +words.</p> + +<p>"Late! I should think you are late. You knew this was Friday night."</p> + +<p>"Now, now mother." Henry Kemp had a man's dread of a scene. "Lottie's +not a child. We've only been here a few minutes."</p> + +<p>"She might as well be—" ignoring his second remark. "Tell Hulda we're +all here. Call Aunt Charlotte."</p> + +<p>"I'll just skip back and beat up the Roquefort dressing first. Hulda +gets it so lumpy.... Minute...."</p> + +<p>"Lottie!" Mrs. Payson's voice was iron. "Lottie Payson, you change your +good suit skirt first!"</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp shouted. Mrs. Payson turned on him. "Well, what's funny +about that!" He buried his face in the evening paper.</p> + +<p>Belle's rather languid tones were heard now for the first time. "Lot, +is that your winter hat you're still wearing?"</p> + +<p>"Winter?—You don't mean to tell me I ought to be wearing a summer one! +Already!" Lottie turned to go upstairs, dutifully. The suit skirt.</p> + +<p>"Already! Why, it's March. Everybody——"</p> + +<p>"I slipped and almost fell on the ice at the corner of twenty-ninth," +Lottie retorted, laughingly, leaning over the balustrade.</p> + +<p>"What earthly difference does that make!"</p> + +<p>A rather grim snort here from Charley who was leaping up the stairs +after her aunt, like a handsome young colt.</p> + +<p>Lottie's room was at the rear of the second floor looking out upon the +back yard. A drear enough plot of ground now, black with a winter's +dregs of snow and ice. In the spring and summer Lottie and Great-aunt +Charlotte coaxed it into a riot of colour that defied even the South +Side pall of factory smoke and Illinois Central cinders. A border of +old-fashioned flowers ran along either side of the high board fence. +There were daisies and marigolds, phlox and four-o'clocks, mignonette +and verbenas, all polka-dotted with soot but defiantly lovely.</p> + +<p>On her way up the stairs, Lottie had been unfastening coat and skirt +with quick, sure fingers. She tossed the despised hat on the bed. Now, +as Charley entered, her aunt stepped out of the suit skirt and stood in +her knickers, a trim, well set-up figure, neatly articulated, hips flat +and well back; bust low and firm; legs sturdy and serviceable, the calf +high and not too prominent. She picked up the skirt, opened her closet +door, snatched another skirt from the hook.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson's voice from the foot of the stairway. "Lottie, put on a +dress—the blue silk one. Ben Gartz is coming over. He telephoned."</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>dear</i>!" said Lottie; hung the skirt again on its hook; took +out the blue silk.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," demanded Charley, "that Grandma made an engagement for +you without your permission?" (You ought to hear Charley on the subject +of personal freedom).</p> + +<p>"Oh, well—Ben Gartz. He and mother talk real estate, or business."</p> + +<p>"But he comes to see you."</p> + +<p>Charley had swung herself up to the footboard of the old walnut bed +that Lottie herself had cream-enamelled. A slim, pliant young thing, +this Charley, in her straight dark blue frock. She was so misleadingly +pink and white and golden that you neglected to notice the fine brow, +the chin squarish in spite of its soft curves, the rather deep-set +eyes. From her perch Charley's long brown-silk legs swung friendlily. +You saw that her stockings were rolled neatly and expertly just below +knees as bare and hardy as a Highlander's. She eyed her aunt critically.</p> + +<p>"Why in the world do you wear corsets, Lotta?" (This "Lotta" was a form +of affectation and affection.)</p> + +<p>"Keep the ol' tum in, of course. I'm no lithe young gazelle like you."</p> + +<p>"Gained a little, haven't you—this winter?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I have." Lottie was stepping into the blue silk and dancing +up and down as she pulled it on to keep from treading on it. "I don't +get enough exercise, that's the trouble. That darned old electric!"</p> + +<p>Charley faced her sternly from the footboard. "Well, if you will insist +on being the Family Sacrifice. Making a 'bus line of yourself between +here and the market—the market and the park—the park and our house. +The city ought to make you pay for a franchise."</p> + +<p>"Now—Charley——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're disgusting, that's what you are, Lotta Payson! You +practically never do anything you really want to do. You're so nobly +self-sacrificing that it's sickening. It's a weakness. It's a vice."</p> + +<p>"Yes ma'am," said Lotta gravely. "And if you kids don't do, say, and +feel everything that comes into your heads you go around screaming +about inhibitions. If you new-generation youngsters don't yield to +every impulse you think you're being stunted."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'd rather try things and find they're bad for me than never try +them at all. Look at Aunt Charlotte!"</p> + +<p>Lottie at the mirror was dabbing at her nose with a hasty powder-pad. +She regarded Charley now, through the glass. "Aunt Charlotte's +more—more understanding than mother is."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but it's been pretty expensive knowledge for her, I'll just bet. +Some day I'm going to ask her why she never married. Great-grandmother +Thrift had a hand in it; you can tell that by looking at that picture +of her in the hoops trimmed with bands of steel, or something. Gosh!"</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't ask her, Charley!"</p> + +<p>"I would too. She's probably dying to tell. Anybody likes to talk +of their love affairs. I'm going to cultivate Aunt Charlotte, I am. +Research work."</p> + +<p>"Yes," retorted Lottie, brushing a bit of powder from the front of the +blue silk, "do. And lend her your Havelock Ellis and Freud first, so +that she'll at least have a chance to be shocked, poor dear. Otherwise +she won't know what you're driving at."</p> + +<p>"You're a worm," said Charley. She jumped off the footboard, took +her aunt in her strong young arms and hugged her close. An unusual +demonstration for Charley, a young woman who belonged to the modern +school that despises sentiment and frowns upon weakly emotional +display; to whom rebellion is a normal state; clear-eyed, remorseless, +honest, fearless, terrifying; the first woman since Eve to tell the +truth and face the consequences. Lottie, looking at her, often felt +puerile and ineffectual. "You don't have half enough fun. And no +self-expression. Come on and join a gymnastic dancing class. You'd make +a dancer. Your legs are so nice and muscular. You'd love it. Wonderful +exercise."</p> + +<p>She sprang away suddenly and stood poised for a brief moment in what is +known as First Position in dancing. "Tour jeté—" she took two quick +sliding steps, turned and leaped high and beautifully—"tour jeté—" +and again, bringing up short of the wall, her breathing as regular as +though she had not moved. "Try it."</p> + +<p>Lottie eyed her enviously. Charley had had lessons in gymnastic dancing +since the age of nine. Her work now was professional in finish, +technique, and beauty. She could do Polish Csárdás in scarlet boots, +or Psyche in wisps of pink chiffon and bare legs, or Papillons d'Amour +in flesh tights, ballet skirts aflare and snug pink satin bodice, with +equal ease and brilliance. She was always threatening to go on the +stage and more than half meant it. Charley would no more have missed a +performance of the latest Russian dancers, or of Pavlova, or the Opera +on special ballet nights than a student surgeon would miss an important +clinic. In the earlier stages of her dancing career her locomotion +had been accomplished entirely by the use of the simpler basic forms +of gymnastic dance steps. She had jeté-d and coupé-d and sauté-d and +turné-d in and out of bed, on L train platforms, at school, on the +street.</p> + +<p>Lottie, regarding her niece now, said, "Looks easy, so I suppose it +isn't. Let's see." She lifted her skirt tentatively. "Look out!"</p> + +<p>"No, no! Don't touch your skirts. Arms free. Out. Like this. Hands are +important in dancing. As important as feet. Now! Tour jeté! Higher! +That's it. <i>Tou</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Lot-<i>tie</i>!" Mrs. Payson's voice at the foot of the staircase.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my goodness!" All the light, the fun, the eagerness that had +radiated Lottie's face vanished now. She snatched a handkerchief from +the dresser and made for the stairs, snapping a fastener at her waist +as she went. "Call Aunt Charlotte for dinner," she flung over her +shoulder at Charley.</p> + +<p>"All right. Can I have a drop of your perfume on my hank?" (Not quite +so grown-up, after all.)</p> + +<p>As she flew past the living room on her way to the pantry Lottie heard +her mother's decided tones a shade more decisive than usual as she +administered advice to her patient son-in-law.</p> + +<p>"Put in a side-line then, until business picks up. Importing won't +improve until this war is over, that's sure. And when will it be over? +Maybe years and years——"</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp's amused, tolerant voice. "What would you suggest, Mother +Payson? Collar buttons—shoe strings—suspenders. They're always +needed."</p> + +<p>"You may think you're very funny, but let me tell you, young man, if I +were in your shoes to-day I'd——"</p> + +<p>The pantry door swung after Lottie. As she ranged oil, vinegar, salt, +pepper, paprika on the shelf before her and pressed the pungent cheese +against the bottom and sides of the shallow bowl with her fork, her +face had the bound look that it had worn earlier in the day at Celia's. +She blended and beat the dressing into a smooth creamy consistency.</p> + +<p>They were all at table when Great-aunt Charlotte finally came down. +She entered with a surprisingly quick light step. To-night she looked +younger than her sister in spite of ten years' seniority. Great-aunt +Charlotte was undeniably dressy—a late phase. At the age of seventy +she had announced her intention of getting no more new dresses. She +had, she said, a closet full of black silks and more serviceable cloth +dresses collected during the last ten or more years. "We Thrifts," she +said, "aren't long livers. I'll make what I've got do."</p> + +<p>The black silks and mohairs had stood the years bravely, but on Aunt +Charlotte's seventy-fifth birthday even the mohairs, most durable of +fabrics, began to protest. The dull silks became shiny; the shiny +mohairs grew dull. Cracks and splits showed in the hems and seams and +folds of the taffetas. Great-aunt Charlotte at three-score ten and +five had looked them over, sniffed, and had cast them off as an embryo +butterfly casts off its chrysalis. She took a new lease on life, +ordered a complete set of dresses that included a figured foulard, sent +her ancient and massive pieces of family jewelry to be cleaned, and +went shopping with Lottie for a hat instead of the bonnet to which she +had so long clung.</p> + +<p>She looked quite the grande dame as she entered the dining room now, +in one of the more frivolous black silks, her white hair crimped, a +great old-fashioned cabachon gold and diamond brooch fastening the +lace at her breast, a band of black velvet ribbon about her neck, her +eyes brightly interested beneath the strongly marked black brows. +Belle came over and dutifully kissed one withered old cheek. She and +Aunt Charlotte had never been close. Henry patted her shoulder as he +pulled out her chair. Charley gave her a quick hug to which Great-aunt +Charlotte said, "Ouch!"—but smiled. "Dear me, I haven't kept you +waiting!"</p> + +<p>"You know you have," retorted Mrs. Carrie Payson; and dipped her spoon +in the plate of steaming golden fragrant soup before her. Whereupon +Great-aunt Charlotte winked at Henry Kemp.</p> + +<p>The Friday night dinner was always a good meal, though what is known as +"plain." Soup, roast, a vegetable, salad, dessert.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mrs. Carrie Payson, "and how've you all been? I suppose +I'd never see you if it weren't for Friday nights."</p> + +<p>Charley looked up quickly. "Oh, Gran, I'm sorry but I shan't be able to +come to dinner any more on Fridays."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"My dancing class."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson laid down her spoon and sat back, terribly composed. +"Dancing class! You can change your dancing class to some other night, +I suppose? You know very well this is the only night possible for the +family. Hulda's out Thursdays; your father and mother play bridge on +Wednesdays; Lottie——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. But there's no other night."</p> + +<p>"You must dance, I suppose?" This Charley took to be a purely +rhetorical question. As well say to her, "You must breathe, I +suppose?" Mrs. Payson turned to her daughter Belle. "This is with your +permission?"</p> + +<p>Belle nibbled celery tranquilly. "We talked it over. But Charley makes +her own decisions in matters like this you know, mother."</p> + +<p>As with one accord Great-aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lottie turned and +regarded Charley. A certain awe was in their faces, unknown to them.</p> + +<p>"But why exactly Friday night?" persisted Mrs. Payson. "Lottie, ring." +Lottie rang, obediently. Hulda entered.</p> + +<p>"That was mighty good soup, mother," said Henry Kemp.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson refused to be mollified. Ignored the compliment. "Why +exactly Friday night, if you please?"</p> + +<p>Charley wiggled a little with pleasure. "I hoped you'd ask me that. +I'm dying to talk about it. Oo! Roast chickens! All brown and crackly! +Well, you see, my actual class-work in merchandising and business +efficiency will be about finished at the end of the month. After that, +the university places you, you know."</p> + +<p>"Places you!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson had always had an uneasy feeling about her +granddaughter's choice of a career. That she would have a career +Charley never for a moment allowed them to doubt. She never called it +a career. She spoke of it as "a job." In range her choice swung from +professional dancing (for which she was technically and temperamentally +fitted) to literature (for the creating of which she had no talent). +Between these widely divergent points she paused briefly to consider +the fascinations of professions such as licensed aviatrix (she had +never flown); private secretary to a millionaire magnate (again the +influence of the matinee); woman tennis champion (she held her own in +a game against the average male player but stuck her tongue between her +teeth when she served); and Influence for Good or Evil (by which she +meant vaguely something in the Madame de Staël and general salon line). +She had never expressed a desire to be a nurse.</p> + +<p>In the middle of her University of Chicago career this young paradox +made up of steel and velvet, of ruthlessness and charm, had announced, +to the surprise of her family and friends, her intention of going +in for the University's newest course—that in which young women +were trained to occupy executive positions in retail mercantile +establishments. Quite suddenly western co-educational universities and +eastern colleges for women—Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr—were +training girl students for business executive positions. Salaries of +ten—twenty—twenty-five thousand a year were predicted, together with +revolutionary changes in the conduct of such business. Until now such +positions had been occupied, for the most part, by women who had worked +their way up painfully, hand over hand, from a cash or stock-girl's +job through a clerkship to department head; thence, perhaps, to the +position of buyer and, later, office executive. On the way they +acquired much knowledge of human nature and business finesse, but it +was a matter of many years. These were, usually, shrewd, hard-working, +successful women; but limited and often devoid of education other than +that gained by practical experience. This new course would introduce +into business the trained young woman of college education. Business +was to be a profession, not a rough-and-tumble game.</p> + +<p>Charley's grandmother looked on this choice of career with mingled +gratification and disapproval. Plainly it was the Isaac Thrift +in Charley asserting itself. But a Thrift—a woman Thrift—in a +shop!—even though ultimately occupying a mahogany office, directing +large affairs, and controlling battalions of push buttons and +secretaries. Was it ladylike? Was it quite nice? What would the South +Side say?</p> + +<p>So, then—"Places you?" Mrs. Payson had echoed uneasily, at dinner.</p> + +<p>"For beginning practical experience. We learn the business from the +ground up as an engineer does, or an interne. I've just heard to-day +they've placed me at Shield's, in the blouses. I'm to start Monday."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" exclaimed Henry Kemp, at once amused and pleased. +He could not resist treating Charley and her job as a rare joke. +"Saleswoman, I suppose, to begin with. Clerk, h'm? Say, Charley, I'm +coming in and ask about——"</p> + +<p>"Clerk?" repeated Mrs. Payson, almost feebly for her. She saw herself +sliding around corners and fleeing up aisles to avoid Shield's blouse +section so that her grandchild need not approach her with a softly +insinuating "Is there something, Madam?"</p> + +<p>"Saleswoman! I should say not!" Charley grinned at their ignorance. +"No—no gravy, thanks—" to Hulda at her elbow. Charley ate like an +athlete in training, avoiding gravies, pastries, sweets. Her skin was a +rose-petal. "I'm to start in Monday as stock-girl—if I'm in luck."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson pushed her plate aside sharply as Henry Kemp threw back his +head and roared. "Belle! Henry, stop that laughing! It's no laughing +matter. No grandchild of mine is going to be allowed to run up and down +Shield's blouse department as a stock-girl. The idea! Stock——"</p> + +<p>"Now, now Mother Payson," interrupted Henry, soothingly, as he +supposed, "you didn't expect them to start Charley in as foreign buyer +did you?"</p> + +<p>Belle raised her eyebrows together with her voice. "The thing Charley's +doing is considered very smart nowadays, mother. That Emery girl who +has just finished at Vassar is in the veilings at Farson's, and if +ever there was a patrician-looking girl—Henry dear, please don't take +another helping of potatoes. You told me to stop you if you tried. +Well, then, have some more chicken. That won't hurt your waistline."</p> + +<p>"Why can't girls stay home?" Mrs. Payson demanded. "It's all very well +if you have to go out into the world, as I did. I was unfortunate and I +had the strength to meet my trial. But when there's no rhyme nor reason +for it, I do declare! Surely there's enough for you at home. Look at +Lottie! What would I do without her!"</p> + +<p>Lottie smiled up at her mother then. It was not often that Mrs. Payson +unbent in her public praise.</p> + +<p>Great-aunt Charlotte, taking no part in the discussion, had eaten every +morsel on her plate down to the last crumb of sage dressing. Now she +looked up, blinking brightly at Charley. She put her question.</p> + +<p>"Suppose, after you've tried it, with your education, and the time, +and money you've spent on it, and all, you find you don't like it, +Charley—then what? H'm? What then?"</p> + +<p>"If I'm quite sure I don't like it I'll stop it and do something else," +replied Charley.</p> + +<p>Great-aunt Charlotte leaned back in her chair with a sigh of +satisfaction. It was as though she found a vicarious relaxation and a +sense of ease in Charley's freedom. She beamed upon the table. "It's a +great age," she announced, "this century. If I'd died at seventy, as I +planned, I'd be madder'n a hornet now to think of all I'd missed." She +giggled a little falsetto note. "I've a good mind to step out and get a +job myself."</p> + +<p>"Don't be childish Charlotte!"—sister Carrie, of course.</p> + +<p>Charley leaped to her defense. "I'd get one this minute if I were you, +Aunt Charlotte, yes I would. If you feel like it. Look at mother! +Always having massages and taking gentle walks in the park, and going +to concerts, when there's the whole world to wallop."</p> + +<p>Belle was not above a certain humourous argument. "I consider that I've +walloped my world, Miss Kemp. I've married; I manage a household; I've +produced a—a family."</p> + +<p>"Gussie runs your household, and you know it. Being married to father +isn't a career—it's a recreation. And as for having produced a family: +one child isn't a family; it's a crime. I'm going to marry at twenty, +have five children one right after the other——"</p> + +<p>The inevitable "Charley!" from Mrs. Carrie Payson.</p> + +<p>"—and handle my job besides. See if I don't."</p> + +<p>"Why exactly five?" inquired Henry Kemp.</p> + +<p>"Well, four is such a silly number; too tidy. And six is too many. +That's half a dozen. Five's just nice. I like odd numbers. Three +would be too risky in case anything should happen to one of them, and +seven——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my God!" from Henry Kemp before he went off into roars again.</p> + +<p>"I never heard such talk!" Mrs. Payson almost shouted. "When I was +your age I'd have been sent from the room for even listening to such +conversation, much less——"</p> + +<p>"That's where they were wrong," Charley went on; and she was so much in +earnest that one could not call her pert. "Look at Lottie! The maternal +type absolutely, or I don't know my philosophy and biology. That's what +makes her so corking in the Girls' Court work that she never has time +to do—" she stopped at a sudden recollection. "Oh, Lotta, Gussie's +having trouble with that sister of hers again."</p> + +<p>Gussie was the Kemp's cook, and a pearl. Even Mrs. Payson was hard +put to it to find a flaw in her conduct of the household. But she +interposed hastily here with her weekly question, Hulda being safely +out of the room.</p> + +<p>"Is your Gussie out to-night, Belle?"</p> + +<p>"She was still there when we left—poor child."</p> + +<p>"And why 'poor child!' You treat her like a princess. No washing, and a +woman to clean. I don't see what she does all day long. And why can't +she go home for her dinner when you're out? You're always getting her +extra pork chops and things."</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp wagged his head. "She's the best little cook we ever had, +Gussie is. Neat and pleasant. Has my breakfast on the table, hot, the +minute I sit down. Coffee's always hot. Bacon's always crisp without +being burned. Now most girls——"</p> + +<p>"Henry, she was crying in her room when I left the house to-night. +Charley told me." A little worried frown marred the usual serenity of +Mrs. Kemp's forehead.</p> + +<p>"Crying, was she?"</p> + +<p>"That sister of hers again," explained Charley. "And Gussie's got so +much pride. Jennie—that's the sister—ran away from home. Took some +money, I think. It's a terrible family. Her case comes up in Judge +Barton's court to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Lottie nodded understandingly. She and Gussie had had many unburdening +talks in the Kemp kitchen. "I think Judge Barton could straighten +things out for Gussie. That sister, anyway."</p> + +<p>Belle grasped at that eagerly. "Oh, Lottie, if she could. Gussie's mind +isn't on her work. And I've got that luncheon next Tuesday."</p> + +<p>Lottie ranged it all swiftly. "I'll tell you what. I'll come over to +your house to-morrow morning, early, and talk with Gussie. To-morrow's +the last day of the week and the Girls' Court doesn't convene again +until Tuesday. Perhaps if I speak for this Jennie when her case comes +up to-morrow——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, Tuesday wouldn't do!" from Belle.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. So I'll see Gussie to-morrow, and then go right down to +Judge Barton's before the session opens. Gussie can come with me, if +you want her to, or——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson's voice, hard, high, interrupted. "Not to-morrow, Lottie. +It's my day for collecting the rents. You know that perfectly well +because I spoke of it this morning. And all my Sunday marketing to do, +too. It's Saturday."</p> + +<p>Lottie fingered her spoon nervously. An added colour crept into her +cheeks. "I'll be back by eleven-thirty—twelve at the latest. Judge +Barton will see me first, I know. We'll drive over to collect the rents +as soon as I get back and then market on the way home."</p> + +<p>"After everything's picked over on Saturday afternoon!"</p> + +<p>Lottie looked down at her plate. Her hands were clasped in her lap, +beneath the tablecloth, but there was a tell-tale tenseness about her +arms, a rigidity about her whole body. "I thought just this once, +mother, you wouldn't mind. Gussie——"</p> + +<p>"Are the affairs of Belle's kitchen maid more important than your own +mother's! Are they?"</p> + +<p>Lottie looked up, slowly. It was as though some force impelled her. +Her eyes met Charley's, intent on her. Her glance went from them to +Aunt Charlotte—Aunt Charlotte, a spare little figure, erect in her +chair—and Aunt Charlotte's eyes were on her too, intent. Those two +pairs of eyes seemed to will her to utter that which she now found +herself saying to her own horror:</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, mother, I think they are in this case. Yes."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</h2> +</div> + + +<p>The family rose from the table and moved into the living room, a little +constraint upon them. Mrs. Payson stayed behind to give directions to +Hulda. Hulda, who dined in a heap off the end of the kitchen table, was +rarely allowed to consume her meal in peace. Between Hulda and Mrs. +Payson there was waged the unending battle of the coffee-pot. After +breakfast, luncheon, dinner the mistress of the house would go into the +kitchen, take the coffee-pot off the gas stove and peer into its dark +depths.</p> + +<p>"My goodness, Hulda, you've made enough coffee for a regiment! That's +wasteful. It'll only have to be thrown away."</p> + +<p>"Ay drink him."</p> + +<p>"You can't drink all this, girl. You'll be sick. You drink altogether +too much coffee. Coffee makes you nervous, don't you know that? Yellow!"</p> + +<p>Hulda munched a piece of bread and took another long gulp of her +beloved beverage, her capable red hand wrapped fondly about the +steaming cup. "Naw Mrs. Pay-son. My grandfather he was drink twenty cup +a day in old country."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but what happened to him? He'd be living to-day——"</p> + +<p>"He ban living to-day. Ninety years and red cheeks like apples."</p> + +<p>In the living room Lottie took up her knitting again. The front parlor +was unlighted but Charley went in and sat down at the old piano. She +did not play particularly well and she had no voice. Lottie, knitting +as she went, walked into the dim front room and sat down near Charley +at the piano. Charley did not turn her head.</p> + +<p>"That you, Lotta?" She went on playing.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear."</p> + +<p>A little silence. "Now you stick to it!"</p> + +<p>"I will."</p> + +<p>In the living room Henry Kemp leaned over and kissed his wife. +Straightening, he took a cigar out of his vest pocket and eyed it +lovingly. He pressed its resilient oily black sides with a tender +thumb and finger. He lighted it, took a deep pull at it, exhaled with +a long-drawn <i>pf-f-f</i>, and closed his eyes for a moment, a little +sigh of content breathing from him. He glanced, then, at his watch. +Only seven-fifty. Good Lord! He strolled over to Great-aunt Charlotte +who was seated near the front parlour doorway and the music. Her head +was cocked. He patted her black-silk shoulder, genially.</p> + +<p>"That cigar smells good, Henry."</p> + +<p>"Good cigar, Aunt Charlotte." He rolled it between his lips.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte's fingers tapped the arm of her chair. She waggled her +head a little in time with the music. "It's nice to have something that +smells like a man in the house."</p> + +<p>"You vamp!" shouted Henry Kemp. He came over to Belle again who was +seated in the most gracious chair the room boasted, doing nothing with +a really charming effect. "Say, listen Belle, we don't have to stay so +very late this evening, do we? I'm all tired out. I worked like a horse +to-day downtown."</p> + +<p>Before Belle could answer Charley called in from the other room, "Oh, +mother, I'm going to be called for, you know."</p> + +<p>Belle raised her voice slightly. "The poet?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"In the flivver?" Her father's question.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Now roar, Dad, you silly old thing. Imagine a girl like me being +cursed with a father who thinks poets and flivvers are funny. If you'd +ever tried to manage either of them you'd know there's nothing comic +about them."</p> + +<p>"There is too," contended Henry Kemp. "Either one of 'em's funny; and +the combination's killing. The modern—uh—what's this horse the poets +are supposed to ride?"</p> + +<p>His wife supplied the classicism, "Pegasus."</p> + +<p>"Pegasus!" he called in to Charley.</p> + +<p>"You stick to your importing, Henry," retorted his gay young daughter, +"and leave the book larnin' to mother and me."</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp, suddenly serious, strolled over to his wife again. He +lowered his voice. "About nine o'clock, anyway, can't we? Eh, Belle?"</p> + +<p>"Not before nine-thirty. You know how mama——"</p> + +<p>Henry sighed, resignedly. He stood a moment, balancing from heel to +toe. "Lot's a peach, that's what she is," he confided irrelevantly to +his wife. He puffed a moment in silence, his eyes squinting up through +the smoke. "And it's a damn shame, that's what. Damn shame."</p> + +<p>He picked up the discarded newspaper and seated himself in the buffalo +chair. The buffalo chair was a hideous monstrosity whose arms, back, +and sides were made of buffalo horns ingeniously put together. +Fortunately, their tips curved away from the sitter. The chair had been +presented to old Isaac Thrift by some lodge or real estate board or +society. It was known to the family as Ole Bull. The women never sat +in it and always warned feminine callers away from it. Its horns had +a disastrous way with flounces, ruffles, plackets, frills. It was one +of those household encumbrances which common sense tells you to cast +off at every housecleaning and sentiment bids you retain. Thus far +sentiment had triumphed on Prairie Avenue. Once you resigned yourself +to him Ole Bull was unexpectedly comfortable. Here Henry Kemp sat +reading, smoking, glancing up over the top of his paper at the women +folk of his family—at his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, +thoughtfully through the soothing haze of his cigar. He pondered on +many things during these family Friday evenings, did Henry Kemp. And +said little.</p> + +<p>The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to +families whose members see each other too often and know one another +too well. Belle to Lottie, for example:</p> + +<p>"Oh, why don't you get something a little different! You've been +wearing blue for ten years."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but it's so practical; and it always looks well."</p> + +<p>"Cut loose and be impractical for a change. They're going to wear a lot +of that fawn colour this spring—sand, I think they call it.... How did +Mrs. Hines get along with that old taffeta she made over for you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know; it kind of draws across the front, and the sleeves—I +have to remember to keep my arms down. I wish you'd look at it."</p> + +<p>"You'd have to put it on. How can I tell?"</p> + +<p>"Too much trouble."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, go on looking frumpy. These home dressmakers!"</p> + +<p>Lottie did not look frumpy, as a matter of fact. No one with a figure +so vigorous and erect, a back so straight, a head so well set on its +fine column of a throat, a habit of such fastidious cleanliness of +person, could be frumpy. But she resorted to few feminine wiles of +clothing, as of speech or manner. Lottie's laces, and silks and fine +white garments, like her dear secret thoughts and fancies, were worn +hidden, by the world unsuspected. All the dearer to Lottie for that.</p> + +<p>To-night Belle sat dangling her slipper at the end of her toe, her +knees crossed. She had a small slim foot and a trick of shooting +her pump loose at the heel so that it hung half on half off as she +waggled her foot in its fine silk stocking. Henry Kemp had found +it an entrancing trick when first they were married. He found it +less fascinating now, after twenty years. Sometimes the slipper +dropped—accidentally. "Henry dear, my slipper." Well, even the Prince +must have remonstrated with Cinderella if she made a practice of the +slipper-dropping business after their marriage. Twenty years after.</p> + +<p>Belle, dangling the slipper, called in now to Lottie: "Nice party, +Lot?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nice enough."</p> + +<p>"Who was there?"</p> + +<p>"The girls. You know."</p> + +<p>"Is her flat pretty? What did she serve?"</p> + +<p>"Chicken salad with aspic—hot biscuits—olives—a cake——"</p> + +<p>"Really!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. A party."</p> + +<p>"Is she happy with her Orville—now that she's waited ten years for +him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—at least, she was until this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Until!—Oh, come in here, Lottie. I can't shout at you like——"</p> + +<p>Lottie, knitting as she walked, came back into the living room. Charley +followed her after a moment; came over to her father, perched herself +on a slippery arm of Ole Bull and leaned back, her shoulder against his.</p> + +<p>Lottie stood, still knitting. She smiled a little. "Beck Schaefer was +on one of her reckless rampages. She teased Celia until Celia cried."</p> + +<p>"About what? Teased her about what? Pretty kind of guest, I must say."</p> + +<p>"Oh, marriage. Marriage and happiness and—she said every unmarried +woman was a failure."</p> + +<p>"That shouldn't have bothered Celia. She's married, safe enough. She +certainly had Beck there."</p> + +<p>"Beck intimated that Orville wasn't worth waiting ten years for."</p> + +<p>"Most men aren't," spoke up great-aunt Charlotte from her corner, "and +their wives don't know it until after they've been married ten years; +and then it's too late. Celia had plenty of time to find it out first +and she married him anyway. That's better. She'll be happy with him."</p> + +<p>"Charlotte Thrift!" called Charley, through the laughter. "You +<i>couldn't</i> be so wise just living to be seventy-four. Oh, you +hoop-skirted gals weren't so prunes-and-prismy. You've had a past. I'm +sure of it."</p> + +<p>"How d'you suppose I could have faced the future all these years if I +hadn't had!" retorted Aunt Charlotte.</p> + +<p>"That Schaefer girl had better go slow." Henry Kemp blew a whole flock +of smoke-rings for Charley's edification at which Charley, unedified, +announced that she could blow better rings than any of these in size, +number, and velocity with a despised gold-tipped perfumed cigarette and +cold-sore on the upper lip. "Some day," he predicted, "some day she'll +run away with a bell-hop. Just the type."</p> + +<p>"Who's run away with a bell-hop?" Mrs. Payson chose this unfortunate +moment to enter the living room after her kitchen conference.</p> + +<p>"Beck Schaefer," said Charley, mischievously.</p> + +<p>You should have seen, then, the quick glance of terror that Mrs. Payson +darted at Lottie. You might almost have thought that Lottie had been +the one who had succumbed to the lure of youth in blue suit and brass +buttons.</p> + +<p>"Beck! She hasn't! She didn't! Beck Schaefer!"</p> + +<p>"No mama, she hasn't. Henry just thinks she will—in time."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson turned on the overhead electric lights (they had been +sitting in the soothing twilight of the lamps), signified that Charley +was to hand her the evening paper that lay at the side of Henry's +chair, and seated herself in an ancient rocker—the only rocker the +house contained. It squeaked. She rocked. Glaring lights, rustling +paper, squeaking chair. The comfort of the room, of the group, was +dispelled.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know why!" demanded Mrs. Payson, turning to the stock +market page. "A good family. Money. And Beck Schaefer's a fine looking +girl."</p> + +<p>One thought flashed through the minds of all of them. The others looked +at Lottie and left the thought unspoken. Lottie herself put it into +words then. Bluntly: "She isn't a girl, mother. She's thirty-five."</p> + +<p>"Thirty-five's just a nice age." The paper crackled as she passed +to the real estate transfers. "If this keeps on I'd like to know +what they're going to do about building. Material's so high now it's +prohibitive." More rustling of paper and squeaking of chair. "Beck +Schaefer's got her mother to look out for her."</p> + +<p>"That's why," said Aunt Charlotte, suddenly. Lottie looked at her, +knitting needles poised a moment.</p> + +<p>"Why what?" asked Mrs. Payson. Then, as her sister Charlotte did not +answer, "You don't even know what we're talking about, Charlotte. Sit +there in the corner half asleep."</p> + +<p>"It's you who're asleep," snapped great-aunt Charlotte tartly. "With +your eyes wide open."</p> + +<p>When the doorbell rang then, opportunely, they all sighed a little, +whether in relief or disappointment.</p> + +<p>"I'll go," said Lottie. So it was she who opened the door to admit Ben +Gartz.</p> + +<p>You heard him as Lottie opened the door. "Hello! Well, Lottie! How's +every little thing with you?... <i>That's</i> good! You cer'nly look +it."</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz came into the living room, rubbing his hands and smiling +genially. A genial man, Ben, and yet you did not warm yourself at his +geniality. A little too anxious, he was. Not quite spruce. Looking his +forty-nine years. A pale and mackerel eye in a rubicund countenance, +had Ben Gartz. Combed his thinning hair in careful wisps across the +top of his head to hide the spreading bald spot. The kind of man who +says, "H'are you, sir!" on meeting you, and offers you a cigar at +once; who sits in the smokers of Pullmans; who speaks of children +always as "Kiddies." He toed in a little as he walked. A plumpish man +and yet with an oddly shrunken look about him somehow. The flame had +pretty well died out in him. He and his kind fought a little shy of +what they called "the old girls." But he was undoubtedly attracted to +Lottie. Ben Gartz had been a good son to his mother. She had regarded +every unmarried woman as her possible rival. She always had said, "Ben +ought to get married, I'd like to see him settled." But it was her one +horror. The South Side, after her death, said as one voice, "Well, +Ben, you certainly have nothing to reproach yourself with. You were a +wonderful son to her." And the South Side was right.</p> + +<p>Once Mrs. Payson said of him, "He's a good boy."</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte had cocked an eye. "He's uninteresting enough to be +good. But I don't know. He looks to me as if he was just waiting for +a chance to be bad." She had caught in Ben Gartz's face a certain +wistfulness—a something unfulfilled—that her worldly-wise sister had +mistaken for mildness.</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp brightened at the visitor's entrance as well he might in +this roomful of women. "Well, Ben, glad to see you. Come into the +harem."</p> + +<p>Ben shook hands with Mrs. Payson, with Aunt Charlotte, with Belle, with +Charley. "My, my, look at this kiddy! Why, she's a young lady! Better +look out, Miss Lottie; you'll be letting your little niece get ahead of +you." Shook hands with Henry Kemp. Out came the cigar.</p> + +<p>"No, no!" protested Henry. "You've got to smoke one of mine." They +exchanged cigars, eyed them, tucked them in vest pockets and lighted +one of their own, according to the solemn and ridiculous ritual of men. +Ben Gartz settled back in a chair and crossed his chubby knees. "This +is mighty nice, let me tell you, for an old batch living in a hotel +room. The family circle, like this. Mighty nice." He glanced at Lottie. +He admired Lottie with an admiration that had in it something of fear, +so he always assumed a boisterous bluffness with her. Sometimes he +felt, vaguely, that she was laughing at him. But she wasn't. She was +sorry for him. He was to her as obvious as a child to its mother.</p> + +<p>"You might have come for dinner," Lottie said, kindly, "if I'd known, +earlier. The folks had dinner here."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!" protested Ben as though the invitation were now being +tendered. "I couldn't think of troubling you. Mighty nice of you, +though, to think of me. Maybe some other time——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson said nothing. She did not issue dinner invitations +thus, helter-skelter. She did not look displeased, though.</p> + +<p>"Well, how's business?"</p> + +<p>Great-aunt Charlotte made a little clucking sound between tongue and +palate and prepared to drift from the room. She had a knack of drifting +out of the room—evaporating, almost. You looked up, suddenly, and she +was not there. Outside there sounded the sharp bleat of a motor horn—a +one-lung motor horn. Two short staccato blasts followed by a long one. +A signal, certainly.</p> + +<p>"The poet, Charley," said Henry Kemp; and laughed his big kind laugh.</p> + +<p>"Ask him in," Mrs. Payson said. "Aren't you going to ask your young man +to come in?" Charley was preparing to go.</p> + +<p>"What for?" she asked now.</p> + +<p>"To meet the family. Unless you're ashamed of him. When I was a +girl——"</p> + +<p>Great-aunt Charlotte sat back again, waiting.</p> + +<p>"All right," said Charley. "He'll hate it." She walked across the room +smiling; opened the door and called out to the bleat in the blackness:</p> + +<p>"Come on in!"</p> + +<p>"What for?"</p> + +<p>"Meet the family."</p> + +<p>"Oh, say, listen——"</p> + +<p>You heard them talking and giggling a little together in the hall. +Then they came down the hall and into the living room, these two young +things; these two beautiful young things. And suddenly the others in +the room felt old—old and fat and futile and done with life. The two +stood there in the doorway a moment. The very texture of their skin; +the vitality of their vigorous hair as it sprang away in a fine line +from their foreheads; the liquid blue-white clearness of the eyeball; +the poise of their slim bodies—was youth.</p> + +<p>She was tall but he was taller. His hair had a warmer glint; it was +almost red. In certain lights it was red. The faun type. Ears a little +pointed. Contemptuous of systems, you could see that; metric or +rhythmic. A good game of tennis, probably. Loathing golf. So graceful +as to seem almost slouchy. Lean, composed, self-possessed. White +flannel trousers for some athletic reason (indoor tennis, perhaps, at +the gym); a loose great-coat buttoned over what seemed to be no shirt +at all. Certainly not a costume for a Chicago March night. He wore it +with a full dress air. And yet a certain lovable shyness.</p> + +<p>Charley waved a hand in a gesture that somehow united him with the +room—the room full of eyes critical, amused, appraising, speculative, +disapproving.</p> + +<p>"Mother and Dad you know, of course. Grandmother Payson, my Aunt +Lottie—Lotta for short. Mr. Ben Gartz.... Oh, forgive me, Aunt +Charlotte, I thought you'd gone. There in the corner—my great-aunt +Charlotte Thrift.... This is Jesse Dick."</p> + +<p>It is a terrible thing to see an old woman blush. The swift, dull +almost thick red surged painfully to great-aunt Charlotte's face +now, and her eyes were suddenly wide and dark, like a young girl's, +startled. Then the red faded and left her face chalky, ghastly. It was +as though a relentless hand had wrapped iron fingers around her heart +and squeezed it and wrenched it once—tight and hard!—and then relaxed +its grip. She peered at the boy standing there in the doorway; peered +at him with dim old eyes that tried to pierce the veil of years and +years and years. The others were talking. Charley had got her wraps +from the hall, and was getting into her galoshes. This cumbersome and +disfiguring footgear had this winter become the fad among university +co-eds and South Side flappers. They wore galoshes on stormy days +and fair. The craze had started during a blizzardy week in January. +It was considered chic to leave the two top clasps or the two lower +clasps open and flapping. The origin of this could readily be traced to +breathless co-eds late for classes. All young and feminine Hyde Park +now clumped along the streets, slim silken shins ending grotesquely in +thick black felt-and-rubber.</p> + +<p>Jesse Dick stooped now to assist in the clasping of Charley's galoshes. +He was down on one knee. Charley, teetering a little, put one hand on +his head to preserve her balance. He looked up at her, smiling; she +looked down at him, smiling. Almost sixty years of life swept back over +great-aunt Charlotte Thrift and left her eighteen again; eighteen, and +hoop-skirted in her second-best merino, with a green-velvet bonnet and +a frill of blond lace, and little muddied boots and white stockings.</p> + +<p>She could not resist the force that impelled her now. She got up from +her corner and came over to them. The talk went on in the living room. +They did not notice her.</p> + +<p>"I knew your—I knew a Jesse Dick," she said, "years ago."</p> + +<p>The boy stood up. "Yes? Did you?"</p> + +<p>"He died in the Civil War. At Donelson. He was killed—at Donelson."</p> + +<p>The boy spatted his hands together a little, briskly, to rid them of a +bit of dried mud that had clung to the galoshes. "That must have been +my grandfather's brother," he said politely. "I've heard them speak of +him."</p> + +<p>He had heard them speak of him. Charlotte Thrift, with seventy-four +years of a ruined life heavy upon her, looked at him. He had heard them +speak of him. "Pomroy Dick? Your grandfather? Pomroy Dick?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes! Yes. Did you know him, too? He wasn't—we Dicks aren't—How +did you happen to know him?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know your grandfather Pomroy Dick," said Great-aunt +Charlotte, and smiled so that the withered lips drew away from the +blue-white, even teeth. "It was Jesse I knew." She looked up at him. +"Jesse Dick."</p> + +<p>Charley leaned over and pressed her fresh dewy young lips to the +parchment cheek. "Now isn't that interesting! Good-bye dear." She +stopped and flashed a mischievous glance at the boy. "Was he a poet +too, Aunt Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Jesse Dick turned his head quickly at that. "He was? I didn't know +that. Are you sure? No one in our family ever said——"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," Great-aunt Charlotte Thrift said, quietly. "Families don't +always know. About each other, I mean."</p> + +<p>"No, indeed," both he and Charley agreed, politely. They were anxious +to be off. They were off, with a good-bye to the group in the living +room. Charlotte Thrift turned to go upstairs. "Jesse Dick——" she +heard, from the room where the others sat. "Dick——" She turned and +came back swiftly, and seated herself again in the dim corner. Henry +Kemp was speaking, his face all agrin.</p> + +<p>"She's a case, that kid. We never know. Some weeks it's the son of +one of the professors, with horn glasses and no hat. And then it'll +be a millionaire youngster she's met at a dance, and the place will +be cluttered up with his Stutz and his orchids and Plow's candy for +awhile. Now it's this young Dick."</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz waggled his head. "These youngsters!" he remarked, +meaninglessly. "These youngsters!"</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Carrie Payson spoke with meaning. "Who is he? Dick? I've never +heard the name. Who're his folks?"</p> + +<p>An uneasy rustle from Belle. "He is a poet," she said. "Quite a good +one, too. Some of his stuff is really——"</p> + +<p>"Who're his folks?" demanded Mrs. Carrie Payson. "They're not poets +too, are they?"</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp's big laugh burst out again, then, in spite of Belle's +warning rustle. "His father's 'Delicatessen Dick,' over on Fifty-third. +We get all our cold cuts there, and the most wonderful pickled herring. +They say they're put up in some special way from a recipe that's been +in the family for years. Holland Dutch, I guess——"</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Carrie Payson had heard enough. "Well, I must say, Belle, +you're overdoing this freedom business with Charley. 'Delicatessen +Dick!' I suppose the poet sells the herrings over the counter? I +suppose he gives you an extra spoonful of onions when you——"</p> + +<p>Belle spoke up tartly: "He isn't in the store, mother. His people have +loads of money. They're very thrifty and nice respectable people. Of +course—everybody in Hyde Park goes to Dick's for their Sunday night +supper things."</p> + +<p>"His mother's a fine looking woman," Henry Kemp put in. "She's the +smart one. Practically runs the business, I hear. Old Dick is kind of a +dreamer. I guess dreaming doesn't go in the delicatessen business."</p> + +<p>"It'll be nice for Charley," Mrs. Payson remarked, grimly. "With her +training at college. I shouldn't wonder if they'd put her in charge of +all the cold meats, maybe. Or the cheese."</p> + +<p>"Now Mother Payson, Charley's only a kid. Don't you go worrying——"</p> + +<p>Belle spoke with some hauteur. "He does not live at home. He has a room +near the University. He's fond of his parents but not in sympathy with +the business. His work appears regularly in <i>Poetry</i>, and they +accept only the best. He worked his way through college without a penny +from his people. And," as a triumphant finish—"he has a book coming +out this spring."</p> + +<p>"Ha!" laughed Henry Kemp, jovially. Then suddenly sobering, regarded +the glowing end of his cigar. "But they do say it's darned good +poetry. People who know. Crazy—but good. I read one of 'em. It's +all about dead horses and entrails and——" he stopped and coughed +apologetically. "His new book is going to be called——" Here he went +off into a silent spasm of laughter.</p> + +<p>"Henry, you know that's just because you don't understand. It's the new +verse."</p> + +<p>"His new book," Henry Kemp went on, gravely, "is called 'White Worms.'"</p> + +<p>He looked at Ben Gartz. The two men laughed uproariously.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson sat forward stiffly in her rocking chair. "And you let +Charley go about with this person!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, mother, please. Let's not discuss Charley's affairs. Mr. Gartz +can't be interested."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I am! Aren't you, Miss Lottie? Young folks——"</p> + +<p>"Besides, all the girls are quite mad about him. Charley's the envy of +them all. He's the most sought-after young man in Hyde Park. He wrote +a poem to Charley that appeared in <i>Poetry</i> last month." Belle +dismissed the whole affair with a little impatient kick of her foot +that sent the dangling slipper flying. "Oh, Henry—my slipper!" Henry +retrieved it. "Besides they're only children. Charley's a baby."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson began to rock in the squeaky chair, violently. "You +heard what she said about the five."</p> + +<p>"The five?"</p> + +<p>"About the five—you know."</p> + +<p>In the laughter that followed great-aunt Charlotte slipped out of the +room, vanished up the stairs.</p> + +<p>Then the War, of course. Ben Gartz was the sort that kept a map in his +office, with coloured pins stuck everywhere in it. They began to talk +about the War. They say it'll go on for years and years; it can't, the +Germans are starving; don't you believe it, they've prepared for this +for forty years; aren't the French wonderful, would you believe it to +look at them so shrimpy; it's beginning to look pretty black for them +just the same; we'll be in it yet, you mark my words; should have gone +in a year ago, that was the time; if ever we do—zowie.</p> + +<p>Lottie sat knitting. Ben Gartz reached over and fingered the soft +springy mass of wool. There was an intimacy about the act. "If we +go into it and I go off to war will you knit me some of these, Miss +Lottie? H'm?"</p> + +<p>Lottie lifted her eyes. "If you go off to fight I'll knit you a whole +outfit, complete: socks, muffler, helmet, wristlets, sweater."</p> + +<p>"'Death, where is thy sting'!" Ben Gartz rolled a pale blue eye.</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp was not laughing now. His face looked a little drawn and +old. He had allowed his cigar to go dead in the earnestness of the war +talk. "You're safe, Lottie. It'll be over before we can ever go into +it."</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz flapped a hand in disagreement. "Don't you be too sure of +that. I've heard it pretty straight that we'll be in by this time +next year—if not before. I've had an offer to go into the men's +watch-bracelet business on the strength of it. And if we do I'm going +to take it. Fortune in it."</p> + +<p>"Men's watch bracelets! Real men don't wear them. Mollycoddles!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't they! No I guess not! Only engineers, and policemen and +aviators and soldiers, that's all. Mollycoddles like that. They say +they aren't wearing any kind <i>but</i> wrist watches over there. Well, +if we go into the war I go into the men's watch-bracelet business, +that's what. Fortune in it."</p> + +<p>"Yeh," said Henry Kemp, haggardly. "If we go into the war I go into the +poor-house."</p> + +<p>Belle stood up, decisively. "It's getting late, Henry."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson bristled. "It's only a little after nine. You only come +once a week. I should think you needn't run off right after dinner."</p> + +<p>"But it isn't right after dinner, mother. Besides Henry has been +working terribly hard. He's worn out."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson, who knew the state of Henry's business, sniffed in +unbelief. But they went. In the hall:</p> + +<p>"Then you'll be in to-morrow morning, Lottie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." Lottie seemed a little pale.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson's face hardened.</p> + +<p>You heard a roar outside. Henry warming up the engine. Snorts and +chugs, then a gigantic purr. They were off.</p> + +<p>The three settled down again in the living room. Mrs. Payson liked to +talk to men. Years of business intercourse had accustomed her to them. +She liked the way their minds worked, clear and hard. When Lottie +had company she almost always sat with them. Lottie had never hinted +that this was not quite as it should be. She never even told herself +that perhaps this might have had something to do with her being Lottie +Payson still.</p> + +<p>She was glad enough to have her mother remain in the room this evening. +She sat, knitting. She was thinking of Orville Sprague, and of Ben +Gartz. Of Charley and this boy—this Jesse Dick. How slim the boy +was, and how young, and how—vital! That was it, vital. His jaw made +such a clean, clear line. It almost hurt you with its beauty.... Beck +Schaefer.... Bell hop.... So that was what Henry had meant. Youth's +appeal to women of her age. A morbid appeal....</p> + +<p>She shook herself a little. Her mother and Ben Gartz were talking.</p> + +<p>"That's a pretty good proposition you got there, Mrs. Payson, if you +can swing it. I wouldn't be in any hurry, if I was you. You hang on to +it."</p> + +<p>There always was talk of "propositions" and "deals" when Mrs. Payson +conversed with one of Lottie's callers.</p> + +<p>"I think a good deal of your advice, Mr. Gartz. After all, I'm only a +woman alone. I haven't got anyone to advise me."</p> + +<p>"You don't need anybody, Mrs. Payson. You're as shrewd as that Rolfe +is, any day. He's waiting to see how this war's going to go. Well, you +wait too. You've got a good proposition there——"</p> + +<p>Lottie rose. "I'll get you something to drink," she said.</p> + +<p>He caught her arm. "Now don't you bother, Miss Lottie." He always +called her "Miss Lottie" when others were there, and "Lottie" when they +were alone.</p> + +<p>But she went, and came back with ginger ale, and some cookies. +Something in his face as he caught sight of these chaste viands +smote her kindly and understanding heart. She knew her mother would +disapprove, would oppose it. But the same boldness that had prompted +her to speak at dinner now urged her to fresh flights of daring.</p> + +<p>"What would you say to a cup of nice hot coffee and some cold chicken +sandwiches!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, say, Miss Lottie! I couldn't think—this is all right." But his +eyes brightened.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense, Lottie!" said Mrs. Payson, sharply. "Mr. Gartz doesn't want +coffee."</p> + +<p>"Yes he does. Don't you? Come on in the kitchen while I make it. We'll +all have a bite at the dining room table. I'll cut the bread if you'll +butter it."</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz got up with alacrity. "No man who lives in a hotel could +resist an offer like that, Miss Lottie." He frisked heavily off to +the kitchen in her wake. Mrs. Payson stood a moment, tasting the +unaccustomed bitter pill of opposition. Then she took her stout cane +from a corner where she had placed it and followed after them to the +kitchen, sniffing the delicious scent of coffee-in-the-making as though +it were poison gas. Later they played dummy bridge. Lottie did not play +bridge well. She failed to take the red and black spots seriously. +Mrs. Payson would overbid regularly. If you had told her that this +was a form of dishonesty she would have put you down as queer. Ben +Gartz squinted through his cigar smoke, slapped the cards down hard, +roared at Mrs. Payson's tactics (he had been a good son to his mother, +remember) and sought Lottie's knee under the table.</p> + +<p>"... going to marry at twenty and have five children, one right after +the other——"</p> + +<p>"Lottie Payson, what are you thinking of!" Her mother's outraged voice.</p> + +<p>"Why—what——"</p> + +<p>"You trumped my ace!"</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Every morning between eight-thirty and nine a boy from the Élite +Garage on Twenty-sixth Street brought the Payson electric to the door. +He trundled it up to the curb with the contempt that it deserved. +Your self-respecting garage mechanic is contemptuous of all electric +conveyances, but this young man looked on the Payson's senile vehicle +as a personal insult. He manipulated its creaking levers and balky +brakes as a professional pitcher would finger a soft rubber ball—thing +beneath pity. As he sprang out of it in his jersey and his tight +pants and his long-visored green cap he would slam its ancient door +behind him with such force as almost to set it rocking on its four +squat wheels. Then he would pass round behind it, kick one of its +asphalt-gnawed rubber tires with a vindictive boot and walk off +whistling back to the Élite Garage. Lottie had watched this performance +a thousand times, surely. She was always disappointed if he failed to +kick the tire. It satisfied something in her to see him do it.</p> + +<p>This morning Lottie was up, dressed, and telephoning the Élite Garage +before eight o'clock. She wanted to make an early start. She meant to +use the electric in order to save time. Without it the trip between the +Payson's house on Prairie Avenue and the Kemp's on Hyde Park Boulevard +near the lake was a pilgrimage marked by dreary waits on clamorous +corners for dirty yellow cars that never came.</p> + +<p>Early as she was Lottie had heard Aunt Charlotte astir much earlier. +She had not yet come down, however. Mrs. Payson had already breakfasted +and read the paper. After Mrs. Payson had finished with a newspaper its +page-sequence was irrevocably ruined for the next reader. Its sport +sheet mingled with the want ads; its front page lay crumpled upon Music +and the Drama. Lottie sometimes wondered if her own fondness for a +neatly folded uncrumpled morning paper was only another indication of +chronic spinsterhood. Aunt Charlotte had once said, as she smoothed +the wrinkled sheets with her wavering withered fingers, "Reading a +newspaper after you've finished with it, Carrie, is like getting the +news three days stale. No flavour to it."</p> + +<p>Lottie scarcely glanced at the headlines as she drank her coffee this +morning. Her mother was doing something or other at the sideboard. Mrs. +Payson was the sort of person who does slammy flappy things in a room +where you happened to be breakfasting, or writing, or reading; things +at which you could not express annoyance and yet which annoyed you to +the point of frenzy. She lifted dishes and put them down. She rattled +silver in the drawer. She tugged at a sideboard door that always stuck. +She made notes on a piece of wrapping paper with a hard pencil and +tapping sounds. All interspersed with a spasmodic conversation carried +on in a high voice with Hulda in the kitchen, the swinging door of the +pantry between them.</p> + +<p>"Need any rice?"</p> + +<p>"W'at?"</p> + +<p>"Rice!"</p> + +<p>"We got yet."</p> + +<p>More tapping of the pencil accompanied by a sotto voce murmur—"Soap +... kitchen cleanser ... new potatoes ... see about electric light +bulbs ... coffee——" she raised her voice again: "We've got plenty of +coffee I know."</p> + +<p>Silence from the kitchen.</p> + +<p>"Hulda, we've got plenty of coffee! I got a pound on Wednesday."</p> + +<p>Silence. Then—"He don't last over Sunday."</p> + +<p>"Not—why my dear young woman——" the swinging door whiffed and +whoofed with the energy of her exit as she passed into the kitchen to +do battle with the coffee-toper.</p> + +<p>Lottie was quite unconscious of the frown that her rasped nerves had +etched between her eyes. She was so accustomed to these breakfast +irritations that she did not know they irritated her. She was even +smiling a little, grimly amused.</p> + +<p>It was a lowering Chicago March morning, gray, foggy, sodden, with +a wet blanket wind from the lake that was more chilling than a walk +through water and more penetrating than severe cold. The months-old +soot-grimed snow and ice lay everywhere. The front page predicted +rain. Not a glint of sunlight filtered through the yellow pane of the +stained-glass window in the Payson dining room. "Ugh!" thought Lottie +picturing the downtown streets a morass of mud trampled to a pudding +consistency. And yet she smiled. She was to have the morning alone; the +morning from eight until almost noon. There was Gussie to interview. +There was Judge Barton to confer with—dear Emma Barton. There was poor +Jennie to dispose of. There was work to do. Real work. Lottie rose from +the table and stood in the pantry doorway holding the swinging door +open with one foot as she was getting into her coat.</p> + +<p>"I'll be back by noon, mother, surely. Perhaps earlier. Then we'll go +right over to your buildings and collect the rents and market on the +way back."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Mrs. Payson only. Her mouth was pursed.</p> + +<p>"For that matter, I think it's so foolish to bother about Sunday +dinner. We always get up later on Sunday, and eat more for breakfast. +Let's just have lunch this once. Let's try it. Forget about the leg of +lamb or the roast beef——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson raised her eyebrows in the direction of the listening +Hulda. "I'll leave that kind of thing to your sister Belle—this new +idea of getting up at noon on Sunday and then having no proper Sunday +dinner. We've always had Sunday dinners in this house and we always +will have as long as I'm head of the household."</p> + +<p>"Well, I just thought——" Lottie released the swinging door. She came +back into the dining room and glanced at herself in the sideboard +mirror. Lottie was the kind of woman who looks well in the morning. +A clear skin, a clear eye, hair that springs cleanly away from the +temples. This morning she looked more than usually alert. A little +half-smile of anticipation was on her lips. The lowering weather, her +mother's dourness, Hulda's slightly burned toast—she had allowed none +of these things to curdle the cream of her morning's adventure. She was +wearing her suit and furs and the small velvet hat whose doom Belle had +pronounced the evening before. As she drew on her gloves her mother +entered the dining room.</p> + +<p>"I'll be back by noon, surely." Mrs. Payson did not answer. Lottie went +down the long hall toward the front door. Her mother followed.</p> + +<p>"Going to Belle's?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'll have to hurry."</p> + +<p>At the door Mrs. Payson flung a final command.</p> + +<p>"You'd better go South Park to Grand."</p> + +<p>Lottie had meant to. It was the logical route to Belle's. She had taken +it a thousand times. Yet now, urged by some imp of perversity, she +was astonished to hear herself saying, "No, I'm going up Prairie to +Fifty-first." The worst possible road.</p> + +<p>She did not mind the wet gray wind as she clanked along in the +little box-like contrivance, up Prairie Avenue, over Thirty-first, +past gray stone and brick mansions whose former glory of façade and +stone-and-iron fence and steps showed the neglect and decay following +upon negro occupancy. It was too bad, she thought. Chicago was like a +colossal and slovenly young woman who, possessing great natural beauty, +is still content to slouch about in greasy wrapper and slippers run +down at heel.</p> + +<p>The Kemps lived in one of the oldest of Hyde Park's apartment houses +and one as nearly aristocratic as a Chicago South Side apartment house +can be. It was on Hyde Park Boulevard, near Jackson Park and the lake. +When Belle had married she had protested at an apartment. She had never +lived in one, she said. She didn't think she could. She would stifle. +No privacy. Everything huddled together on one floor and everybody +underfoot. People upstairs; people downstairs. But houses were scarce +in Hyde Park and she and Henry had compromised on an apartment much too +large for them and as choice as anything for miles around. There were +nine rooms. The two front rooms were a parlour and sitting room but not +many years had passed before Belle did away with this. Belle had caused +all sorts of things to be done to the apartment—at Henry's expense, +not the landlord's. Year after year partitions had been removed; old +fixtures torn out and modern ones installed; dark woodwork had been +cream enamelled; the old parlour and sitting room had been thrown +into one enormous living room. They had even built a "sun-parlour" +without which no Chicago apartment is considered complete. As it eats, +sleeps, plays bridge, reads, sews, writes, and lounges in those little +many-windowed peep-shows all Chicago's family life is an open book to +its neighbour.</p> + +<p>Belle's front room was a carefully careless place—livable, +inviting—with its books, and lamps, and plump low chairs mothering +unexpected tables nestled at their elbows—tantalising little tables +holding the last new novel, face downward; a smart little tooled +leather box primly packed with cigarettes; a squat wooden bowl, +very small, whose tipped cover revealed a glimpse of vivid scrunchy +fruit-drops within. Splashes of scarlet and orange bitter-sweet in +lustre bowls, loot of Charley's autumn days at the dunes. A roll +of watermelon-pink wool and a ball of the same shade in one corner +of the deep davenport, with two long amber needles stuck through +prophesied the first rainbow note of Charley's summer wardrobe. The +grand piano holding a book of Chopin and a chromo-covered song-hit +labeled, incredibly enough, Tya-da-dee. It was as unlike the Prairie +Avenue living room as Charley was unlike Mrs. Carrie Payson. Belle had +recently had the sun-parlour done in the new Chinese furniture—green +enameled wood with engaging little Chinese figures and scenes painted +on it; queer gashes of black here and there and lamp shades shaped +like some sort of Chinese head-gear; no one knew quite what. Surely +no Mongolian—coolie or mandarin—would have recognised the origin of +anything in the Chinese sun-parlour.</p> + +<p>Gussie answered the door. An admirable young woman, Gussie, capable, +self-contained, self-respecting. Sprung from a loose-moraled slovenly +household, she had, somehow, got the habit of personal cleanliness and +of straight thinking. Gussie's pastry hand was a light, deft, clean +one. Gussie's bedroom had none of the kennel stuffiness of the average +kitchen-bedroom. Gussie's pride in her own bathroom spoke in shining +tiles and gleaming porcelain.</p> + +<p>"Oo, Miss Lottie! How you are early! Mrs. ain't up at all yet. Miss +Charley she is in bathtub."</p> + +<p>"That's all right, Gussie. I came to see you."</p> + +<p>Gussie's eyes were red-rimmed. "Yeh ... Jennie...." She led the way +back to the kitchen; a sturdy young woman facing facts squarely. Her +thick-tongued speech told of her Slavic origin. She went on with her +morning's work as she talked and Lottie listened. Hers was a no-good +family. Her step-father she dismissed briefly as a bum. Her mother was +always getting mixed up with the boarders—that menace of city tenement +life. And now Jennie. Jennie wasn't bad. Only she liked a good time. +The two brothers (rough, lowering fellows) were always a-jumping on +Jennie. It was fierce. They wouldn't let her go out with the fellas. +In the street they yelled at her and shamed Jennie for Jennie's crowd +right out. They wanted she should marry one of the boarders. Well, say, +he had money sure, but old like Jennie's own father. Jennie was only +seventeen. All this while Gussie was slamming expertly from table to +sink, from sink to stove.</p> + +<p>"Seventeen! Why doesn't she leave home and work out as you do, Gussie? +Housework."</p> + +<p>Jennie, it appeared was too toney for housework. "Like this Jennie is." +Gussie took a smudged envelope from her pocket and opened it with damp +fingers. With one blunt finger-tip she pointed to the signature. It was +a pencil-scrawled letter from Jennie to her sister and it was signed, +flourishingly, "Jeannette."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lottie. "I see."</p> + +<p>Jennie, then, worked by factory. She paid board at home. She helped +with the housework evenings and Sundays. But always they yelled at her. +And then Jennie had taken one hundred dollars and had run away from +home.</p> + +<p>"Jennie is smart," Gussie said, in conclusion, "she is smart like +machine. She can make in her head figgers. She finished school, she +wanted she should go by business college for typewriter and work in +office, but ma and my brothers they won't let. They yell and they yell +and so Jennie works by factory."</p> + +<p>It was all simple enough to Lottie. She had sat in many sessions of +Judge Barton's court. "You'd rather not go with me, Gussie?"</p> + +<p>Gussie shook a vehement head. "Better you should go alone. Right away I +cry and yell for scared, Jennie she begin cry and yell, ma she begin +cry and——"</p> + +<p>"All right, Gussie.... Whose hundred dollars was it?"</p> + +<p>"Otto. He is big brother. He is mad like everything. He say he make +Jennie go by jail——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Gussie. He can't do that without Judge Barton, and she'll +never——"</p> + +<p>Gussie vanished into her bedroom. She emerged again with a stout roll +of grimy bills in her hand. These she proffered Lottie. "Here is more +as fifty dollar. I save'm. You should give to judge he shouldn't send +Jennie to jail." Gussie was of the class that never quite achieves one +hundred dollars. Seventy—eighty—eighty-five—and then the dentist or +doctor.</p> + +<p>Lottie gave the girl's shoulder a little squeeze. "Oh, Gussie, you +funny dear child. The judge is a woman. And besides it isn't right to +bribe the——"</p> + +<p>"No-o-o-o! A woman! In my life I ain't heard how a woman is judge."</p> + +<p>"Well, this one is. And Jennie won't go by jail. I promise you."</p> + +<p>Down the hall sped a figure in a pongee bathrobe, corded at the waist, +slim and sleek as a goldfish. Charley.</p> + +<p>"I heard you come in. Finished? Then sit and talk sociable while I +dress. You can speed a bit on the way downtown and make it. Step on the +ol' batteries. Please! Did you fix things with Gussie?"</p> + +<p>"Yeh," Gussie answered, comfortably, but she wore a puzzled frown. "She +fix. Judge is woman. Never in my life——"</p> + +<p>"Gussie, ma'am, will you let me have my breakfast tray in the +sun-parlour? It's such a glummy morning. That's a nice girl. About five +minutes."</p> + +<p>And it wasn't more than five. Lottie, watching Charley in the act of +dressing wondered what that young woman's grandmother or great-aunt +would have thought of the process. She decided that her dead-and-gone +great-grandmother—that hoop-skirted, iron-stayed, Victorian lady all +encased in linings, buckram, wool, wire, merino, and starch—would have +swooned at the sight. Charley's garments were so few and scant as to be +Chinese in their simplicity. She wore, usually, three wispy garments, +not counting shoes and stockings. She proceeded to don them now. First +she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just +below the knee. This cuff she then twisted deftly round, caught the +slack of it, twisted that rope-like, caught the twist neatly under a +fold, rolled the fold down tight and hard three inches below the knee +and left it there, an ingenious silken bracelet. There it stayed, fast +and firm, unaided by garter, stay, or elastic. Above this a pair of +scant knickers of jersey silk or muslin; a straight little shirt with +straps over the shoulders or, sometimes, just a brassière that bound +the young breasts. Over this slight foundation went a slim scant frock +of cloth. That was all. She was a pliant wheat-sheaf, a gracile blade, +a supple spear (see verses "To C.K." in <i>Poetry Magazine</i> for +February, signed Jesse Dick). She twisted her hair into a knot that, +worn low on the neck, would have been a test for anyone but Charley. +She now pursed her lips a little critically, and leaned forward close +to her mirror. Charley's lips were a little too full, the carping said; +the kind of lips known as "bee-stung." Charley hated her mouth; said it +was coarse and sensual. Others did not think so. (See poem "Your Lips" +in <i>Century Magazine</i>, June.)</p> + +<p>"There!" she said and turned away from the mirror. The five minutes +were just up.</p> + +<p>"Meaning you're dressed?"</p> + +<p>"Dressed. Why of——"</p> + +<p>"Sketchy, I calls it. But I suppose it's all right. You're covered, +anyway. Only I hope your grandmother'll never witness the sight I've +seen this morning. You make me feel like an elderly Esquimau sewed up +for the winter."</p> + +<p>Charley shrugged luxuriously. "I hate a lot of clothes."</p> + +<p>Her tray awaited her on the table in the sun-parlour—fruit, toast, +steaming hot chocolate. "I've got to go," Lottie kept murmuring and +leaned in the doorway watching her. Charley attacked the food with +a relish that gave you an appetite. She rolled an ecstatic eye at +the first sip of chocolate. "Oo, hot! Sure you won't have some?" She +demolished the whole daintily and thoroughly. As she sat there in +the cruel morning light of the many-windowed little room she was as +pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and scrubbed-looking as a Briggs boy ready +for supper. You could see the fine pores of her skin.</p> + +<p>Lottie began to button her coat. Charley chased a crumb of toast around +her plate. "What, if any, do you think of him?"</p> + +<p>Lottie had seen and met shoals of Charley's young men. "Suitors" was +the official South Side name for them. But Charley had never asked +Lottie's opinion of one of them.</p> + +<p>"Charming youngster. I grew quite mooney, after you'd gone, thinking +about him, and trumped mother's ace. He doesn't look like a poet—that +is, poet."</p> + +<p>"They never do. Good poets, I mean. I've often thought it was all for +the best that Rupert Brooke—that Byron collar of his. Fancy by the +time he became forty ... you really think he's charming?"</p> + +<p>"So does your mother. Last night she was enthusiastic—about his work."</p> + +<p>"M-m-m. Mother's partial to young poets."</p> + +<p>Between Charley and her mother there existed an unwritten code. +Charley commanded whole squads of devoted young men in assorted sizes, +positions, and conditions. Young men who liked country hikes and +wayside lunches; young men who preferred to dance at the Blackstone +on Saturday afternoons; young men who took Charley to the Symphony +concerts; young men who read to her out of books. And Mrs. Henry +Kemp, youngish, attractive, almost twenty years of married life with +Henry Kemp behind her, relished a chat with these slim youngsters. A +lean-flanked graceful crew they were, for the most part, with an almost +feline co-ordination of muscle. When they shook hands with you their +grip drove the rings into your fingers. They looked you in the eye—and +blushed a little. Their profiles would have put a movie star to shame. +Their waists were slim as a girl's (tennis and baseball). They drove +low-slung cars around Hyde Park corners with death-defying expertness. +Nerveless; not talkative and yet well up on the small-talk of the +younger set—Labour, Socialism, sex, baseball, Freud, psychiatry, +dancing and—just now—the War. Some were all for dashing across to +join the Lafayette Escadrille. Belle Kemp would have liked to sit and +talk with these young men—talk, and laugh, and dangle her slipper on +the end of her toe. Charley knew this. And her mother knew she knew. No +pulling the wool over Charley's eyes. No pretending to play the chummy +young mother with her. "Pal stuff."</p> + +<p>So, then, "M-m-m," said Charley, sipping the last of her chocolate. +"Mother's partial to young poets."</p> + +<p>Lottie had to be off. She cast a glance down the hall. "Do you suppose +she's really asleep still? I'd like to talk to her just a minute."</p> + +<p>"You might tap once at the door. I never disturb her in the morning. +But I don't think she's sleeping."</p> + +<p>Another code rule. These two—mother and daughter—treated one another +with polite deference. Never intruded on each other's privacy. Rarely +interfered with each other's engagements. Mrs. Kemp liked her breakfast +in bed—a practice Charley loathed. Once a week a strapping Swedish +damsel came to the apartment to give Mrs. Kemp a body massage and what +is known as a "facial." You should have heard Mrs. Carrie Payson on the +subject. Belle defended the practice, claiming that it benefited some +obscure digestive ailment from which she suffered.</p> + +<p>Lottie tapped at Belle's door. A little silence. Then an unenthusiastic +voice bade her enter. Belle was in bed, resting. Belle looked her age +in bed in the morning. Slightly haggard and a little yellow.</p> + +<p>"I thought it must be you."</p> + +<p>"It is."</p> + +<p>Belle rolled a languid eye. "I woke up feeling wretched. How about this +Gussie business?"</p> + +<p>"I'm just going downtown. It'll turn out all right, I think."</p> + +<p>"Just arrange things so that Gussie won't be upset for Tuesday. You +wouldn't think she was nervous, to look at her. Great huge creature. +But when she's upset! And I do so want that luncheon to be just right. +Mrs. Radcliffe Phelps——"</p> + +<p>Lottie could not restrain a little smile. "Oh, Belle."</p> + +<p>Belle turned her head pettishly on the pillow. "Oh, Belle!" she +mimicked in an astonishingly un-grown-up manner. Indeed, she sounded +amazingly like the school-girl of Armour Institute days. "You're more +like mother every day, Lottie." Lottie closed the door softly.</p> + +<p>Charley was waiting for her at the end of the hall. "Don't say I didn't +warn you. Here—I'll give you a chocolatey kiss. Are you lunching +downtown? There's a darling new tea-room just opened in the Great +Lakes Building——"</p> + +<p>"I've promised to be home by noon, at the latest."</p> + +<p>"What for?"</p> + +<p>"To take mother marketing and over to the West Side——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, for Heaven's sake!"</p> + +<p>"You have your job, Charley. This is mine."</p> + +<p>"Oh, is it? Do you like it?"</p> + +<p>"N-n-no."</p> + +<p>"Then it isn't."</p> + +<p>Lottie flung a final word at the door. "Even a free untrammelled spirit +like you will acknowledge that such a thing as duty does exist, I +suppose?"</p> + +<p>Charley leaned over the railing to combat that as Lottie flew +downstairs. "There is no higher duty than that of self-expression."</p> + +<p>"Gabble-gabble!" laughed Lottie, at the vestibule door.</p> + +<p>"Coward!" shouted Charley over the railing.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</h2> +</div> + + +<p>When she came out the fog was beginning to lift over the lake and +there was even an impression of watery lemon-coloured sunshine behind +the bank of gray. Lottie's spirits soared. As she stepped into the +swaying old electric there came over her a little swooping sensation of +freedom. It was good to be going about one's business thus, alone. No +one to say, "Slower! Not so fast!" No one to choose the maelstrom of +State and Madison streets as the spot in which to ask her opinion as to +whether this sample of silk matched this bit of cloth. A licorice lane +of smooth black roadway ahead. Down Hyde Park Boulevard and across to +Drexel. Down the long empty stretch of that fine avenue at a spanking +speed—spanking, that is, for the ancient electric whose inside +protested at every revolution of the wheels. She negotiated the narrows +of lower Michigan Avenue and emerged into the gracious sweep of that +street as it widened at Twelfth. She always caught her breath a little +at the spaciousness and magnificence of those blocks between Twelfth +and Randolph. The new Field Columbian museum, a white wraith, rose out +of the lake mist at her right. Already it was smudged with the smoke +of the I. C. engines. A pity, Lottie thought. She always felt civic +when driving down Michigan. On one side Grant Park and the lake beyond; +on the other the smart shops. You had to keep eyes ahead, but now and +then, out of the corner of them, you caught tantalising glimpses of a +scarlet velvet evening wrap in the window of the Blackstone shop; a +chic and trickily simple poiret twill in Vogue; the glint of silver as +you flashed past a jeweller's; the sooted façade of the Art Institute. +She loved it. It exhilarated her. She felt young, and free, and rather +important. The sombre old house on Prairie ceased to dominate her +for the time. What fun it would be to stay down for lunch with Emma +Barton—wise, humourous, understanding Emma Barton. Maybe they could +get hold of Winnie Steppler, too. Then, later, she might prowl around +looking at the new cloth dresses for spring.</p> + +<p>Well, she couldn't. That was all there was to it.</p> + +<p>She parked the electric and entered the grim black pile that was the +City Hall and County Building, threaded her way among the cuspidors of +the dingy entrance hall, stepped out of the elevator on the floor that +held Judge Barton's court: the Girls' Court. The attendant at the door +knew her. There was no entering Judge Barton's court as a public place +of entertainment. In the ante-room red-eyed girls and shawled mothers +were watching the closed door in mingled patience and fear. Girls. +Sullen girls, bold girls, frightened girls. Girls who had never heard +of the Ten Commandments and who had broken most of them. Girls who +had not waited for the apple of life to drop ripe into their laps but +had twisted it off the tree and bitten deep into the fruit and found +the taste of gall in their mouths. Tear-stained, bedraggled, wretched +girls; defiant girls; silk-clad, contemptuous, staring girls. Girls +who had rehearsed their rôles, prepared for stern justice in uniform. +Girls who bristled with resentment against life, against law, against +maternal authority. They did not suspect how completely they were to be +disarmed by a small woman with a misleadingly mild face, graying hair, +and eyes that—well, it was hard to tell about those eyes. They looked +at you—they looked at you and through you.... What was that you had +planned to say ... what was that you had.... Oh, for God's sakes, ma, +shut up your crying! Between the girls in their sleazy silk stockings +and the mothers in their shapeless shawls lay the rotten root of the +trouble. New America and the Old World, out of sympathy with each +other, uncomprehending, resentful. The girls in the outer room rustled, +and twisted, and jerked, and sobbed, and whispered, and shrugged, +and scowled; and stared furtively at each other. But the shawled and +formless older women stood or sat animal-like in their patience, their +eyes on the closed door.</p> + +<p>Lottie wondered if she could pick Jennie from among them. She even +thought of asking for her, but she quickly decided against that. Better +to see Emma Barton first.</p> + +<p>It lacked just five minutes of ten. Lottie nodded to the woman who +guarded the door and passed through the little room in which Judge +Barton held court, to the private office beyond. Never was less +official-looking hall of justice than that little court room. It +resembled a more than ordinarily pleasant business office. A long flat +table on a platform four or five inches above the floor. Half a dozen +chairs ranged about the wall. A vase of spring flowers—jonquils, +tulips, mignonette—on the table. Not a carefully planned "woman's +touch." Someone was always sending flowers to Judge Barton. She +was that kind of woman. You were struck with the absence of +official-looking papers, documents, files. All the paraphernalia of red +tape was absent.</p> + +<p>Judge Barton sat in the cubby-hole of an office just beyond this, a +girl stenographer at her elbow. Outside the great window the City Hall +pigeons strutted and purled. Bright-eyed and alert as an early robin, +the judge looked up as Lottie came in. She took Lottie's hand in her +own firm fingers.</p> + +<p>"Well!" Then they smiled at each other, these two women. "You'll stay +down and have lunch with me. I've the whole afternoon—Saturday."</p> + +<p>"I can't."</p> + +<p>"Of course you can. Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I've got to be home by noon to take mother to market and to——"</p> + +<p>"It sounds like nonsense to me," Emma Barton said, gently. And, +somehow, it did sound like nonsense.</p> + +<p>Lottie flushed like a school-girl. "I suppose it does——" she broke +off, abruptly. "I came down to talk to you about Jennie. Jennie's the +sister of Belle's housemaid, Gussie, and she's in trouble. Her case +comes up before you this morning."</p> + +<p>Emma Barton's eyes travelled swiftly over the charted sheets before +her. "Jennie? Jennie?—Jeannette Kromek?"</p> + +<p>"Jeannette."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Judge Barton, just as Lottie had before her in Belle's +kitchen that morning. She glanced at the chart of Jennie's case. +A common enough case in that court. She listened as Lottie talked +briefly. She knew the Jennie kind; Jennie in rebellion against a +treadmill of working and eating and sleeping. Jennie, the grub, vainly +trying to transform herself into Jeannette the butterfly. Excitement, +life, admiration, pretty clothes, "a chance." That was what the +Jeannettes vaguely desired: a chance.</p> + +<p>Judge Barton did not waste any time on sentiment. She did not walk +to the window and gaze out upon the great gray city stretched +below. She did not say, "Poor little broken butterfly." She had not +become head of this judicature thus. She said, "The world's full of +Jennie—Jeannettes. I wonder there aren't more of them." The soft bright +eyes were on Lottie. They said, "You're one, you know." But she did not +utter the thought aloud. She glanced at her watch then (it actually +hung from an old-fashioned chatelaine pinned near her right shoulder), +rose and led the way into the larger room, followed by Lottie and the +girl stenographer. She mounted the low platform, slipped into the chair +at the desk.</p> + +<p>She had placed the chart of Jennie's case uppermost on the table, was +about to have the case summoned when the door flew open and Winnie +Steppler entered. Doors always flew open before Winnie's entrance. +White-haired, pink-cheeked as a girl, looming vast and imposing in +her blue cloak and gray furs, she looked more the grande dame on an +errand of mercy than a newspaper reporter on the job. She rarely got +a story in Judge Barton's court because Judge Barton's girls' names +were carefully kept out of the glare of publicity. The human quality +in the place drew her; and her friendship and admiration for Emma +Barton; and the off-chance. There might be a story for her. She ranged +the city, did Winnie Steppler, for her stuff. Her friends were firemen +and policemen, newsboys and elevator starters; movie ticket-sellers, +news-stand girls, hotel clerks, lunch-room waitresses, manicures, +taxi-drivers, street-sweepers, doormen, waiters, Greek boot-blacks—all +that vast stratum of submerged servers over whom the flood of humanity +sweeps in a careless torrent leaving no one knows what sediment of rich +knowledge.</p> + +<p>At sight of Lottie, Winnie Steppler's Irish blue eyes blazed. She +affected a brogue, inimitable. "Och, but you're the grand sight and me +a-sickening for ye these weeks and not a glimpse. You'll have lunch +with me—you and Her Honour there."</p> + +<p>"I can't," said Lottie.</p> + +<p>"And why not, then!"</p> + +<p>It really was beginning to sound a little foolish. Lottie hesitated. +She fidgeted with her fingers, looked up smiling uncertainly. +"I've"—with a rush—"I've got to be home by twelve to drive mother to +market and to the West Side."</p> + +<p>"Telephone her. Say you won't be home till two. It's no life-and-death +matter, is it—the market and the West Side?"</p> + +<p>Lottie tried to picture that driving force at home waiting complacently +until she should return at two. "Oh, I can't! I can't!"</p> + +<p>Winnie Steppler, the world-wise, stared at her a moment curiously. +There had been a note resembling hysteria in Lottie's voice. "Why, look +here, girl——"</p> + +<p>"Order in the court!" said Judge Barton, with mock dignity. But she +meant it. It was ten o'clock. Two probation officers came in. A bailiff +opened the door and stuck his head in. Judge Barton nodded to him. He +closed the door. You heard his voice in the outer room. "Jeannette +Kromek! Mrs. Kromek! Otto Kromek!"</p> + +<p>A girl in a wrinkled blue cloth dress, a black velvet tam o'shanter, +slippers and (significant this) black cotton stockings. At sight of +those black cotton stockings Lottie Payson knew, definitely, that +beneath the top tawdriness of Jeannette was Jennie, sound enough. A +sullen, lowering, rather frightened girl of seventeen. Her hair was +bobbed. The style went oddly with the high-cheek-boned Slavic face, the +blunt-fingered factory hands. With her was a shawled woman who might +have been forty or sixty. She glanced about dartingly beneath lowered +lids with quick furtive looks. An animal, trapped, has the same look +in its eyes. The two stood at the side of the table facing Judge Barton.</p> + +<p>"Where is Otto Kromek?"</p> + +<p>"He didn't show up," the bailiff reported.</p> + +<p>No case, then. But Judge Barton did not so state. She leaned forward a +little toward the girl whose face was blotched and swollen with weeping.</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble, Jennie?"</p> + +<p>Jennie set her jaw. She looked down, looked up again. The brown eyes +were still upon her, questioningly. "I——"</p> + +<p>The shawled woman plucked at the girl's skirt and whispered fiercely in +her own tongue.</p> + +<p>"Le' me alone," hissed the girl, and jerked away.</p> + +<p>Judge Barton turned toward the woman. "Mrs. Kromek, just stand away +from Jennie. Let her talk to me. Afterward you can talk."</p> + +<p>The two separated, glaring.</p> + +<p>"Now then, Jennie, how did it all happen?"</p> + +<p>The girl begins to speak. The older woman edges closer again to catch +what the low voice says.</p> + +<p>"We went ridin' with a couple fellas."</p> + +<p>"Did you know them? Were they boys you knew?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"How did you happen to go riding with them, Jennie?"</p> + +<p>"We was walkin'——"</p> + +<p>"We?"</p> + +<p>"Me an' my girl friend. We was walkin'. These fellas was driving 'round +slow. We seen 'em. An' they come up to the curb where we was passin' by +an' asked us would we like to take a ride. Well, we didn't have nothin' +else to do so——"</p> + +<p>I-sez-to-him and he-sez-to-me. The drive. Terror. A fight in the car, +the sturdy girls defending themselves fiercely. Home safe but so late +that the usual tirade became abuse. They had said things at home ... +well ... she'd show'm. She'd run away. She had taken the hundred to +spite him—Otto.</p> + +<p>"Why did you go, Jennie? You knew, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>The girl's smouldering resentment flared into open hatred. "It's her. +She's always a-yellin' at me. They're all yellin' all the time. I come +home from work and right away they jump on me. Nothin' I do ain't +right. I'm good and sick of it, that's what. Good and sick——" She +was weeping again, wildly, unrestrainedly. The older woman broke into +a torrent of talk in her own thick tongue. She grasped the girl's arm. +Jennie wrenched herself free. "Yeh, you!" She turned again to Judge +Barton, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She made no attempt to +wipe them away. The Jennies of Judge Barton's court, so prone to +tears, were usually poorly equipped for the disposal of them.</p> + +<p>Emma Barton did not say, "Don't cry, Jennie." Without taking her eyes +from the girl she opened the upper right-hand drawer of her desk, and +from a neatly stacked pile of plain white handkerchiefs she took the +topmost one, shook it out of its folds and handed it wordlessly to +Jennie. As wordlessly Jennie took it and wiped her streaming eyes and +blew her nose, and mopped her face. Emma Barton had won a thousand +Jennies with a thousand neat white handkerchiefs extracted in the nick +of time from that upper right-hand drawer.</p> + +<p>"Now then, Mrs. Kromek. What's the trouble between you and Jennie? Why +don't you get along, you two?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Kromek, no longer furtive, squared herself to state her grievance. +Hers was a polyglot but pungent tongue. She made plain her meaning. +Jennie was a bum, a no-good, a stuck-up. The house wasn't clean enough +for Jennie. Always she was washing. Evenings she was washing herself +always with hot water it was enough to make you sick. And Jennie was +sassy on the boarders.</p> + +<p>And, "I see," said Judge Barton encouragingly, at intervals, as the +vituperative flood rolled on. "I see." Jennie's eyes, round with +hostility, glared at her accuser over the top of the handkerchief. +Finally, when the poison stream grew thinner, trickled, showed signs +of stopping altogether, Judge Barton beamed understandingly upon the +vixenish Mrs. Kromek. "I understand perfectly now. Just wait here, +Mrs. Kromek. Jennie, come with me." She beckoned to Lottie. The three +disappeared into the inner office. Judge Barton laid a hand lightly on +the girl's shoulder. "Now then, Jennie, what would you like to do, h'm? +Just talk to me. Tell me, what would you like to do?"</p> + +<p>Jennie's hands writhed in the folds of her skirt. She twisted her +fingers. She sobbed final dry, racking sobs. And then she rolled the +judicial handkerchief into a tight, damp, hard little ball and began to +talk. She talked as she had never talked to Ma Kromek. Translated, it +ran thus:</p> + +<p>At home there was no privacy. The house was full of hulking men; +pipe-smoke; the smell of food eternally stewing on the stove; shrill +or guttural voices; rough jests. Book-reading, bathing, reticence on +Jennie's part were all shouted down as attempts at being "toney." When +she came home from the factory at night, tired, nerve-worn, jaded, the +house was as cluttered and dirty as it had been when she left it in the +morning. The mother went with the boarders (this Jennie told as evenly +and dispassionately as the rest). She had run away from home after +the last hideous family fracas. She had taken the money in a spirit +of hatred and revenge. She'd do it again. If they had let her go to +school, as she had wanted to—she used to talk English all right, like +the teacher—but you heard the other kind of talk around the house and +at the factory and pretty soon you couldn't talk the right way. They +made fun of you if you did. A business college course. That was what +she wanted. She could spell. At school she could spell better than +anyone in the room. Only they had taken her out in the sixth grade.</p> + +<p>What to do with Jennie?</p> + +<p>The two older women looked at each other over Jennie's head. The +course in stenography could be managed simply enough. Judge Barton met +such problems hourly. But what to do with Jennie in the meantime? She +shrank from consigning to a detention home or a Girls' Refuge this +fundamentally sound and decent young creature.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, "I'll take her," said Lottie.</p> + +<p>"How do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I'll take her home with me. We've got rooms and rooms in that barracks +of ours. The whole third floor. She can stay for awhile. Anyway, she +can't go back to that house."</p> + +<p>The girl sat looking from one to the other, uncomprehending. Her hands +were clutching each other tightly. Emma Barton turned to her. "What do +you say, Jennie? Would you like to go home with Miss Payson here? Just +for awhile, until we think of something else? I think we can manage the +business college course."</p> + +<p>The girl seemed hardly to comprehend. Lottie leaned toward her. "Would +you like to come to my house, Jeannette?" And at that the first stab of +misgiving darted through Lottie. "My house?" She thought of her mother.</p> + +<p>"Yes," answered Jennie with the ready acquiescence of her class. "Yes."</p> + +<p>And so it was settled, simply. Ma Kromek accepted the decision with +dumb passiveness. One of the brothers would bring Jennie's clothes to +the Prairie Avenue house. Jennie had only spent half of the stolen +hundred. The unspent half she had returned to him. The rest she would +pay back, bit by bit, out of her earnings. Winnie Steppler bemoaned her +inability to make a feature story of Jennie—Jeannette. Lottie smiled +at Jennie, and propelled her down the corridor and into the elevator, +to the street. In her well-fitting tailor suit, and her good furs +and her close little velvet hat, she looked the Lady Bountiful. The +girl, shabby, tear-stained, followed. Lottie was racked with horrid +misgivings. Why had she suggested it! What a mad idea! Her mother! She +tried to put the thought out of her mind. She couldn't face it. And +all the while she was unlocking the door of the electric, settling +herself in the seat, holding out a hand to help Jennie's entrance. The +watery sunshine of the early morning had been a false promise. It was +raining again.</p> + +<p>Out of the welter of State Street and Wabash, and into the clear +stretch of Michigan once more she turned suddenly to look at Jennie +and found Jennie looking fixedly at her. Jennie's eyes did not drop +shiftily at this unexpected encounter. That was reassuring.</p> + +<p>"Gussie works at my sister's," she told the girl, bluntly. "That's how +I happened to be in court this morning when your case came up."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Jennie, accepting this as of a piece with all the rest of +the day's happenings. Then, after a moment, "Is that why you said you'd +take me? Gussie?"</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't even think of Gussie at the time. I just thought of you. +I didn't even think of myself." She smiled a little grimly. "I'm going +to call you Jeannette, shall I?"</p> + +<p>"Yeh. Jennie's so homely. What's your name?"</p> + +<p>"Lottie."</p> + +<p>Jeannette politely made no comment. Lottie found herself defending the +name. "It's short for Charlotte, you know. My Aunt Charlotte lives +with us. We'd get mixed up. My niece is named Charlotte, too. We call +her Charley."</p> + +<p>Jeannette nodded briskly. "I know. I seen her once. I was at Gussie's. +Gussie told me. She's awful pretty.... She's got it swell.... You like +my hair this way?" She whisked off the dusty velvet tam.</p> + +<p>"I think I'd like it better the other way. Long."</p> + +<p>"I'll let it grow. I can do it in a net so it looks like long." They +rode along in silence.</p> + +<p>What to say to her mother! She glanced at her watch. Eleven. Well, at +least she wasn't late. They were turning into Prairie at Sixteenth. She +was terrified at what she had done; furious that this should be so. She +argued fiercely with herself, maintaining all the while her outwardly +composed and dignified demeanour. "Don't be a silly fool. You're a +woman of thirty-two—almost thirty-three. You ought to be at the head +of your own household. If you were, this is what you'd have done. Well, +then!" But she was sick with apprehension, even while she despised +herself because it was so.</p> + +<p>Jeannette was speaking again. "The houses around here are swell, ain't +they?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Lottie agreed, absently. Her own house was a block away.</p> + +<p>Jeannette's mind grasshoppered to another topic. "I can talk good if +you keep telling me. I forget. Home and in the works everybody talks +bum English. I learn quick."</p> + +<p>"Well, then," said Lottie. "I shouldn't say 'swell' nor 'ain't'."</p> + +<p>Jeannette thought a moment. +"The—houses—around—here—are—grand—are—they—not?"</p> + +<p>Suddenly Lottie reached over and covered the girl's hand with her own.</p> + +<p>Jeannette smiled back at her. She thought her a fine looking +middle-aged person. Not a very swell dresser but you could see she had +class.</p> + +<p>"Here we are!" said Lottie aloud. The direct, clear-headed woman +who had acted with authority and initiative only an hour before in +the court room was now thinking, "Oh, dear! Oh, <i>dear</i>!" in +anticipative agony. She stepped out of the electric. "Gussie'll be +glad."</p> + +<p>"Yeh—Gussie!" Jeannette's tone was not without venom. "She's her own +boss. She's got it good. Sometimes for a whole month she didn't come +home." She stared curiously at the grim old Prairie Avenue house. It +was raining hard now. Lottie glanced quickly up at the parlour window. +Sometimes her mother stood there, watching for her, impatient of any +waiting. She was not there now. She opened the front door, the two +entered—Jeannette the braver of the two.</p> + +<p>"Yoo-hoo!" called Lottie with an airy assumption of cheeriness. +Jeannette stood looking up and down the long dim hallway with wide +ambient eyes. There was no answer to Lottie's call. She sped back to +the kitchen.</p> + +<p>"Where's mother?"</p> + +<p>"She ban gone out."</p> + +<p>"Out! Where? It's raining. Pouring!"</p> + +<p>"She ban gone out."</p> + +<p>Even in her horror at the thought of her rheumatism-stricken mother +in the downpour she was conscious of a feeling of relief. It was the +relief a condemned murderer feels whose hanging is postponed from +to-day until to-morrow.</p> + +<p>She came back to Jeannette. Oh, <i>dear</i>! "Come upstairs with me, +Jeannette." Lottie ran up the stairs quickly, Jeannette at her heels. +She went straight to Aunt Charlotte's room. Aunt Charlotte was asleep +in her old plush armchair by the window. She often napped like that in +the morning. She dropped off to sleep easily, sometimes dozing almost +immediately after breakfast. It was light, fitful sleep. She started +up, wide awake, as Lottie came in.</p> + +<p>"Where's mother?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte smiled grimly. "She bounced out the minute you left."</p> + +<p>"But where?"</p> + +<p>"Her rents and the marketing."</p> + +<p>"But it's raining. She can't be out in the rain. Way over there!"</p> + +<p>"She said she was going to take the street car.... What time is it, +Lottie? I must have.... Who's that in the hall?" She stopped in the +middle of a yawn.</p> + +<p>"Jeannette, come here. This is Jeannette, Aunt Charlotte. Gussie's +sister. You know—Gussie who works for Belle. I've brought Jeannette +home with me."</p> + +<p>"That's nice," said Aunt Charlotte, pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"To live, I mean."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Does your mother know?"</p> + +<p>"No. I just—I just brought her home." Lottie put a hand on Aunt +Charlotte's withered cheek. She was terribly near to tears. "Dear +Aunt Charlotte, won't you take care of Jeannette; I'm going out after +mother. Show her her room—upstairs; you know. And give her some hot +lunch. On the third floor you know—the room."</p> + +<p>Jeannette spoke up, primly. "I don't want to make nobody trouble."</p> + +<p>"Trouble!" echoed Aunt Charlotte. She rose spryly to her feet, asked no +explanation. "You come with me, Jeannette. My, my! How pretty your hair +is cut short like that. So Gussie is your sister, h'm? Well, well." She +actually pinched Jeannette's tear-stained cheek.</p> + +<p>"The dear thing!" Lottie thought, harassed as she was. "The darling old +thing!" And then, suddenly: "<i>She</i> should have been my mother."</p> + +<p>Lottie ran downstairs and into the electric. She jerked its levers so +that the old vehicle swayed and cavorted on the slippery pavement.</p> + +<p>She would drive straight over to the one-story buildings on west +Halsted, near Eighteenth. Her mother usually went there first. It was +a Polish settlement. Mrs. Payson owned a row of six stores occupied +by a tobacconist, a shoemaker, a delicatessen, a Chinese laundry, a +grocer, a lunch room. She collected the rents herself, let out bids for +repairs, kept her own books. Lottie had tried to help with these last +but she was not good at accounts. Unless carefully watched she mixed +things up hopelessly. Mrs. Payson juggled account books, ledgers, check +books, rental lists like an expert accountant. Eighteenth Street, as +Lottie drove across it now, was a wallow of liquid mud, rain, drays, +spattered yellow street-cars, dim drab-looking shops. The slippery +car tracks were a menace to drivers. She had to go slowly. The row of +Halsted Street buildings reached at last, Lottie ran in one store and +out the other.</p> + +<p>"Is my mother here?"</p> + +<p>"She's gone."</p> + +<p>"Has Mrs. Payson been here?"</p> + +<p>"Long. She left an hour ago."</p> + +<p>There were the other buildings on Forty-third Street. But she couldn't +have gone way up there, Lottie told herself. But she decided to try +them. On the way she stopped at the house. Her mother had not yet +come in. She went on up to Forty-third, the spring rain lashing the +glassed-in hood of the electric. Yes, her mother had been there and +gone. Lottie was conscious of a little hot flame of anger rising, +rising in her. It seemed to drum in her ears. It made her eyelids smart +and sting. She set her teeth. She swung the car over to Gus's market on +Forty-third. Her hands gripped the levers so that the ungloved knuckles +showed white.</p> + +<p>"It's a damned shame, that's what it is!" she said, aloud; and sobbed a +little. "It's a damned shame, that's what it is. She could have waited. +It's just pure meanness. She could have waited. I wish I was dead!"</p> + +<p>It was as though the calm, capable, resourceful woman of the ten +o'clock court room scene had never been.</p> + +<p>"Gus, has my mother——?"</p> + +<p>"She's just went. You can ketch her yet. I told her to wait till it let +up a little. She was wetter'n a drowned rat. But not her! You know your +ma! Wait nothin'."</p> + +<p>Lottie headed toward Indiana Avenue and the car line. Her eyes +searched the passers-by beneath their dripping umbrellas. Then she +spied her, a draggled black-garbed figure, bundle laden, waiting on the +corner for her car. Her left arm—the bad one—was held stiffly folded +in front of her, close to her body. That meant pain. Her shoulders were +hunched a little. Her black hat was slightly askew. Lottie noted, with +the queer faculty one has for detail at such times, that her colour +was slightly yellow. But as she peered up the street in vain hope +of an approaching street car, her glance was as alert as ever. She +walked forward toward the curb to scan the empty car tracks. Lottie +noticed her feet. In the way she set them down; in their appearance of +ankle-weakness and a certain indescribable stiffness that carried with +it a pathetic effort at spryness there was, somehow, a startling effect +of age, of feebleness. She toed in a little with weariness. A hot blur +sprang to Lottie's eyes. She drew up sharply at the curb, flung open +the door, was out, had seized the bundles and was propelling her mother +toward the electric almost before Mrs. Payson had realised her presence.</p> + +<p>"Mother dear, why didn't you wait!"</p> + +<p>For a moment it looked as if Mrs. Payson meant to resist stubbornly. +She even jerked her arm away, childishly. But strong as her will was, +her aching body protested still more strongly. Lottie hoisted her +almost bodily into the electric. She looked shrunken and ocherous as +she huddled in a corner. But her face was set, implacable. The car sped +down the rain-swept street. Lottie glanced sideways at her mother. Her +eyes were closed. They seemed strangely deep-set in their sockets.</p> + +<p>"Oh, mama——" Lottie's voice broke; the tears, hot, hurt, repentant, +coursed down her cheeks—"why did you do it! You knew—you knew——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson opened her eyes. "You said Belle's hired girl's +sister was more important than I, didn't you? Well!"</p> + +<p>"But you knew I didn't——" she stopped short. She couldn't say she +hadn't meant it. She had. She couldn't explain to her mother that she +had meant that her effort to help Jeannette was her protest against +stifled expression. Her mother would not have understood. It sounded +silly and pretentious even in her unspoken thought. But deeper than +this deprecatory self-consciousness was a new and growing consciousness +of Self.</p> + +<p>She remembered Jeannette; Jeannette installed in the third floor room, +a member of the household. At the thought of breaking the news of her +presence to her mother Lottie felt a wild desire to giggle. It was a +task too colossal, too hopeless for seriousness. You had to tackle it +smilingly or go down to defeat at once. Lottie braced herself for the +effort. She told herself, dramatically, that if Jeannette went she, +too, would go.</p> + +<p>"I brought Jeannette home with me."</p> + +<p>"Who?"</p> + +<p>"Jeannette—Gussie's sister. The one who's had trouble with the family."</p> + +<p>"Home! What for!"</p> + +<p>"She's—she's a nice little thing, and bright. There wasn't any place +to send her. We've got so much room."</p> + +<p>"You must be crazy."</p> + +<p>"Are you going to turn her out into the storm, mom, like the girl in +the melodrama?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson was silent a moment. Then, "Does she know anything about +housework? Belle's always saying her Gussie's such a treasure. I'm +about sick of that Hulda. Wastes more every week than we eat. I don't +see what they <i>do</i> with it—these girls. If we used a pound of +butter this last week we used five and I hardly touch——"</p> + +<p>"Jeannette doesn't want to do housework. She wants to go to business +college."</p> + +<p>"Well, of course, if you're running a reform school."</p> + +<p>But she made no further protest now. Lottie, peeling off her mother's +wet clothing as soon as they entered the house, pleaded with her to go +to bed.</p> + +<p>She was startled when her mother agreed. Mrs. Payson had always said, +"When I go to bed in the middle of the day you can know I'm sick." Now +she crept stiffly between the covers of her big old-fashioned walnut +bed with a groan that she tried to turn into a cough. An hour later +they sent for the doctor. An acute arthritis attack. Lottie reproached +herself grimly, unsparingly.</p> + +<p>"I'll get up around four o'clock," Mrs. Payson said. "You don't find +me staying in bed. Belle does enough of that for the whole family." At +four she said, "I'll get up in time for dinner.... Where's that girl? +Where's that girl that was so important, h'm? I want to see her."</p> + +<p>She was in bed for a week. Lottie covered herself with reproaches.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</h2> +</div> + + +<p>No one quite knew when or how Jeannette had become indispensable to the +Payson household; but she had. Most of all had she become indispensable +to Mrs. Carrie Payson. Between the two there existed a lion-and-mouse +friendship. Jeannette's ebullient spirits had not undergone years of +quenching from the acid stream of Mrs. Payson's criticism. Jeannette's +perceptions and valuations were the straightforward simple peasant +sort, unhampered by fine distinctions or involved reasoning. To her +Mrs. Carrie Payson was not a domineering and rather terrible person +whose word was law and whose will was adamant, but a fretful, funny, +and rather bossy old woman who generally was wrong. Jeannette was +immensely fond of her and did not take her seriously for a moment. +About the house Jeannette was as handy as a man. And this was a manless +household. She could conquer a stubborn window-shade; adjust a loose +castor in one of the bulky old chairs or bedsteads; drive a nail; put +up a shelf; set a mouse-trap.</p> + +<p>In the very beginning she and Mrs. Payson had come to grips. Mrs. +Payson's usual attitude of fault-finding and intolerance had brought +about the situation. Jeannette had rebelled at once.</p> + +<p>"I guess I'll have to leave to-day," she had said. "I'm going back to +the factory."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"I can't have nobody giving me board and room for nothing. I always +paid for what I got." She began to pack her scant belongings in the +little room on the third floor next to Hulda's. A council was summoned. +It was agreed that Jeannette should help with the household tasks; +assist Hulda with the dishes; flip-flop the mattresses; clean the +silver, perhaps. This silver-cleaning was one of Mrs. Payson's fixed +ideas. It popped into her mind whenever she saw Hulda momentarily idle. +Hulda did endless yards of coarse and hideous tatting and crocheting +intended ultimately for guimpes, edgings, bands and borders on +nightgowns, corset covers, and pillow slips. Pressed, she admitted an +Oscar in the offing. She had mounds of stout underwear, crochet-edged, +in her queer old-world trunk. When, in a leisure hour, she sat in her +room or in the orderly kitchen she was always busy with a gray and +grimy ball of this handiwork. Mrs. Payson would slam in and out of the +kitchen. "There she sits, doing nothing. Crocheting!"</p> + +<p>"But mother," Lottie would say, "her work's all done. The kitchen's +like a pin. She cleaned the whole front of the house to-day. It isn't +time to start dinner."</p> + +<p>"Let her clean the silver, then."</p> + +<p>Jeannette ate her meals with Hulda and before a week had passed she +had banished the grubby and haphazard feeding off one end of the +kitchen table. She got hold of a rickety old table in the basement, +straightened its wobbly legs, painted it white, and set it up against +the kitchen wall under the window facing the back yard. In a pantry +drawer she found a faded lunch cloth of the Japanese variety, with +bluebirds on it. This she spread for their meals. They had proper +knives, forks, and spoons. The girl was friendly, good-natured, +helpful. Hulda could not resent her—even welcomed her companionship +in that rather grim household. Hulda showed Jeannette her dream-book +without which no Swedish houseworker can exist; told her her dreams +in detail. "It vos like I vos walking and yet I didn't come nowheres. +It seems like I vos in Chicago and same time it vos old country where +I ban come from and all the flowers vos blooming in fields and all of +sudden a old man comes walking and I look and it vos——" etc., ad lib.</p> + +<p>Jeannette's business college hours were from nine to four. She went +downtown in one of Charley's straight smart tailor suits, revamped, +and a sailor with an upturned brim that gave her face a piquant look. +She did not seem to care much for what she called "the fellas." Perhaps +her searing experience of the automobile ride had scarred that side of +her. Lottie encouraged her to bring her "boy friends" to the house, but +Jeannette had not yet taken advantage of the offer. One day, soon after +her induction into the Prairie Avenue household, she had turned her +attention to the electric. Lottie had just come in from an errand with +Mrs. Payson. Jeannette waylaid her.</p> + +<p>"Listen. If you would learn me to—huh? oh—teach me to run that thing +you ride around in, I bet I could catch on quick—quickly. Then I could +take your ma around Saturday mornings when I ain't at school; and +evenings, and you wouldn't have to, see? Will you?"</p> + +<p>With the magic adaptability of youth she learned to drive with +incredible ease. She had no nerves; a sense of the road; an eye for +distances. After she had mastered the old car's idiosyncrasies she +became adept at it. She had a natural mechanical sense, and after +one or two encounters with the young man from the Élite Garage the +electric's motive powers were noticeably improved. Often, now, it was +Jeannette who drove Mrs. Payson to her buildings on the West Side, or +to her appointments with contractors, plumbers, carpenters, and the +like. Heretofore, on such errands, Mrs. Payson had always insisted that +Lottie wait in the electric at the curb. Seated thus, Lottie would +watch her mother with worried anxious eyes as she whisked in and out of +store doors, alleys, and basements followed by a heavy-footed workman +or contractor whose face grew more sullen and resentful each time it +appeared around a corner. Mrs. Payson's voice came floating back to +Lottie. "Now what's the best you'll do on that job. Remember, I'll have +a good deal of work later in the year if you'll do this reasonably."</p> + +<p>Now Jeannette calmly followed Mrs. Payson in her tour of inspection. +Once or twice Mrs. Payson actually consulted her about this fence or +that floor or partition. The girl was good at figures, too; a natural +aptitude for mathematics.</p> + +<p>Lottie found herself possessed of occasional leisure. She could spend +a half-day in the country. She could lunch in the park and stroll over +to the Wooded Island to watch and wonder at the budding marvel of trees +and shrubs and bushes. She even thought, boldly, of getting a Saturday +job of some sort—perhaps in connection with Judge Barton's court, +but hesitated to appropriate Jeannette's time permanently thus. The +atmosphere of the old Prairie Avenue home was less turbid, somehow. +Jeannette was a dash of clear cold water in the muddy sediment of their +existence. Sometimes the thought came to Lottie that she hadn't been +needed in the household after all. That is, she—Lottie Payson—to the +exclusion of anyone else. Anyone else would have done as well. She had +merely been the person at hand. Looking back on the past ten years +she hated to believe this. If she had merely been made use of thus, +then those ten years had been wasted, thrown away, useless—she put +the thought out of her mind as morbid. Sometimes, too, of late, Lottie +took a hasty fearful glance into the future and there saw herself a +septuagenarian like Aunt Charlotte; living out her life with Belle. +"No! No! No!" protested a voice within her rising to a silent shriek. +"No!"</p> + +<p>Lottie was thirty-three the last week in April. "Now Lottie!" her +mother's friends said to her, wagging a chiding forefinger, "you're not +going to let your little niece get ahead of you, are you!"</p> + +<p>She rarely saw the Girls now. She heard that Beck Schaefer had taken +to afternoon tea dancing. She was seen daily at hotel tea rooms in +company with pallid and incredibly slim youths of the lizard type, +their hair as glittering as their boots; lynx-eyed; exhaling a last +hasty puff of cigarette smoke as they rose from the table for the next +dance; inhaling a grateful lungful before they so much as sat down +again after that dance was finished. They wore very tight pants and +slim-waisted coats, and their hats came down over their ears as if they +were too big for their heads. Beck, smelling expensively of L'Origan +and wearing very palpable slippers and stockings was said to pay the +checks proffered by the waiter at the close of these afternoons. +Lottie's informant further confided to her that Beck was known in +tea-dance circles as The Youth's Companion.</p> + +<p>The last week in April Mrs. Carrie Payson went to French Lick Springs +with Belle—Mrs. Payson for her rheumatism, Belle for her digestive +trouble. Henry, looking more worried and distrait than ever, was to +follow them at the end of the week. You rarely heard his big booming +laugh now. Mrs. Payson and her daughter Belle had never before gone +away together. Always it had been Lottie who had accompanied her +mother. Lottie was rather apprehensive about the outcome of the +proximity of the two. Belle did not appear to relish the prospect +particularly; but she said she needed the cure, and Henry had finally +convinced her of the utter impossibility of his going. He was rather +alarmingly frank about it. "Can't afford it, Belle," he said, "and +that's the God's truth. Business is—well, there isn't any, that's all. +You need the rest and all and I want you to go. I'll try to come down +for Saturday and Sunday but don't count on me. I may have to go to New +York any day now."</p> + +<p>He did leave for New York that week, before the French Lick trip. +Lottie and Charley took them down to the station in the Kemps' big car +with the expert Charley at the wheel. Mrs. Payson kept up a steady +stream of admonition, reminder, direction, caution, advice. The house +was to undergo the April semiannual cleaning during her absence.</p> + +<p>"Call up Amos again about the rugs and mattresses ... in the yard, +remember; and you've got to watch him every minute ... every inch +of the woodwork with warm water—not hot! ... a little ammonia ... +the backs of the pictures ... a pot-roast and cut it up cold for the +cleaning woman's lunch and give her plenty of potatoes ... the parlour +curtains...."</p> + +<p>The train was gone. Lottie and Charley stood looking at each other +for a moment, wordlessly. They burst into rather wild laughter. Then +they embraced. People in the station must have thought one of them a +traveller just returned from afar. They clasped hands and raced for the +car.</p> + +<p>"Let's go for a drive," said Charley. It was ten-thirty at night.</p> + +<p>"All right," agreed Lottie. Charley swung the car back into Michigan, +then up Michigan headed north. The air was deliciously soft and +balmy for April in Chicago. They whisked up Lake Shore Drive and into +Lincoln Park. Lottie was almost ashamed of the feeling of freedom, of +relaxation, of exaltation that flooded her whole being. She felt alive, +and tingling and light. She was smiling unconsciously. On the way back +Charley drew up at the curb along the outside drive at the edge of +Lincoln Park, facing the lake. They sat wordlessly for a brief space in +the healing quiet and peace and darkness, with the waves lipping the +stones at their feet.</p> + +<p>"Nice," from Charley.</p> + +<p>"Mm."</p> + +<p>Silence again. An occasional motor sped past them in the darkness. +To the south the great pier, like a monster sea-serpent, stretched +its mile-length into the lake. A freighter, ore-laden, plying its +course between some northern Michigan mine and an Indiana steel +mill was transformed by the darkness and distance into a barge of +beauty—mystic, silent, glittering.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do with your week, Lotta?"</p> + +<p>"H'm? Oh! Well, there's the housecleaning——"</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Charley slammed her fist down on the motor horn. It squawked in +chorus with her protest. "If what the Bible promises is true then +you're the heiress of the ages, you are."</p> + +<p>"Heiress?"</p> + +<p>"'The meek shall inherit the earth.'"</p> + +<p>"I'm not meek. I'm just the kind of person that things don't happen to."</p> + +<p>"You don't let them happen. When everything has gone wrong, and you're +feeling stifled and choked, and you've just been forbidden, as if +you were a half-wit of sixteen, to do something that you've every +right to do, what's your method! Instead of blowing up with a loud +report—instead of asserting yourself like a free-born white woman—you +put on your hat and take a long walk and work it off that way. Then +you come home with that high spiritual look on your face that makes me +want to scream and slap you. You're exactly like Aunt Charlotte. When +she and Grandma have had a tiff she sails upstairs and starts to clean +out her bureau drawers and wind old ribbons, and fold things. Well, +some day in a crisis she'll find that her bureau drawers have all been +tidied the day before. <i>Then</i> what'll she do!"</p> + +<p>"Muss 'em up."</p> + +<p>"So will you—muss things up. You mark the words of a gal that's been +around."</p> + +<p>"You kids to-day are so sure of yourselves. I wonder if your method is +going to work out any better than ours. You haven't proved it yet. You +know, always, exactly what you want to do and then you go ahead and do +it. It's so simple that there must be a catch in it somewhere."</p> + +<p>"It's full of catches. That's what makes it so fascinating. All these +centuries we've been told to profit by the advice of our elders. What's +living for if not to experience? How can anyone know whether you're +right or wrong? Oh, I don't mean about small things. Any stranger can +decide for you that blue is more becoming than black. But the big +things—those things I want to decide for myself. I'm entitled to my +own mistakes. I've the right to be wrong. How many middle-aged people +do you know whose lives aren't a mess this minute! The thing is to be +able to say, 'I planned this myself and my plans didn't work. Now I'll +take my medicine.' You can't live somebody else's life without your +own getting all distorted in the effort. Now I'll probably marry Jesse +Dick——"</p> + +<p>"Charley Kemp! You don't know what you're saying. You're a +nineteen-year-old infant."</p> + +<p>"I'm a lot older than you. Of course he hasn't asked me. I don't +suppose he ever will. I mean they don't put a hand on the heart and say +will-you-be-mine. But he hadn't kissed me twice before I knew."</p> + +<p>A faint, "Charley!"</p> + +<p>"And he's the only man I've ever met that I can fancy still caring for +when he's forty-three and I'm forty. He'll never be snuffy and settled +and taken-for-granted. He talks to children as if they were human +beings and not nuisances or idiots. I've heard him. He's darling with +them. Sort of solemn and answers their questions intelligently. I know +that when I'm forty he'll still be able to make me laugh by calling me +'Mrs. Dick, ma'am.' We'll probably disagree, as we do now, about the +big empty things like war and politics. But we're in perfect accord +about the small things that make up everyday life. And they're the +things that count, in marriage."</p> + +<p>"But Charley, child, does your mother know all this?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. Mother thinks she's the modern woman and that she makes +up the younger generation. She doesn't realize that I'm the +younger generation. She's really as old-fashioned as any of them. +She is superior in a lot of ways, mother is. But she's like all +the rest in most. She's been so used all these years to having +people exclaim with surprise when she said she had a daughter of +sixteen—seventeen—eighteen—that now, when I'm nineteen she still +expects people to exclaim over her having a big girl. I'm not a big +girl. I'm not even what the cheap novels used to call a 'child-woman.' +Mother'll have to wake up to that."</p> + +<p>Lottie laughed a little at a sudden recollection. "When I got this hat +last week mother went with me."</p> + +<p>"She would," sotto voce, from Charley.</p> + +<p>"The saleswoman brought a little pile of them—four or five—and I +tried them on; but they weren't the thing, quite. And then mother, who +was sitting there, watching me, said to the girl: 'Oh, no, those won't +do. Show us something more girlish.'"</p> + +<p>"There!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but wasn't it kind of sweet? The clerk stared, of course. I heard +her giggling about it afterward to one of the other saleswomen. You +see, mother thinks I'm still a girl. When I leave the house she often +asks me if I have a clean handkerchief."</p> + +<p>"Yes, go on, be sentimental about it. That'll help. You've let Grandma +dominate your life. That's all right—her wanting to, I mean. That's +human nature. The older generation trying to curb the younger. But your +letting her do it—that's another thing. That's a crime against your +own generation and indicates a weakness in you, not in her. The younger +generation has got to rule. Those of us who recognize that and act on +it, win. Those who don't go under."</p> + +<p>"You're a dreadful child!" exclaimed Lottie. She more than half meant +it. "It's horrible to hear you. Where did you learn all this—this +ruthlessness?"</p> + +<p>"I learned it at school—and out of school. Those are the things we +talk about. What did you suppose boys and girls talk about these days!"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," Lottie replied, weakly. She thought of the girl of +the old Armour Institute days—the girl who used to go bicycling +on Saturdays with the boy in the jersey sweater. They had talked +about school, and books, and games, and dreams, and even hopes—very +diffidently and shyly—but never once about reality or life. If they +had perhaps things would have been different for Lottie Payson, she +thought now. "Let's go home, Chas."</p> + +<p>On the drive home Charley talked of her new work. She was full of +shop stories. Nightly she brought home some fresh account of the +happenings in her department; a tale of a buyer, or customer, or clerk, +or department head. Henry Kemp called these her stock of stock-girl +stories. Following her first week at Shield's she had said grimly: +"Remember that girl O. Henry used to write about, the one who kept +thinking about her feet all the time? That's me. I'm that little +shop-girl, I am."</p> + +<p>Her father encouraged her dinner-table conversation and roared at her +rather caustic comment:</p> + +<p>"Our buyer came back from New York to-day. Her name's Healy. She has +her hair marcelled regularly and wears the loveliest black crêpe de +chine frocks with collars and cuffs that are simply priceless, and I +wish you could hear her pronounce 'voile.' Like this—'vwawl.' It isn't +a mouthful; it's a meal. Don't glare, mother. I know I'm vulgar. When +a North Shore customer comes in you say, 'Do let me show you a little +import that came in yesterday. It's too sweet.' All high-priced blouses +are 'little imports.' They're as precious as jewels since the war, of +course. Healy used to be a stock-girl. They say her hair is gray but +she dyes it the most fetching raspberry shade. Her salary is twelve +thousand a year and she could get eighteen at any one of the other big +stores. She stays at Shield's because she thinks it has distinction. +'Class,' she calls it, unless she's talking to a customer or someone +else she's trying to impress. Then she says 'atmosphere.' She supports +her mother and a good for-nothing brother. I like her. Her nails +glitter something grand. She calls me girlie. I wonder if her pearls +are real."</p> + +<p>Lottie listened now, fascinated, amused, and yet wondering, as Charley +gave an account of the meeting of the Ever Upward Club. Charley was +driving with one hand on the steering wheel. She was slumped low down +on her spine. Lottie thought how relaxed she looked and almost babyish, +and yet how vital and how knowing. The Ever Upward Club, she explained, +was made up of the women workers in Shield's. There had been a meeting +of the club this morning, before the store opened at nine. It was the +club's twenty-fifth anniversary. Charley, on the subject, was vitriol.</p> + +<p>"There they sat, in their black dresses and white collars. Some of the +collars weren't so white. I suppose, after a few years, washing out +white collars at night when you get home from work loses its appeal. +First Kiesing made a speech about the meaning of Shield's, and the +loftiness of its aim. I don't know where he got his information but I +gathered that to have the privilege of clerking there makes you one +of the anointed. Kiesing's general manager, you know. Then he brought +forward Mrs. Hough. She's pretty old and her teeth sort of stick out +and her voice is high and what they call querulous, I suppose. Anyway +it never drops at the end of a sentence. She told how she had started +the Ever Upward Club with a membership of only fifteen, and now look +at it. Considering that you have to belong to it, and pay your dues +automatically when you enter the store, I don't see why she feels so +set up about it. But anyway, she does. You'd think she had gone around +converting the heathen to Christianity. She told us in that nasal +rasping voice that it was the spirit of cheer and good-will that made +tasks light. Yes, indeed. And when we got home at night we were to help +our mothers with the dishes in a spirit of cheer and with a right good +will. Then she read one of those terrible vim-and-vigour poems. You +know. Something like this:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">If you think you are beaten, you are.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If you think you dare not, you don't.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">If you like to win and don't think you can</div> + <div class="verse indent0">It's almost a cinch you won't.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>There was a lot more to it, about Life's battles and the man who wins. +Most of the girls looked half-dead in their chairs. They had been +working over-time for the spring opening. Then a girl sprang to the +platform—she's the club athletic director, a college girl, big, husky, +good-looking brute, too. 'Three rousing cheers for Mrs. Hough! Hip +hip—' We all piped up. And I couldn't think of anything but Oliver +Twist and the beadle—what was his name?—Bumble. Then this girl told +us about the value of games and the Spirit of Play, and how we should +leap and run about—after you've done the dinner dishes with a right +good will, I suppose, having previously walked eleven thousand miles +in your department showing little imports and trying to convince a +woman with a forty-two bust that a thirty-eight blouse is a little +snug.... 'The romance of business.' Ha!"</p> + +<p>"But you like it, don't you Charley?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Goodness knows why. Certainly I don't want to turn out a Healy, +or a Hough—or even a female Kiesing. Jesse did a poem about it all."</p> + +<p>"A good one?"</p> + +<p>"Good—yes. And terrible. One of his sledge-hammer things. He calls it +'Merchandise.' The girls, of course."</p> + +<p>They stopped at a corner drug store and had ice cream sodas. Charley +was to spend the night at the Prairie Avenue house. She had a brilliant +thought. "Let's bring a chocolate soda home to Aunt Charlotte." They +ordered two in pressed paper cartons and presented them at midnight to +Aunt Charlotte and Jeannette. Jeannette, looking like a rose baby, ate +hers in a semi-trance, her lids weighted with sleep. But great-aunt +Charlotte was wide-awake immediately, as though a midnight chocolate +ice cream soda were her prescribed night-cap. She sipped and blinked +and scraped the bottom of the container with her spoon. Then, with an +appreciative sigh, she lay back on her pillow.</p> + +<p>"What time is it, Lottie?"</p> + +<p>"After midnight. Twelve-twenty."</p> + +<p>"That's nice," said Aunt Charlotte. "Let's have waffles for breakfast."</p> + +<p>The mice were playing.</p> + +<p>It was Lottie's idea that they accomplish the spring house cleaning in +three volcanic days instead of devoting a week or more to it, as was +Mrs. Payson's habit. "Let's all pitch in," she said, "and get it over +with. Then we'll have a week to play in." Mrs. Payson was to remain ten +days at French Lick.</p> + +<p>There followed such an orgy of beating, pounding, flapping, brushing, +swashing, and scrubbing as no corps of able-bodied men could have +survived. The women emerged from it with shrivelled fingers, broken +nails, and aching spines, but the Prairie Avenue house was clean, +even to the backs of the pictures. After it was over Lottie had a +Turkish bath, a manicure, and a shampoo and proclaimed herself socially +accessible.</p> + +<p>Hulda drank coffee happily, all day. Great-aunt Charlotte announced +that she thought she'd have some of the girls in for the afternoon. She +invited a group of ancients whose names sounded like the topmost row +of Chicago's social register. Their sons or grandsons were world-powers +in banking, packing, grain-distribution. Some of them Aunt Charlotte +had not seen in years. They rolled up in great fat black limousines +and rustled in black silks as modish as Aunt Charlotte's own. +Lottie saw to the tea and left them absolutely alone. She heard them +snickering and gossiping in their high plangent voices. They bragged +in a well-bred way about their sons or grandsons or sons-in-law. They +gossiped. They reminisced.</p> + +<p>"And do you remember when the Palmer House barber shop floor was paved +at intervals with silver dollars and the farmers used to come from +miles around to see it?"</p> + +<p>"There hasn't been a real social leader in Chicago since Mrs. Potter +Palmer died."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. She's tried. But charm—that's the thing she hasn't got. +No. She thinks her money will do it. Never."</p> + +<p>"Well, it seems——"</p> + +<p>What a good time they were having, Lottie thought. She had set the +table in the dining room. There were spring flowers and candles. She +saw that they were properly served, but effaced herself. She sensed +that her presence would, somehow, mar Aunt Charlotte's complete sense +of freedom, of hospitality, of hostesship.</p> + +<p>They did not leave until six. After they were gone Aunt Charlotte +stepped about the sitting room putting the furniture to rights. She was +tired, but too stimulated to rest. Her cheeks were flushed.</p> + +<p>"Minnie Parnell is beginning to show her age, don't you think? Did you +see the hat Henrietta Grismore wore? Well, I should think, with all her +money! But then, she always was a funny girl. No style."</p> + +<p>When, two days later, Lottie had Emma Barton and Winnie Steppler +to dinner Aunt Charlotte kept her room. She said she felt a little +tired—the spring weather perhaps. She'd have just a bite on a tray if +Jeannette would bring it up to her; and then she'd go to bed. Do her +good. Lottie, understanding, kissed her.</p> + +<p>Lottie and her two friends had one of those long animated talks. Lottie +had lighted a fire in the sitting room fireplace. There were flowers in +the room—jonquils, tulips. The old house was quiet, peaceful. Lottie +made a charming hostess. They laughed a good deal from the very start +when Winnie Steppler had come up the stairs panting apologies for her +new head-gear.</p> + +<p>"Don't say it's too youthful. I know it. I bought it on that fine day +last week—the kind of spring day that makes you go into a shop and buy +a hat that's too young for you." Her cheeks were rosy. When she laughed +she opened her mouth wide and stuck her tongue out so that she reminded +you of the talcum baby picture so familiar to everyone. A woman of +tremendous energy—magnetic, witty, zestful.</p> + +<p>"Fifty's the age!" she announced with gusto, as dinner progressed. "At +fifty you haven't a figger any more than you have legs—except, of +course, for purposes of locomotion. At fifty you can eat and drink what +you like. Chocolate with whipped-cream at four in the afternoon. Who +cares! A second helping of dessert. It's a grand time of life. At fifty +you don't wait for the telephone to ring. Will he call me! Won't he +call me! A telephone's just a telephone at fifty—a convenience without +a thrill to it. Many's the time that bell has stabbed me. But not now. +Nothing more can happen to you at fifty—if you've lived your life as +you should. Here I sit, stays loosened, savouring life. I wouldn't +change places with any young sprat I know."</p> + +<p>Emma Barton smiled, calm-eyed. Winnie Steppler had been twice married, +once widowed, once divorced. Emma Barton had never married. Yet both +knew peace at fifty.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Lottie, as they rose from the table, "perhaps, by the +time I'm fifty—but just now I've such a frightened feeling as though +everything were passing me by; all the things that matter. I want to +grab at life and say, 'Heh, wait a minute! Aren't you forgetting me?'"</p> + +<p>Winnie Steppler glanced at her sharply. "Look out, my girl, that it +doesn't rush back at your call and drop the wrong trick into your lap."</p> + +<p>A little flash of defiance came into Lottie's eyes. "The wrong trick's +better than no trick at all."</p> + +<p>Emma Barton looked at Lottie curiously, with much the same glance that +she bestowed upon the girls who came before her each morning. "What do +you need to keep you happy, Lottie?"</p> + +<p>Lottie did not hesitate a moment. "Work that's congenial; books; music +occasionally; a picnic in the woods; a five-mile hike, a well-fitting +suit, a thirteen-dollar corset, Charley—I didn't mean to place her +last. She should be up at the beginning somewhere."</p> + +<p>"How about this superstition they call love?" inquired Winnie Steppler. +Lottie shrugged her shoulders. Winnie persisted. "There must have been +somebody, some time."</p> + +<p>"Well, when I was seventeen or eighteen—but there never was anything +serious about it, really. Since then—you wouldn't believe how +rarely women of my type meet men—interesting men. You have to make +a point of meeting them, I suppose. And I've been here at home. I'm +thirty-three. Not bad looking. I've kept my figure, and hair, and +skin. Walking, I suppose. The men I know are snuffy bachelors nearing +fifty, or widowers with three children. They'd rather go to a musical +show than a symphony concert; they'll tell you they do enough walking +in their business. I don't mind their being bald—though why should +they be?—but I do mind their being snuffy. I suppose there are men of +about my own age who like the things I like; whose viewpoint is mine. +But attractive men of thirty-five marry girls of twenty. I don't want +to marry a boy of twenty; but neither can I work up any enthusiasm +for a man of fifty who tells me that what he wants is a home, and who +would no more take a tramp in the country for enjoyment than he would +contemplate a trip to Mars."</p> + +<p>Emma Barton interposed. "What were you doing at twenty-five?"</p> + +<p>Lottie glanced around the room. Her hand came out in a little gesture +that included the house and its occupants. "Just what I'm doing now. +But not even thinking about it—as I do now! I think I had an idea I +was important. Now that I look back on it, it seems to me I've just +been running errands for the last ten years or more. Running errands up +and down, while the world has gone by."</p> + +<p>Two days before her mother's return Lottie prevailed upon Jeannette +to invite a half dozen or more of her business college acquaintances +to spend the evening at the house. Jeannette demurred at first, but +it was plain the idea fascinated her. Seven of them arrived at the +time appointed. Their ages ranged between seventeen and twenty-two. +The girls were amazingly well dressed in georgettes and taffetas and +smart slippers and silk stockings. The boys were, for the most part, +of the shipping-clerk type. They were all palpably impressed with the +big old house on Prairie, its massive furniture and pictures, its +occupants. Lottie met them all, as did Aunt Charlotte who had donned +her second-best black silk and her jewelry and had crimped her hair for +the occasion. She sensed that what Jeannette needed was background. +Aunt Charlotte vanished before nine and Lottie did likewise, to appear +again only for the serving of the ice cream and cake. They danced, +sang, seemed really to enjoy the evening. After they had gone Jeannette +turned to Lottie and catching up one of her hands pressed it against +her own glowing cheek. Her eyes were very bright. They—and the +gesture—supplied the meaning that her inarticulate speech lacked. "It +was grand!"</p> + +<p>It was typical of Charley and indicative of the freedom with which she +lived, that her existence during the ten days of her mother's absence +did not vary at all from the usual. She would have been torn between +laughter and fury could she have realised the sense of boldness and +freedom with which Lottie, her aunt, and Charlotte, her great-aunt, +set about planning their innocent maidenly revels.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson and Belle returned from French Lick the first week in +May. Mrs. Payson, divesting herself of her wraps, ran a quick and +comprehensive eye over the room, over Lottie, over Aunt Charlotte, +Jeannette, Hulda. It was as though she read Coffee! Tea Party! Dinner! +Dance! in their faces. Her first question seemed to carry with it a +hidden meaning. "Well, what have you been doing while I've been gone? +Did Brosch call up about the plastering? Did you have Henry and Charley +to dinner? Any letters? How many days did you have Mrs. Schlagel for +the cleaning? Lottie, get me a cup of tea. I feel kind of faint—not +hungry, but a faint feeling. Oh—Ben Gartz was in French Lick. Did I +write you? He was very attentive. Very. Every inch the gentleman. I +don't know what Belle and I would have done without him."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</h2> +</div> + + +<p>For fifteen years Mrs. Carrie Payson's bitterness at the outcome of +her own unfortunate marriage had been unconsciously expressed in +her attitude toward the possible marriage of her daughter Lottie. +Confronted with this accusation, she would have denied it and her +daughter Lottie would have defended her in the denial. Nevertheless, +it was true. During the years when all Mrs. Payson's energy, thought, +and time were devoted to the success of the real estate and bond +business, her influence had been less markedly felt than later. In some +indefinable way the few men who came within Lottie's ken were startled +and repelled by the grim white-haired woman who regarded them with eyes +of cold hostility. One or two of them had said, uncomfortably, in one +of Mrs. Payson's brief absences, "Your mother doesn't like me."</p> + +<p>"What nonsense! Why shouldn't she?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. She looks at me as if she had something on me." Then +as Lottie stiffened perceptibly, "Oh, I didn't mean that exactly. No +offence, I hope. I just meant——"</p> + +<p>"Mother's like I am. She isn't demonstrative but her likes and dislikes +are very definite." Lottie, remember, was only twenty-three or +thereabouts at this time. Still, she should have known better.</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" the young man would exclaim, thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>Now, suddenly, Mrs. Payson had about-faced. Perhaps this in turn was as +unconscious as her previous attitude had been. Perhaps the thought of +a spinster daughter of thirty-three pricked her vanity. Perhaps she, +like Lottie, had got a sudden glimpse into the future in which she saw +Lottie a second Aunt Charlotte, tremulous and withered, telling out her +days in her sister Belle's household. It was slowly borne in on Lottie +that her mother regarded Ben Gartz favourably as a possible son-in-law. +Her first sensation on making this discovery was one of amusement. Her +mother in the rôle of match-maker wore a humourous aspect, certainly. +As the weeks went on this amusement gave way to something resembling +terror. Mrs. Payson usually achieved her own ends. Lottie had never +defined the relationship that existed between her mother and herself. +She did not suspect that they were united by a strong bond of affection +and hate so complexly interwoven that it was almost impossible to tell +which strand was this and which that. Mrs. Payson did not dream that +she had blocked her daughter's chances for a career or for marital +happiness. Neither did she know that she looked down upon that daughter +for having failed to marry. But both were true in some nightmarish and +indefinable way. Mrs. Carrie Payson, the coarser metal, had beat upon +Lottie, the finer, and had moulded and shaped her as iron beats upon +gold.</p> + +<p>Lottie was still in the amused stage when Mrs. Payson remarked:</p> + +<p>"I understand that Ben Gartz is going into that business he spoke +of last spring. Men's wrist watches. We all thought he was making a +mistake but it seems he's right. He's going in with Beck and Diblee +this fall. I shouldn't wonder if Ben Gartz should turn out to be a very +rich man some day. A ve-ry rich man. Especially if this war——"</p> + +<p>"That'll be nice," said Lottie.</p> + +<p>"I wish Henry had some of his push and enterprise."</p> + +<p>Lottie looked up quickly at that, prompt in defense of Henry. "Henry +isn't to blame for the war. His business was successful enough until +two years ago—more than successful. It just happens to be the kind +that has been hardest hit."</p> + +<p>"Why doesn't he take up a new business, then! Ben Gartz is going into +something new."</p> + +<p>"Ben's mother left him a little money when she died. I suppose he's +putting that into the new business. Besides, he hasn't a family to +think of. He can take a chance. If it doesn't turn out he'll be the +only one to suffer."</p> + +<p>"Ben Gartz is an unusual boy." (Boy!) "He was a wonderful son to his +mother.... I'd like to know what you have against him."</p> + +<p>"Against him! Why, not a thing, mama. Only——"</p> + +<p>Lottie hesitated. Then, regrettably, she giggled. "Only he has never +heard of Alice in Wonderland, and he thinks the Japs are a wonderful +little people but look out for 'em!, and he speaks of summer as the +heated term, and he says 'not an iota.'"</p> + +<p>"Not an iota!" echoed Mrs. Payson almost feebly.</p> + +<p>"Yes. You know—'not an iota of truth in it'; 'not an iota of +difference.'"</p> + +<p>"Lottie Payson, sometimes I think you're downright idiotic! Alice in +Wonderland! The idea! Woman your age! Ben Gartz is a business man."</p> + +<p>"Indeed he is—strictly."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you'd prefer going around with some young fool like this +poet Charley has picked up from behind the delicatessen counter. I +don't know what your sister Belle can be thinking of."</p> + +<p>Sister Belle was thinking of a number of things, none of them pleasant; +and none of them connected with Charley or Charley's poet. Henry Kemp +had sold the car—the big, luxurious, swift-moving car. He had hinted +that the nine-room apartment on Hyde Park Boulevard might soon be +beyond his means.</p> + +<p>"If this keeps up much longer," he had said one day to Charley, "your +old dad will be asking you for a job as bundle boy at Shield's." His +laugh, as he said it, had been none too robust.</p> + +<p>Charley had been promoted from stock-girl to saleswoman. She said she +supposed now she'd have to save up for black satin slippers, a French +frock, a string of pearls, and filet collars and cuffs—the working +girl's costume. She announced, further, that her education had reached +a point where any blouse not hand made and bearing a thirty-nine dollar +price tag was a mere rag in her opinion.</p> + +<p>Charley's Saturday afternoons and Sundays were spent in the country +about Chicago—at the Indiana sand dunes; at Palos Park when May +transformed its trees into puff-balls of apple blossoms; in the woods +about Beverly; along the far North Shore. Both she and Lottie were +hardened trampers. Lottie was expert at what she called "cooking out." +She could build a three-section fire with incredibly little fuel and +only one match. Just as you were becoming properly ravenous she had +the coffee steaming in one section, the bacon sizzling in another, +the sausages boiling in another. Now that the Kemp car was gone these +country excursions became fewer for Lottie. She missed them. The +electric was impossible for country travel. It often expired even on +the boulevards and had to be towed back to the garage. Charley said +that Jesse Dick's flivver saved her life and youth these spring days. +Together they ranged the countryside in it, a slim volume of poetry +(not his own) in Jesse Dick's pocket and a plump packet of sandwiches +and fruit in a corner of the seat. You were beginning to see reviews of +Jesse Dicks' poems in <i>The Dial</i>, in the <i>New Republic</i>, in +the weekly literary supplements of the newspapers. They spoke of his +work as being "virile and American." They said it had a "warm human +quality." He sang everyday life—the grain-pit, the stockyards, the +steel mill, the street corner, the movies. Some of the reviews said, +"But this isn't poetry!" Perhaps they had just been reading the thing +he called "Halsted Street." You know it:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Halsted street. All the nations of the world.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Mill end sales; <i>shlag</i> stores; Polack women gossiping.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Look at the picture of the bride in her borrowed wedding dress</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Outside the Italian photograph gallery——</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Perhaps they were right.</p> + +<p>Still, while he did not write spring poetry of the May-day variety it +is certain that not a peach-pink petal on a wild-crab tree blossoming +by the roadway bloomed in vain as Jesse and Charley passed by. Not +that they were rhapsodic about it. These two belonged to the new order +to whom lyricism was loathsome, adjective anathema. Fine and moving +things were received with a trite or even an uncouth word or phrase. +After a Brahms symphony you said, "Gee!" It was considered "hickey" or +ostentatious to speak of a thing as being exquisite or wonderful. They +even revived that humourously vulgar and practically obsolete word, +"swell." A green and gold and pink May-day landscape was "elegant." +Struck by the beauty of a scene, the majesty of a written passage, the +magnificence of the lake in a storm, the glory of an orchard in full +bloom, they used the crude and rustic "Gosh!" This only when deeply +stirred.</p> + +<p>Late in May, Ben Gartz bought a car of unimpressive make but florid +complexion. He referred to it always as "the bus." As soon as he had +mastered it he drove round to the Paysons' and proposed a Sunday +morning ride to Lottie.</p> + +<p>"Go on, Lottie," Mrs. Payson said, "it'll do you good."</p> + +<p>The devil of perversity seized Lottie. "I hate driving in town. I've +trundled that electric of ours over these fifty miles—or is it one +hundred?—of boulevards until I could follow the route blindfolded. +Jackson Park to the Midway—the Midway to Washington Park—Washington +to Garfield—Garfield——"</p> + +<p>"Well, then, how about a drive in the country? Anywhere you say, Miss +Lottie. The little old bus is yours to command."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Lottie. "Let's take Charley."</p> + +<p>"Fine!" Ben's tone was sufficiently hearty, if somewhat hollow. "Great +little kid, Charley. What do you say to having lunch at one of those +road-houses along the way? Chicken dinner."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Let's cook out." Ben, looking dubious, regarded the end of his +cigar. But Lottie was already on her way to the kitchen. He clapped on +his derby hat and went out to look over the bus. Aside from keeping +it supplied with oil and gasoline its insides were as complete a +mystery to him as the workings of the solar system. Lottie, flushed and +animated, was slicing bacon, cutting sandwiches, measuring out coffee. +She loved a day in the country, Ben or no Ben. They telephoned Charley. +She said, "Can I take Jesse? His fliv's got something the matter with +its insides. We had planned to go to Thornton."</p> + +<p>"Sure," Ben agreed again when Lottie put this to him. On the way to +the Kemp apartment they stopped at a delicatessen and bought cream, +fruit, wieners, cheese, salad. As she stepped out of the car Lottie +saw that the fat gold letters on the window spelled "<span class="smcap">Dick's +Delicatessen—And Bakery</span>." She was conscious of a little shock. +Immediately she was ashamed that this should be so. Dick's delicatessen +was white-tiled, immaculate, smelling of things spiced and fruity and +pickled. A chubby florid man with a shock of curly rust-red hair waited +on her. He was affable, good-natured.</p> + +<p>"Going on a picnic, h'm?" he said. He gave her good measure—too good +for his own profit, Lottie thought. She glanced about for the wife. She +must be the business man of this concern. Mrs. Dick was not there.</p> + +<p>"Are you Mr. Dick?" Lottie asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes <i>ma'am</i>! I sure am." He began to total the sales, +using the white marble counter as a tablet for his pencil. +"Cheese—wieners—tongue—pickles—cream—that'll be one dollar and +forty-three cents. If you bring back the cream bottle with this ticket +you get five cents refund."</p> + +<p>She thought of the slim and exquisite Charley; of Belle, the +fastidious. "Oh, pooh!" she said to herself as she went out to the +car with Ben, bundle-laden, "she's only a kid. A temporary case on a +near-poet, that's all."</p> + +<p>When they reached the Hyde Park apartment Charley and the poet were +seated on the outer steps in the sun. The poet wore becoming shabby +gray tweeds, a soft shirt and no hat. Lottie admitted to herself that +he looked charming—even distinguished.</p> + +<p>"Don't you own one?" she asked. He quirked one eyebrow. "A hat, I mean."</p> + +<p>"Oh." He glanced at Ben's derby. Then he took from one capacious pocket +a soft cloth cap and put it on. He glanced then at his hands, affecting +great embarrassment. "My gloves!—stick!" He glanced frantically up and +down the street. "My spats!"</p> + +<p>The three laughed. Ben joined in a little late, and evidently +bewildered.</p> + +<p>Charley presented her contribution to the picnic lunch. Gussie had +baked a caramel cake the day before. Sweaters, boxes, coats, baskets, +bundles—they were off.</p> + +<p>They headed for Palos Park. Hideous as is the countryside about Chicago +in most directions, this spot to the southwest is a thing of loveliness +in May and in October. Gently sloping hills relieve the flat monotony +of the Illinois prairie landscape. The green of the fields and trees +was so tender as to carry with it a suggestion of gold. Jesse and +Charley occupied the back seat. Lottie sat in front with Ben Gartz. He +drove badly, especially on the hills. The two in the back seat politely +refrained from comment or criticism. But on the last steep hill +the protesting knock of the tortured engine wrung interference from +Charley. To her an engine was a precious thing. She could no more have +mistreated it than she could have kicked a baby. "Shift to second!" she +cried now, in actual pain. "Can't you hear her knocking!"</p> + +<p>They struck camp on a wooded knoll a little ways back from the road and +with a view of the countryside for miles around. Ben Gartz presented +that most pathetic and incongruous of human spectacles—a fat man, in a +derby, at a picnic.</p> + +<p>He made himself useful, gathered wood, produced matches, carried water, +arranged seats made up of cushions and robes from the car and was not +at all offended when the others expressed a preference for the ground.</p> + +<p>"Say, this is great!" he exclaimed, again and again, "Yessir! Nothing +like getting away from the city, let me tell you, into God's big +outdoors." The three smiled at what they took to be an unexpected burst +of humour and were startled to see that he was quite serious. Ben +tucked a napkin under his vest and played the waiter. He praised the +wieners, the coffee, the bacon, the salad. He ate prodigiously, and +smiled genially on Lottie and winked an eye in her direction at the +same time nodding toward Charley and Jesse to indicate that he was a +party to some very special secret that Lottie shared with him. He sat +cross-legged on the ground and suffered. When the luncheon was finished +he fell upon his cigar with almost a groan of relief.</p> + +<p>"Have a cigar, sir?" He proffered a plump brown cylinder to Jesse Dick.</p> + +<p>"No thanks," Jesse replied; and took from his own pocket a paper packet.</p> + +<p>"A cigarette boy, eh? Well, let me tell you something, youngster. A +hundred of those'll do you more harm than a barrel of these. Yessir! +You take a fella smokes a mild cigar after his meal, why, when he's +through with that cigar he's through—for awhile, anyway. He don't +light another right away. But start to smoke a cigarette and first +thing you know where's the package!"</p> + +<p>Jesse appeared to consider this gravely. Ben Gartz leaned back +supported by one hand, palm down, on the ground. His left was hooked in +the arm-hole of his vest. One leg was extended stiffly in front of him, +the other drawn up. He puffed at his cigar.</p> + +<p>Lottie rose abruptly. "I'll clear these things away." She smiled at +Jesse and Charley. "You two children go for a walk. I know you're dying +to. I'll have everything slicked up in a jiffy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I think not," the two answered. They knew what was sporting and +rigidly followed certain forms of conduct. Having eaten, they expected +to pay. They scraped, cleared, folded, packed with the deftness of +practiced picnickers. Jesse Dick's eye was caught by the name on the +cover of a discarded pasteboard box.</p> + +<p>"Oh, say! You got this stuff at father's."</p> + +<p>"Yes; we stopped on the way——"</p> + +<p>The boy tapped the cover of the box and grinned. "Best delicatessen +in Chicago, Illinois, ladies and gents, if I say it as shouldn't. +Dad certainly pickles a mean herring." His face sobered. "He's an +artist in his line—father. Did you ever see one of his Saturday night +windows? He'll have a great rugged mountain of Swiss cheese in the +background, with foothills of Roquefort and Edam. Then there'll be a +plateau of brown crackly roasted turkeys and chickens, and below this, +like flowers in the valley, all the pimento and mayonnaise things, the +salads, and lettuces and deviled eggs and stuffed tomatoes." (His poem +"Delicatessen Window" is now included in the volume called "Roughneck.")</p> + +<p>"I understand you're a poet," Ben Gartz remarked, quizzically. For him +there was humour in the very word.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Now that's funny, ain't it—with your father in the delicatessen +business and all?"</p> + +<p>Again Jesse Dick seemed to ponder seriously. "Maybe it is. But I know +of quite a good poet who was apprenticed to a butcher."</p> + +<p>"Butcher! No!" Ben roared genially. "What poet was that?"</p> + +<p>Jesse Dick glanced at Charley then. He looked a little shame-faced; and +yet, having begun, he went through with it. "Shakespeare, his name was. +Will Shakespeare."</p> + +<p>"Oh, say, what's this you're giving me!" But the faces of the three +were serious. "Say, is that right?" He appealed to Lottie.</p> + +<p>"It's supposed to be true," she said, gently, "though it has been +doubted." Lottie had brought along the olive-drab knitting in a little +flowered cretonne bag. She sat on the ground now, in the sunlight, her +back against a tree, knitting.</p> + +<p>Jesse and Charley rose, wordlessly, as though with one thought and +glanced across the little meadow beyond. It was a Persian carpet of +spring flowers—little pink, and mauve, and yellow chalices. Charley +gazed at it a moment, her head thrown back. She began to walk toward +it, through the wood. Jesse stopped to light a cigarette. His eyes were +on Charley. He called out to her. "See your whole leg through that +dress of yours, Charley."</p> + +<p>She glanced down carelessly. "Yes? That's because I'm standing in the +sun, I suppose." It was a slim little wool jersey frock. "I never wear +a petticoat with this." They strolled off together across the meadow.</p> + +<p>"Well!" exploded Ben Gartz, "that young fella certainly is a free +talker." He looked after them, his face red. "Young folks nowdays——"</p> + +<p>"Young folks nowdays are wonderful," Lottie said. She remembered an +expression she had heard somewhere. "They're sitting on top of the +world."</p> + +<p>Out on the flower-strewn carpet of meadow-grass Charley was doing a +dance in the sunlight all alone—a dance that looked like an inspired +improvisation and that probably represented hours of careful technical +training. If a wood-nymph had ever worn a wool jersey frock she would +have looked as Charley looked now. Ben, almost grudgingly, admitted +something like this. "Gosh, that kid certainly can dance! Where'd she +pick it up?"</p> + +<p>"She's had years of training—lessons. Boys and girls do nowdays, you +know. They have everything. We never used to. I wish we had. If their +teeth aren't perfect they're straightened. Everything's made perfect +that's imperfect. And they're taught about music, and they know books, +and they look the world in the eye. They're free!"</p> + +<p>Ben dug in the soft ground with a bit of wood. "How d'you mean—free?"</p> + +<p>"Why I mean—free," she said again, lamely. "Honest. Not afraid."</p> + +<p>"Afraid of what?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head then, and went on with her knitting. Lottie looked +very peaceful and pleasant there in the little sun-dappled wood, with +the light shining on her hair, her firm strong shoulders resting +against the black trunk of the tree, her slim black-silk ankles crossed +primly. Ben regarded her appreciatively.</p> + +<p>"Well, you're perfect enough to suit me," he blurted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Gartz, sir! You're a-flattering of me, so you are!" Inside she +was thinking, "Oh, my goodness, stop him!"</p> + +<p>But Ben himself was a little terrified at what he had said. After all, +the men's watch bracelet business was still in the venturesome stage.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not a man to flatter. I mean we're not so bad off, older +folks like us. I'm not envying those kids anything. I guess I'm a kind +of a funny fella, anyway. Different from most."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" Lottie encouraged him, knitting. ("You're exactly +like a million others—a million billion others.")</p> + +<p>"I think so—yes. I've been around a good deal. I've had my ups and +downs. I know this little old world from the cellar to the attic, and +I don't envy anybody anything."</p> + +<p>Lottie smiled a little, and looked at him, and wondered. How smug he +was, and oily, and plausible. What seepage was there beneath the placid +surface of his dull conversation. Adventure! No, not adventure. Yet +this kindly paunchy bachelor knew phases of life that she had never +even approached.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean when you say you've been around? Around where?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, around. You know what I mean. Men—well, a nice girl like +you wouldn't just understand how it is with a man, but I mean I +been—uh—now—subject to the same temptations other men have. But I +know there's nothing in it. Give me a nice little place of my own, my +own household, a little bus to run around in and I wouldn't change +places with a king. No sir. Nor a poet either." He laughed largely at +that, and glanced across the meadow. "I don't know. I guess I'm a funny +fella. Different. That's me. Different."</p> + +<p>Barren as Lottie's experience with men had been she still knew, as +does any woman, that there are certain invariable reactions to certain +given statements. These were scientific in their chemical precision. +In conversation with the average man you said certain things and +immediately got certain results. It was like fishing in a lively trout +stream. This dialogue, for example, she or any other woman could have +written before it had been spoken. She felt that she could see what was +going on inside his head as plainly as though its working were charted. +She thought: "He has his mind made up to propose to me but caution +tells him to wait. He isn't quite sure of his business yet. He'd really +prefer a younger woman but he has told himself that that's foolishness. +The thing to do is to settle down. He thinks I'm not bad looking. He +isn't crazy about me at all, but he thinks he could work himself up +to a pretty good state of enthusiasm. He didn't have what they call +his 'fling' in his youth; and he secretly regrets it. If I wanted to I +could make him forget his caution and ask me to marry him right now."</p> + +<p>He was talking. "I haven't said much about this new business I'm going +into. I'm not a fella that talks much. Go ahead and do it, I always +say, and then you don't have to talk. What you've done'll talk for you. +Yessir!"</p> + +<p>Lottie looked at him—at his blunt square hands and the big spatulate +thumbs—the little pouches under his eyes—at the thinning hair that +he allowed to grow long at the sides so that he could plaster it over +the crown, deceiving no one. And she thought, "This is a kind man. What +they call a good provider. Generous. Decent, as men go. On the way to +fairly certain business success. He'll make what is known as a good +husband. You're not so much, Lottie. You're an old girl, with no money; +nothing much to look at. Who are you to turn up your nose at him! +You're probably a fool to do it——"</p> + +<p>"—not an iota of difference to me what other people say or do. I do +what I think's right and that's all anybody can do, isn't that true?" +He was laboriously following some dull thought of his own.</p> + +<p>Lottie jumped up quickly—leapt up, almost, so that the knitting +bounded toward him, startled him, as did her sudden movement. "I'm +going to get the infants," she said, hurriedly. "It's time we +were starting back." Even as he stared up at her she was off. She +ran through the little wood, down the knoll full pelt, across the +field, her sturdy legs flashing beneath her short skirt, her arms +out-stretched. Halfway across the flower-strewn meadow she called to +Jesse and Charley. They stood up. Something of her feeling communicated +itself to them. They sensed her protest. They ran to meet her, +laughing; laughing, they met, joined hands, circled round and round, +straining away from each other at arm's length like three mad things +there in the May meadow until with a final shout and whoop and +high-flung step they dropped panting to the ground.</p> + +<p>Lottie, still breathing fast, was the first to rise. "I had to," she +explained, "or bust."</p> + +<p>"Sure," said the poet and Charley, together. Charley continued. "Lotta, +I'll sit in the front seat going home. You and Jesse can get chummy in +the back——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no—" But when they were ready to go it had, somehow, arranged +itself in that way. Charley invariably gained her own end thus. "Will +you let me drive part of the way, Mr. Gartz? Please!"</p> + +<p>He shook a worried head. "Why, say, I'd like to, Miss Charley, but I'm +afraid you don't understand this little ol' bus of mine. I'm afraid I'd +be nervous with anybody else running it. You'd better just let me——"</p> + +<p>But in the end it was Charley's slim strong hands that guided the +wheel. Ben Gartz sat beside her, tense, watchful, working brakes that +were not there. Under the girl's expert guidance the car took the +hills like a hawk, swooped, flew, purred. "Say, you better slow down a +little," Ben cautioned her again and again. Then, grudgingly, glancing +sideways at her lovely young profile, vivid, electric, laughing, +"You're <i>some</i> driver, kid!"</p> + +<p>Lottie, in the back seat, was being charmed by Jesse Dick. She felt +as if she had known him for years. He talked little—that is, he +would express himself with tremendous enthusiasm on a topic so that +you caught the spark of his warmth. Then he would fall silent and his +silence was a glowing thing. He sat slumped down on the middle of his +spine in a corner of the seat. He rarely glanced at Charley. His eyes +flattered Lottie. She found herself being witty and a little hard. She +thought now: "Here's one that's different enough. And I haven't an idea +of what's going on in <i>his</i> handsome head. Not an idea. Not—" she +giggled a little and Jesse Dick was so companionable that he did not +even ask her what she was laughing at—"not an iota of an idea."</p> + +<p>In August Lottie accompanied her mother and Aunt Charlotte up to +one of the Michigan lake resorts. They went there every summer. The +food was good, the air superb, the people typical of any Michigan +first-class resort. Jeannette had gone to spend ten days in a girls' +camp in Wisconsin. She had a job promised for September. The Paysons +had a three-room cottage near the hotel and under the hotel's +management; took their meals in the hotel dining room. The cottage +boasted a vine-covered porch and a tiny garden. The days were not half +bad. Mrs. Payson played bridge occasionally. Aunt Charlotte rocked +and knitted and watched the young girls in their gay sweaters and +flat-heeled white shoes and smart loud skirts. Lottie even played +golf occasionally, when her mother and Aunt Charlotte were napping or +resting, or safely disposed of on their own cottage porch or hotel +veranda. There were few men during the week. On Fridays husbands and +fiancés swarmed down on train and boat for the week-end. On Saturday +night there was a dance. Lottie, sitting on the porch of their little +cottage, could hear the music. Her mother and Aunt Charlotte were +always in bed by ten-thirty, at the latest. Often it was an hour +earlier than that. The evenings were terrible beyond words. Long, +black, velvety nights during which she sat alone on the little porch +guarding the two sleeping occupants of the cottage; staring out into +the darkness. The crickets cheeped and chirped. A young girl's laugh +rang out from the hotel veranda beyond. A man's voice sounded, low, +resonant, as two quiet figures wound their way along one of the little +paths that led down to the water. A blundering moth bumped its head +against the screen door. A little group of hotel kitchen-girls and +dish-washers skirted the back of the cottage on their way to their +quarters, talking gutturally. The evenings were terrible beyond words.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</h2> +</div> + + +<p>It was Lottie Payson's last August of that sort. When next August +came round there she was folding gauze, rolling bandages, stitching +pneumonia jackets with the rest of them at the Michigan Avenue Red +Cross shop and thinking to herself that the conversation of the women +busy about the long tables or at the machines was startlingly like +that of the old Reading Club. The Reading Club was, in fact, there +almost in its entirety. The Girls' faces, framed in the white linen +folds of their Red Cross coifs, looked strangely purified and aloof. +Beck Schaefer alone wore her cap with a certain diablerie. She was +captain of her section and her official coif was scarlet. She looked +like Carmen strayed into a nunnery. A strange new spirit had come upon +Chicago that summer. People talked high, and worked hard, prayed a +good deal, gave their money away liberally and did not go to northern +Michigan to escape the heat. Lottie sewed at the Red Cross shop three +days every week. Even Mrs. Carrie Payson seemed to realize that driving +about the parks and boulevards on summer afternoons was not quite the +thing. When autumn came she was selling Liberty Bonds in the sure-fire +manner of a professional. As for great-aunt Charlotte—the hand that +had sewed and folded and stitched during the four years of the '60s +and that had fashioned the prize-winning patchwork silk quilt in the +'70s had not lost its cunning. She knitted with a speed and perfection +nothing short of miraculous, turning out a sweater in three days, a +pair of socks in two. The dip, bite, and recovery of her needles was +machine-like in its regularity. She folded and rolled bandages as +well, having enrolled in a Red Cross shop established in the parlours +of a near-by hotel. Even Jeannette had been caught by the spirit of +the new order. Her wage as stenographer was a queenly sum these days; +and while she could not resist silk stockings, new hats, expensive +blouses, and gloves, and talked of a fur coat for the coming winter +(every self-respecting stenographer boasted one by December) she still +had enough left to contribute freely to every drive, fund, association, +and relief committee connected with the war. She had long ago paid back +the hundred dollars to that Otto who had been whisked away in the first +draft. Even Hulda in the kitchen had deserted her yards of crochet for +a hank of wool. Henry Kemp worked nights as a member of the district +draft board. Charley danced in benefits all the way from Lake Forest +to South Chicago, and enrolled as Emergency Driver for Sunday work. +Alone, of all the family, Belle remained aloof. True, she knitted now +and then, languidly. But the Red Cross sewing gave her a headache, she +said; the excitement affected her digestive disorder. She was anti-war, +anti-draft, anti-Wilson.</p> + +<p>And Ben Gartz thrived. If anyone had ever doubted Ben Gartz's business +foresight that person was forever silenced now. On every martial male +left arm—rookie or general, gob or admiral—reposed a wrist watch. +And now when Ben Gartz offered Henry a plump brown cylinder with the +customary "Have a cigar!" Henry took it reluctantly, if reverently, +eyed its scarlet and gold belly-band with appreciation, and knew better +than to proffer one of his own inferior brand in return. "I'll smoke +it after dinner," he would say, and tuck it away in his vest pocket. +Henry Kemp had aged in the last year. His business was keeping its head +barely above water with the makeshift of American manufactured products.</p> + +<p>It had been during the winter before the war—February, 1917—that +Charley Kemp had announced one evening to her father and mother that +she intended to marry Jesse Dick when she was twenty. That would be in +June. He had got a job as feature writer with the Chicago News Bureau +and he was acting as motion picture critic for one of the afternoon +papers. His comment was caustic but highly readable. His writing in +this new field was characterised by the same crude force that made his +poetry a living thing.</p> + +<p>"Well, was I right or wasn't I?" demanded Mrs. Payson of her daughter +Belle. "Talking about her five children like a—like a hussy!"</p> + +<p>"Hussies don't have five children," Belle retorted, meaninglessly.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson endeavoured to arouse her daughter to the necessity for +immediate action against this proposed madness of Charley's. "You've +got to stop it, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Stop it how?"</p> + +<p>"How! By forbidding it, that's how."</p> + +<p>Belle could even smile at that. "Oh, mother, aren't you quaint! +Nowadays parents don't forbid girls marrying this man or that, +any more than they lock them up in a high tower like the princess +What's-her-name in the fairy tale."</p> + +<p>"You let me talk to her," said Mrs. Carrie Payson. "I'll do a little +plain speaking."</p> + +<p>Her plain speaking consisted in calling Jesse Dick a butcher's boy and +a good-for-nothing scribbler who couldn't earn a living. Charley heard +her out, a steely light in her eyes.</p> + +<p>She spoke quietly and with deadly effect. "You're my grandmother, but +that doesn't entitle you to talk to me with the disrespect you've just +shown."</p> + +<p>"Disrespect! To you! Well, upon my word!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know it strikes you as extraordinary. If it had been written +'Honor thy sons and thy daughters' along with 'Honor Thy Father and +Thy Mother' there'd have been a lot less trouble in the world. You +never did respect your own people—your own family. You've never shown +respect to Lottie or to mother, or to father or to Aunt Charlotte, for +that matter. So why should I expect you to respect me. I'm marrying +Jesse Dick because he's the man I want to marry. I may be making a +mistake but if I am I'm willing to pay for it. At least I'll have only +myself to reproach."</p> + +<p>"You children to-day think you know everything, but you don't. You +wait. You'll see. I know."</p> + +<p>"No you don't. You didn't know when you married. You thought you +were making a good match and your husband turned out to be a +good-for-nothing rogue. I'm sorry to hurt you but you make me do it. +If I'm wrong I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I went into it with +my eyes open. I know all Jesse Dick's weaknesses and I love them. Five +years from now he'll be a famous American poet—if not the most famous. +I know just what he needs. He needs me, for one thing. In time he may +go off with other women——"</p> + +<p>"Charley Kemp how can you sit there and talk like that!"</p> + +<p>"—but he'll come back to me. I know. I'll keep on with my job at +Shields'. In two or three years I'll be making a very respectable +number of thousands a year."</p> + +<p>"And in the meantime you'll live where, may I ask? Your father's in +no position, goodness knows, to have a poet son-in-law dumped on his +hands. Unless you're planning to live in the rear of the delicatessen, +perhaps."</p> + +<p>"We've got a three-room cottage in Hubbard Woods. Some time, when +you're feeling stronger, I'd like to have you see it. It belongs to +Dorn, the landscape painter. He built it when Hubbard Woods was a +wilderness. It's got a fireplace that doesn't draw and a sink that +doesn't drain and windows that don't fit. It's right on the edge of the +big ravine and the very thought of it makes me happy all over. And now +I'm going to kiss you, grandma, which I think is awfully sweet of me, +all things considered, you dear mistaken old-fashioned darling." Which +she did, on the tip of Mrs. Payson's nose.</p> + +<p>At the word "old-fashioned" Mrs. Carrie Payson had bristled; then, +inexplicably, had slumped without voicing a word in her own defense. +She seemed momentarily uncertain, bewildered almost. Still, she did +allow herself a last javelin. "'In five years he'll be a famous poet.' +That's a sensible reason for marrying a man! Huh!"</p> + +<p>"But that's not my reason," Charley explained with charming good +humour, "any more than because his hair is sort of red in lights, or +his ears a little pointed, or his hands slim and brown or his ties +always terrible."</p> + +<p>"What is your reason?" snapped Mrs. Payson. But an honest curiosity +lighted her eye.</p> + +<p>"The same thing strikes us funny at the same time. We like the same +kind of book though we may disagree about it. We like to be outdoors a +lot, and we understand each other's language and we're not sentimental +and we don't snarl if food is delayed and we don't demand explanations, +and any one of those reasons would make marriage between two people a +reasonably safe bet."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson forced herself to a tremendous effort. "You haven't even +said you're——" she gulped—"you're——" with a rush—"in love with +him."</p> + +<p>"I haven't said anything else."</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>But next June, when she was twenty, Charley was saying, "But a man who +won't fight——!"</p> + +<p>"I haven't said I won't fight. I said I wouldn't enlist, and I won't. I +hate war. It's against every principle I've got. If I'm drafted I'll +go into the damn thing as a private and if I find that shooting a gun +or jabbing a bayonet into another fellow's guts is going to stop his +doing the same to me I'll shoot and jab. I don't pretend to be fired +with the martial spirit simply because a European nation, grown too big +for its clothes, tried to grab off a new lot and failed in the first +attempt."</p> + +<p>"I believe you're afraid."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'm afraid. Any man who says he isn't lies. I hate living in +filth and mud and lice and getting an eye shot out. But that isn't my +reason for not going, and you know it. I won't voluntarily further this +thing."</p> + +<p>Charley did know it. She knew, too, that the instinct that made her +want to send her man to war was a thing of low derivation yet terribly +human. She did not say, definitely. "I can't marry a man who feels +as you do." It was the first time in her life that she had lacked +the courage to say definitely the thing she thought. But the family +realised that the June wedding was no longer a thing to be combated. +June came and went. The Hyde Park Boulevard apartment had not known the +young poet for a month.</p> + +<p>Jesse Dick was called in the first draft. Charley kept doggedly at +her work all summer, riding back and forth in the dirt and cinders +of the I. C. trains. It was a summer of intense heat. Daily Charley +threatened to appear at Shields' in her bathing suit or in one of the +Greekest of her dancing costumes. But it was surprising to see how +roselike she could look as she emerged after dinner in a last year's +organdie. Everyone was dancing. Sometimes Charley went to the Midway +Garden at the entrance to Washington Park or over to the old Bismarck +(now known as the Marigold Gardens) there to dance and dine outdoors +in the moonlight. Always she was squired by a dashing blue-and-gold +or white duck uniform from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, or +olive-drab and shiny tan boots from Fort Sheridan.</p> + +<p>Jesse Dick came home just before he sailed for France. He wore an +issue uniform which would have rendered grotesque a Captain Jinks +or a D'Artagnan. The sleeves were too short; the collar too large; +the jacket too brief. Spiral puttees wrapped his slim shanks. Army +brogans—yellow—were on his feet.</p> + +<p>Bairnsfather's drawings had already achieved a popularity in America. +Charley hung between laughter and tears when Jesse struck a pose and +said, "Alf."</p> + +<p>They drove to the Marigold Gardens on the North Side. Jesse had not +sold his little flivver. The place was a fairyland of lights, music, +flower-banked terraces. Hundreds were dining outdoors under the +moonlight, the women in pale-coloured organdies and chiffons, the men +in Palm Beach suits or in uniforms. No where else in America could one +find just this sort of thing—nor, for that matter, in Europe even in +the days before the war. In a city constantly referred to as crude, +commercial, and unlovely there flourished two garden spots unique, +exquisite and unproclaimed.</p> + +<p>Jesse ordered a dinner that brought a look of wonder to the face of the +waiter (Swiss, of course) who had gauged his prospective order after +one glance at the ill-fitting issue uniform.</p> + +<p>"Dance?" said Jesse.</p> + +<p>"Yes." They danced, wordlessly. They danced before and after the hors +d'œuvres, the fowl, the salad, the dessert, the coffee. They talked +little. The boy glanced about with cold wise young eyes. "God!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," Charley said, as if in answer to a long speech, "but +after all what good would it do if they all stayed home! They're +probably all doing their share. They hate it as much as you do. Moping +won't help."</p> + +<p>"Dance?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>They rose and wound their way among the little green tables to the +dancing platform. Charley raised her eyes to his as they danced. "Will +you marry me to-morrow, Jesse? Before you go?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"That's all right for truck drivers and for sloppy emotionalists. But +it's a poor plan. You're only suggesting it because of the music and +my nearness and the fact that I'm leaving day after to-morrow. I'm no +different than I was three months ago. I hate war as much as I ever +did. If you think three months of camp training——"</p> + +<p>"Will you marry me to-morrow, Jesse?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid, Jesse."</p> + +<p>"So am I. But not as scared as that." His cheek rested against hers. +Her fingers clutched tight a fold of the bunchy cloth of his rough +uniform. She could not bring herself to name the fear she felt. All the +way home she pressed close to the rough sleeve—the good tangible rough +cloth of the sleeve—and the muscle-hard arm within it.</p> + +<p>Hyde Park is cut through by the Illinois Central tracks. All that +summer and autumn and winter Charley would start up in her sleep at the +sound of high shrill voices like the voices of children. Lottie Payson +heard them, too, at night in the old house on Prairie and could not +sleep again. The Illinois Central and Michigan Central trains were +bringing boys to the training camps, or from the training camps to the +points of embarkation. They were boys from Illinois farms, Wisconsin +towns, Minnesota and Michigan villages. "Yee-ow!" they yelled as +their trains passed through the great sleeping city. "Whoo-ee! Yip!" +Keeping their courage up. Yelling defiance at a world gone mad. All +that summer you heard them, and through the autumn and winter, and the +next spring and summer and autumn. High young voices they were, almost +like the voices of children. "Berlin or Bust" was scrawled in chalk on +the outside of their cars—scrawled by some raw youth from Two Rivers, +Wisconsin, who was going to camp and to war in a baseball cap and his +Sunday pants and a red sweater.</p> + +<p>Charley would pull the covers over her head and cover her ears with her +hands until the last yip had died away. But Lottie would sit up in bed, +her head thrown back, listening—listening as if they were calling to +her.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</h2> +</div> + + +<p>One Saturday morning Lottie, just returned from marketing with her +mother, answered the telephone and recognised with difficulty Beck +Schaefer's voice, high-pitched and hysterical as it was.</p> + +<p>"Lot, is this you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Lot—Lot—listen. Listen!"</p> + +<p>"I'm listening."</p> + +<p>"Lot, listen. You know I've always liked you better than any of the +other girls, don't you? You're so sincere—so sincere and fair and +everything. You know that, don't you, Lot?"</p> + +<p>"What's the matter," parried Lottie.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lot darling, Sam Butler and I—Sam—you know—Sam and I, we're——"</p> + +<p>"Not!"</p> + +<p>"Yes! Oh, Lottie, isn't it wonderful! This afternoon. Don't breathe it. +I'm scared to death. Will you be my bridesmaid? Lottie <i>dear</i>. +Sam goes to Camp Funston to-morrow. He's got a captaincy you know. I'm +going with him. We're to live in a shack with a tin roof and they say +it's hotter than hell down there in the summer and, oh, Lottie, I'm so +happy! We're to be married at the parsonage—Dr. Little. Mother doesn't +know a thing about it. Neither does Sam's mother. Sam's going to tell +his mother's companion after it's all over this afternoon, and then +we'll go up there. I hate to think.... Mama said she wanted to go to +California again this fall because it was going to be so uncomfortable +here this winter, and Lottie, when she said that something in me just +went kind of crazy.... Can you hear me? I don't want to talk any +louder.... I called up Sam and began to cry and we met downtown and +we decided to get married right away ... goodness knows I don't +deserve ... and oh, Lottie, I feel so <i>religious</i>! You'll come, won't +you? Won't you!"</p> + +<p>Lottie came.</p> + +<p>Beck had taken a room at the Blackstone Hotel and there she had packed, +written letters, dressed for her wedding. Lottie joined her there. Beck +had lost her telephone hysteria and was fairly calm and markedly pale. +She wore a taffeta frock and a small blue hat and none of her jewelry. +"I haven't even got an engagement ring," she said almost in triumph to +Lottie. "We didn't have time. Sam's going to buy it now—or after we're +married. I spent the whole morning on Michigan Avenue, shopping. Look."</p> + +<p>"How's the Camp Funston laundress going to handle that, Beck dear?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care. I wanted it nice. I've waited so long. But I'd have +been willing to go away with one shirtwaist and a knitted union suit, +honestly I would. It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I got +back here at twelve and had a bath and a bite of lunch and I packed and +dressed, and then, Lottie, I knelt down by the bed and prayed. I don't +know why I knelt down by the bed, exactly. I suppose because that's the +way you see them kneeling in the pictures or something. But anyway I +liked doing it. Lot, do you think I'm too pale? H'm? I put on quite a +lot of rouge and then I took it all off and now——"</p> + +<p>A message from the hotel office announced Sam. They went down. +With Sam was a nervous and jocular best man, Ed Morrow. They drove +to the minister's study adjoining the church. It was an extremely +unbridal-looking party. Lottie, in her haste, was wearing an old +Georgette dress and a sailor hat recently rained on (no one was buying +new clothes these days) and slightly out of shape. The best man waxed +facetious. "Cheer up, Sam old boy! The worst is yet to come." He mopped +his face and winked at Lottie.</p> + +<p>They were ushered into the minister's little study. He was not yet +there. They laughed and talked nervously. There was a warm-looking +bottle of mineral water on the window ledge; a bookcase full of well +bound books with an unread look about them; a bust of Henry Ward +Beecher; a brown leather chair scuffed, dented, and shiny with much +use; a little box of digestive tablets on the flat-topped desk. Sam, +in his smartly tailored uniform, seemed to fill the room. Beck did not +take her eyes from him. He was not at all the chubby middle-aged person +that Lottie had known. He looked a magnificently martial figure. The +fact that he was in the ordnance department did not detract from the +fit, cut, and becomingness of his uniform.</p> + +<p>Dr. Little came in, a businesslike figure in gray tweed. A little +silence fell upon the four. The wedding service began. Dr. Little's +voice was not the exhorting voice of the preacher. Its tone, Lottie +thought, was blandly conversational. All of a sudden he was saying +"pronounce you man and wife" and Lottie was kissing the bride and the +groom and even the best man who, immediately afterward, looked startled +and then suspicious.</p> + +<p>Beck had a calm and matronly air. It had descended upon her, complete, +like an all-enveloping robe.</p> + +<p>And so they were married. After it was over Lottie went back to the +Red Cross shop. Three days later she had a letter from Beck. It was not +one of the remote and carefully impersonal letters of the modern bride. +It was packed with all the old-fashioned terms in which honeymoon +brides of a less sophisticated day used to voice their ecstasy.</p> + +<p>"... Most wonderful man ... happiest girl in the world ... I thought I +knew him but I never dreamed he was so ... makes me feel so humble ... +wonder what I have ever done to deserve such a prince among...."</p> + +<p>Lottie told her mother and Aunt Charlotte about it that evening at +dinner. It was very hot. Lottie had been ashamed of her own waspishness +and irritability before dinner. She attributed it to the weather. +Sometimes, nowadays, she wondered at her own manner. Was she growing +persnickety, she asked herself, and fault-finding and crabbed? It +seemed to her that the two old women were calmer, more tolerant, less +fault-finding than she. She was the crotchety one. It annoyed Lottie to +see Aunt Charlotte munching chocolates just before dinner. "Oh, Aunt +Charlotte, for heaven's sake! Can't you wait until after dinner? You +won't eat a thing."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter if I don't, Lottie," Aunt Charlotte returned, +mildly. Aunt Charlotte, at seventy-five, and rapidly approaching +seventy-six, was now magnificently free. She defied life. What could +it do to her! Nothing that it had not already done. So she ate, slept, +talked as she pleased. A second youth seemed to have come upon her.</p> + +<p>To-night, after Lottie's story of Beck Schaefer's marriage Mrs. Carrie +Payson had said, with apparent irrelevance, "I won't be here always, +Lottie. Neither will Aunt Charlotte." A little pause, then, "I wish you +were settled, too."</p> + +<p>Lottie deliberately pretended to misunderstand. "Settled, mama! My +goodness I should think I'm settled enough!" She glanced about the +quiet old room. But she knew what her mother meant, and resented it. +Settled. Shelved. Her mother was thinking of Ben Gartz, Lottie knew.</p> + +<p>Amazing things had happened to Ben Gartz in the last six months. +He had sold the bus. In its place was a long, low, smooth-running, +powerful gray car with special wheels and special tires and special +boxes and flaps and rods. Ben Gartz was transformed from a wistful, +fusty, and almost shabby middle-aged bachelor into a dapper beau in a +tailored Palm Beach suit, saw-edge sailor, and silk hose. He carried a +lemon-coloured cane. He had two rooms at an expensive Hyde Park hotel +near the lake. He had had the Paysons and the Kemps to dinner there. +There were lamps in the sitting room, and cushions, and a phonograph +with opera records. Ben put on some of these after dinner and listened, +his head on one side. He said it was the only way to live—with your +own things around you. "My books," he said, and waved a hand toward +a small sectional bookcase, in which thirty or forty volumes leaned +limply against each other. One or two had slipped down and now lay +supine on the roomy shelves. Lottie strolled over to the bookcase +and glanced at the titles. The Mystery of the Purple Shroud. One +Hundred Ways to Use the Chafing Dish. Eat and Grow Thin. Ben Gartz's +waist line had been one of the first things about him to register a +surprising change. Though his method of living had expanded his girth +had decreased. He made no secret of his method. "A Turkish bath once +a week," he said. "No sugar, no butter, no sweets or starches of any +kind. And I feel better for it. Yessir! I never felt so well in my +life. Sleep better. Walk better. Twenty-five pounds off already and +I'll do another twenty-five before I'm through. I don't even miss the +sugar in my coffee. I used to take saccharine. Not now. I don't even +miss it. Take my coffee black. Got so now I think you miss the real +flavour and spoil it using sugar and cream."</p> + +<p>His face was a trifle jaundiced and haggard, one thought. The surprised +muscles were showing their resentment at the suddenly withdrawn +supports and cushions of fat.</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz loved to play the host. He talked about the War, about +business, about Chicago's part in the War, about his own part in it. He +had bought bonds, sold bonds, given to this, that, the other. "Now take +these Eyetalians, for instance. How long do you suppose they'd held out +against the Austrians? Or the French, either, for that matter against +the Germans? They were just about all in, now I'm here to tell you." +His conversational facts were gleaned from the front-page headlines, +yet he expounded them with a fervour and an assurance that gave them +the effect of being inside information.</p> + +<p>Of all his listeners Aunt Charlotte was the grimmest.</p> + +<p>"Wasn't he interesting about the War?" Mrs. Carrie Payson had asked, +after they had left.</p> + +<p>"About as interesting as a bill-of-lading," Aunt Charlotte had snapped.</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp had laughed one of his hearty laughs so rare now. "What do +you know about bills-of-lading, Aunt Charlotte?"</p> + +<p>"Not a thing, Henry. I don't even rightly know what a bill-of-lading +is. But it always sounded to me like about the dullest thing in the +world."</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz had escorted them to the very elevator and had said, with a +final wave of the hand, just as they were descending, "Now that you've +found the way, come often."</p> + +<p>Charley and Lottie, looking at each other, had given way completely.</p> + +<p>Just after dinner, on the evening of Beck Schaefer's wedding day, Ben +Gartz telephoned. The telephone call had followed less than a minute +after Lottie's rebellious thoughts about him. "I hope my thinking of +him didn't do it," she said to herself as she answered the telephone.</p> + +<p>Would she go driving? No, she didn't feel like it. Oh come on! Do you +good. We'll drop in at the Midway. There's a new revue there that's a +winner. She pleaded a headache. Then it's just what you need. Won't +take no for an answer. She went.</p> + +<p>She wore her white wash-satin skirt and the pink sports coat and her +big hat and looked very well indeed. They drove to the Midway Gardens +in Ben's new car. Ben, parking the car, knew the auto starter. "H'are +you, Eddie." He knew the uniformed doorman. "H'are you, Jo." He knew +the head waiter. "H'are you, Al. Got a nice table for me?"</p> + +<p>"Always find a table for you, Mr. Gartz. Yes, Mr. Gartz." Ben surveyed +the Gardens largely from the top of the terrace. They were worth +surveying. Your Chicago South Side dweller bores you with details. +"Look at that! Notice anything queer about this place?" he asks you.</p> + +<p>You survey its chaste white beauty. "Queer? No, it's lovely——"</p> + +<p>"Not a curved line in it!" announces the South Sider, largely. "Frank +Lloyd Wright designed it. Not a curved line in it—roof, balcony, +pillars, statues—anywhere."</p> + +<p>Your surprised and grateful eyes confirm this boast as you glance about +at the scene before you.</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz was fussy about his table. Near one of three dancing +platforms—but not too near. Near the music—but not too near. On the +terrace where one could see and be seen—but not too exposed to the +public gaze. At last they found it.</p> + +<p>It was deliciously cool there in that great unroofed space. There was +even a breeze, miraculously caught within the four walls of the Garden. +They ordered iced drinks. There was a revue, between the general +dancing numbers. Ben applauded this revue vigorously. He seemed to +know a good deal about the girls who took part in it. Very young girls +they were, and exquisitely slim. Some of them had almost the angular +lines of adolescence. In one number they were supposed to represent +Light—Candle Light, Gas Light, Lamp Light, Electricity, Moonlight, +Sunlight, Starlight. Their costumes were bizarre, scanty to a degree +that would have been startling had they been less young and reticent of +flesh.</p> + +<p>"I see you've got a couple of new ones," Ben remarked to Albert, the +head waiter, as that urbane individual passed their table.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Albert; and again, "Yes," in order not to seem less than +unctuous.</p> + +<p>Lottie said to herself, "Oh, Lottie, don't be so magnificent. He isn't +so bad. He's enjoying himself, that's all. You're just a middle-aged +old gal who ought to be glad of the chance to spend a cool evening in +the Midway Garden, drinking claret lemonade. Glad of the chance."</p> + +<p>But she wasn't.</p> + +<p>Ben was all for dancing, of course. He had become amazingly proficient +at it, as does your plump middle-aged playboy. Lottie liked to dance, +too. She discovered that she didn't particularly like to dance with +Ben, though he was light, expert, and skillful at avoiding collisions +even on that crowded floor. Proximity proved him moist, soft, and +protuberant.</p> + +<p>Seated at their table it was cool and almost restful. A row of slim +trees showed a fairy frieze above the tiled balcony that enclosed the +garden. The lights of the garden fell on them and gave them an unreal +quality. They seemed weird, dazzling. Lottie thought they looked like +trees in a Barrie fantasy. She opened her lips to utter this thought. +Then, "He won't know what I mean," she said to herself. Ben was eating +an ice out of a tall silver goblet. "Take a fruit ice like this," he +had explained, "there's nothing fattening in it. Now ice cream, that's +different. Not for me. Ice is all right, though. Raspberry ice."</p> + +<p>"Those trees," said Lottie, and nodded toward them. Ben turned heavily, +a spoonful of raspberry ice poised halfway. "They're like fairy trees +in a Barrie play. Fantastic."</p> + +<p>"Yeh," said Ben, and carried the laden spoon to his mouth. "Light's bad +for 'em, I guess, shining on 'em that way. Look how yellow the leaves +are already."</p> + +<p>"There!" shouted Lottie, not aloud, but to her inner self. "You can't +expect me to marry a man who doesn't know what I'm talking about, can +you?"</p> + +<p>"What are you smiling at, you little rascal!" Ben was saying. "Tell me +the joke."</p> + +<p>"Was I smiling? I didn't know——" You little rascal! No one had ever +called Lottie a little rascal. She tried, now, to think of herself as +a little rascal and decided that the term was one that Ben had found +useful, perhaps, in conversation with the young ladies of the Light +revue. She did not resent being called a little rascal. She resented +the fact that Ben could not see the absurdity of applying the term +to a staid-appearing, conventionally-dressed, rather serious woman of +thirty-three or -four. She thought of Beck. Beck, in the old days, +would have shaken a forefinger at him and said, "Will you never grow +up, you bad boy!" Suddenly Lottie felt a little sick. "Let's go," she +said. "Do you mind? I'm—I've had a trying day."</p> + +<p>On the way home Ben grew expansive. "Some fellas in my position would +have a shofe but I like to drive my own bus. I come home in the evening +and have my bath and my dinner and go out in the little wagon and it +rests me. Yessir! Rests me.... I'm thinking of moving north. A little +flat, maybe, and a housekeeper. A fella gets pretty sick of hotels."</p> + +<p>"That would be nice. Everyone seems to be moving to the North Side."</p> + +<p>"It's the place to live. The South Side is getting worse all the +time—dirt, and the I. C. smoke and all. And now that they've brought +all these niggers up from the South to work over at the Yards since the +war it isn't fit to live in, that's what. Why, look at Grand Boulevard! +Black way up to Forty-third Street. All those old houses. It's a shame!"</p> + +<p>He was driving with one hand, expertly. The other was hung negligently +over the back of the seat. Lottie could feel it touching her shoulder +blades. It was touching them so lightly that she could not resent the +contact by moving slightly. Besides, she did not want to move. She +had a little amused curiosity about the arm. She wanted to know what +it would do next. She made up her mind that she would see the evening +through. She smiled to herself in the warm darkness. She relaxed a +little. She took off her hat and held it in her lap. The cool breeze on +her brow was like a drink of water to one thirsting.</p> + +<p>They were driving slowly through Washington Park on the way home. +Lottie closed her eyes. How deliciously cool it was. Her bedroom at +home would be hot, she thought. It faced east, and to-night the scant +breeze was from the west. The car stopped. She opened her eyes. They +were parked by the roadside near the sunken gardens. The negligent +arm behind her suddenly tightened into a band of bone and muscle. The +loose-hung hand grasped her shoulder tight and hard. Ben Gartz was bent +over her. She was conscious of a smell of cigarettes and shaving lotion +and whiskey (he had had a highball earlier in the evening). Ben Gartz +was kissing Lottie with a good deal of vehemence and little restraint +and no finesse. It was an unexpected and open-mouthed kiss, mucous, +moist, and loathsome. She didn't enjoy it. Lottie felt besmeared, +befouled. Still, she did none of those statuesque or dramatic things +that ladies are supposed to do who have been unhandsomely kissed +against their will. For that matter, it had not been against her will. +She had not expected it, true, but she had had a mild and amused +curiosity about its possibility. She was now seized with a violent and +uncontrollable shudder. She had released herself with a push of her +strong hand against Ben's chest. Her eyes were wide and rather staring. +She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, hard.</p> + +<p>"I want to go home," she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, say, Lottie, honestly, you're not mad! I don't know what made +me—say, on the square——"</p> + +<p>Lottie put on her hat. "I'm not a bit angry, Ben. I just want to go +home. I'm sleepy."</p> + +<p>But he refused to believe her, even while he shifted gears and drove +home at a sharp clip through the almost deserted park and down the +boulevard. It was almost as if he felt she should be resentful. "Say, +you must think I'm a bum, that's what. Why, Lottie, I didn't mean +anything. Why, I think you're one of the grandest girls I know. A fine +girl. There isn't a girl I respect more."</p> + +<p>"Do you?" She said nothing more. She had nothing to more to say. She +felt calm, and almost happy. It was as though that kiss had cleansed +her, even while it soiled. She sensed that he was thinking hard. She +could almost hear his baffled mind scurrying about for words. She +sensed, too, that he had almost spoken of marriage but had cautiously +thought better of it in time.</p> + +<p>They were at the curb outside the Prairie Avenue house. "Lottie, you're +sore; and I don't blame you. I'm dead sorry. On the square. I'm—say, +you'll prob'ly never speak to me again." He was as argumentative as +though he had trod on her toe.</p> + +<p>She smiled as she turned at the steps. "I'm glad you kissed me, Ben. I +didn't like it. But I'm glad you kissed me."</p> + +<p>She left him staring. She let herself into the house, ran quietly up +the stairs to the second floor. She went into the bathroom and turned +on the cold water faucet and washed her mouth inside and out with cold +water. Then with listerine. Then she saw a bottle marked peroxide and +took a mouthful. I think that if there had been a carbolic in the house +she might have taken a gargle of that, as a final cleanser, in her zeal +to be rid of the taste of the wet red kiss. She spat forcefully and +finally now, made a wry face and went into her bedroom. She took off +her clothes, came back and washed with soap and a rough cloth, brushed +her hair, put on a fresh nightgown and went to bed.</p> + +<p>Lottie's middle-aged romance with Ben Gartz was over.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</h2> +</div> + + +<p>The Paysons and the Kemps, together with the rest of the world, were +to be tossed about now like straws in a storm. But Mrs. Carrie Payson, +reading the paper next morning in the dining room window, after +breakfast, was the dispassionately interested spectator. Though this +was a manless household it received its morning and evening paper +regularly. You saw Mrs. Payson in that. She had no patience with women +who did not read the newspapers. Sometimes when Belle said, "What +wedding?" or "What murder?" or "What sale?" Mrs. Payson would exclaim, +"For heaven's sake, don't you read the papers! How do you expect to +know what's going on!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson knew what was going on. She knew the price of coal, and the +whereabouts of the Cingalese troops, and the closing Steel quotations, +and whether duvetyne was going to be good this winter, and how much the +Claflin estate amounted to, and why the DeWitts dropped their divorce +proceedings. More than this, she read aloud extracts from these items +and commented thereon. She was the kind of woman who rarely breakfasts +in a kimono. When she did it was so restrained and somber in cut and +colour that the Nipponese would have failed to recognise its origin. +Her white hair was primly dressed. Through spectacles worn at a rakish +angle and set rather low down on her nose she surveyed the antics of +the world and pronounced upon them as a judge upon a day's grist of +cases. To one who preferred to get the first-page news first-hand it +was a maddening practice.</p> + +<p>"I see they predict a coal famine. I don't know what we'll do in this +house. If I didn't know I'd practically have to give it away I'd +sell and move into a flat out south.... They're going to wear those +capes again next winter. I should think they'd freeze in 'em. Though +I remember we used to wear them altogether—dolmans, we called them. +I see your friend Winnie Steppler has gone to France for her paper. +Woman of her age! I should think she'd stay home.... H'm! Ben Gartz +is captain of the Manufacturing Jewelers' Liberty Loan committee.... +What time did you come in last night, Lottie? I didn't hear you." Aunt +Charlotte, breakfasting across the table, looked up.</p> + +<p>Lottie poured herself another cup of coffee. She was drinking a +great deal of coffee lately; using it frankly as a stimulant. "About +midnight."</p> + +<p>"Did you have a nice time?"</p> + +<p>"Interesting," Lottie said, gravely. She sensed that her mother was +listening intently behind the newspaper. "Did you mean what you just +said about wanting to sell the house and moving into a flat out south?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson's spectacles showed, half-moons, above the paper's horizon. +"I might. Hulda's going to marry that man. He doesn't want to go to +war. They say you can't get a girl now for less than fifteen dollars a +week. Fifteen! Well! I see myself! And now this coal shortage—and a +four-story house. Still, we'd need a pretty big apartment."</p> + +<p>Lottie made her tone casual. "You ought to marry off Jeannette—and me."</p> + +<p>She knew that Ben Gartz leaped from a position of doubt to one of hope +in her mother's mind. She knew, too, that her mother could no more +force herself to speak of this hope than she could wear a pink silk and +lace negligee. She would have considered both, somehow, indecent. She +turned a page of the paper, elaborately careless. "I'd move out of this +barn fast enough if there was only Charlotte and me to keep it up for."</p> + +<p>Lottie laughed a little. "You'd have to have a special room for Ole +Bull, and your walnut bed and the hall hatrack. No modern flat——"</p> + +<p>"I'd sell them. For that matter, I might even take rooms in a hotel, +and give up housekeeping altogether. It's too hard these days."</p> + +<p>"Why mama, you talk as if you had it all planned out! You know +perfectly well you couldn't get along without me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, couldn't I! I'd like to know why not! Jeannette thinks more of +my comfort this minute than you do." She folded the sheets of the +paper into an untidy mass and slapped the crumpled whole down on the +breakfast table.</p> + +<p>"You oughtn't to expect Jeannette to act as a sort of unpaid companion."</p> + +<p>"Companion! I'm not in my dotage yet. I don't need a companion, paid or +unpaid. I don't need anybody for that matter. You're not so terribly +important. Don't think it. I'd manage to live without you, very well."</p> + +<p>"Do you really mean that, mama?"</p> + +<p>At her tone Mrs. Payson stopped, one hand out-stretched toward the +pantry door. "That I could get along without you? I certainly——"</p> + +<p>"That if I hadn't been here to run the electric and take you to market +and shopping when you or Aunt Charlotte needed clothes, or hats, or +corsets—you wouldn't have missed me? All these years?"</p> + +<p>"I'd have got along. So would your Aunt Charlotte. Nobody's so +important that the world can't get along without them. I'd have +managed."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you would," Lottie said, dully. "I suppose you would."</p> + +<p>Her mother passed into the kitchen. Aunt Charlotte, across the table, +reached for the mangled newspaper and began to smooth it out sheet by +sheet, and to fold it painstakingly into its original creasings. At +the apprehensive look in her eyes Lottie smiled reassuringly, got up +and came round to her. She patted the shrivelled cheek. "Don't look +so disappointed in your maiden niece, Charlotte Thrift. She isn't as +desperate as that. Don't think it."</p> + +<p>"Well, just for a minute——" there was relief in her voice—"I +thought—but you've got some plan in your head?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Don't let anybody stop you then, whatever it is. Don't let anybody +stop you. It's your last chance, Lottie."</p> + +<p>The pantry door swung open. "What's her last chance?" demanded +Mrs. Payson, entering. She had a way of making timely—or +untimely—entrances with the precision of a character in a badly +written play.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing." Aunt Charlotte smiled and nodded coquettishly and her +sister thought of Ben Gartz, as Aunt Charlotte had meant she should. +Lottie knew this. At the knowledge a hot little flame of wrath swept +over her.</p> + +<p>Then for three weeks the household went about its business. Lottie +sewed at the Red Cross shop; Aunt Charlotte knitted; Mrs. Payson talked +Liberty Bonds, managed her household, protested at the increased cost +of living, berated Belle for what she termed her extravagance, quizzed +Henry about his business at the Friday night family dinner. At the end +of the month Hulda left to marry her unmartial Oscar. Though she and +Mrs. Payson had carried on guerilla warfare for years, Hulda, packing +her trunk, wept into the crochet-edged trousseau and declared that Mrs. +Payson had been, of all mistresses, the kindest. Mrs. Payson, on her +part, facing the prospect of breaking in a pert new incompetent at a +weekly wage far beyond that of the departing and highly capable Hulda, +forgave her everything, including her weakness for coffee. She even +plied her with a farewell cup of that black brew as Hulda, dressed for +departure, sat waiting red-eyed in the kitchen for the drayman.</p> + +<p>With the advent of a new maid Jeannette began to take her meals with +the family. Somehow the kitchen was no longer the place for Jeannette. +She had acquired a pretty manner, along with a certain comeliness of +feature and figure. It had been a sudden blossoming. Hers were the +bright-eyed assurance, the little upward quirk at the corners of the +mouth, the preenings and flutterings of the duckling who is transformed +miraculously into a swan. Jeannette had a "boy friend." Jeannette had +invitations for every night in the week (censored by Mrs. Payson). +Jeannette went to the War Camp Community dances on Saturday nights at +the Soldiers' and Sailors' Club and was magically transformed from +a wall-flower into a rose. Jeannette, the erstwhile plain, bloomed +into beauty—the beauty that comes of being told one is beautiful and +desirable. She danced expertly and gracefully (private sessions with +Charley had accomplished this) and she had endless patience with the +wistful lads from the near-by naval training station and camps who +swarmed into the city on leave, seeking diversion where they could find +it. At these carefully supervised Community affairs Jeannette danced +with boys from Texas and boys from Massachusetts; boys from Arizona and +Kansas and Ohio and Washington. But though she danced with them all +with indefatigable patience and good-humour it was Nebraska's step that +perfectly matched her own after the first few weeks and it was Nebraska +who took her home at a gallop in order not to overstay his shore leave. +Nebraska was an embryo ensign. He talked of the sea as only a boy can +who has known but the waves of the wheat rippling before the wind +across miles of inland prairie. When Lottie suggested that Jeannette +invite Nebraska to dinner on Sunday Mrs. Payson, surprisingly enough, +agreed. They made conversation.</p> + +<p>"And where is your home?"</p> + +<p>"I'm from Nebraska, ma'am."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Nebraska!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am."</p> + +<p>"How do you like Chicago?"</p> + +<p>"I like it fine." A quick glance at Jeannette. "Everybody here is +certainly grand."</p> + +<p>Now that Jeannette was regularly at dinner the silences that had +tortured Lottie's nerves were banished quite. The girl chattered +endlessly but engagingly, too. One of the girls at the office had +gone and got married during the noon hour—did you see the parade on +Michigan to-day?—that actress with the Liberty Loan speaker at the +corner of Monroe and State had given a signed photograph with every +bond purchased—there was a fur coat in Olson's window for only one +hundred and fifty—all the girls were going to buy those short fur +coats this winter.</p> + +<p>"Mercy on us!" from Aunt Charlotte. Jeannette and Aunt Charlotte were +great friends. Aunt Charlotte's room had, for Jeannette, something +of the attraction of a museum. In it were all those treasures +accumulated by a lonely woman throughout almost half a century of +living in one house. Ribbons, flowers, buttons, photographs, scraps of +lace, old hats, mounds of unused handkerchiefs and bottles of perfume +and boxes of time-yellowed writing paper representing the birthdays +and Christmases of years; old candy boxes; newspaper clippings; baby +pictures of Lottie, Belle, Charley; family albums. There was always +a bag of candy of the more durable sort—hard peppermints, or fruit +drops. And, treasured of all, the patchwork silk quilt. When Belle and +Lottie were little girls the patchwork quilt had been the covering of +convalescence during the milder periods of childhood indispositions. +At very sight of its prismatic folds now Lottie was whisked back +twenty-five years to days of delicious languor on the sitting room +sofa, the silk quilt across her knees, cups of broth and quivering +rosy gelatines to tempt the appetite, and the button box for endless +stringing and unstringing.</p> + +<p>To-day, as Lottie passed Aunt Charlotte's room just before dinner she +saw her sitting by the window with the silk quilt in her lap. Of late +it had been packed away in one of the room's treasure boxes and brought +out only for purposes of shaking and dusting.</p> + +<p>Lottie entered and stood over Aunt Charlotte as she sat there in her +chair by the window looking out on the ornate old houses across the +way. "I haven't seen it in years." She passed her fingers over the +shining surface of the silk and satin. Frayed squares and triangles +marred many of the blocks now. A glistening butterfly still shone in +yellow silk in one corner; a spider wove an endless web in another. +Time had mellowed the vivid orange and purple and scarlet and pink +until now the whole had the vague softness and subdued gleam of an +ancient Persian carpet or an old cathedral window.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte looked down at it. One tremulous finger traced the +pattern of wheels and circles and blocks. "I always thought I'd give it +to the first one of the family that married. But Belle—of course not, +in that grand apartment. For awhile I thought Charley and that young +lad—I'd have liked to tell them how I came to make it. The boy would +have liked to hear it. Jesse Dick. He'd have understood. But he's gone +to war again. Jesse Dick has gone to war again. Oh, dear! Why didn't +Charlotte marry him before he went?"</p> + +<p>"She's wandering a little," Lottie thought, with a pang. "After all, +she's very old. We haven't realised." Aloud she said, smiling, "And how +about me, Charlotte Thrift? You're forgetting your old niece entirely."</p> + +<p>"No, I haven't forgotten you, Lottie. I think I got it out because of +you to-day. A curious feeling. Something's going to happen. I've lived +a long time, Lottie. Nearly seventy-six years. Old maids usually don't +live that long. Did you know that? Short-lived, they are—unmarried +women. Here I am, nearing seventy-six. And every now and then I get +the feeling—that unsettled feeling as if something might still happen +in my life. I don't know. It's like listening for a bell to ring. +Something's going to happen."</p> + +<p>Lottie looked at her strangely, almost fearfully. She stooped, +suddenly, and gathered Aunt Charlotte and the silk quilt into her arms. +"Oh, Aunt Charlotte! Aunt Charlotte! I've done something terrible. I'm +scared, I'm——"</p> + +<p>"Lot-tie!" from the foot of the stairs. "Lottie! What's the matter with +you and Aunt Charlotte! Dinner's waiting."</p> + +<p>"You don't say!" Aunt Charlotte stood up facing Lottie, suddenly alert, +vitalised. "You don't say!" Something about the commonplaceness of her +expression of approval seemed to restore Lottie's balance. "Don't let +her scare you. They always try and if you're weak you give in. But +don't you. Don't you!" A sudden suspicion—"It isn't that pink fat man!"</p> + +<p>"Ben? No. It's something I never thought I'd——"</p> + +<p>"What's it matter? Only don't give in." She propelled her almost +fiercely ahead of her to the stairway and down to the dining room. It +was as though she feared Lottie would change her mind if they paused on +the way. All through dinner Aunt Charlotte glowed and beamed upon her. +Occasionally she shook her head vehemently to convey encouragement to +the silent Lottie.</p> + +<p>Jeannette was full of plans for the evening. "If we don't start early +we won't get there in time for the first show and then we'll have to +stand and wait. They say it's a wonderful picture. The man who takes +the part of the Kaiser looks exactly like him." Evidently she and Mrs. +Payson were going Hunning among the films.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte looked up from her dessert. "I thought you wanted me to +show you that new block stitch this evening." Jeannette's knitting was +more ambitious than expert.</p> + +<p>"I do. But I've got a date with my girl friend to go to the movie +first." She grinned at the stately white-haired companion of her revels +and the two giggled like school girls. Jeannette's rollicking peasant +humour appealed to Mrs. Payson. She seemed to draw new life from the +abounding health and spirits of Jeannette.</p> + +<p>They had eaten their dessert. In another moment they would leave the +table. Jeannette and Mrs. Payson would get their wraps and clank off +in the old electric toward the Arcadia. Lottie sat back in her chair +and gave a little indrawn gasp like a swimmer who plunges into icy +water.</p> + +<p>"I had my first inoculation to-day, and my vaccination."</p> + +<p>The minds of the three other women at the table, busy with their own +small projects, refused to grasp the meaning of this statement thrust +so suddenly upon them. "Vaccination?" Mrs. Payson had caught this one +familiar word and now held it dully, awaiting an explanation.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to France two weeks from to-day," said Lottie. She braced +herself, one hand clutching her napkin tight as if that would sustain +her.</p> + +<p>But there was no storm. Not yet. Mrs. Carrie Payson's will refused to +accept the message that her ears had flashed to her brain.</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly, Lottie," she said. She brushed a cooky crumb from the +front of her waist.</p> + +<p>Lottie leaned forward. "Mama, don't you understand? I'm going to +France. I'm going in two weeks. I've signed. It's all arranged. I'm +going. In two weeks."</p> + +<p>"Oh golly!" cried Jeannette, "how perfectly grand!" Aunt Charlotte's +hand was weaving nervous palsied circles on the tablecloth, round and +round. She champed her teeth as always when she was terribly excited. +But Mrs. Payson sat suddenly waxen and yellow. You saw odd lines etched +in her face that had not been there a moment before. She stared at +Lottie. The whites of her eyes showed below the iris.</p> + +<p>"This is a stroke," Lottie said to herself in a moment of hideous +detachment. "She's going to have a stroke, and I've done it."</p> + +<p>The red surged up into Mrs. Payson's face. "Well, you're not going, +that's all. You're not going."</p> + +<p>"Yes I am, mama," Lottie said then, quietly.</p> + +<p>"And I say you won't. France! What for! What for!"</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte stood up, her face working, her head shaking. She +pointed a lean aspen finger at her sister. "Carrie Thrift, don't you +stand in the way of her going. Don't you! Don't you!"</p> + +<p>Even then Mrs. Payson's middle-class horror of being overheard by the +servant in the kitchen triumphed over her anger. "Come on into the +sitting room. I'm not going to have that girl listening." She went to +the swinging door. "We're through, Liela. You can clear off." She eyed +the girl sharply before the door swung back.</p> + +<p>They marched into the sitting room in silence.</p> + +<p>In the two weeks that followed Mrs. Payson never once relaxed her +opposition. Yet she insisted on accompanying Lottie throughout +the orgy of shopping that followed—scouring the stores for such +commonplace articles as woollen stockings, woollen underwear, heavy +shoes, bed socks, flannel bloomers, soap, hot water bag, candles, +sugar, pins, needles. Sometimes her mother barely spoke to Lottie +for hours. Yet strangely enough, Lottie had twice heard her say to a +sympathetic clerk when she did not know Lottie was listening: "Yes, +they are for my daughter who's going to France.... Yes, it is hard, but +we've got to do our share." There had even been a ring of pride in her +voice. Lottie heard her speaking at the telephone. "We'll miss her; but +they need her more than we do." One could almost call it bragging.</p> + +<p>She had a strangely detached feeling about it all. When Henry spoke +gravely of U-boats she felt immune, as when one hears of typhus in +China. This person who was going to France was not Lottie Payson at +all—Lottie Payson, aged thirty-three, of Prairie Avenue, Chicago, +Illinois. This was some new, selfish, driven being to whom all the old +familiar things and people—the house, the decrepit electric, Aunt +Charlotte, her mother, Emma Barton—were remote and inconsequential.</p> + +<p>She and Charley had had one brief honest moment together. "I wanted +to go too," Charley had said. "I do still. But I'm not going. I want +to see Jesse. I want him so much that sometimes I find myself doing +things that I thought only women in novels did. Stretching out my +arms to him in the dark.... The girls of my sort who are going are +going for the excitement of it—for the trip, you might almost say. +Oh, I know a lot of women—thousands—are moved by the finest kind of +patriotism. But—well, for example, that pretty Olive Banning who's in +our advertising department. She's going. She says all the men are over +there."</p> + +<p>The night before leaving, Lottie Payson suffered that agony of +self-reproach and terror which unaccustomed travellers feel who are +leaving all that is dear and safe and familiar. She lay there in bed in +her quiet room and great waves of fear and dread swept over her—not +fear of what she was going to, but of what she was leaving behind.</p> + +<p>She sat up in bed. Listened. If only she might hear some sound to +break the stillness—the grinding of a Cottage Grove avenue car—the +whistle of an Illinois Central train. Suddenly she swung her legs over +the side of the bed, thrust her feet into slippers and stole down the +hall to her mother's room. She wanted to talk to her. She'd be awake; +awake and sitting up, alone and fearful, just as she herself was. Her +mother's door was open. The room was dark, quite. Lottie peered in, +sure of a little breathless silence that should precede her mother's +whispered, "Is that you, Lottie?" But from within the room came a +sleeper's breathing, deep, full, regular. Her mother was asleep. Her +mother was asleep! The knowledge hurt her, angered her. She ought to be +awake—awake and fearful. Lottie leaned against the doorsill and pitied +herself a little. An occasional strangled snore came from the bed. "I +should have gone years ago," Lottie told herself.</p> + +<p>She turned back to her room, not taking the trouble to tiptoe now. Past +Aunt Charlotte's room.</p> + +<p>"Lottie! Is that you?"</p> + +<p>Lottie groped in the darkness for the bed and that shrill whisper. +"Yes. I—I couldn't sleep.——"</p> + +<p>"I should think not. Come here to Auntie." That was what she had always +said in the first years, long ago, when Lottie and Belle were children, +afraid or hurt. "Come here to Auntie." Her hand was on Lottie's +shoulder, warm and comforting. "Child alive, you haven't got a thing +around you! Here, get the silk quilt. It's over the foot of the bed. I +didn't put it away."</p> + +<p>"I've got it." Lottie hunched it gratefully about her chilly shoulders. +They were talking in guilty whispers. Lottie huddled at the side of the +bed. "I can't go, Aunt Charlotte. I can't go."</p> + +<p>"Fiddlesticks! That's the middle of the night talking. Wait till you've +had a cup of coffee at eight to-morow morning and see how you feel +about going."</p> + +<p>Lottie knew she was right. Yet she must justify her own terror. "It +isn't fair to Jeannette. I've been thinking of her."</p> + +<p>Great-aunt Charlotte snickered a little. "Never you mind about +Jeannette."</p> + +<p>"But I do. I brought her here. I'm responsible——"</p> + +<p>"Listen to me, Lottie. I went up to Jeannette's room a few nights ago +to bring her that little brooch I gave her. The garnet one. She was +standing in front of the mirror in her nightgown—don't say a word to +your ma—you know how Jeannette always brushes her hair and leaves it +loose when she goes to bed? Well, there she was, doing it different +ways to see which was most becoming in bed. I saw her. And tying it +with a big pink bow." She snickered again, wickedly.</p> + +<p>"Why Aunt Charlotte Thrift?"</p> + +<p>"Yes <i>ma'am</i>! She'll probably marry that boy before he's off for +service. And stay right on here until he comes back. So don't you worry +about her being a human sacrifice, Lottie Payson. It's the Jeannettes +that make the world go round. They don't stop to think. They just act."</p> + +<p>Lottie went back to bed feeling reassured, almost light-hearted. Next +morning at breakfast her mother said, "I didn't close my eyes all +night."</p> + +<p>They made a good-sized group at the station. Her mother, Aunt +Charlotte, Jeannette, Belle, Henry, Charley, of course. Then, all The +Girls. And Emma Barton was there. Winnie Steppler was in France for +her syndicate of papers sending back stories about the Kansas and +Nebraska and Wyoming lads in Paris—the best stories of her career. +And Ben Gartz was at the station. He was there in spats, and a check +suit, and what is known as a trench coat, with a belt and full skirt; +and a little green soft hat with a tiny scarlet feather stuck in the +band, toward the back. He had regained some of his former weight, and +though he was dapper and spruce he looked plump and pink-jowled and +prime. Surprisingly young, too. It was said that, quite outside the +flourishing wrist-watch business, he had just made a little fortune in +War Steel. He joked with Charley. "You little rascal!" Lottie heard +him say; and Charley had laughed and looked arch. When he came over to +Lottie his admiring eyes were still on Charley's slim young figure. +"That little niece of yours is a card! She's a wonder, that kid." +Ben and The Girls had brought books, candy, flowers, magazines. Ben +had taken the name of the New York hotel at which she was to stop +overnight. She saw, in anticipation, more books, flowers, candy. She +wished he wouldn't. Effie Case's eyes were red. Lottie wished that the +train would start. They were standing round, with nothing more to say. +How old Henry looked. What a dear he was. Fine. Too fine and good.</p> + +<p>The train gave a tremendous jerk. She stood on the car steps, looking +down on them. They, on the platform, waved hands, handkerchiefs, their +faces upturned to her.</p> + +<p>"Cable the minute you land."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye! Good-bye!"</p> + +<p>"If you see Vernon Hatch tell him——"</p> + +<p>"Stationed at Nancy I think—or maybe it's Soissons."</p> + +<p>"Woollen stockings when you get——"</p> + +<p>"Good-bye!... 'Bye!"</p> + +<p>The train gathered speed. They dwindled. Ben Gartz, standing just +beside Charley, took hold of her arm above the elbow and leaning over +her looked down into her face, laughing and saying something. Dimly, +Lottie saw the little group turning away. Ben's arm still grasped +Charley's, proprietorially.</p> + +<p>A wave of fear and apprehension so violent as to be almost dizzying +swept over Lottie. "Wait a minute!" she cried to the astonished porter +who was carrying in bags and boxes piled on the car platform. "Wait a +minute!"</p> + +<p>"Too late now, lady. Ef yo' fo'got som'hum Ah kin sen' yo' wiah at +Elkhart. Elkhart's nex' stop, lady."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</h2> +</div> + + +<p>The family thought that Ben Gartz was being heavily attentive. A man +who paid court to a woman through her family was an attentive man. +But after the first few weeks following Lottie's departure it was +unmistakably plain that his attentions were concentrating on the Kemp +branch of the family rather than on the Payson. The first box of candy +sent to Charley, for example, came a week after Lottie's sailing. It +was one of those large satin, brocade, lace-and-gold affairs. You have +seen them in the two-dollar-a-pound shops and have wondered who might +be so fatuous or so rich or so much in love as to buy them. Charley, +coming from work on a cool autumn day, found a great square package +on the dressing table in her bedroom. Her letters and packages and +telephone calls always were placed there, ready for homecoming.</p> + +<p>"Any mail?" she said, to-day. Her quick eye had seen there was none. +And yet she so wanted some—one letter in particular—that she asked, +hopefully. Mail, to Charley, meant, those days, one of those thin +envelopes with a strip pasted over one end to show where the censor +had opened it. Then she had seen the box. It was an unavoidable box +holding, as it did, five pounds of Wood's most intricate sweets. +In these self-sacrificing days candy was one of the things you had +learned to forego. Therefore, "Wood's!" exclaimed Charley, removing the +wrappers. "Who do you suppose?—Oh, my goodness! It looks like a parlor +davenport; or a dressy coffin. Why, it's from that Ben Gartz! Well! +Lotta can't say I'm not keeping the home-fires burning."</p> + +<p>She gave the brocade box to Jeannette for her dresser and more +than half its contents to her grandmother and Aunt Charlotte, both +of whom ate sweets in appalling quantities, the flickering flame +of their bodily furnaces doubtless calling for this quick form of +fuel. She herself scarcely tasted it, thinking more of a clear skin +than a pleased palate. She meant to write Ben a note of thanks. She +even started one; addressed one of her great square stiff art-paper +envelopes in her dashing hand. But something called her away and +she never finished it. He called at the house a week later, after +dinner—just dropped in as he was driving by—and mentioned it +delicately.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Charley, I sent you a little—I wondered if you got it——"</p> + +<p>Then she was honestly ashamed. "Oh, Mr. Gartz, what a pig you must +think me! I started a note to you. Really——" She even ran back to her +room and returned with the envelope and the sheet of paper on which she +had written his name, and the date. He said he was going to keep the +piece of paper, and tucked it into his left-hand vest pocket with a +soulful look.</p> + +<p>The box containing his second gift made the first one seem +infinitesimal. Mrs. Kemp was the recipient. She had said, +characteristically, that she didn't mind doing without white bread, +or sugar in her coffee, or new clothes, but it was hard not being +able to have flowers. She had always had flowers in the living room +until now—a standing order at the florist's. The box held two dozen +American Beauties whose legs stuck out through a slit in the end. It +was November, and American Beauties were fifteen dollars a dozen. +There weren't enough tall vases in the house to accommodate them all. +Their scarlet heads glowed in the jade-green background of the sun +parlour and all over the living room and even spilled back into Belle +Kemp's bedroom. Charley told her father that he ought to realise the +seriousness of it. "Where's your pride and manhood, Henry Kemp! Two +dozen American Beauties! It's equivalent to jewelry."</p> + +<p>Henry, eyeing them, rubbed a rueful hand over his chin, even while he +grinned. "Next time I wish old Ben'd send the cash."</p> + +<p>Things had come to a bad pass with Henry Kemp. It was no longer +necessary for him to say that business was not going. Business, for +him, was gone. Importing was as dead as war and U-boats could make it. +His house, together with many less flourishing and important ones, had +closed for lack of goods. It had been wiped out so completely that +there remained of it nothing to tell the tale except the exquisite +collection of Venetian glass, and Bohemian liqueur sets, and French +enamel opera glasses and toilette table pieces, and Hungarian china +and embroidery which Belle had acquired during the years in which her +husband had dealt in these precious things. Sometimes you saw Henry +looking at them—picking up a fine old piece of French china or Italian +glass from the buffet or dresser and turning it over to scan its +familiar stamp. He knew them as an expert knows diamonds. His eye could +detect any flaw in glaze or colour.</p> + +<p>Now, at fifty, Henry Kemp, for years a successful merchant and +importer, was looking about for an opening. He would get something. +The young men were being drawn away by the hundreds of thousands. He +had been offered a position which would require his travelling for +six months in the year. He had no illusions about it. On the road, a +travelling salesman, at fifty. It was a bitter pill for Henry Kemp. He +could not yet force himself to swallow it.</p> + +<p>His day stretched, empty, before him, but he made himself busy. Each +morning he rose at the hour to which his business had accustomed him +for years. He bathed and shaved and dressed carefully, as usual. He +breakfasted and glanced at the paper, doing both with the little air of +hurry that had meant the car waiting outside, or the 8:45 I. C. train +to catch. For twenty-five years he had gone downtown daily at a certain +time, his face alight with the eager alert expression which meant the +anticipation of a heavy mail and a day crowded with orders. He still +followed out this programme. But the eager look was absent. His springy +step was suddenly heavy, lagging. Belle sometimes wondered where he +went—how he filled his day. He belonged to clubs—big, comfortable, +prosperous clubs housed on Michigan Boulevard. But clubs, to American +business men, meant a place for a quiet business talk at luncheon. +During the day they were, for the most part, deserted. Sometimes +Charley said, "Lunch with me, father?"</p> + +<p>"I've got to see a man at twelve. It's a conference. I can't tell how +long it'll last."</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp presented that most tragic of spectacles, the American +business man at leisure.</p> + +<p>In fairness to Belle Kemp it must be said that she did not nag him, +or reproach him, or bewail her lot or mope. He would get something, +she knew. He had a reputation for business acumen; a standing in the +community; hosts of influential friends. Besides, there was money for +present needs. They had lived well, the Kemps. Henry had denied his +wife and daughter nothing. Still Henry Kemp sensed that his wife was +thinking, "Failure." Failure at fifty. She was too much her mother's +daughter to think otherwise. So he walked off, jauntily, every morning, +with a haste that deceived no one, least of all himself.</p> + +<p>Ben Gartz got into the way of sending tickets to the Kemps. Tickets for +concerts, tickets for war benefits, for the theatre. "I wonder if you +wouldn't like to use these? I can't go and I thought——"</p> + +<p>He heard Charley speak of a book she had tried to get, and failed. +He sent to New York for it and had it mailed to her. It was the Bab +Ballads. He did not know that she wanted them for Jesse. She and Jesse +had read them together often. Now she thought that if she could send +them to him if only to amuse him for a day, or an hour even, in the +trenches or back of the lines, it would be something. Ben Gartz had +never heard of the book but he had written down the name, carefully, in +his little leather notebook. When Charley told him that she had sent +the volume ($4.50 net) to Jesse, in France, his face wore the strangest +look.</p> + +<p>When Mrs. Payson heard of these things, as she inevitably did, she +looked a little aggrieved. "He's been here once since Lottie left—just +once. I can't blame him. Lottie treated him like a dog. If ever there +was an attentive man. But what's he come to your house so much for?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he and Henry——" Belle said lamely.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte spoke up from the silence which now enveloped her more +and more. "I suppose there's nothing Henry needs just now more than +candy and roses and theatre tickets and one thing and another."</p> + +<p>Following these attentions—rather, breaking into the midst of them as +they came, thick and fast—the Kemps had Ben Gartz in to dinner. They +had had few dinner guests of late. Belle made a very special effort +and the dinner was delicious; a thing to tempt Ben's restaurant-jaded +appetite. The meat sauce was smooth, rich, zestful; the dressing for +the salad properly piquant, but suave; the sweet just light enough to +satisfy without cloying. Ben Gartz had become a connoisseur in these +things as does your fleshly man who learns late in life of gastronomic +delights.</p> + +<p>After dinner he and Henry talked business. "Have a cigar, Henry."</p> + +<p>"Thanks, but I don't smoke those heavy ones any more. They don't agree +with me. Try one of these."</p> + +<p>Ben took it, eyed it, tucked it into his vest pocket and lighted one +of his own. He rolled it between his lips. He squinted up through the +smoke.</p> + +<p>"Well now, Kemp, you hold on for awhile longer, will you? There may be +something pretty big breaking for you."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean, breaking for me?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to say, right now. But I mean—well, I mean in our +business. We knew we had a big thing but we didn't know what we really +had. Why, it's colossal. There's only me—and Beck and Diblee. Beck's +getting pretty old. He's a pioneer among the jewelry manufacturers. +Crowding seventy, Beck is. Diblee's all right but he doesn't do for the +trade. He hasn't got the trick of mixing. He wears those eyeglasses +with a black ribbon, you know, and talks about the east, where he came +from, and they get sore, the wholesalers do.... Got any capital, Henry? +Not that we need capital, y'understand. Lord no! What we need is brains +and business experience and a mixer. I've got all three but say, I +can't be everywhere."</p> + +<p>As if by magic Henry Kemp's face filled out, became firm where it +had sagged, glowed where it had been sallow with the jaundice of +discouragement.</p> + +<p>"Why, say Ben—look here—you don't mean—"</p> + +<p>"I don't mean anything, Kemp. Not yet. And perhaps I oughtn't to have +said anything. Of course old Beck and Diblee've got to be considered. +But I think I could swing it—if I pushed hard enough. The business is +getting to be enormous, I'm telling you. Four million kids in service, +every one of 'em with a watch on his wrist, y'understand, from doughboy +to general; and millions and millions more to come. Why, say, before +we're through with this thing——"</p> + +<p>He gave Henry a tip on war stocks.</p> + +<p>"No thanks," Henry said. "I can't afford to take any chances just now."</p> + +<p>"But this isn't a chance, you chump. Where's your nerve! Can't you +trust a fellow that's giving it to you straight!"</p> + +<p>Henry was tempted, but privately decided against it. It wasn't fair +to Belle and Charley to take the chance, he thought. A week later Ben +telephoned him.</p> + +<p>"Sell out on that stuff Henry—you know—that I told you about."</p> + +<p>"I didn't buy."</p> + +<p>"Didn't——!"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Why you darned fool, I just cleaned up twenty-five thousand on it, +that's all. My God, why——"</p> + +<p>Henry put it out of his mind, grimly. He told himself he had done the +right thing. Sometimes Henry Kemp thought of his insurance. He carried +a big insurance. When he died it would amount to a tidy fortune for +Belle and Charley. But it had to be kept up. It was all clear now but +it had to be kept up.... He put that thought out of his mind. An ugly +thought.</p> + +<p>Ben was just as good a sport about small stakes as he was about big +ones. He made a bet with Charley, for example. He seemed so certainly +on the losing side that Charley said, "But I won't bet on that. I'm +sure of it. You haven't a sporting chance."</p> + +<p>"Oh, haven't I! That's what everybody thinks before the other fellow +wins. I'm just as sure as you are. I'm so sure that I'll bet you a +pair of gloves to a set of dice. What size do you wear? Understand, +I'm only asking to observe the formalities, that's all. I'm safe." He +laughed a fat chuckling laugh and took Charley's slim strong young +fingers in his own pulpy clasp. Charley was surprised to find herself +snatching her hand away, hotly. She hadn't meant to. It was purely +involuntary. The reaction against something distasteful. She won the +bet. He sent her half a dozen pairs of finest French glacé gloves. +Charley fingered them, thoughtfully. There was nothing pleased about +her expression. She was not a fool, Charley. But she told herself that +she was; poo-pood'd the idea that was growing in her mind. But now, +steadily, when he called at the house, telephoned, wrote, sent flowers +or candy she was out; did not answer; ignored the gifts. He found out +that she and her mother had arranged to meet at a tea-room for lunch +during Charley's noon hour one day, intercepted them, carried them +off almost bodily to the Blackstone. There, in the rich splendour of +the rose-and-cream dining room looking out upon the boulevard and the +lake beyond, he was in his element. A table by the window—the centre +window. Well, Maurice, what have you got out of season, h'm? Lobster? +Japanese persimmons? Artichokes? Corn on the cob? He remembered that +Charley had once said she adored Lobster Thermidor as the Blackstone +chef prepared it. "But none of your little crab-sized lobsters now, +Maurice! This young lady may be a baby vamp but she doesn't want your +little measly baby lobster, remember. A good big one. And hot. And +plenty of sauce.... Now then, Mrs. Kemp. How about you?"</p> + +<p>Charley ate two bites of the big succulent crustacean and left the +rest disdainfully as a reproach and a punishment for him. She talked +little, and then of Lottie. Her manner was frigid, remote, baffling. A +baby vamp—she, Charley Kemp! who loathed cheapness, and bobbed hair, +and wriggling ways, and the whole new breed of her contemporaries who +were of the hard-drinking, stairway kissing, country-club petting +class. She thought of Jesse, looked out across the broad avenue to the +great blue expanse of lake as though it were in reality the ocean that +lay between them; and left her sweet untouched on her plate.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Kemp did not speak to Charley of Ben Gartz's insistent attentions. +Probably she did not even admit to herself the meaning of them, at +first. But there is no doubt that she began, perhaps unconsciously, a +process of slow poisoning.</p> + +<p>"They all say this will go on for years. There won't be a young man +left in the world—nor a middle-aged man, for that matter. Nothing but +old men and children. Look at France, and Poland, and Germany! I don't +know what the women are going to do."</p> + +<p>"Do?" queried Charley, maliciously; she knew perfectly well what her +mother meant.</p> + +<p>"Do for husbands. Girls must marry, you know."</p> + +<p>"I don't see the necessity," said Charley, coolly. (Charley, who +stretched out her arms in the dark.)</p> + +<p>"Well I do. How would you like to be another Aunt Charlotte? Or a +Lottie, for that matter?"</p> + +<p>"There are worse fates, mother dear. For that matter, I know a lot of +married women who envy me my independence. I don't know any married +women I envy."</p> + +<p>"That's complimentary to your father, I must say."</p> + +<p>"Now, don't be personal, mother. I'd rather have Dad for a father than +any father I've ever seen. Why, he's darling. I love the way he doesn't +get me; and his laugh; and his sweetness with you; and his fineness +and dignity; and the way he's kept his waistline; and his fondness for +the country. Oh, everything about him as a father. But as the type of +husband for me Dad lacks the light touch.... What a conversation! I'm +surprised at you, Belle Kemp!"</p> + +<p>One day, in mid-winter, Henry Kemp came home looking more lined and +careworn than usual. It was five o'clock. His wife was in their +bedroom. He always whistled an enquiring note or two when he let +himself in at the front door. It was a little conjugal call that meant, +"Are you home?" In her babyhood days Charley always used to come +pattering and staggering down the long hall at the sound of it. But +though he caught the child up in his arms he always kissed his wife +first. Not that Belle had always been there. She was not the kind of +wife who makes a point of being home to greet her lord when he returns +weary from the chase. As often as not a concert, or matinee, or late +bridge delayed her beyond her husband's homecoming time. Then the +little questioning whistle sounded plaintively in the empty apartment, +and Henry went about his tidying up for dinner with one ear cocked for +the click of the front-door lock.</p> + +<p>To-night he whistled as usual. You almost felt the effort he made to +pucker his lips for the sound that used to be so blithe. Belle answered +him. "Yoo-hoo!" For the first time he found himself wishing she had +been out. He came into their bedroom. A large, gracious, rose-illumined +room it was. Belle was standing before the mirror doing something +to her hair. Her arms were raised. She smiled at him in the mirror. +"You're home early."</p> + +<p>He came over to her, put his arm about her and kissed her rather +roughly. He was still in love with his somewhat selfish wife, was Henry +Kemp. And this kiss was a strange mixture of passion, of fear, and +defiance and protest against the cruel circumstance that was lashing +him now. Here he was, the lover, the generous provider, the kind and +tolerant husband and father, suddenly transformed by a malicious force +he was powerless to combat, into a mendicant; an asker instead of a +giver; a failure who had grown used to the feel of success. So now +he looked at this still-pretty woman who was his wife, and his arm +tightened about her and he kissed her hard, as though these things held +for him some tangible assurance.</p> + +<p>"Henry!" she shrugged him away. "Now look at my hair!" He looked at it. +He looked at its reflection in the mirror; at her face, unlined and +rosy; at his own face near hers. He was startled at the contrast, so +sallow and haggard he seemed.</p> + +<p>He rubbed a hand over his cheek and chin. "Gosh! I look seedy."</p> + +<p>"You need a shave," Belle said, lightly. She turned away from the +mirror. He caught her arm, faced her, his face almost distorted with +pain.</p> + +<p>"Belle, we'll have to get out of here."</p> + +<p>"Out of—how do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Our lease is up in May. We'd have to go then, anyway. But I was +talking to a fellow to-day—Leach, of the David, Anderson company. +They've made a pile in war contracts. His wife's looking for an +apartment about this size and neighborhood. They'd take it off our +hands—the lease I mean."</p> + +<p>"Now? You mean now!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. We could take something smaller. We—we'll have to, Belle."</p> + +<p>She threw a terrified glance around the room. It was a glance that +encompassed everything, as though she were seeing it all for the +first time. It was the look one gives a cherished thing that is about +to be snatched away. A luxurious room with its silken bed-covers and +rosy hangings. The room of a fastidious luxury-loving woman. Its +appointments were as carefully chosen as her gowns. The beds were +rich dark walnut, magnificently marked—not at all the walnut of Mrs. +Payson's great cumbersome edifice in the old Prairie Avenue house—but +exquisite pieces of bijouterie; plump, inviting; beds such as queens +have slept in. The reading lamp on the small table between gave just +the soothing subdued glow to make one's eleven o'clock printed page a +narcotic instead of a stimulant. Beside it a little clock of finest +French enamel picked out with platinum ticked almost soundlessly.</p> + +<p>Terror lay in her eyes as they turned from their contemplation of this +to the man who stood before her. "Oh, Henry, can't we hold out just for +awhile? This war can't last much longer. Everybody says it'll be over +soon—the spring, perhaps—" She who had just spoken to Charley of its +endlessness.</p> + +<p>"It's no use, Belle. No one knows how long it'll last. I hate to give +it up. But we've got to, that's all. We might as well face it."</p> + +<p>"How about Ben Gartz? He promised to take you into the business—that +wonderful business."</p> + +<p>"He didn't promise. He sort of hinted. He didn't mean any harm. He's a +big talker, Ben."</p> + +<p>"But he meant it. I know he did. I know he did." A sudden thought came +to her. "How long has it been since he talked to you about—since he +last mentioned it to you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's been three weeks anyway."</p> + +<p>She calculated quickly. It was three weeks since the Blackstone +luncheon when Charley had been so rude to him. She tucked this away in +the back of her mind; fenced for time. "Couldn't we sublet? I'd even be +willing to rent it furnished, to reliable people."</p> + +<p>"Furnished? What good would that do? Where would we live?"</p> + +<p>She had thought of that, too. "We could go to mother's to live for +awhile. There's loads of room. We could have the whole third floor, for +that matter, until this blows over. Lots of families——"</p> + +<p>But at that his jaws came together and the lower one jutted out a +little in the line she had seen so seldom and yet knew so well. It +meant thus far and no farther.</p> + +<p>"No, Belle. I may be broke, but I'm not that broke—yet. I'll provide +a home for my family. Maybe it won't be quite what we're used to; but +it'll be of my own providing. When I let you go back to your mother's +to live you can know I'm licked, beaten, done. But not until then, +understand."</p> + +<p>She understood.</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, we'll just have to do the best we can. When do you have to +give Leach your answer?"</p> + +<p>"Within the week, I should say. Yes."</p> + +<p>She smiled up at him, brightly. She patted his lean cheek with her soft +cool scented hand. "Well, you never can tell. Something may happen." +She left him to shave and dress.</p> + +<p>He thought, "What a child she is. Women are."</p> + +<p>She thought. "He's like a child. All men are.... Well, I've got to +manage this."</p> + +<p>There were two telephone connections in that big apartment—one in the +front hall, another in the dining room at the rear. She went down the +hall, closed the dining room door carefully, called Ben Gartz's office +number in a low tense voice. It was not yet five-thirty. He might still +be there. He must be, she told herself.</p> + +<p>He was. His tone, when he heard her name, was rather sulky. But she had +ways. We haven't seen a thing of you. Forgotten your old friends since +you've made all that horrid money. Talking of you only yesterday. Who? +Charley. Why not come up for dinner to-night. Just a plain family meal +but there was a rather special deep dish pie.</p> + +<p>He would come. You could hear that it was against his better judgment. +But he would come. When she had hung up the receiver she sat for a +minute, breathing fast, as if she had been running a close race. Then +she went into the kitchen and began feverish preparations. Halfway, +she stopped suddenly, went back into the dining room, picked up the +receiver and gave her own telephone number, hung up quickly, opened +the door that led from the dining room to the long hall, and let the +telephone bell ring three times before she answered it. The maid opened +the swinging door that led to the kitchen but Belle shook her head. +"Never mind. I'll answer it." She said "hello," then hung up again, +once the buzzing had ceased. Then, carefully, she carried on a brief +conversation with some one who was not there—some one who evidently +wanted to come to see them all; and wouldn't he like to run in to +dinner. She went to the hall door and called. "Henry! Oh, Henry!"</p> + +<p>A mumble from the direction of the bathroom meant that he was +handicapped by shaving lather.</p> + +<p>"I just wanted to tell you. That was Ben Gartz who just called up. He +wanted to come up so I asked him to dinner. Is that all right?"</p> + +<p>"'S'all right with me."</p> + +<p>Grapefruit. Olives. A can of mushrooms to be opened. For over half an +hour she worked furiously. At six Charley came home.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Dad. Where's mother?" He was reading the evening paper under +the amber-silk light of the living room. Charley kissed the top of his +head, patted his shoulder once, and went back to her room. A little +subdued these days was Charley—for Charley. "Any mail? I wonder what's +the matter with Lotta. I haven't had a letter in a month."</p> + +<p>Her bedroom was down the long hall, halfway between the living room +and dining room. Her mother was already there, waiting. "Any mail?... +How pretty you look, mother! Your cheeks are all pink." But her eyes +went past her mother to the little sheaf of envelopes that lay on her +dressing table. She went toward them, quickly. But her mother stopped +her.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Charley. Ben Gartz is coming to dinner to-night." Charley's +eyebrows went up ever so slightly. She said nothing. "Charley, Ben +Gartz could do a great deal for your father—and for all of us—if he +wanted to."</p> + +<p>"Doesn't he want to?"</p> + +<p>"Well, after all, why should he? It isn't as if we were related—or as +if he were one of the family."</p> + +<p>"Lottie, you mean?" She knew what her mother meant. And yet she wanted +to give her a chance—a chance to save herself from this final infamy.</p> + +<p>"N-n-no." Her voice had the rising inflection. "I don't think he cares +about Lottie any more."</p> + +<p>"Then that snatches him definitely out of the family clutches, doesn't +it? Unless Aunt Charlotte——"</p> + +<p>"Don't be funny, Charley. He's a man to be respected. He's +good-looking, not old; more than well-to-do—rich, really."</p> + +<p>Charley's eyes were cold and hard. And they were no longer mother and +daughter, but two women, battle-locked. "M-m-m.... A little old and fat +though, don't you think, for most purposes? And just a wee bit common? +H'm?"</p> + +<p>"Common! Well, when it comes to being common, my dear child, I don't +think there was anything fastidious about the choice you made last +June. After all, Delicatessen Dick isn't exactly——"</p> + +<p>"Just a minute, mother. I want to get this thing straight. I'm to marry +your chubby little friend in order to save the family fortunes—is that +it?"</p> + +<p>"N-no. I don't mean just that. I merely——"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, then? I want to hear you say it."</p> + +<p>"You could do a really big thing for your father. You must have seen +how old he's grown in the last six months. I don't see how you can +stand by and not want to help. He had a chance. Ben Gartz practically +offered to take him into the business. But you were deliberately rude +to him. No man with any pride——"</p> + +<p>Charley began to laugh then; not prettily. "Oh, mother, you quaint old +thing!" Belle stiffened. "I don't want to insult you, don't you know, +but I can't make a thing out of what you've said except that if I +marry this chubby little ridiculous old sport he'll take Dad into the +business and we'll all live happily ever after and I'll be just like +the noble heroine who sells herself to the rich old banker to pay the +muggidge. Oh mother!" She was laughing again; and then, suddenly, she +was crying, her face distorted. She was crying terribly.</p> + +<p>"Sh-sh-sh! Your father'll hear you! There's nothing to make a scene +about."</p> + +<p>"No scene!" said Charley, through her tears. "If you can't cry when +your mother dies when can you cry!"</p> + +<p>She turned away from her then. Belle Kemp looked a little frightened. +But at the door she said what she still had to say. "He's coming here +to dinner to-night."</p> + +<p>Charley, lifting heavy arms to take off her hat, seemed not to +hear. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment—stared at the +tear-stained red-eyed girl. At what she saw she began to sob again, +weakly. Then she shook herself angrily, and pushed her hair back from +her forehead with a hand that was closed into a fist. She went into the +living room, stood before her father reading there.</p> + +<p>"Dad."</p> + +<p>He looked up from his paper; stiffened. "Why, Charley, what's——" +Charley almost never cried. He was as disturbed as if this had been a +man standing there before him, red-eyed and shaken.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Dad. You know that thing Ben Gartz spoke to you about a little +while ago? The business. Taking you into it, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"That? Yes. What of it?"</p> + +<p>"He hasn't said anything lately, has he?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he—he—wasn't sure, you know. I thought at the time it was a +little wild. Ben's good-hearted, but he's a gabby boy. Doesn't mean +quite all he says."</p> + +<p>"He meant it all right, Dad. But you see he—he'd like to have me marry +him first."</p> + +<p>He stared, half willing to laugh if she gave him any encouragement. But +she did not. His newspaper came down with a crash, then, as his fingers +crushed it and threw it to the floor. "Gartz! You marry Ben Gartz!" She +was crying again, helplessly. His two hands gripped her shoulders. +"Why, the damned old l——" he stopped himself, shaking a little.</p> + +<p>"That's it," said Charley, and she was smiling as she sobbed. "That's +the word.... I knew I could count on you, Dad. I knew."</p> + +<p>His arms were about her. Her face was pressed against the good rough +cloth of his coat. "Sh-sh-sh Charley. Don't let your mother hear you. +We mustn't let her know. She'd be wild. He's coming here to dinner, the +oily old fox. Gosh, Charley, are you sure you——"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure."</p> + +<p>"We won't say anything to mother, will we?"</p> + +<p>"No, Dad."</p> + +<p>"She'd be sick, that's what. Sick. We'll fix him and his business, all +right."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Talk about Jesse. Talk about Jesse a lot. And make it plain. +About Jesse. Then see what he has to say about his business."</p> + +<p>The doorbell sounded. Charley was out of his arms and off to her room. +Belle came swiftly down the hall and darted into her bedroom for a +hasty dab at her flushed face with the powder-pad. Henry opened the +door. Ben's voice boomed. Henry's answered with hollow geniality.</p> + +<p>"Come in, come in! Here, let me have that. Belle'll be here in a +minute."</p> + +<p>Belle was there becomingly flushed, cordial. Ben was pressing her +hand. "It was mighty nice of you, let me tell you, to call me——"</p> + +<p>She was panic-stricken but Henry had not heard, apparently. He had +interrupted with a foolish remark of his own.</p> + +<p>"It's probably the last time in this place anyway, Ben. We're giving up +this flat, you know. End of the month."</p> + +<p>"How's that?"</p> + +<p>"Can't afford it."</p> + +<p>Ben pursed his lips, drummed with his fingers on the arm of the deep +comfortable chair. "Well, now, perhaps——"</p> + +<p>Charley came in, smiling a watery smile and palpably red-eyed. Her +father caught her and hugged the slender shoulder with a paternal and +yet quizzical gesture. "Nobody's supposed to notice that Charley's been +crying a little. She didn't get a letter from her boy in France and +she doesn't feel happy about it." She looked up at him, gratefully. He +patted her shoulder, turned pridefully to Ben. "Charley and her poet +are going to be married, you know, when this war's over—if it ever +<i>is</i> over. Look at her blush! I guess these new-fangled girls have +got some old-fashioned ways left, after all, eh, Chas?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Dad."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</h2> +</div> + + +<p>They were in the midst of packing and moving when the news came of +Jesse Dick's death. She had no formal warning. No official envelope +prepared her. And yet she received it with a dreadful calm, as though +she had expected it, and had braced herself for it. She and her father +were at breakfast surrounded by wooden packing boxes and burlap rolls. +Charley, in peril of missing the 8:35 I. C. train, contented herself +with the morning's news second-hand. Henry Kemp had the paper.</p> + +<p>"What's the daily <i>schrecklichkeit</i>, Dad?"</p> + +<p>He had not answered. Suddenly the weight of his silence struck her. She +looked up as though he had spoken her name. The open newspaper shielded +his face. Something in the way he held it. You do not hold a paper thus +when you are reading. "Dad!" The paper came down slowly. She saw his +face.</p> + +<p>"Dead?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>He stood up. She came around to him. She wanted to see it on paper, +printed.</p> + +<p>That morning she actually caught the 8:35 as usual. She sold little +imports all that morning, went out at the lunch hour and never returned +to Shields'. Outwardly she practised the stoicism of her kind. She +cried herself to sleep night after night, indeed; beat on her pillow +with an impotent fist; sat up, feverish and wakeful, to rage at life. +But she was up next morning, as usual, pale and determined.</p> + +<p>There was a curious scene with great-aunt Charlotte. At news of Jesse +Dick's death she had summoned Charley; had insisted that she must +see her; had been so mysteriously emphatic that Charley had almost +rebelled, anticipating a garrulous hour of senile sympathy and decayed +advice. Still she went, ascended the stairs to Aunt Charlotte's room +(she came downstairs more and more rarely now) and at Aunt Charlotte's +first words, "I knew he'd never come back, Charley," would have fled +incontinently if something in the grim earnestness of the black-browed +old countenance had not held her. There was no soft sentimentality +in great-aunt Charlotte's word or look. Rather she seemed eager, +vitalised, as though she had an important message to convey. Charley +did groan a little, inwardly, when Aunt Charlotte brought out the +yellow old photograph of the girl in the full-skirted wasp-waisted +riding habit, with the plume and the rose. And she said vaguely, "Oh, +yes," as she took it in her hand, and wished that she had not come. And +then, "Why, Aunt Charlotte! You lovely thing! You never showed me this +picture before! You're the family beauty. Your face is—the look—it +sort of glows——"</p> + +<p>"Just for a little while. Jesse Dick brought that look to it."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean—Jesse Dick?"</p> + +<p>And quietly, masterfully, with the repression of more than fifty years +swept away before the urgence of this other Charlotte's need, she told +her own brief stark story. "I was eighteen, Charley, when the Civil War +began. That's the picture of me, taken at the time——"</p> + +<p>Charley listened. Sometimes her eyes dwelt on the withered old +countenance before her; sometimes she looked down, mistily, at the +glowing face of the girl in the picture. But her attention never +wandered. For the first time she was hearing the story of the first +Jesse Dick. For the first time great-aunt Charlotte was telling it. +She was telling it, curiously enough, with the detachment of an +outsider—without reproach, without regret, without bitterness. When +she had finished she sat back and glanced about the bedroom—the neat, +shabby, rather close-smelling bedroom of an old, old woman—and then +she opened her hands on her knees, palms out, as though in exposition. +"And this is I," said the open palms and dim old eyes. "This is I, +Charlotte Thrift."</p> + +<p>As though in answer—in defense of her—Charley leaned forward, +impetuously, and pressed her fresh young cheek against the sallow +withered one. "You've been wonderful, Aunt Charlotte. You have! What +would Grandma Payson have done without you!—or Lottie, or mother, for +that matter."</p> + +<p>But great-aunt Charlotte shook her head. She seemed to be waiting for +something. And then Charley said, "I'll be all right. I'm the kind that +goes on. You know. I'm too curious about life to want to miss any of +it. I'll keep on trying things and people and I'll probably find the +combination. Not the perfect combination, like Jesse. You don't, twice. +But I suppose I'll marry—sometime."</p> + +<p>"That's it. Don't you give in. You're twenty. Don't you give in. I was +scared when you left your work——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, that. I couldn't stay. I don't know. Restless."</p> + +<p>"That's all right," said Aunt Charlotte, satisfied. "Restless is all +right. Restless is better than resigned."</p> + +<p>Of Jesse Dick's poems, two made a little furore. The reviewers all +had a line or two or three about his having been one of the most +promising of the younger poets of the virile school. They said his was +American poetry, full of crude power. One poem—the one called "Chemin +des Dames"—they even learned in the schools, mispronouncing its +title horribly, of course. They took it seriously, solemnly. Charley +alone knew that it had been written in satire and derision. It was +his protest against all the poems about scarlet poppies and Flanders +fields. Taken seriously, it was indeed a lovely lyric thing. Taken as +Charley knew he had meant it, it was scathing, terrible.</p> + +<p>People thought the one called "Death" was a little too bitter. +Good—but bitter, don't you think? That part beginning:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">"They said you were majestic, Death.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Majestic! You!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I know you for the foolish clown you are;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A drooling zany, mouth agape and legs asprawl,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A grotesque scarecrow on a barbed wire fence.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">...."</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>When Charley read that one, as she often did, she would beat with her +hard young fist on her knee and cry impotent tears of rage at the +uselessness of it all.</p> + +<p>They made a book of his poems and brought it out in the autumn, just +before the armistice. A slim book of poems. There had been so few of +them.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</h2> +</div> + + +<p>Charley was away when Lottie came home in February, following that +historic hysteric November. Charley was in Cincinnati, Ohio, dancing +with the Krisiloff Russian ballet. They were playing Cincinnati all +that week, and the future bookings included Columbus, Cleveland, +Toledo, Akron. Charley wrote that they would be back in Chicago for two +weeks at the end of March, showing one week at the Palace and one at +the Majestic.</p> + +<p>"... And what's all this," she wrote Lottie, "about your having brought +back a French war orphan? There never was such a gal for orphans. +Though I must say you did pretty well with Jeannette. Mother wrote me +about her wedding. But this orphan sounds so young. And a girl, too. +I'm disappointed. While you were about it it seems to me you might have +picked a gentleman orphan. We certainly need some men in our family. +Send me a picture, won't you? I hope she isn't one of those awfully +brune French babies that look a mixture of Italian and Yiddish and +Creole. In any case I'm going to call her Coot. Are you really going +to adopt her? That would be nice, but mad. Did Grandmother raise an +awful row? I'm sorry she's feeling no better. Mother wrote you have a +trained nurse now...."</p> + +<p>Lottie's homecoming had been a subdued affair. She had slipped back +into the family life of the old house on Prairie Avenue as if those +months of horror and exaltation and hardship had never been. But there +was a difference. Lottie was the head of the household now.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson lay upstairs in the second-floor front bedroom, a +strangely flat outline beneath the covers of the great walnut bed. She +made a bad patient. The eyes in the pointed sallow face were never +still. The new nurse said, almost automatically now, "Don't try to +talk, Mrs. Payson. You want to save your strength."</p> + +<p>"Strength! How can I ever get my strength lying here! I never stayed in +bed. I'll get up to-morrow, doctor or no doctor. Everything's going to +rack and ruin. I engaged the painters for the first of March. There's +repairing to do on everything in the spring. Did they send in the bill +for fixing the shed?"</p> + +<p>But when next day came she threatened to get up to-morrow. And next +day. Her will still burned, indomitable, but the heart refused to do +its bidding. The thing they called rheumatism had leaped and struck +deep with claws and fangs, following a series of disturbing events.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson had looked upon the Kemp's removal from the Hyde Park +apartment to the small Fifty-third Street flat as a family disgrace. +The Thrifts, she said, had always gone forward, never back. She tried +vainly to shake Henry's determination not to take advantage of the +roominess of the Prairie Avenue house. Henry had remained firm. He +had a position as manager of the china and glass department in a big +wholesale house whose specialty was the complete equipment of hotels, +restaurants, and country clubs. His salary was less than one-fourth +of what his income had been in the old days. He said it would have +to do. The Hyde Park Boulevard furnishings fitted strangely into the +cheap-woodwork-and-wall-paper background of the new apartment. Belle +refused to part with any of them. She said that some day they would be +back where they belonged. What she could not use she stored in the top +floor of her mother's house. By early spring she was white-enamelling +almost happily, and dickering with the dour landlord as to his possible +share of the expense of plain plaster in the living room. She had the +gift of making a house habitable in spite of herself.</p> + +<p>The Friday night family dinners persisted. Mrs. Payson even continued +to administer business advice to the long-suffering Henry. Things +that had seemed unbearable in prospect now adjusted themselves well +enough. And then Charley had horrified them all by discarding the black +uniform of a Shields' employee for the chiffon and fleshings of the +Krisiloff Ballet. Belle and even Henry opposed it from the first moment +of surprise and disapproval, but Mrs. Carrie Payson fought it like a +tigress. They had all thought she would return to Shields'. But she had +announced, calmly, her decision never to return. "Go back? Why should I +go back there? The thought makes me ill."</p> + +<p>Her father and mother had received this with amazement. "But Charley, +you were promoted just last week. You said you liked it. Let me tell +you three thousand a year isn't to be sneezed at by a kid of twenty. In +another five——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. In another five I'll be earning five thousand. I'll be +twenty-five then. And in another five I'll be earning ten, and I'll +be thirty. And in another five and another five and another five!... +And then I'll colour my hair a beautiful raspberry shade, too, just +like Healy, and wear imported black charmeuse and maybe my pearls will +be real and my manicure grand and glittering, and while I shan't call +the stock-girls 'girlie,' I'll have that hard finish. You get it in +business—if you're in it for business."</p> + +<p>"Well, what <i>were</i> you in it for?"</p> + +<p>"For Jesse, I suppose."</p> + +<p>They were at dinner at home. Belle left the table, weeping. Charley +and her father went on with their meal and their discussion like two +men, though Charley did become a little dramatic toward the end. +Later Belle, overcome by curiosity at the sound of their low-voiced +conversation, crept back, red-eyed, to know the rest.</p> + +<p>Henry Kemp, wise enough in the ways of women-folk, as well he might +be—the one man in that family of women—groped bewildered for a motive +in Charley's sudden revolt. "But you liked it well enough, Charley. You +liked it real well. You said so. You seemed to be getting a lot of fun +out of it. Maybe something's happened down there. Anything wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Not a thing, Dad. I'm not interested in it any more. It's just +that—it's just that—well, you see, Jesse furnished enough colour and +light and poetry for both of us. When I say poetry I don't mean verses +on paper. I mean rhythm and motion and joy. Does that sound silly to +you?"</p> + +<p>"Why no, Charley, it doesn't sound silly. I guess maybe I get what you +mean, sort of."</p> + +<p>"Well—" Then it was that Belle came creeping back into the room, +sniffling. Charley looked up at her calm-eyed. "Mother, I'd like to +have you understand this, too. I've been thinking about it quite a lot. +I don't want you to imagine I'm just popping off, suddenly."</p> + +<p>"Off!" Belle snatched at the word.</p> + +<p>Charley nodded. "You see I've got to have colour and motion and life. +And beauty. You don't find them at Shields'. But before Jesse—went—I +knew I could hit it off beautifully down there and that he'd furnish +me with enough of the other thing. One of us had to buckle down, and I +was the one. I wanted to be. We were both going to be married and free +at the same time. The little house in Hubbard Woods was there to come +to, every day or once a week. It was going to be every day for me. But +a man like Jesse can't write—couldn't write—his kind of stuff without +feeling free to come and go. So there I was going to be. And I'd have +my job, and some babies in between.... Well, there's nothing in it for +me now. Plodding away. It's ridiculous. What for! Oh, it's interesting +enough. It's all right if.... I want a change. Dancing! Krisiloff's +going out with his company. He's got forty-two solid weeks booked. I'm +going with them. He's going to let me do the Gypsy Beggar dance alone." +She pushed her plate away, got up from the table. "It'll be good to +dance again." She raised her arms high above her head. "'Can I show you +something in blouses, madam?' Ugh!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Payson, when she heard of it, was aroused to a point +that alarmed them all. "A grandchild of mine—Isaac Thrift's +great-granddaughter—dancing around the country on the stage! What did +I tell you, Belle! Haven't I always told you! But no, she had to take +dancing lessons. Esthetic dancing. Esthetic! I'd like to know what's +esthetic about a lot of dirty Russians slapping about in their bare +feet. I won't have it. I won't have it. Colour, huh? Life and beauty! +I'd show her colour if I were you. A spanking—that's what she needs. +That'd show her a little life and colour. She shan't go. Hear me!"</p> + +<p>When Charley refused to discuss it with her grandmother Mrs. Payson +forbade her the house. The excitement had given her tremendous energy. +She stamped about the house and down the street, scorning the electric.</p> + +<p>Charley joined the Krisiloffs in August. Her letters home omitted many +details that would have justified Mrs. Payson in the stand she had +taken. But Charley was only slightly disgusted and often amused at +the manners and morals of the Krisiloffs. She hated the stuffy hotels +and the uninviting food but loved exploring the towns. Audiences in +medium-sized Middle West towns were rather startled by the fury and +fire which she flung into the Gypsy Beggar dance. Her costume of satin +breeches and chiffon shirt was an ingenious imitation of a street +beggar's picturesque rags and tatters. As she finished her dance, and +flung herself on her knees, holding out her tambourine for alms, the +audiences would stare at her uncomfortably, shifting in their seats, +so haggard and piteous and feverish was her appeal. But always there +was a crash of applause, sharp and spontaneous. She had some unpleasant +moments with other women of the company who were jealous of the favour +with which her dance was received.</p> + +<p>When the rest of the company was sleeping, or eating, or cooking messes +over furtive alcohol stoves in hotel bedrooms, Charley was prowling +about book-shops, or walking in the town's outskirts, or getting a +quiet private enjoyment out of its main street. She missed Lottie. She +often wanted to write her many of the things that the other members of +the family would not have understood. In the life and colour and beauty +she had craved she had found, as well, much drudgery, and sordidness +and hardship. But she loved the dancing. The shifting from town to +town, from theatre to theatre, numbed her pain. She caught herself +looking at beauty through Jesse Dick's eyes. In her Cincinnati letter +to Lottie she dismissed dancing in ten words and devoted three pages to +a description of the Nürnberg quality of the turreted buildings on the +hill overlooking the river, from the park. The money she earned, aside +from that which she needed for her own actual wants, she sent regularly +to the Red Cross. Before she had left, "I suppose I could be cutting +sandwiches," she had said, "and dancing with the kids passing through +Chicago; or driving an emergency car. I'd rather not. There are fifty +girls to every job of that kind."</p> + +<p>Contrary to Aunt Charlotte's prediction, Jeannette's Nebraska sailor +had not become Jeannette's Nebraska husband until after the armistice. +She was married at Christmas and left for the West with him. The +wedding was held in the Prairie Avenue house. It turned out to be +rather a grim affair, in spite of Jeannette's high spirits and her +Bohemian relatives and the post-war reaction and the very good supper +provided by Mrs. Payson. For Belle and Henry thought of Charley; and +Mrs. Payson thought of Lottie; and Aunt Charlotte thought of both, and +of the girl of sixty years ago. And Jeannette said bluntly: "You look +as if it was a funeral instead of a wedding." She herself was a little +terrified at the thought of this great unknown prairie land to which +she was going, with her smart fur coat and her tricotine dress and her +silk stockings and gray kid shoes. As well she might be.</p> + +<p>After it was over, an unnatural quiet settled down upon the house. +The two old women told each other that it was a blessed relief after +the flurry and fuss of the wedding, but looked at each other rather +fearfully during the long evenings and awaited Lottie's return with +such passionate eagerness as neither would have admitted to the other. +They expected her to pop in, somehow, the day after the armistice.</p> + +<p>"Well, Lottie'll be home now," Mrs. Payson would say, "most any day." +She took to watching for the postman, as she used to watch at the +parlour window for Lottie on the rare occasions when she was late. +When he failed to appear at what she considered the proper time she +would fume and fuss. Then, at his ring, she would whisk into the front +vestibule with surprising agility and, poking her head out of the door, +berate him.</p> + +<p>"You're getting later and later, Mail Man. Yesterday it was nine +o'clock. To-day it's almost half-past."</p> + +<p>Mail Man was a chromic individual, his grayish hair blending into the +grayish uniform above which his grayish face rose almost indefinably. +He was lopsided from much service. "Well, everything's late these +days, M'z. Payson. Since the war we haven't had any regular——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, the war! You make me tired with your war. The war's over!"</p> + +<p>Mail Man did not defend himself further. Mail men have that henpecked +look by virtue of their calling which lays them open to tirade and +abuse from every disappointed sweetheart, housemaid, daughter, wife, +and mother.</p> + +<p>"Expecting a letter from Miss Lottie, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Have you——"</p> + +<p>"Don't see it here this morning, M'z. Payson. Might be in on the eleven +o'clock mail. Everything's late these days since the war."</p> + +<p>They confidently expected her in December. In December she wrote that +it would be January. The letter was postmarked Paris. In January she +set the date of her homecoming for February and it was that letter +which contained the astounding news of the impending French orphan.</p> + +<p>The two old women stared at each other, their mouths open ludicrously, +their eyes wide. Mrs. Payson had read the letter aloud to Aunt +Charlotte there in the living room.</p> + +<p>"A French child—a French orphan." It was then that Mrs. Payson had +looked up, her face as blank of expression as that of a dead fish. She +plunged back into the letter, holding the page away from her as though +distance would change the meaning of the black letters on the white +flimsy page.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Aunt Charlotte, the first to recover, "that'll be kind of +nice, now Jeannette's gone and all. Young folks around the house again. +It's been kind of spooky. French child, h'm? That'll be odd. I used to +know some French. Had it, when I was a girl, at Miss Rapp's school, +across the river. Remember Miss Rapp's s——"</p> + +<p>"Charlotte Thrift, you're crazy! So's Lottie, crazy. A French orphan!" +Another dart at the letter—"Why, it's a baby—a French baby. One of +those war babies, I'll be bound.... Where's Belle? I'll get Belle. I'll +telephone Belle." Later, at the telephone—"Yes, I tell you that's what +it says. A French baby and she's bringing it home. Well, come here and +read it for yourself then. I guess I can read. You telephone Henry +right away, d'you hear! You tell him to telegraph her, or cable her, or +whatever it is, that she can't bring any French baby here. The idea! +Why! Girls nowdays! Look at Charley.... Excited? Don't you tell me not +to be excited, Belle Payson! I guess you'd be excited——"</p> + +<p>Henry cabled. He agreed with Mother Payson that it was a little too +much. Let the French take care of their own orphans. America'd furnish +the money but no wet-nursing.</p> + +<p>Winnie Steppler had returned from France in December. To her Mrs. +Payson appealed for information. "Did you know anything about this +crazy notion of Lottie's? Did she say anything to you when you were +together there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed. I saw her."</p> + +<p>"Saw who?"</p> + +<p>"The baby. The French baby. She's awfully cute. Fair.... No, they're +not all dark, you know.... Well, now, Mrs. Payson, I wouldn't say that. +It's a nice humane thing to do, I think. All those poor little things +left fatherless. Lots of Americans are bringing home.... You have? +Well, I don't think even that will change her now. She seems to have +her mind made up. Maybe when you see it——"</p> + +<p>"But where'd she get it? Where did she find it? How did she happen——"</p> + +<p>Winnie Steppler explained. "Well, you know, after St. Mihiel, when the +Germans were retreating and our boys were advancing, the Germans took +prisoner all the young French men and women—all they could lay hands +on. Regular slavery. They took parents from their children, and all. +This baby was found in a little town called Thiaucourt, all alone, +in a kind of cellar. They took care of her, and sent her back to the +American relief."</p> + +<p>"But the father and mother? They may be alive, looking for her."</p> + +<p>"The father was killed. That's proved. The mother died——"</p> + +<p>It was at this point that the accumulation of family eccentricities +proved too much for Mrs. Payson. The "faint feeling" mushroomed into a +full-sized faint from which they thought she would never recover. Aunt +Charlotte had come upon her younger sister seated saggingly in a chair +in the living room. Her face was livid. She was breathing stertorously. +They put her to bed. For a long time she did not regain consciousness. +But almost immediately on doing so she tried to get up.</p> + +<p>"Well! I'm not staying in bed. What's the matter! What's the matter! +Don't you think you can keep me in bed."</p> + +<p>Followed another attack. The doctor said that a third would probably +prove the last. So she stayed in bed now, rebellious still, and +indomitable. One could not but admire the will that still burned so +bright in the charred ruin of the body.</p> + +<p>So it was a subdued homecoming that Lottie met. When she stepped off +the train at the Twelfth Street station with an unmistakable bundle +in her arms, Belle and Henry kissed her across the bundle and said, +almost simultaneously, "Mother's been quite sick, Lottie. You can't +keep her at the house, you know."</p> + +<p>"Mother sick? How sick?"</p> + +<p>They told her. And again, "You see, there can't be a baby in the house."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Lottie, not in argument, but almost amusedly, as though +it were too ridiculous to argue. "Don't you want to see her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Belle, nervously. And "W-what's its name?" asked Henry.</p> + +<p>"I think Claire would be nice, don't you?" Lottie turned back the flap +of the downy coverlet and Claire blinked up at them rosily and caught +this unguarded opportunity to shoot a wanton fist in the air.</p> + +<p>"Why, say, she's a cute little tyke," said Henry, and jiggled her +chin, and caught the velvet fist. "Claire, huh? That isn't so terribly +French."</p> + +<p>Belle gave a gasp. "Why, Lottie, she's so little! She's just a tiny +baby! Almost new. You must be crazy. Mother's too sick to have——"</p> + +<p>Lottie replaced the flap and captured the waving fist expertly, tucking +it back into warmth. "She's not little. She's really large for her age. +Those are all my bags, Henry, and things. There's a frightful lot of +them. And here's my trunk check. Perhaps you'd better tend to them. +Here, I'll take this, and that. Give them to the boy. Perhaps Belle +and I had better go ahead in a taxi while you straighten out the mess."</p> + +<p>She was calm, alert, smiling. Henry thought she looked handsome, and +told her so. "War certainly agrees with you, Lottie. Gosh, you look +great. Doesn't she, Belle? Darned pretty, if you ask me, Lot."</p> + +<p>Belle, eyeing Lottie's clear fine skin, and the vital line of her +shoulders and back and a certain set of the head, and a look that was +at once peaceful and triumphant, nodded in agreement, vaguely puzzled. +"I thought you'd be a wreck.... What do you think of Charley?... Oh, +well, and now mother. And here you come complicating things still more. +How did you happen to do such a crazy thing, Lottie?"</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you all about it on the way home." Later, in the taxi, the +heaving bundle fitting graciously into the hollow of her arm: "Well, +you know, after St. Mihiel, when the Germans were retreating and +retreating and our boys were advancing, the Germans took with them in +their retreat all the young men and young women they could lay their +hands on. Prisoners, you know. They meant to use them for work. Well, +often, parents were taken from their children. Babies were left alone. +When our men got to Thiaucourt—that's a little town of about three +hundred—in September, it was a deserted ruined heap of stone. They +were right up on the retreat. And there, in what had been a kitchen, +without any roof to it, was a baby. They sent her back, of course, to +us."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but Lottie, perhaps the——"</p> + +<p>"No. The father was killed in the war. They traced the mother. She died +in November. I adopted her legally——"</p> + +<p>"You didn't!"</p> + +<p>"But I did."</p> + +<p>"Claire—what?"</p> + +<p>Lottie looked down at the bundle; squeezed it with a gentle pressure. +"Claire Payson, I suppose, now."</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</h2> +</div> + + +<p>The Girls all came to see the baby. They exclaimed and cooed and +<i>ah</i>'d and <i>oh</i>'d. "Of course it's wonderful and all. But it +is a big responsibility, Lottie. How in the world did you happen——"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know, after St. Mihiel, when the Germans were retreating and +our boys were advancing——"</p> + +<p>She was asked to lecture before some of the women's clubs, but declined.</p> + +<p>Beck Schaefer, grown a trifle too plump now in the rôle of Mrs. Sam +Butler, insisted on holding the struggling Claire. "I never can tell +whether I like a baby or not until I've held it—her. 'Scuse. Though +this one certainly is a darling. Come to your Aunt Beck, sweetie. Oh, +Lottie! Look at her! She put her little hand right up on my cheek! +S'e is a tunnin' ol' sin, izzen s'e!" This last addressed directly to +the object of her admiration. "Sam and I want to adopt a baby. That's +what comes of marrying late. Though I suppose you heard about Celia. +Imagine! But he looks just like Orville. Good thing he's a boy. I +don't see why you didn't take a boy, while you were about it. Though, +after all, when you've brought up a girl you know where she is, but a +boy! Well! They leave you and then where are you! They don't even thank +you for your trouble. And girls are such fun to dress. Oh, <i>what</i> +did you think of Ben Gartz marrying a chorus girl! Didn't you nearly +die! I saw her in the Pompeiian Room with him one night after the +theatre. She's a common looking little thing and young enough to be his +daughter. She was ordering things under glass. Poor Ben. He was awfully +sweet on you, Lottie, at one time. What happened, anyway?"</p> + +<p>Against the doctor's orders and the nurse's advice and manœuverings, +Mrs. Payson had insisted on seeing the baby immediately on Lottie's +entering the house. They prepared Lottie. "It can't be much worse for +her to see you—and the baby—now than not to see you. She's so worked +up that we can't do anything with her anyway. But don't argue; and +don't oppose her in anything. Lie, if you have to, about sending the +baby away."</p> + +<p>"Away! Oh! no!"</p> + +<p>"But Lottie, you don't understand how sick she is. Any shock might——"</p> + +<p>Lottie had scarcely divested herself of hat and wraps when she entered +her mother's bedroom, the child in her arms. Mrs. Payson's eyes +were on the door—had been from the moment she heard the flurry of +homecoming downstairs. As Lottie stood in the doorway a moment the sick +woman's eyes dilated. She made as though to sit up. The nurse took the +child from Lottie as she bent over to kiss her mother. Then, suddenly, +she dropped to her knees at the side of the bed. "Oh, mama, it's so +good to be home." She took one of the flaccid hands in her own firm +vital grasp.</p> + +<p>"H'm. Well, that's some good come of your leaving, anyway. You look +handsome, Lottie. How've you got your hair done?"</p> + +<p>"Just as I always had it, mama."</p> + +<p>"Your face looks fuller, somehow. Let's see the young one."</p> + +<p>The nurse turned and leaned over the bed. But at this final test of her +good nature Claire, travel worn, bewildered, hungry, failed them. She +opened wide her mouth, lurched in muscular rebellion, and emitted a +series of ear-piercing screams against the world; against this strange +person in white who held her; against that which stared at her from the +bed.</p> + +<p>"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Payson. "Take it away. I knew it. Don't you +think for one minute I'm going to have any foreign baby screaming +around this house, sick as I am. Not for a minute. I hope you're +satisfied, Lottie. Running an orphan asylum in this house. Well, I've +still got something to say."</p> + +<p>But strangely enough she had little to say, after that. She showed +small interest in the newcomer and they kept the baby out of the sick +room. The little world of her bedside interested the sick woman more. +She fancied them all in league against her. She would call Lottie to +her bedside and send the nurse out of the room on some pretext or other +that deceived no one.</p> + +<p>"Lottie, come here. Listen. That woman has got to go. Why, she won't +let me get up! I'm perfectly well."</p> + +<p>"But perhaps you haven't quite got your strength, mama. You know it +takes a while."</p> + +<p>"I'll never get my strength back lying here. Was I ever a person to +stay in bed?"</p> + +<p>"No, mama. You've always been wonderful."</p> + +<p>"A lot of thanks I've got for it, too. Now, Lottie, you see that I +get another doctor. This man's a fool. He doesn't understand my case. +Palavering young hand-holder, that's what he is."</p> + +<p>"Don't you think you'd better try him a little longer? He hasn't had +time, really."</p> + +<p>"Time! I've been three mortal months in this bed. You're like all the +rest of them. Glad if I died. Well, I'm not going to please you just +yet. You'll see me up to-morrow, early."</p> + +<p>They had heard this threat so regularly and so often that they scarcely +heeded it now; or, if they did, only to say, soothingly, "We'll see how +you feel by to-morrow, shall we?"</p> + +<p>So that when, finally, she made good her threat the nurse came in early +one morning from where she slept in the alcove just off the big front +bedroom to find her half-lying, half-sitting in the big chair by the +window. She had got up stealthily, had even fumbled about in bureau +and closet for the clothes she had not worn in months. In one hand she +grasped her corsets. She had actually meant to put them on as she had +done every morning before her illness, regarding corsetless kimonoed +women with contempt. She must have dragged herself up to the chair by +an almost super-human effort of will. So they found her. A born ruler, +defying them all to the last.</p> + +<p>Charley came home for the funeral. She was not to rejoin the Krisiloff +company until its arrival in Chicago for the two-weeks' engagement +there. "If ever," said Henry Kemp privately to Lottie. "I don't think +she's so crazy about this trouping any more. You ought to have heard +her talking about the fresh eggs at breakfast this morning. I asked +her what she'd been eating on the road and she said, 'Vintage oofs.'"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Carrie Payson's funeral proved an enlightening thing. There came +to it a queer hodge-podge of people; representatives of Chicago's South +Side old families who had not set foot in the Prairie Avenue house +in half a century; real estate men who had known her in the days of +her early business career; Brosch, the carpenter and contractor, with +whom she had bickered and bartered for years; some of the Polish and +Italian tenants from over Eighteenth Street way; women in shawls of +whom Lottie had never heard, and who owed Mrs. Payson some unnamed debt +of gratitude. Lottie wondered if she had ever really understood her +mother; if the indomitability that amounted almost to ruthlessness had +not been, after all, a finer quality than a certain fluid element in +herself, in Aunt Charlotte, in Charley, which had handicapped them all.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte mourned her sister sincerely; seemed even to miss her +tart-tongued goading. No one to find fault with her clothes, her +habits, her ideas, her conversation. Lottie humoured her outrageously. +The household found itself buying as Mrs. Payson had bought; thinking +as she had thought; regulating its hours as they had been regulated +for her needs. Her personality was too powerful to fade so soon after +the corporeal being had gone.</p> + +<p>More easily than any of them Aunt Charlotte had accepted the advent +of the French baby. To her the sound and sight of a baby in the old +Prairie Avenue house seemed an accustomed and natural thing. She had +a way of mixing names, bewilderingly. Often as not she called Claire +"Lottie," or Charley "Claire." She clapped her hands at the baby and +wagged her head at her tremulously, and said, "No, no, no! Auntie +punish!" and "Come to Auntie Charlotte," exactly as she had done forty +years before to Belle. Once she put the child down on the floor for a +moment and Claire began to wriggle her way down the faded green stream +of the parlor carpet river, and to poke a finger into the sails of the +dim old ships and floral garlands, just as Lottie and Belle had done +long ago.</p> + +<p>There was much talk of selling the old house; but it never seemed to +amount to more than talk. In proper time Claire was cutting her teeth +and soothing her hot swollen gums on the hard surface of Ole Bull's +arms, just as Belle and Lottie had done before her. This only, of +course, when Aunt Charlotte was holding her. Lottie and Charley both +put down the practice as highly unhygienic.</p> + +<p>"Fiddlesticks! You and Belle did it with all your teeth. And you're +living."</p> + +<p>Charley came daily—often twice daily—to see the baby. She was +fascinated by her, made herself Claire's slave, insisted on trundling +her up and down Prairie Avenue in the smart English pram, though Lottie +said she much preferred to have her sleep or take her airing in the +back garden undisturbed. Charley and Aunt Charlotte opposed this. +Charley said, "Oh, but look how ducky she is in that bonnet! Everybody +stops to look at her, and then I brag. Yesterday I told a woman she was +mine. I expected her to say, 'And you so young!' but she didn't."</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte said, "This new fad of never talking to babies and never +picking 'em up! It makes idiots of them. How can you ever expect them +to learn anything? Lie there like wooden images. Or else break their +hearts crying, when all they want is a little petting.... Her want her +ol' Auntie to p'ay wis her, yes her does, doesn't her?" to the baby.</p> + +<p>Claire was one of those fair, rose-leaf babies, and possessed, at eight +months, of that indefinable thing known as style. She was the kind of +baby, Charley said, that looks dressy in a flannel nightgown. "Those +French gals," Charley explained. "Chic. That's what she's got. Haven't +you, <i>ma petite? Ma bébé</i>—or is it <i>mon bébé</i>, Lotta? +I get so mixed." Charley's was the American college girl's French, +verbless, scant, and faltering. She insisted on addressing Claire in +it, to that young person's wide-eyed delight. "<i>Tu est mon chou—ma +chou</i>—say, Lotta, you're a girl that's been around. Do they really +call each other cabbages over there?"</p> + +<p>One of the big bedrooms on the second floor had been cleared and +refurnished as a nursery. Here, almost nightly at six o'clock, you +found Lottie, Charley, and Aunt Charlotte. The six o'clock bottle was a +vital affair. It just preceded sleeping time. It must be taken quietly +for some dietetic reason. The three women talked low, in the twilight, +watching Claire in her small bed. Claire lay rolling her eyes around at +them ecstatically as she pulled at the bottle. She exercised tremendous +suction and absorbed the bottle's contents almost magically unless +carefully watched.</p> + +<p>This evening the talk centred on the child, as always. Trivial talk, +and yet vital.</p> + +<p>"She's growing so I'll have to let her hems down again. And some new +stockings. The heels of those she has come under the middle of her +foot."</p> + +<p>"Look at her Lotta! She's half asleep. There, now she's awake again and +pulling like mad. Swoons off and shows the whites of her eyes and then +remembers and goes at it again. Now she's—I never saw such a snoozey +old thing. Sleeps something chronic, all day and all night. What good +are you, anyway, h'm?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte grew reminiscent. "Time you and Belle were babies you +wore long dresses—great long trailing bunchy things, and yards and +yards of petticoats—flannel and white. It used to take the girl hours +to do 'em up. Nowadays, seems the less they put on 'em the healthier +they are."</p> + +<p>Charley was seated cross-legged on the floor, her back against a fat +old armchair. "How about the babies in France, Lotta? I suppose they're +still bundling them up over there. What did the Coot have on when they +found her, h'm?"</p> + +<p>Lotta rose to take the empty bottle away, gently. Claire's eyes were +again showing two white slits.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte, in the window chair, leaned forward. Her tremulous +forefinger made circles, round and round, on her black-silk knee. "Yes, +Lotta. Now what did she have on, poor little forlorn lamb!"</p> + +<p>"Why—I don't remember, Aunt Charlotte." She tucked the coverlet in +at the sides of the crib firmly. Claire was sound asleep now, her two +fists held high above her head, as a healthy baby sleeps. Lottie stood +a moment looking down at the child. The old, old virgin in the chair by +the window and the young girl seated cross-legged on the floor watched +her intently. Suddenly the quiet peaceful air of the nursery was +electric. The child made a little clucking sound with tongue and lips, +in her sleep. Charley sat forward, her eyes on Lottie.</p> + +<p>"Lotta, do you remember my five—my five——" she broke off with a +half-sob. Then she threw up her head. "I'll have them yet."</p> + +<p>It was then Aunt Charlotte put into brave words the thought that was +in the minds of the three women. "Don't you want to tell us about him, +Lottie? Don't you?"</p> + +<p>For one instant terror leaped into Lottie's eyes as they went from Aunt +Charlotte's face to Charley's. But at what they saw there the terror +faded and in its place came relief—infinite relief. "Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, just you do."</p> + +<p>But Lottie hesitated yet another moment, looking at them intently. "Did +you both know—all the time." Aunt Charlotte nodded. But Charley shook +her head slightly. "Not until just now, Lotta ... something in your +face as you stood there looking down at her."</p> + +<p>Lottie came away from the crib, sat down in a low chair near Aunt +Charlotte. Charley scuttled crab-wise over to her across the floor and +settled there against her, her arm flung across Lottie's knee. The old +Prairie Avenue house was quiet, quiet. You could hear the child's +regular breathing. Lottie's voice was low, so that the baby's sleep +might not be disturbed, yet clear, that Aunt Charlotte might hear. They +could have gone downstairs, or to another chamber, but they did not. +The three women sat in the dim room.</p> + +<p>"We met—I met him—in Paris, the very first week. He had gone over +there in the beginning as a correspondent. Then he had come all the +way back to America and had enlisted for service. He hated it, as +every intelligent man did. But he had to do it, he said. We—liked +each other right away. I'd never met a man like that before. I didn't +know there were any. Oh, I suppose I did know; but they had never come +within my range. He had only a second-lieutenancy. There was nothing +of the commander about him. He always said so. He used to say he had +never learned to 'snap into it' properly. You know what I mean? He was +thirty-seven. Winnie Steppler introduced us. She had known him in his +Chicago cub reporter days. He went to New York, later. Well, that first +week, when I was waiting to be sent out, he and Winnie and I—she met +me in Paris, you know, when I came—went everywhere together and it +was glorious. I can't tell you. Paris was being shelled but it refused +to be terrorised. The streets and the parks and the restaurants were +packed. You've no idea what it was, going about with him. He was like +a boy about things—simple things, I mean—a print in a window, or a +sauce in a restaurant, or a sunset on the Bois. We used to laugh at +nothing—foolish, wonderful, private jokes like those families have +that are funny to no one outside the family. The only other person +I'd ever known like that was a boy at school when I went to Armour. I +haven't seen him since I was eighteen, and he's an important person +now. But he had that same quality. They call it a sense of humour, I +suppose, but it's more than that. It's the most delightful thing in +the world, and if you have it you don't need anything else.... Four +months later he was wounded. Not badly. He was in the hospital for six +weeks. In that time I didn't see him. Then he went back into it but he +wasn't fit. We used to write regularly. I don't know how I can make you +understand how things were—things——"</p> + +<p>Charley looked up at her. "I know what you mean. The—the state of mind +that people got into over there—nice people—nice girls. Is that what +you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Do you know?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I can imagine——"</p> + +<p>"No, you can't. The world was rocking and we over there were +getting the full swing of it. It seemed that all the things we had +considered so vital and fundamental didn't matter any more. Life +didn't count. A city to-day was a brick-heap to-morrow. Night and day +were all mixed up. Terror and work. Exhaustion and hysteria. A lot +of us were girls—women, I mean—who had never known freedom. Not +license—freedom. Ordinary freedom of will, or intellect, or action. +Men, too, who had their noses to the grindstone for years. You know +there's a lot more to war than just killing, and winning battles, and +patching people up. It does something to you—something chemical and +transforming—after you've been in it. The reaction isn't always noble. +I'm just trying to explain what I mean. There were a lot of things +going around—especially among the older and more severe looking of us +girls. It's queer. There was one girl—she'd been a librarian in some +little town up in Michigan. She told me once that there were certain +books they kept in what they called 'The Inferno,' and only certain +people could have them. They weren't on the shelves, for the boys and +girls, or the general public. When she spoke of them she looked like a +librarian. Her mouth made a thin straight line. You could picture her +sitting in the library, at her desk, holding that pencil they use with +a funny little rubber stamp thing attached to it, and refusing to allow +some school-girl to take out 'Jennie Gerhardt.' She was discharged and +sent home for being what they called promiscuous.... I just wanted you +to know how things were.... He got three days' leave. Winnie Steppler +was in Paris at the time. I was to try for leave—I'd have gone A. W. +O. L. if I hadn't got it—and we three were to meet there. Winnie had +a little two-room flat across the river. She'd been there for almost a +year, you know. She made it her headquarters. The concierge knew me. +When I got there Robert was waiting for me. Winnie had left a note. +She had been called to Italy by her paper. I was to use her apartment. +We stayed there together.... I'm not excusing it. There is no excuse. +They were the happiest three days of my life—and always will be.... +There are two kinds of men, you know, who make the best soldiers. The +butcher-boy type with no nerves and no imagination. And the fine, +high-strung type that fears battle and hates war and who whips himself +into courage and heroism because he's afraid he'll be afraid.... He +hated to go back, though he never said so.... He was killed ten days +later.... I went to Switzerland for a while when.... Winnie was with +me.... She was wonderful. I think I should have died without her.... I +wanted to at first.... But not now. Not now."</p> + +<p>Stillness again. You heard only the child's breathing, gentle, +rhythmical.</p> + +<p>Aunt Charlotte's wavering tremulous forefinger traced circles round +and round on her knee—round and round. The heavy black brows were +drawn into a frown. She looked an age-old seeress sitting there in her +black. "Well." She got up slowly and came over to the crib. She stood +there a moment. "It's a brave lie, Lottie. You stick to it, for her. A +topsy-turvy world she's come into. Perhaps she'll be the one to work +out what we haven't done—we Thrift girls. She's got a job ahead of +her. A job."</p> + +<p>Lottie leaned forward in the darkness. "I'll never stand in her way. +She's going to be free. I know. I'll never hamper her. Not in word, or +look, or thought. You'll see."</p> + +<p>"You probably will, Lottie. You're human. But I won't be here to see. +Not I. And I'm not sorry. I've hardly been away from the spot where I +was born, but I've seen the world. I've seen the world.... Well...."</p> + +<p>She went toward the door with her slow firm step, putting each foot +down flat; along the hall she went, her black silk skirts making a soft +susurrus. Lottie rose, opened a window to the sharp spring air. Then, +together, she and Charley tiptoed out, stopping a moment, hand in hand +at the crib. The nursery room was quiet except for the breathing of the +child.</p> + + +<p class="ph2">THE END</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="ph2">THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS</p> + +<p class="ph2">GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</p> + +<p class="ph2">[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as +printed. Chapter XVIII used twice. The second occurrence changed to +Chapter XIX.]</p> + +<hr class="chap"> + +<p class="ph2"><i>Books by</i></p> + +<p class="ph2">EDNA FERBER</p> + + +<p class="ph2"><span class="smcap">Buttered Side Down</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Cheerful, by Request</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Emma McChesney & Co.</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Dawn O'Hara</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Fanny Herself</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Half Portions</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Personality Plus</span><br> +<span class="smcap">Roast Beef Medium</span><br> +<span class="smcap">The Girls</span></p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="ph2"><i>With Newman Levy</i></p> + +<p class="ph2"><span class="smcap">$1200 A Year</span></p> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75334 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75334-h/images/cover.jpg b/75334-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..78a85ed --- /dev/null +++ b/75334-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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