THE CLASS GRIND
By Henry B. Stevens
HE seldom saw him except at classes, and then no one spoke to him; for he was a grind, and his name was Ephraim T. Baggs. I remember that at a sophomore class meeting, Fuzzy, who was a clever practical joker, jumped up and shouted that since the class grind had not yet been elected, and that since every class in Dartmouth College had always had such an officer, he wished to nominate Ephraim T. Baggs. Of course we pulled Fuzzy down, and luckily Ephraim T. wasn’t there at the time, but the name of Class Grind stuck.
Baggsy was a short, stoop-shouldered fellow with an overhanging forehead and a pair of high-power spectacles underneath. He was known about college as well as the captain of the football team, and yet there were less than a dozen men who ever talked with him. Those who did said he was not a “half bad fellow after all,” but finding that nobody paid any attention to their statements, they speedily forgot all about him. Men like Fuzzy spread time-worn stories in which Baggs always objected at the Dean’s office, because he had received ninety-two in a subject instead of ninety-five. As a matter of fact, no one in college knew anything about Baggs, and I determined to find out concerning him my-
I do not claim motives merely of curiosity in this respect; I really could not bear to see a fellow-being so lonely as I knew Baggs must be. Think of rooming alone in Massachusetts, of all dormitories, of not having a single soul there or in the whole college whom you could call your friend, of meeting fellows day after day
who scarcely nod at you, and who are fain to consider you some peculiar type among the peculiar animals we call men. It was with such thought as these one night that I started for Baggs’ room.
Massachusetts has always been, to me, a prison-like structure, but it never appeared so cheerless as on that night. No gaiety echoed from its rooms, no sounds of laughter or of revelry. My footsteps fell like lead upon the deserted corridor. The doors loomed up like barred entrances to cells, made to keep men in, and never to let them out. At my knock, Baggs came to the door. As he swung it back, I noticed that the room was dark, as dark as the night outside. “Come in, Crandall,” he said, “but wait till I turn on the light.” The electricity showed a small, regulation room, with a large window at the rear beside the desk. In one comer a high bookcase displayed an array of choice volumes, and in the other, beside the fireplace, a large arm-chair beckoned to anyone weary of work. The bedroom door was open, and through some green baize curtains I could just see the white of the bed. Baggs looked up with an inquiring expression. “What are you selling?” he asked. “What am I selling?” I echoed, and understood, even as I spoke, for the only visitors Baggs had must be the itinerant venders of candy and banners. I laughed it off, “Your’re wrong for once, Baggsy. I just came over to find out where the ‘Soshy’ lesson is,” and thereby deliberately lied. But it seemed to relieve Baggs.
I settled down in the arm-chair and started to talk the commonplaces of the day, from the new chemistry “prof” to our chances of winning the Harvard game. Never in my life however, have I had such a monopoly of the conversation. Baggs sat at his desk, silent and motionless, suspicious probably of my motives in an unexpected visit like that. But at the end of fifteen minutes I had broken the ice. “Let’s make a fire,” he said of a sudden, and leaped up to do so. In a little while the logs had caught the flame, and the smoke
and heat spread simultaneously. “Do you mind if I turn out the light?” he asked, “It seems to hurt my eyes,” and a little later,” I like to sit in the dark by the fire, don’t you?”
An hour afterwards I left him, still gazing at the dying embers on the hearth. “I’m afraid I’m not a very interesting talker,” he said wistfully, “but I wish you would come in again.” It was not till I was outside that I recollected I had found out nothing about the Sociology lesson. But I didn’t care for that; I had found a new friend instead, and his name was Ephraim T. Baggs.
From that time I was with him a good deal, walked with him, tried to interest my friends in him, and found instead that I was already earning an unenviable reputation as “a friend of Baggs.” If I had any glimmerings of regret over this, however, they were soon to be extinguished.
Baggs had often complained to me of his eyes. “Why don’t you go to an optician?” I would remonstrate. Then he would laugh slightly, “You see I’ve got the highest magnifying glasses I can possibly get; so what good would that do?” After constant pressure, however, he at last promised to consult a specialist.
The night after the examination of his eyes I hurried to his room. He was as usual sitting without a light, but I saw that there was something wrong, even as I shut the door behind me. “What’s the verdict, Ephraim?” I cried, with a deep misgiving in my voice. For a long while he said nothing, gathering power to speak. “I’m afraid,” he said, with short, slow breaths, “I’m afraid—it’s all—up with me. It’s an operation—in a week—and the doctor says—he can’t—give me much hope—my only chance—that’s all.”
And then the horror of it came upon me. Blindness—what a pitifully weak word it is. We who live in the strong sunlight, in the world of lights and colors, we do not realize what it means, cannot realize when we stop and think.
“Great Heaven,” I cried, “It can’t be so,” and found no other word to say. With a slight effort Baggs pulled himself together.
“Come, don’t be down-hearted,” he said, “for what does the poet say?
‘Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.’ ” “Seriously, Crandall,” he went on, “there’s a great philosophy in those two lines; I was thinking about them, just before you came. The only trouble with me is, it seems as if I had always been too old. The whole fault of my college life has been—I was too old to start right. I came up here with the intention of getting the best possible education. I didn’t care to spend all of my time on studies, however, and I haven’t. I’m thankful for that. But I was shy, you know, wasn’t a good mixer, didn’t get acquainted. There seemed only one friend I could turn to—that was my library. It wasn’t till the end of freshman year that I awoke to the fact that I had won a reputation. I hadn’t studied much, but I had read a great deal, and had had the misfortune to be a Rufus Choater. That it was a misfortune I soon found out; for my personal appearance was against me. I have been a social outcast, ostracized by my fellows, and sometimes, I half suspect, despised by my professors. I had to rely more and more upon my books. I didn’t understand what friendship meant until you came along. And now you’ve come,” he laughed painfully, “I suppose the gods think I have no more use for my eyes, and I’m afraid thy’re going to take them away.”
For some time we sat there together looking out on the pines in back of the dormitory. The moon was beginning to peep above them, making long, white lanes down through the tree-tops, and finding, beneath, a resting-place in the deathly-white tombstones of the cemetery. Suddenly Baggs jumped hysterically to his feet. “Good God,” he cried, “I’d rather be down there with the dead, than be like that,” and fell a-sobbing on the floor, like a poor, heartbroken child.
But in the broad daylight the world is more cheerful than at night. As a matter of fact things .were not so hopeless as we thought; for a week later, the operation came out a complete success, and Baggs had a much better eyesight than ever before.
In two weeks it was Baggs’ first morning but of doors, and a fine, windy, soul-stirring morning it was. He was exuberant, and we sped across the campus arm in arm. We were bound for an old haunt in the park, a sunny spot among the rocks, near the Bema, where we could lie without fear of a cold, the main consideration of a day in springtime. We were just clambering down the hillside, when we heard voices below us in the trees, voices which we could not choose but hear.
“Yes,” said one of them, I was sure it was Fuzzy’s, “Crandall is a good enough sort, but do you see who he’s around with nowadays? Baggs—of all men. Why, they say Baggs is such a grind, he’s all but ground his eyes out. Now, I like to think I’m a broadminded man, but honestly, you know, I can’t see anything in a fellow like that—not in a grind like that. Honestly, I can’t.”
A PULLMAN IDYLL
​
By Malcolm Gale Rollins
FAT and Skinny were as inseparable as the Siamese twins. When Fat picked out a new suit, Skinny had to O. K. it before it was accepted. And if Skinny went to buy a box of tobacco, Fat was sure to be at his heels, and to advise him as to the brand. Friendly? I should say yes. They had Damon and Pythias lashed to a mast yelling for help.
--------- And in looks they were as different as two fellows could possibly be. Fat was not fat. He stood at least six feet three in his stockings and only weighed about a hundred and sixty-five. Skinny on the other hand was not skinny. He was just the opposite to Fat. When he and Fat were standing side by side, he came about up to Fat’s elbow, and he weighed considerably more than his faithful follower. Neither of them looked athletic, and when they trotted out, as pitcher and catcher respectively, on a foreign field, there were usually a few derisive laughs. But when they got through, there was a pained silence in the ranks of the enemy.
They had been united by one of “Skeet’s” marriages, and for a wonder it had turned out to perfection. From freshman to senior year there was never a serious break in their friendship. And yet never a night went by without a Titanic struggle between them before they went to bed. But woe betide any one who insulted either of them. For they believed that in unity was strength, and no one ever cared to face the two of them a second time.
They took the same courses, and having disposed of the necessary majors and minors, were absorbing all the “culture” that Fine Arts and Sociology and other
erudite subjects could give them. They had plugged at least fifteen minutes for each exam and had been rewarded, not with golden keys, perhaps, but with at least satisfactory marks. For as Skinny said, “We ought to leave the high marks to the fellows who really need them.”
With the last exam past, came the thirst for relaxation. And it was not hard for Fat to persuade Skinny that cold, reserved Boston would be grateful for the infusion of some new blood.
So Wednesday morning found them perched beside Henry, smiling scornfully at the more unfortunate youths who had come back.
“Believe me, kid, there’s going to be some class to this league. What’ll we do tonight? Go to some show? We’ll have dinner at the Harwood; say, I guess it won’t seem good to be sitting down to a civilized meal again. This com-flake diet never did appeal to me, and I thought I was doomed to it for keeps, till the old man sent me that check,” and Skinny carefully produced his cigarette case and lighted up.
“I know what I’m going to order first thing. One of those big oyster cocktails, and a planked steak, and well, let me see, what comes next?” and Fat also brought out a case which matched Skinny’s in every detail.
There was the usual motley crowd in the smoking car of the down river train. Loggers from the north country in their mackinaws and larrigans, painfully smoking malodorous cigars, were sitting beside sleek clothing drummers from New York. The air was heavy with the intermingled smells that are an invariable accompaniment of a through train. French-Canadian patois was mixed with the choicest eloquence of the East Side. . A .
“Nix on this for mine, Fat. I can’t stand this. Ana the day coach will be full of howling babies. And take it from me, a nice baby is all right, but these squalling Canuck kids have certainly got my goat. Anyway, we might as well be sports, y’know, and get a Pullman seat. That all right?”
“Sure, go ahead and get them and I’ll look out for the bags. We’ll eat on the train, too.”
For a wonder the Montreal train was in when they arrived at the Junction, and Skinny hastened in to the ticket window for his tickets.
“Two parlor car checks to Boston, please?”
The aged derelict behind the grating, after much fumbling and loss of time, at length succeeded in finding the correct tickets, and Skinny picked up his change and started for the train.
He took one heedless step, and then, covered with confusion, attempted to apologize for the extremely awkward way in which he had bumped into the undeniably pretty girl in front of him.
From her black fur hat to the black fur coat and the neat tan shoes there could be no question that she knew how to dress well and strikingly, and as she turned toward the window even the most hardened critic of feminine beauty would have been at a loss to pick any flaws in her features and complexion. And certainly Skinny was not a hard judge.
He walked out to the car in a daze, and even Fat’s urgent summons to “make it fast” did not arouse him. Mechanically he handed the checks to the porter and pulled off his overcoat.
“Well, what hit you? You look as if you’d lost your best friend. Come on, look alive, show signs of intelligence and tell me what the trouble is,” and Fat began to look nervous himself.
“I want a smoke. Come down to the smoking room a minute,” was the only response from Skinny.
“All right, but come out of the fog and explain yourself. Do you think I’ve thrown you down, that you won’t loosen up a little,” and Fat with some energy threw himself into a chair.
“Not a bit of it, but I saw a queen in the station. Say, she has them all backed off the boards. Why, that gang of skirts last Prom looked like a bunch of chorines beside this girl. I wonder where she’s going?
Gee, I’d like to meet her. And what do you know, I bumped into her when I left the window,” and Skinny was off again in a trance.
“What did she look like?” asked Fat with some interest.
“I don’t know. She’s tall and you ought to see the clothes. All fur and silk. Believe me, she’s there. I couldn’t see her face very well, on account of the hat she had. One of those dipper things, you know. And you ought to see the eyes. I’m not kidding you. She can have me.”
“Aw! you make me tired. Every girl you see, you rave about in the same old way. They’re all alike. I know. Look how that Smith girl threw me down after Prom last year. And I thought I made an awful hit with her. You’d better forget it. You’ll never see her again, so what does it get you to dream on like this?” and Fat smiled from the height of his superior experience.
“Well, go ahead. I don’t care, but I wish you had seen her and you’d believe me. Just because I saw her and you didn’t is no reason for not believing me. You’re sore because I slipped it over on you,” said Skinny, and he subsided into a grouchy quiet.
“I’m going back to my seat,” announced Fat presently, “Coming?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I’d like to see her again at that,” answered Skinny, casting his half-smoked cigarette aside.
With Fat leading the way they started toward their seats. Fat pushed the door aside and took one step, when a firm hand grasped his collar and dragged him back into the narrow corridor. “There she is, right opposite us. Look, you unbeliever, and if you don’t fall for her the same way I did, I’ll eat my hat. Do you think I’m in my right mind,” said Skinny, excitedly, “or am I foolish?”
“Say, there is some class to her, I’ll admit,” responded Fat with rather more enthusiasm than he had shown before.
“How in time are we going to meet her? She isn’t the kind that you can pick up in Leb.” mused Skinny.
“I don’t know. Let’s go down and see what develops.”
“Oh, wait a minute. Let’s dope this thing out. Now, you go down and sit there in your seat and don’t try to start anything. I have a scheme. Don’t ask any questions, but beat it.”
Obediently, Fat marched down the aisle, and hastily took his seat while his room-mate was casting aside plan after plan. Canaan and Potter Place were passed before he finally gave up in despair and disconsolately strolled back into the car.
What he saw made him speechless. There, in the next chair to the girl, and busily talking to her, was Fat. And he had been cooped up in the smoking-compartment all the while. To think that his room-mate should get ahead of him. What right had he to be talking to her? He had not seen her first. Stiffly he strode on, and turned his back to the unconscious pair. What he heard made him all the more angry. What wouldn’t he do to Fat when they were alone? A fellow who would do what Fat had done was not to be trusted. Certainly not.
He heard Fat’s well-known voice singing loud the praises of the college. He heard the answering voice in reply. He heard her ask a question. And he heard the answer. “Yes, he is rather blind at times. But he means well. It was only carelessness on his part. He told me that he was terribly sorry.”
What Fat was talking about, was all too plain to him. Would this ever stop? He began to get out his time-tables to see if he could get back that same afternoon. Just then he felt Fat’s hand on his shoulder and Fat’s voice mumbling an introduction. Dimly he heard “Miss Ashmont,” and a conventional response in a voice that exactly suited that lady’s appearance.
Miss Ashmont, this is my room-mate. I thought he’d show up before long.” And he had been hanging
around for at least a half hour waiting for recognition! “Where were you?”
“I-I was studying a little. You see,” and then he stopped as he felt Fat’s gloating smile upon him.
“It must be a beastly bore to have to study so much, Mr. Morton. Do you have much time for recreation?” asked Miss Ashmont, in a solicitous tone.
He looked at Fat. There was no hiding of the broad grin on his face. Of course he had coached the girl on what to say to him. Would there be war? There certainly would.
The stentorian voice of the porter broke in. “Last call for lunch in the dining car!” Skinny looked at Fat. Would he take a chance? There was no need to appeal to Fat. That bold youth had already been planning his campaign.
“Of course it’s rather unconventional, Miss Ashmont, but you know how seldom we emerge into civilization, and so perhaps you will pardon me in asking you to lunch with me?”
“Why, really, it is hardly the proper thing, is it?” objected the girl.
“I realize your position, but still, it’s our only chance,” and Fat smiled encouragingly.
“I’ll admit that I am hungry, and—Yes, Mr. Ump-steadt, I will.”
Fat turned in an elaborately unconcerned manner to Skinny, “You’ll come too, won’t you, Harold?”
Skinny simply glared. To be treated in this manner was bad enough, but to be called “Harold” was the final touch. Why had he been given that name of all others, when he hated it above any?
“Sure, I’ll come,” he answered, and the three proceeded to the diner. They were all hungry, and there was little on the bill of fare that was not sampled. Of course, there was the usual fuss about paying the bill, but Fat insisted that he do it. He gave the rest of the ten-dollar bill to the waiter.
The shades of the winter afternoon had fallen be
fore they reached Boston, and all the way Skinny had been all but ignored in the lively conversation that the other two maintained. His feelings can not be described. They were too profound for words.
The long train drew slowly into the yards before there was any move to pick up coats and bags.
“May I hope to see you again?” Fat said.
“I hardly think so, still, one never knows,” answered Miss Ashmont.
“May I look after your trunk?” Skinny managed to murmur.
Miss Ashmont seemed amused. “No, I think I can manage to attend to it. Here is a baggage man now. If you would be so kind as to call him here.”
Skinny, with the joy of service in his heart, hastened to obey the behest of his goddess.
“Yes, Miss, we can have those trunks up tonight. The Beacon Theatre, you said?”
Skinny looked at Fat, and Fat looked mildly astonished. He turned to his awe-struck companion. “Hustle up,and get hold of a taxi, will you? She’s going up to the Belmont, too. And I told her we might as well go together.”
The still more astonished Skinny once more set off to follow out the commands of his superiors.
On the way to the hotel, Skinny was relegated to the folding seat, while the other two put in a busy fifteen minutes.
This time it was Skinny that paid the bill, and he at once seemed to swell with importance to think that at last he had made some headway towards attaining the position of the favored Fat.
Once in the hotel, Miss Ashmont turned with a decisive word of farewell. “I suppose you boys must realize by this time that I have accepted far too much from you, and this must be the last. And you probably know that I am an actress. The least that I can do in return for your kindnesses, is to ask you to be my guests at the first performance next Monday night. I will have
seats reserved for you at the box-office. Good-by, and thank you very much.”
She entered the elevator and was gone. The two men looked long and hard at each other.
“Guess I’m not there when it comes to helping along lone females, huh, Harold?” was Fat’s first comment.
“Yes, you big bum, do you know what you did? You made me feel like murdering you. There I was her first acquaintance—”
“Her first acquaintance! Just because you were clumsy enough to bump into her, you call yourself an acquaintance. Why, my boy, you don’t know the first rudiments of this social game. ’
“Well, how did you manage to become acquainted? You call yourself a gentleman.”
“Never mind that. I was introduced to her.”
“Introduced to her? By whom?”
“That’s all right. Wait till Monday night. And after the show we’ll probably go to the Touraine to supper. Maybe she will get some of her company to go with you.”
The last statement left Skinny speechless.
Monday came, and Fat and Skinny, after spending at least two hours in getting into the dress suits that had been hastily sent for, at length summoned a taxi and left for the theater.
According to the bill-boards the attraction at the Beacon was “Mr. Justin Aiding, in the London Musical Success, ‘The Winter Widows’.” “I suppose Miss Ash-mont is the leading lady, Fat. Say, I guess there won t be some sore heads in the old town when the boys hear of this?” said Skinny, who by this time had recovered from his late grouch. - „
“Are there some tickets here for Mr. Umpsteadtr he asked the box-office man.
“Mr. Humphrey? No.”
“No, Umpsteadt, U-m-p-s-t-e-a-d-t-.”
“I guess these are the ones.”
Carelessly they sauntered off. “Hurry up, Fat, let’s see what they are.”
“Look here, what do you know about this? Box A. I guess that’s poor. Well, let’s go in. We’ll look them over when the crowd comes in.
They carefully sat down in the front of the box, directly over the stage. In their confusion they had forgotten to procure a program and the first act was on before they managed to get one from an usher. Feverishly they ran over it, but the opening chorus broke in upon their search. Then she appeared. Expectantly she looked toward the box.
“Say, she’s better than ever. I wonder if the old man would let me go to work?” and Fat joined in the applause that greeted her song.
“Wonder who she is in the show?” inquired Skinny. “Let me see that program, will you?”
“Why, she isn’t in here. Wait a minute—what the devil! Look! Oh! Fat, what a beautiful pair of suckers we are.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Look at this, if you don’t believe me.”
Fat read, with gradually opening eyes: “Mr. Justin Aiding, The Famous Female Impersonator, Will Appear as Miss Lena Ashmont.”
Silently, Fat reached for his overcoat. “Come on, let’s beat it. I feel the need of some nourishment.”
“Mr. Umpsteadt? A note for you,” and the usher vanished as noiselessly as he had appeared.
“Well, read it. Don’t sit there like a boob,” Skinny whispered.
Fat opened the note, and read:
“Dear Mr. Umpsteadt:
“You must by this time be calling me all the names in a college man’s vocabulary, and being a college man myself, I appreciate the breadth of language that is possible.
“I was taking advantage of you and Mr. Morton, I admit, but it was too good an opportunity to miss.
“I should like to have you both join me in a little supper after the performance. Just speak to the head usher and he will take you back.
“As a recompense for your mistake about my sex, I have asked Miss Northern and two others of the company to be with us.
“Sincerely yours,
“Justin Aiding”
“Will we go? Well, rather! Come on, show some signs of life! This act’s over,” and Fat was half way up the aisle, waving feverishly to the usher.
THE CITIZEN
By Forrest C. Blood
THE heavy gilded sign of the North American Paper Company looked down ominously on Roland Bishop, as he ascended the steps to the office of that immense factory. It was an hour before he was admitted to the presence of a short, withered person who bent over a paper-strewn desk.
The little man turned a thin, wiry ---------face toward the stranger, and then went back to his scrutiny of the papers before him. Apparently he was satisfied that Bishop could wait awhile longer. It was five minutes before he spoke, and then he did not leave off his cat-like scrutiny of his papers: “What do you want?”
“I am looking for work.”
“Are you a paper maker?” the little man squeaked, without taking his eyes from his work.
“No, sir, I am a brass worker, but I assure you I could-”
“We have no use for you!” the man at the desk interrupted. “We can’t afford to break in green hands—” and he continued his work.
When Bishop closed the door behind him, there was discouragement in his young face, and a stoop to his boyish shoulders. He had borne up under a hundred curt and unsympathetic dismissals, but something in this one had stunned him.
“We have no use for you! We have no use for you!” He repeated the words to himself, as if trying to weigh them in his dazed mind. The stone-cutters had told him they were sorry, but their union prevented them from taking him in. The shoe-makers pitied him,
but the union, their strength, the society that guaranteed humanity and justice to the working man, barred him. The glass-blowers, the printers, the book-binders were powerless to help him on account of their unions. This world of work was all there was in life for him, and it had repeated many times that it had no use for him.
God in heaven now seemed far off to his aching heart. He fell to asking himself whether He was saying, “I have no use for you.” In spite of his numerous failures, he told himself that he had not lost faith. His mother had taught him that God was always his friend. Bishop loved his mother, and perhaps for her sweet memory he tried now to believe in Him. She had been the only beam of light that had come to his cheerless life the last two months. But now he heard only the world clamoring, “I have no use for you,” and he forgot his mother and his God.
It was night. A heavy chilling mist penetrated thick and thin clothing. Bishop’s clothes were thin and torn, and the cold water leaked into his shoes as he splashed heedlesly through the muddy pools in the middle of the sidewalk. The atmosphere seemed to be saying, “I have no use for you.” At least, he believed it did, and thought of nothing else.
“Why should I bother the world with my presence?” he asked. “No one needs me. Am I really a part of this world?”
The thought of suicide came to his mind, but he flung it from him.
“I am not afraid of life,” he rebelled. “It is only that the world does not need me. I cannot murder myself. Life is the gift of God, to be taken by Him.” A sudden light of determination flashed into his eyes. “I am no coward. All the world asks me to do is to get out of its way. I’ll do it.”
The next week Bishop entered a store on the Mexican frontier, where he purchased a few supplies with the last money he had. Then he pushed on into the
mountains. Serious determination stamped the young face. Two weeks he traveled through trackless forests, until he believed the world had been left far enough behind. In a sunny valley he built his hut.
During this time the world went on. No one took note of his departure; no one missed him; no one needed him. Years passed; unions dictated to manufacturers, and manufacturers increased prices. But the unions patted themselves on the back, saying they had shortened the working - hours, had increased the workingman’s wages, had defended their trades against the hordes of foreign laborers,—and all for a quarter a week. Meantime the manufacturer had increased his prices to meet the higher cost of labor, had stifled competition, had reaped immense profits, and had gambled with the poor man’s sustenance.
The man that the world had cast out knew nothing of this. A panic came and passed, leaving thousands of cold, white lumps of clay in its wake—but he suffered only from loneliness. He longed for the world of strife he believed shut off from him. He dreamed of the happiness of its endless struggle. But when he yearned most, the old, fierce light of determination burned strongest.
Thirty years he faced the hardships of this voluntary exile. Three years of suffering had left their traces in the drawn lines of his wrinkled face, in the stoop of his broad shoulders. The only sounds he knew were the sighing of the trees, the dash of the waterfalls, the howl of the beasts, and the thousand rapacious shrieks of the birds of prey.
One cold evening a sharp rap shook the door of his hut. He seized an old axe, and crouched in a corner. The door shook under a heavier knock. The thought that a human being was on the other side forced itself upon him. But it never occurred to him to bid the visitor enter, or to warn him away. He stood motionless as the door creaked open, and slunk behind it as a tall young man in a hunting suit stepped in. The stranger
looked about the apparently empty room and stepped to the welcome blaze on the hearth. “Well here’s luck,” he remarked cheerily to himself. “The occupant of this hut can’t be very long away. Just built the fire. Well, this is luck!” and his cheer filled the little room.
In the comer, crouching in the dim, flickering light, Bishop watched his unbidden guest. The stranger’s youth and happiness may have penetrated his hard, bitter heart, but if it did, it only kindled a demoniac fire. He studied the young man. Yes, he was one of those who had driven him from the world. His strong, substantial clothing, his heavy tan boots, the strength and freedom of his carriage, the joy of life and the many other luxuries of living to which only they, the true citizens, are heir, proclaimed him of the other sphere. And they had driven Bishop from their world, as now this unsuspecting visitor was turning the huddled wretch behind him into an enraged crouching beast. And now from the comer came this new thing; fire leapt in his eyes; his parched and ragged lips curled away from dull yellow teeth. He made no sound as he neared his prey, until suddenly he sprang upon his back. The unexpected and terrific assault hurled the hunter to his knees .... then he struggled up and tore at the long, sinuous fingers that crushed his throat. But the fiendish vise only tightened, and the great, strong form swayed, tottered backwards, and would have fallen. But the demon behind him clung on with superhuman strength. He held the inert form close to him for an instant more and then let it fall in a quivering heap on the floor.
Like some wild beast Bishop crouched by his victim and watched the color creep back into the upturned face. Once his terrible, bony fingers sought the swollen throat as if to crush out the returning life. With feeble gasps consciousness returned and the hunter opened his eyes and looked about. At his feet squatted a weird creature, staring into his eyes. Long, torn, silvery hair fell over his bent shoulders, and his dirty yellow beard
concealed part of his rough, shaggy breast. His assailant’s eyes penetrated the darkness, continually shifting, and never meeting his glance. Yet their still, cold glare sent a shiver through him, like the glare of a panther in the night.
And now the hunter spoke. “I am a friend. I was looking for a cave to sleep in tonight when I saw your light. I was hungry and tired, but I meant no harm.” His voice rattled through the deathly stillness and startled him. But Bishop did not move, nor did he seem to hear. “Do you speak English?” the hunter asked doubtfully.
“Yes, I was an American ... I was—once.” “And you are a Mexican now in your politics?” “I’m nothing. These forests are my country; this cabin my palace. Thirty years ago I belonged to that republic men boasted as the home of the free, the home of equality. The city . . . they called it ‘the Cradle of Liberty’, I believe. They cast me out. Wherever I looked for work they told me they had no use for me. If I sat down on. a doorstep a burly officer drove me on. If I fell asleep in a back alley they locked me up. And what was my crime against society? Is an honest man, because he is poor, ragged, and starved, a criminal? Every day I saw filing out of the factories hundreds of good union men. Here I saw a moral wreck, there a thief, this man sold his vote, that one cheated his employer. I knew the political grafters, the corrupters of mankind. I saw last decade’s jailbirds honored by society. These men represented the republic. And now they will come to drive me from my exile, to torture me. I tried to kill you a few minutes ago. I am sorry I didn’t. Once a bear pushed that door open; now you are sitting on his skin.”
The hunter had thrown aside his heavy coat, and was listening intently. The deep emotion that shook the old man shook him, too.
“Then you left the world because you were in hard luck?”
“Left the world!” the man repeated bitterly. “Left it!—they drove me from it.”
“And you ran away like a coward,” the young man added, half to himself.
“You lie!”
“You are a living suicide. Did God put you on earth to hide yourself in a corner?”
The old face grew even whiter than the hoary locks, and the thin blue lips trembled.
“My God!” he burst forth. “I have never forgotten Him. I have prayed for help; I worked and struggled against it all,—but the world trampled me down until I knew there was no hope left. What else could I have done?”
“ ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.’ But you were cast down and destroyed, you were perplexed and in despair. That noble man had courage; and trouble, perplexity, and persecution brought it out. Anyone can be strong and courageous as long as the world runs smoothly; but he shows his true self in time of persecution. Then, you were a coward.”
“You lie!” The words lacked their former defiance. They were the fierce expression of his baffled reasoning.
“You say I lie. Is that the way you treated the world you left, the world I come from? You thought you had failed, and cowered when fortune struck hard. How did you know you were not needed—that you were of no use in the world? If you had not been a coward you would have seen your duty. Yet you have not failed. We need you back there, and I shall send you back. Do you think I pity you? I forget that you tried to kill me, and I forgive, but I cannot pity a coward.”
Nothing but the dull flickering shadows on the wall seemed alive in the hut. Both men sat motionless before the fire. The glowing ashes cast a dull red over the pallor on the quivering face of the old man. He clenched his bony hands tightly.
Without any warning he hurled himself upon the young hunter and clutched his swollen throat. The two struggled fiercely, rolling over and over. The young man tore at the fingers at his neck. But the long nails had sunk in too deep to yield easily. The red blood wet his fingers, and they slipped hopelessly. In his terror he struck the old man in the face. With this tremendous effort he fainted.
Something was crushing his breast. As his head cleared he saw across him the filthy body of his assailant. A new terror seized him. With a strength bom of fear he hurled the filthy thing from him. It fell on its face by the hearth and one hand rolled into the coals. Now the hunter crawled to the hearth. The old man was dead.
But in his open eyes there was still a tear.
THE LITTLE MOTHER
By H.C.
DRESSED in a soft, clinging grey gown, the Little Mother sat silently gazing at the opened book before her. But she did not read. Her eyes raised continually to a small picture in a silver frame that stood on the table beside her. It was the picture of a small boy, with large, lustrous eyes, and thin, sunken cheeks. He seemed to smile sadly across at her, as she gazed. Then she glanced at the clock. “In an an hour,” she murmured. “In an hour.” She sighed heavily. “If God is only merciful—”
* * * * *
Along the cold, damp street, walked a tall handsome man and a small boy, with spindly legs, who trotted at the man’s side, clinging desperately to his hand.
All at once they turned in at the gate of a large building, climbed the steps, and rang the bell. A woman in a blue and white uniform, and white apron and cap, let them in.
“You are to go right upstairs,” she said, in a cold, harsh voice. “The Doctor has been delayed. We expect him at any moment.”
The two turned and entered the elevator, slowly. The pale face of the Boy had flushed at the words of the woman, and his large eyes looked heavy and frightened. As they rose to the top floor the Boy mechanically counted the landings. And their numbers kept pounding through his head. Two, three, four! Two, three— The elevator boy slammed the door open, and waited for the two to step out. The door made a jarring
sound, and grated unpleasantly. The sensitive nerves of the Boy tingled. He caught his breath. Two, three, four!
Another noiseless, white-uniformed person appeared.
“You may as well have the lad get ready. Leave his under-garments and stockings on. The Doctor will be here directly. I’ll be back in a few moments.”
Slowly the Man drew a small package from his pocket, undid the string, with seemingly stiff fingers. It was a pink string. The Boy noticed that. Two, three, four— Why did the Little Mother put on a pink string? Two, three— Probably because she knew his favorite color was pink. . . . The Man took off the paper wrapping, and drew forth a small pink flannel night-gown.
It took but a few seconds to draw off the little blouse and the knickerbocker trousers. The Boy slipped the pink nightie over his head, and thrust his arms through. He took off his shoes with trembling fingers. Then he sat by the window and waited.
* * * * *
The Little Mother still sat motionless; watching the hands of the persistent little clock tick, tick, tick, itself gradually through the long minutes.
“In half an hour,” she murmured, and clasped her hands convulsively together. And her lips seemed to move, as though she were praying. God is good. He would—He must give her back her Boy. In half an hour she would know. In half an hour he would be safe, or—
* * * * *
For a long time the pink form of the Boy sat huddled before the spotless window. Occasionally he shivered, and a few hot tears trickled down his cheeks, dropping unheeded on the folds of his flannel nightgown. The Man’s face was set and frowning; but there
was a great lump in his throat, and he drew his lips into a tight, hard line. The small room, with its bare, green tinted walls, seemed stifling, and he longed for a breath of real out-door air.
Two, three, four! The Boy’s head seemed to swim, and the window panes looked blurred. Yes, it was a pink string. Pink was such a lovely color. And it was so like her to think of a pink string. It just matched his little nightie, too. She always looked lovely in pink. Perhaps—
“The Doctor is here now and will be ready for you in a moment.” The Blue-uniformed Lady stepped in.
The Man looked up and nodded. At the sound of her voice the Boy turned with a startled cry. He put out one hand and clutched the Man’s strong arm, impulsively. Then he suddenly burst out in an agonized tone:
“No! No! Father, I can’t—I can’t! Don’t let them take me.” Dry sobs shook his whole frame. “Don’t let them touch me!”
Then the Man put his firm hand on the Boy’s head. “Hush, Boy,” he said. “Be a man. Remember the Little Mother. She wouldn’t want you to mind. You must, you know. It’s for the best.”
Almost immediately the Boy subsided, with a few hesitating sobs. The Man lifted the frail figure in his strong arms, and carried him into the great white room opposite.
Everywhere there was light. There was a huge sky-light in the ceiling, and on three sides of the room were enormous polished windows. A big glass table stood in the center of the room, directly under the skylight ; and near it was a white enameled stand, on which lay various pieces of glittering steel.
Beside the table stood two white-uniformed attendants. The Doctor stepped forth from behind a high, white muslin screen. He was dressed all in white, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, showing brawny fore-arms.
“Just put him here,” he ordered, pointing to a small couch against one wall. The Man laid the Boy gently down, still holding the thin hand in his firm grasp.
“Now, don’t be frightened, Boy,” said the Doctor, not unkindly; and he patted the small head encouragingly.
Suddenly the Blue-uniformed Lady stooped over the Boy, and moved something white before his face. The Boy gasped and choked; and he tightened his grasp on the Man’s hand.
“Remember the Little Mother,” whispered the Man, his face white and drawn.
The Blue-uniformed Lady continued the movements, passing nearer to the Boy’s face every time. Then all at once she placed the white cone over the lower half of his face, completely covering his nose and mouth. The Boy tried to struggle, but fell back immediately. He loosened his hold on the Man’s hand and relaxed in every muscle.
He seemed to have queer fancies. There was a brook rippling lazily somewhere and tall trees beckoned towards him with their drowsy branches. He thought that he was running, but his legs refused to move. A black cloud was coming towards him, and the trees swayed warningly. The wind sighed mournfully in the trees, and the idle brook lapped disconsolately against the stones that impeded its course. Someone seemed to be talking.......
The Doctor lifted the Boy gently, and laid him on the glass table. Then he turned to the Man. “You’d better go into the next room,” he said.
The Man shook his head. “I’ll stay,” was all he said, and clenched his nails into his palms until they stung with pain. Then the Doctor lifted something from the enameled stand that gleamed in the white light.
* * * * *
The Little Mother stood watching from the window. Her eyes travelled occasionally to the little clock that
ticked! ticked! ticked! away the long minutes. She closed her eyes and rested her arm against the window frame.
Then all at once the Man came. He stood on the threshold and waited. As she turned she hardly dared look at his face. Only a glance would decide it. She drew a deep breath. It was now, or—
“It’s all right. The Boy’s all right,” he said, giving a short laugh.
The Little Mother stepped forward. “Thank God!” she cried, and clasped her arms about the Man’s neck. Then the torrent of tears broke .
THE SAINT
By Henry B. Stevens
HE came from Bangor Theological Seminary, but we liked him, nevertheless. There was no particular halo over his head, yet when someone called him “The Saint”, everybody in Hellgate laughed, even the janitor, and the name stuck. His real name was Hezekiah Epaminon-das Orkins. For a time we wondered why he did not live in a private house, as —— was the habit of most of his kind, but he seemed to have a vague idea that there was as much chance to work for God in college as in the rest of the world, and after awhile we let it go at that. He had settled down in No. 15, at the other end of the corridor, and perhaps we should have resented it, if we had not, as Granders said, felt perfectly sure that he could not start an Epworth League meeting in Hellgate.
There were two distinguishing features about the Saint. The first one was his mustache. It was a real attainment to be able to cultivate one during the winter months—a sign of actual manhood. But to wear one all the year round, to be able to twirl the drooping ends of one even in Prom time—that was the height of virility. We used to go down to the Saint’s room occasionally and admire it audibly, whereat his long, sad face would flush red, and he would turn about seriously in his swivel chair. Then Shorty would point out that since his hair had been driven from the top of his head, it had, in obedience to the law of conservation of energy, taken refuge over his mouth.
“That explains it,” everybody would say in unison, and all file solemnly out.
He was mournful about it, but absolutely truthful.
Just then there was a faint knock at the door.
“Come in,” said the Saint, and in through the door walked a slight woman, with a pale, drawn face and a prim, black dress.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Doesn’t Robert Manders room here?”
We were all nonplussed except the Saint.
“Yes,” he answered, “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you,” she said, and complied. She had a low, sweet voice. “I am his mother. I don’t suppose I should walk into the dormitory like this, but, you know, he didn’t write me he had been sick until this week, and I was so worried, I couldn’t wait.”
The Saint introduced us very formally. Shorty went out to look for Eva; and the rest of us surreptitiously put away our pipes. Mrs. Manders was so bound up in the object of her visit that she was not even embarrassed.
“Tell me,” she said, “How was Robert’s illness caused? I never knew him to be taken that way before.”
“Why,” said the Saint cautiously, as if he were afraid of stepping into a pitfall, “the doctor claimed that it was overwork.”
He did not intend to give her our opinion—the Saint. He was nothing, if not truthful.
“Perhaps you would be more comfortable, Mrs. Manders,” he added, “if we should go over to the Inn and await Robert there.”
“Ohl” she sighed with relief, “that would be better. How can I thank you? I suppose you are all studying for the examinations,” as she turned to us. “I dread their effect on Robert after his illness, but he was always proficient in his lessons. I am sure he will do well in them. Don’t you think he will, Mr. Orkins?” and she scanned his face.
“Why, I sincerely hope so,” said the Saint, and with a good-by all around, they left the room.
The Saint was good-natured about this and other matters—good-natured, but always serious.
His second cause for distinction was that he roomed with Eva. It may be that in a less isolated community Eva would not have been noticed, but up there, where girls were as scarce as money, his full cheeks and large, trustful eyes impelled attention. We had a sort of heroine-worship for Eva, although he had by no means a feminine disposition.
The trouble started when Eva declared since he roomed with a man, it was time he became one himself. Being unable to raise a mustache, he did the next best thing. He descended upon Claremont, purchased a quart of whiskey, and under the adroit management of Granders afforded amusement for the whole midnight train.
“I have put away—hic—all childish things,” said Eva, as he clutched the dark-leather seat of the smoker, and Granders added that he put away a good many other things besides. Under the more sympathetic management of the Saint, Eva himself was put away for two weeks as a result. “A sort of fever,” said the doctor, “due probably to overwork.”
The Saint did not like this at all. He scanned the calendar, saw that examinations were almost upon us, and shook his head. He was, of course, right. By the time Eva was outdoors again, the midyears had started. By the time he was really awake, he had failed in French, and the Math exam was hanging above him, like a thunder-cloud in mid-summer.
The night before the exam we were huddled around the table in the Saint’s room smoking after a hearty dinner. Eva had gone out to study.
“What do you think are his chances?” Shorty asked.
“If you refer to Manders,” said the Saint in his precise way, “I can assure you that there is just an even possibility that he will pass the mathematics examination. If he does not, of course he cannot remain in college. His conditions are heavy.”
“What a brute the Saint can be!” said Shorty, as we looked at each other in amazement.
The morning found a fresh fall of snow that piled up in hugh banks alongside of the walks, and hurt your eyes with its white glare. Shorty and I were taking a history examination, and we walked down with Eva and the Saint. Eva was as white as the new-fallen snow, and his eyes were bloodshot. He had been studying all night. Nevertheless, he was voluble.
“When does your mother go back?” Shorty asked.
“Why, she leaves this morning,” replied Eva. “Leaves at 11.19. Confound it, Saint,” and he slapped him on his back, “I’ve got to get by this exam—got to, that’s all. I don’t want to go back home just because of that break two or three weeks ago.”
The Saint said nothing, and we went up stairs. A large number had already gathered, and the Registrar was flitting up and down the aisle, conferring with instructors, and waving white papers decisively. A youth relieved him of some of his cards and booklets, distributed them, and we were off.
My examination was not difficult; like most easy ones, however, it was long, and I wrote steadily for more than an hour. About half past ten I looked around. I was sitting right across the aisle from the Saint, and beyond him was Eva. Eva’s face was bloodless and drawn. He was evidently finding it hard to marshal his thoughts. Sweat had begun to appear upon his forehead, and he gazed anxiously straight ahead.
It must have been fifteen minutes later that I looked over again. This time I saw that the Saint was watching Eva, not merely glancing at him, but watching him intently, closely, and thinking at the same time. I could see a struggle and a quiver in his face. He turned and started to write again. Then he underlined something quickly, turned, and held his paper up to the full gaze of Eva. There was nothing stealthy about the movement—no covert glancing, only the one bold act. If the proctors had not been talking and laughing
in a group at the upper end of the hall, they could not but have seen. Eva’s face was transformed instantly. It was as if a key had been turned in the lock of his memory and the thoughts there all unloosed. The lines by his mouth relaxed, and he went to work with a vim.
I finished a little after eleven, and went up to the room. Five or six who had learned about it from Shorty had already gathered under the leadership of Gran-ders. I have never met anyone who loved a joke more than Granders.
“I do not understand this,” he said. “Do you mean to tell me that a minister of the Gospel, a minister of the Gospel has deliberately aided a mere beardless boy to crib? I dislike to use that vulgar word, gentlemen, but I repeat, to crib. Such an act must meet with the severest disapproval of this dormitory, and I move you that we reprimand Mr. Orkins at once.”
Everyone laughed, and single file we started for the Saint’s door. Shorty was first, because his height made him most imposing. As we hesitated in the corridor, we heard a tense undertone inside the room. Shorty turned the knob cautiously, and we looked in. There on his knees before the desk was the Saint, his lips moving in a quick, heedless prayer.
Shorty pulled back the door.
“You fellows will have to come some other time,” he said.
GIRLS
​
By David B. Kinne Jr
IIT has always seemed to me that the introduction of the serpent into the Garden of Eden must have been a device of Satan purely for Eve’s benefit. For there could have been no doubt in the mind of the worthy overlord of Hades as to Adam’s downfall. A man and a maid in a garden is a combination of circumstances which will inevitably lead to trouble— for the man, while Satan and the Girl are sure to have a most enjoyable occasion.
For it can hardly be denied that a Girl’s chief mission in life seems to be to cause man trouble, and then delude her victim into enjoying his sad predicament. This is evident from the very first. In the cradle of extreme youth, girls look little different from their future victims. Both are infinitesimally small, astoundingly red, and remarkably vociferous. But, mark you, even at that stage there is a difference. The male scion of the family, given a reasonable amount of health and temper, is bound to develop his lungs by a strenuous course in vocal exercises, varying in pitch and extent with the object of his desire, and the intensity with which he wants it. Girls, however, are even then far too subtle to resort to any such method of procuring indulgences. They cry, but that is as far as the similarity extends. For instead of attempting to show that they “want what they want when they want it” by lusty howls, in every instance they launch a feeble, quavering wail, which clutches at the heart and chokes the throat, until their hearers satisfy their every whimsy out of pure misery. One girl baby can cause more unhappiness with one plaintive semi-quaver, than a dozen boys, for all their whole-souled lung exercises. Hard is the lot of the man-child who was born twins with a girl. He may as well waive all his rights at the outset; his nose is broken at the start.
This method of attaining her will is followed by the Girl for some years. Man’s memory of girl-kind during early years
consists almost entirely of recollections of blackmail extorted by the daughter of Eve through copious floods of crocodile tears, until at last she had subjugated him to the point where the very lull before the storm of weeping was enough to bring him to her feet. At this stage, the merest hint of weeping, and the slightest suspicion of a whimper, is sufficient to separate the luckless man from his choicest possessions.
This strategic plan is, of course, only temporary; it is totally unfitted for continued use. It serves only to bridge the gap between the time when the girl is an ordinary looking female boy in dresses. It is impossible for man to remember how the Girl looked at the time when her machinations were instinctive and not the result of forethought. It is only through reconstructing her through evidence contributed by study of a small sister that he arrives at the conclusion that she was just pure, unadulterated eyes, always bright with a film of tears, ready to be shed at will.
Shortly thereafter man enjoys an existence undisturbed; a period of life untroubled by feminine visions. For a year or two he lives in himself, utterly oblivious of woman as a sex, disdainful of girls, tolerantly critical of a mother and a handful of female aunts, chiefly remarkable for the possession of cookies. And then, of a sudden, he awakes. No one knows less than himself where or why it happened, but his mind suddenly becomes obsessed with girls. He sees them everywhere; he looks for them where they are not in evidence. And, master of strategy that she is, the Girl changes her plan of attack in a thought’s time, and the battle of sex is on again.
From this time on, man comes into his heritage of real suffering. Smiles one day, frowns the next, the girl has him at the end of her finger, and of his own scattered wits. It is here that the survival of the Spartan blood shows in him. For not only does he bear his untold suffering, riot without some slight groans, it is true, but he searches for more, piles burden on burden, and makes his agony self-imposed. He is not content to be in love with one girl, or with half a dozen at different times, he must love them all, and all at once. The worse he is treated, the happier is he. For there is a certain exultation in acute pain. If his lady smiles, man is happy thereat. If he later finds, as is usually the case, that the smile was not intended for him, but was cast over his head at his rival across the room, he can at
least be deliciously unhappy. And in order to taste misery’s potion at the bitterest, youth invariably falls in love with a “girl” of many campaigns, of countless summers in the mountains, and at the shore, of innumerable victories over the most hardened masculine campaigner. Man’s first love is seldom many years shy of a certain age; thus he is as dough in her hands, plays page to her whims, expends his total allowance for a glance, and subsists upon dreams in the winter, when the summer’s romance is laid away in the brain’s garret, for her; in his heart’s innermost shrine, as he thinks.
Psychologists postulate that trouble is not only the test of character, but the creator of it. Thus it is, no doubt, that men have for aeons laid all their successes at the feet of a girl. It is not impossible to assume that mediocre men have not achieved because they have not loved—and been flouted. For in one love affair, even a happy one, there is enough of trouble to test a score of men. To the girl love is a science—learned by instinct and experience. No man has wits enough to learn the game of love by experience, and the instinct for it is totally lacking. Constant defeats have made it impossible for him to conceive of winning. He proposes with invariable trepidation, he is astounded beyond his wildest dreams if he is accepted. He considers himself above his kind in courage, for the very daring it took to propose. And yet, no doubt, a little woman of half his weight, but twice his sense, has done all the work of the avowal. He has won a victory, but such a victory as assures his existence in a state of worshipping and will-less bondage for the rest of his days.
Nor does the victory come easy or early. It is only after long series of rebuffs at the hands of the seasoned campaigners that man learns to attack citadels less strongly garrisoned. As man advances in years, his definition of the term Girl changes in inverse proportion. It takes a decade of defeats to bring him to the point where he can conceive of falling in love with a girl of his own age. This is a merciful dispensation of Providence, for had he not come through countless defeats before he met his mate, man would never have temerity or wisdom sufficient for the winning of her. Every man, like every dog, has his day with a girl. Let him seize it and his blissful subjection is forever arranged.
But the man who lets pass the time when he is mature enough to fall in love with a girl of his own age is halfway to ruin. The inexorable inverse proportion holds fast; as he advances in age he falls in love with blossoms of girlhood which are farther and farther from full bloom, until perhaps he reaches senility, and snatches a girl from her teens to be an old man’s darling for a few brief years. Or he may suffer a worse fate, and bow before the law until it is too late, and his loves are in pinafores. It is fortunate that heaven has arranged to snap the thread of life at three-score and ten; if man were permitted to abide on earth for a century he would be taking in marriage from the cradle.
It is fashionable in this age to discourse upon the “battle of the sexes.” It would be far wiser to call the downfall of man the slaughter of the innocents. From babyhood to marriage, and through it till the bitter end, girls rule the world, and the Girl rules her chosen man. Man may delude himself that he did the choosing, but it is a sop thrown to him by womankind to content him. Man proposes, but God’s instrument in disposing takes a familiar and indispensable form. Whom he loves, God chastiseth. He must love man, for He has in His wisdom set woman-kind over him to rule and torment him to the end of his days. And oh, but the pain is sweet!
TRAGEDY UNMASKED
By David B. Kinne Jr
BEING young, James Thornton believed adventure to be still alive and walking about the earth. When I tell you that he was himself ever upon the qui vive to meet it in its perambulations, I will not need to say that he was very young indeed. An awaited adventure, like a watched pot, never comes up to expectations, and all men of experience realize the truth of this fact. But James Thornton was not a man of experience, and he was indeed young — still in the college age. So he sought adventure in the highways and byways of the city in which he lived. Now ordinarily nothing would have happened to him. But in the case of James Thornton something did happen, and something so unlike the usual incidents in short stories that it will seem incredible enough to be the truth. And perhaps it is.
James Thornton, I have said, lived in a city. Adventure, to his youth, was conceivable only in woman’s guise. Now all the women that James Thornton knew were very, very respectable — decidedly so. Society would have termed them “hopelessly middle class.” James Thornton was not child enough to believe that adventure was to be found only in the personage of one of those chimerical beings called an “adventuress;” he would have been horrified by the thought. But he was perfectly sure that adventure never occurred to the mean of society—he must seek it out toward one extreme or the other of wealth and social position,
A very little reflection convinced him that it would never do to seek adventure at the upper level; such a course would be too likely to incur the unpleasant complications of give and take of offence, of the police court or the butler’s toe. So James Thornton decided to seek adventure in a stratum of society a little lower than his own. And thus employed he was on the day when adventure unmasked to him. '
He had stood on the corner underneath the arc-light for fully half an hour, timidly raising his hat to the girls who passed him with a sidelong glance, but nothing had thus far occurred. This was not, as might be expected, because the young women who had passed him had been outraged by his act. On the other hand, his failure to make the clandestine acquaintance of one of the several scores of girls who had passed him was due to a far different cause. It was not the custom of girls in that neighborhood to consider the homage of an unknown man insulting. In fact, it was quite according to their standard of living that a girl who was not often accosted by strange youths should feel dissatisfied with her personal
appearance. The reason that the girls who strolled past James Thornton's post failed to notice him was that he did not act according to the code. He should have tilted his straw hat to a perilous angle, dangled a cigarette from his mouth, and accosted the first girl he met with a greeting such as “What ho! chicken, whither away to roost?’’ accompanied by a copious exhalation of tobacco smoke in his object’s face. He would conformed with ethics and have secured what to all intents and purposes was an introduction. As it was, he was outside the pale — a “dead one.”
James Thornton did not know this; he did not know at all the rules of the game in which he was sitting. So girl after girl passed, fluttered him a look from under her eye-lids, and disappeared around the comer without a backward glance. His station was becoming irksome, and he was about to leave in disgust, when a girl appeared from a store half way up the block. James Thornton’s long wait had made him more courageous, so he sallied out to meet her. They met in the dusk, half way between two electric lights, beside a row of darkened shops.
“Good evening,” said James Thornton, and raised his hat.
The girl looked up quickly, and shot him an appraising glance. It started by being a cold glance, softened, and finally flickered into the ghost of a smile. He saw that she was a pretty girl, far better looking than those who had passed him by. So he counted himself among those who are fortunate, when the girl answered him.
“Hello,” she said.
The answer floored James Thornton. He didn’t quite know how to continue the conversation. So he said quite truthfully, “I have been waiting for you.”
The girl surveyed James Thornton again, and again she smiled the wisp of a smile.
“I don’t think that is quite possible,” she said, “for you don’t know me.”
Now the adventure was going as it should. So James Thornton replied in turn, “Oh, don’t say that. You see, I am sure that I know you, but—."
“You can’t remember my name,” the girl went on for him. “Well, you don’t know me, nor I you, and you had far better leave me alone—” James Thornton’s heart sank — “unless — you would like very much to stay,” she ended.
James Thornton made the necessary avowal of a desire to remain, and received permission to do so. Then the affair was at a standstill again.
“However,” remarked the girl, “my consent for .you to stay does not mean that I will remain in this one spot on the sidewalk for a much greater space of time.”
James Thornton apologized profusely, and found himself walking down the street with his pretty acquaintance, arm in arm, for all the world like any other of the countless couples that paraded past them. And the first
thing he knew they had walked through a gate, and were in one of th little oases in the midst of a desert of asphalt which the city had digni by the name of a park. It wasn’t very much of a park, hardly an acre or in spread, with some shop-worn grass, and a few weary trees, but th were benches in it, and it was moderately cool, and comparatively secluded. So James Thornton guided his companion to one of the benches, and they sat down together.
For a while they chatted as any other man and woman would do. Then James Thornton awoke with a start to the fact that he was not producing anything in the line of adventure.
“Do you know,” he said, “that you are awfully pretty?”
“Is that your usual remark under these circumstances ?” asked the girl.
“I never have been in precisely these circumstances,” answered James Thornton, truthfully.
“I might remark ‘that’s what they all say,’ ” said the girl, “but I won’t because you wouldn’t like it. I will pretend to believe you.”
“I want you to really believe me,” said James Thornton. “I really mean it. And I mean that you are very pretty, too.”
“Thank you. You’re nice,” replied his companion.
Then the conversation lagged again. James Thornton sat in silence, looking at the girl. Then he awoke again to the fact that he was seeking adventure. He took the girl’s hand. He had rather expected that it would be necessary to hold his capture. But he was mistaken. The hand lay limp in his. So he pressed adventure hard.
“Girl, I am going to kiss you,” he said.
“Don’t do it,” said the girl. “Don’t be like all the rest of them.”
“What rest of them?”
“O, you know what I mean. Every fellow wants to kiss a girl. And every girl lets him do it, some —or that’s what they tell me.”
“No girl as good looking as you are would be dependent upon hearsay. Never,” said James Thornton.
“Well, I am,” said the girl, and there was a note of finality in her voice.
“Then you won’t be any longer,” said he, and he kissed her.
Now John Thornton had expected to have his face slapped, or to arouse a storm of teams, or a scream, or else — to be kissed in return. But this girl was different from any that he had met in his very limited experience. She just let him kiss her, she let him hold her in his arms, she let him do with her as he would. And because he was John Thornton, and very young, and remarkably decent for his day and age, he kissed her once or twice and then stopped.
“Well,” she said, “are you satisfied?”
John Thornton was mildly surprised, and somewhat hurt.
“Doesn’t that stir you at all ?” he asked.
“No it doesn’t. Why should it. They all do it,” said the girl, and again there was the tired note in her voice. “Most of them do it more, and some of them do it worse, that’s all.”
Now John Thornton, being young, foolish, and decent, was immediately indignant. “Do you mean to say that you let any man you meet kiss you,” he asked. “Do you mean to say that any stranger can kiss you ?”
“Why not?” said the girl. “You don’t suppose we get any pleasure out of it, do you? You don’t suppose I love you, do you? But what is a girl going to do?”
“Why don’t you marry?” he asked.
“Marry!” the girl laughed. “Would you marry me? Not you! Nor any of your class. And you might at least do me the credit to assume that I wouldn’t marry a man of what you probably consider in your heart my class. What are we going to do, we girls ? You educate us. Yes, you educate us. I know as much of books as you do. I can talk as well. And I know much more about the world than you do. But I’m a ‘working girl’. What but allow herself to become acquainted with any man she likes the appearance of, and let him kiss her in part payment of an enjoyable time? You said marry. You would’nt ask me to marry without love, would you?”
John Thornton was beginning to squirm. “Don’t you ever love any of the men that kiss you?” he asked.
“Sometimes we do. I never have, thank heaven! That’s ruin, isn't it? As long as you don’t love them you can draw the line at kisses. But if you fall in love — well, you didn’t say that you would be willing to marry me, did you?”
John Thornton felt more and more uncomfortable. He wasn’t accustomed to hearing of social problems first hand. “There’s something wrong somewhere,” he said, feeling like an ass for the brilliant remark and perception displayed in the remark.
“Yes, there’s something wrong. And I can tell you what it is. You spoke of education. Don’t you know that your class in society is fixed? You’re a college man, aren’t you? You have your friends in the class that you belong in. My people are poor. They have their friends in their own class. But what about their children? What do you do with them? You take them and educate them as well as you do your own children. You teach them to despise what they are accustomed to. You make them see all the faults in the rank of life from which they spring. You educate them to a point where their sensibilities revolt against the men of their own people, and they reach up for friends among what you are pleased to call gentlemen, and then what happens? Well, here are you, and here am I. You haven’t been remarkably gentle, have you.”
James Thornton was silent. He was thinking over the problem.
“And you are the gentlest I have met,” continued the girl. “Love and
education. One is destruction, the other ruin. You educate us to the point where we cannot love our equals, and then you prey on us. O, there’s use in talking about it. You know what would happen if I fell in love with one of you fellows. If you didn’t marry me, I would be ruined; if you did, both of us would be unhappy. On the other hand, if I marry where I can, do you think I will live in any seventh heaven ? Do you think a truckman is my ideal? Oh, I don’t suppose it’s your fault, or anybody’s. There’s just something wrong.”
“There's just something wrong,” echoed James Thornton, and then for a while there was silence. Finally the girl spoke again.
“I’m sorry I let you in for such a tirade,” she said. “It is my one weak side. If you get me started I can’t stop. And it’s all true. But it can’t be very pleasant for others to hear.”
“It isn’t very pleasant to hear, but I am glad I have heard it,” answered he.
After a time the girl spoke again. “It’s time for me to be going home,” she said. “I have to work, you know.” Then, not at all sarcastically she added, “You may kiss me goodnight, if you wish.”
John Thornton rose, and took her hand. He pressed it to his lips very lightly, and bowed with grace that had never been in him.
“I do wish,” he said.
* * * * *
John Thornton went straight home, thinking the girl’s words over. When he reached his house, her words were still in his head, “Something’s the matter.”
At just about the time that he reached his house the girl arrived at hers. But she had not gone straight home. She had gone two squares from where he had left her and stopped before a waiting limousine. She spoke to the chauffeur, who touched his cap respectfully, and carried her rapidly uptown. She alighted before a house far beyond John Thornton’s wildest dreams, and entered.
As she came through the door a woman addressed her.
“Myra,” she said, “where have you been at this time of night ? I have been on the point of telephoning for the police. I was so afraid something was the matter, when you didn’t come home.”
“Something the matter?” said the girl absent-mindedly. “Oh, no. I have just been down at the settlement house, carrying on a little research work in sociology. I guess there’s nothing the matter — with me.”
AN EVENING WITH PHIL O'FRENIS
By George Blanchard Phillips
THE historians gravely inform us that the heroes of Greece fell in love with each other. I think that is what many Dartmouth men do in absence of something better. Such do I consider my relationship to Phil O’Frenis, an old friend, with whom I became acquainted in Prep. school. True, we do not always agree. Indeed I remember that our first mutual admiration arose from a spirited two-man debate we held over the comparative excellence of Caesar and Cicero. At another time we argued nearly an hour as to whether or not there was any difference in sense between saying that a hill is steeper and straighter, and saying that it is steeper but straighter. The one thing . that Phil cannot stand is my antipathy against the Irish race—a stand which I confess is somewhat unreasonable, seeing that I have never met an individual member of it whom I disliked, but on the other hand am acquainted with many who please me excellently. Phil himself of course, is, as his name shows, an Irishman. He tells me things which he says he would not even whisper to any other person in the seven continents,— the seventh of course being Erin,—and I reciprocate. A few days ago I dropped in to see him after supper and found him working at his desk. He looked up and we exchanged our usual greeting. Then he turned back to his book for a few minutes. At last he slammed his work onto his desk and swung around in his desk-chair to face me.
“Got a stamp you want to sell?” he asked.
I had and tossed it down on the table.
He picked it up and started off on a monologue, “H’m. Two cents. All right. I can finish my letter now. But say,—I couldn’t send a letter to Italy with that.” There was an awkward pause, in which I was hunting through my pockets for another sticker or two. Then he started again. “Well, I don’t know anybody in Italy, so what do I care.”
Phil O’Frenis to a nicety! Running off talk to himself for the bystander’s benefit and going through the most absurd thought processes imaginable.
“How’s your freshman getting along?” I asked.
Phil and I are both tutoring freshmen this year and are having a contest to see which shall be the more effective.
“Flunking as usual,” he answered.
“Little’s not much better,” I acquiesed,
Phil was silent a moment, then broke out in disgust. “I don’t know how Little is, but Harvey seems to consider the only thing studying is, is to remember. He doesn’t have any conception of thinking at all!”
“Little’s a good deal that way too,” I admitted, “but I lay it mostly at the door of poor Prep. There are some academies and Prep. schools, which, apparently, have no right to bear the name except through the courtesy of tradition. All they do is to offer their students a chance to read through some rather valuable books, which are, however, not to any degree understood by the majority of the classes.”
“What are you going to do to stop it?” he replied.
I had in mind a vague idea of a freshman course in psychical education, which should attempt to teach the average man how to study and think, but the idea was so very dim that I did not try to express it.
“They might be permitted to take the courses that would interest them,” I suggested. “By the way, why don’t you take Physics this year, I remember it was your top-notch favorite in Corwin.”
“I know it,” he replied, “but I wanted to know things then. I am not so curious now.”
“Wrong and right,” I responded. “You are tired of learning about things, but your curiosity is greater. You want to know people. So do I. That is why you are taking History, and I, Philosophy.”
“That might work as far as studies are concerned,” he meditated, “but it doesn’t explain my other interests,—my mental relaxations.”
“You’ve hit the key-word yourself, mental relaxations,” T quickly interjected. “That’s why we trot off to Leb or the June to see the movies, whenever I can pull you away from your thesis on ‘The Growth of Venice.’ ”
“Say! While I think of it,” he interjected, “did you see that there were to be moving-picture facilities in Robinson ? That opportunity should not be neglected. There ought to be a committee, something like the College Club to see that we get a chance to see the best films at least once a week, say every Friday night,—films like ‘Quo Vadis?’ I mean.”
“They will have to be better critics than some of the boards we have now, if we don’t want to shock the Faculty’s morals,” I said.
“You’re right in that,” he ejaculated. “Look at our enterprising monthly. What did you think of the first number?”
I shook my head for him to proceed.
“I don’t care what you think about it,” he said, “I wouldn’t read it.”
“But you did,” I insisted.
He glared and continued, “I don’t think stories such as were in there should be written unless they teach some lesson, and as far as I can see—”
"Hold on!” I cried. “Calm yourself. Don’t blame the Benia too much. Its contributor was only imitating some very popular models. Robert Chambers is, of course, the most signal example. He evidently thinks his works have been duly honored by the Bar of Literary judgment of all time, because they have been passed favorably upon by the Court of Sensual Appeals.”
“Meaning?” he interrogated.
“Meaning,” I replied, “a large part of the modern American reading public.”
“What about horror stories?” he asked. “Aren’t they becoming rather too frequent?”
I was touched in a tender, point here, for my best freshman English theme had fallen into this class.
“I don’t think so,” I said slowly. “There has always been the horror story. Great writers have employed it. Look at Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ or ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’ ”
“Because great writers have written in that way,” he argued, “it does not prove that the stories are great. They have too many bad effects. Suppose this case : A nervous, excitable person has been reading ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’; he leaves it in that highest period of strain just before Sherlock Holmes re-enters. Suppose he is traversing a lonely road in a slight fog a few nights after, thinking of the story and perhaps starting at every bush. Suddenly the harsh ‘honk’ of an auto-horn sounds behind him, and he turns to see the two head-lights come over a hill, dimly through the fog. I fear the shock would be rather demoralizing.”
Here our conversation dropped off and fluttered about on nothings for a while, and finally came up in quite another place. Phil was talking.
“I hear that Alfred Noyes is over here again lecturing. I wonder if he is to come to Dartmouth. Of course it’s unnecessary to say that we want him again. His poems have an individuality that attracts one.”
The evening was so far advanced that I considered that if we were to differ in opinion at all, it must be soon; hence I took a little different view.
“There may be a little truth in what you say. Certainly I enjoy him. I think, however, that his seeming individuality in his poems comes from our having heard him read. Now my poetry would sound individual after you had heard me read.”
“Your poetry!” he snorted.
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s what I said.”
“Oh,” he laughed, softly, as a cat purrs by a rat-hole, “let’s hear some.”
I fell for the trap and started out.
‘There’s a magic in the moon-beams, There’s a wonder in the night, When you’re safe away from people, And your heart is beating right. For the cricket’s chirp reminds you Of the past’s onrushing sea, And the pine boughs’ gentle rustle, Hints of things that yet may be.
Then you see sweet visions rising From the waters as they flow; Hear desire from out the future, Calling tenderly and low.”
“There,” he said, soothingly, “that’ll do. Don’t tell people that you are crazy and they won’t lock you up. Next time you write, get a meter, a rhyme, and a subject; then perhaps you’ll do better. I might help you with rhyme and meter, though I confess I do not know about the plot and subject.”
"That’s easy,” I retorted, getting warmed up over his language. “Just sit still with your mind in an open state, and an idea will strike you before you know it. There are a thousand 'ideas all about us at any moment. Most of us don’t see them though; that’s the only trouble. For instance, did you even notice that as you go down the steps of College Hall at night, you cast three shadows: one to the .front, very dark; one to each side, rather pale? What a chance for a symbolism there. Then going to more serious matters. Is there subject matter for a tragedy imposing as those of Athens—existent today,—a national grief? I think there is. Look at the scourge of infantile paralysis sweeping away the young of the land. Picture the grief the tragedian could depict, as the future warriors and poets and maidens perish before they have ever lifted sword, written word of imagery, or received a lover’s kiss ’neath the summer stars. Why man! The death of Egypt’s first-born grows weak and pale beside of this.”
I paused for breath and Phil answered, “Very good, but can you give me a single story which could be used almost without changes—say even for an English theme?”
“I can,” I answered. “Just as I myself heard it. I can tell it in a few words. Of course you knew Mildred Chandler at Corwin?”
He nodded.
“She was very sick last summer with typhoid fever,” I continued, “so sick that the word went out she was dead. That night she had a dream, which she told to me just before I came back here. She seemed to be
standing on the shore of a little island, as the waves were coming in. Her sister was by her side and they seemed to be watching for a sail. At length they noticed that the waters were rising, and they started back along the land. But as they went away, the sea followed them. They retreated still faster, but the floods still kept at their heels. To trouble them yet more the ground became rough, and was covered with tangled vines. So at last they were clambering desperately over rocks and tree roots, while the waves came ever nearer and nearer. She had almost given up, when she came to the door of a palace, but when she turned to find her sister, she discovered that she was alone. Finally she entered through the gate-way, and found herself in the midst of all sorts of beautiful things. As she was trying to unlock a desk, she suddenly felt afraid, and turned to see that a door had opened, and a stranger had entered. It was a very beautiful girl of about her own age, but as pale as chalk. The new-comer seemed strangely familiar, but Mildred did not realize for a moment, that the other young lady was very, very like herself. She drew near the silent one, fearing, she knew not what, till at last their fingers touched. The hand that grasped here was as cold as death, and sent a strange thrill rushing the length of her body. Then she awoke, to see the doctor’s face in the green light of the sick-lamp, and dimly hear him say, ‘The fever has turned.’ ”
A WITLESS OPTIMIST
By Myron J. Files
YOU’RE not an optimist, Barron, you’re a genial idiot. An utter disregard for the safety of yourself and that of other people is not optimism; it is plain foolishness. No amount of ‘seeing the funny side of it’ will help matters any.” I was justly angry and Barron made me laugh in spite of myself.
“Well thrust! I guess that got me,” was his cheerful reply. “But really, old fellow, don’t you think you need a pill—usually you’re such a good-natured dog.” And he began to whistle gaily. My remonstrances were always thus futile.
Now as I look back upon our fatal cruise, I absolve myself of blame. Indeed, I should not have allowed him to accompany me, and yet the disaster which came upon him was only the working out of his likable, but imperfect character. He was the victim of his own heedlessness.
I prefer to travel light, but our trip was to be a long one, and even after the most stringent elimination of all but necessities, the load, for a canoe, was alarming. Then Barron arrived from the city with two duffle bags, heavy as lead, and filled with everything that an unscrupulous salesman thought “might be handy to have along.” I revolted. “Do you think this is an ocean liner?” I pro
tested. “You’ve got to chuck about three-fourths of that junk.”
“All right, dearie,” he replied cheerful as you please. He chucked a folding cot, a collapsible stool, and all but one of a small library of books, but in spite of my watchful eye he somehow smuggled aboard much of his condemned outfit.
When Stevens waved farewell from the float in front of his sporting camp, our craft sat very low in the water—lower than I care now to remember. The load was tremendous for a canoe.
We were not many miles upon our journey before I began to regret my temerity in setting forth with so utterly irresponsible a youth. From the first, I had felt it imperative to lay down a few rules of canoe conduct and to have him adhere strictly to them. But he could conform to no rules. He seemed incorrigibly fond of attacking the water with his paddle as if he were beating a carpet, and, more perilous in our over-laden canoe, of using the gunwale as a promenade deck. He was irrepressible—as gay as a vaudeville troupe. Good spirits are contagious and I was frequently compelled to laugh in spite of my justifiable anger. Often I quaked inwardly, like a “nervous pudding”, as Barron had called the
gelatine dessert that was served to us at our last civilized hostelry. I chided his jumping-jack antics and in answer he immediately snatched up my warning phrases and sang them to a popular tune, which began something like this,
“Look out! Look out! Look out, you’re rocking the boat”.
In spite of his carelessness, we were having an enjoyable time. Fishing—incidental to the real object of our expedition—was excellent, and consequently we travelled slowly. The second day found us only a few miles from Stevens’ camp, at the foot of Long Lake and in the capacious mouth of Bog Stream, the shores of which, for a few miles, are one treacherous, impenetrable mass of rank weeds, reeds, amphibious plants, and in the background, gloomy, bearded tamaracks.
In the center of this broad juncture of lake and stream there was, incongruously enough, a small, rocky island, thickly fringed on the lee side by the ugly, black heads of ledges, protruding from the water, large and small, sharp and blunt. The whole broken reef was like a model of some archipelago of volcanic islands.
Here the bass fishing was superior. Deep among these ledges were great, bowl-shaped cavities of clear, cool water. In places the bottom was of sand or white gravel, and in such spots big, black bass could be seen cruising sluggishly over the bottom, like manoeuvering submarines. In the late summer the black bass is a lazy fish. We soon found that
nothing short of our most tempting helgromites and frogs could lure the over-fed -sluggards.
Barron, as usual, could not keep decently quiet in the canoe, and as the fish are suspicious of shadowy flourishes between them and the sun, I disembarked on to one of the many ledges. Aly companion and the canoe I banished from the immediate vicinity -that I might smoke and fish undisturbed.
Barron drifted in nearer the shore, where he played at fishing. He sat idly toying with his rod and endeavoring to patch together the snatches of the song he had been humming at since the day before.
The weather looked distinctly threatening in spite of the glaring sun. I did not like the appearance of the sky nor the feel of the muggy air, which was cooling with an alarming rapidity. The heavy calmness had given place to contending breezes and a choppy water, which could be seen advancing upon the calm surface about us like a tidal wave in miniature across a mill pond. The danger from these squalls lies not in their fierceness, but in their swift unexpectedness. They leap upon one like a thug.
“Barron,” I called sharply, “take me off; smartly now—this looks nasty.”
He hastened to comply. In response to his stroke the canoe jumped in my direction. But this sort of craft is of difficult management to a single man, especially if he be in the bow, paddling backward.
Barron, seeing the awkwardness of his position, tossed his paddle to the stem and started hastily, to clamber after it. The craft careened violently and precipitated Barron headlong toward the stern. The canoe veered to the left and the squall of wind and water, sweeping around the head of the island, swung it yet more swiftly in that direction, as if the bow were fixed to a pivot. There was a crash—a grating and tearing against one of the semi-submerged ledges, and the canoe, rapidly filling, reared its stern gracefully in the air and slid with a farewell gurgle beneath the surface, like a lesser Titanic in collision with an iceberg.
Barron in his loose clothing swam floundering to shore, and sat there on the gravel. The squall subsided almost as suddenly as it came. Even at the distance separating us I could see Barron’s attempt at a grin.
“Captain, passengers, and crew escaped with but a ducking,” he announced.
I answered nothing. I did not know what to say. I was stunned at the catastrophe which had left us marooned here in this uncivilized country, on a bare .island, with no way of escape, a fishing rod and a tobacco pipe as means of sustenance. Evidently he did not realize the seriousness of the situation.
“I am sorry to report,” he continued, with mock solemnity, “that the cargo is a total loss.” And then, grinning openly, “What’s the trouble out there on the rock? Isn’t your wireless working?”
Barron’s joking nonchalance stung me to retort:
“Your devil-may-careness is damned out of place. If you’ll show me how we are to escape from here, I, too, will consider the situation a joke and laugh with you.”
“Why worry; Stevens’ camp isn’t more than five miles from here at the most.”
“Might as well be a hundred,” I replied. “He may not happen down Bog Stream for a month. After you’ve Robinson Crusoed for a while on this bleak island; you’ll laugh out of another side of your face. I’m not old, but you’re ten years younger. Besides, you’re green to this life, and whether or no it is just, your folks will hold me liable for your safety.”
This sobered him a bit, though by no means did it squelch his witless optimism. Probably I would have shared his cheerfulness had I not felt responsibility for the two of us, enhanced by his utter freedom from concern.
I stripped and rolled up my clothes in a tight bundle, with tobacco, matches, and pocket knick-knacks inside. Cautiously I let myself into the water and, holding the bundle dry above the surface with one arm, made an awkward, three-limb struggle for the island.
Barron evidently wanted to tease me further, but wisely refrained. The cool ducking had not a similar sedative influence on my then peppery temper. Once on shore, I dressed hastily and sat on my haunches beside Barron. I filled and
lit my pipe, took a few puffs, and then handed the little black comforter to my companion. And there we squatted, alternately puffing and passing the communal pipe to the squatter at our elbow, for all the world like just such another scene depicted in the Peace Pipe canto of Hiawatha.
When the pipe was done, we arose and set forth to explore our solitary confinement. We were a sorry pair of castaways, “sans food, sans hope, sans everything,” as Barron remarked, paraphrasing I don’t know whom. The water in his shoes sucked and sighed through the eyelets. It was a chill, melancholy sound, reminding one of raw, damp, blanketless nights; and noting the scanty driftwood and the scrawny scrub firs, I mentally observed that the nights might soon be fireless.
“If only ‘one touch of nature makes the whole world kin’,” observed Barron, “our friendship will be pretty solidly cemented before we escape this ‘beautiful isle of somewhere’.”
“Will you let up on that facetious stuff,” I begged. “I’m not in the mood for it. Looky here, do you realize that it’s near mealtime, that we have naught to eat but a few fish that I propose now to catch, and that when our scanty fuel and matches are gone we may actually starve?”
“I’ll admit,” he answered, “that you have made a very good point. However, chef, for dinner you may grill me a bass, Maitre d’Hotel, s’il vous plait. Merci, et au revoir. Je
vais—er—er—I’m going to do a little diving, to raise the Titanic or part of the cargo, at least.”
With that deliverance he laid aside his wet garments and swam out to a rock in the vicinity of our late disaster. From where I stood fishing off the shore I could watch him dive time and again only to come back to the rock, slap his body with his arms, chafe his legs, and try a new direction.
I managed to land three fish before he returned to shore. His expression showed his lack of success.
“Gad, but it’s cold toward the bottom. This sun feels good. I guess I’ll stretch out here and toast a bit.” Thus he rattled on.
After considerable searching I gathered enough sticks for a fire. I split open and prepared the bass, and cut out some green rods for spits. Soon the fish were sputtering and roasting in a most appetizing manner. Barron had a hungry eye in my direction.
“Sans salt,” I suggested.
“Sans salt is right,” he assented, “but, according to the latest reports from my stomach, distinctly edible.”
Barron dined from his fish as nonchalantly as if dessert were waiting. His disposition was as elastic as cheerful, and he adapted himself readily to this as to all situations.
“Funny,” he mumbled between mouthfuls, ‘I couldn’t find a trace of the old boat. Searched most of the bottom, too, though in some places it’s too deep, and everywhere down
there it’s so dam cold that a fellow can’t stay long.”
And a moment later he continued.
“Do you know it just struck me— and perhaps you’ve thought the same —that our situation here is—well— unique. Like one of those things you find in books, coming to men who really have things happen to them. You know, I’ve dwelt in the city and the studious cloister’s pale—I’ve never been in the real wilderness before, and now I’m here and something has really happened, just as I hoped it would, something that?—”
I interrupted with a groan. “Barron, Barron, punch yourself, wake up and talk sense or talk to yourself. Romance has its time and place but that’s neither now nor here. This is stern reality and Realism knocks the slats out of Romance every time.”
Barron, under these conditions, preferred to commune with himself. Arid so we frittered away the remainder of the day and part of the night in comparative silence, he romancing and pipe-dreaming with my pipe for company, and I all alone with my thoughts, which were too fast and tumultous to be despondent. A thousand schemes, vague and desperate, whirled in my head like confused dreams. And after long hours they were dreams, for at last sleep found me—I know not when or how.
The slat-knocking process went merrily on during the next few days, with Realism having very much the better of it. But Barron did not easily repudiate his fealty to Romance.
His continued cheerfulness was no end of wonder to me, since our scanty, indifferently prepared food and our lack of any beds at all, made his face say privation, even while his lips smiled.
It was on the fourth day after we were marooned that the sea of troubles which had overwhelmed at last reached flood tide. A fresh calamity may be welcome if it brings assurance that it is the last.
On awaking that morning we were both chilled to the marrow and achy in every joint. Barron swore drearily, but with most commendable moderation for so young a man in so dire a situation. He started a smile which was immediately lost in a tremendous yawn.
“Let’s get a drink,” he suggested. “My lips are dry and hard as a cracker.”
We stumbled down to the shore. The lake water was H2O—that was about all one could say of it; and the less said and thought about it, the easier it was to drink the insipid stuff.
Thus far I had not uttered a word since rising. I felt deathly sick in mind and body. I knew it was the fever.
“Why don’t you open your mouth and sing, birdie?” queried Barron. “You haven’t warbled once since this morn. S’matter—head hot ?”
My head was hot, but I thrust out my hand quickly to his own. It burned as fire. He brushed my hand aside.
“Come on, now,” he cried, “what are you doing? I’m all right.”
“Yes, you are all right,” I assented slowly; “I didn’t think you had the nerve-”
His fevered face darkened redly.
“And as an actor, Barron, you are the nonpareil,” I continued. “I believe you’re sicker than I am.”
“Well we’ll be starving if I don’t catch some breakfast,” he muttered nonchalantly. He grasped the rod and started off down the shore. I sat down to warm myself in the sun— firewood was too dear to use except for cooking.
After a long, aching time Barron returned, dragging his rod dispiritedly.
“Not a bite,” he barely whispered. “The place is fished out!”
And it was our last source of food. It was essentially a tragic announcement, yet I neither fainted nor cried out. I merely sat there and gazed dully at the toes of my shoe-packs.
“What are we to do?” asked Barron.
“From where I sit,” I answered, “there seems to be just this (indicating a fresh water clam on the beach) between us and—”
“And death,” he finished. “Which observation gives one a sort of clammy sensation. But I draw the line on the bivalve, after the way they poisoned us the other day. I prefer to just die, guiltless of gastronomic suicide.”
But I was too sick to care much what happened, or even to answer his sally. We withdrew to a grassy
spot and sat in the sun, a pleasing comfort after the raw dampness of the night.
We were famished, and had no prospect of securing food. Our situation could have been hardly more serious had we been adrift on a raft in the lonely ocean. I could not make myself think coherently. The fever had touched Barron in the head. He rattled on, gay as you please.
“Do you remember,” he cried, “that Mercutio boy, in Romeo and Juliet? How, when he was stabbed in a duel and was dying, he persisted in laughing and joking with his friends? Said he, ‘tomorrow I’ll be a grave man’ or something like that. How was that for a way to die, eh?”
“His pun was only less asinine than your remark about the clam,” I retorted.
Barron was quiet a moment and then continued solemnly, “You didn’t suppose I was comparing myself to Mercutio, did you? Why, Mercutio,” he cried, “was peerless! Leander, he was different. He was a fool. He swam the Hellespont,—to see a girl—think of it, man—to see a girl! If on the other shore there were a big juicy beefsteak—or a pot of hot coffee—or a piece of bread and butter—why any man would swim it—twice the distance—three times the distance—Say, man, I’ve got a girl, a corker, too—but tell me, what’s a girl?—any girl?—to a big hunk of bread with yellow butter on it?”
Barron’s voice had sunk into a jerky whine. His eyes, staring to
ward me, were wide open, but their sense seemed shut. I seized him by both arms and shook him. He pushed me backward. I staggered halfway to my feet—my knees trembled, my hot eyes blurred, I heard Barron laugh, it seemed far away; then all was darkness and oblivion.
I was recalled to life after a long time by a hot liquid strangling my dry throat. There were two men standing over me. They seemed very much like Stevens of the sporting camp and one of his guests. The latter had some clothes on his arm, which looked like Barron’s.
“Where is he?” asked Stevens eagerly, pointing to the clothes.
My throat refused to frame words.
“Barron, I mean,” he continued, thinking I did not understand.
I felt confused. I struggled to think, to remember.
“Do you know anything about this?” and Stevens exhibited the piece of bark which we had used as a plate for our cooked fish. On it was scrawled in charcoal:
“Old Top:
“I am swimming the Hellespont. “Barron”.
“The Hellespont—the Hellespont”. —In a terrible moment I remembered. I pointed a trembling finger across the waters to the bogs and the dreary tamaracks. Then for the second time in my life and in that day I fainted.
DORY-MATES
By Gilbert S. Pattillo
WITH increasing regularity, the long, gray waves rolled under the shapely hull of the Annie M. as she rested at weary anchor on the winter fishing grounds. A dozen dories, each containing two men, were scattered about her at distances varying from one to two miles,— much like a brood of baby spiders in a grassy jungle, ever ready to climb upon the back of their watchful mother at the first sign of danger.
In the dory farthest away from the vessel, Donald and Angus McDonald were slowly catching their capacity of big, slippery cod, while their frail boat rose and sank to the slow heave of the sea in a manner that in time would have distressed anyone but a bank fisherman, all of whom are quite used to such unsteadiness.
The sea, in spite of its assumed gentleness, was not in an ordinary mood; it had in its gray heart an air of deviltry that seemed, in some subtile fashion, to have affected the • Annie M. Her one-time dignity seemed to be forgotten, for she plunged and pulled at her anchor fretfully, holding her nose in high disdain above the too familiar waves. And if the schooner was troubled, imagine how badly the dories must behave, climbing and tumbling like
the merest chips, giving the men now a view of the vessel’s hull, and now a glimpse of her topmasts alone.
Angus and Donald were not brothers, nor even cousins, in spite of their common name, but they had been dorymates ever since they had first sailed together, and that was now several years since. As boys they had owned a rowboat together, in which they had paddled about the harbor at home, dreaming of the days when they, too, should board a ship, as their fathers had done before them, and sail off into the mystery of the sunrise and into the glory of such a life as their blood within them bade them love. No closer friends had ever left the home port; no dorymates of their age had braved so many adventures together. In every emergency that had yet surprised them they had been able to trust each other wholly, but now there had arisen an emergency which neither knew how to meet.
Bonds of friendship, of loyalty, welded by the braving of mutual danger, even of love of man for man, were now in danger of destruction; all because of a slip of a girl. Kate’s black eyes and rosy lips constituted a peril that they could not defy in the old way, shoulder to shoulder; they had reached the spot where a parting
must be made, however bitterly they dreaded it, for the instinct to love was in each of them stronger than all habit of friendship. Victory could be for but one alone; one of them must go down to defeat. Each had seen that inevitable result when first they realized that both were in love with the same girl, and although their hearts failed at the thought of separation, neither could deny the greater strength of the new attraction.
On this day they were unusually silent while they fished, for each was thinking of Kate. Mechanically and quite regularly they pulled the cod over the gunwale, rebaited, and then threw their lines overside again, while the fish they had caught flapped viciously in the glittering pile at the bottom of the dory. Neither man noticed the storm clouds brewing in the north, neither felt the subtile increase of the cold, for their thoughts of Kate and of each other occupied their minds.
Then from Donald, as he slatted a heavy fish into the growing mass of fins and gaping mouths, “I wouldn’t love her if I could help it, Angus boy.”
Startled by this sudden, oral expression of the idea his slower mind had been trying for hours to put into words, Angus looked up gratefully, but still he said nothing. Instead of speaking, he once more baited his hooks and threw them into the sea. Then as he held the lines against the gunwale with his knee, he beat his arms across his chest to take out
the growing stiffness of the cold. Finally stopping his exercise, yet not daring to look at Donald, he spoke, “Nor I,” he said simply, “ it means the end between you—and me.” Then he turned his attention once more to his fishing.
The tension between the two was hardly lessened by these words that meant so much to both of them. Silence alone seemed to help them, and, except for the flopping of the fish and the noise of the sea, silence profound settled about them. The gray-green waves were beginning to froth ever so slightly along their curling lips; the north wind increased in power, and the snow clouds drew nearer all unnoticed.
“And yet—,” said Angus.
Again, silence: only the noise of cruel water slapping against the dory; only the ever growing moan of the wind; ever the sickening rise and fall upon the waves.
“And yet?” Donald questioned.
Angus sat up very straight, looking fairly at Donald. In his eyes burned a light that was part love and part folly, but with no hint of jealousy or hate. His hugh fists, convulsively clenched, were pulled close to his sides; tears started in his eyes. “And yet, she’s mine!” his voice thrilled with the depth of his emotion, “she’s mine, Donald! Nor you nor no man can take her away from me!—Donald!” He faltered for a moment, but recovering, “Not even God dares take her away from me!” He remained tensely upright, staring at his friend, knowing not what to
expect from him. If he was prepared for an outburst of anger, of passion equal to his own, he was disappointed. He was met with a calmness as deep and poignant with feeling as his own wild challenge had been. A voice answered so calmly that even above the sound of the waves and the increasing rush of the wind it carried perfectly.
“And I say,” said Donald, “that no one but God can take her away from me! No one but God,— or the sea!”
By this time, the men in the other dories, true to their homing instinct, were pulling for the parent ship. They had seen the storm clouds bearing down upon them, indeed, had seen them boil up from over the edge of the sea and warily had watched them for the last hour or more. Having seen, they knew the danger, they knew how impossible it was for a dory to weather such a smother as this storm promised to be, just as Donald or Angus would have known had they seen. Logically these two should have been the first to leave their fishing, for the greatest distance separated them from safety, and as they gave no signs of moving, the men in the other dories fell to surmising reasons for this delay. When the nearest men left, they called to Donald, but against the rising wind could not make themselves heard. Yet knowing the quality of seamanship possessed by the MacDonalds, and thinking that every moment would see them alive to their danger, they rowed for the Annie M.
As the distance to the vessel rapidly decreased, and their own safety grew constantly more assured, they viewed with genuine alarm the condition of their friends; so they rowed the faster that they might set the ship’s fog horn blowing full blast in warning.
Angus and Donald, facing each other in the deepening gloom with disaster threatening from the North while they were still unconscious of its approach, caught the faintest sigh of warning from the bellowing fog-horn, and on the moment were changed from despairing friends into able seamen. One glance at the increasing confusion of the waves that had changed from long swells to shorter, more vicious seas; one look at the storm clouds rolling towards them, was sufficient to turn them from the chasm of separation into which they had gazed so intently, and face them towards the more immediate peril. Instantly, in all their splendid strength they became alive.
“Up with the anchor, Angus!” Donald cried, and as he spoke he got out the oars, standing a moment fully erect to gauge distance and direction and figure- chances on reaching the Annie M. In his soul burned brightly the light of conquest, the light to dare and win in spite of Fate, the light that had glittered for centuries in the eyes of his ancestors since the day of the Vikings. Before Angus had the anchor well stowed and was able to help at the oars, Donald was bending forward and back in short
powerful strokes, while the wind buffeted them about and sought to turn them from their course.
They were scarcely under way when a flurry of snowflakes swept by them, leaving them once more in clear air. It was the warning, the whip lash that travelled and curled and stung in advance of the galloping storm, and both men knew it. Donald crouched on his knees, and, one by one, rapidly threw the great cod into the sea. No peace offering this; no wasting of a day’s hard toil in a moment of terror, but the act of a cool, calculating man who knew that in the coming struggle every ounce of his own and of his companion’s strength would be required to gain safety, and that every pound of fish counted against them. Then, in perfect, desperate rhythm the oars creaked at their work.
Like some menacing monster of old, the waves curled up about them, gnashing their bared, white fangs, as the wind momentarily lashed them into greater fury. And then, with more than half the distance still to be crossed, the snow, in blinding, smothering clouds, shut them in; shut out all sight of the vessel; left dimly visible only the dory itself and a narrow circle of the sea, crushing them in. The snow fought its way beneath their coats, down their necks; biting cold, the wind lashed the spray against them where it froze in little drops all over them, on their eyelids, on their mustaches, on their woolen mittens. Breathing was next to im
possible in the face of the wind and the clotting, choking flakes.
Angus began to gasp under the lash of the storm, the heart-breaking work and the terrific mental strain,-— the horrible thought of going in the wrong direction now that they must depend wholly on their instinct to guide them, yet neither flinched. They stuck to their task with swelling, burning muscles and lungs near bursting, knowing that such battering could not long be withstood.
Only once did either speak, and then Angus cried, “Oh, God!” but it was not a curse; it was a prayer from lips that seldom prayed. Had he wished to say more, he could not.
Then the very worst of the storm struck them, caught them sidewise in a blinding fury of wave and wind and snow, capsized them fairly into that awful chaos. The chance to prolong life a little longer by clinging to the dory was but one in a thousand, yet it came t® both of them, and both instinctively seized it. Each managed to grip the gunwale as he rose, and fortunately both were on the lee side of the now overturned dory which afforded them some miserable protection. Then began the terrific strain upon arms and shoulders of maintaining that precarious hold. Down they would sink with the waves rushing over their heads, down to the depths for an eternity, then up again as the wave crests lifted the dory, pulling on their arms as if to rip them from their sockets, or tear away their desperate fingers. If the
storm blew over soon and the Annie M. arrived in time, there was a chance that they might be saved, otherwise—.
Once when their heads were above water Donald asked,“Have you got good hold, Angus?”
Then the sea buried them again, and again the dory pulled their heads above the welter, and Angus answered, “Yes, but not for long.”
With the shrinking moment that saw them capsized once past, the storm began slowly to slacken. True, its moderation was hardly to be appreciated at first, but it was enough to give Donald new hope and new courage ; yet he knew they must soon freeze or drown. Their heads dipped under less and less frequently.
“Donald,” said Angus, “I was wrong; God does dare.”
“Hush, boy! Can you cling hold a bit longer? The storm is slackening.”
Angus shook his head as if he did not understand, but he resumed his previous thought, “After all,—Kate ain’t for me; you’re a stronger man than I am, maybe you—,” again the sea drove over them, again the dory pulled them free,— “maybe you will live to see her,—give my, give my,—” for a moment his teeth chattered so that he could not continue,—“give my love—to her.”
“No! No!” Donald exclaimed, “don’t talk that way. We can both be saved. Hang on! The squall is most over; the Annie M. will soon be along, and then it’s a warm bunk and food and sleep and rest—.”
Half-heartedly, already with the dazed look of a freezing man, Angus stared back at him. “You’ll tell her—tell Kate,” he gasped. “I’m— going now. Perhaps when I let go it’ll be—easier—for you—. Give my —love—to—.”
“Hold!” roared Donald. “We can both be saved I tell you. If you go, I go too—you can’t help me any by going! You’re crazy, you don’t know what you’re saying! For the love of God, hold on!”
With now almost expressionless eyes, giving no sign that he heard, Angus murmured, “Aye, for the love of God,” as one who repeated a formula that meant nothing. Already his eyes were closing.
“Angus! Angus!” Donald’s voice was choking with the passion of his final appeal. “Angus! this is no time to settle between you and me; no time for friends to part! Live, boy, and I’ll give you Kate! Live, and you can have her! Hold on if you love Kate!”
Twenty minutes later, when the Annie M. slanting perilously to port, with white froth boiling at her prow, and at her helm her skipper cursing the retreating storm, bore down on the capsized dory, her crew found two men clinging to its lee side. Both were unconscious; only their fingers frozen stiff and fast to the wood kept them from drifting off. One of them never revived, but down in the warm cabin, under the spell of the raw whiskey poured down his throat, the other, for a moment, opened his eyes. Wildly he stared
upon the familiar faces, seeing none of them. “Hold on!” he whispered, “hold on!—hold on!—hold on if you —love—Kate!” And with his voice
growing weaker, still tensely whispering, “Hold on !—hold on”—in spite of his own warning, he, too, slipped into eternity.
RELATIVES
By Clifford B. Orr
In that banner-trimmed room where plaster statuary, steins, and brilliant posters formed the principal decorations; where musical instruments, smoking accessories, books, and soiled clothing were jumbled in comfortable confusion; where sister’s picture reposed side by side with the daring one of Lucille Hammett, motion picture bathing beauty; where letters of grandmotherly advice fell through the letter slot onto a floor gray with the week’s accumulation of cigarette ashes :—in that room all the problems of the world found ready solution. Wars were fought and treaties signed; governments were re-established and political questions settled; religions were renovated and moral codes changed; and fellows, girls, and professors were placed in their proper categories. Not that it was different from the hundreds of other rooms in this college or in any other college, however. They are all alike.
Kenneth Putnam, his gray-white flannels covering a pair of long legs that stretched to the back of a nearby chair, and his fingers picking idly and tunelessly on a battered mandolin, lay on a littered couch and watched his roommate alternately scratching away at a letter and tapping his front teeth with the butt of his fountain pen.
“You’ll make a hot judge, Ty.”
His roommate, without looking up, muttered a disinterested “What?”
“Are you really going to be a judge, Ty?” “Sure. Why?”
“You’ll make a hot one.”
Tyler Coleman signed his name with a distinct flourish, and while slipping the letter into an envelope turned and faced Kenneth.
“What do you mean, hot one?”
“You can’t argue.”
“Judges don’t have to argue, foolish. They listen to other people. And I’ve had practice enough in that, rooming with you.”
Kenneth threw the mandolin aside and sent the chair sliding across the room with a kick.
“No personal remarks, please,” he said. Then, changing the subject, “What’s at the show tonight?”
But Tyler was on his favorite topic, or at least saw a way to get onto it, so he continued, “I think I’ll make a pretty good judge.”
“Well, you’re a good listener if that’s what you mean,” Ken agreed.
“And besides,” Tyler went on, “my father is a judge and my grandfather was one, and so was his father, and I’ve had two uncles who were too. It seems sort of born in the Coleman family, I guess. So you see I really have to.”
“Yes, you’ll probably have a lot of pull.”
“Pull!” exclaimed Tyler. “It isn't pull I’m after. But when a thing is handed down to you from three or four generations, you ought to be thankful enough to take it. Sometimes I pity the fellows who haven’t much in the way of parentage.”
“I know lots of fellows who aren’t from very old or especially wealthy families, and they’re just as good as you are,” said Ken.
“Oh, so do I,” returned Tyler. “They’re good enough boys, but not exactly the kind I’d want to chum around with much or room with, you understand. Why you take every fellow in our bunch. They all have good families.”
“Yes, but you’ve just picked the fellows that have. That doesn't prove anything,” argued Kenneth.
“Look at Teddy,” continued Tyler, ignoring the last remark. “His father is a broker. And Don’s is a banker, and Bud’s is a writer, and then take your own case.”
“Well, what about my case? My father is dead.”
“I know that; but your mother is alive, isn’t she? And the money your father left keeps you in college and allows your mother to go South every winter, doesn’t it? And from what you say, she doesn't move in any mean social circle. And as only people who amount to a little something anyway can do that, why shouldn’t I class you with the rest of us?”
“Oh, I’m not objecting. Go ahead and address your letter, and then let’s wander down town.” And Kenneth turned his face to the wall.
Tyler scribbled an address and then rose from his desk. “Come on then,” he said. As the two of them were going out the door, Tyler stopped and pointed at a photograph of a middle aged lady with gray hair and a quiet face that hung over Ken’s desk. “If anyone ever doubted your family, Ken, you would only have to show him a picture of your mother. I never saw a woman more artistocratic and I surely would like to meet her. Are you positive she hasn’t any New England blood, Ken?”
“Positive,” Ken replied almost gruffly. “Are we going to the show or not? If we are, we’ve got to hurry.”
The college town was a small one and some distance from a city, and therefore it offered no metropolitan amusement until a loyal and pleasureloving alumnus, mindful of many long winter evenings, presented a comfortable playhouse, and decreed that at least four times a week movies should be shown, and on Saturday nights good class vaudeville should be offered. Then about once every two weeks, a travelling play or musical come-
dy should perform. So every Saturday night—and this was Saturday—the theatre was jammed with an enthusiastic crowd ready to applaud, and just as ready to jeer.
Ken and Tyler, dodging the rain of peanuts and hard peppermints that poured from the balcony and the seats about them found places well down front, and soon joined in the eager cries for “Music!” “Action!” that filled the house.
“Big time tonight!" the fellow next to Ken yelled in his ear.
“What’s on?” Ken yelled back, above the tumult.
“Haven’t you seen the ads?” Ken shook his head and the fellow continued, “Big dancing and musical revue act. Forget the name of the girl. Sort of Gertrude Hoffman stunt, I guess. Wait, I’ll get a program. Bill!” he called, several rows ahead. “Hand back that program will you!”
While the program was en route, Ken turned to Tyler. “Big musical revue is one of the acts, Ty.”
Tyler whistled. “Lord! The fellows will go wild. They’re ready for anything after that game this afternoon. If there’s a decent looking woman or any kind of a chorus, the house will come down. Glad we’re somewhere near the front.”
The program arrived and was handed to Ken who ran his eyes down the list of acts, turned the page, and found last on the list:
CAROLINE DESMOND
AND HER LIGHT FANTASTIC GIRLS IN A FORTY MINUTE REVELRY
“BRING ON YOUR JAZZ!”
Ken grew suddenly pale and thrust the program in the hands of the fellow beside him, and then turned to Tyler.
“Ty,” he said hoarsely, “I—I’ve got to—got to go out a moment. Let me by you, will you— .please?”
“Why, what’s the matter Ken?” asked Tyler. “You aren’t sick are you? You look—”
"I’m all right. Just—just wait a moment. I’ve got to—to go. Be right back.”
He rushed up the aisle and nodded to the doorman as he went out, and kept on to the sidewalk. Still pale, and shivering almost as if he had a chill, he fairly ran in an alley and through the stage door. There were several stage hands standing near, but none of them noticed him, and he dashed down the stairs that he knew led to the dressing rooms, for he had been in many a college production in this same theatre. Finally he stood before a row of five or six doors, puzzled, and then a voice hailed him.
“Hey there, Putnam! What are you doing down here ?”
Ken recognized Bailey, the janitor.
“Which is—which is Caroline Desmond’s room, Bailey ?”
“That one in front of yer, but you can’t go in, Putnam.”
“I’ve got to go in, Bailey!”
“She said don’t let no one in.”
“But I’ve got to! Knock on the door and tell her it’s me. Go ahead, Bailey. I’ve got to see her.”
Bailey reluctantly rapped with a grimy fist on the door and in response to the woman’s voice that answered, “Who is it?” replied, “They’s a student here named Putnam and he wants to know can he come in. He’s a Sophomore.”
“Kenneth Putnam?” asked the voice quickly.
“Yup,” replied Bailey.
“Oh, tell him to come in right now!”
Without waiting for a word from Bailey, Kenneth pushed him aside and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. A woman with a profusion of dark curls falling over her shoulders, and a light dressing gown but partially covering silk underthings rose to meet him.
"Mother!” he cried, and caught and kissed her.
"Don’t muss my hair, Kenneth. There, let me go.” She sat down again before her dressing table and looked at him. “You’re just as good looking as ever, Kenneth. Are you real glad to see me ?”
Ken drew a deep breath. “I’m mighty glad to see you, mother, but—but—Oh, mother, why did you come here!”
“Why did I come?” answered his mother. “Why to see you, Kenneth, of course. I was back in New York last week and I found that through some mistake I had a clear date, and so I just had to get booked up here, because it’s been such a long time since 1 saw you last. My manager was furious. Perfectly furious. This is an awful small town for an act like mine, you know, because I never play anything but the big cities, but I persuaded him.”
“But, mother, you didn’t let me know you were coming.”
“I know. I haven’t had a moment, and then I thought I might be able to surprise you. I can imagine you when you first saw my name in the papers. I really expected you to meet me at the train.”
“I didn’t know you were here until about two minutes ago. Somehow I missed the ads this week.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Ken exclaimed, “Mother, you can’t play here tonight!”
She looked up at him suddenly and tossed back a curl.
“Why not?” she demanded.
Ken turned from her, at a loss how to tell her.
“Why can’t I play? They say there’s one of the best houses they’ve ever had. Why, the janitor said the fellows would go wild over my act. He said it would be one of the biggest receptions I ever had.”
“That’s just it, mother!” Ken exclaimed. “They’ll—Oh, mother, can’t you understand that— Mother, what are you going to wear?”
“Why nothing much,” she answered with a shrug. “Just that little costume over there, with a few overscarves that I take off one by one. Why?”
Ken groaned. “Mother, the fellows will yell their heads off over you. There’ll almost be a stampede.”
“Wonderful!” cried his mother. “You don’t know how grand it makes you feel when the audience is enthusiastic.”
“But mother, that’s all right to have them do it over some young chorus girl, but—but you—!”
“Well,” she said, throwing back her head and looking in the mirror, “I may be thirty-eight, but I'm sure I don’t look more than twenty-eight, if I look that, and if they can find anything in my clothes or my face or my dancing to cheer about, why let them go ahead, and I’ll be proud of it.” And she seized a rabbit foot and began her facial make-up.
Ken stood up. “Look here, mother,” he said slowly, “I’ve seen the fellows go wild over acts before. and I’ve sat among them and heard the remarks that were passed around, and I'm not going to let my mother get out there and have every thing said about her. They’ll shout to you, mother, and some may even try to get up on the stage, and after the show the whole college will be outside the stage door. And I’m not going to let you go on.”
His mother rose too, and stood in front of him. “I'm sorry, Ken, but you’ll have to be disappointed. Let them yell. I’m going to dance my best and my girls will do the same, and we’ll dance so that you can be proud of me. I know they’ll go wild. I’ve played New Haven and Anh Arbor. We don’t wear tights when we play college towns!”
“Mother!”
“So don’t you worry a bit. I've been on the stage fifteen years now, and I know my audiences and how to please them, and it won’t disturb me a bit, no matter what they yell at me.” She opened the door. “So now you run along out, and afterward,” she said, pushingly him firmly into the corridor, “afterward, if you think you have to save me from the terrible crowd that will besiege my dressing room, you can take me to the dormitory and introduce me to Tyler.”
“Listen mother! You—” The door slammed.
Ken stood for a moment completely dazed, and then turned slowly toward the stairs, wildly trying to think of something. He couldn't bear the thought of the reception his mother would- get, and as for having her in the room and introducing her to Tyler! No, he couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly do it. He valued Tyler’s friendship more than anything else, and Tyler with his smug New England opinions— damn New England!— would break all relations if he found that he was the son of a vaudeville actress. But he couldn’t tell his mother ! He couldn’t make her understand that it was for his happiness and Tyler’s friendship that he had posed all along as the son of a wealthy lady of birth instead of telling the truth—that his mother was not the aristocratic lady of the picture (that was purchased at a photographer’s) but was instead a thirty-eight year old dancer, slaving six days a week to keep her son in college. He couldn’t tell either of them.
Anyway, he wasn’t going back into the theatre and hear them yell at her. But what if they should say things that he might prevent by his presence? Of course he couldn’t really get up and stop them but — before he knew it, he was in his seat, and Tyler was extorting from him a reason for his leaving. Kenneth at last told him that he had felt sick and Tyler was satisfied.
For the next hour he paid no attention to the show whatever, but managed to nod or smile every time Tyler poked him in appreciation of a joke or asked him if something wasn’t good. His state of mind was a queer one, a mixture of perplexity as to what to do with his mother, a fear of being found out by Tyler, a dread of having his mother appear on the stage before the eyes of this mob. But the appearance was inevitable, and soon he felt the crowd settling itself in expectation, and the curtain rose.
Lights were dim and the stage was draped in deep purple hangings which parted in the middle at the sound of trumpets, and six thinly and scantily clad girls arranged themselves on a marble staircase. Another flourish of trumpets and Caroline Desmond appeared at the top of the stairs, and the orchestra burst into tune. Down the stairs she whirled, and surrounded by her six attendants flew back and forth behind the footlights in a wild introductory dance.
"Thirty-eight!” thought Kenneth. “She doesn't look eighteen!”
Then the house woke up and bellowed its approval, and when Caroline responded to the demands for an encore to her first dance, fellows had to hold their more eager companions in their seats. And as time went on and dance after dance took place and song after song was sung, and scarf after scarf was shed, the audience howled more and more and actually tugged at its leash. And although they approved of the six attendants, it was Caroline they wanted and Caroline that was called for, many times and. loudly.
Only Kenneth was silent, but Tyler excused him from his usual enthusiasm on the grounds that he was still feeling rather ill. He didn’t want to watch â– his mother whirling and kicking and singing and smiling there on the stage, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from her, and he lived in agony, trying to shut his ears from the remarks about him until with a grand final crash and tableau the act ended and the curtain fell. But still the crowd refused to leave until Caroline had responded to call after call before the curtain and had time and again mockingly shaken her finger at an extra noisy group in a box. But finally she disappeared for the last time, and the audience began to push its way out.
“I guess I’ll leave you here,” Ken said to Tyler at the door. “Why don’t you run up to Bud’s room and maybe I’ll drop in there in an hour or so.” This was said hoping that Tyler would keep clear of his own room and offer an excuse should he be unable to keep his mother away.
“Perhaps I will,” said Tyler. “See you later.”
Ken went straight to his mother’s dressing room but was informed by the watchful Bailey that his mother had told him to wait in the corridor until she had dressed. So he had another half hour of torture, racking his brain for some way out, and finally relying on the slim hope that his mother would be too tired to go to the dormitory.
At last she came out. Her black hat with its splash of green and her trim belted coat were already on, and she was pulling on a pair of gloves.
“Is it far, Ken?” she asked.
“It’s a few minutes walk, mother,” Ken replied, all hope gone. “You must be tired. Why don’t you let me get you something to eat and then you trot along to the hotel. Never mind coming up to the dorm.”
“Oh, but I’m not tired a bit!” she exclaimed, slipping her arm in his and smiling up at him. “And one of the principal reasons I came was to see your roommate, Tyler. You’ve written so much about
At the door was a crowd of fellows who fell back as they came out, and touched their hats in response to Ken’s nods, and once or twice came low whistles of astonishment. Ken Putnam out with Caroline Desmond!
As soon as they were out of the downtown section and on the darker campus paths, Ken began to walk more slowly, gaining time and trying to think. But his mother kept talking steadily.
“You know, Ken, I’m actually saving money. My act is going big, and really, Ken, I just have to smile all over when I stop and realize how fully I’m getting you educated and saving up for old age at the same time. It keeps me young where I don’t have to worry. I can keep on like this for years yet, if I don’t lose my figure.”
“You’re not going to work one instant after I get out of college! And if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t support you comfortably and take my self through college, too, you wouldn’t be working now.”
“Well, we’ll see. Let’s not talk about it until we have to. Now tell me about Tyler. Do you suppose he’ll be there when we arrive?”
They were nearing the dormitory, but Kenneth turned off and took a roundabout path. It would delay things for five minutes or so, and something might turn up. At last:
“Mother,” he suddenly said. “I know. Let’s play a joke on Tyler and make him think I’m just entertaining you as an actress—not as my mother at all!” He waited breathlessly for an answer.
“You mean — not tell him —even at the end?”
“Well — er — ” he began, and then remembering that at any time he could send Ty out of the room on some pretext when things were nearing an exposure, he went on, “Oh, of course we’ll tell him finally. What do you say?”
“All right, Ken,” she laughed. “And shall I be real tough?”
After his mother had made the usual remarks that his room was nice, but untidy, and after Ken had thanked his stars that Tyler hadn’t come home yet, the two sat on the couch and talked, quite like old times, and Ken almost lost his dread of Tyler’s coming.
Only once had conversation become dangerous.
“Who is that?” his mother asked, indicating the picture of the woman above his desk.
“Ty’s mother,” Ken had told her. “That used to be his desk and when we swapped it was too much trouble to change the pictures.”
“I shall have to send you a picture of me. I’ve had some new ones taken, in costume.”
And then Tyler came, and stopped in amazement when he opened the door and saw the pair on the couch.
“Holy mackerel!” he exclaimed.
Ken rose. “Miss Desmond,” he said, “this is Mr. Coleman, my roommate. Ty, you remember Miss Desmond at the show tonight.”
Tyler, always polite, bowed graciously, started at first to sit down, but then changed his mind and said, “Great! Shall I run- and get Bud and Teddy ?”
Miss Desmond came to the rescue. “Oh, I think it would be so much nicer if I just stayed and talked with you and Kenneth alone, Mr. Coleman.”
“She calls him Kenneth already,” thought Tyler.
“Where did he ever get hold of her?”
Then Kenneth began the conversation by asking his mother a well-formed question about the stage, and she began to talk. Ken listened to every word and if ever she appeared to be touching dangerous ground for the fraction of a second, another ques-
tion or warning look would turn her off on some other tack. Tyler joined in, too, but was inclined to be personal.
“I’m almost surprised at Ken,” he even said. “He never brought a girl up here before.”
Ken looked quickly at his mother who smiled at him. “I’m glad of that,” she said, and then giving Ken a wink, continued, “Well, I can’t say that this is the first college room I’ve ever visited after the show. Champagne days at New Haven were the good old days. Just think what your mother would do if she could see us now, Mr. Coleman.” She pointed to the picture over the desk.
“Frankly,” remarked Tyler, “my mother would have a couple of hundred fits. But that’s not my mother. That’s Ken’s.”
The crash had come, and Caroline Desmond turned on her son, presumably to demand an explanation, but when she saw the look of imploring despair on his face, although she didn’t understand, she merely murmured, “Indeed,” and said no more. But Tyler rattled on, and even got out pictures of his own family, in spite of many frantic wavings and signals from the desperate Kenneth.
“We’re New Englanders," he said, “but Ken’s family comes from Michigan. But of course his mother doesn’t stay there all the year round. She’s South now, isn’t she, Ken?” The horrified mother watched her son nod, and slowly everything dawned on her. He was ashamed of his mother. Ashamed to introduce her to his roommate. Ashamed even of his family and had invented a huge lie to cover it all. And here she had danced for fifteen tedious years, since her husband died to give him a proper bringing up, weeping often when alone, but always presenting a smiling face and happy air when he was present. Momentarily she thought of turning accusingly on Kenneth and exposing everything, but then she realized his position and she even saw into the friendship and what he had to lose.
“I should like to meet his mother,” she brought herself to say, but could not help adding bitterly, “But I can imagine what she’d think of me!”
There was a moment’s awkward pause which was suddenly broken by a sharp rap on the door.
“Come in,” called Tyler.
The door opened and in walked the Dean!
“Lord!” muttered Ken and Tyler simultaneously, but not one of them had the presence of mind to stand or to say a word. In the mind of each was the same thought. The Dean! Why it was only in rumors or in stories that the Dean ever entered the dormitories. It was unheard of. It was —
“Which is Putnam?” demanded the Dean.
Kenneth rose. “Here, sir.”
“A janitor of one of the college buildings just met me down town and reported that you were entertaining a girl in your rooms without consent of the Administration. I am not waiting until morning to find out about the case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he further reported that she was a member of some theatrical troupe.”
The Dean must have seen Caroline sitting on the couch, but he ignored her presence entirely.
“Is this girl still here?”
“Ye—es, sir.”
“Who is she?” And then noticing that Kenneth
was struggling for a reply, he turned on Tyler. “Who is she?” he repeated.
“Miss Desmond of the vaudeville, sir.”
Caroline remained on the couch. She knew the Dean had seen her, and she knew that it was only a matter of moments before she would have to speak, and she had no idea what to say. Evidently women were not allowed in the college rooms. But surely mothers were all right. Ken would presently come out of his daze and tell the Dean that she was his mother and everything would be fine. But then she remembered. That aristocratic woman over the desk that was Kenneth’s mother to his college associates.
“Don’t you know,” the Dean was saying, addressing himself to Kenneth again, “that only relatives, close relatives of the men are allowed in the college rooms?”
“I know sir, and as my roommate has nothing to do with this, if I may speak to you alone, I think I can explain.”
“He isn't going to tell!” thought his mother. “He doesn’t dare while Tyler is in the room.”
But Tyler was equal to the situation. “I shan’t leave this all to you, Ken. It’s as much my room as it is his, sir, and I’m as much to blame.”
The Dean turned to him again. “This girl is no relative of yours, is she?’.’
“No, sir,” Tyler replied, and Caroline fancied she saw him shudder at the mere thought.
“And she is no relative of yours either, is she, Putnam ?”
The moment had come, and Ken had been expecting it. It was no use, he had decided. Everything must be told. Poor Ty, what a shock he was going to get. But he had to tell, and then take the consequences, possibly leave college!
“Is she, Putnam ?”
Kenneth drew himself together. “Sir,” he began-
“Relative!” fairly shrieked a coarse voice from the couch, and the three turned on Caroline who had risen and was facing them, her hands on her hips.
“Relative! My God! As if I’d own ’em, either of ’em!” Ken’s hands went into his pockets, and he turned away. “You can trot right along, Mr. President, or whoever you are. I ain’t no relative of either of ’em. Here I am, a poor dancin’ girl, and when I come to this here college town and want a little excitement and walk into the best lookin’ dormitory in the place and happen into the first room I see, what do I find but these two guys who hain’t enough life for a snail. You needn't punish ’em, Mr. President. They hain’t done nothin’, and they couldn’t help themselves. They’re a couple of slowpokes, they are.”
She slouched across the room and opened the door, but no one spoke.
“Relatives! My God! They’re no good. The whole damn college is no good!”
The door slammed behind her.
A moment afterward the Dean spoke. “We’ll clear this up later,” he said and went out.”
Kenneth stood motionless for a whole minute, and then for the first time in several years his feelings gave way and he flung himself face downward on the couch, and Tyler saw his shoulders shake.
“What are you laughing about, Ken?” he asked.
WATCH THAT JAZZ!
By Clifford B. Orr
Steinbeck’s Music Store bustled with its late afternoon rush. Particular old ladies, hermetically sealed in glass-walled rooms, rapped for the busy clerks to come and change the records that they had just been listening to and disliked. College girls, fresh from the matinee, hummed the tunes that they liked best from the afternoon’s musical comedy, and grew impatient when the clerks were unable to recognize the melody. College youths with hair parted in the middle and black knit ties called loudly for mandolin picks and guitar strings, and wanted the best and would take nothing but the best, but objected at the price. Lisping little girls with short dresses and awkward legs requested Eckman’s “Six Easy Studies for the Piano-forte,” and exclaimed over the difficult appearance of the great black notes. A great violinist, performing that evening at the municipal organ concert, chatted confidentially with Mr. Steinbeck himself, blocking the center aisle.
Stroudport folks loved Steinbeck’s. They loved its green-carpeted interior with its legions of silver instruments in their crystal cases. They loved its well-dressed, quiet-voiced floor walkers, and its calm and patient clerks. They loved the efficiency of the whole place and the quality of its goods. But best of all they loved Bertha Trent.
When finally the last customer had been sent away satisfied and the green-bronze clock in the ceiling announced closing time, Bertha Trent turned to her assistant.
“When you come in in the morning, dear, perhaps the first thing you’d better do will be to get out a few more copies of “Traumerei”. Seidel is going to play it tonight, I understand, and they’ll rush for it tomorrow.”
“All right, Miss Trent,” replied her assistant, “and now you just let me put that music away, and you run along home. You must be nearly dead.”
Bertha smiled. She had known three years of these afternoon rushes, and they no longer tired her. Nevertheless, with a final word of instruction, she slipped into her serge jacket, adjusted her plain black hat, and took a tiny peek in the mirror behind the music stacks. Bertha Trent was not a
beauty, but beneath her soft black hair, her face which was rather inclined to be pallid, possessed a pair of eyes of the deepest brown, eyes that lighted so pleasantly when she smiled, and she often smiled. She was very slight indeed, but she looked every day of her twenty-five years, and her mouth sometimes had just the slightest trace of weariness.
As she stepped from behind the counter, Rex Damon, swinging up the aisle from the popular music department, fell into step beside her.
“Going up the street, Miss Trent?” he inquired, tucking a roll of music under his arm while he pulled on his gloves; and then without waiting for her answer he rattled on. “What a day! Say, I bet that if I had one request for ‘Sweetie’s Smile’ this afternoon, I had fifty, and don’t they jump at that ‘Land of the Sphinx!’ Heard it?”
Bertha laughed. “Heard it! Mr. Damon, when do I ever get time to hear such things?”
“Why, they’re singing it at the Orpheum this week. And by the way, that’s a peach of a show. Have you seen it?”
“My dear Mr. Damon, I haven’t ever been to a vaudeville show.”
“You what?” Damon stopped short and stared at her. By this time they were out of the store and among the hungry crowd that was hurrying uptown toward home and supper.
Bertha touched him lightly on the arm. “Come along,” she said, “and don’t look so startled. Besides you’re blocking traffic. But it’s true. I have neither time nor inclination to go to vaudevilles or musical comedies. But I’m no phenomenon, am I ?”
“Well rather,” contradicted Damon. “About every girl I know goes to the Orpheum every week and to a musical comedy whenever one hits town. Do you mean to say you didn’t see ‘Roll Over’ when it was here?”
“Mr. Damon, did you hear Farrar last week?” “Oh come off! I don’t like—”
“Did you hear Percy Grainger the week before?” “No, I tell you I don’t—”
“Do you ever attend concerts by the Rossini Club?”
“Oh, Miss Trent, have a heart! I’m not a high
brow. And besides, if I went to all those things, I wouldn’t have any time for vaudeville, and you know that I just have to keep up with the times and see what songs the shows are featuring. When you run the popular music department of a big music store, you—"
“Have you forgotten, then, that I run the classical department of the same big music store? Don’t you suppose that a classical department has to be kept just as up-to-date as a popular? Listen, Mr. Damon, here’s my corner. You don’t like my ‘highbrow stuff’ as you call it. You don’t understand it. You’ve never been educated up to it. Well, it’s the same with me. I can’t bear your ragtime. I can’t see anything pretty or interesting in it. I’ve never heard very much, but what I did hear was terrible. I’ve never been educated down to it, that’s all. Good-by.”
Damon stood and stared after her for a moment when she had gone and then turned and pushed his blond height through the crowds. “Quite a girl, quite a girl,” he thought. “Too bad she’s that way, though.”
Bertha hurried on homeward, smiling quietly to herself as she thought of Damon’s surprise. But it was true. She had never seen the inside of a vaudeville theater, not even in her childhood. Her father, Josef Trent, had been a fairly successful concert violinist, and with him and her mother, Bertha had travelled from one city to another as his engagements carried him. Her girlhood had been very unusual. With the exception of two years in kindergarten she had never been to school, but had been taught by her father. She had made no friends or playmates, and all her spare time had been taken up by piano practice or by reading. “When you are twenty-one,” her father had always promised her, “your mother and I will send you to a conservatory of music and you can study to be a teacher of piano.” But the very year that she was to be twenty-one, while her father was playing in London, the automobile in which all three of them were riding was struck by an omnibus. Her father died two days afterward and she and her mother were in the hospital for the better part of a year, and it had left her mother maimed for life, a cripple in a wheeled chair. And, which was nearly as bad, the hospital expenses proved to be tremendous, leaving them scarcely enough money from their never too plentiful store to journey back to America and establish themselves in a little flat in Stroudport where her mother was born. Gone now were any dreams of a musical education.
Bertha had to go to work, and after a few clerkships in different department stores, she had finally succeeded in obtaining this position in Steinbeck’s, and there she had stayed. And there, to all appearances, she was likely to stay for the rest of her life. Her salary was sufficient and she liked the work. It kept her in constant touch with the musical world, and she attended every concert and recital that she possibly could.
“But musical comedy and vaudeville!” she laughed as she ran up the steps of the house. "Not for Bertha Trent!”
Mrs. Syders, who lived on the floor below her, opened the door and addressed her breathlessly, “Oh, Miss Bertha, I tried to telephone you. Your mother is having a spell.”
Bertha started. “Again, Mrs. Syders? Why this makes two this month! Have you telephoned the doctor?” And scarcely hearing Mrs. Syders’ “Yes, ten minutes ago,” she flew up the freshly varnished stairs to the little flat on the second floor, with Mrs. Syders close behind her calling, “She’s in the front room. I didn’t have time to move her.”
Bertha threw her hat and gloves on the top of the square piano, which, jutting out from the corner of the little parlor left scarcely room for anything else, and fell on her knees beside her mother’s wheeled chair.
“Mother, dear,” she said quietly, “here I am.”
Mrs. Trent raised a flushed face and placed her hands on her heart, breathing with difficulty.
Bertha,” she gasped, “you’ve been a long time— and my side—my side is—” With a moan of pain she let her head sink on her ample breast again.
“Hush, dear,” said Bertha soothingly, laying her hands on her mother’s hot forehead. “You know what the doctor said. Be very quiet till he gets here. Let me tell you what happened at the store today. A woman—”
“My side, Bertha! Right here—by the heart.
It pains so. It pains.”
“I know, mother, but do let me tell you about this woman. She was a fine looking woman, mother, and what do you suppose she asked for? Chopin’s ‘Melody in F.’ ”
“It pains—It—Oh!”
“Wasn’t that funny mother? You know, don’t you, that Chopin didn’t write the ‘Melody in F.’ Who did write it mother?”
Momentarily, only momentarily, Mrs. Trent forgot the pain at her heart, and answered with all assurance, “Why, Rubenstein.”
Bertha laughed. “Of course. And wasn’t it a funny mistake for her to make?”
“My heart!”
“Sh-h, mother. Remember how father used to play it ? Let me play it for you, mother, the way he used to. Keep very quiet while I’m playing it, and perhaps the doctor will be here when I get through. Remember how he used to begin it so slow—like this, and then grow faster and faster right here, and then nice and soft—and slow when he reached this part?” And so talking and playing at once, Bertha finished the “Melody” and then turned to find her mother sleeping. It was then that the doctor arrived. Bertha stole out into the hall to admit him.
I guess we don’t need you, Dr. Bronson,” she said. “Mother's real quiet now, asleep. It was just a short spell.”
The doctor rebuttoned his heavy coat.
“Good enough, Miss Trent,” he said. “But call me up the moment you think the spell is returning; and remember that she must not get all worked up about herself. Here’s one instance, at least, where Christian Science and medicine can work hand in hand. If she can be kept from thinking about her pain until I can arrive with my injection, she’s safe. The one is of no use without the other. But it’s hard on you, I know.”
Bertha smiled rather wearily. “She is unreasonable at times, but I can generally get her interested in something else. This afternoon I played to her. It’s the first time I’ve tried it during a spell, and it worked beautifully.”
The doctor picked up his bag. “Good for you, Miss Trent. Keep it up, and don’t let her have a big relapse, and we may cure that heart yet. Good-by.”
Bertha watched him down the stairs, and then satisfying herself that her mother was still sleeping, turned to the pantry for a cold supper.
Steinbeck’s popular music department was not of the ten-cent store type. Its filing cupboards, it is true, were full of the usual sheets of music in the gaudy and inappropriate covers, proclaiming in brilliant colors the name of the song, and illustrating it with a picture having nothing whatever to do with the theme. There was that part of the counter devoted to ten-cent music, that part devoted to musical comedy hits, and that part devoted to semi-classical ballads that drew thirty-five cents and many sighs from the purchasers. But there was no active-jawed blonde to play any selection by request, and
thus display its merits or expose its worthlessness. Rex Damon ruled supreme and he had other methods.
“Miss Canty, this young lady would like a copy of ‘Jumbo.’ Will you pass me one? Thanks. If you like ‘Jumbo’ miss, I’ve got another that you just can’t afford to overlook. It’s a wonder. Rhythm! Say, it started Steinbeck himself to stepping. ‘Shrug ’Em’ is the name of it. Perhaps you’ve heard it.
‘Shrug, shrug, shrug, shrug, Shrug your little shoulder, dearie.
Hug, hug, hug, hug,
Now I’m getting bolder, dearie...’ Let me. give you a copy. It’s only ten. Good enough. And by the way, we had the score of ‘Lovetime,’ the new musical show come in yesterday, and pep! You never heard such music. Let me put in some of it'. Here’s the feature song, ‘The Moaning Waltz.’ What do you say?” And finally the young lady, who had come in the store fully determined to spend no more than a dime, parts with eighty cents and omits her chocolate float on the way home.
Damon jumped from one thing to another all day long, wasting not a single moment, but every now and then his eyes would wander up the aisle to the counter where, in front of tier upon tier of green-covered files, labelled alphabetically, Bertha Trent ruled supreme over her department. Funny she had never seen a Vaudeville show. He had thought a great deal about it during the last two days, apd he had almost made up his mind to ask her. Jove! He was going to! She could do no more than refuse him anyway, and though none of the other girls ever refused, still Miss Trent was different. Even sort of queer sometimes. Never know how she was going to take things. But he was going to take the chance, and during a lull in the morning’s work, he sauntered up the aisle.
Bertha saw him' coming and greeted him cheerfully. “Good morning Mr. Damon,” she called. “How’s the popular side of the music world today?”
Damon seated himself on the edge of the counter. “Bull, Miss Trent. Much more lively than the classical, Bet I’ve sold more copies of ‘Jumbo’ today than you have sold pieces of music all together.”
“Well, I don’t doubt that, Mr. Damon, but I can get a higher price for my goods than you can yours. You can’t get a dollar and a half for your ‘Jumbo’ whatever it is, the way I can for some of my arrangements.”
“Oh let's not come to blows about it. I didn’t come over here to fight, Miss Trent. I came to suggest something.”
Bertha laid down the music she was marking and turned to him.
“Do you remember,” Damon continued, “that night before last you said that you’d never seen a vaudeville show?”
“Surely,” Bertha nodded.
“Well, you said you’d never seen one, but you didn’t say that you were set against them in any way, Methodist, you know, or any of that stuff. So I made up my mind to ask you to go to one. Will you let me take you tonight and show you the Orpheum?”
Bertha stared at him in surprise. “Why, Mr. Damon, what do you mean?”
Damon slipped off the counter. “Whew! Don’t look at me like that. It isn’t any crime I’ve committed, is it?”
“Oh, of course not,” Bertha laughingly reassured him. “But it took me by surprise, that’s all. It’s my first experience, you know, at being asked to a theater.”
“But you’ll go?”
“Now, Mr. Damon,” Bertha spoke earnestly, “you really don’t want me to go. I should probably dislike it, and I should bore you. Take Miss Canty or some of the other girls who would surely enjoy it. Take someone who is used to it.”
“But that is just what I want,” argued Damon. “Someone who isn’t used to it. Don’t you like to be with people when they see things for the first time—the ocean or the movies or something? I want to watch you and see the effect on you. I’m sick of these girls who nudge you and say ‘Say, Rex, ain’t it swell!’ I’d rather take you and watch you
make fun of it. Say you’ll go.” And Damon leaned eagerly over the counter.
“Mr. Damon, I believe you really want me to go with you, and 1 think I shall.”
It was the usual vaudeville show. From “A: Overture” to “J:Exit March” there was nothing particularly surprising to the habitual vaudeville attender. The Spiro Brothers threw each other around for ten or twelve minutes, and illustrated that it was not at all painful to land full on your back on the floor. A colored monologist told humorous stories, mostly about traveling men and marriage. A husband and wife argued through a twenty minute playlet.
Bertha enjoyed herself immensely. The novelty of everything refreshed her, and she was in the best of spirits. Damon was pleased and showed it plainly.
“There, Miss Trent,” he said when they were out of the theater and walking slowly up town, “tell me how you liked it.”
“I enjoyed every moment of it, Mr. Damon,” Bertha replied quickly. “I thought that little playlet was very clever indeed and that harpist was excellent. I thank you ever so much for taking me.”
“Oh, you’re welcome, Miss Trent. But tell me. How did you like the ‘Jazz Kid?’ ”
“That little girl that sang? I thought she was very cute indeed.”
“But you couldn’t hand her songs much?”
“No, Mr. Damon,” said Bertha frankly, “I thought they were terrible. Why the words didn’t have any sense to them.”
“Oh, hang the words!” exclaimed Damon. “Didn’t you like the tunes? Didn’t they sort of—well— sort of get you?”
“Mr. Damon,” laughed Bertha, “I think ypu’re funny. No, of course they didn’t 'get me.’ But don’t you think that I didn’t have a good time because I did, and maybe sometime you—you’ll ask me again.”
“I sure will, Miss Trent,” Damon told her, and in crossing a street he took her arm for the first time.
Shortly afterward, they reached Bertha’s home, and as she stood on the lower step and hunted for the key in her hand bag, she said, “I’d ask you to come in for a few moments if it weren’t so late, Mr. Damon. But perhaps some other time.”
“May I ?” he suddenly asked. “May I come some other time and meet your mother and call on you?”
He looked so wistful that Bertha had a momentary inclination to lay her hands on his shoulders and say, “You dear old thing! Of course you can come to see me.” But instead she merely replied, “I am sure mother and I would be very pleased. And let me thank you again for my good time. Goodnight.” And giving him one of her nicest smiles, she ran up the steps and into the house.
To her surprise, she found her mother in the living room, sitting in her wheeled chair, reading.
“Why, mother,” she exclaimed, “Aren’t you in bed yet? I told Mrs. Syders to be sure that you got in bed by ten, and here it is nearly eleven.”
Her mother laid aside the book. “I sent Mrs. Syders away, Bertha, because I wanted to stay up until you got home. I thought perhaps you might want to bring Mr.------your friend in to see me.”
“But it was so late, mother!”
“Yes, I suppose so. But I did want to see him. You’ve never had any gentlemen friends, Bertha, and I did kind of want to see—”
“You dear little mother!” Bertha exclaimed. “You wanted to see if he was nice enough to associate with your beloved daughter, didn’t you?”
“Well, is he nice?”
Bertha was afraid that she blushed a trifle.
“Why, yes, mother,” she said, “of course he’s nice.”
“Nice enough,” pursued her mother, “so that you may get to—to like him?”
“Now what are you hinting at, mother?”
Mrs. Trent laid a gentle hand on Bertha’s own. “You’re old enough to get married. Is he nice enough for that?”
Bertha leaned over and kissed her. “You ridiculous, scheming old thing! I don’t want to get married. Our tastes are absolutely different. Why, mother, he actually worships this ragtime! Imagine Josef Trent’s daughter marrying a man that worships ragtime, mother!”
“But is that all you don’t like about him?” her mother asked. “Because if it is, it seems to me that before I’d let a little thing like that—”
“Mother!” Bertha interrupted. “There is absolutely nothing between Mr. Damon and myself. He merely invited me to the theater and I accepted. I haven’t spoken to him a dozen times in my life. But I have invited him to come and meet you sometime soon, and then you can see for yourself what
he is like. Meanwhile you get this marriage idea right out of your head. You'll see how impossible it is. Imagine a Wagner admirer and a ragtime fiend marrying. But that’s as easy to imagine as Rex Damon being converted into a Wagner admirer or me into a-----a ragtime fiend! But you’ve got to go to bed!”
Within a week Bertha announced at supper, “Mother, I’m going to have company tonight.”
Mrs. Trent looked up expectantly. “Not—not your friend?”
Smiling, Bertha nodded. Tears actually came into her mother’s eyes as she exclaimed, “Oh, Bertha, you don’t know how glad I am! I’ve always regretted that you never had any gentlemen callers. Do you suppose my silk is all wrinkled.”
“Anyone would think, mother,” laughed Bertha, “that Mr. Steinbeck himself were coming! Yes, I do think your silk is all wrinkled, and I do think you’re perfectly adorable in that shirtwaist and skirt, and I do think you’re much more excited over it all than I am.”
But Mrs. Trent insisted on being dressed up, and clean covers being put on the pillows behind her, and the piano dusted twice, and the chair in the living room with the slightly broken spring replaced by the wicker one from Bertha’s bed room. And every time that Bertha left the room where she had placed her mother ready to receive, she was called back again to fix some trifling thing. Even when the doorbell rang at last, she had to rush into the living room in response to excited cries and tear off the calendar pad to date.
Damon was resplendent in a new gray suit, and his face still glowed from a recent shave. Bertha went to the door to meet him, and was all gracious-
“It’s great of you to let me come and see you, Miss Trent,” he said.
“This is in return for the theater the other night, you know. And mother is as excited as a girl. You’re an innovation, you know. Let me take your hat.”
Mrs. Trent, enthroned in her wheeled chair beamed like a propitious goddess when they entered the room, and the introduction was hardly over when she began to talk.
“I tell Bertha, Mr. Damon, that it does seem so good to see a man about. When her father was alive we had them around all the time, but Bertha isn’t much of a hand at bringing home friends. You may not know it, Mr. Damon, but you’re the first—”
“Now mother,” Bertha began, “You’ll embarrass Mr. Damon.”
“Embarrass me nothing!” Damon exclaimed. “So,” he continued playfully, “so I’m the first, am I?”
And Mrs. Trent, thus encouraged, continued. “Yes, he was the first man that Bertha has had call on her since her father died, how many years ago, Bertha? And as she said before, it did seem good to have one around again.”
“But Bertha tells me, Mr. Damon,” she concluded, “that you’re fond of this—this ragtime.”
“That’s my business, Mrs. Trent. Are you fond of it too?”
Bertha began to laugh. “Mr. Damon,” she said, “mother hasn’t been out of this house for nearly three years except to be wheeled up and down the street, and you know about how much ragtime ever comes into her life, living with me.”
Damon seized the opportunity. “Then you don’t know any ragtime, Mrs. Trent? Please can I play you some?”
“No,” Mr. Damon,” began Bertha, “I think—”
“Of course you can play me some,” interrupted her mother. “I’ll be tickled to death to hear it.”
“Good for you, Mrs. Trent!” exclaimed Damon. “I’ve got the newest hit out in my overcoat pocket, Yes, I brought it just for this purpose.” In a moment he had procured it and was seated at the piano. “Now, you’ve just got to like this, Mrs. Trent, because it’s the newest thing out and it’s a wonder. I sold two hundred odd copies today. They’re eating it alive. Just listen to the swing. Mind if I sing it too?”
He crashed an opening bar or two, twinkled rapidly through the verse, and then as he hit the rhythm of the chorus, with shoulders swaying slightly, he began to sing.
“Watch that jazz! (dum, dum,)
My honey don’t forget to watch that jazz! (dum, dum,)
It’s bound to get you with its sneaky, freaky, Ever-appealing feeling.
Watch your step! (dum, dum,)
It’s bound to fill you just so full of pep, (dum, dum,)
That you must—Oh! Oh! Say don’t you know, (dum, dum,)
You’ve got to watch that jazz!”
He ended with a quick chord and swung around on the stool and faced them. Bertha was smiling sympathetically, but Mrs. Trent’s eyes were shining as she exclaimed, "I haven’t heard anything like that since I was a girl. Play it again, Mr. Damon, and sing it louder.”
Damon turned to Bertha. “Did you hear that, Miss Trent? Your mother wants me to play it again. I swear she’s crazy about it.”
“Mother is funny sometimes.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Bertha?” asked Mrs.
Trent. “Didn’t you like it?”
“No, not especially,” Bertha replied.
“Well, I did,” her mother went on. “It’s so much more invigorating than those fugues and preludes that you play time and time again. Why this tune is so full of—of—”
“Pep,” supplied Damon.
“Well, I don’t know just what it’s full of, but I did like it. Never mind Bertha, Mr. Damon, and just play it again.”
So Damon did play it, and sang it as before.
“Watch that jazz! (dum, dum.)
My honey don’t forget to watch that jazz!”
And Bertha, horrified, actually saw her mother’s shoulders keeping time with Damon’s.
“Watch your step! (dum, dum,)
It’s bound to fill you just so full of pep, (dum, dum,)”
And Mrs. Trent, seeing Bertha watching her, smiled broadly and stretching out her arms began to sway her body in perfect rhythm. Bertha had to burst out laughing in spite of herself, and to show her mother how ridiculous she looked, began to imitate her. Then Damon, catching a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, stopped short his playing, whirled around and pointed an accusing finger at her.
“I caught you!” he cried. “You couldn’t resist it, could you? Come on, confess there!”
“Why, I—I—was only imitating mother. Surely you don’t think—”
“Imitating your grandmother! You’re a ragtime fiend, Miss Trent. You’re a jazzer. You can’t deny it. You’re a—”
“Mr. Damon!”
“No need of talking. You’re caught. Come on, let’s change the subject.”
“No, let’s not change the subject!” exclaimed Mrs. Trent. “Let’s have Bertha play it.”
Damon applauded. “That’s the dope! Come on, Miss Trent, and show your paces.”
Bertha at first refused. She couldn’t play it, she knew she couldn’t. And besides what would be the use. Damon had just played it twice, and much better than she could ever do it. But after pleadings from her mother, she gave in and took Damon’s place at the piano.
“Show me how it goes,” she said, and Damon beat out for her the first few bars over which she stumbled, unused to the syncopation. She came to the chorus and succeeded so very well that she felt called upon to end the piece with a discord so that
she would draw no compliments on the ragtime achievements. It had the desired effect.
“Well, I must say, Bertha,” was her mother’s comment, “that with all your training, you’re not one half as good as Mr. Damon. Now I tell you what would be real nice. Mr. Damon, you play it, and Bertha will sing it.”
Bertha cast an appealing look at Damon and he remarked, “Oh, let’s let the whole thing drop for tonight, Mrs. Trent. What do you say?”
Reluctantly Mrs. Trent consented, and was about to change the subject herself when Bertha said, “I should like to play a little something classical for Mr. Damon.”
“Fine!” Damon cried. “Let’s have some contrast !”
And Bertha, who was not expecting this encouragement, played a bit of Wagner. To her amazement, Damon applauded enthusiastically when she had finished.
“Pretty good!” he exclaimed. “You play better than Miss Canty.”
“Did you really like it, Mr. Damon?” Mrs. Trent asked earnestly, seeing visions of barriers destroyed between him and her daughter.
“Of course I liked it, Mrs. Trent. I’m not all heathen.”
In the remaining half hour of Damon’s stay, the conversation touched nearly every discussable topic, so skillfully did both Bertha and Damon contrive to keep Mrs. Trent away from music. But when Damon rose to go, Mrs. Trent broke loose again.
“There now, I suppose it is getting late,” she said. “But you must be sure and come again, and
very soon. Bertha will be very pleased to have you. It seems real nice, where you are both in the same store and everything. And I’m sure that Bertha can easily overcome her prejudice against your kind of music. You leave that piece of music, Mr. Damon, and maybe I can get her to play it some time. Bertha, go to the door with Mr. Damon.”
Bertha not only went to the door of the flat with him, but together they walked slowly down the stairs to the street floor.
“Hasn’t this been a funny evening?” Bertha laughed softly. “But mother has had the time of her life. You must come again soon.”
“I sure will, Miss Trent. Can’t be too soon to suit me. Sorry things were made so uncomfortable for you at times.”
“I enjoyed every moment, Mr. Damon. But as for you, you didn’t really enjoy that Wagner, did you?”
Damon looked her frankly in the eye. “No,” he said. “I thought it was awful.”
The next three weeks passed rapidly for Bertha. Her mother appeared to be very well, and she had allowed herself more freedom. Twice she had been to the theater with Damon, and once to supper at a dansant where he had actually persuaded her to dance because the music was “Watch That Jazz!” He had told her that she danced well, but she didn’t see how that was possible because she had never tried it before. Her friendship with Damon had decidedly strengthened. They called each other by their first names now, through Mrs. Trent’s sug-
gestion. He had been at the Trent home every week, but before each visit, Bertha had extracted a promise that music was not to be mentioned, and mother had obeyed. “Watch That Jazz!” lay untouched on the square piano. Once, or at least so Bertha imagined, Damon had come dangerously near proposing. She had been strangely happy, although she dreaded the time when he actually should, knowing that she must refuse. And then one night when they were strolling homeward slowly from the theater, Damon suddenly asked, “Bertha, am I to come to your home day after tomorrow as usual ?”
“Why, of course.”
“Well, then, on that evening I am going to ask you to marry me, and then I am going to ask your mother if I can have you. All the same evening.”
Bertha’s heart sank. It was what she had been dreading.
“I don’t think it will be any use, Rex,” she said softly. “I am very sorry, but don’t you see the distinct barrier between us, and besides—”
“Great Scott! Bertha! I’m not asking you now!” Damon exclaimed. “Save your refusal, if it must be a refusal until Wednesday evening. Then I’ll be all set for anything. But don’t you see, Bertha, you mustn’t refuse! Here, run in the house quickly and think it all over.”
There was no need to think it over. Bertha had done nothing else for the past few days, and her mind was made up. At least she thought it was made up. It did seem such a pity though, because he was really very nice, and she did like hint a great deal. Yes, a very great deal. But oh! his music!
Mrs. Trent seemed to sense that there was something of more than usual importance in this visit of Damon’s, for she seemed doubly excited. As soon as sapper had been cleared away, she was wheeled into the living room, and there she immediately found fault. They must get a new lampshade. Those magazines under the table must be carried down cellar for the Salvation Army to come after. The cat must never be allowed to get up in that upholstered chair again. It was all clawed up. Bertha fixed things as well as she could, and then left to dress for the evening.
Scarcely was she ready when there came a cry from the living room, a cry of pain. Bertha knew it well, and she grew pale. Her mother was going to have a spell. So without losing a moment’s time, she sprang to the telephone and sent a hurry call to Dr. Bronson, and then rushed in to her mother.
“My side, Bertha!”
Bertha knelt at her mother’s feet and took her hands in hers.
“Now brace up, mother,” she said. “I’ve sent for the doctor and he’s coming right over. Let’s see if we can’t keep nice and cool all the time before he comes. And when the pains come, j ust try not to scream, mother, because—you know what he says—it weakens you so. Let’s think of other things. Let’s think of—”
“Oh—h! Bertha! My—my side!” Mrs. Trent was actually writhing with her pain.
“Mother, you did make such a funny face then,” Bertha ventured, forcing a laugh. “Shall I show you how you looked?” She squinted her eyes and opened her mouth wide, but Mrs. Trent did not hear or see.
“My heart! Oh! I—I can’t stand it, Bertha! I can't!”
Bertha jumped to her feet. “You must, mother! You know you must! Here, shall I dance for you mother? Dance the way Rex Damon and I did the other night. Mother, you musn’t act so! You can’t stand it!”
Her mother’s arms were wrapped around her head and she was rocking back and forth, screaming with the terrific pain. It had never been quite as bad as this before.
“My side!”
“Yes, yes, mother, I know. But just listen to me a moment. Let me read you something. See, here’s a magazine. Shall I read you a story, mother? Here’s one by—”
“My heart! My side!” The woman’s agony was terrible to see.
“I know, mother, I’ll play to you the way I did last time. You liked it last time, mother, and you must be very quiet the way you were before. Remember I played the ‘Melody in F?’ I’ll play it now, just like father, you remember, beginning so slow.”
But her mother screamed again and Bertha had to leave the piano and hold her in her arms.
“Mother, mother, mother,” she pleaded. “You mustn’t. You’re wearing yourself out. Won’t you. won’t you be quiet?”
‘“Bertha! It pains so!” She could only gasp.
“Listen mother while I play again. If you don’t like the ‘Melody in F,’ I’ll play you Paderewski’s ‘Menuet.’ You always liked that, you know. Here it is. Dee, dee, diddlety dumty dee, dee.”
“I can’t. I can’t!”
“Mother you’ll drive me crazy and you’ll kill yourself. You must be quiet!”
But it seemed useless, and Bertha, nearly worn out herself, and fearful even for her mother’s life, glanced wildly around the room for some new thing to try. It was then that she saw the copy of Damon’s music still lying on the piano. She hesitated just a moment and then seized it and tore it open to the chorus.
“Mother!” she cried. “You’ll have to listen now!”
At first, in her excitement, she could make neither head nor tail out of the notes, and the entire chorus was played without her mother taking the slightest heed, but rather increasing her shrieks of pain, for Bertha had stopped talking. But then Bertha began to play it for the second time, and now she had found the swing, and was pounding it out with all her might.
“My heart!”
“Mother, don’t you hear what I am playing!”
“Pain, Bertha! My heart!”
But Bertha did not give up, and beginning the chorus again, she began to sing it.
"Watch that jazz! (Mother, do you hear?)
My honey don’t forget to watch that jazz!
(Mother!)
It’s bound to get you with its—”
“Bertha!” Mrs. Trent had heard, and this was a
cry of surprise rather than pain—of delighted surprise. Twenty-five years with Bertha Trent and nothing like this before. What was pain in the face of this!
“That you must—Oh! Oh! Say don’t you know You’ve got to watch that jazz!”
But although she had finished the chorus, she didn’t dare to stop. In fact she didn’t even dare to glance around at her mother, but instead she began to play it again, and this time her shoulders began to sway. Her mother, completely exhausted, and although the pains were still present, not daring to scream for fear of stopping. Bertha, watched her every motion.
“Watch your step! (Look, mother!)
It’s bound to fill you just so full of pep!” There was no need of telling her mother to look. Her mother could do nothing else but watch her until again the piece was finished. And still Bertha did not dare to stop, and this time she sprang from the piano and began to dance and sing at once, imitating perfectly an actress she had watched at the Orpheum two nights before who had sung this same song. Around the table she went, her arms outstretched, her head flung back, whirling, kicking, singing. And when that was done, back she flew to the piano again, and as long as she played her mother watched, and as long as she watched, the pain was ignored, until finally it passed altogether, and the fight was won. She slept exhausted.
When Damon arrived he found Bertha alone in the living room. The doctor had come, and had moved Mrs. Trent to her bed.
“Why, Bertha,” he said. “Whatever is the matter? You look all in.”
“Maybe I am, Rex,” said Bertha, smiling. “Mother has just had a terrible spell. In fact, the worst she has ever had. But she’s all right now. The doctor said so.”
“Perhaps you had rather I wouldn’t stay.”
“No, Rex, I want you to stay.”
Damon did stay, but there was something so strange in Bertha’s attitude that he did not stay long. As he rose to go, Bertha shyly remarked, “You didn’t know we had a little veranda out back, did you? Come let me show you it.”
They tiptoed past Mrs. Trent’s door, through the kitchen, and out onto a tiny porch overlooking a jumble of back yards and fences. But there were enough trees so that the moon, straggling through, splotched everything with fantastic lights and shadows.
For a moment or two they stood looking, and then Damon spoke.
“While we were in the living room tonight, I made up my mind not to mention that subject tonight. But out here, it’s a little different. Bertha, will you marry me?”
Bertha answered him slowly. "Tonight when mother had her spell, Rex, I tried every means possible to keep her from killing herself by screaming her strength away. Nothing would do. I finally played to her. I played classical music, and it didn’t have any effect. Then, Rex, I played ragtime. I played ‘Watch That Jazz!’ And it worked, Rex! And I not only played it but I sang it. And I not only sang it, but I danced to it! And poor mother forgot her pain and stared at me in amazement. It saved her life, the doctor said. Ragtime saved her life. You saved her life, Rex!”
“I did?”
“Yes. You with your ragtime. And now let me tell you a very dark secret. All the time, I’m very much afraid I enjoyed it. And what’s more, if you’ll come in the house a moment before you go, I’ll sing it to you.”
She started in, but he caught her and held her.
“Just a minute here, you wonder!" he exclaimed. “I want an answer. Will you marry me?”
Bertha didn’t try to get away.
“Rex, how could I refuse!.........Oh, Rex! That’s quite enough! Remember, young man, if you don’t behave, it is I who will have the upper hand. I can rule you all my life.”
“How’s that?” he demanded.
“Why don’t you see? I can rule you absolutely. Whenever you won’t do what I say, I shall drag you to the piano, I shall make you sit down beside me, and—”
“And what?”
“And I shall play you Wagner!”
DISENCH-ANTMENT
By Emanuel M. Benson
THERE’S a good boy, Frank; now don’t ever says anything like that again.”
“But Frances,” I insisted, “I only------------------”
“Oh yes,” she cut in, “I know what you mean when you say all those beautiful things about ‘the sea's eye having a mist in it’ but you must never say such things. Never, never, never,” she continued, stamping her slippered feet in anger. “You make me feel so uneasy, and I like you so much, Frank. Please don’t make me be silly and cry. Promise me, Frank,” she said sweetly, placing her tiny white hands upon my shoulders, “promise me that you will never again say anything pretty; say you never will and I shall give you the nicest butterfly kiss. You know you love-—
“Dear Frances,” I rudely interrupted. “I confess that I love kisses—especially butterfly kisses from your lips ‘whose blood runs wine,’ but—”
“Oh dear me,” screamed Frances, “don’t make up such ridiculous stories!”
I noticed many warm tears making careless paths down her face. She looked more delightful than ever before.
“Oh Frank,” she uttered between her sobs, “I know you are so clever; but you bewilder me with those foolishly nice things you say. I do wish you would just act like a stupid little child when we are together. Never say anything that is at all clever.”
I dared not tell her how angelic she looked as she attempted to convince me to metamorphose into a senseless little cherubim.
“Come, my dear Frank, be my playmate just for today. Forget that the sea’s eye has a mist in it and that my lips are whatever you say they are. Let me place my hands over your eyes and you must make believe that you have become a silly little child like your dear Frances. That’s a good boy, Frank. Now you may hold my hand as we look for some sweet-scented flowers on top of that big, big hill.”
The only thing I recalled as I ran along with Frances was the pretty little swish her dress made when the wind caught it up in its sibilant caresses.
In the distance I could hear the faint tingle of miniature bells. “Frances, my child-friend,” I pleaded in spite of myself, “listen, listen, can’t you hear the tiny bluebells ringing cheerfully in the wind ? They are really singing, Frances, like happy little children with harmonious voices.”
Frances patted my cheek with her thin, white
hand and sweetly admonished me not to forget that I must never, never, never, say-------her last words were caught up by the tricky wind and carried to a distant land of dryads.
When Frances saw the portion of the hillside which was covered with a sheen of green gossamer silk, from whose surface sprung up hundreds of merry bluebells, she left my side and cruelly plucked up a nosegay.
“Oh cruel, cruel Frances.” I tried to shout, but no sound came from my parched and swollen throat. My heart wept pitifully. The sweet, dulcimer-like wind suddenly became sad and mournful; it moaned frightfully. The bluebells all bowed their heads in prayer. The whole world of bluebells were praying for their dead brothers. Their sorrow pierced my heart and made my legs sag horribly.
Frances found me bathing my inflamed eyes in a brook of icy water shaded by many weeping willows and yew trees. She raised my head so that she could look into my swollen eyes.
“Frank my love,” she said like a frightened child, “why are you so unhappy ?”
I knew it would be vain to tell her that my heart was as lifeless as a hollow tree, so I told her that I loved her; and I am sure that I told the truth.
Frances thought that I had been play-acting, as she called it, and burst out laughing. She was sucking the blood from my body but she believed she was being only too grateful as she said, “let me give you a butterfly kiss for you excellent acting. There, you are such a dear boy. Now you may carry my honey-sweet nosegay for me.”
When she placed the dead bluebells in my hand their skeletons poisoned my entire body and made my hand hang heavy on my breathless chest.
Oh dear child-friend you thought that you made me happy when you gave me those phantom-like bluebells to carry—;—you thought that I was happy when you gave me a butterfly kiss.
As I walked home the sun was bleaching the heavens into a brilliant vermillion. In the distance I could hear the weeping bluebells ringing out a dirge which each moment became more and more heartbreaking. I suddenly became old, terribly old, at least I was much older than my child-friend Frances. Dear Frances, you will never know that between our hands lay twenty withered years.
Success - - A Novelette
By L. W. Ingram
THE eminent neurologist continued: ‘‘Your case is not unusual, Mr. McLain. The evident nervous tension with which you are tortured is chiefly attributable to suppressed desires. Its just another instance of the hopeless maladjustment of the physical and the more—or the physical and the economic—in our present-day life. I know how ironic my advice will sound, for the remedy for your condition would consist very largely in the attainment of a normal sex life. I confess my inability to prescribe a substitute—complete sublimation is not possible, naturally. Nor is marriage always possible, and as I am entirely acquainted with the moral precepts under which you have been brought up, I hesitate to suggest— ah—the alternative. As I say, it’s the matter of trying to fit our cave man bodies into this twentieth century environment, and our bodies often rebel violently—Now, my boy, I can give you an, analysis of my findings in your case in the usual psychotherapeutic terminology, but you don’t want that. You want to know what to do—Well, the only way out of the impasse is marriage—Failing that—you will be obliged, I am afraid, to scrap some of your sex ‘mores’.”
* * * *
His best friend said to him: “Lynn, I rather envy you. You are free to come and go as you please, while I am tied down here at home. This married life—I don’t know as it’s worth the candle. My salary is bigger than yours—but I’m not as well fixed as you are. When you want a suit you buy it, while I’ve always got to think of Merriam and the kid. You can get over to the games whenever you like. And to the shows. I can’t even make Urbana for that spring get together. I love Merriam, of course, and I’m proud of my little home here, but—oh, hell, yours is the life! No responsibilities, congenial friends, plenty of money, great prospects—old man, you’re sitting on the world I”
His best girl friend said to him: “Why Lynn, what makes you so despondent ? The other night we were discussing all the old gang, where we were, what we were doing—you know—-and somebody said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you who’s going to be
the success—Lynn McLain.’ Then followed a very flattering description of your talents—you should have been there, Lynn. It made me a wee bit jealous. You know that I had hopes for a career once, and then—I fell in love. That finished the career, and instead of Merriam Redding, illustrator, possibly a celebrated artist, I’m just a wife and a mother. Oh, I don’t regret it, only—only—well, Lynn, you are in a wonderful position to do something awfully fine!”
* * * *
His boss said to him: “McLain, I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time that your work here has been extremely satisfactory. You have personality, originality, ability—and what’s more, you have shown great interest in the business. This publishing game—if you want to make a go of it —takes a lot of damned hard work. I’ve noticed that a lot of the men we take on here from your—your set—spend most of the time with their feet parked on the desks, resting, no doubt, for the anticipated evening of helling around. But you seem to be anxious to learn this game. At least, you have applied yourself. There’s plenty of room at the top, my boy. Keep it up.”
* * * *
His pastor said: “Lynn, you’ve always been one of my boys. I am very proud of you. I’ve known you since you were a little tad, I’ve watched you grow, I’ve prayed for you. I’ve followed you thru your school and college career, and I’ve seen you launched upon what promises to be an undertaking that will bring you rich reward, both in financial return and happiness. I’m still very much interested. I only wish your mother might be here to enjoy you. I am sure your father is very proud of his son. That is more than can be said of some of his neighbors—some of your old playmates have certainly traveled another road. And one that will lead them far afield, only to rob them of the best things life has to offer. Some day they will wish they had followed the trail of Lynn McLain, Christian gentleman.”
* * * *
That was three years ago. That night he went out and put a bullet thru his temple.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
By Emanuel M. Benson
THlS fellow Perchal is a queer guy, A asserted. Damn peculiar duck, B confirmed. So the gossip was disseminated,----------------no harm meant---------------------------------------not at all-----------------------------only they had an idea-according to their point of view------------they didn’t care but------------------------------------. So it went from mouth to mouth, sneeringly, in a joke or a friendly confession: Know this guy Perchal? Who in hell wants to know him anyway? He ain’t human-------------he don't know the difference between a petticoat and a eunuch. Why just hear the way he talks. I wish you could hear him in class. Gosh, he says the damndest stuff! Who wants to know a fellah like that? He ain’t half natural-----------------holy gee, I’m tolerant but when it comes to--------------------—----------—
2
Brad Perchal was sitting comfortably in a large red leather easy chair. Every minute or so his eyelids twitched nervously. He got up to poke the embers on the hearth. As usual, he was alone, and above all things he hated solitude. There were times when he could scream with loneliness; when he would have given a great deal to talk for hours on end with a person whom he liked, with someone, anyone. It was no use trying.
The door of Brad’s room was thrown back ecstatically on it rusty hinges. Hello, Brad, a jovial voice shouted. How the hell are you? Pretty good Steve, sit down won’t you?
Steve plopped down into a wicker chair near the fireplace, took a cigarette out of his pocket, lighted it carelessly and looked up at Brad Perchal. Hey Brad, why don’t you go out with some of the fellows? All you ever do is sit cooped up in your room mooding, reading or writing. It ain’t good for you Brad. You should go out some place on a tear------------------------a peerade-get tight-laugh--damn it all Brad, be happy and laugh.
That’s not what I want Steve. It’s something else. It’s music, theatres, and then- - -oh, what’s the use! You won’t, you can’t understand.
Steve roared with laughter. The wicker chair groaned. The fire on the hearth spluttered wildly. Can that stuff Brad. You’ll have plenty of time for music and junk like that when you get out of college, when you get hitched up with some woman and get married. What you should do while you’ve
got the chance is to feel college life-----join a fraternity------------------------------------meet some janes- - -. Wake up Brad, you know damn well what I mean.
Brad wasn’t looking at Steve as he spoke to him. He was looking down thoughtfully at his long thin fingers and those large noticeable blue veins that channeled his hands.
I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Steve suggested, I’ll take you along with me to-night. Plenty to drink- - -nice dames- - -everything a guy can want. What do you say to that Brad ?
Brad slowly glanced up at Steve. His face was half a smile and half snicker. He wondered if--------- It’s kind of you Steve--------------------------------this invitation-but I don’t think that I can.
Horses Brad- - -don’t think at all. Just come along. Meet me down at my room at eight o'clock.
Steve threw his cigarette into the fireplace. So long Brad until to-night. Steve lurched out of his chair, opened the door and rushed out of the room laughing contentedly. His laughter echoed loudly down the dark empty corridors of the dormitory.
Curly blue clouds of cigarette smoke greeted Brad as he entered Steve’s room. Steve pushed the clouds aside as he went to meet Brad. Before Brad had time to take off his coat Steve grabbed him by the arm and led him toward the center of the room. Brad heard a girl’s low whisper--------and the rustle of a silk gown. The smoky air burnt tears into his eyes. As the grip on his arm tightened a short pale-faced girl sprang up before him, and with her arms akimbo she looked at him defiantly. The grip on Brad’s arm loosened. This is Dorothy Churchill, Brad, damn good friend of mine. How do you do Miss Churchill. Brad’s meek words flew swiftly by the pallid cheeks of the impudent girl and found themselves crushed against the wall. She turned her eyes from Brad and looked questioningly at Steve. Gee, I’m awful thirsty--where do you keep the fireworks? On the top shelf in the closet. Thanks Steve, you’re a hero, site threw over her shoulder running toward the closet.
A tall sluggish boy with a dimple for a chin, and an aquiline nose that kissed his lips, came precipiately toward them. Brad, I want you to meet Chris
Chedwick. How do you do Chedwick. Sure glad to meet you Perchal, heard a lot about, yeah, Steve is always talking ’bout you when he ain’t got nothing else to do.
So it went. Brad met them all coldly and dispassionately. Whenever Miss Churchill came tripping by him with the liquid contents of the closet held dangerously by the nape of the neck, Brad stopped her and poured himself out a drink. But he only drank so that he could forget the foolish jabber of those dumb asses, who seemed like inflated balloons taking advantage of the breezy weather.
Brad caught Steve by the arm. Look here Steve.
I must go along-------rotten headache- - -drank- too much- - -nice party---thanks a lot-------- - -come over to see me some time. Brad leaped for the door like a frightened animal.
4
He poked the embers on the hearth; his eyelids twitched nervously. Thank God, at last he was alone. A tangled image of Steve’s party caused Brad to smile cynically. Strange people, he said to the leaping yellow flames, and they criticize me when they should be crawling on their bellies. Good God, just as long as I blow my nose as they do I am alI lowed to exist unmolested. But if I dare blow my nose differently,----------oh Lord, I wish I were- -
Brad walked over to his desk to get a volume of French poetry. No, he didn’t want to read Ronsard. No, not even De Musset. It was Hugo he wanted, dear good Hugo. The flames blinked fantastically on the olive-green walls.
He was not lonesome to-night. Quite the contrary, even the most melancholy poetry made him happy. He read a line of Hugo to the leaping yellow flames:
Demain c’est le tombeau.
The Damn Fool
By Clifford B. Orr
Well, don’t keep lookin’ at me like that, then, if you want me to tell you. You stare as though I’d done somethin’ terrible, and I ain’t. Maybe it was my fault, but it wasn't wrong. And besides, Mrs. Castle, or whatever your name is, it’s you folks at the Mission that ought to have come a long time ago and agiven us your help instid of waiting until it’s all over and then comin’ and sayin’ what’s all this, and that wa’n’t Christian and all the rest. Hypocrites, that’s what you are! ....Well, I’m goin’ to tell you if you’ll give me the chanct....
I’ve been laid up, see, for more’n a year with this damn con, and Bibs, that’s what they calls my husband—no, you didn’t know him—he knew enough to keep out of the way of St. Joseph’s Mission—Bibs worked up at Dago’s fruit store, up at the other end of Poat Street. He got a dollar a day and all the fruit he could swipe... .Say, of course he swiped. We all swipes. You swipes too, probably, or else where does the Mission get all its fine airs they tell us about. No one’s goin’ to give nothin’ in this world. That’s a cinch.
Well, I tell you I got the con, and I have to lay here all day, and Bibs, he ain’t here most of the time, and you can’t get no one to come and stay with a con who ain’t goin’ to get no pay for it, not on Poat Street. So we has to hire someone, and pay her a quarter, and the medicine I takes costs another quarter, and so how are we goin’ to
live on four bits a day, I want to know, and pay the rent too? And Bibs is too old to get another job, and I’m gettin’ on, even if I could have got a job. So why couldn’t I tell him what I did tell him, and what’s the use fussin’ about my doin’ wrong and being the cause of it all. I had to, I tell you, I had to! Wait till I . . . . . . . . . .. yes, I cough like
that all the time. Now do you see?
Oh, hold your horses. I’m goin’ to tell it, though you know it already well enough. And what’s goin’ to become of me, I’d like to know. Am I goin’ to lie here and cough till . I rot?.. .No, I won’t go to your damn Mission. If you say it’s my fault, I’ll stick it out, I will, and rot. Oh, it won’t be long. I cough... I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gee, that was a
long one.
I suppose the sooner I tell you, the sooner you’ll get outa here. So here’s the rest.... Well, a month ago, we gets so hard up we don’t eat for three days, and I tells Bibs that there ain’t nothin’ more to it, he’s got to get some cash somehow. And I remembers the old man that used to sit on Robie Street with one leg and a tin dipper, and he used to get so much money in his old dipper that he rolled in it. So I tells Bibs that’s what he’s got to do. He’s got to beg it. And he gets cold feet and swears he’ll murder first, and I tells him don’t be a damn fool, but he won’t, see? So the next day I nags him again, and he won’t, and I nags him again, and he won’t, and I nags him every day for a month. And
then yesterday we don’t eat again and we... . we... .there... .that cough means I ain’t et yet.
So last night he gives in, and this mornin’ he gets up and says where’s the dipper. And I tells him to take the strap off that old trunk there and hitch up his leg under his coat. And he won’t do that until I argue myself sick again, but finally he says he will, and I straps his leg up for him, good and tight. He takes the dipper and looks like a regular cripple with his white hair and all. And then he gets the dumps again and says he’s goin’ across the street and ask old man Buckney if he thinks it’s all right, and I tell him again don’t be such a damn fool, but he swears he’s
goin’. So he takes a stick and hobbles down the stairs.
I crawls to the winder and when he comes on the sidewalk I yells to him to go straight to Robie Street and never mind old man Buckney. I knows the old man’ll talk him out of it, see? But he yells back shut up, and starts across the street. And he keeps lookin’ back at me and talkin’ and the stick slips on the ice, and he ain’t used to one leg, and he gets so mixed up he don’t see it comin’. But I do, and I yells at him, and the people on the street yells at him too. .The Truck!... .But he don’t see it, and he falls, and there’s a noise, and we all screams, and he yells, and the wheels.........the........this.....cough......... Bibs.....Oh, the damn fool!
Madame
By A. L. Vincent
She had left Wallace, a small town in Idaho, to go on the stage. A travelling company of Abie Jacobs’ “Rosebuds” was playing in Moscow at the time and she joined the chorus. That was fifteen years ago, and now she was returning, after taking Paris by storm; acclaimed the most beautiful American woman on the Parisian stage.
Madame’s maid told reporters that she was recovering from a long illness and that she could see positively no one. Madame would leave tomorrow for Priest Lake, in the northern part of the state. She had taken the De Wolf Lammers’ country home there and she would not return to public life until she had rested for a long time.
Yes, she was very glad to be back in her home again and she hoped that her recovery might be soon so that she might have time to visit her old friends before having to return east to fill her pressing contracts.
Town Topics for the week before had said, “There are rumors afloat concerning the departure of a lady, famous for her beauty, from the theatrical world. It is said that her cold-hearted manager thrust her into the street because her looks were beginning to fade. Others maintain that she was being threatened with a suit and saw fit to pick up her luggage and start for points west. It is certain, at any rate, that she is no longer in our midst.”
When she had read this, Madame had become indignant. They were casting slurs. There must be a libel suit when she returned to New York. ’Twas a pity these snoopy writers could not leave a perfectly innocent creature alone.
But just now she was too much concerned with her “recent illness”
to return eastward for fighting such a suit. She must rest up first; then possibly she might recover. She flattered herself so much as to think that Town Topics little realized just how close they had come to the truth. She was a has-been from the stand-point of beauty, but the fool public need not know if she could only scrape up an extra thousand or so for a face-lifting operation. That was just the trouble; she found that her credit was no longer good in eastern shops. It was this realizationthat made her “pick up her luggage” and go back home where rumors of financial difficulties could not possibly have been heard, where she could struggle along for a while on mere front. Possibly she might find new contracts on the coast, or some fool might fall for her and overlook her increasing wrinkles. Marriage with such a fool would not be too difficult, providing he was well enough off.
She was using DeWolf Lammers’ place while they were in Alaska, it having been arranged through a series of craftily worded letters from Madame, posing as her own secretary. These newly-rich mining men were such easy marks, their wives such climbers, that they quickly jumped at the chance of having a famous actress living in their home. They had even told her that the servants, who stayed on the place all year anyway, were hers to command-- altogether quite an ideal arrangement under the circumstances.
Heavily veiled, and with eight suitcases (Marie, the maid, carried the two empty ones) Madame left the hotel in the morning and took the train to Spokane. From there she went by train to Priest River. The Lammers car met her there, Marie being careful to keep her two bags all the while.
The hotel at Coolin, where they stopped for dinner, was full of men
up from Spokane for a week-end’s fishing, some of them with their wives and children. Madame was annoyed by the staring in the dining room, by the untidy linen, by the squeaky chairs at the tables.
The waitress was flustered to the point of paralysis whenever she approached the table. Between trips, in the kitchen, she recounted with infinite detail Madame’s every word and gesture.
“George at the desk called her Madame, real grand-like. Her name’s Miss Elinor Heath so I can’t see why they calls her Madame. She wa’nt ever married, leastwise Tatler says she wa’nt. She’s goin’ up to the Lammers’ place on the bay. It’s a real swell layout, Gertrude. We’ll row up there tomorrow.”
The house, five miles above Coolin, proved to be a success. The building materials had been carted from Priest River and the grounds had been laid out sumptuously. There was a motor boat and a canoe. The lawn sloped down to the shoreline and a long dock was built out over the water.
Madame, as she sat on the vine-covered verandah, looking across the lake toward the sunset, was well satisfied with herself. Here she would be safe for two or three months. When the Lammers came back from Alaska she might even go into town with them for part of the Fall and Winter. Something else might turn up even before then.
For the time being, however, she need not worry.
The next evening she was again sitting on the verandah. There seemed to be nothing else to do in this God-forsaken hole. She at least was free from all the scandal-mongers who had been haunting her apartment in New York in search of choice bits for the Tatler and Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang.
The gardener, who was quite too
good-looking to be living at Priest Lake, had tried to interest her in the sail boat which was moored at the dock. She was afraid of water when she had to venture over it in such a flimsy shell, so she had kept a safe distance from the wharf. The beach at the north end of the lake sloped gently for fifteen feet and then dropped off to a depth of twenty feet or so. From the shore it was easy to see the trout and bass swimming lazily about in the sun-filled water, silhouetted against the pure white sand. She had been sitting on the beach all morning, watching the fishes, until the sun had come around so that it shone in her eyes, and it was no longer possible to see into the water, which was screened by a brilliant glare of reflected light.
In the afternoon she had puttered about the house, reading bits of poetry which Mrs. DeWitt Lammers had copied in illuminated lettering while a child at school, later to be framed in gilt and placed at frequent intervals on the walls of her bedroom done in French gray. Madame laughed a little at the poetry; it was entirely too sentimental to be taken seriously. At three o’clock she had tea served, too impatient and bored to wait longer.
Now as she sat outdoors, watching the red and gold reflections ripple back and forth across the water, she was strangely contented. She could not tell why. Of course it might have been the food, which was correct in every detail. Or perhaps it was the faultless servants. Or perhaps she was beginning to get sleepy and didn’t care very much whether everything was as it should be or not.
The lights of a motor could be seen rounding the curves across the bay. Strange, she didn’t know that there was another estate on that part of the lake. She traced yesterday’s trip up from Coolin in the twilight and could remember no gates along the road. No, she was positive that there were no gates.. The car must
be coming to the Lammers’ place. Perhaps the Lammers were coming back unexpectedly. No, they couldn’t have reached Alaska yet if they had followed their original schedule.
Whoever it was, even though it were a delivery car, they provided some novelty in the day’s routine. She could wager with herself any number of times on just who it was. This kind of betting wouldn’t lose her money anyway. It was not as if she were going to lose all of her year’s salary in advance, as she had done in a surreptitious game in a London night club.
She decided to go down to the lodge and meet the machine. It would have been a foolish thing to do any place else, but all conventions and fears seemed to be dropped in this wilderness.
As she swung open the lodge gate the lights of the car rounded the last curve and shone on her. Once again she was standing in the spotlight of the Folies Bergere, or on the New Amsterdam roof. She felt that she was an actress with a role which unfolded before her as the play went on and the old aching for applause came back to her. Whether she was cast for a melodrama or a comedy could only be determined by the persons in the approaching machine.
The car drew up and stopped at the gate.
“Hello, Elinor!”
There was only one man in the car. He stepped out and took both of Madame’s hands in his.
“It’s Bob, Elinor. Bob Fielding.” “How nice! And do you still love me Bob?”
“I can’t tell. The headlights aren’t awfully strong, and you know photographers are awful flatterers sometimes.”
“How romantic of you, coming up here like this. How did you know I was here?”
“Get in. I’ll put up the car and then we can talk things over.”
“Put up the car! You’re not stay-
ing, are you?”
“Of course. I can’t go back to Priest River at this time of the night.”
“You’re simply delicious. I love unconventional men.”
Madame was glad that Bob had come. She had not thought of him for many years—not since he had said goodbye to her in Moscow when she left with the Jacobs show. She hoped that he wouldn’t prove a disappointment. That line about the headlights was a good one. She must save it in case Mr. Hearst asked her for an autobiography.
“You look just like your pictures, Elinor. But you’re just a little--tired, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Bob. I am old. Why say tired? They’re not synonymous—at least not in my case.”
“I hoped you’d be frank about it. And are you leaving the stage for good?”
“That all depends. Why?”
“I asked you out here to find that little thing out.”
“You asked me out here? How ridiculous. You haven’t changed your name to Lammers have you?”
“No, Elinor. I read about your little troubles and I happen to have been in touch with your manager. You see, I still love you. I can tell you for sure, now that we’re in the light.”
“Don’t be idiotic. I haven’t seen you since I was eighteen. And don’t tell me you were cad enough to drag me all the way out here like that. Of course it was the Lammers people.”
“They’re friends of mine. I open all of their mail while they are away simply as a favor to them. Something important might turn up. I rented the house from them for the year. They won’t be back for a long time—going to Honolulu when they get tired of Alaska. And please don’t think I’m a cad. I’ve loved you all the time. I’ve had clipping bureaus send me all the news about you. I’ve saved all of your maga-
zine and newspaper pictures. I’ve worshipped you from afar, if you’ll permit me to become trite.”
Madame laughed. The play was to be a comedy after all.
"I hope that car belongs to you. I love people who can afford Renaults in this sort of country!”
“I knew you would. That’s why I have the nerve to hope that you’ll stay. You didn’t know that Hecla went from eighteen cents to six dollars within a year after you left, did you? That started it. Montana is filthy with oil right now and I have four wells started. Possibly with the first five hundred barrels coming in the last part of this week you may learn to love me.”
“Possibly, if they do come in.” “How obliging!”
Bob had hoped that Madame would not be too frank. He still dreamed of romance and he felt that he deserved a little from her after waiting so long.
Madame, leaning back against the soft cusions of the lounge, stared into the fire in the grate. She was at a loss as to how to take Bob. Surely a man wouldn’t be fool enough to wait for someone whom he knew would not have him. It was impossible to fall in love with photographs. Only movie heroes did that. She could not understand any man’s loving a woman so much that he would resort to such ends. He was insane to have done it. She must keep on playing her role, though. Perhaps some other reason might crop out.
They talked until long after midnight. Experiences which she had forgotten long ago were brought back to her. She dropped the frigid exterior which years of dealing with the world had given her, and cursed herself afterwards for having done it. She must not let this man know her real self. He had no reason for being any closer to her than anyone else.
When Madame arose in the morning she looked out of her window and
saw Bob sitting on the dock, fishing. He was dressed in white flannels, smoking a pipe. She hoped that he would not try to interest her in the motor boat. At any rate she would sit with him until he brought up the subject.
Taking up a piece of toast and an orange from the breakfast table she ran down to the dock. She had decided to give up coffee during her stay at the lake. Perhaps there was something in what these health cranks said, after all.
“Don’t you love the weather up here Bob?”
“Yeah. It is pretty good sometimes. You get used to things like that around here, though.”
“Trying to tempt me? A subject so trite as the weather can hardly be expected to interest a former lady of the bright lights.”
“You flatter yourself and under-rate my intelligence. I was not trying to tempt you. If I were to do that I should certainly not resort to the weather as an aid.”
“How remarkable! You’re the first man I’ve ever known who was impolite enough to say just what he thought. I rather like it—for a while, anyway.”
“About the tempting, I had thought of trying it. What do you like around here?”
“The food and the stillness. But even that is beginning to grind a bit. My nerves are strung for crowds and laughter and music. Of course, under it all there is always a touch of sadness for the wiser ones, but I’d lots rather have that sadness drowned out by the din of orchestras than to have to face it all alone with nothing but a hoot owl to distract my attention from it.”
“How quaint you are when you really say something. I hadn’t expected to find you such a philosopher”
“Now don’t be nasty. Of course I think. Everyone does. It’s all in the matter of how many magazines you’ve read. The more magazines—.
the more ways you have of saying things.”
“My dear you must learn to distinguish the good literature from the bad in modern periodicals. Save the trash and throw the good away. It’s been used once, and is now trite. You can always use the trash for satire if nothing else.”
“How strange! I was just thinking the same thing!. . . .Oh, pardon me, Bob. I forgot that I wasn't to use my old tricks. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”
“Yes, you started out by being delightfully original. Keep it up. A little lie now and then is all right, though, when it’s necessary to brighten the conversation. Of course, that about thinking the same thing is a bit hackneyed.”
She was beginning to be bothered by Robert. One didn’t know how to treat him. It was hard to know just what he meant and what he didn’t. She had thought of a novel little saying while she was sitting in the sand yesterday. She would try it on him.
“Bob, isn’t it funny about happiness? It seems that God is a little boy sitting on the dock dangling a bright shining bait in the water and all of us humans are the poor fish in the lake. Every time we start for the bait God yanks it out. Philosophers call it life and the bait is happiness.”
“I tell you, let’s pretend that I’m God and that you’re the fish. I’ll let you catch the bait—then you marry me. Is that a bargain?”
“And if I don’t think that the bait is worth it?”
“I”ll let you have another sort of bait.”
Madame thought for a few moments. Then—
“Bob, see that perch over there? If he takes your bait I’ll marry you. If he doesn’t—you owe me the money you’d naturally spend on me were we to be married.”
“You’re fooling.”
“I’m not. You said you’d let me have another sort of bait if I didn’t
want you for a husband. I won’t mince my words. I’d need a thousand or so for a facial operation, a few thousand for apartment rental, another few thousand for clothes. I really mean it. If you catch the fish I’ll marry you. If you don’t, I get the money.”
Bob did not answer. He let the bait j remain in the water for a few moments. The perch swam up to it, nosed it a bit, and swam away. It came back again. Madame’s sporting blood was up.
“Shake on it, Bob!”
She took his hand and he mechanically gripped hers.
Again the perch swam away. He was starting back again when Bob suddenly pulled the line out of the water.
“Elinor, I swear to God that I still love you. You have a queer fascination for me. But I’m sorry—I’m one of the old-fashioned unfortunates who like a little sincerity in women. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the only woman in the state of Idaho. I’m going back to town this morning. You’ll find a check on the table in the library.”
He got up and walked up the hill As he reached the door he turned and blew a mock kiss to Madame. Then he bowed extravagantly and went into the house. Madame, stunned at the sudden turn in the little comedy’s plot, stayed on the wharf. Suddenly she began to smile. When she heard Bob’s car go down the lane to the lodge, she got up and waved him out of sight, laughing all the while.
The next morning, after Marie had packed up, Madame came out of the side door, called to the chauffeur that she was ready, took a peek into her handbag to make sure that there really was a check for ten thousand there, and walked majestically down the path to the driveway.
Marie trotted behind, carrying two empty grips.
THE SHELL THAT HAD BEEN PETE
By Herbert S. Talbot
This a tale of a youth who had a happy dream. And being a lonely youth, he sought to make his dream come true.
There was a narrow soft-dirt road, and over it a golden chariot glided smoothly, with never a jar, never a bump, but a soft swaying lilt from side to side that kept time to the pulses of the Boy. And in the chariot with him was the Girl. In the dream he knew that she was his girl—only his. And he was hers with all his soul There was nothing which told them this, but they knew it,—this Boy and the Girl who was his. The road wound through wooded groves and stretched over long plains of sweet grass, with here and there a red poppy; and all the sound was the song of the larks. The sky was not blue but soft lavender. Nowhere else was such color but in the eyes of the Girl.
When the chariot came to the foot of a long steep hill the Girl looked at the Boy and said with her eyes, “Boy, when we are at the top of this hill, you shall kiss me.” Then they were at the top of the hill and the Boy kissed the Girl. He kissed her mouth and her eyes, and she rested lightly in his arms. Nothing told them, but they knew in the dream that they loved each other. Once more he kissed her, and the dream ended.
Pete, they called him in the garage. No one knew whether he had another name. He had walked in one day and asked for work. Short-handed for the moment, they had taken him, although he knew nothing but what he had learned tinkering with old farm machinery. There had been a farm, he told them, and people who had been his, but now there was nothing. Somehow he stayed on at his work because no one ever seemed to notice him, and he never noticed anyone. Each morning he came, did his
menial work quietly and faithfully, and then at night he left. Where he went they did not ask nor did he tell. Pete, they called him.
A morning came when he was late. But it was the first time and they said little. Because they never noticed him anyway they could notice nothing unusual now. Still, there was a difference. For an inner groping and struggling had gone. There would be no more stumbling. The goal was in sight, although he knew not how far off. So in place of the blindness there was vision; instead of the strife in his heart there was peace. But they didn’t notice the change. Only he, and perhaps God, had seen the lavender sky and looked into the soft lavender eyes. And only he, not even God, had kissed the white lids that covered those eyes.
He swept up the waste as usual before he left, and punched his time card. Then he walked out into Lafayette Street, deserted now in the late dusk of August. The throngs were gone, scattered through the city— leaves that had been blown together for a moment and then blown apart again. The sun was nearly gone, the street lamps just lit. The Boy walked down the hazy street to Canal Street, and then up Broadway. Well up-town there were lights and a million faces. Farther on, the lights were not quite so bright, the faces not quite so many. But Pete observed none of this. He was looking for something.—a chariot of gold in which he might ride on and on with the Girl, through green fields spotted with poppies, and under a sky of lavender.
Wearied at last he turned and went back to his room. After all. it was not to be expected that he should find what he looked for at his first attempt. But he would keep looking, and some day he must surely find it.
He was up at dawn to resume his search. There had been a farm where the fields were green, and through them a soft-dirt road had wound. These things he could find at least. In an old cigar box, hidden away in the bottom of his trunk, were a few crumpled bills. These he took, and went to the railroad station. For three hours he waited. Then there was a train on which he rode for six hours,—a stuffy, uncomfortable, sooty train. On the way he coughed frequently, to the great annoyance of those who sat near him. But only the coughs attracted their attention. The Boy himself they did not notice.
And then the ride was over. It was early evening and the boy was tired and hungry, but he left the station at once and found his road. A walk of a mile brought him to a little cemetery where he stopped and kneeled between two graves. Far, far off in the past, he had stood beside those graves when the brown soil was still damp above them. Now they were covered by a tangle of weeds. His head was not bowed, while he stayed there, but turned up to the sky, and his lips were still. Then he rose and went on his way. That night he slept in a hay-stack. In the morning he stopped at a farm-house for breakfast. The crumpled bills were gone now — only a few coins remained.
He walked all that day, stopping often to sit by the road. His whole body ached and he coughed often. In his heart was a great void. His mind was hazy but determined. There was no other thought than that he would find the chariot and ride in it. But he was weary —weary. Late in the afternoon he spent the last of his money for a little food. Before it was dark he lay down to sleep under a great elm at the edge of a broad green meadow. He coughed before he fell asleep.
For the second time he dreamed. Less like a dream than at first, it seemed to him. To his already benumbed mind the world awake was but a dream itself. . . .He kissed the
Girl, and was suddenly awakened by a downpour of rain. For an hour he huddled, half asleep, under the elm, trying in vain to keep dry. The coughing shook his frame, his brow was hot, his lips parched. For a moment he crawled from beneath the partial shelter of the tree and lay on his back. The cool sweet flow of rain on his face relieved him, but not for long. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and left him shivering under the tree again. He slept no more that night, but remained painfully awake, breathing with difficulty, stiff and sore. For all his fever he still shivered.
Then suddenly he slept and dreamed again. The dawn was just breaking when he opened his eyes, and looking through the tree tops saw that the sky above him was all soft lavender. Painfully he arose, and leaving the elms walked across a green meadow and onto the road. He was at the foot of a steep hill.... “Boy, when we are at the top of this hill, you shall kiss me” Slowly he started the long wearisome climb. Where was the smooth-running chariot? No matter; at the top of the hill he might stop, and there he would hold the Girl in his arms. The sun was up now,—just a little too warm. The sweat stood out on his face as he stumbled along the road. The everlasting cough weakened him more every minute. At every breath there was a stabbing pain through his lungs. Each step was agony. Somehow he could not see very well. Outlines were vague and indistinct. He tripped on a stone and fell, lying there in the road; he thought that it would be sweet to lie there longer, to cease driving his weary body ahead. But he must reach the top of the hill,— the summit. Where was it? On his feet again, he looked ahead. Where was the strength that would carry him on? Then he remembered and looked up to the sky,—the lavender sky of his dreams. And a soft hand seemed to hold his, a sweet voice spoke to him and urged him along.
Blindly he staggered on. It could not be much farther now. But he
could not breathe, he was choking, and he could not see. The hand that touched his increased its pressure ever so slightly, and the voice that spoke to him was clearer now. “Just a little more, just a little higher, Boy, and it will be over.” Just a few steps
more... .a few steps more.
And now he was there and he saw that he was not only at the top of the hill. For here, indeed, was the top of the world! He fell, exhausted, and pantingly dragged himself to the grass beside the road. With his last effort he stood upright and stretched his arms upward. He looked up and saw the sky; there came to his ears
the song of a lark. For an instant he stiffened, and then suddenly there was no more pain. He sank to the ground....But no, he had not fallen. He was gliding swiftly and smoothly in the golden chariot, and in his arms was the Girl with the lavender eyes. And both knew that at last the dream would never end.
Such is the tale of the youth who had a happy dream. Being a lonely youth, he sought to make his dream come true. And though the dream was a thing not of this world, still he went on and on until he found it.
For the price he paid was little enough in the end,—nothing more than a shell that had been Pete.