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https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=Alina.2.hartung Off the Road Database - User contributions [en] 2026-04-13T14:32:04Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.43.8 https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Motor_Boys_Across_the_Plains;_Or,_the_Hermit_of_Lost_Lake_(Book_4)&diff=938 The Motor Boys Across the Plains; Or, the Hermit of Lost Lake (Book 4) 2026-04-13T08:13:06Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: spacing of paragraphs in chapter II</p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Young, Clarence"<br /> year_of_publication="1907"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/43509/pg43509-images.html"<br /> genre="Fiction"<br /> journal="The Motor Boys Across the Plains: OR THE HERMIT OF LOST LAKE"<br /> page_range="1-248"<br /> /><br /> <br /> ===Preface/Chapter I. - Ramming an Ox Cart (1-10) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model, nationality, West, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> PREFACE<br /> <br /> <br /> Dear Boys:<br /> <br /> Here it is at last—the fourth volume of "The Motor Boys Series," for which so many boys all over our land have been asking during the past year.<br /> <br /> To those who have read the other volumes in this line, this new tale needs no special introduction. To others, I would say that in the first volume, entitled, "The Motor Boys," I introduced three wide-awake American lads, Ned, Bob and Jerry, and told how they first won a bicycle race and then a great motor cycle contest,—the prize in the latter being a big touring car.<br /> <br /> Having obtained the automobile, the lads went west, and in the second volume, called, "The Motor Boys Overland," were related the particulars of a struggle for a valuable mine, a struggle which tested the boys' bravery to the utmost.<br /> <br /> While in the west the boys heard of a strange buried city in Mexico, and, in company with a learned college professor, journeyed to that locality. The marvellous adventures met with are told in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> Leaving the buried city, the boys started again for the locality of the mine, and in the present tale are told the particulars of some strange things that happened on the way. A portion of this story is based on facts, related to me while on an automobiling tour in the west, by an old ranchman who had participated in some of the occurrences.<br /> With best wishes, and hoping we shall meet again, I leave you to peruse<br /> the pages which follow.<br /> <div style='text-align: right;'>CLARENCE YOUNG.</div><br /> <i>March 1, 1907.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car part, technology, car model, passenger, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS<br /> </div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>CHAPTER I</div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>RAMMING AN OX CART</div><br /> <br /> Mingled with the frantic tooting of an automobile horn, there was the shrill shrieking of the brake-band as it gripped the wheel hub in a friction clutch.<br /> <br /> "Hi, Bob! Look out for that ox cart ahead!" exclaimed one of three sturdy youths in the touring car.<br /> <br /> "I should say so! Jam on the brakes, Bob!" put in the tallest of the trio, while an elderly man, who was in the rear seat with one of the boys, glanced carelessly up to see what was the trouble.<br /> <br /> "I have got the brake on, Jerry!" was the answer the lad at the steering wheel made. "Can't you and Ned hear it screeching!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, topography, nationality, animal, pedestrian, accident, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was speeding down a steep hill, seemingly headed straight toward a solitary Mexican who was moving slowly along in an antiquated ox-drawn vehicle.<br /> <br /> "Then why don't she slow up? You've got the power off, haven't you?"<br /> <br /> "Of course! Do you take me for an idiot!" yelled Bob, or, as his friends sometimes called him, because of his fatness, "Chunky." "Of course I've shut down, but something seems to be the matter with the brake pedal."<br /> <br /> "Have you tried the emergency?" asked Ned.<br /> <br /> "Sure!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, onomatopoeia, nationality, speed, animal, pedestrian, risk, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Toot! Toot! Toot!<br /> <br /> Again the horn honked out a warning to the Mexican, but he did not seem to hear.<br /> <br /> The big red touring car was gathering speed, in spite of the fact that it was not under power, and it bore down ever closer to the ox cart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, sound, metaphor, nationality, pedestrian, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "Cut out the muffler and let him hear the explosions," suggested Jerry.<br /> <br /> Bob did so, and the sounds that resulted were not unlike a Gatling gun battery going into action. This time the native heard.<br /> <br /> Glancing back, he gave a frightened whoop and jabbed the sharp goad into the ox. The animal turned squarely across the road, thus shutting off what small chance there might have been of the auto gliding past on either side.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, passenger, driver, nationality, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going to hit him sure!" yelled Ned. "I say Professor, you'd better hold on to your specimens. There's going to be all sorts of things doing in about two shakes of a rattlesnake's tail!"<br /> <br /> "What's that about a rattlesnake?" asked the old man, who, looking up from a box of bugs and stones on his lap, seemed aware, for the first time, of the danger that threatened.<br /> <br /> "Hi there! Get out of the way! Move the cart! Shake a leg! Pull to one side and let us have half the road!" yelled Jerry as a last desperate resort, standing up and shouting at the bewildered and frightened Mexican.<br /> <br /> "Oh pshaw! He don't understand United States!" cried Ned.<br /> <br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry ruefully.<br /> <br /> "Vamoose, is the proper word for telling a Mexican to get out of the road," suggested the professor calmly. "Perhaps if you shouted that at him he might—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, accident, driver, speed, scenery, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> What effect trying the right word might have had the boys had no chance of learning, for, the next instant, in spite of Bob's frantic working at the brake, the auto shot right at the ox cart. By the merest good luck, more than anything else, for Bob could steer neither to the right nor left, because the narrow road was hemmed in by high banks, the machine struck the smaller vehicle a glancing blow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, animal, nationality, pedestrian, health, passenger, driver, dust"><br /> <poem><br /> The force of the impact skidded the auto on two wheels up the side of the embankment, where, poking the front axle into a stump served to bring the car to a stop. The car was slewed around to one side, the ox was yanked from its feet, and, as the cart overturned, the Mexican, yelling voluble Spanish, pitched out into the road.<br /> <br /> Nor did the boys and the professor come off scathless, for the sudden stopping of their machine piled the occupants on the rear seat up in a heap on the floor of the tonneau, while Bob and Jerry, who were in front, went sprawling into the dust near the native.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, nationality, animal, dust, accident, metaphor, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds there was no sound save the yelling of the Mexican and the bellowing of the ox. Then the cloud of dust slowly drifted away, and Bob picked himself up, gazing ruefully about.<br /> <br /> "This is a pretty kettle of fish," he remarked.<br /> <br /> "I should say it was several of 'em," agreed Jerry, trying to get some of the dust from his mouth, ears and nose. "You certainly hit him, Chunky!"<br /> <br /> "It wasn't my fault! How did I know the brake wasn't going to work just the time it was most needed?"<br /> <br /> "Is anybody killed?" asked the professor, looking up over the edge of the tonneau, and not releasing his hold of several boxes which contained his specimens.<br /> <br /> "Don't seem to be, nor any one badly hurt, unless it's the ox or the auto," said Ned, taking a look. "The Mexican seems to be mad about something, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the native had arisen from his prostrate position and was shaking his fist at the Motor Boys and the professor, meanwhile, it would appear from his language, calling them all the names to which he could lay his tongue.<br /> <br /> "I guess he wants Bob's scalp," said Jerry with a smile.<br /> <br /> "It was as much his fault as mine," growled Chunky. "If he had pulled to one side, I could easily have passed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="nationality, health, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The Mexican, brushing the dust from his clothes, approached the auto party, and continued his rapid talk in Spanish. The boys, who had been long enough in Mexico to pick up considerable of the language, gathered that the native demanded two hundred dollars for the damage to himself, the cart and the ox, as well as for the injury to his dignity and feelings.<br /> <br /> "You'd better talk to him, Professor," suggested Jerry. "Offer him what you think is right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thereupon Professor Snodgrass, in mild terms explained how the accident had happened, saying it was no fault of the auto party.<br /> <br /> The Mexican, in language more forcible than polite, reiterated his demand, and announced that unless the money was instantly forthcoming, he would go to the nearest alcade and lodge a complaint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, nationality, animal, health, tree, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers knew what this meant, with the endless delays of Mexican justice, the summoning of witnesses and petty officers.<br /> <br /> "I wish there was some way out," said Jerry.<br /> <br /> As the Mexican had not been hurt, nor his cart or ox been damaged, there was really no excuse for the boys giving in to his demands.<br /> <br /> "Let's give him a few dollars and skip out," suggested Ned. "He can't catch us."<br /> <br /> This was easier said than done, for the auto was jammed up against a tree stump on a bank, and the ox cart, which, the native by this time had righted, blocked the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, all unexpectedly, there came a diversion that ended matters. Professor Snodgrass, with his usual care for his beloved specimens before himself, was examining the various boxes containing them. He opened one containing his latest acquisition of horned toads, big lizards, rattlesnakes and bats. The reptiles crawled, jumped and flew out, for they were all alive.<br /> <br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" exclaimed the Mexican as he caught sight of the repulsive creatures. "They are crazy Americanos!" he yelled.<br /> <br /> With a flying leap he jumped into his ox cart, and with goad and voice he urged the animal on to such advantage that, a few minutes later, all that was to be seen of him was a cloud of dust in the distance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, tree, accident, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> "Good riddance," said Bob. "Now to see how much our machine is damaged."<br /> <br /> Fortunately the auto had struck a rotten stump, and though with considerable force, the impact was not enough to cause any serious damage. Under the direction of Jerry the boys managed to get the machine back into the road, where they let it stand while they went to a near-by spring for a drink of water.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> While they are quenching their thirst an opportunity will be taken to present them to the reader in proper form.<br /> <br /> The three boys were Bob Baker, son of Andrew Baker, a banker, Ned Slade, the only heir of Aaron Slade, a department store proprietor, and Jerry Hopkins, the son of a widow. All three were about seventeen years of age, and lived in the city of Cresville, not far from Boston, Mass. Their companion was Professor Uriah Snodgrass, a learned man with many letters after his name, signifying the societies and institutions to which he belonged. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, risk, equipment, speed, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Those who have read the first book of this series, entitled, "The Motor Boys," need no introduction to the three lads. Sufficient to say that some time before this story opens they had taken part in some exciting bicycle races, the winning of which resulted in the acquiring of Motor cycles for each of them.<br /> <br /> On these machines they had had much fun and had also many adventures befall them. Taking part in a big race meet, one of them won an event which gave him a chance to get a big touring automobile, the same car in which they were now speeding through Mexico.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their adventures in the auto are set forth at length in the second volume of the series entitled, "The Motor Boys Overland," which tells of a tour across the country, in which they had to contend with their old enemy, Noddy Nixon, and his gang. Eventually the boys and Jim Nestor, a miner whom they befriended, gained some information of a long lost gold mine in Arizona.<br /> <br /> They made a dash for this and won it against heavy odds, after a fight with their enemies. The mine turned out well, and the boys and their friends made considerable money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The spirit of adventure would not drown in them. Just before reaching the diggings they made the acquaintance of Professor Snodgrass, who told a wonderful story of a buried city. How the boys found this ancient town of old Mexico, and the many adventures that befell them there, are told in the third book, called "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> <br /> Therein is related the strange happenings under ground, of the sunken road, the old temples, the rich treasures and the fights with the bandits. Also there is told of the rescue of the Mexican girl Maximina, and how she was taken from a band of criminals and restored to her friends.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, animal, road condition, safety, nationality"><br /> <poem><br /> These happenings brought the boys and the professor to the City of Mexico, where the auto was given a good overhauling, to prepare it for the trip back to the United States.<br /> <br /> The boys and the professor, the latter bearing with him his beloved specimens, started back for civilization, keeping to the best and most frequented roads, to avoid the brigands, with whom they had had more than one adventure on their first trip. It was while on this homeward journey that the incident of the Mexican and the ox cart befell them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="equipment, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Having slaked their thirst the boys and the professor went back to the auto where, gathering up the belongings that had become scattered from the upset, they prepared to resume their journey.<br /> <br /> "Get in; I'll run her for a while," said Jerry.<br /> <br /> "One minute! Stand still! Don't move if you value my happiness!" exclaimed the professor suddenly, dropping down on his hands and knees, and creeping forward through the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter II. - A Nest of Serpents (11-19) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>CHAPTER II</div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A NEST OF SERPENTS</div><br /> <br /> "What is it; a rattlesnake?" asked Bob, in a hoarse whisper.<br /> <br /> "Or a Gila monster?" inquired Ned.<br /> <br /> "Quiet! No noise!" cautioned the professor. "I see a specimen worth ten dollars at the lowest calculation. I'll have him in a minute."<br /> <br /> "Is it a bug?" asked Chunky.<br /> <br /> "There! I have him!" yelled the scientist, making a sudden dive forward, sliding on his face, and clutching his hand deep into the grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As it happened there was a little puddle of water at that point, and the professor, in the excess of his zeal, pitched right into it.<br /> <br /> "Oh! Oh my! Oh dear! Phew! Wow! Help! Save me!" he exclaimed a moment later, as he tried to get out of the slough.<br /> <br /> The boys hurried to his aid, but the mud was soft and the professor had gone head first into the ooze, which held fast to him as though it was quicksand.<br /> <br /> "Get him by the heels and yank him out or he'll smother!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other boys followed his advice, and, in a little while the bug-collector was pulled from his uncomfortable and dangerous position. As he rolled about in the grass to get rid of some of the mud, he kept his right hand tightly closed.<br /> <br /> "What's the matter, are your fingers hurt?" asked Bob.<br /> <br /> "No sir, my fingers are not hurt!" snapped the professor, with the faintest tinge of impatience, which might be excused on the part of a man who has just dived into a mud hole. "My fingers are not hurt in the least. What I have here is one of the rarest specimens of the Mexican mosquito I have ever seen. I would go ten miles to get one."<br /> <br /> "I guess you're welcome to 'em," commented Jerry. "We don't want any."<br /> <br /> "That's because you don't understand the value of this specimen," replied the professor. "This mosquito will add to my fame, and I shall devote one whole chapter of my four books to it. This indeed has been a lucky day for me."<br /> <br /> "And unlucky for the rest of us," said Bob, as he thought of the spill.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, pleasure, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> It was found that a few minor repairs had to be made to the auto, and when these were completed it was nearly noon.<br /> <br /> "I vote we have dinner before we start again," spoke Bob.<br /> <br /> "There goes Chunky!" exclaimed Ned. "Never saw him when he wasn't thinking of something to eat!"<br /> <br /> "Well, I guess if the truth was known you are just as hungry as I am," expostulated Chunky. "This Mexican air gives me a good appetite."<br /> <br /> Bob's plan was voted a good one, so, with supplies and materials carried in the auto for camping purposes, a fire was soon built, and hot chocolate was being made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sick of canned stuff and those endless eggs, frijoles and tortillas," complained Bob. "I'd like a good beefsteak and some fish and bread and butter."<br /> <br /> "I don't know about the other things, but I think we could get some fish over in that little brook," said the professor, pointing to a stream that wound about the base of a near-by hill.<br /> <br /> A minute later the boys had their hooks and lines out. Poles were cut from trees, and, with some pieces of canned meat for bait they went fishing. They caught several large white fish, which the professor named in long Latin terms, and which, he said, were good to eat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while a savory smell filled the air, for Ned, who volunteered to act as cook, had put the fish on to broil with some strips of bacon, and soon there was a dinner fit for any king that ever wielded a scepter.<br /> <br /> Sipping their chocolate, the boys and the professor watched the sun slowly cross the zenith as they reclined in the shade of the big trees on either side of the road. Then each one half fell asleep in the lazy atmosphere.<br /> Jerry was the first to rouse up. He looked and saw it would soon be dusk, and then he awakened the others.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll have to travel, unless we want to sleep out in the open," he said.<br /> <br /> Thereupon they made preparations to leave, the professor gathering up his specimens, including the Mexican mosquito that had caused him such labor.<br /> <br /> "I think we'll head straight for the Rio Grande," said Jerry. "Once we get into Texas I expect we'll have some news from Nestor, as I wrote him to let us know how the mine was getting on, and, also, to inform us if he needed any help."<br /> <br /> "I'll be glad to see old Jim again," said Bob.<br /> <br /> "So will I," chimed in Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was soon chug-chugging over the road, headed toward the States, and the occupants were engaged with their thoughts. It was rapidly growing dusk, and the chief anxiety was to reach some town or village where they could spend the night. For, though they were used to staying in the open, they did not care to, now that the rainy season was coming on, when fevers were prevalent.<br /> <br /> The sun sank slowly to rest behind the big wooded hills as the auto glided along, and, almost before the boys realized it, darkness was upon them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Better light the lamps," suggested Ned. "No telling what we'll run into on this road. No use colliding with more ox carts, if we can help it."<br /> <br /> "I'll light up," volunteered Bob. "It will give me a chance to stretch my legs. I'm all cramped up from sitting still so long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry brought the big machine to a stop while Bob alighted and proceeded to illuminate the big search lamp and the smaller ones that burned oil. He had just started the acetylene gas aglow when, glancing forward he gave a cry of alarm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it?" cried Jerry, seeing that something was wrong. "Is it a mountain lion?"<br /> <br /> "It's worse!" cried Bob in a frightened voice.<br /> <br /> "What?"<br /> <br /> "A regular den of snakes! The horrible things are stretched right across the road, and we can't get past. Ugh! There are some whoppers!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, night, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Bob, who hated, above all creatures a snake, made a jump into the auto.<br /> <br /> "There's about a thousand of 'em!" he cried with a shudder.<br /> <br /> "Great!" exclaimed the professor. "I will have a chance to select some fine specimens. This is a rare fortune!"<br /> <br /> "Don't go out there!" gasped Bob. "You'll be bitten to death!"<br /> <br /> Just then there sounded on the stillness of the night a strange, whirring buzz. At the sound of it the professor started.<br /> <br /> "Rattlers!" he whispered. "I guess none of us will get out. Probably moccasins, cotton-mouths and vipers! There must be thousands of them!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> As he spoke he looked over the side of the car, and the exclamation he gave caused the boys to glance toward the ground. There they beheld a sight that filled them with terror.<br /> <br /> As the professor had said, the ground was literally covered with the snakes. The reptiles seemed to be moving in a vast body to some new location. There were big snakes and little ones, round fat ones, and long thin ones, and of many hues.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned. "Start the machine, Jerry!"<br /> <br /> "No! Don't!" called the professor. "You may kill a few, but the revolving wheels of the auto will fling some live ones up among us, and I have no desire to be bitten by any of these reptiles. They are too deadly. So keep the car still until they have passed. They are probably getting ready to go into winter quarters, or whatever corresponds to that in Mexico."<br /> <br /> "It will be lucky if they don't take a notion to climb up and investigate the machine and us," put in Jerry. "I have—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, health"><br /> <poem><br /> He gave a sudden start, for, at that instant one of the ugly reptiles, which had twined itself around the wheel spokes, reared its ugly head up, over the side of the front seat, and hissed, right in Jerry's face.<br /> <br /> "Here's one now!" the boy exclaimed as he made a motion to brush the snake aside.<br /> "Don't touch it as you value your life!" yelled the professor. "It's a diamond-backed rattler, and one of the most deadly!"<br /> <br /> "Here is another coming up on my side," called Bob.<br /> <br /> "Yes, and there are some coming up here!" shouted Ned. "They'll overwhelm us if we don't look out!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a time it seemed a serious matter. The snakes began twining up the sides of the car, and, though most of them dropped back to the ground again, a few maintained their position, and seemed to exhibit anger at the sight of the boys and the professor.<br /> <br /> "What shall we do?" asked Bob. "We can't run ahead, or go backward, and, if we stay here we're likely to be killed by the snakes."<br /> <br /> Jerry, who was feeling around in the bottom of the car for his rifle, gave a cry as his hand came in contact with something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, equipment, animal, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Get bitten?" asked the professor in alarm.<br /> <br /> "No, but I found this lariat," said Jerry in excited tones.<br /> <br /> "Are you going to lasso the snakes?" asked Ned, wondering if Jerry had gone crazy.<br /> <br /> "No, but you see this lariat is made of horse hair, and I think I can keep the snakes away with it."<br /> <br /> "How; by shaking it at 'em?"<br /> <br /> "No. I read in some book that snakes hated horse hair, and would never cross even a small ring of it."<br /> <br /> "Well?"<br /> <br /> "Well, if I run this lariat all around the auto the snakes will not cross it to come to us. Then we can stay here until they all disappear."<br /> <br /> "Good!" exclaimed Ned. "That's the ticket!"<br /> <br /> The reptiles that had climbed up the wheels had gone from sight. With the help of Ned and Bob, Jerry began to spread the horse-hair lariat in a circle about the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter III. - The Deserted Cabin (20-29) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, skill, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER III<br /> <br /> THE DESERTED CABIN<br /> <br /> In a few minutes the hair rope was all about the auto, spread out on the ground in an irregular circle. As the boys dropped it over the sides of the car the lariat struck several of the big snakes, and the reptiles shrunk away as though scorched by fire.<br /> "They're afraid of it all right!" exclaimed Ned. "I guess it will do the business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Sure enough, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the snakes to clear out of the vicinity of the hair rope. They glided off by scores, and soon there was a clear space all about the car, where, before, there had been hundreds of the crawling things.<br /> "Shake the lasso," suggested Bob, "and maybe it will scare them farther off."<br /> "Yes and we might try shooting a few now they are at a safe distance," put in Ned.<br /> "It's too bad I can't get some specimens," lamented the professor, "but I suppose you had better try to get rid of them."<br /> So Jerry, who had retained one end of the long lasso vibrated it rapidly, and, as it wiggled in sinuous folds toward the reptiles they made haste to get out of the way. Then Bob and Ned opened fire, killing several. In a little while there were no snakes to be seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, pleasure, risk, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we can go ahead now," said Jerry. "Who'll crank up the car? Don't all speak at once."<br /> "My arm is a bit sore," spoke Ned, rubbing his elbow.<br /> "Then you do it, Chunky," asked the steersman.<br /> "I think I have a stone in my foot," said Bob, making a wry face.<br /> "Ha! Ha!" laughed Jerry. "Why don't you two own up and say you're afraid there's a stray rattler or two under the machine, and you think it may bite you?"<br /> The two boys grinned sheepishly, and both made a motion to get out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, car part, passenger, dust, gasoline, driver, skill, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stay where you are," called the professor preparing to leave from the side door of the tonneau. "I'm used to snakes. I don't believe there are any left, but if there are I want them for specimens. I'll crank the car."<br /> So he got out and peered anxiously under the body, while the boys waited in anxiety.<br /> "No," called the scientist, in discouraged tones, "there are none left."<br /> He crawled out, covered with dust, which fact he did not seem to mind, and then turned the crank that sent the fly wheel over. Jerry turned on the gasolene and threw in the spark, and, the next instant the familiar chug-chug of the engine told that the auto was ready to bear the boys and Professor Snodgrass on their way. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, river, pleasure, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> They were headed on as straight a road as they could find to the Rio Grande, but, because of the conditions of the thoroughfares it would be several days before they could cross the big river and get into Texas. Their main concern now was to reach some place where there was shelter for the night.<br /> "Keep your eyes peeled for villages," called Ned. "We don't want to pass any. I think a good bed would go fine now."<br /> "A supper would go better," put in Bob.<br /> "Oh, of course! It wouldn't be Chunky if he didn't say something about eating," remarked Jerry with a laugh. "But there seems to be something ahead. It's a house at all events, and probably is the mark of the outskirts of the village."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, night, car part, nationality, parking, passenger, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> On the left side of the road, about a hundred yards ahead they saw an adobe, or mud hut. They could see no signs of life about in the half-darkness, illuminated as it was by the powerful search light, but this gave them no concern, as they knew the native Mexicans retired early.<br /> When they came opposite the hut Jerry brought the machine to a stop, and he and the other boys jumped out. The professor, who, as usual was arranging some specimens in one of the many small boxes he carried, remained in the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" shouted Bob. "Is any one home? Show a light. Can we get a supper here?"<br /> "Why don't you ask for a bed too?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Supper first," replied Chunky, rubbing his stomach with a reflective air.<br /> No replies came to the hail of the boys, and, in some wonder they approached nearer to the hut. Then they saw that the door was ajar, and that the cabin bore every appearance of being deserted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody home, I guess," said Jerry.<br /> "No, and there hasn't been for some time," added Ned.<br /> "Maybe there's a place to build a fire where we can cook a good meal," put in Bob, whereat his companions laughed.<br /> They went into the hut, and found, that, while it was in good condition, and furnished as well as the average native Mexican's abode, there was no sign of life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, car part, oil, equipment, night, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> "Might as well make ourselves to home," said Ned. "Come on in, professor," he called. "We'll stay here all night. No use traveling further when there is such a good shelter right at hand."<br /> It was now quite dark, and the boys brought in the two oil lamps from the auto, as well as a lantern, to illuminate the place. As they did so they disturbed a colony of bats which flew out with a great flutter of wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a charcoal stove, and plenty of fuel," said Bob, as he looked at the hearth. "Now we can cook something."<br /> "Well, seeing you are so fond of eating, we'll let you get the meal," said Jerry, and it was voted that Chunky should perform this office.<br /> Meanwhile the others brought in blankets to make beds on the frame work of cane that formed the sleeping quarters of whoever had last lived in the hut.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather queer sort of a shack," remarked Jerry, as he sat down in a corner on a pile of rugs. "Seems to have been left suddenly. They didn't even stop to take the dishes, and here is the remains of a meal," and he pointed to some dried frijoles in one corner of the main room or kitchen.<br /> "Perhaps the people who lived here were frightened away," came from Ned.<br /> "Well I'm tired enough not to let anything short of a regiment of soldiers in action scare me awake to-night," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Under Bob's direction supper was soon ready, and the travelers sat down to a good, if rather limited meal as far as variety went. There were no dishes to be washed, for they ate off wooden plates, of which they had a quantity and which they threw away after each meal. Then, after a good fire had been built on the hearth—for the night was likely to be chilly—the boys and the professor wrapped themselves up in their blankets and soon fell asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry must have been slumbering for several hours when he suddenly awakened as he heard a loud noise.<br /> "Who's there?" he called involuntarily, sitting up.<br /> It was so dark that at first he could distinguish nothing, but, as his eyes became used to the blackness he managed to make out, by the glow of the fire, a shadowy figure gliding toward the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" called the boy sharply, feeling under the rolled up blanket that served for a pillow, for his revolver. "Stop or I'll fire!"<br /> The shadowy figure halted. Then Jerry saw it drop down on all fours and begin to creep toward him. Though he was not a coward the boy felt his heart beating strangely, and he had a queer, creepy sensation down his spine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned, who was awakened by Jerry's voice.<br /> "Get your revolver, quick!" called Jerry. "There is some one in the hut besides ourselves! Look over by the fire!"<br /> "I see it! Shall I shoot?" asked Ned.<br /> There came a sudden crash, followed by a wild yell.<br /> "Help! Help! I'm killed! They are murdering me!" shouted Bob's voice. "They are choking me to death!"<br /> Bang! went Ned's gun. Fortunately it was aimed at the ceiling, or some one might have been hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" inquired the professor, who only just then awoke.<br /> "Robbers!" yelled Bob.<br /> "Brigands!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "Some one is in the cabin!" cried Jerry.<br /> By this time he had managed to creep over toward the fire, on which he threw some light wood. The glowing embers caught it, and as the blaze flared up it revealed a big monkey tangled up amid the folds of Bob's blanket, while Chunky was buried somewhere beneath the pile. The beast was struggling wildly to escape, but Bob, in his terror, had grabbed it by a leg.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop your noise!" commanded Jerry. "You're not hurt, Chunky!"<br /> "Are you sure they haven't killed me?" asked Bob, releasing his hold on the beast, which, with a wild chatter of fear, fled from the hut.<br /> "You ought to be able to give the best evidence on that score," said Jerry, as he lighted one of the lamps.<br /> "The fellow tried to choke me," sputtered Bob.<br /> "I guess the poor beast was as badly scared as you were," remarked the professor. "It was probably attracted in here by the light and warmth. Well, we seem bound to run up against excitement, night as well as day."<br /> "The monkey must have knocked something over," said Jerry. "I was awakened by the sound of something falling."<br /> They looked and saw that the beast had tried to eat the remains of the supper, and had upset a big pot.<br /> "I was sure it was a man, at first," explained Jerry, "and when I saw it go down and start over toward me I was afraid it was some of those Mexican brigands that traveled with Vasco Bilette and Noddy Nixon, when those rascals were on our trail."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was some time before the excitement caused by the monkey's visit died down sufficiently to allow the travelers to go to sleep again. It was morning when they awoke, and prepared to get breakfast.<br /> "We need some water to make coffee," said Jerry, who had agreed to get the morning meal. "As chief cook and bottle washer I delegate Bob to find some. Take the pail in the auto."<br /> Bob started for the receptacle, and, as he reached the door of the hut he gave a cry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry and Ned.<br /> "There's a man out here," replied Bob.<br /> "Well, he won't bite you," said Jerry. "Who is he?"<br /> "Pardon, senors," called a voice, and then, into the hut staggered a Mexican, who bore evidences of having passed through a hard fight. His face was cut and bruised, one arm hung limply at his side, and his clothing was torn.<br /> "What's the matter?" cried Jerry.<br /> Before the stranger could reply he had fallen forward in a faint.<br /> "Bring some water! Quick!" called Ned.<br /> "Let me see to him! I have a little liquor here!" exclaimed the professor, kneeling down beside the prostrate form.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IV. - News from the Mine (30-38) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="river, night, nationality, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IV<br /> <br /> NEWS FROM THE MINE<br /> <br /> By the use of the strong stimulant the Mexican was revived. His eyes opened, and he sat up, muttering something in Spanish which the boys could not catch.<br /> The professor, however, made reply, and, at the words the stranger seemed to brighten up. He drank some water, and then, at the suggestion of Mr. Snodgrass the boys brought him some food, which the native ate as if he had fasted for a week.<br /> His hunger satisfied, he began to talk rapidly to the professor, who listened attentively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" asked Jerry at length.<br /> "It seems that the poor man lives in this hut," explained the scientist. "Night before last some robbers came in, took nearly everything he had and beat him. Then, driving him into the forest they left him. Only just now did he dare to venture back, fearing to find his enemies in possession of his home. He is weak from lack of food and from the treatment he received."<br /> The boys felt sorry for the Mexican, and, at Jerry's suggestion they gave him a sum of money, which, while it was small enough to the travelers, meant a great deal to the native. He poured forth voluble thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, nationality, navigation, river, animal, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As the boys and the professor were anxious to get under way, a start was made as soon as it was found that the native was not badly hurt, and that he was able to summon help from friends in a near-by village if necessary. With final leave-takings the travelers started off.<br /> For several days and nights they journeyed north, toward the Rio Grande, which river separated them from the United States. Once they crossed that they would be in Texas.<br /> "And we can't get there any too soon," remarked Bob, one morning after a sleepless night, passed in the open, during which innumerable fleas attacked the travelers.<br /> It was toward dusk, one evening, about a week after having left the City of Mexico that the boys and the professor found themselves on a road, which, upon inquiry led to a small Mexican town, on the bank of the Rio Grande, nearly opposite Eagle Pass, Texas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we cross over to-night or wait until morning?" asked the professor of the boys. "Probably it would be better to wait until daylight. I could probably gather a few more specimens then."<br /> This was something of which the scientist, who rejoiced in such letters as A.M.; Ph.D.; M.D.; F. R. G. S.; A. G. S., etc., after his name, all indicating some college honor conferred upon him, never seemed to tire. He was making a collection for his own college, as well as gathering data for four large books, which, some day, he intended to issue.<br /> "I'd rather get over on our land if we can," said Ned, and he seemed to voice the sentiments of the others. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, rural, animal, risk, car part, gasoline, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided, somewhat against the professor's wish, to run the automobile on the big flat-bottomed scow, which served as a ferry, and proceed across the stream.<br /> Quite a crowd of villagers came out to see the auto as it chug-chugged up to the ferry landing, and not a few of the children and dogs were in danger of being run over until Ned, who was steering, cut out the muffler, and the explosions of the gasolene, unconfined by any pipes, made so much noise that all except the grown men were frightened away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was no one at the ferry house, and after diligent inquiries it was learned that the captain and crew of the boat had gone off to a dance about five miles away.<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay on this side after all," remarked the professor. "I think—"<br /> What he thought he did not say, for just then he happened to catch sight of something on the shoulder of one of the Mexicans, who had gathered in a fringe about the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stand still, my dear man!" called the professor, as with cat-like tread he crept toward the native.<br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" muttered the man, thinking, evidently, that the old scientist was out of his wits.<br /> "Don't move! Please don't move!" pleaded Mr. Snodgrass, forgetting in his excitement that his hearer could not understand his language. "There is a beautiful specimen of a Mexican katy-did on your coat. If I get it I will have a specimen worth at least thirty dollars!"<br /> He made a sudden motion. The Mexican mistook the import of it, and, seemingly thinking he was about to be assaulted, raised his hand in self defense, and aimed a blow at the professor.<br /> It was only a glancing one, but it knocked the scientist down, and he fell into the road.<br /> "There, the katy-did got away after all," Mr. Snodgrass exclaimed, not seeming to mind his personal mishap in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This time the professor spoke in Spanish. The Mexican understood, and was profuse in his apologies. He conversed rapidly with his companions, and, all at once there was a wild scramble after katy-dids. So successful was the hunt that the professor was fairly burdened with the insects. He took as many as he needed, and thanked his newly found friends for their efforts.<br /> Matters quieted down after a bit. Darkness fell rapidly and, the Mexican on whom the professor had seen the katy-did invited the travelers to dine with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He proved to be one of the principal men of the village, and his house, though not large, was well fitted up. The boys and the professor enjoyed the best meal they had eaten since leaving the City of Mexico.<br /> "Do me the honor to spend the night here," said the Mexican, after the meal.<br /> "Thank you, if it will not disturb your household arrangements, we will," replied the professor. "We must make an early start, however, and cross the river the first thing in the morning."<br /> "It will be impossible," replied Senor Gerardo, their host.<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Because to-morrow starts the Feast of San Juarez, which lasts for three days, and not a soul in town, including the ferry-master, will work in that time."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "If you do not cross to-night you will not be able to make the passage until the end of the week," was the answer.<br /> "Then let's start to-night," spoke Jerry. "We went over the Rio Grande after dark once before."<br /> "Yes, and a pretty mess we made of it," said Ned, referring to the collision they had with the house-boat, as told of in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought they said the ferry-master was away to a dance," put in Bob.<br /> "He is, Senor," replied their host, who managed to understand the boy's poor Spanish. "However, if he knew the Americanos wanted him, and would go for him in their big marvelous—fire-spitting wagon, and—er—that is if they offered him a small sum, he might be prevailed upon to leave the<br /> dance."<br /> "Let's try it, at all events," suggested Jerry. "I'm anxious to get over the line and into the United States. A stay of several days may mean one of a week. When these Mexicans get feasting they don't know when to stop."<br /> He spoke in English, so as not to offend their kind friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, animal, slowness, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> It was arranged that Jerry and Senor Gerardo should go in the auto for the ferry-master, and summon him to the river with his men, who could come on their fast ponies.<br /> This was done, and, though the master of the boat demurred at leaving the pleasures of the dance, he consented when Jerry casually showed a gold-piece. He and his men were soon mounted and galloped along, Jerry running the auto slowly to keep pace with them. The five miles were quickly covered and, while half the population of the village came out to see the strange machine ferried over, the boys and the professor bade farewell to the country where they had gone through so many strange adventures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="A"><br /> <poem><br /> It was nearly ten o'clock when the big flat-bottomed boat grounded on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande.<br /> "Hurrah for the United States!" exclaimed Bob. "Now I can get a decent meal without having to swallow red peppers, onions and chocolate!"<br /> "There goes Chunky again," laughingly complained Ned. "No sooner does he land than he wants to feed his stomach. I believe if he had been with Christopher Columbus the first thing he would have inquired about on landing at San Salvador would be what the Indians had good to eat."<br /> "Oh you're as bad as I am, every bit!" said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, rural, plains, animal, pedestrian, South"><br /> <poem><br /> Eagle's Pass, where the travelers landed, was a typical Texas town, with what passed for a hotel, a store and a few houses where the small population lived. It was on the edge of the border prairies and the outlying districts were occupied by cattle ranches.<br /> Nearly all, if not quite all, of the male population came down to the dock to see the unusual sight of a big touring automobile on the ferry boat. Many were the comments made by the ranchmen and herders.<br /> After much pulling and hauling the car was rolled from the big scow, and the travelers, glad to feel that they were once more in their own country, began to think of a place to spend the night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the nearest hotel?" asked Jerry of a man in the crowd.<br /> "Ain't but one, stranger, an' it's right in front of you," was the reply, as the cowboy pointed to a small, one story building across the street from the river front.<br /> "Is Professor Driedgrass in that bunch?" asked a voice as the travelers were contemplating the hostelry. "If he is I have a letter for him."<br /> "I am Professor Snodgrass," replied the scientist, looking toward the man who had last spoken.<br /> "Beg your pardon, Professor Snodgrass. I kinder got my brands mixed," the stranger went on. "Anyhow I'm th' postmaster here, an' I've been holdin' a letter for ye most a week. It says it's to be delivered to a man with three boys an' a choo-choo wagon, an' that description fits you."<br /> "Where's it from?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Come in a letter to me, from a feller named Nestor, up at a place in the mining section," was the reply. "Th' letter to me said you might likely pass this way on your journey back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter V. - Trouble Ahead (39-45) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river,"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER V<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AHEAD<br /> <br /> "I remember now, I did write to Nestor, telling him we were about to start back, and would probably cross the river at this place," spoke the professor. "I had forgotten all about it."<br /> "Well, here's your letter," said the postmaster. "Now allow me to welcome you to our city, which I do in the name of the Mayor—which individual you see in me—and the Common Council, which consists of Pete Blaston, only he ain't here, in consequent of bein' locked up for disturbin' th' peace an' quiet of the community by shootin' a Greaser."<br /> "Glad to meet you, I am sure," replied the scientist politely, as he received the letter from the dual official.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "What is the news from Nestor?" asked Jerry anxiously. "Is the mine all right?"<br /> "I'll tell you right away," replied Mr. Snodgrass, as, by the light of the gas lantern on the auto he read the letter.<br /> As he glanced rapidly over the pages his face took on an anxious look.<br /> "Is there anything wrong?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is indeed," replied the professor gravely. "The letter was written over a week ago, and, among other things Nestor says there is likely to be trouble over the mine."<br /> "What kind? Is Noddy Nixon trying to get it away from us again?" asked Jerry. <br /> "No," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "It appears our title is not as good as it might be. There is one of the former owners of the land where the mine is located who did not sign the deed. He was missing when the transfer was made, but Nestor did not know this, so there is a cloud on our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought we claimed the land from the government, and were the original owners," put in Ned.<br /> "It seems that a company of men owned the mine before we did, but they sold out to Nestor and some of his friends. They all signed the deed but this one man, and now some one has learned of this, and seeks to take the mine, on the theory that they have as good a claim to the holding as<br /> we have."<br /> "I should say that was trouble," sighed Bob. "To think of losing what we worked so hard to get!"<br /> "Well, there's no use crossing a bridge until you come to it," Professor Snodgrass went on. "Nestor and his friends are in possession yet, and that, you know, is nine of the ten points of the law."<br /> "Then if we can't do anything right away I move we have something to eat," suggested Bob.<br /> "It's a good suggestion," agreed the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had drawn a little to one side from the crowd of townspeople while talking about the letter from Nestor, but, having decided there was nothing to be done at present, they moved toward the hotel.<br /> "I reckon I've got some more mail for your outfit, Professor Hayseed—er I beg yer pardon—Snodgrass," said the postmaster-mayor. "There's letters fer chaps named Baker, Slade and Hopkins. Nestor sent 'em along with that other," and the dual official handed over three envelopes.<br /> "They're from home!" cried the boys in a chorus. And in the glare of oil lamps on the porch of the hotel they read the communications.<br /> The missives contained nothing but good news, to the effect that all the loved ones were well. Each one inquired anxiously how much longer the travelers expected to stay away, and urged them to come home as soon as they could.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, cowboy, nationality, metaphor, safety, weapon, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for that supper!" exclaimed Bob, as he put his letter away.<br /> If the meal was a rough one, prepared as it was by the Chinese cook, it was good, and the travelers enjoyed it thoroughly. As they rose from the table a cowboy entered the dining room and drawled out:<br /> "I say strangers, be you th' owners of that there rip-snortin' specimen of th' lower regions that runs on four wheels tied 'round with big sassages?"<br /> "Do you mean the automobile?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I reckon I do, if that's what ye call it."<br /> "Yes, it's our machine," replied Jerry.<br /> "Then if ye have any great love for th' workin' of it in the future, an' any regard or consideration for it's feelin' ye ought t' see to it."<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Nothin'," drawled the cowboy as he carefully pared his nails with a big bowie knife; "nothin' only Bronco Pete is amusin' his self by tryin' t' see how near he can come to stickin' his scalpin' steel inter th' tires!"<br /> "Great Scott! We must stop that!" exclaimed Jerry, running from the hotel toward where the auto had been left in the street. The other boys and the professor followed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, pleasure, cowboy, weapon, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> They found the machine surrounded by quite a crowd that seemed to be much amused at something which was taking place in its midst. Making their way to the inner circle of spectators the boys beheld an odd sight.<br /> A big cowboy, who, from appearances had indulged too freely in something stronger than water, was unsteadily trying to stick his big knife into the rubber tires.<br /> "Here! You mustn't do that," cried Jerry, sharply, laying his hand on the man's shoulder.<br /> "Look out for him! He's dangerous!" warned some of the bystanders.<br /> "I can't help it if he is," replied Jerry. "We can't let him ruin the tires."<br /> "This is the time I do it!" cried Bronco Pete, as he made a lunge for the front wheel. Jerry sprang forward and the crowd held its breath, for it seemed as if the boy was right in the path of the knife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Jerry knew what he was about. With a quick motion he kicked the cowboy lightly on the wrist, the blow knocking the knife from his hand, and sending it some distance away.<br /> "Look out now, sonny!" called a man to Jerry. "No one ever hit Pete an' lived after it."<br /> It seemed that Jerry was in a dangerous position. Pete, enraged at being foiled of his purpose, uttered a beast-like roar, and reached back to where his revolver rested at his hip in a belt. Jerry never moved an inch, but looked the man straight in the eye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! None of that Pete!" called a voice suddenly, and a big man pushed his way through the crowd, and grabbed the cowboy's arm before he had time to draw his gun. "If you don't want to get into trouble move on!"<br /> "All right, Marshall; all right," replied Pete, the desire of shooting seeming to die out as he looked at the newcomer. "I were only havin' a little fun with th' tenderfoot."<br /> "You didn't appear to scare him much," remarked the town marshall, who had seen the whole thing. "You had your nerve with you all right, son," he added, to Jerry.<br /> "That's what he had," commented Pete. "There ain't many men would have done what he did, an' I admire him for it. Put it there, stranger," and Pete, all the anger gone from him, extended a big hand, which Jerry grasped heartily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Three cheers for the 'tenderfoot,'" called some one, and they were given with a will for Jerry, as Pete, under the guidance of the marshall, moved unsteadily away.<br /> "I wouldn't have been in your boots one spell there, for a good bit," observed the postmaster as he came up. "Pete's about as bad as they come."<br /> "I didn't stop to think of the danger, or maybe I wouldn't have done as I did," said Jerry. "All I thought of was that he would spoil the tire, and it would take a long while to fix it."<br /> "Yes, and we don't want to delay any longer than we can help," spoke Ned in a low voice. "I'm anxious to get back to the mine and see what we can do to perfect our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VI. - On a Strange Road (46-54) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="storm, animal, rain, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, navigation, bridge"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VI<br /> <br /> ON A STRANGE ROAD<br /> <br /> For several days they made good progress, for the roads were in fair condition. The machine was kept headed as nearly as possible toward Arizona, though they often had to go some distance out of their way to get rid of bad places, or find a ford or bridge to cross a stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="South"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll soon be out of Texas," remarked Bob one afternoon, when they had passed through a small ranch town where they had dinner.<br /> "And I think we're going to get a wetting before we leave the big state," put in Ned.<br /> "I think you're right," agreed the professor, as he turned and looked at a bank of ugly dark clouds in the southwest. "A thunder shower is coming up, if I'm any judge. There doesn't seem to be any shelter, either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, North, driver, wind, lightning, thunder, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> As far as they could see there was nothing but a vast stretch of wild country, though, far to the north, there was a dark patch which looked as if it was a forest.<br /> "It's coming just at the wrong time," remarked Jerry, who was steering. "I was in hopes the storm would hold off a bit. Well, we shan't melt if it does rain."<br /> And that it was soon going to pour in the proverbial buckets full was evident. The wind began to blow a half gale, and the clouds, from which angry streaks of jagged lightning leaped, scurried forward. At the same time low mutterings of thunder were heard.<br /> "We're in for it," cried Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, rain, visibility, lightning, thunder, driver, equipment, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant the storm broke, and the whole landscape was blotted out in a veil of mist and rain which came down in sheets of water. Now and then the darkness would be illuminated by a vivid flash of fire from the sky artillery, and the thunder seemed to shake the earth.<br /> Jerry could barely see where to steer, so fiercely did the rain beat down. Fortunately they had time to put on their raincoats before the deluge hit them.<br /> The provisions and other things in the auto had, likewise, been covered up with canvas, so little damage would result from the downpour.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, braking, slowness, visibility, animal, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> "Look out!" yelled Ned suddenly to Jerry. "There's something ahead of us!"<br /> Jerry partially shut off the power, and, as the machine slowed down, he and the others peered forward to see what the object was.<br /> "It's some sort of an animal!" cried Bob, who had sharp eyes. "It's running along on four legs, right in front of the car!"<br /> "It's a bear, that's what it is!" shouted Ned. "A big black bear!"<br /> "Let me get it for a specimen!" exclaimed the professor, in his enthusiasm, not considering the size of the animal, nor the difficulties in the way of capturing it. "Let me get out! It's worth forty dollars if it's worth a cent!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, animal, sound, risk, car part, parking, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> At the sound of the excited voices, which the animal must have heard above the roar of the storm, the bear turned suddenly and faced the occupants of the car. So quickly was it done that Jerry had barely time to jam on the brakes in order to avoid a collision.<br /> "Why didn't you run him down, and we could have some bear steaks for supper?" asked Bob.<br /> "Because I don't think it's just healthy to run into a three hundred and fifty pound bear with a big auto," replied Jerry. "We might kill the bear, but we'd be sure to damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> The beast did not appear to be frightened at the sight of his natural enemies. Raising on its haunches the animal slowly ambled toward the stalled machine, growling in a menacing manner.<br /> "I believe he's going to attack us!" exclaimed the professor. "Let me get out my rifle!"<br /> But this was easier said than done. The weapons and ammunition were all under the canvas, and it would require several minutes to get at them.<br /> In the meanwhile the bear, showing every indication of rage was trying to climb up on the engine hood, despite the throbbing of the engine, which was going, though the gears were not thrown in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, risk, animal, storm, wind, rain, thunder, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Start the car and run over him!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Back up and get out of his way!" was Ned's advice to Jerry.<br /> "I've got to do something," muttered the steersman.<br /> Matters were getting critical. The storm was increasing in violence, with the wind lashing the rain into the faces of the travelers. The growls of the angry beast mingled with the rumble and rattle of thunder, and the machine was shaking under the efforts Bruin made to climb over the hood and into the front seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, car part, skill, driver, gasoline, animal, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hold on tight! I'm going to start!" yelled Jerry suddenly.<br /> He threw in the intermediate gear and opened wide the gasolene throttle. The car sprang forward like a thing alive. But the bear had too good a hold with his long sharp claws sticking in the ventilator holes of the hood, to be shaken off.<br /> "I should think he'd burn on the water radiator," said Ned.<br /> "His fur's too thick I guess," was Bob's reply.<br /> On went the auto, the boys and the professor clinging to it for dear life, while Bruin hung on, half crazed with fear and anger.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, sound, storm, visibility, rain, skill, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "How you going to get rid of him?" shouted Ned above the roar of the storm.<br /> "I'll show you," replied Jerry grimly.<br /> Some distance ahead the steersman had seen a sharp curve in the road. It was dimly discernible through the mist of water.<br /> "Hold tight everybody!" shouted Jerry a second or two before the turn was reached.<br /> Then, suddenly swinging around it, at as sharp an angle as he dared to make and not overturn the car, Jerry sent the auto skidding. The next instant, unable to stand the impetus of the turn, the bear lost its hold on the hood, and was flung, like a stone from a catapult, far off to the left, rolling over and over on the muddy ground.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, slowness, sound, animal, rain, storm, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "There, I guess it will be quite a while before he tries to eat up another live automobile," remarked Jerry as he slowed up a bit.<br /> Off in the distance they heard a sort of reproachful whine, as if Bruin objected to such treatment. Then the rain came down harder than ever, and all sight of the bear was lost.<br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned, as he felt a small stream of water trickling down his back. "Can't we strike for those woods we saw a while ago?"<br /> "I'm headed for them," spoke Jerry. "I just want to get my bearings. Guess we'd better light up, as it will soon be dusk."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="wind, rain, storm, car part, visibility, oil, road condition, navigation, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> After some difficulty in getting matches to burn in the wind and rain, the big search lights and the oil lanterns were lighted, and then, with four shafts of light cutting the misty darkness ahead of them the travelers proceeded.<br /> The roads seemed to be getting worse, but there was nothing to do except to keep on. Every now and then the machine would lurch into some hollow with force enough to almost break the springs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, North, car part, asphalt"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" cried Jerry suddenly. "Here are two roads. Which shall we take?"<br /> "The right seems to go a little more directly north," said the professor, peering forward. "Suppose we take that?"<br /> "Especially as it seems to be the better road," added Jerry.<br /> He turned the machine into it, and, to the surprise of all they felt the thoroughfare become hard and firm as the auto tires rolled over it. It was almost as smooth as asphalt, and the travelers were congratulating themselves on having made a wise choice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rain, storm, forest, scenery, visibility, metaphor, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> All at once the rain, which had been coming down in torrents, seemed to let up.<br /> "I believe it's clearing up," said Bob.<br /> "No, it's because we've run into a dense forest, and the trees above keep the rain off," spoke the professor.<br /> The others looked about them and saw that this was so. On every side the glare of the lamps showed big trunks and leafy branches, while ahead more trees could be observed.<br /> "Why it's just like a tunnel in the woods," said Bob. "See, the trees seem to meet in an arch overhead."<br /> "And what a fine road it is," put in Ned.<br /> "An altogether strange sort of road," agreed Jerry. "Suppose we stop and look about before we go any further? I don't like the looks of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, metaphor, macadam, road condition, forest, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the machine was brought to a halt, and the travelers alighted. They found it just as Bob had said, almost exactly like an immense tunnel in the forest. Beneath their feet the road was of the finest Macadam construction.<br /> "And to think of finding this in the midst of Texas," observed Jerry.<br /> "Some one built this road, and cut the trees to make this tunnel," remarked the professor. "I wonder what sort of a place we have stumbled into."<br /> "At all events it doesn't rain anything to speak of in here," said Bob, "and it's a good place to stay until the storm is over."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, forest, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry, in the meanwhile had walked on ahead some distance. In a few minutes he came hurrying back. His manner showed that he had seen something.<br /> "What is it?" asked the professor.<br /> "Don't make any noise, but follow me," replied the lad.<br /> In silence, and wondering what was about to happen, Bob, Ned and the scientist trailed after Jerry. He led them several hundred feet ahead of the automobile, and away from the glare of the lamps, the tunnel curving somewhat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See!" whispered Jerry, hoarsely.<br /> "Well, I never!"<br /> "That's queer!"<br /> There, about three hundred feet to the left of the main road and on a sort of side path, the travelers saw a small hut, brilliantly lighted up. Through an open window, a room could be seen, and several figures moving about in it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VII. - The Rescue of Tommy Bell (55-64) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VII<br /> <br /> THE RESCUE OF TOMMY BELL<br /> <br /> "I wonder who they can be, to hide off in the woods this way," whispered Bob.<br /> The next instant there floated out from the hut a cry of anguish. It was the voice of a boy, seemingly in great pain or fear, and the travelers heard the words:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! You are killing me! I don't know! I can't tell you, for I would if I could! Oh! Oh! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> "It's a gang torturing some one!" almost shouted Ned. "Let's go to the rescue!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have sprung forward had not Jerry laid a detaining hand on his arm.<br /> "Wait, Ned," counseled Jerry. "Some one there evidently needs our help, but we must go with caution. First we must get our guns. We may need them!"<br /> Once more the appealing cry burst out.<br /> "Quick!" whispered Jerry. "Professor, you and Bob go back for the rifles, and bring the bulls-eye lantern that has the dark slide to it. Ned and I will stay here and watch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Snodgrass and Bob lost no time. In less than five minutes they had rejoined Ned and Jerry.<br /> "Has anything happened?" asked Bob.<br /> "Nothing since," whispered Jerry. "Now we will go forward. Every one have his gun ready. I will carry the lantern."<br /> Almost as silently as shadows the four figures stole forward, Jerry showing a cautious gleam now and then to guide them on their way. They found there was a fairly good path leading up to the hut.<br /> They had covered half the distance when once more the cries of anguish burst out. This time they were followed by angry shouts, seemingly from several men, and voices in dispute could be heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of us had better creep forward and see what is going on inside the cabin," whispered Jerry. "We must know what sort of enemies we have to meet."<br /> "I'll go," volunteered Bob.<br /> "Better let me," suggested the professor. "I have had some experience in stalking animals, and I can probably advance more quietly than you can."<br /> They all saw the reasonableness of this and the scientist started off. Like a cat he made an advance until he was so close to the hut that he could peer into the uncurtained window. What he saw made him start back in terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the room were half a dozen roughly dressed men, all armed, and with brutal faces. The room was filled with smoke from cigars and pipes, and cards were scattered over a rough table in the middle of the apartment.<br /> But what attracted the attention of the professor and made his heart beat fast in anger, was the sight of a small, pale boy, bound with ropes up against a big stone fireplace, on the hearth of which logs were burning.<br /> In front of the lad stood one of the largest and strongest of the tough gang, and in his hand he held a redhot poker, which, as the scientist watched, he brought close to the bare legs of the terror-stricken lad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then came again those heart-rending cries:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! I would tell you where he is if I knew! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> The professor's blood boiled.<br /> "We'll soon put a stop to this horrible work!" he exclaimed to himself as he glided back to where the boys were and quickly made them acquainted with what he had seen.<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must rescue that boy!"<br /> As softly as they could, the travelers advanced toward the hut. They found the door and, while the others with rifles in readiness stood in a semi-circle about it, Jerry made ready to knock and demand admittance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If they don't open the door we must burst it in," said the boy. "The professor and I will look to that, while you and Ned, Bob, must stand ready to rush in right after us with your guns ready. But don't shoot unless your life is in danger, and then fire not to kill, but to wound."<br /> There was a minute of hesitation, for they all realized that it was taking a desperate chance to tackle such a rough gang in the midst of woods, far from civilization. But the sound of the poor boy's cries nerved them on as, once more, the pitiful appeal for mercy rang out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry sprang forward and gave several vigorous blows on the door with the butt of his gun. All at once silence took the place of the confusion inside the hut.<br /> "Who's there? What do you want?" asked a gruff voice.<br /> "Open the door! We want that boy!" cried Jerry.<br /> Confused murmurs from within told that the gang had been taken by surprise.<br /> "I don't know who you are, but whoever you are you had better move on, if you don't want a bullet through you," called the man who had first answered the knock. "This is none of your affair."<br /> "Open the door or we'll burst it in!" cried Jerry, knowing the best way to be successful in the fight was to act quickly and take the men by surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a laugh from within the hut. It was answered by a rending, crashing splintering sound as Jerry and the professor, using the stocks of their guns, began a vigorous attack on the portal. The door was strong enough, but the hinges were not, and, in less than half a minute the barrier had given way and, with a bound the travelers found themselves tumbling into the hut.<br /> Instantly confusion reigned. The men shouted hoarsely, and several tried to reach their guns, which were stacked in one corner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hands up!" commanded Jerry sharply, leveling his gun at the man who seemed to be the leader.<br /> "Why, they're nothing but boys! Knock 'em out of the way!" cried one of the gang. At the same time another began creeping up behind Jerry, his intention being to grab the lad from the back and disarm him.<br /> But Bob saw the movement, and, leveling his rifle at the fellow, told him to halt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess you've got the drop on us," growled the man whom Jerry was covering with the gun. "What's the game anyhow? Are you stage robbers?"<br /> "We want you to stop torturing that boy," cried Jerry.<br /> "Why, that's my kid, and I was only givin' him a taste of the rod because he wouldn't mind me; 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' is a good saying, you know."<br /> "Not from you!" snapped the professor. "Is this man your father?" the scientist asked the bound boy.<br /> "Speak up now! Ain't I your daddy?" put in the leader, scowling at the boy.<br /> "Tell the truth! Don't let him scare you!" said the professor reassuredly. "We are in charge here now. Is he your father?"<br /> "No—no—sir," stammered the poor little lad, and then he burst into tears.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought so!" commented the scientist. "Now you scoundrels clear out of here before we cause your arrest!"<br /> "You're talkin' mighty high," sneered the leader, "but look out! This matter is none of your affair, and that boy belongs to us!"<br /> "Take me away! Oh, please take me away! They'll kill me!" sobbed the lad.<br /> There was such a fiery look in the professor's eye as he leveled his gun at the gang of men that they started back, evidently fearing to be fired upon.<br /> "Come on!" called one. "We'll get some of the Mexicans and then we'll see who's runnin' things around here!"<br /> With that the gang sneaked out of the door, leaving the boys and the professor master of the situation. Their first act was to unbind the lad, who was almost fainting from pain and fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there any more of them?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Yes," said the boy faintly. "There are a lot of half-breed Mexicans in the gang. They are in a hut about a mile farther up the road, where they keep a lot of horses on a ranch."<br /> "Then perhaps we'd better get out of here while we have a chance," said the professor. "We can't fight a score or more. Let's take the boy and hurry away."<br /> "Come on then," said Jerry. "We'll get back to the auto. I only hope these men don't discover it and damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, equipment, risk, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> But when an attempt to start was made it was found that the boy, who said, in response to an inquiry from Ned, that his name was Tommy Bell, was unable to walk. The ropes bound about his legs had caused the blood to stagnate in the veins.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Jerry. "Bob, you and Ned go ahead with the lantern, and the professor and I will carry Tommy. Step lively now!"<br /> Moving in that order the procession started, and in a few minutes the travelers were back at the machine, which did not seem to have been disturbed. There was no sight or sound of the gang.<br /> Tommy was made as comfortable as possible, and then there was a brief consultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, forest, road condition, night, moonlight, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Which way had we better go?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I think it would be best to turn around," said Bob. "We'll run up against the gang if we go ahead."<br /> "The best road is straight ahead through this woods," spoke Tommy. "If you take the other your machine will get stuck."<br /> "Then we'll take this one, and trust to luck not to have any trouble with the gang," decided Jerry, as he cranked up the car.<br /> Just as they started the moon came out from the clouds, for the rain had ceased, and, though not many of the silver beams shone through the thick foliage, it was much lighter than it had been. Jerry threw in the gear and the next instant the car glided forward and shot along the tunnel of trees, leaving the hut where Tommy Bell had been a prisoner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, forest, scenery, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Is the Mexican camp near this main road?" asked the professor of Tommy.<br /> "About three hundred feet in," answered the boy, who was feeling much better.<br /> "How many men are at it?"<br /> "About one hundred, I guess, from what I heard them say."<br /> "Then I guess we'd better go past it on the fly," muttered Jerry, as he speeded up the machine until it was skimming along at a fast rate. In a little while there was a gleam of light through the trees ahead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound, risk, visibility, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the camp!" exclaimed Tommy.<br /> A minute later the travelers were made well aware of it, for, as they whizzed past in the auto, they heard shouts of anger, mingling with the sounds of rushing feet, while an occasional pistol shot rang out, the flash of fire cutting the darkness.<br /> "They saw us," spoke Bob. "Lucky it was pretty dark, or they might have damaged the auto."<br /> "To say nothing of ourselves," added Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VIII. - Pursued by Enemies (65-71) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VIII<br /> <br /> PURSUED BY ENEMIES<br /> <br /> As the auto sped along, Professor Snodgrass asked Tommy Bell how he had come to the hut in the forest.<br /> "Those men took me there," replied the boy.<br /> "And what did they try to make you do?" asked Jerry.<br /> "They wanted me to tell them where my father was," went on Tommy. "I could not because I did not know, and they burned me, because they did not believe I was telling the truth."<br /> "What did they want of your father?" inquired Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "They want him to sign some papers connected with some property," went on Tommy. "I don't know much about it, except that father used to work with those men developing a mine. It didn't pay, and they left it, after selling it to some other men. I lived with my father, and my mother was alive then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="safety, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boy stopped, and, at the mention of his mother's name began to cry softly.<br /> "Poor little lad," muttered the professor, putting his arm, with a sort of caressing motion about Tommy. "Don't cry, lad," the scientist went on, in what seemed a sort of husky voice, for he was very fond of children; "don't worry, we'll look out for you; won't we, boys?"<br /> "You bet!" exclaimed Jerry, Ned and Bob in one voice.<br /> The auto was slowed down now, as there seemed to be no danger of pursuit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After mother died," Tommy resumed, "and the mine did not pay, father started prospecting with Nat Richards and the others in that crowd. But they were bad men, and soon got the better of my dad, taking away what little money he had left.<br /> "This ruined my father, and he grew discouraged, for he was old, and in poor health. He wandered away and I haven't seen him for nearly a year. I traveled about, doing what little work I could get to do, until I struck Texas. One day, about a week ago, I passed a ranch, the same one<br /> we just came by. I asked for work, and got it. Then I found the same men owned it that had ruined my father.<br /> "As soon as Nat Richards saw me he demanded to know where dad was. I couldn't tell, and then he promised me one hundred dollars if I would tell. He said they needed my father's signature to a paper.<br /> "I don't know as I would have told them where dad was if I did know. When I kept on refusing to give them the information, Nat Richards grew ugly. He had me taken off to the hut where you found me, and said he'd starve me to death if I didn't tell.<br /> "I almost did die from hunger," Tommy went on with a catch in his voice. "Then they tried torture. They burned me on the legs with a hot poker. That's what they were doing when you came in," and, overcome again by the thought of all he had suffered Tommy cried bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, car part, accident, sound, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys and the professor did all they could to comfort the friendless lad, and, soon Tommy's grief wore off.<br /> "We'll take you along with us," said Jerry heartily, "and we'll try to help you find your father. Where did you see him last?"<br /> "He was in Arizona," answered Tommy.<br /> "That's just where we're headed for," exclaimed Bob. "We'll take you there all right."<br /> Jerry leaned forward to throw in the higher speed gear when there was a sudden ripping, breaking sound, and the auto began to slow up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, driver, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned.<br /> "Stripped the gear, I'm afraid," replied the steersman. "This is a nice pickle to be in."<br /> "Won't it run on the low or intermediate gear?" asked Bob.<br /> Jerry tried them, and found they were all right.<br /> "I guess we'd better stop here for the night," he said. "We may need the high gear any minute, and perhaps I can fix it in the morning. I have a spare wheel."<br /> "Then let's camp and have supper," said Bob eagerly. "I haven't eaten in a week by the way I feel."<br /> "Same here! I agree with you for once, Chunky," spoke Jerry. "It has been a long time since dinner, but with the excitement of the storm, the bear, and rescuing Tommy I didn't notice it before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while the camping outfit was taken from the automobile, and a fire started in the sheet-iron stove, with the charcoal that was carried to be used in emergencies, such as being unable to find dry wood after a rain.<br /> Ned ground the coffee, while Bob went in search of water, using the lantern to aid him in the somewhat dim forest, though the moon helped some. He found a spring close at hand, and soon a fragrant beverage was steaming under the trees. Then some bacon was placed in the frying pan, and the hard tack was taken from the tin and other things prepared.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Fall to!" commanded Ned, who was acting as cook, and fall to they all did, with a will.<br /> "Do you often camp out and eat in the woods like this?" asked Tommy. "I think it's jolly fun," and the lad, who was about twelve years old, laughed for the first time since his rescue. He, too, was eating with an appetite that showed he needed the food.<br /> Jerry briefly related some of their travel adventures, at which Tommy opened his eyes to their widest extent.<br /> "Cracky! But you have had stunning times!" he exclaimed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The meal having been finished, they began to think of getting some sleep. Blankets were brought out, and rolling themselves up in them the boys and the professor were soon in the land of nod.<br /> It was nearly dawn when Jerry was suddenly awakened by the far off baying of a dog. At first he could not imagine what the sound was, and sat up to listen more intently. Then a long, mournful howl was borne to him on the wind.<br /> "That's strange," he muttered. "There are very few dogs about here. I wonder what it is."<br /> At the same time Tommy Bell roused up, and he, too, heard the sound.<br /> "It's the gang after us!" he exclaimed. "They have a lot of hounds on the ranch! Hurry up! Let's get out of this!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, risk, night, speed, equipment, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark!" exclaimed Jerry, raising his hand.<br /> Then the boys heard, faint and far off, the sound of galloping horses.<br /> "They're coming!" cried Jerry.<br /> His cry awakened the others, who sat up bewildered and heavy from sound sleep.<br /> "Lively's the word!" called Jerry. "They're after us!"<br /> No further explanation was needed, for all knew what Jerry meant. There was a hasty piling of blankets into the auto; the stove was packed up, and, while the travelers jumped into the car, Jerry went in front to crank it up. The cheerful chug-chug told that the machinery was in good working order, and then, the boy, leaping into the steersman's seat, threw in the low gear for the start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, skill, sound, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> As he did so Ned glanced back and saw, coming around the bend of the forest road a score of horsemen and a pack of dogs.<br /> "Speed her up, Jerry!" called Bob.<br /> "I will!" was the exclamation, as Jerry leaned forward to throw in the high gear. A mournful screeching of the engine was the only response.<br /> "I forgot! The high gear is broken!" the steersman cried. "We can only use the intermediate, and that is not very fast!"<br /> "It's the best we can do, though!" said Bob. "We may get away from them!"<br /> On the intermediate cogs the auto made good speed, and, for a while, distanced the gang, the members of which, with shouts of rage, put their horses to their best effort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IX. - Into the Cave (72-80) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, risk, animal, topograpy"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="forest, metaphor, speed, animal, skill, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IX<br /> <br /> INTO THE CAVE<br /> <br /> The sun began to peep up from beneath the eastern hills, throwing a rosy light over the earth. The woods began to thin out, and the sides of the "tunnel," which had been dense, became more open, so that glimpses of the country could be seen now and then.<br /> The chase was now on in earnest. For some time, however, the auto kept well in advance of the horsemen, for Jerry used all the power possible on the differential gear. If the high speed one had been in working order there would have been no question of the outcome, but, for once, luck was against the boys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, road condition, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Nearer and nearer came the gang on horseback. They got so close that their shouts to halt could be plainly heard. But Jerry was not going to give up. He gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel with a firmer grasp.<br /> "We seem to be slacking up," observed Ned.<br /> "That's what we are," spoke Jerry. "The auto is going back on us."<br /> The car did seem to be dragging, and there was no excuse for it in the condition of the road, which was a fine level one.<br /> "The car needs repairing," said Jerry, "and the way I have to run it isn't the best thing in the world for it."<br /> "Do you think they'll catch up to us?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid so," muttered Jerry. "We are going the limit now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, metaphor, car part, accident, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The thunder of the horses sounded nearer and the shouts of the pursuing gang came more plainly on the morning breeze. The auto coughed and wheezed, seeming like a man who has run far and is about to collapse. The explosions became less frequent, and finally one of the cylinders ceased to work altogether, leaving only three in commission.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" muttered Jerry, as, by a hasty glance back he saw the men spurring their horses on.<br /> "You'd better give up!" one of the gang shouted.<br /> "Not yet, you scoundrels!" cried Jerry, as he advanced the sparkling lever to the final notch. This seemed to be the last straw to the auto engine, for with a dismal snort it stopped short.<br /> "This settles it," muttered Ned grimly. "We are done for."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, speed, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Fortunately, however, they were on a slight slope now, and the car, with the impetus it had gathered, began to glide down the hill under its own momentum.<br /> But the horsemen were not one thousand feet in the rear and were drawing nearer. There seemed to be no help at hand and there was every indication that the boys would fall into the hands of their desperate enemies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, tree, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> "How much farther can we go?" asked Tommy suddenly.<br /> "To the foot of the hill," replied Jerry. "Why do you ask?"<br /> "That's far enough!" exclaimed Tommy. "I guess we can escape them."<br /> "How?"<br /> "Steer straight for that dead pine tree," replied the young lad, "and when you get almost to it, make a wide turn to the right."<br /> "What good will that do?"<br /> "There's a big cave right at the foot of the hill," replied Tommy. "I know for I passed it as I was tramping toward the ranch. It is large enough to take in the auto, and maybe we can hold it against the gang."<br /> "Hurrah!" shouted Jerry, as he shifted the wheel to conform with Tommy's directions. "We'll beat 'em yet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, skill, speed, scenery, animal, risk, weapon, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> Straight toward the dead pine Jerry aimed, and, as he came to the bottom of the slope, he saw an opening in the bush-lined side of the hill, that told him the cave was at hand. Into it, by a skillful turn, he steered the auto, and the machine, running in about one hundred feet from the opening came to a stop, just as the horsemen came dashing up, much surprised by the sudden disappearance of those they were pursuing.<br /> "We're safe!" whispered Ned.<br /> "Not yet," said Jerry. "We must arm ourselves," and he began to get out the rifles from the bottom of the car, and hand them around to his companions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, scenery, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Outside the cavern, which was a natural one in the rocky side of the hill, there came confused shouts.<br /> "Where did they go?" they heard a voice ask.<br /> "Must have gone over some ledge and been killed," was the reply.<br /> "Then that settles it," said the first one. "That's just our bad luck!"<br /> Then came a curious cry, and, by it, the boys knew their hiding place was discovered.<br /> "Here are the tracks of the wheels!" the travelers heard some one shout. "They turned off somewhere about here."<br /> "Then they're in that cave," was the rejoinder.<br /> "Dismount!" came a sharp order.<br /> The boys could hear the men getting off their horses, and the animals being led away.<br /> "Get your carbines ready!" was the next command.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's time for us to act!" whispered Jerry. "We must each one take a gun, and stand at the mouth of the cave. We'll warn them not to enter. If they persist we will have to fire, but we must try not to hurt any one mortally. Aim at their legs!"<br /> In the half darkness of the cavern the boys and the professor each took a rifle and crept to the mouth of the opening. No sooner had they reached it than they heard the tramp of feet, and shadows told them the bad men were advancing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Halt!" cried Jerry, who had naturally assumed command.<br /> "Who are you?" asked the leader of the gang.<br /> "Never mind who we are," replied Jerry. "We are in possession of this cave, and we warn you not to come in!"<br /> "Big words for a kid!" sneered the leader.<br /> "You'll find we can back them up," spoke Jerry. Then, in lower tones, he bade his comrades stand in readiness.<br /> There was a consultation in whispers among the members of the gang, and then, seeming to feel that they had nothing to fear, they made a rush.<br /> "Fire!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Remembering his instructions, the boys and the professor aimed low. To the reports of the rifles there succeeded howls of pain. Several of the gang shot back, but, as it was dark in the cave they could not see to aim, and they did no damage.<br /> "Give them another volley!" yelled Jerry.<br /> Again the rifles spoke, and this time, to the chorus of howls there was added a command from the leader to retreat, and the men rushed from the cave, which was filled with smoke.<br /> "Are—are any of them killed?" asked Tommy.<br /> "I don't believe so," replied Jerry. "We fired too low to do much damage. I only wanted to let them know we were ready for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Waiting several minutes to see if there would be any further attack, Jerry cautiously advanced to the mouth of the cavern. In the semi-light he saw several blood stains, but the absence of any bodies told him the battle had not resulted fatally, for which he was thankful. Though the<br /> men were desperate characters, who, perhaps, would not stop at murder, the boy did not want the responsibility of killing any of them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They seem to have retreated," Jerry reported when he joined the others. "But I don't suppose they have gone for good. This probably will only make them more anxious to get Tommy away from us, for it is him they are after."<br /> "Do you think they want me?" asked the younger lad.<br /> "I am pretty sure, after what you have told us about the mine, that they would give a good deal to get you," replied Jerry. "Perhaps your signature may be as good as that of your father's in case—in case—" and Jerry stopped suddenly.<br /> "You mean in case dad is dead?" asked Tommy quietly.<br /> "Yes," answered Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't believe my father is dead," spoke the boy bravely. "Somehow I feel that he is alive, and that I will find him. But if the gang is after me, it is not right for you all to be in danger on my account. Give me up to them, I'm not afraid—that is, I'll try not to be. Let me go out and surrender, and perhaps they'll go away."<br /> "I'd like to see myself!" exclaimed Jerry. "You don't stir out of this cave, Tommy Bell, until we go! I'm not afraid of that gang. We've been in tighter places than this and gotten out; haven't we, fellows?"<br /> "You bet!" echoed Bob and Ned.<br /> "Then give me a gun and let me help fight," begged Tommy.<br /> "Can you shoot?" asked Jerry.<br /> "My father taught me," was all Tommy said, and Jerry gave him a rifle, at which Tommy's eyes sparkled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A cautious glance from the mouth of the cave showed that the gang had withdrawn some distance away. But that they had no notion of giving up the fight was evidenced by the fact that they were constructing a camp so as to command the entrance to the cavern.<br /> "I guess they're going to try and starve us out," remarked the professor. "Lucky we have plenty of provisions and ammunition on hand for a siege."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess we're just as well off here as anywhere," observed Jerry. "We'd have to lay up a few days at any rate, to fix the machine, and it might as well be in a good roomy cave, where the rain can't wet us."<br /> The boys waited an hour before laying aside their arms. Then, as the gang showed no signs of renewing the attack, they proceeded to make themselves more comfortable.<br /> "Might as well get ready to camp out," said Ned. "I'll set up the stove, and we'll have breakfast, though it is a little late."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> So while he set up the sheet iron apparatus, Jerry instructed Bob to stand guard at the mouth of the cavern, and to give instant notice of any activity on the part of the enemy.<br /> "But what will we do about eating breakfast?" asked Bob in a sorrowful voice.<br /> "Don't worry about that, 'Chunky,'" said Jerry. "I'll relieve you, or some one will, in time to get a meal. In the meantime keep a good watch."<br /> Then Jerry went back to help Ned, and, at the same time, make ready to repair the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter X. - Attacked by a Cougar (81-89) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, risk, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER X<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY A COUGAR<br /> <br /> "I say, Jerry," called Ned, "we're in a sort of a pickle."<br /> "How's that?"<br /> "Why, I started to make coffee and I got along all right until I came to the water."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "No, it's not at all well. In fact we ought to have a well here."<br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> "I mean there's no water in the cave!"<br /> "Great Scott! Is that so?" exclaimed Jerry. "I never thought of such a thing. Are you sure there's not a spring away in the rear?"<br /> "The professor and I made a good search," replied the temporary cook. "The cave comes to an end about three hundred feet back, and there's not a sign of water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, gasoline, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds Jerry was silent. Then he gave an exclamation.<br /> "I have it!" he cried. "We can use the emergency water supply on the auto. It is not very fresh, but it will do for coffee."<br /> "The very thing!" ejaculated Ned.<br /> It was fortunate that the auto carried an extra tank of water, as well as one of gasolene. They had often found it useful in getting a supply of the fluid for the radiator in places far from a supply, and the reserve tank had been built with that purpose in view. It held about ten gallons. Drawing on this Ned had a supply for his coffee which was soon boiling merrily on the stove, while some canned chicken and bacon were put on to fry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say, is anybody going to relieve me?" called Bob from his post on guard.<br /> He smelled the breakfast in preparation, and it added to his hunger.<br /> "I'll go," volunteered the professor. "I'm in no hurry to eat, and perhaps I may pick up a specimen or two. This cave ought to be a good place for them."<br /> Accordingly he took Bob's place, and soon the four boys were eating ravenously, and with as good appetites as if a band of bad men was not outside, ready to attack them at the first opportunity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, car part, engine, technology, skill, night"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to fix the machine," said Jerry as he rose from the ground that served as a table. "Light all the lamps, Ned, and then you and Bob come and help me. Tommy and the professor can take turns standing guard."<br /> It was no easy matter to take the automobile engine apart, and substitute a new gear for the broken one. It was also found necessary to insert new spark plugs, which had become covered with a coating of carbon; and the cylinders also needed cleaning, while the pistons had to be adjusted.<br /> The afternoon was spent in working at the auto, and by night such good progress had been made that Jerry said by the next evening it would be in shape to start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, night, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "That is if the gang let's us," spoke Ned.<br /> "We'll make a dash for it," replied Jerry. "We needn't fear them with the car in good order, for we can leave them behind in less than half an hour. We'll try to escape to-morrow about midnight."<br /> "In the meanwhile let's eat," suggested Bob, and his cry brought forth the usual chaffing about "Chunky's" appetite.<br /> Ned started to get supper. He went to the tank of the auto to draw some water for the tea, when he gave a cry of surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, accident, mud"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" called Jerry.<br /> "The water's gone!" exclaimed Ned. "That's a leak in the tank!"<br /> They all rushed to the car. There, on the ground under the reserve tank was a muddy spot, showing where the precious fluid had dripped away. A quick examination showed there was a small hole in the reservoir.<br /> "Now we are up against it," murmured Bob.<br /> "Not quite yet," said Jerry.<br /> "How can we get water without being shot?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is quite a bit left in the pipe coils of the radiator," answered Jerry. "It will be pretty poor stuff to drink I guess, but it's better than nothing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable of the fluid in the big brass radiator on the front of the car, and, though it was stale, and had been heated many times, as it circulated about the cylinders, still, it was better than none. Made into tea, which was served as a change from coffee, it did not taste so very bad.<br /> But the situation was grave. With only water enough on hand to last about half a day, the plight of the travelers was a critical one.<br /> "We'll have to have water for the car, as well as ourselves," spoke Ned. "We can't run the machine without water."<br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry dubiously. "Something will have to be done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> After the evening meal Jerry resumed his labors on the car, working at double speed, in which he was assisted by Ned and Bob. The professor and Tommy took turns watching at the cavern's mouth.<br /> But there seemed to be no need of this, as the men showed no inclination to make a second attack. They appeared to know that the boys were caught in a trap; a trap that contained no water. So they evidently felt sure of success sooner or later, and that without the danger of being wounded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, midnight, technology, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and his comrades worked to such advantage that shortly after midnight the auto was in shape to be used, and with the new high gear wheel in place. The car was given a good oiling, and was repacked in readiness for a quick start.<br /> "Now if we only had water," sighed Jerry, "we could slip out, and, I believe get away."<br /> But he knew it was useless to proceed without at least a full radiator. The extra tank, which had been repaired, could be filled later. The radiator coils were empty however. What had not been used for cooking had been made up into weak tea, as it was not considered healthful to drink the water as it came from the pipes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to do something," said Jerry decidedly. "If we stay here much longer we'll die of thirst. If we could only make a dash and get some water we could manage. Two pails full would do."<br /> "Let me go after them," exclaimed Tommy. "I'm not afraid. I can run fast. Maybe I can get out there by the brook, get the water and come back before any of them see me."<br /> "No you couldn't," spoke Jerry, pointing to where one of the men, as sentry, could be seen, from the mouth of the cave, walking up and down near the camp fire. "If any one goes I will, and I think I'd better start."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob and Ned both offered to make the dangerous attempt, and the professor insisted that he be allowed to try, as he knew how to move over ground very silently. But Jerry was firm in his determination.<br /> "I'm going to make the try about two o'clock," he said. "They'll be sounder asleep then."<br /> As he was very tired he stretched out in some blankets until it would be time to make the try. He fell asleep soon, and the others moved away, talking in whispers lest they disturb him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Almost exactly at the appointed hour Jerry awakened. He sat up, and, slipping a pair of Indian moccasins over his shoes, to enable him to move as silently as possible, he cautiously approached the mouth of the cavern, carrying two water pails with him.<br /> The moon had gone down and it was quite dark, which was favorable to Jerry's plans. As he got to the entrance of the cavern the boy looked toward the gang's camp. There seemed to be no sign of life, and Jerry thought perhaps the sentry had fallen asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As silent as a cat the lad made his way toward the stream, which he could hear gurgling and splashing over the stones. His throat was dry, for the last of the cold tea had been drunk, and his exertions had made him very thirsty. As he heard the sound of the brook he felt a fierce desire for water, so strong was it that he felt he would brave anything to get it.<br /> Foot by foot he advanced, crouching down as low as he could. He was beginning to feel that he would be successful, and not be detected. He could see the sparkle of the water about three hundred feet away, and his parched mouth and throat seemed to be as dry as leather. He could<br /> hardly swallow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On and on he went. Now he was about two hundred feet away and he was getting ready to make a dash for the brook.<br /> Suddenly he heard a clicking sound, and knew it was a rifle being cocked. Next there rang out on the night air the command:<br /> "Halt or I'll fire!"<br /> Poor Jerry was detected! He came to a stop, sick at heart at the failure of his plan.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a moment there was no other sound. The boy could not see who had discovered him, though he instinctively felt the eyes of the man on him. Suddenly there was a shaking in the tree somewhat to Jerry's left, and about one hundred feet away. Then came a rustle of the leaves on the ground and the boy made out the figure of a man, dimly, standing with rifle aimed straight at him.<br /> "Throw up your hands!" was the next order, and, letting the pails fall to the ground, Jerry obeyed.<br /> Then, all at once, there burst out on the air a most terrifying sound. It was a blood-curdling yell, a screech as if from some one in mortal agony. Jerry felt the cold chills go down his back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a crashing sound, and, from the tree under which the man stood who had aimed at the boy a dark body shot downward.<br /> The screech of the cougar, for such it was, mingled with the terrific yells of the sentry. Jerry dimly saw a confused tangle of man and beast. He heard the man shout for help. He heard his rifle go off, and then came sounds that told that the camp had been aroused.<br /> The attack of the cougar had come just in time. Jerry, taking advantage of the diversion, grabbed up his pails, and running to the brook filled them with water. Then, as fast as he could go, he ran toward the cave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XI. - A Runaway Auto (90-97) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, maintenance, car part, night, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XI<br /> <br /> A RUNAWAY AUTO<br /> <br /> Behind the boys sounded the yells and shouts of the men in camp, mingled with rifle shots and the screeching of several of the cougars, for, it developed, a band of three, grown desperate by hunger, had made an attack.<br /> "Are you hurt, Jerry?" cried Bob and Ned, as, with his pails of water, the boy staggered into the cave.<br /> "Not a bit, but I had a close shave," was the answer. "But we must be quick! Here! Help fill the radiator with the water."<br /> "Can't we drink any?" asked Bob who, like the others, was very thirsty.<br /> "Not a drop," said Jerry firmly. "We need every bit for the automobile. Without it we can't get away from here, and now is the only chance we may have to escape. We can drink later."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> While Jerry and Ned filled the radiator the other boys and the professor made ready for the escape. Everything was packed up and placed in the car, which, as soon as the coil was filled, would be ready to start and dash from the cave.<br /> "I'm afraid this is not going to be water enough," spoke Jerry as the second of the pails was emptied into the radiator.<br /> "Can't I make a dash for some more? There seems to be excitement enough in the camp to keep them from watching me," said Ned. "I'm going to try."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable activity among the ranch men. The cougars, though wounded, seemed to have temporarily lost all fear and made attack after attack on the men, who had to fire several volleys from their rifles.<br /> "Go ahead," said Jerry. "I'll start the engine slowly."<br /> Grabbing up the pails Ned walked from the cave.<br /> "I'm going to help, also," said Tommy.<br /> "No, you stay here," commanded Jerry. "Bob can go if he wants to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob joined Ned. They ran to the stream and had filled the pails when, just as they started on the way back, the wounded cougars, driven from the camp, came dashing after the boys.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" exclaimed Ned. "Run, Bob!"<br /> And run they did, as they had never run before, and left the beasts behind.<br /> "Have you the water?" asked Jerry eagerly as the boys came in.<br /> "We have!" exclaimed Bob. "And hard enough work we had getting it."<br /> "Good!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry hurriedly poured most of it into the radiator, though every one in the cave looked at the fluid with longing eyes.<br /> "I must get a drink soon, or I shall go half crazy!" said the professor suddenly. "I never was so thirsty in my life."<br /> "I'm saving just a little bit for each of us," spoke Jerry. "But it is a very small quantity, and will only serve to wet our mouths. If all goes well we shall soon have plenty."<br /> He distributed about a pint of the water among his companions, and though each one got only a little it brought welcome relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, speed, engine"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now we're ready to skip out!" announced Jerry as he screwed the cap on the radiator tank, and increased the speed of the engine. "But first we had better take a look outside to see if any of that gang are in sight."<br /> The professor, who had good eyes, went to the mouth of the cave, and, coming back, reported that he could see a dark mass moving on the further bank of the stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, road condition, speed, driver, passenger, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "They have evidently gotten over their scare about the cougars," Mr. Snodgrass said, "and are waiting to bag us. What are we going to do?"<br /> "There's only one thing to do," replied Jerry.<br /> "And that is what?"<br /> "We must make a dash for it. The road is fairly good, and I guess we can speed up enough to get out of the range of their bullets in a short time. They can't be very good shots or they would have killed the three cougars, with all the bullets they fired."<br /> So it was decided. They all took their places in the car, and Jerry, who, as if by mutual consent, assumed the place of steersman, leaned forward to throw in the gear clutches.<br /> "Here we go!" he cried. "Look out everybody!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="slowness, car part, visibility, risk, night, speed, sound, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly at first, but gathering speed, the auto moved out of the cave. The lamps lighted up the path, and, though the boys realized that the lanterns disclosed their position to their enemies, they had to use them for their own safety. It was too dark to do without them.<br /> A few seconds later and the car emerged from the cavern. As it shot out there came a chorus of angry cries from the camp of the ranchmen, and several shots were fired, though none of them came close enough to be uncomfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, skill, risk, navigation, visibility, night, river, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" cried Jerry again, as he increased the speed, and the auto fairly leaped forward. It swayed from side to side, and struck several ruts, so that the occupants were tossed about.<br /> But the main thing was that they went ahead, and away from their enemies. Jerry, peering as best he could into the darkness ahead, made a course for the stream, intending to go close to it, and then run along the bank, or near it, as he had noted in the afternoon that there was a fairly good road there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, speed, parking, river, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> Gradually the shouts of the men, and the firing of their guns died away, and the travelers began to breathe more freely. They had made their escape, and, for the present, were safe.<br /> "Oh do let's stop and get a drink!" pleaded Bob.<br /> "Not yet!" exclaimed Jerry. "Five minutes more will not kill you, and it may save all our lives," for he did not want to slack up while there was any danger of the ranchmen coming after them.<br /> The five minutes seemed like an hour to Bob, and the others, too, were impatient. But at last Jerry shut off the power and the machine came to a halt not far from the creek. Out scrambled the boys and the professor, and then, in spite of the danger of drinking snakes and lizards in the darkness, they all made for the stream, where they quenched their thirst from small collapsable cups which each one had been holding in readiness for just that chance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's better than an ice cream soda!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "You bet!" agreed Bob heartily. "I never tasted such fine water."<br /> "Very good!" said the professor.<br /> "I guess we can stop long enough to lay in a supply now," remarked Jerry. "We can start off again in five minutes, and in that time they can not catch up to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part, night, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> So the radiator was filled to the top, and the auxiliary tank likewise, while the boys indulged freely in the liquid, thinking, perhaps, they might have some of the characteristics of the camel, and could drink enough at one time to last a week or more.<br /> Then they started forward again, and the auto soon carried them beyond the possibility of capture that night. They camped out in the open, and, in spite of their rather exciting adventures they slept soundly, awaking as the sun rose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, passenger, mountain, topography, scenery, car part, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was given a chance to run the machine, and he took the front seat with Tommy, who was delighted to be there for the first time. They had not been going long before they found the land was rising.<br /> "We're coming into the mountains now," said Jerry.<br /> Up a long hill, with a gradual assent, puffed the auto. On either side were broad fields where tall Pampas grass was growing, amid which thousands of grasshoppers, or some similar insect, were singing.<br /> "Better be sure your brake is in good working order," suggested Jerry, as they came to the steep descent on the other side. "We don't want any more accidents."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned tried the ordinary brake. There was a clicking sound, followed by a snapping one.<br /> "Brake's busted!" exclaimed Jerry. "Try the emergency!"<br /> Ned did so. That, too, gave out only a faint screech, and did not grip the axle as it should.<br /> "Look out now!" yelled Jerry. "We're in for it!"<br /> An instant later the auto began to move forward at a rapid pace. All Ned's efforts to check it were in vain.<br /> "We're running away!" cried frightened Tommy. "I wish I'd stayed in back!"<br /> "Keep to the middle of the road!" Jerry cried above the noise of the auto rushing down the steep hill. At the bottom the road took a sharp turn, and the hearts of all beat rapidly with fear as they beheld it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XII. - Tommy Finds a Friend (98-106) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, agriculture"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, car part, driver, passenger, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XII<br /> <br /> TOMMY FINDS A FRIEND<br /> <br /> So rapidly did the machine shoot down the descent that it almost seemed the curved road was rushing to meet the travelers. Again and again Ned tried the brakes, but without avail. He had shut off the power at the first indication that something was wrong.<br /> "We can never make that turn!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid not," agreed Jerry.<br /> They were all clinging to the sides of the car, while Ned gripped the steering wheel with a desperate hold.<br /> "Look out for the turn!" cried the professor as they came to the sharp curve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, car part, risk, scenery, agriculture, speed, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> But, to the surprise of all, Ned, instead of shifting the wheel in at least an attempt to swing around the half circle kept straight on the course. The boy had resolved on another plan.<br /> Directly in front of him, and to the left of the road was a big field of tall waving Pampas grass, the plumes nodding eight feet above the ground. It was shut off from the thoroughfare by a frail wooden fence.<br /> "I'm going to steer into the grass!" cried Ned. "It's our only chance!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, accident, speed, agriculture, risk, plant, skill, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a splintering sound as the auto crashed through the fence, which offered no more resistance, because of the great speed, than a paper hoop does to a circus performer. Then it seemed to the travelers as though they had been plunged into a tossing, waving sea of grass.<br /> The tall Pampas plumes and the stems wrapped themselves about the boys and the professor, almost choking them by the pollen that was shaken off. The feathery-like tops tickled them in the eyes, nose and mouth as, carried by the runaway auto, they were dashed through them.<br /> But the grass had just the effect Ned had intended and hoped for. It clogged the wheels of the machine, and though soft, offered so much resistance that the machine soon began to slow down, as does a locomotive when it runs into a snow drift.<br /> After plowing through the field for about two hundred feet the car came to a final stop, with a little jolt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, risk, health, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Caramba!" yelled a voice and then followed such a string of Spanish that the boys thought they had run down a whole camp of Mexican herders.<br /> "Did we hit any one?" asked Jerry, peering forward as well as he could through the tall grass.<br /> "Caramba! Hit any one! The Americano pirates have killed Don Elvardo!" exclaimed the unseen one. "You have broken—!" and then followed such a confusion of words that the boys could not understand.<br /> "Have we broken your leg?" asked Jerry, speaking in Spanish this time.<br /> "Santa Maria! No! You have broken the cigarette I just rolled!" and with that the grass parted in front of the auto, and a little Mexican, wearing a suit profusely trimmed with silver braid, showed himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys felt like laughing as they beheld the woe-begone face of Don Elvardo. In his hand he held the remains of a cigarette.<br /> "Behold!" he went on tragically. "I am peacefully walking in my field, looking over my crop of Pampas, when I feel a desire to smoke. I sit me down and roll a cigarette. I am about to light it, when—Santa Maria! There is a rushing sound of ten thousand imps of darkness. My grass is mowed down as if by a sickle in the hands of a giant. I turn in fear! I see something coming! I can not tell what it is, for the tall grass hides it! I turn to flee! The infernal thing keeps after me! Presto! Caramba! It hits me so—"<br /> Don Elvardo illustrated by slapping himself vigorously on the thigh.<br /> "Then I fall! I am crushed! I am killed! I die in pain and fear! I arise! Behold, senor Americanos, my cigarette is broken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, agriculture, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're very sorry, of course," said Jerry politely. "But you see our auto ran away on the hill, and as the brakes would not work, the only thing to save our lives was to steer into this field. We did not know you were here, or we would have sent around to your house to ask permission to enter," added the lad sarcastically.<br /> "But I am here!" snapped the Mexican.<br /> "So we see," admitted Jerry. "We are willing to pay for any damage we have done."<br /> The Mexican's eyes sparkled, and he rubbed his hands as if in anticipation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That alters the case," said Don Elvardo. "The Americano senors are welcome ten thousand times to my field. I bid you welcome. I salute you. Pay. Oh, yes! It is but right that you should pay!" Again he rubbed his hands together.<br /> "About what would you say it was worth?" asked Ned.<br /> "I am no miser," replied the Mexican. "I do not wish to insult my friends the Americanos. I will only charge them for the damage to the grass. The broken fence is of no moment. Pay me one hundred dollars and I will say no more about the affair."<br /> "He's a robber!" said Jerry in a low voice. "We haven't done five dollars' damage to his crop and the fence combined."<br /> "I guess he will whistle for his one hundred dollars," said Ned.<br /> Don Elvardo heard him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, agriculture, plant, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "So!" he exclaimed. "You will not pay me one little hundred dollars for the damage. Caramba! Then it is I who shall at once lodge a complaint with the authorities. We will see if there is a law in the land, or if crazy Americanos can spoil a poor man's crop and pay nothing. We shall see!"<br /> "Offer him ten dollars," suggested Bob. The boys consulted together a minute or two. They wanted to be fair, but they did not care to be robbed. The professor had taken no part in the discussion. He seemed to be intently examining the tall grass on either side of the machine.<br /> Suddenly the scientist stepped from the side of the car, and rapidly made his way to the front, where Don Elvardo stood. Mr. Snodgrass gazed intently at the Mexican. Then he gave a leap toward the Don, exclaiming as he did so:<br /> "There it is! Right on your hat! Don't move an inch or it will jump away! I have it now! This is indeed a lucky day! Just a second and I'll have it!"<br /> With that the professor made a leap toward the Mexican with outstretched hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Diavolo?" screamed Don Elvardo as he saw the scientist coming for him. "Caramba! It is to murder me that you come!"<br /> Then, calling for help at the top of his voice, the Mexican turned and fled in terror, his course being marked through the tall grass by the wave-like motion he imparted to the plumes in his haste.<br /> "Why—why what in the world ails him?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "He probably thought you were going to choke him to death," said Jerry with a laugh. "In fact your actions were not so very far from giving that idea."<br /> "Why bless my soul!" ejaculated the professor. "All I wanted was to get a fine specimen of a blue grasshopper from his big hat, where the insect had alighted. It was worth about forty dollars."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I saw some just as good in a city once for twenty dollars," put in Tommy, "and they had more silver braid on."<br /> "What! A grasshopper with silver braid on?" cried the scientist.<br /> "I thought you said his hat was worth forty dollars," went on Tommy, somewhat embarrassed.<br /> "I was speaking of the blue grasshopper," explained Mr. Snodgrass. "My, I am sorry to have missed that one."<br /> "But you did a good service in scaring this Mexican away, as you did the chap with the ox cart," spoke Ned. "He might have made trouble for us."<br /> "And we had better get out of here while we have the chance," said Jerry. "He may come back any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="agriculture, plant, navigation, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the auto was turned around, and run over the same course by which it had entered the field. Otherwise it would have been almost impossible to have advanced, so thick was the grass. The road regained, the machine was sent along it at good speed, for fear Don Elvardo or some of his friends might appear.<br /> "We had better stop and fix the brakes," suggested Ned, after an hour's run.<br /> "And get dinner at the same time," put in Bob. "We'll kill two stones with the same automobile, as the poem says."<br /> "I guess you're a little twisted," remarked Ned, "but your intentions are good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, river, maintenance, car part, navigation, map"><br /> <poem><br /> A halt was made under a big tree, near a little stream, and soon a good fire was built and dinner was being cooked.<br /> It was found that some nuts had become loose on the brakes, and this trouble Jerry soon remedied. After the meal they sat about and talked a while.<br /> "We'll soon be in New Mexico," remarked Jerry, consulting a small map.<br /> "Will we?" asked Tommy. "I'm so glad."<br /> "Why?"<br /> "Because there's a man who was once a friend of my father at a place called Las Cruces. It's near the Rio Grande river. If we could go there I know Mr. Douglass would take care of me."<br /> "Then we'll go there," said Jerry. "It will be right on our route."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed this would be a good plan. That night the travelers stopped in a small village where they had good beds and meals. They resumed the journey next day, and for several days thereafter met with no mishaps as they speeded toward Las Cruces. They had left the lowlands and were well up among the hills by this time.<br /> One day, just at dusk, they rolled into Las Cruces and, after a little inquiry found Mr. Douglass, who was very glad to see Tommy.<br /> "I will be glad to take care of him for the present," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIII. - The Colored Man's Ghost (107-116) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="city, rural, pleasure, mechanic, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIII<br /> <br /> THE COLORED MAN'S GHOST<br /> <br /> The travelers found the town where Tommy's friend lived such a pleasant place that they spent several days there. It was a thriving place, and the auto was a source of endless wonder to most of the inhabitants, who had never seen one.<br /> Had the boys wished they could have made considerable money taking parties out in the car for short trips, but they knew they had a long journey before them and they wished to save the machine all they could. It needed some repairs which were made by the local blacksmith, and then the travelers were ready to move forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know how to thank you for all you did for me," said Tommy, as the boys were leaving. "You saved my life. Maybe I will have a chance to do you a good turn some day. If I have, you can bet I'll do it."<br /> "We know you will, Tommy," said Jerry. "Well, good-by. I hope we see you again."<br /> "Same here!" exclaimed Bob and Ned.<br /> They did not know how soon they were to meet their friend again, nor in what a peculiar manner he was able to aid them in return for what they had done for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, slowness, equipment, rural, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> For several days the auto skimmed along through a somewhat lonely country. The roads were not very good and a number of times progress was so slow that only a few miles were made between sunrise and sunset. Now and then the travelers would come to a lonely cabin, where they could replenish their food supply or get a night's lodging. But, in the main, they had to depend on their own resources.<br /> Occasionally they would reach a little settlement, where their arrival never failed to produce as much excitement as a fire and circus combined. Every day brought them nearer their gold mine, concerning which they were very anxious, as they had heard nothing further from Jim Nestor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, mountain, maintenance, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "The mine may have been taken away from him for all we know," chafed Jerry as he fretted at the delay caused by bad roads.<br /> "We'll hope for the best," said Ned. "No use crossing a bridge until you come to it."<br /> The travelers were well up among the lower mountains now, though compared with the heights they had still to scale the range was one of mere hills. One evening just at dusk, after a particularly hard day of travel, during which the auto had broken down several times, necessitating minor repairs, the Motor Boys came to a place where two roads divided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder which we had better take?" asked Bob, who was at the wheel.<br /> "The right," said Jerry.<br /> "The left," advised Ned.<br /> "Toss up a cent," suggested the professor. "Make it heads right and tails left."<br /> They did so. The coin came down heads up, and Bob turned the machine to the right. It had not proceeded far on this road when, about a mile ahead, the travelers saw a couple of log cabins.<br /> "Well, there's shelter for to-night, at all events," Jerry remarked, "and, I hope, supper as well. I'm getting a little tired of bacon and coffee."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> They found one of the cabins occupied by a negro, his wife, and seven children, the oldest a boy of sixteen and the youngest a little girl, just able to toddle.<br /> "Good evening," greeted the professor, "can we get supper and lodging anywhere about here?"<br /> "I reckon I kin fix yo' up on th' eatin' question, boss," remarked the darkey as he stood in the cabin door as the auto drew up, "but I 'clare t' goodness I can't find no room t' stable that there rip-snortin' beast ye got."<br /> "We don't expect you to take the auto in," spoke Jerry. "If you give us beds for ourselves, or even a room to sleep in we'll pay for it and glad to do it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Land sakes, I'd like t' 'blige yo', deed 'n I would boss," went on the negro, "but my cabin am jest crowded t' th' doah wif me an' my fambily. Yo' am welcome t' suthin' t' eat, but land a' massy whar I'se goin' t' have yo' sleep hab got me cogitatin'."<br /> "What's the matter with that other cabin?" asked Ned.<br /> "What other cabin?" asked the negro, not turning to look in the direction of the second shack, about a quarter of a mile down the road.<br /> "That one," went on Ned, pointing to it. "There may be room in it."<br /> "Oh I reckon there's room enough," replied the colored man, "only—well to tell you th' truff, boss, it ain't exackly healthy t' sleep in that cabin, er even t' talk about it. 'Scuse me but I don't want even t' look at it."<br /> "Why not?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The colored man seemed to hesitate. He fidgeted and seemed ready to go back into his house.<br /> "Why not?" asked Ned again.<br /> "Kase it's--it's got ghosts an' it's hanted!" exclaimed the negro, "an' it ain't safe fer any one to go near it, let alone sleep in it."<br /> "Nonsense," remarked the professor. "There are no such things as ghosts."<br /> "Yo' wouldn't say so if yo' went to that there cabin after dark," persisted the colored man. "'Tain't safe t' talk about it, so yo'll please 'scuse me."<br /> "But what sort of a ghost is it?" asked Jerry.<br /> "It's big an' it's white, an' it rattles chains an' groans sumthin' turrible," said the negro.<br /> "Did you ever see it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Did I ever see it, boss? Couse I done see it. Only t'other night it near skeered me to deff."<br /> "How long has it been there?" asked Bob.<br /> "'Bout a week I reckon," replied the negro. "Ever since Rastus Johnson moved away from th' cabin."<br /> "I guess we'll take a chance with the ghost for the sake of spending a night under shelter," said Jerry. "Meanwhile we can get supper here."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And a fine supper they had. Mrs. Jones, wife of the colored man, proved an excellent cook. She fried some chicken, made some corn bread, and that, with preserves and some good coffee, made up a meal which the travelers voted one of the finest they had eaten in many months.<br /> "Can we get breakfast here, also?" asked Jerry when supper was finished. <br /> "If yo' am alive," replied Jones solemnly.<br /> "If we're alive? What do you mean?"<br /> "Well I reckon ef yo' sleeps in that hanted cabin, there won't be any of yo' left t' want a meal in th' mo'nin'," explained Jones. "It's takin' yo'uns' lives in yo' hands t' go nigh it suah yo' is boahn!"<br /> All they could say did not induce the man to change his mind. He was plainly afraid of the cabin and the "ghost."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> But the travelers were determined not to let a little thing like that interfere with a chance to sleep under shelter. Accordingly they covered the auto with the tarpaulin provided for that purpose, and moved their blankets into the deserted cabin, which was fairly clean and in good condition. One of the big oil lamps gave sufficient light.<br /> The cabin contained only two rooms, one on the ground floor, and the other above it, reached by a movable ladder.<br /> "I think we had better sleep upstairs," said Jerry. "The door doesn't fasten very securely, and besides I think it will be drier there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they mounted the ladder, spread their blankets out on the floor, and were all soon fast asleep. None of them expected to be disturbed, for they laid the story of the ghost to an overwrought imagination of the colored man.<br /> So it was with a sudden feeling of terror that Jerry was awakened in the middle of the night by hearing a deep groan, seeming to come from the room below.<br /> He sat up, rubbing his eyes to further awaken himself, and then he became aware that Bob was also sitting up. He could see because of the moonlight streaming in through a window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you hear anything?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I thought so," answered Bob.<br /> "I thought I did," put in Ned, who, it seems had been awakened at the same time the others were.<br /> Once more there sounded an unmistakable groan. It came from the ground floor, and was so loud, penetrating and, in spite of the would-be bravery of the boys, so awful coming out of the darkness, that they shuddered.<br /> "What's that?" asked the professor, who also, this time, was roused from his slumbers.<br /> Before either of the boys could answer the groan was repeated and this time it was followed by the unmistakable clanking of chains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The colored man's ghost!" whispered Bob.<br /> "Nonsense!" exclaimed the professor, but, no sooner had he spoken than there came another weird noise, and the chains rattled louder than ever.<br /> "Light the lantern," whispered Jerry. "We must see what it is. Perhaps it's only some one playing a joke."<br /> "Let me take a look before you make a light," suggested the professor. "I can look down the ladder hole."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Softly he crawled over to the opening and peered down. As he did so the noises were repeated. The professor uttered an exclamation.<br /> "It bears the other descriptive marks of the creature the negro told about," he said, crawling back to where the boys were huddled together. "It is big and white and it seems to be trying to climb up the ladder."<br /> "Wait until I get my revolver," whispered Jerry. "We'll soon see if it's a ghost or not."<br /> "Don't fire," cautioned the professor. "It may be some one trying to scare us, but we have no right to fire at any one."<br /> "I'll give 'em a warning, at any rate," said the lad. He went to the opening and called down:<br /> "Tell us who you are or I'll shoot, do you hear?"<br /> A groan and the clanking of chains was the only answer. This was followed by a violent agitation and shaking of the ladder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bang!" went Jerry's revolver. He had fired into the air.<br /> Succeeding the report there was a silence. This was broken by a further clanking of chains. Then came a crash, and when the echo of this died away the sound of feet running away could be heard.<br /> "Pretty solid footsteps for a ghost," commented Ned.<br /> "Look! Look!" cried Bob, pointing out of the window.<br /> There, running down the moon-lit road the boys saw a big white mule, to the neck of which was fastened a chain that rattled with every step.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the ghost," said the professor. "I thought I recognized the voice as that of a quadruped with which I was familiar. The animal has probably broken loose from the field and came here in search of food."<br /> "Well it certainly scared me all right," admitted Bob. The others did not commit themselves, but there was no doubt but that they had several heart-flutters.<br /> "I wonder what that crash was?" asked Ned.<br /> The professor glanced down the hole leading to the first floor.<br /> "The ghost made it by kicking our ladder away," the scientist replied. "I wonder how we can get down."<br /> But the boys did not worry about this, being too sleepy. Soon they were all snoring again, and did not awaken until the sun was streaming in the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIV. - Trouble With a Bad Man (117-126) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="rural, navigation, pedestrian, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIV<br /> <br /> TROUBLE WITH A BAD MAN<br /> <br /> "This is a nice pickle!" exclaimed Bob, who was the first to rise.<br /> "What's the matter, lost your collar button?" sleepily inquired Jerry.<br /> "No, but the mule knocked the ladder down, and we'll have to jump or stay here."<br /> "It isn't far to the ground in this shanty," remarked Jerry. "Go ahead and drop down."<br /> "It may not be very far," said Bob, "but I don't want to take the chance."<br /> "Afraid you'll sprain your ankle?"<br /> "No, but I don't want to fall into the cistern."<br /> "Cistern? What are you talking about?"<br /> "Well," went on Bob, "there's a cistern right under this ladder opening. The mule pulled the cover off last night, and whoever drops down is going to land goodness knows where."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The others soon confirmed what Bob had said. When the cabin was built a cistern had been sunk in the middle of the ground floor. This had been covered, and the ladder rested on it when the travelers went to bed, but the mule, probably in search for a drink, uncovered it.<br /> "Can't get down without a ladder," observed Ned.<br /> "What's the matter with jumping from one of the outside windows?" asked Jerry.<br /> They thought the idea a good one until they saw that the only one there was opened onto a pile of sharp rocks, into which even a jump of fifteen feet might be dangerous.<br /> "What's to be done?" asked Bob.<br /> "Guess we'll have to wait until Jones comes to see if we are dead," replied Jerry. "Then he can cover the cistern and raise the ladder."<br /> "I guess we'll have a long wait for Jones," commented Ned. "He's so afraid of this place that he'll never come within hearing distance of it."<br /> "Let's yell out of the window," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They did so, uniting their voices in a volume of sound. It seemed to have no effect though, for there was no movement about the colored man's cabin.<br /> "Once more," urged the professor.<br /> This time they produced a result, for, down the road they could see Jones come to the door of his shack and peer out. Thereupon they waved their hands to him, and in a few minutes the colored man was standing as close as he seemed to dare to come to their shelter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is yo' all daid?" he asked in awed accents.<br /> "Not quite all of us," answered the professor, "but we will be unless you come in and hoist the ladder for us."<br /> "Did th'—th' ghost knock it down?" asked Jones. <br /> "It did," replied Bob, solemnly.<br /> "I knowed it! I knowed it! Maybe you'll believe me next time. Golly! I ain't goin' t' stay here," and Jones was about to run off down the road.<br /> "Here! Come back!" commanded the captives, and the colored man reluctantly did so.<br /> "I doan laik t' stay round yeah!" pleaded the negro. "'Tain't no ways healthy. What yo' done want, anyhow?"<br /> "We want you to hoist the ladder for us," said the professor. "Come now, don't be silly. The only ghost there was, and we saw it, was an old white mule with a chain on its neck."<br /> "Co'se it were! Dat's de form it took when I seed it!" cried Jones. "But it can take on any shape, dat ghost can. Next time it'll be a lion er a tiger er a elephant. Monstrous terrible things, ha'nts is. So de ghost done knocked de ladder down! I knowed it would do suthin'."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Amid a show of genuine fear the colored man entered the cabin, and after replacing the cistern cover cautiously raised the ladder. Then he ran out as if the ghost were after him.<br /> "I guess we'll never be able to convince Jones that there isn't a ghost here," said Jerry as they came down and started down the road toward the colored man's cabin, where they were to have breakfast.<br /> "Here's something that may prove to him that the mule was the ghost," spoke Ned, picking up a horse shoe, which was on the cabin floor.<br /> They showed it to the negro, but he only shook his head.<br /> "It looks like a hoss shoe, dat I admit," said Jones, "but it's enchanted. It'll turn inter a snake er a tiger er suthin' terruble 'fore long. I don't want nothin' t' do with it," and he cast it into the bushes by the side of the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="dust, rural, night, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> The excitement of the night had taken none of the travelers' appetites away, and they made a good meal. Then, once more they took the road, disappearing in a cloud of dust, while Jones, his wife, and the seven children stood and stared in wonder.<br /> They traveled all that day with only an occasional glimpse of civilization in the shape of some house or cabin. No villages were reached, it being a centre of vast grazing lands, where only a lonely herder, or, perhaps two, remained to guard the cattle. That night they camped in the open, and found it rather uncomfortable, for it began to rain about midnight.<br /> "I wish we were back in the cabin, with the ghost-mule and everything else," muttered Jerry, as he tried to find a dry spot to lie down on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, city, class"><br /> <poem><br /> But troubles can not last forever, and morning came finally, bringing a clear day and a bright sun which was very welcome.<br /> Breakfast over they took the road once more. About noon they came to a small town that boasted of what was called the "Imperial Hotel."<br /> "I suppose we'd better try the Imperial," suggested Ned. "It don't look very scrumptious, but you can't always tell by the appearance of a toad how far he can jump."<br /> The auto drew up in front of the inn with a noise that brought a score of men from the barroom.<br /> "Jumpin' Gila Monsters and rattlesnakes!" cried one of the men, evidently a miner from his dress. "I've read about them Satan go-carts, but I never believed in 'em. Sakes alive, but they do look funny without a hoss in front."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, sound, risk, city"><br /> <poem><br /> He and the others gathered about the car, asking so many questions that it took all the boys and the professor as well to answer them. When curiosity had been partially satisfied the boys went into the hotel. While there was nothing to make a weary traveler glad he had found it, the place was not as bad as many where the Motor Boys had stopped. They had a good meal, and decided to rest a few hours before proceeding.<br /> It was along about three o'clock. The crowd of men in the barroom had become larger as new comers arrived. It was also noisier and loud voices, and occasional threats to shoot, made the travelers think it was about time to move on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="class, risk, rural, city"><br /> <poem><br /> They were about to go to their machine when they were approached on the porch where they were sitting, by the miner who had first remarked about the auto. He had evidently been drinking more than was good for him, and was in a quarrelsome mood.<br /> "If you don't want to play with me you needn't," he called, evidently to some one inside. "I can find some one to shuffle the cards with me. Here, you kid"—to Jerry, "you come an' we'll have a little game."<br /> "Thank you, I don't play," said Jerry quietly.<br /> "What's that?" came the sharp return.<br /> "I said I didn't play."<br /> "Why hang my buttons! You got to play when I tell you to," cried the miner. "Pete Simmons ain't used to bein' told no. Here, sit down to this table an' deal the cards," and he grabbed Jerry by the arm, and attempted to force him into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go my arm!" exclaimed Jerry.<br /> "You do as I tell you or I'll make you!" exclaimed the brute. "I'm used to havin' my way!"<br /> "Take your hand off!" commanded Jerry, drawing back his fist, for he was strong and hot tempered.<br /> "Now be nice, be nice!" sneered the man. <br /> "Let go of him!" exclaimed Ned coming forward and standing beside his chum, while Bob also ranged up alongside. "We'll all take a hand in this if you force us to."<br /> "I can tackle the three of you with both hands tied behind my back," cried the miner, flushing with anger at being defied by the boys.<br /> "Count me in too," spoke Professor Snodgrass, joining the lads. "I don't want to fight, but I will if I have to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now the professor, though a mild man, was, by reason of his out-of-door life, in fine physical condition, and no mean antagonist, which fact the miner saw.<br /> "Oh well, I was only foolin'," the ugly chap remarked with a poor attempt at a smile. But his face showed his rage. He moved away in a few seconds, and shuffled to the end of the porch, where he soon fell asleep on a bench.<br /> Bob looked over and saw him, as the boys were discussing the program for the remainder of the day.<br /> "Let's play a trick on that brute," said Bob.<br /> "What kind?" asked Jerry.<br /> "You watch," replied Chunky. "You'll see some fun."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now it happened that the professor had among his collection of specimens several large stuffed snakes, for he was an expert taxidermist. There were also several horned toads and big lizards. Bob got several of the ugliest ones and, with the aid of the scientist, who entered into the<br /> plan to pay a well deserved lesson to the miner, arranged the things about the sleeper, on the bench and on the floor of the porch.<br /> By this time most of the crowd at the hotel was aware what was going on, and, as few of them had any too much love for Simmons they waited the outcome with interest. When the reptiles were placed in a circle about the sleeping miner, one of the men fired his revolver in the air. At the sound Simmons awoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first he did not notice the reptiles, as he was on his back, staring up at the sky. Then he suddenly sat up, and caught a glimpse of the ugly looking things. For a moment he seemed to be in doubt as to what he beheld. Then he let out a yell that could have been heard almost a half mile.<br /> "Wow!" he cried. "Take 'em away. I'll never drink another drop! Honest I won't! Oh! Oh! the horrible snakes! I'll shut my eyes so I can't see 'em!"<br /> But when he opened them again the reptiles were still there.<br /> "Oh! Oh! I see 'em still!" he yelled. "Take 'em away, somebody, please do. Oh I forgot! They ain't real! I only imagine I see 'em!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He got up on the bench and was dancing about in terror. Then he drew his revolver, and was about to fire into the midst of the snakes.<br /> "He'll ruin my specimens!" cried the professor.<br /> One of the men ran forward, and began collecting the reptiles. Simmons saw them being gathered up, and noticed that they were not wiggling. Then the truth of it dawned on him, and he knew he had been fooled. His companions laughed loud and long. But Simmons, unable to stand the jokes and jibes he knew would be poked at him, leaped over the porch railing and ran down the road as fast as he could go.<br /> "Serves him right!" was the general verdict.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XV. - The Story of Lost Lake (127-134) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, animal, car, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XV<br /> <br /> THE STORY OF LOST LAKE<br /> <br /> The trick Bob had played seemed to be much appreciated among the crowd of miners and herdsmen who were gathered at the hotel. They laughed loud and long over the sight Simmons had presented.<br /> "I guess he'll know better than to fool with the next lad that comes along in one of them choo-choo wagons," was the hotel proprietor's comment.<br /> Bob gathered up the specimens that belonged to the professor and they were put in the car, together with a fresh supply of provisions that were purchased at the village store.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we'll be traveling," suggested the professor. The boys agreed with him, for though they knew the pleasures of sleeping beneath a roof, yet the character of the men who stayed at the hotel was so rough that they feared further rows. So, in spite of the entreaties of the hotel keeper they started off, having inquired the best roads to take.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, pleasure, mountain"><br /> <poem><br /> Through the afternoon they bowled over a well elevated table land. The air was fine and bracing. Off in the distance to the west could be seen the first ranges of the big mountains.<br /> "That's where our mine is," said Jerry, his eyes shining.<br /> "Maybe it isn't ours after all," put in Bob.<br /> "Now there you go, Chunky. What do you want to call up unpleasant subjects for?" asked Ned reproachfully. "Anyhow it's our mine until some one takes it away from us, and I guess they'll have quite a fight, with Nestor on guard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, speed, vision, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The others thought so too. Jerry, who was steering, was sending the auto forward at a fast clip, when the professor, who always had his eyes open called out:<br /> "What's that just ahead of us? Looks like a bear."<br /> "Where?" asked Ned.<br /> "Right in line with that big rock," went on the scientist, who had very good eyes and could see a long distance.<br /> "It's only a tree stump," spoke Bob.<br /> "I didn't know tree stumps could move," went on Mr. Snodgrass, "for this one is certainly coming toward us. It's not a bear after all," he continued, now that the object was nearer. "It's a bull! That's what it is! It looks as if it meant to go for us!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys could now see that the beast was one of the big, long-horned western cattle. It had evidently strayed from the herd, or had been made an outcast because of a bad temper and a perpetual desire to fight. The latter seemed more likely, for, as the auto proceeded, and the bull came on, lessening the distance between the two, a defiant bellow of rage sounded.<br /> "I hope he don't try to ram us," spoke Jerry. "We don't want any more collisions."<br /> "See if you can't run away from him," suggested Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car part, sound, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the bull was about one hundred yards away. It was coming straight for the auto. Jerry opened the muffler and at the sound of the explosions the bull stopped short.<br /> At this point the road ran in a sort of depression, with hills rising on either side. It was rather narrow, so there was no chance to turn to one side. Jerry had to bring the machine to a stop or else run the risk of hitting the bull. He thought the animal might run away if it saw the machine coming toward him, but there was nothing sure about this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, this is a regular hold-up," said the professor. "I wonder whether the bull wants to collect toll?"<br /> The animal seemed to be growing angrier and angrier every minute. It bellowed loudly, pawed the earth with its hoofs, and shook the lowered head, armed with sharp horns. Occasionally the keen points would tear up the ground.<br /> "I wouldn't want him to strike one of our tires," remarked Ned. "It would be all up with it."<br /> "Hurrah! I have it!" cried Bob at length.<br /> He dove beneath the rear seat and pulled up a shining object.<br /> "The ammonia squirt gun!" he exclaimed. "The same we used on the hold-up tramps. Give the bull a dose of it!"<br /> "Good idea," commented Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, weapon, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The bulb of the automatic pistol was still filled with the fiery liquid, for the boys kept it loaded in readiness for use. Bob handed it over to Jerry. The latter took careful aim, and pressed the rubber. A fine stream of the powerful stuff struck the bull full in the face.<br /> With a bellow that fairly shook the ground near-by the bull reared up in the air, and coming down on all fours snorted with rage, shook its head to rid its eyes of the terrible burning, and then dashed madly away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now I guess we can get past," remarked Bob, "and get some supper. I'm as hungry as a bear."<br /> A good fire was soon started and Ned began to prepare the meal. While the others were setting out the dishes, or getting ready for the night camp, since it seemed there was no place for shelter in the neighborhood, the travelers were startled by a voice:<br /> "Evenin' strangers," called a tall, thin man who strolled down the slight hill at the foot of which the party were encamped. "Have you got a bite to spare?"<br /> "Plenty," replied the professor cheerfully. "Come right along. Supper will be ready in a little while. Are you hungry?"<br /> "Hungry? I should say so. I haven't had a bit to eat for two days, except what berries and old nuts I could gather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter? Get lost?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Exactly," replied the stranger. "My name's Johnson," he went on. "I was prospecting up in the hills, and got lost there."<br /> "Anybody with you?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a soul; I'm all alone. I used up the last of my grub in trying to find the trail, and I guess I'd been looking for it yet if I hadn't heard the noise of your steam engine here, and smelled the cooking. I s'pose you're huntin' for it, same as me."<br /> "Hunting for what?" asked the professor, struck by Johnson's manner.<br /> "Why Lost Lake, to be sure. Nobody comes out this far unless they're huntin' for the lake, but you're the first to come in a steam car without rails."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it's a free country," remarked the scientist, wishing to evade giving a direct answer, in the hope of learning something. "I guess we have a right to hunt for the lake."<br /> "Of course, of course you have, strangers," went on Johnson. "No offense. Have you struck a trace of it yet?"<br /> "Not yet," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "To tell you the truth," the professor went on, "we don't know much about this lost lake."<br /> "Nor no one else," said Johnson. "I'll tell you all I know, which isn't much. I've been looking for it 'most a year now."<br /> "Suppose we have supper first," suggested the professor as he noted the eyes Johnson was casting at the food. "We can talk afterward."<br /> "That's the best word I've heard in a good while," said the newcomer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate with a rapidity that left no doubt about his hunger. Nor were the others far behind him, as the crisp air of the mountain region had given them all famous appetites.<br /> "Now for Lost Lake," spoke Jerry when all had their fill.<br /> "It's supposed to be in those mountains over there," began Johnson, pointing to the range off in the west, now dimly discernible in the dusk. "It's said to be a beautiful sheet of water, with high peaks all around it. It was discovered forty years ago by a prospector, and he came to the nearest village with the news. But when he went to lead a party back they couldn't find the trail. Ever since then people have tried to find Lost Lake, but no one has ever succeeded. Many have been<br /> killed trying."<br /> "But why does any one want to find a lake hidden in the mountains?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Yes, tell us?" asked Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, for the gold on its banks, of course," said Johnson. "Didn't I say that? I meant to. The man who discovered it said there were pebbles of gold on the shores. He brought back a pocket full to prove it. I got the fever quite a few months ago, but nothing has come of all my efforts, and this time I nearly died. It was terrible up in the mountains. There's not a soul there I believe."<br /> "And you didn't even get a glimpse of the lake?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a look, young man. But I'm sure it's there. I'm going back to town, get a new outfit and some provisions, and have another try."<br /> He was another example of how the gold fever grips one.<br /> "Maybe we'll come across the lake, though we're not looking for it," said Jerry.<br /> "Maybe you will," assented the prospector. "That's generally the way. The first man was not hunting for it, but he came upon it one night when the moon was shining. If you do find it, look out for the old hermit, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVI. - A Lonely Cabin (135-143) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, health, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVI<br /> <br /> A LONELY CABIN<br /> <br /> "What hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why you haven't heard half the story of Lost Lake," went on Johnson. "There's supposed to be a sort of wild man who lives on the shores of the lake, and he murders travelers. At least that's the yarn they tell."<br /> "Was the hermit always there?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, only the last few years," replied Johnson. "He is said to be an old man with white hair. But I don't believe that part. Let me find the lake and the gold, and I won't worry about hermits."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The prospector camped with the travelers that night. They were all up early the next morning, and, at the professor's suggestion the boys gave Johnson plenty of provisions to last him until he could get back to civilization.<br /> "Maybe you would like to go along with us and look for the lake?" suggested Bob.<br /> "No, thank you," replied Johnson. "I'm afraid your chances of finding it are slimmer than mine are. I'll have another try all by myself. I'm much obliged for the help you've given me."<br /> Then, shouldering his pack, he started off down the trail, while the travelers, packing their things in the auto, set forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys talked about little save the story of Lost Lake, but the professor was too busy arranging his latest specimens to join in the conversation.<br /> "I'd like to find it and see the wild hermit," said Bob.<br /> "I don't s'pose you'd care anything about the gold," put in Ned.<br /> "Of course I would," replied Bob. "But we've got one gold mine now, what do we want of another?"<br /> "It might be well to have a second in case we lose the first," Jerry ventured. "Nothing like having plenty while you're at it."<br /> "I wouldn't like to be a hermit," went on Bob. "Think of always being hungry."<br /> "Chunky is thinking of misers, I guess," laughed Ned. "There's nothing to prevent a hermit from living off the fat of the land. If it wasn't for being lonesome I'd be a hermit for a while."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, passenger, driver, parking"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop the auto!" called the professor suddenly. "I just saw a fine specimen of a snapping turtle scoot across the road. I must have it. It's worth about twenty dollars to me. Stop the car! I must get out!"<br /> Ned, who was running the auto, shut off the power and the machine came to a stop. Before it had ceased to move Mr. Snodgrass had leaped out and was running back. He began a hurried but careful search over the ground. Then he was seen to spring forward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got it, I guess," remarked Jerry.<br /> An instant later there came a howl from the scientist, who was hidden from sight by the tall grass.<br /> "Help, boys! Help!"<br /> "What's the matter? Won't he let you catch him?" cried Ned.<br /> "He's caught me!" yelled the professor. "Come quick and bring a knife to cut his head off with!"<br /> The boys piled out of the auto in a hurry, Jerry stopping to grab up a big carving knife from the camp utensils.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When they came up to the professor they hardly knew whether to laugh or not. The turtle, which was a big one, had grabbed the scientist by the thumb, and was clinging so tightly that it was suspended in the air, swaying to and fro. Meanwhile Mr. Snodgrass was dancing about in pain.<br /> "Why don't you take hold of the turtle's shell in the other hand, and you won't feel the weight so much!" called Jerry.<br /> "I can't," replied the professor. "I have a rare specimen of a toad in my other hand, and I don't want to lose it. Oh boys! Hurry up, and pry the turtle's jaws open, but don't hurt him, for he's valuable."<br /> "Can't you put the toad in your pocket?" asked Ned, knowing the scientist had no scruples about loading his garments up with all sorts of things. "Then you would have one hand free."<br /> "I never thought of that," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I can do that, can't I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did so, and, once the toad was secure he took hold of the turtle, which relieved his lacerated thumb from the dragging weight.<br /> "He won't let go!" exclaimed the professor, after a vain attempt to pull the turtle loose. "It is a genuine snapper, and they have a grip like a bull dog. I am glad I found it, in spite of the pain," he added, though just then, the turtle took a fresh hold and the professor squirmed in<br /> agony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here; I'll cut its head off," said Jerry, coming forward with the knife.<br /> "No, no!" exclaimed the professor. "It is too valuable to spoil. Just take the point of the blade, and pry the jaws open while I hold it steady."<br /> Jerry tried to do this, but the turtle only seemed to grip the tighter, and the professor's thumb was bitten through nearly to the bone.<br /> "What shall I do?" wailed Mr. Snodgrass. "I don't want to kill it."<br /> "I have it!" exclaimed Ned. "There's a little puddle of water over there beside the road. Dip the turtle in it, and he'll think he can swim. Then he'll let go."<br /> "Good!" cried the professor as he proceeded to put the plan in operation. "Then I can save him alive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The scheme worked well. As soon as the turtle felt the water it let go, and started to swim off. But the puddle was too shallow, and the professor, watching his chance, grabbed the reptile again. This time he took care to catch it at the middle of the shell, where the turtle could<br /> not reach around and bite.<br /> "I have it, after all," remarked the scientist as he deposited his prize in a box, and proceeded to put some salve and a rag on his thumb. "It's a rare specimen. I'm glad I got it."<br /> "And we're all glad we didn't get it," spoke Jerry with a laugh in which the others joined. But the professor took it good naturedly. He was used to such accidents he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Resuming their journey, the travelers made only one more stop, that at noon, to get dinner. They had seen no signs of human habitation, and, as the afternoon wore on, and no house or cabin was seen, they began to feel that they might as well prepare to camp out again.<br /> As they were descending a gentle, sloping hill that led down into a small valley, just as the sun was setting, they saw, about a mile ahead a lonely cabin. The sight of smoke coming from the chimney told them there was some one at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hope whoever lives there can accommodate us," remarked Chunky. "My appetite's getting the upper hand of me again."<br /> "It don't look large enough to hold us all," observed Jerry.<br /> "There's a barn, or some sort of building, in the rear," remarked Ned. "Some of us can use that if the man or woman lets us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> A few minutes later the auto came to a stop in front of the cabin, which was indeed a lonely one, not another dwelling, large or small, showing in the whole valley.<br /> "Good evening," greeted an old man, with snow-white hair falling over his shoulders. He came to the door of the shack, and seemed to regard the coming travelers as a matter of course. "I am glad to see you," he went on. "You are just in time."<br /> "Time for what?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "For the great final and successful experiment," proceeded the aged man. "The test is about to begin. Come in and see me make gold from common earth. At last I have found the long-lost secret!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The eyes of the lonely man glowed with a strange light, and he seemed so excited that the boys did not know what to do.<br /> "Humor him," advised the professor in a whisper. "He is probably a harmless lunatic. Let him have his way, and pretend to agree with all he says."<br /> "Will you come in?" went on the old man. "I must proceed with my work."<br /> "We'll be glad to," went on the scientist. "That is, if we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> "My labors are now ended," the man said. "I have worked for twenty years on the secret of making gold from the baser metals. At last I have the correct method. I will be a millionaire in another month. But come in! Come in!"<br /> The boys, obeying Mr. Snodgrass's advice, went in, the scientist following them. They saw that the cabin, though small, was neat and clean. Nearly all of the first of two rooms was occupied by a large, rudely made furnace, while on a table near it stood all sorts of chemical apparatus. On the furnace a pot was boiling furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the last act in the drama of life," said the aged man. "See, I place in the pot these pieces of brass," and he showed the travelers some chunks of the yellow stuff. He put them in the pot, from which arose a cloud of steam.<br /> "Next I throw in this powder, which I have labored on for years. It is the secret that men would give their lives for."<br /> He threw the powder into the pot, which boiled more furiously than before, and a white cloud of steam arose. Then it died away, and the pot seemed to cool off.<br /> "Now for the gold!" exclaimed the chemist.<br /> He lifted the pot from the furnace, and, holding it with some thick cloths poured the water off into a hole in the ground floor of the cabin. Out toppled the pieces of brass which had been thrown in, but while they had been dull before, they now glittered with the yellow gleam of gold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The test! The test!" exclaimed the old man in a voice that trembled with eagerness.<br /> He placed one of the yellow pieces on the table, and put a few drops of gold-testing acid on it. There was a little hissing sound, and then, on the shiny surface of the piece of metal there came a dull black spot. The old man uttered a despairing cry.<br /> "Another failure!" he exclaimed. "It is brass still. I thought it would turn to gold! I must have made a mistake in mixing the powder."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVII. - The Indian and the Auto (144-151) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVII<br /> <br /> THE INDIAN AND THE AUTO<br /> <br /> For a few moments the scientist who hoped he had discovered the fabled power to transmute metals stared at the result of his latest trial. He appeared lost in thought. Then he seemed to recollect that there were strangers present.<br /> "I am sorry my experiment did not succeed," he said in a more quiet voice than he had yet used. "I hoped to show you what I can do. Well, I must try again. I think I know where I made the error. I had too much soda in the powder. I will use less next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We are sorry to interrupt your experiments," put in the professor, "but we are travelers, and our object in stopping here was to find out if you could take us in for the night."<br /> "Gladly," replied the old man. "There is a barn in the rear, but it has not been occupied in years; not since I came here. You are welcome to use that. Some of you can spend the night in the rear room. As for me I shall not go to bed. I must start at once and make up some fresh powders."<br /> "I think perhaps we had all better sleep in the barn," said the professor. "Then we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The truth of it was Mr. Snodgrass saw that the aged man was not altogether right in his head, and he preferred not to be too near in case the fellow should suddenly become violent.<br /> "Just as you like, just as you like," was the reply to the professor's decision, and the chemist seemed to be dreaming over some problem he was trying to solve.<br /> "May we cook some of our food on your stove?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why certainly. I beg your pardon for not mentioning supper," spoke the man, "but you see I am so used to getting a bite whenever I need it, so as not to interrupt my work, that I forgot there is such a thing as hospitality. Make yourselves at home, and, if you find anything in the cupboards help yourselves. Meanwhile please excuse me if I do not join you. I must go out and gather some roots and herbs I need in my experiments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car, lake"><br /> <poem><br /> He left the cabin, and, after bringing in some provisions from the auto, having first ascertained that there were few in the cabin, the travelers proceeded to make a meal.<br /> "Do you suppose he can be the hermit of Lost Lake?" asked Bob.<br /> "Well, he's certainly a hermit," spoke the professor, "but I don't believe there's a lake of any kind about here. Certainly if he was the hermit of the lake he would not be away off here. No, I am inclined to think we shall never see the lost lake or the hermit either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think it will be safe to stay here all night?" inquired Chunky.<br /> "I think so," was the professor's reply. "You see we will be out in another building, and we can fasten the door. If he tries to get in, which I am sure he will not, he will make noise enough to awaken us."<br /> "We could mount guard," suggested Ned.<br /> "It will not be necessary," Mr. Snodgrass said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nor did the travelers find it so. After their meal, having left a good supply of victuals for the old man in case he came back, they retired to the rear building where they slept soundly.<br /> After breakfast, which the old man did not spend more than five minutes over, the travelers prepared to resume their trip.<br /> "You had better stay one more night," urged the owner of the cabin. "I feel sure that I shall be successful to-night. I have discovered a new root. See, I call it gold threads," and he held up some bulbs that had been dug from the ground. Clinging to them were small yellow fibres or roots. "I found them last night, down in the hollow by the mineral spring," the man went on. "I am sure they are just what I need. Please stay; won't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, mountain, navigatio, plains, topography, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> But the professor told him, as gently as possible, that they must keep on. So, after bidding the gold-seeker good bye, and wishing him success, the boys and Mr. Snodgrass proceeded, the auto puffing along at a good rate.<br /> The weather continued fine and the air was bracing and cool, for they were well up among the foothills now. During the morning the road led up a gentle slope, but at noon they camped on a sort of ridge that marked the divide. On the other side was a vast plain, bounded at the further side by tall mountains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="plains, road condition, agriculture, navigation, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> It was well along in the afternoon, when having descended to the plain, the travelers found themselves bowling along a fine road, on either side of which were rolling fields. Mile after mile was covered, everyone enjoying the trip very much. The professor, however, was beginning to<br /> show signs of uneasiness. He fidgeted about in his seat, and seemed unable to remain quiet.<br /> "What's the matter?" asked Bob at length.<br /> "To tell you the truth," said the scientist, "I want to get out and get some specimens, but I did not like to ask you, for I do not want to delay the party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, engine, maintenance, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> They all voted that the professor should be given a chance to get as many specimens as he wanted. Accordingly Jerry brought the car to a stop, and the boys and the scientist got out.<br /> As the engine had not been running as smoothly as was desirable Jerry did not shut off the power, merely throwing out the gear clutches. He said he wanted to have the cylinders warm up, and so the engine was left going, though the car itself stood still.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The professor was soon busy gathering insects of various kinds from the tall grass, and even crawling on his hands and knees over the ground. The boys walked some distance off, to stretch their legs, for they were a little tired of sitting still so long.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who happened to glance back toward the auto, uttered a cry.<br /> "Look!" he shouted. "Some one is stealing our car and going off in it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, weapon, animal, car part, skill, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The others looked. The sight that met their eyes was enough to astonish any one. Climbing into the automobile was a big Indian, attired in gay colored blankets, a rifle slung across his back, while near him stood a Pinto pony, clean-cut and wiry.<br /> While they watched they saw the red man seat himself comfortably at the steering wheel, reach forward to throw the gear clutch in place, and then the car moved off, taking the Indian with it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! Come back!"<br /> "Stop that auto!"<br /> "Get out of that!"<br /> These were some of the things the boys yelled at the bold thief. But all of no avail. The Indian threw in the second gear, and the auto went faster than before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Come on! We must catch him!" cried Jerry, and he began to run in the direction the auto was fast disappearing in, down the road.<br /> "We can never catch him," called Bob.<br /> "Yes we can! He can't know anything about running an auto!" panted Jerry. "He'll put on the brake or pull the wrong lever next, and the machine will stop!"<br /> "That is unless he blows it up first or smashes it," said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, skill, Native American, navigation, engine, gasoline"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, appearing at this juncture.<br /> Bob was the only one left to tell him, as Jerry and Ned were running down the road at top speed. But it seemed that their race would be useless, for the auto was now running on third gear. And, strangest of all, the Indian seemed to know how to operate it. He kept a straight course, and the puffing of the exhaust told Jerry that the engine was running to perfection, with a good supply of gasolene, and the spark coming regularly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE INDIAN SEEMED TO KNOW HOW TO OPERATE IT.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, Native American risk, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who—ever—heard—of—an—Indian running—an—auto," panted Ned.<br /> "Running—away—with—one—you—mean," said Jerry, his breathing labored.<br /> Further and further away from the pursuing boys the auto went. It seemed hopeless to keep after it, but neither Jerry nor Ned would give up. They realized what it meant to lose their machine, though they could not understand how an Indian, in all his wild regalia, would think of getting into an auto.<br /> Suddenly there sounded down the road the patter of hoof beats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, gasoline, car part, sound, onomatopoeia"><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe that's more Indians," said Jerry turning around and slowing up in his running.<br /> "No," he added, "it's Bob on the Indian's pony. I wonder you or I didn't think of that."<br /> "He couldn't catch up with the auto if he had two ponies," growled Ned.<br /> "The only chance is that the gasolene may give out, or the sparker refuse to work, or that he may run into a sand bank," lamented Jerry.<br /> "And there don't seem to be much chance of either taking place right off," put in Ned. "Hark! What's that?"<br /> From down the road sounded the Toot! Toot! of the auto horn.<br /> "It sounds as if he was coming back," said Jerry. Just then Bob caught up to them on the pony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVIII. - Lost Lake Found (152-160) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, night, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, car, visibility, navigation, Native American, highway"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVIII<br /> <br /> LOST LAKE FOUND<br /> <br /> "Let me past! I'll catch him!" cried Bob.<br /> "Wait a minute! Maybe that's him coming back?" replied Jerry.<br /> Sure enough the next instant the auto, which had been lost to sight by reason of a turn in the road, came into view.<br /> Straight up the highway it came, the figure of the Indian, wrapped in his blanket, with his headdress of feathers, an altogether brilliant figure, seated at the wheel; a strange enough combination as any one will admit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, risk, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The red man acted as though he had been used to running autos all his life. He sat straight as an arrow, his hands grasping the wheel, which was sending the car straight for the boys.<br /> "He's just doing this to taunt us!" exclaimed Jerry. "I have a good notion to take a shot at one of the tires with my revolver and scare him into stopping."<br /> "Don't do it! You might kill him," said Ned, "and you wouldn't want to do that. But what does he mean by stealing the car, and then bringing it back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> A few seconds later the auto drew up in front of the boys, who had come to a halt. With an ease that bespoke long experience the Indian brought the machine to a stop, and then, while the lads looked on, so full of wonder at the whole occurrence that they did not know what to say, the red man grunted:<br /> "Heap fine wagon. Ugh! Indian like um, he buy um! How much?"<br /> "Look here!" burst out Jerry, so angry that he hardly took note of what the red man had said. "Do you know you are a—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. Wrapping his blankets closely about him, and drawing himself up to his full height of over six feet, the Indian said calmly:<br /> "I really beg your pardon for the unwarranted liberty I took with your car, but when I saw it standing out here, so far from civilization, I could not resist the temptation to take a ride. I trust you will overlook it."<br /> For a moment the boys were speechless, for the Indian they had supposed one from the half-wild plain tribes, and whose every appearance indicated that, had spoken in English as cultured as that of a college professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, pleasure, class, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "What—why—when—where?" stammered Jerry, and the Indian burst into a laugh.<br /> "I see I must explain," he said. "I am not what I seem."<br /> "Aren't you an Indian?" asked Ned.<br /> "A full blooded one, and the chief of a tribe," spoke the red man. "But I am not the half dime library sort.<br /> "You see," he went on, "I have just come back from the school at Carlisle, where I am taking a post graduate course. I felt a sudden longing to don the dress of my ancestors, and roam the broad fields. I did so, starting from my home on the reservation this morning. I came<br /> along and saw the auto. As I said, the temptation was too strong to resist. I got in and took a little spin, as you saw. I am sorry if I caused you annoyance, or made you fear your machine had been stolen."<br /> The eyes of the Indian twinkled and, beneath the paint on his face, the boys could see a smile coming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, animal, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "But how in the world did you learn to run a car?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Easy enough," was the answer. "I acted as chauffeur for several months this vacation to earn money enough to continue my studies. I got to be quite an expert. That is a fine car you have."<br /> "Well I'm stumped!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "How do you like my pony?" asked the red man. "I think we made a sort of unfair exchange, though, in spite of the fact that the animal is valuable. Now let me apologize once more, and then I will take my animal and go home."<br /> "You are welcome to the ride," said Jerry. "We were so surprised at first that we took you for a thief."<br /> "I don't blame you," spoke the Indian. "The sight of a red man in an automobile is enough to make any one wonder. Well, heap big chief, Whistling Wind in the Pine, must go."<br /> "Is that your name?" asked Ned.<br /> "It's my Indian one," was the answer, "but at the school I am known as Paul Rader. Now let me bid you good day, and a pleasant journey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, before they could ask him to take a ride with them, the boys saw the Indian leap on his pony, from which Bob had dismounted, and ride away at a smart gallop, his blanket flying out behind him in the wind.<br /> "Well, that's the limit!" exclaimed Ned. "To think of a wild-civilized Indian playing a trick like that."<br /> "I certainly thought he was as wild as they come," put in Bob. "I was afraid it was all up with us."<br /> Then the professor appeared and they told him the story.<br /> "I wish I had met him," said the professor.<br /> "What for; did you know him?" asked Jerry.<br /> "No, but he would probably be able to tell me where to get some fine specimens," remarked the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, scenery, speed, night, slowness, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> In a short time they were all in the auto again, and were bowling along over the table land, the machine humming in a way that told that the cylinders were working well. They camped for supper, and then, as it was a fine moon light night they determined to continue on slowly, as they<br /> wanted to make up for lost time.<br /> The moon rose early, a big silver disk shining among the trees, when the autoists started on their night journey.<br /> "This is great!" exclaimed Bob, who seemed to have forgotten his desire for a bed under shelter. "Wouldn't it be fun to have a lot of Indians chase us now?"<br /> "It might if they were tame ones," put in Jerry, who was steering, "but excuse me from any wild ones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, slowness, road condition, tree, mountain, night, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The road soon began a gentle ascent, and the auto ran more slowly up the hill. The road, too, became narrower, winding in and out. The trees, which had been scattering, were thicker, and the travelers could see they were getting well up among the mountains.<br /> "How late are you going to travel?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Until nearly midnight," was the answer. "The moon begins to go down then and it will not be very safe. But I think we ought to cover as big a distance as possible while we can. We have had delays enough."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, night, mountain, scenery, car part, slowness, road condition, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The only noise, besides the puffing of the machine, were the cries of owls, the chirping of crickets and katy-dids, with, now and then, the howl of a wolf or fox. In spite of the number in the party, there was a feeling of loneliness about being so far from civilization among the wilds of the mountain region.<br /> Up and up went the car, until the ascent became so steep that Jerry was obliged to run on the low gear. This made progress slow, and, because of the uneven road, so risky, that it seemed unwise to proceed further that night.<br /> "I'll slow up when we get to the top of this hill," said Jerry, "and we'll go into camp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, accident, slowness, risk, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> But he reckoned without knowing what sort of a hill it was, nor did he calculate on the auto failing to stop as soon as he expected. For that was what happened. Reaching the summit of the slope Jerry shut off the power.<br /> But something went wrong with the mechanism. The auto continued on, slowly to be sure, but with enough momentum to send it over the brow of the hill. Then it plunged down on the other side, gathering speed every minute.<br /> "Is she running away?" asked Ned. "Seems so to me."<br /> "She's not behaving as well as she should," replied Jerry, "but I have her under control. The brake is working all right," which fact he soon ascertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, topography, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> Faster and faster, however, in spite of the brake, did the auto plunge down the slope. Jerry kept his head, however, and was working to bring the machine to a halt. All at once Bob, looking up, saw where the road made a sudden turn to the left.<br /> "Look out for that!" he cried, pointing.<br /> Jerry tried to make the turn, but the steering wheel suddenly became a little stiff, so that, instead of the car being turned to the left, and around the bend, it kept straight on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, accident, speed, car part, road"><br /> <poem><br /> There was a crackling of brush and tree branches, and the big machine left the road and began plowing up the side of a slope, around the lower edge of which the road wound.<br /> "Duck!" cried Ned, as a tree branch hit him in the face.<br /> They all did so, and the next instant the big machine crashed through some briars, bending down several saplings in its journey. Then, having exhausted the momentum, the auto came to a stop, at the summit of the little slope, and Jerry jammed on the brakes to hold it there, the band this time gripping the axle firmly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! Oh look!" cried Ned, pointing ahead and down below them. <br /> There, in a sort of basin formed by high hills, lay a body of water, sparkling and beautiful in the moonlight, the shadows of tall black mountains reflected in its calm surface.<br /> "It's Lost Lake!" exclaimed Jerry, softly. "Boys! We have found Lost Lake! I am sure of it!"<br /> For a few seconds no one spoke after that, for they were all lost in wonder at the beauty and strangeness of the sight. It was so quiet that it seemed almost as if it was but a picture painted by a master's hand.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who was staring intently at the upper end of the lake, grasped Ned by the arm.<br /> "See," he whispered. "What's that? That thing in white?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIX. - The Ghost of the Lake (161-168) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="night, lake, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="visibility, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIX<br /> <br /> THE GHOST OF THE LAKE<br /> <br /> They all looked to where Bob pointed. At first they could make out nothing, but Bob insisted that he had seen some tall, white object moving.<br /> "It was just like the description of ghosts," he said, with a queer little laugh.<br /> "I see it," said Jerry, softly. "Right by the big white birch."<br /> "Sure enough," remarked the professor.<br /> Then they all beheld a tall white form in the pale moonlight, gliding from tree to tree, on the shore of the lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, it is picking up something from the shore," said Ned. "Maybe it's the hermit the miner told us about, gathering gold."<br /> "Nonsense," said Jerry. "It's probably a bit of fog, or it may be a white fox, or a wolf."<br /> "No fox or wolf is as big as that," insisted Ned. "I'll bet it's the hermit."<br /> "Whatever it is, it's gone now," put in Bob.<br /> And, sure enough, the object suddenly disappeared among the trees, and there was nothing in sight but the lake, the mountains and the moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we seem to have stumbled onto the lake," remarked Jerry. "If the auto had not misbehaved we would have taken the regular road, and Lost Lake would still be lost. As it is we have found it."<br /> "I hope we find some of the gold, as well," put in Ned. "We may need the yellow pebbles if our mine is gone."<br /> "Whatever we do, we shall stay here until morning," said Jerry. "It will be a good place to camp, anyhow, gold or no gold."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they all busied themselves in preparing to stay there for the rest of the night. A fire was built and a midnight supper was soon in preparation. They had good appetites, and, tired with the day's journey and events, they got out their blankets and slept soundly.<br /> By daylight the lake was seen to be a large sheet of water, rather irregular in outline, with many small bays and coves. Shimmering in the sunlight the water made a beautiful picture.<br /> "Here goes to see if there are any golden pebbles on the shore," remarked Bob, with a whoop as soon as he had crawled from the improvised bed. He did not have to stop and dress for the travelers slept in their clothes.<br /> Chunky climbed down the slope, along a rather rough path to the water. Some time later Jerry and Ned were about to follow, when they heard Bob yelling at the top of his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry.<br /> "Have you found the gold?" cried Ned.<br /> "Maybe the hermit has attacked him," suggested the professor.<br /> They all ran to the water's edge. When they reached the shore Bob was nowhere in sight.<br /> "Hi, Bob! Where are you?" cried Jerry looking around.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Chunky, suddenly, bobbing up from beneath the little waves about one hundred feet from shore.<br /> "Did you fall in?" asked the professor, anxiously.<br /> "No, I jumped in," replied the boy. "I'm in swimming. Come on in, the water's fine!"<br /> "Good for you!" called Ned and the next instant he was undressed and splashing out toward Bob. Jerry soon joined them, and even the professor took a dip. The water was somewhat cool, but after they were once in it was invigorating, and they swam about for half an hour, greatly enjoying the luxury of a bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark! What was that?" asked Ned, suddenly.<br /> There came a whirring of wings and a rustling of the leaves of the bushes off to the left. Then a bevy of birds sailed through the air.<br /> "Partridge, or some similar bird, I would say," was the professor's opinion.<br /> "And there goes a big rabbit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there's another!" exclaimed Jerry. "Say, we have struck a game country if we haven't a gold one. I say, what's the matter with having a hunt?"<br /> "Good!" cried Bob and Ned.<br /> "I think it would do no harm to replenish the larder with something fresh," remarked the professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly, after breakfast, guns were gotten ready and the boys and the professor tramped off through the woods, taking care not to go too far from the lake, as the trees were thick, and, as there were no trails blazed, it would be easy to get lost.<br /> Ned bagged the first partridge, and Bob came second, getting two in succession. Jerry had hard luck, for twice he missed easy shots. A little later, however, he bowled over a plump rabbit, and followed it up with a second. Then Ned got one, and Jerry succeeded in bagging a couple of fine birds.<br /> Some of the game was served for dinner, which was eaten by a campfire, and very fine it was voted. Then some was packed away in salt, against a possible time when provisions might be hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you say, shall we stay here another night or push on?" asked Jerry, about the middle of the afternoon.<br /> "If you ask me," said the professor, "I should say to remain here. I saw a number of fine and rare specimens I would like to gather."<br /> "The only thing is, perhaps we had better join Nestor as soon as possible," remarked Ned.<br /> "I think a few days' delay can do no harm," Mr. Snodgrass said. "From the tone of Nestor's letter I would say there was no immediate danger of the mine being claimed by others."<br /> "Then we'll stay," said Jerry. "I would like to investigate the lake a little more. We did not go very far along the shore. Perhaps there might be an outcropping of gold somewhere around this locality."<br /> "And maybe we will see the hermit, or the ghost, or whatever it is," added Ned. "Let's stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then we ought to rig up some kind of shelter," went on Jerry. "It may rain in the night, and it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to sleep in a mud puddle."<br /> "We can build a shack of boughs," said Bob.<br /> And this they did. They had often done the same thing before. Branches from a pine tree, stacked up against a sapling cut to fit between the crotches of two trees, with the same sort of boughs for a roof and<br /> floor, made a very good shelter. Rubber blankets on top insured the rain being kept out, and with woolen coverings for inside, beds were made that were very comfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, technology, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> When these preparations had been made it was growing dusk. While Bob and Ned were getting supper, and the professor was busy arranging his specimens gathered that day, Jerry removed one of the big search-lights from the auto.<br /> "What are doing that for?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm going to try and find out what that white thing is," said Jerry. "I'm going to rig up a lantern in front of the shack, facing the lake, and if the hermit or whatever it is, shows up, I'm going to flash the light on it."<br /> "Maybe it won't come to-night," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it did. It was along about midnight when Ned felt a light touch on his arm.<br /> "What's the matter?" he asked, sitting up.<br /> "Come on," whispered Jerry. "I see something down by the lake, and I want to investigate. Be careful, don't make any noise."<br /> Bob and the professor were both sleeping so soundly that they did not hear Jerry and Ned leave the shack.<br /> "Where is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "There," replied Jerry, pointing to a spot about three hundred feet away, and on the shore of the lake. "It was there a minute ago, but it's gone now. Watch, it will come back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, visibility, night"><br /> <poem><br /> He busied himself over the search-light, making ready to light it quickly and flash the beams on the ghost or hermit, or whatever it should prove to be.<br /> "There it is!" called Ned, in a hoarse whisper. "Right by that big rock that runs out into the water."<br /> "I see!" said Jerry, softly.<br /> There was a hissing sound as Jerry turned on the acetylene gas, a snapping sound as he lit the match, and then a slight puff as the vapor ignited. The next instant a glaring shaft of light shot down toward the lake, glint on a strange object.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There in the glare of the white beams stood the figure of an old man. His hair was snow white, and hung down long over his shoulders. He seemed bent with age, and this was made more pronounced because he bore a heavy bag on his back. He was right at the edge of the water.<br /> The sudden glare had startled him, and he turned in surprise and fear to see whence it came. His face stood out in strong relief, and Jerry started, for he dimly remembered seeing some one who looked like that some time before.<br /> Then, all at once the stillness of the night was broken by a shrill scream. Ned and Jerry were startled, and Bob and the professor, in the shack, were awakened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XX. - The Mysterious Woman (169-174) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="lake, rain, night"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XX<br /> <br /> THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN<br /> <br /> "Look!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> Then, as he and Jerry watched what took place in the circle of light, they beheld a woman, her long hair streaming down her back, run from the woods up to the old man. In her hand she held a big club, and with it she endeavored to strike the aged man. The latter dropped his sack, and seemed to engage in a struggle with the woman.<br /> "He's killing her!" exclaimed Ned. "This is the hermit we were warned against."<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must see what it means."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, just as he started down the slope, the search-light went out, leaving the place in utter blackness, for the moon was under a cloud. When Jerry had succeeded in getting the light going again, the man and woman were nowhere to be seen.<br /> "Well, that certainly was a queer sight," remarked Ned. "I wonder what it all means?"<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay here until we find out," said Jerry. "It looked as if there was going to be trouble, at one time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's all the excitement about?" asked the professor, coming out of the shack, followed by Bob.<br /> Jerry related what they had seen, and the professor agreed that it would be better to remain and make an investigation.<br /> "I say, you fellows are mean to go off alone and have a cracking adventure like that," objected Bob, in a grieved tone.<br /> "We didn't want to disturb your slumbers," said Ned.<br /> "Don't eat so much supper next time, and you will not sleep so sound," advised Jerry. But Bob was not to be appeased until promised that the next time Ned and Jerry went ghost hunting they would take him with them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having been so thoroughly aroused from their sleep the travelers decided to sit up a while and see if they could catch another glimpse of the strange man and woman. But, though they sat and talked for more than an hour, there was no further sign of the two queer creatures.<br /> "I'm going to bed," announced Bob at length, and the others decided to follow his example. They slept soundly until morning, though Jerry said afterward that he dreamed he was being chased across the frozen lake by a white haired man on a black horse. He got stuck in the ice, and was freezing to death, when he awakened to find that his blanket had slipped from him, and that a cold rain was blowing in through the cracks of the shack. Morning had dawned cold and dreary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wow! This isn't exactly pleasant!" exclaimed Jerry, as he poked his head out of the front of the screen of branches. "I wish there was a hotel handy."<br /> The others crawled from beneath the blankets, not in any too good humor at the dismal prospect.<br /> "And I'll bet there isn't any dry wood to be had," said Bob. "That means a cold breakfast."<br /> A search proved that he was right. Nor was there any charcoal, since the last had been used some days before, and they had been to no place where they could get more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just when a fellow needs a hot cup of coffee," went on Bob. "I never saw such beastly luck."<br /> Jerry said nothing. He seemed to be studying over some matter.<br /> "I have it," he exclaimed.<br /> "What? Some dry wood?" asked Ned with much eagerness.<br /> "No, but I know how to make some hot coffee," was the answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, equipment, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time in explaining. He first went to the auto where he got out rubber coats for himself and his companions. Then, ready to defy the rain, which was coming down at a good clip, Jerry hunted about until he found two large stones. These he set up a short distance apart, placing another each at the front and rear of the first two.<br /> "There's the stove," he remarked.<br /> "A heap of good it will do, with no fire in it," growled Bob.<br /> "Wait," advised Jerry.<br /> Taking the big search-light, which he had used the night previous, he removed the top, so that the flame could be used for cooking purposes. They prepared a good meal and enjoyed it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It continued to rain, and to fill in time the boys went fishing in the lake. Luck was with them and within half an hour they had ten fine fish, and then, though they could have taken many more, they did not, as Jerry<br /> said they would have no use for them.<br /> "Fish for dinner for me to-day," said Bob, while the others laughed at his usual exhibition of how fond of eating he was. The fish did prove an excellent dish, fried in corn meal on Jerry's improvised stove. Some bacon gave them a relish, and with hot coffee they felt they had as good a meal as many a hotel could serve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder where the professor is?" said Ned, when the meal was almost over. "I forgot that he wasn't with us."<br /> "He's off gathering birds, bugs or reptiles," said Jerry. "He'll come when he feels good and hungry."<br /> "He's more likely to forget all about being hungry if he gets chasing a fine specimen," remarked Ned. "I think I'll just take a stroll and see if I can come across him."<br /> "We'll go along," said Jerry and Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So the three started off together. They could easily follow the professor's trail, as he had broken through the underbrush, snapping off many twigs and breaking small branches. The boys wandered on for nearly a mile, but saw no sign of the scientist. They were about to turn back, and wait for him at camp, when Jerry held up his hand to indicate silence.<br /> "Hark!" he whispered.<br /> The others stood still, and, listening intently, heard above the patter of the raindrops, voices in conversation.<br /> "That's the professor," said Ned.<br /> "Some one is with him then," put in Jerry. "They are coming this way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sounds of persons advancing through the bushes could be heard. The voices also sounded plainer. A minute later the brush was parted and the professor, followed by a woman, came out into the little clearing where the boys were. At the sight of the woman, Jerry started, for he recognized her as the strange person who had been with the old man the night previous. The professor seemed excited about something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Boys, this lady has just told me some strange news," he said.<br /> "What is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Beware of the hermit of Lost Lake!" the woman exclaimed suddenly. "Have a care of him. Many poor travelers has he murdered. He would have murdered you last night if I had not prevented him."<br /> "So that's what it was all about," said Jerry, half aloud. The woman heard him, and turned:<br /> "Did you see him?" she asked. "Did you see me?"<br /> "I—we—" began Jerry.<br /> "You have been spying on me!" exclaimed the woman, growing much excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXI. - The Den of the Hermit (175-184) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="forest, lake, pleasure, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXI<br /> <br /> THE DEN OF THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "No, no!" said the professor calmly. "The boys were not spying. They happened to see a man and a woman on the shore of the lake last night, and they thought it might have been you."<br /> "It was me," said the woman. "I was trying to prevent him from coming and killing you all in your sleep."<br /> The boys began to feel a queer creepy sensation run up their spines, as if some one had poured cold water down their backs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's true," the strange creature went on. "I will tell you all about it. Listen to me," and she sat down on a stump.<br /> "Perhaps we had better go where there is shelter," suggested Jerry, for it was raining hard again, though the boys and the professor in their rubber coats did not mind it. The woman was drenched.<br /> "No," she said. "I can go to no place save these woods. I am safe from him here." She seemed nervous and excited, and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The old man is a hermit," she went on. "He has lived near this lake for many years. He kills travelers and takes their money. He tried to kill me but I escaped from him because I can run fast. Since then he has been after me. Last night he started for your camp, but I got a big club and stopped him. Then he ran away."<br /> "What was in the bag?" asked Ned.<br /> "What bag?" asked the woman.<br /> "The one the old man had on his back?"<br /> "Hush! Don't speak about it," was the reply. "He had a murdered man's body in there, and he threw it into the lake."<br /> "Are you sure?" asked the professor, thinking the woman might, perhaps, be trying to scare them away.<br /> "Positive," she replied. "I saw him kill the poor fellow, but the hermit did not know I was watching."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where does he live?" asked the professor.<br /> "He has a den in the darkest part of the woods," was the answer. "He takes travelers there and kills them. He does not know that I know where it is, but I do. Would you like to see it?"<br /> "Not if he is the kind of a person you say he is," spoke Jerry. "I think we had better steer clear of him."<br /> "I can take you there when he is not at home," said the woman. "Listen, once each week he takes a long trip over the mountain, to bury the gold he has taken from travelers. I can hide and watch him go. Then I could come and bring you to his den. Shall I?"<br /> "It might be a good plan," mused the professor. "If this man is a murderer he should be taken in charge by the authorities. Yes, come and let us know when he goes away. Perhaps we could capture him ourselves."<br /> "I'll come," said the woman. "Now I must go, for I hear some one coming," and, rising suddenly, she ran off at top speed through the woods. The boys listened intently but could hear no one approaching, and began to think the woman must have been mistaken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where did you meet her?" asked Jerry of the professor, when it was seen that the woman was not coming back.<br /> "She saw me while I was gathering some specimens," was the reply, "and she came up to warn me about the hermit. It seems that she lives not far away, and roams through the woods. Besides telling me about the old man, and to be on our guard against him, she showed me where to get some beautiful tree toads," and the scientist opened his pocket and showed it full of the little creatures.<br /> "Do you think she is telling the truth about the hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "There may be some exaggeration to it," rejoined the professor, "but I have heard of old half crazed men who lived in the woods as this one does, and who occasionally murdered lone travelers. We can't be too<br /> careful."<br /> "Besides, it did look as though she was trying to prevent him doing something last night," put in Jerry.<br /> "Well, we'll keep a good lookout," suggested the professor. "That's all we can do now, unless we decide to move on away from this place."<br /> "I would rather like to solve the mystery," said Jerry. "I do not think we have much to fear. He is an old man, and I guess we four are a match for him."<br /> "Then we had better do as the woman says, wait until she comes to lead us to his hut, or cabin, or whatever it is," the professor advised after a moment's thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That plan settled on, they made their way back to camp and the professor was given his rather late dinner. But he did not seem to mind this in the least.<br /> "Are you going to keep watch again to-night?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Of course. I want to get at the bottom of this. There is a mystery somewhere, and I think the hermit, the lost lake and the strange woman, together, can explain it."<br /> The rain stopped after supper, though it remained cloudy, and Jerry again prepared the gas lamp. It was arranged that he and Ned would stay up on guard until twelve o'clock and that Bob and the professor would take the rest of the night. Whichever party saw the hermit was at once to notify the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and Ned began their vigil. Several hours passed and it seemed they were to have their trouble for their pains. At length, however, just as they were preparing to turn in and let the others take their turn, Jerry saw a movement in the bushes about five hundred feet away, and down near the edge of the lake. The moon, shining faintly through the clouds, illuminated the scene.<br /> "Be ready to turn on the light when I say so," said Jerry to Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was all alert. Jerry, with his eyes straining to catch the slightest movement of the underbrush, peered through the darkness. Something white attracted him.<br /> "Now!" he whispered to Ned, and the light, that had been burning low, was suddenly turned on at full power.<br /> In its glare the two boys saw again the white haired hermit stealing along the edge of the water, the big bag on his back.<br /> "Call the others!" whispered Jerry to Ned. "I'll keep watch!"<br /> "All right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned softly went back to the shack where he awakened the professor and Bob. They were out in an instant, and made ready to go quietly down as close as they could to where the hermit was, while Jerry showed the way by the searchlight. But again they were doomed to disappointment, for, no sooner had Jerry turned the light so that it shown full on the old man, than he jumped as though struck by lightning and made a dive for the woods, into the black depths of which he disappeared.<br /> "I guess that's the last we'll see of him," said Ned.<br /> "He dropped his bag," cried Bob. "Let's get that and see what's in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this the professor and Ned ran down to the edge of the water, and soon returned with the sack the old man had carried on his back.<br /> "Open it and let's see if there are any murdered persons in it," said Jerry, with an uneasy laugh.<br /> Ned untied the string, and, not without some misgivings, peered inside.<br /> "Well I never," he exclaimed.<br /> "What is it?" asked Bob.<br /> "Fish! Nothing but fish!" replied Ned. "Fine ones at that. I guess all we have done is to have scared the poor old man away from his fishing grounds."<br /> "Certainly there is nothing suspicious in having a bag of fish," put in the professor. "I wonder if that strange woman could have been telling the truth."<br /> "We'll know better if she keeps her word and comes to take us to the hermit's den," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, lake, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> There seemed nothing more to do that night, so they all went to bed, not being disturbed until morning. They were awakened by the sun peeping in through the chinks in the shack, and they got up to find a fine day had succeeded the rainy one.<br /> The beams of Old Sol were bright and warm, and the first thing the travelers did was to go down and have a dip in the lake. Then breakfast was served, and when it was over Jerry and Ned started to overhaul the machine.<br /> "For," said Jerry, "we may want to leave at any time, and the car is in none too good condition since we plowed up the side of the mountain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, navigation, tree, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Several minor repairs were made and the auto was run down to the main road, where it stood in readiness for a quick start. It was some time after dinner before all this was done, and along about three o'clock the four travelers stretched out under the trees and took a well earned rest.<br /> "Now if that strange woman would—" began Ned.<br /> "Hush!" cautioned the professor, "some one is coming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hardly had he ceased speaking before the bushes opened and there appeared the figure of the queer woman, with her long hair hanging loose down her back.<br /> "Hush!" she whispered, placing her finger on her lips. "I have come to keep my promise. The hermit has gone over the mountain. Come, and I will take you to his hut, and you can see where he has murdered travelers."<br /> The boys hardly knew whether to obey or not, but a nod from Professor Snodgrass, to whom they looked, indicated they were to do as the woman wanted. So they arose and prepared to follow her. The professor brought up the rear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the woods their strange guide went, for several miles. At length she reached a thick part of the woods.<br /> "It is very close now," she said. "Wait until I take a look."<br /> The travelers halted, while the woman crept softly forward. She peered through the brush into a sort of clearing, and apparently seeing that everything was safe, she motioned for the others to advance.<br /> They did so, and, a moment later emerged from the woods into a place where many trees had been cut down. In the centre of this space was a small log cabin, and toward it the woman pointed.<br /> "There is his hut," she said. "Come on, I will lead the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She advanced with great caution, as though she feared to disturb some one. Closer and closer to the door she went, the others close behind her.<br /> "He never locks it, so we can go right in," she said.<br /> By this time she was near enough to grasp the latch. She raised it, and was about to enter, when the door suddenly swung back, and the old hermit himself, stepping out, stood before the astonished travelers.<br /> "There he is! There he is! There is the murderer!" cried the woman, pointing her finger at the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man did not appear greatly surprised. He looked from the woman to the boys and the professor, and remarked:<br /> "To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit?"<br /> "I we,—er—that is—we—er—I—" began the professor, finding it was hard to tell the truth.<br /> "Oh, it's poor old Kate," went on the hermit. "She has probably been telling you some strange stories. Will you not come into my cabin?"<br /> "Don't go into the murderer's hut!" cried the woman, as she turned and fled back through the underbrush, leaving the travelers in a somewhat queer situation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXIII. - Searching for the Hermit (195-202) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXIII<br /> <br /> SEARCHING FOR THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "Let's go to his help!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Come on!" cried Ned.<br /> "You had better not," said the woman, in a calm voice. "It is probably only the police after him for the many murders he has committed, and we had better not interfere. Besides if you want me to take you to your camp you had better come, as I have my house work to do before sunrise."<br /> She started to lead the way, and, though the boys felt inclined to follow and see what became of the hermit, they concluded it would be better to go back to camp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate seemed to have lost much of her excited manner as she led them through the woods, over a scarcely discernible path. Neither the fast gathering darkness nor the maze of trees seemed to confuse her. She made better progress than did the boys or the professor, as they were not familiar with the ground.<br /> "Well of all the queer adventures we've had," remarked Ned to Jerry, who had lagged somewhat in the rear with him, "this is the worst. Think of going to capture a murderer and then being led home by an insane woman! I wonder what will come next?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, car, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The journey to camp took some time, as the path was hard for the boys and professor to follow, and several times Kate had to wait for them to catch up to her. At last, however, she brought them out near the little open place where the auto stood, and the boys breathed a sigh of relief.<br /> "Our car is safe, anyhow," said Jerry. "Now for some sleep."<br /> "Ain't we going to have something to eat first?" demanded Bob in an aggrieved tone.<br /> The others laughed at Chunky's sorrowful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll see," said Jerry. "Perhaps you would like a cup of chocolate," he went on, turning to Kate.<br /> "No, thank you," she said. "I must not stay here. I want to see if they have captured the murderer, so I will go back," and, turning suddenly, she returned over the path they had come, her footsteps growing fainter and fainter.<br /> "Come on, let's make the chocolate," said Bob, when Kate had gone.<br /> Jerry soon had the beverage in preparation, and they all enjoyed it. Then they fixed up the beds in the shack, and soon were slumbering, too tired even to post a guard, though, as events proved, there was no need for one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Jerry, after breakfast had been eaten, "I suppose we may as well push on for Arizona. No use staying here since the mystery is solved."<br /> "I don't believe it is solved," spoke Professor Snodgrass, suddenly. "I'm not altogether satisfied about that hermit."<br /> "You don't think he's a murderer, do you?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, but there is something odd about him. I can not get over the feeling that I have met him before, or some relative of his. Yet I can not recall it clearly. He has certain queer little actions that remind me of some one. I would like to see him again."<br /> "If you want to, I think I could find our way back to the cabin in the day time," spoke Ned.<br /> "I took pretty good notice of the trail when we went over."<br /> "I wish you could," said the professor, eagerly. "I want to have a talk with that old man. Besides, I think I can get some more specimens at his hut. I saw a fine lizard around the door step in the afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided they would pay another visit to the hermit's cabin. Accordingly they started off after dinner, and, led by Ned, followed the trail. They went astray several times, and had to search about for the path, but finally they came to the place where Kate had halted them the day before to go forward and peer at the hut.<br /> "Shall we go right on now?" asked Ned, pausing to see what the rest wanted to do. "The cabin is just ahead."<br /> "Go on," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They came out into the little glade, in which the cabin stood. As they emerged from the woods they saw Kate standing in front of the hut, crying.<br /> "What is the matter?" asked the professor.<br /> "They have taken the poor old man away and killed him!" sobbed the woman.<br /> "It's another of her imaginations," said Ned, softly. "Probably the hermit is inside."<br /> But when they looked he was not to be seen, and his bed showed that it had not been slept in that night.<br /> "Will you help me hunt for him?" asked Kate.<br /> "Certainly we will," answered the professor.<br /> "Then follow me!" exclaimed the woman, striding off into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She led the way, explaining in disjointed sentences, yet so that she could be understood, that the old man frequently imagined some one was after him. At such times he would go to one or another of his hiding places, of which he had a number in the different parts of the woods.<br /> But this time he was not to be found easily. Place after place, including caves and deep ravines, were visited by the searchers, but there was no sign of the hermit.<br /> "I am sure he has been killed," said Kate in a sorrowful tone. "And he was the kindest man that ever lived."<br /> "I thought you said he was a murderer," spoke the professor, wondering in what strange channels the woman's mind ran.<br /> "So he is!" exclaimed Kate, "but he is a good murderer, and not one of the bad kind."<br /> "Poor woman," sighed Mr. Snodgrass. "Her mind is hopelessly gone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate started off in a different direction, and the boys and the professor followed her. She went at a rapid pace, and soon the travelers were aware that they were going up hill. The trail became more steep as they advanced, until they were panting from their exertions. Yet the crazy woman did not seem to become exhausted by the hard pace in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There is the hill!" she exclaimed at last, pointing upward, and the boys saw ahead of them a big half round mound, at the very summit of which was an immense tree.<br /> "He sometimes stays in that tree," spoke Kate, as they neared the big forest giant.<br /> "In the tree? I presume you mean he has a sort of platform built among the branches," said the professor. "A number of Indian tribes live that way."<br /> "He lives right inside the tree what little time he does live up here," replied Kate. "The trunk is hollow, and he crawls into it, and hides until all danger is past. We will soon see if he is there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An examination of the hollow trunk, however, showed that the hermit was not within, nor did the place disclose any signs of his having been there recently. Kate showed the despair she felt and the professor and the boys could not help feeling disappointed. For a while they stood beneath the spreading branches, wondering what would be best to do.<br /> All at once the professor, who had been intently gazing up into the leafy branches, gave utterance to an exclamation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There it is!" he cried. "A regular beauty! I must secure that if I never get another. Keep quiet, every one."<br /> "It's another specimen," said Jerry. "Can't you forget them for once, professor?"<br /> "This seems to be a sloth or an ant-bear," replied the scientist, as he made preparations to climb the tree. "It has long white whiskers, a black body and no tail. Wait until I crawl up and get it."<br /> "Never mind coming up, I'm coming down," spoke a voice, seeming to come from the animal, the capture of which the professor was intent upon.<br /> "Bless my soul, it's a combined sloth and parrot!" exclaimed the professor. "That is a rare animal-bird. I must secure it at all hazards. Help me, boys."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But there was no need for help, as, the next instant, two dangling legs descended from the lower branches of the tree, to be followed, a little later by a body, and then came a mass of white hair and whiskers.<br /> "It's the old hermit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes! It's him! it's him!" cried Kate. "He is safe! We have found him."<br /> "Be quiet!" cautioned the old man, when he had reached the ground. "There may be spies all around, though I think I have escaped them for the time being."<br /> "How did you get here?" asked Kate.<br /> "I ran as soon as I heard the noise of men coming after me," replied the aged man. "But I did not dare get into the hollow trunk, for fear of being seen. So I just crawled up into the branches, and there I'd be yet if the professor had not mistaken me for a specimen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can come down in safety," said Mr. Snodgrass, "as there seems to be no one in the neighborhood but ourselves."<br /> "That's good," was the rejoinder, "but there is no telling when some one may come. I think I will go back to my own cabin."<br /> The hermit started off with Kate, the others following. He had not proceeded far when he uttered an exclamation:<br /> "There is one of them!"<br /> At the same instant a roughly dressed man appeared in the narrow path, as if by magic. At sight of him the hermit turned and fled back into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXV. - Attacked by the Enemy (212-220) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, speed, mountain, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXV<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY<br /> <br /> "Are you sure the boy we have in mind is your son?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "We do not want to raise false hopes. Perhaps you may be mistaken."<br /> "Something tells me I can not be mistaken," exclaimed the hermit. "Tommy Bell is not a common name. Besides, I can describe my son, and then you will know whether he is the one you know," and he rapidly gave a short description of Tommy.<br /> "That's him all right," said Jerry, and the others agreed that the lad they had rescued from the hands of the rough men was, indeed, the son of the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I thought him dead," said the old man. "After I had been abused by the wicked gang that got me in their control I lost sight of poor Tommy. As soon as I could I made a search for him, but it was of no use."<br /> "Tommy thought you had wandered away from him," said Ned. "He told us his story after we had rescued him."<br /> "Then you saved his life, just as you have mine," broke in Mr. Bell. "I have much to thank you for. But first I must find my son. Where did you leave him?"<br /> "At a place called Las Cruces," replied the professor. Thereupon he told briefly how they had taken Tommy from the hands of the lawless gang and left him with a friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must go to him at once," exclaimed the old man. "I can hardly wait to start. To think that the boy I thought was dead is alive! And I suppose he thinks I am dead also," Mr. Bell went on.<br /> "He was going to search for you," replied Bob, "but he did not know where to start. We can send him word now."<br /> "I'll take him word myself!" cried Mr. Bell. "I'll start as soon as it is daylight."<br /> "Then you had better get some rest and sleep now," observed Mr. Snodgrass. "Come into the shack, and we will make you some hot coffee."<br /> The hermit begged them to go to no trouble on his account, but they insisted, and soon the coffee was boiling on the coals of the camp fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm too excited to sleep," remarked Mr. Bell, as he went inside the rough shelter to lie down. And so it would seem, for, every few minutes he would rouse up from his position, and ask some particular about his son. He appeared scarcely able to believe the good news. At length, however, he grew weary, and along toward morning fell into a doze.<br /> The others were so tired and sleepy from being awake the night before that they slumbered late, and the sun was quite high when Jerry roused himself, and sat up, wondering what day it was.<br /> He got up, took a plunge in the lake, and came back to start breakfast, finding that, in the meanwhile, the others in the camp, including Mr. Bell, had arisen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to start and find my son," cried the hermit.<br /> "You had better have something to eat first," suggested Mr. Snodgrass. "Then perhaps we can think of some plan to aid you."<br /> Though impatient to be gone the old man consented to remain to breakfast. He did not eat much, however, and seemed ready any minute to start on the long search for Tommy.<br /> "How would it be if we took you to the nearest town in our automobile," suggested the professor, when the meal was over. "From there you can get conveyances and reach Las Cruces in a short time. If you need any money—"<br /> "Thank you, I think I have enough for the present," interrupted Mr. Bell. "I do not need much. When I find Tommy I will bring him back with me, and we will be together once more. It seems too good to be true!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What will become of Kate in the meanwhile?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "Though she has queer ideas concerning you I think she is your friend. Will she be able to live in these woods all alone?"<br /> "Kate is able to take care of herself," was the reply. "She was in these woods before I came and she may be here after I am gone. But I will tell her where I am going, and that I expect to return."<br /> A trip was made to the hermit's hut, and, after several blasts had been blown on the conch horn, Kate appeared. She was overjoyed to see the aged man again, and was told of the latest developments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You had better hurry up then, and get away from these woods," said the woman.<br /> "Why so?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because there are a number of strange men lurking about," was the answer. "I think they are after this good old man. So be on your guard."<br /> "It is the same crowd," said Mr. Bell. "They hate to give me up."<br /> "What do they want of you?" asked Jerry. "You said you might tell us the secret some day, adding that perhaps we could help you. Maybe we can help you now."<br /> "You can help me, and you have helped me," said Mr. Bell. "I can tell you the rest of my story now. As I said I have long been in quest of some one. That some one is my son Tommy. I did not want to tell you of him before, as I was afraid the news would get out. Nor did I tell you why the gang wanted me in their power. It is because I hold the final title to a piece of valuable property, and they can not get possession of it until I sign off, which I refused to do!"<br /> "Why so?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Because I understand the property is now claimed by persons who, if not in the eyes of the law, are, still the rightful owners. If I should sign my rights away to the gang they would take the property away from the innocent holders now. So I refused to sign, and they have ruined me for<br /> it."<br /> "Never mind," said the professor, cheerfully. "We will get you out of their power, never fear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder if the gang that had Tommy is not the same one that had Mr. Bell in their power," suggested Bob. "He told us about men wanting him to sign papers that would give them control of some land."<br /> "They must be the same," commented Mr. Bell. "I will be on my guard now. Neither Tommy nor I will sign a single document. But now I must start."<br /> "Very well," said Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, engine, maintenance, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> There was no further cause for delay, so Jerry got the automobile ready, and, the various belongings having been stowed away, the engine was started, after a somewhat longer rest than usual, and, puffing away in a manner that awoke all the echoes of the forest, the car started toward the village at the foot of the slope. From there, it was arranged Mr. Bell would go forward to Las Cruces by stage coach, or whatever other means of travel presented themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, mountain, speed, driver, sound, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Once fairly on the road the spirits of all in the party rose. It was a fine day, and the fresh mountain air, crisp and cool, put new life into their veins.<br /> They were bowling along the road at a good clip with Jerry at the wheel, when, suddenly in the air above their heads, there sounded a shrill buzz.<br /> "That's a new kind of a bumble bee," cried Uriah Snodgrass. "I must have it for my collection."<br /> "I guess you wouldn't want many of that kind," said Mr. Bell, quietly.<br /> "Why not? I like all kinds."<br /> "That was a lead one," went on the old man.<br /> "You mean a bullet?" asked Bob. "Is some one firing at us?"<br /> "I'm afraid so," answered the hermit.<br /> Then came a distant report, followed by the peculiar buzzing sound.<br /> "Speed her up!" cried Bob to Jerry. "Let's get out of this danger zone. It's too much like being on the firing line to suit me."<br /> The auto, all this while was speeding along, and, soon, the shooters, whoever they were, had been left far in the rear. The sound of the bullets was no longer heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The reason they are doing it," answered Mr. Bell, "is that they want to get me alive. If I was to be killed their last chance of getting me to sign the papers would be gone."<br /> "But there is your son, Tommy," said Jerry. "He told us they wanted him to sign. If you were dead, he would be your heir, and his signature would be legal when he became of age. Perhaps the men could make use of it even before then."<br /> "I see! I see!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "It is important then that I live so I can beat them at their own game."<br /> "Unless you don't care about living on your own account or that of your son's," said the professor, grimly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, rural, speed, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> They kept on steady after this and at last reached the bottom of the mountain slope.<br /> "Now for the village," exclaimed Mr. Bell. "I shall soon see my boy!"<br /> Faster and faster went the auto. The traveling was good, and Jerry speeded the car to the last notch. About six o'clock they rolled into town, to the surprise of many of the inhabitants, who had never seen one of the puffing, snorting things, though they had read of them.<br /> A knot of curious persons gathered around the machine as Jerry brought it to a stop in front of the post-office. Several boys began to inspect every part. The travelers were about to alight when a shrill voice cried out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hey, Jerry! And Bob! And Ned! Hey there! Oh, how glad I am to see you!"<br /> For a moment the Motor Boys did not recognize the voice. Then Ned saw a lad trying to break through the crowd.<br /> "It's Tommy! It's Tommy Bell!" exclaimed Ned. "Hey, Tommy! You can't guess who we have with us!"<br /> "Tommy Bell! Did you say Tommy Bell!" exclaimed the hermit. "Where is he? Let me see him!"<br /> But Tommy had heard his parent's voice, and the next instant the boy had made a flying leap into the car, and was clasped in his father's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE NEXT INSTANT THE BOY HAD MADE A FLYING LEAP INTO THE CAR.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVI. - On the Road Again (221-226) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, slowness, mountain, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVI<br /> <br /> ON THE ROAD AGAIN<br /> <br /> "Where in the world did you come from?" asked Jerry of Tommy.<br /> "How did you get here?" inquired Ned.<br /> "How did you know where to find us?" Bob wanted to know.<br /> But to all these questions Tommy turned a deaf ear. He was so overjoyed at seeing his father, and the hermit was so excited at seeing his son once more, that neither had eyes nor ears for anything or any one except the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The crowd looked on curiously, the interest divided between the automobile and the meeting between father and son. Finally, when Mr. Bell and Tommy had, temporarily, exhausted the theme of telling each other how glad they were at being united, the boys had a chance to get a word in edgeways, and Tommy answered a few of their questions.<br /> He told them that he had remained for several days with his friend in Las Cruces, and how a traveling miner had, in a general conversation, mentioned the lake and told of the queer hermit that lived on the shores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Something in the description of this odd character impressed Tommy with the belief that the hermit might be his father, who had taken that method to escape the gang which wanted him to sign away his rights. Accordingly, the boy had started from Las Cruces and made his way to Deighton, the town where Mr. Bell expected to start in search of his son.<br /> "I got here this morning," said Tommy, "and I found a little work to do to earn some money. I was going to start up the mountain to-morrow and try and find the lake."<br /> "Now you don't have to," said Mr. Bell. "Well, it certainly is a queer world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers spent the night at the Deighton hotel, and, in the morning, after a good breakfast, assembled to talk over their plans for the future.<br /> "Do you intend to go back to Lost Lake, Mr. Bell?" asked the professor. "If you do, you and your son can ride that far in the automobile, since we are going back in that direction."<br /> "Where are you going after you leave Lost Lake?" asked Mr. Bell.<br /> "To Arizona," answered Jerry. "We have a mine there, and we must go to see how things are getting on."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, passenger, pleasure, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "That's rather odd," commented the hermit. "I have an interest in some mining property in Arizona, though I don't suppose it is anywhere near yours. But I have made up my mind not to go back to Lost Lake, except to bring away a few things that I left in the cabin. I would also like to provide for poor Kate. After that I think Tommy and I will go to Arizona and try our fortunes over again."<br /> "Then why not go with us?" spoke Jerry. "We have plenty of room in the machine, and we'd be glad of your company."<br /> "I would like to very much," said Mr. Bell, "if I thought I would not bother you."<br /> He was assured that he would be very welcome, and then he consented to go. A new stock of provisions was purchased, together with some ammunition and some other supplies for the auto. Then, amid the cheers of more than half the populace of Deighton, the travelers began their journey toward Lost Lake again.<br /> Mr. Bell had made arrangements with a family in the town to take charge of Kate whom he promised to send to them, for he knew he could depend on the woman to obey him and make the journey alone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, sound, car part, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> Lost Lake was reached on the second day, for the travelers were delayed by a landslide, and had to camp out one night. They found the camp and the hermit's hut undisturbed.<br /> "I guess none of the gang has been around lately," remarked Jerry.<br /> "I hope we have seen the last of them," put in Mr. Bell. "They certainly caused enough trouble."<br /> A few blasts on the horn brought Kate, and the poor demented woman was overjoyed to see her friends again. She made much of Tommy, who, she said, looked enough like his father to be recognized on the darkest night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first the crazy woman objected to being sent to Deighton, but Mr. Bell knew how to reason with her, and after some argument, she consented to go. She started away on the second morning, and, as the travelers learned later, eventually reached the family that had consented to care for her. Under skillful medical treatment Kate partly recovered her reason, and continued to live in Deighton for many years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, road condition, topography, car part, maintenance, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now," remarked the professor, when they had seen Kate started off on her journey, "I suppose it is time for us to move. So let's get started toward our mine, for I'm sure Nestor must be quite anxious to see us."<br /> "Onward it is, then!" exclaimed Ned. "All aboard, and may we have a safe trip!"<br /> With Ned at the steering wheel the auto was started off. The way was rather rougher than any they had yet traveled over, and for some distance the ascent was steep. But with a new set of batteries and spark plugs, and with everything on the car well adjusted, matters went along smoothly, though no very great speed could be attained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, topography, pleasure, rural, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> Mile after mile was covered, the auto mounting higher and higher amid the mountains. There were no signs of human habitation, not even a deserted miner's hut being passed the first two days of the trip.<br /> Of course there was no shelter to be had, and nights were spent in the open. But as the weather was mild, and as it did not rain, this was considered more a pleasure than a hardship.<br /> The third day they began to see signs that told them they were approaching a town. Now and then cabins and huts would be passed, mostly the lonely homes of solitary miners, who were prospecting for gold. Sometimes they would pass quite good sized camps, and about noon of the fourth day they were invited to come in and have a meal, which they were glad to do.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> The miners told them the nearest town was Sleighton, seventy-five miles away, and that it was the centre of activity for a large area of country round about.<br /> "And I wouldn't advise you folks to speed that there machine of yours when you strike the village," said one of the miners.<br /> "Why not?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because the marshal is very strict, and he ain't got no very great hankerin' fer choo-choo wagons."<br /> "We'll look out," promised Jerry. "We are in too much of a hurry to want any delays."<br /> "I wonder if we'll hear anything more of that gang," said Ned as they rode away from the mining camp. "It seems queer that they would drop the thing when they seemed so anxious to capture Mr. Bell."<br /> "We'll hear of them again, and in a way we won't like, I'm afraid," said the former hermit. "We'll have to be on the lookout."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVII. - Trouble at the Mine (227-236) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="health, law, risk, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, rain, equipment, Southwest"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVII<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AT THE MINE<br /> <br /> Several days' travel brought the party over the line into Arizona. They passed through a small village one noon, and, on inquiring their where-abouts were told that they were well within the borders of the state where their gold mine was located.<br /> It began to rain shortly after this, and their trip was rather unpleasant, but, well wrapped up in rubber coats, they managed to keep fairly dry. As for the auto it did not seem to mind what kind of weather it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, rain, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> They camped that night under a clump of pine trees which served as a partial shelter, and it was so wet that no fire could be built. Jerry resorted to the stove made from one of the search-lights, and made some hot chocolate that warmed them all up.<br /> The next day dawned clear, however, and with a better feeling the travelers took up their journey again. The way was becoming familiar to them, and they recognized many landmarks they had observed in their great race across the continent to secure the gold mine before Noddy Nixon and his crowd could win the claim, as told in detail in "The Motor Boys Overland."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> That night they stayed in the town where the government assay office was located and to reach which there had been such an exciting brush between the two automobiles, the one run by Noddy, and that run by the Motor Boys. They saw several men whom they knew slightly, and who appeared much surprised to see them again.<br /> "Well, well, well, where in the world did you come from?" asked the proprietor of the hotel, as the auto drew up in front of his place. He had been quite friendly with the boys while they stayed at the mine, and had sold them many supplies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been down to Mexico for a change of air," said Jerry.<br /> "I suppose it didn't agree with you, or you wouldn't be coming back so soon," went on the proprietor.<br /> "Well, we thought our mine needed looking after," Jerry remarked.<br /> "Looking after? I should say it did," the proprietor continued. "Jim Nestor was here the other day and he said if you didn't come back pretty soon and do something, there wouldn't be any mine."<br /> "Is that right?" asked Ned, thinking the man might be trying to scare them for a joke.<br /> "Straight as a string," was the answer. "It seems that the title to the place is in doubt."<br /> "I know, Nestor wrote us about that," put in Jerry. "But he is still in possession, isn't he?"<br /> "Can't say," replied the hotel man. "He was very anxious the last time I saw him, and that was a week ago. If I was you I'd look after it the first thing in the morning."<br /> "We will," said Jerry. "I wonder if the government office is closed."<br /> "Long ago," said the proprietor of the inn. "Why?"<br /> "I was thinking I could go there and find out what sort of claim there was against our property," answered the boy.<br /> "You'll have to wait until ten o'clock to-morrow morning," went on the man. "They've got a new official in charge and he takes more time off than he puts in. Some one ought to write to the President about it. There's lots of kicks about the way he acts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> Neither the boys nor the professor did much sleeping that night, because of worry over the mine tangle. They made an early breakfast and then started for their claim, which they expected to reach in about two hours unless something unexpected occurs.<br /> The way was familiar to them, and recalled many old memories of the exciting times they had in locating and proving their claim. They pointed out to Mr. Bell the various landmarks as they passed them, but the former hermit seemed to have fallen into a sort of stupor. His eyes had a vacant stare and he took no interest in what was being said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid he's going to be sick," said Jerry to the professor. "He has hardly spoken since we came into Arizona, and he used to be quite a talker."<br /> "I guess it is only the excitement wearing off," said Mr. Snodgrass. "He will be all right in a day or two. He has had a pretty hard life the last few weeks."<br /> Tommy was worried about his father, and sat beside him, holding his hand, now and then looking up into his face, as if he feared to lose his parent again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As they neared the mine Mr. Bell seemed to become more dazed. Yet he appeared to be struggling to recall something that he had once known and forgotten.<br /> Suddenly he stood up in the automobile, as the car passed a deserted and tumbled down hut and exclaimed:<br /> "See! There it is! There is the place!"<br /> "What place, father? What do you mean?" asked Tommy.<br /> But Mr. Bell sat down again, and seemed to have forgotten that he had spoken. The professor could note, however, that there was a struggle going on in the old man's mind.<br /> "I hope he does not become raving mad, yet it looks bad for him," the professor thought to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography, scenery, sound, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "Ten minutes more and we'll be there!" exclaimed Jerry, crowding on a little more speed. "I do hope Nestor is having no trouble."<br /> They were in the midst of a wild mountainous country now. On either side of the road were great bowlders, while a little further back was scrub timber which extended for a mile or more before the deeper woods were reached.<br /> They were just rounding the last turn of the road to swing into the straight stretch that would take them to the mine when there sounded on the air the crack of a rifle. An instant later Mr. Bell gave a convulsive start and fell over in his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, visibility, risk, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "They've killed him! They've shot him!" cried Tommy, while Jerry suddenly brought the machine to a stop. Glancing across to the left a small curling cloud of smoke could be seen floating above a big stone.<br /> "There's where the shot came from," said Ned.<br /> "Is he badly hurt?" asked Jerry of Professor Snodgrass, who was bending over Mr. Bell.<br /> "It is hard to say," was the answer. "The bullet struck him on the head, but there is so much blood I can't tell how bad the wound is. Push on to the mine. Perhaps Nestor can help us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry started the machine again. It had attained a good speed when, from the side of the road came a hail.<br /> "Motor Boys, ahoy!"<br /> "There's Nestor!" cried Ned, pointing to a man who stood in front of a small shanty. "Hello, Nestor!" he called.<br /> "Hello!" responded the miner, running down to the road. "Well, I am certainly glad to see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quick, Nestor!" exclaimed Mr. Snodgrass. "We have a wounded man here, and must get him to the shanty at the mine as soon as possible."<br /> "We can't do it," replied Nestor.<br /> "Why not?"<br /> "Didn't you get my letter?"<br /> "Only the one saying there might be a possibility of trouble."<br /> "Well trouble came all right. I've been driven from the mine, and it's in possession of a bad gang. So we can't take the wounded man there."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Jerry, seeing that Mr. Bell was bleeding badly.<br /> "Bring him into my cabin," said Nestor. "I came here after the gang drove me out. I can put you up, I guess."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, parking, equipment, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry ran the car up close to the shanty and Mr. Bell, who was unconscious, was carried in and laid as tenderly as possible on the single bunk of which the place boasted.<br /> "Now some warm water and clean clothes," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I must wash the wound and see how bad it is."<br /> "I haven't a bit of hot water," said Nestor.<br /> "There's plenty in the radiator of the auto," spoke Jerry. "Give me a pail and I'll soon get some."<br /> He soon had a plentiful supply that was almost boiling, and, cooling it somewhat, the naturalist carefully washed the blood from the wounded man's head. Then he examined the hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will he die?" asked Tommy, as he stood around, tearfully.<br /> "Not this time," replied Mr. Snodgrass, cheerfully. "The bullet appears to have only grazed the scalp a bit, but it probably gave him a pretty hard knock. He'll soon come around right I guess."<br /> Mr. Bell was made as comfortable as possible, and, as there was nothing to do but wait until he became conscious, he was left in charge of his son. Tommy was told to call as soon as his father showed signs of awakening, and then the others surrounded Nestor, eager to hear about<br /> the mine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess it's gone," said the old prospector. "As I wrote you, the title seems to have some flaw in it, and this gang, which came from somewhere to the southeast, found it out, and served papers on me. It appears that there is a man missing who holds the key to the situation, and who owns<br /> the majority of the mine, but he can't be found, and so our title is no good."<br /> The news depressed the spirits of all. They had been hoping that the trouble was small and temporary and that Nestor would find a way out. Now they stood to lose the mine they had struggled so hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you resist their claim?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You bet I did," replied Nestor. "I went to court over it, but the judge said though it was morally wrong to put me out, yet the others had the law on their side, and he had to decide against me.<br /> "I didn't give up even then, for I barricaded the place and defied 'em to get me out. But the sheriff came and said that was no way to do. He had the law with him, and he said it would be his duty to shoot me if I resisted. He advised going to a higher court, and so, rather than have any bloodshed I gave up, and decided to camp out here until you came. I've been here about two weeks now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then the mine's gone," remarked Jerry, sorrowfully.<br /> "We can try the courts," said Nestor, hopefully.<br /> "It would take years to settle the case," put in Mr. Snodgrass. "No, I guess you are beaten, boys."<br /> "I will not give up yet," said Jerry.<br /> "What are you going to do?" asked Ned.<br /> "I'm going to town, hire the best lawyer I can get, and see what he says. There may be a way out of this yet."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" exclaimed Bob. "I'm with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time. He hurried to the auto, and with Bob for company made the run to town in record time. He was directed to a lawyer's office, and, finding the attorney, who was a young chap, in, paid him a retainer and stated the case briefly.<br /> "I just want to know how we stand, what sort of a claim there is against our title, and what we can do to perfect it," said Jerry.<br /> "It's quite a lot of information to get at in a hurry," said the lawyer, "but I'll do my best. I'll be ready for you at four o'clock this afternoon."<br /> "I'll call for you then," went on Jerry, "and take you back to Nestor's shanty, where you can explain the whole thing to us."<br /> Then the boys, with a feeling of dread that their mine was gone forever, in spite of all they could do, went back to where the others were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVIII. - All's Well that Ends Well (237-248) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="law, health, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVIII<br /> <br /> ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL<br /> <br /> They found Mr. Bell in much the same condition as before, though Mr. Snodgrass said the wounded man's breathing was a little easier, which was a good sign.<br /> "And what about the mine?" asked the naturalist. Jerry told him the lawyer was coming.<br /> "I'm afraid it will be of little use," said the professor. "Nestor says they had a big lawyer to represent the gang, and they also have a large force in charge of the mine, taking out gold."<br /> "And it's our gold," exclaimed Jerry. "Oh, why didn't we get back sooner?"<br /> "It wouldn't have done much good," spoke Nestor. "I did all I could, but the law was on their side."<br /> "Of course, I didn't mean that you failed," Jerry hastened to add, for fear of hurting the old miner's feelings. "It's too bad, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, oil, navigation, law, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> After a somewhat gloomy dinner, which the professor tried to liven up by telling jokes and funny stories, Jerry oiled the machine, and, about two o'clock started back to town for the lawyer. He found the attorney waiting for him, with several big law books in a valise.<br /> "Any luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Not a great deal," was the answer.<br /> "Well, don't tell us until we are all together," went on Jerry. "I don't want to stand it all alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When, on arrival at Nestor's cabin, the lawyer proceeded to tell what he had learned, there were six very attentive listeners.<br /> The attorney went over the ground carefully, and told the boys, Nestor and Professor Snodgrass, much that they had already heard. How, because of a missing owner who held more than a half interest in the mine, the title was not good when the boys preëmpted it. In fact it was still the property of others, though about to lapse.<br /> "I don't understand all them legal terms," put in Nestor, "but didn't we make a good claim to the government for that mine?"<br /> "You did, as far as it went," replied the lawyer. "Uncle Sam gave you a title, but did not guarantee that some one did not have a better one, which it seems is the case."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But that gang hasn't a good title either, not if the owner of over half the shares is missing," went on Nestor.<br /> "No, but it seems, according to the records, that they have some sort of an agreement from this missing man that they are empowered to work the claim until he comes to demand his share."<br /> "If that's the case I'm for going up there and driving them out with a gun!" exclaimed Nestor. "They haven't any more right than we have, and we can at least make them go shares with us until this missing man shows up. What's the matter with attacking them to-night."<br /> "If you're going to resort to lawless means I'll have to throw up the case," said the attorney. "That is no way to talk."<br /> "Nestor doesn't mean it at all," put in Jerry. "Of course we will have no battle with that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are two ways we might proceed," the lawyer went on. "There may be more, but they are the only ones that suggest themselves to me from what time I was able to give to the case."<br /> "What would you advise?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You can apply to the courts for an injunction to prevent the working of the mine until the missing half-owner shows up."<br /> "But that would bar us as well as them," put in Jerry. <br /> "Yes, it would have that effect, if you secured the injunction, which is doubtful. It would be a long and costly litigation, I fear."<br /> "And what is the other plan?"<br /> "You might try to find the missing man, and buy him out, or make some arrangement with him. From what I can learn he and the others have quarreled and are opposed to each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the missing man?" asked Bob.<br /> "That is something on which I can not be of the least help to you," was the reply. "There is nothing to show where he is."<br /> "Then it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to search for him, and as long and costly as the injunction means," commented Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "I'm afraid it would," was the lawyer's answer.<br /> "What is the man's name?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I have it here," proceeded the attorney. "It is Mr. Well, no, that's not it. Oh yes! Here it is. Bell, that's it. Mr. Jackson Bell."<br /> "What?" fairly shouted the three boys at once.<br /> "What name?" inquired the professor, wondering if he had heard aright.<br /> "Jackson Bell," repeated the lawyer. "Why, do you know him?"<br /> "Know him?" went on Jerry, jumping up in his excitement. "Why he is in the next room this very minute! Well of all the strange pieces of luck!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they all tried to tell the lawyer at once the story of the hermit and his son, making such a jumble that the attorney had to beg them to stop, while he listened to one at a time. Finally the tale was related, and the boys and the professor as well, greatly excited, paused to see what the lawyer would say.<br /> "Then I don't see any further trouble to your getting possession of the mine," said the attorney. "If Mr. Bell is on your side, and you make a joint application to the court or even to the government agent, I am sure you will be given instant charge of the claim."<br /> "There is only one difficulty," said Mr. Snodgrass. "Mr. Bell is wounded. His mind was not strong before the shooting, and it may be altogether gone when he recovers consciousness. In that case—?"<br /> "In that case I'm afraid you are as badly off as before," finished the lawyer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door to the inner room, where Mr. Bell was in the bunk, opened, and Tommy came out, looking worried.<br /> "Is he worse, Tommy?" asked the professor.<br /> "He's acting very queer," replied the boy. "He is sitting up in bed, and is trying to get something out from under his shirt. He's talking something about a mine."<br /> "He is probably delirious," said Mr. Snodgrass. "We must have a doctor. I'm afraid it looks bad for us, boys."<br /> At that instant the form of Mr. Bell, weak and tottering, showed in the doorway. He seemed greatly excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There you are!" he cried tearing open his shirt and throwing a bundle, done up in oiled silk on the table. "There are the papers. There are the proofs to the mine. The gang did not get them after all!"<br /> "Calm yourself," spoke Mr. Snodgrass, in a soothing tone that one uses to sick children or fever patients.<br /> "I'm all right!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "Don't think I'm crazy. I was a little off my head, but the wound the bullet gave me, and the blood I lost, accomplished just what was needed. There, I tell you, are the papers proving my claim to the mine."<br /> "What mine?" asked the professor, while the others waited in anxiety for the answer.<br /> "The mine we were going to," responded the old man. "From the description you boys gave of it I recognize it as the same one I have more than a half share in. All the way up here I was trying to recall when I had been here before. I recognized the places, but my mind would not serve me. I had suffered so much that I was almost crazy. Then came the shot, and I did not know anything more, until I just woke up in that room, and remembered all about it. Now we will beat that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurrah!" cried Jerry, seizing Ned by the arms and starting to dance a hornpipe.<br /> "Are you sure you can not be mistaken about the mine?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, for it seemed hardly possible that the old hermit, whom they had rescued, should turn out to be the much-wanted missing owner.<br /> "There are the papers, you can see for yourself," replied Mr. Bell.<br /> The lawyer, at a sign from the professor, made a careful examination of the documents.<br /> "They seem to be all right," he said. "I have no doubt but that you can fully establish your claim, Mr. Bell."<br /> "It isn't my claim, sir."<br /> "Why I thought you said—"<br /> "Everything I have or own is the property of these noble boys and Professor Snodgrass," went on the former hermit. "They saved my life, and that of my son's. If I gave them a hundred mines I could not repay them."<br /> "But we do not want your share," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "It don't make any difference what you want, you've got to take it," said Mr. Bell, firmly.<br /> "We can settle that part later," put in the lawyer. "The thing to do now is to get possession of the mine. If you wish I will act for you."<br /> "Of course we want you to," said Jerry.<br /> "Very well. I will take these papers, and go to court with them. If I am successful, as I have no doubt I shall be, I will apply to the sheriff to oust the crowd that is in charge of the mine. Then you and Mr. Bell can take possession."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" fairly yelled Nestor, who was anxious to get back to the "diggings."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> The lawyer was hurried back to town in the auto. Nothing could be done that afternoon, as the court was closed. He promised to be on hand early in the morning.<br /> The boys could hardly sleep that night. Mr. Bell seemed to have fully recovered, and, beyond a slight pain where the bullet had hit him, he did not suffer. It was late when they went to bed, and somewhat late when they arose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going into town and see what's doing," said Jerry after breakfast.<br /> "So am I," cried Ned and Bob.<br /> "Better not," went on Jerry. "If I have to bring back the lawyer, and the sheriff and some of his deputies to read the riot act to the gang, I'll need all the room there is."<br /> So Jerry went off alone in the car. He did not find the lawyer in, but the attorney's clerk said he was at court.<br /> "I'll wait until he comes back," said Jerry, and he sat down in the office. Two hours later, the lawyer came in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, passenger, slowness, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "What luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "The very best. I have a peremptory order commanding that crowd to turn the mine over to your party and Mr. Bell. Come on, we'll get the sheriff and finish the thing right up."<br /> The sheriff was only too glad of a chance for some activity. He and three deputies, well armed, got into the car, and Jerry started off. To the boy the machine never seemed to move so slowly, but several times one of the deputies threatened to jump out if the auto did not slacken up a bit.<br /> Arriving at the cabin, Nestor, the two boys, and Professor Snodgrass were found anxiously waiting.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the mine!" cried Jerry, as he rapidly explained the success of the mission.<br /> "Wait till I get my gun," said Nestor.<br /> "No shooting unless we have to," warned the sheriff.<br /> Then they advanced on the mine. An eighth of a mile away they were halted by a guard. But an order from the sheriff, and a sight of the command from the court, made the guard give in, and he was sent back to the cabin, in custody of one of the deputies.<br /> Then, without any warning, the party descended on the others of the gang, who were all gathered in the main cabin at dinner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first it looked as if there was going to be trouble. Several made an attempt to get their guns, but Nestor, the sheriff, and his man, had covered them, and they saw that the game was up.<br /> "I'll read you this court order," said the sheriff.<br /> "You needn't bother," spoke the leader, whom the boys recognized as one of the men who had held Tommy a captive. Others in the gang were recognizable as men who had tried to capture Mr. Bell at Lost Lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We played a bold game, but we lost," said the leader, as he and his companions, gathering up their baggage, left the cabin, and made their way toward town. They did not go there, however,—since they feared further proceedings,—and were never heard of again.<br /> "Hurrah, now we have our mine back again!" cried Jerry. "I wonder if it is paying?"<br /> "Better than ever, by the looks of this stuff," answered Jim Nestor, picking up some newly-mined ore that lay on ground. "No wonder that crowd wanted to keep possession of the mine."<br /> There followed a general jollification. The boys got up a fine dinner, at which the sheriff, his men, and the lawyer were guests. An arrangement was made whereby Mr. Bell should retain a large interest in the mine, while the other share was divided between our friends as before. The lawyer received a generous fee, and the sheriff and his men were not forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Jerry, a week later, "we came out all right, didn't we? I presume our adventures are all over now."<br /> "Don't be too sure," put in Bob. "Something else may turn up soon." And Bob was right, as we shall learn in another volume, to be called, "The Motor Boys Afloat; Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway," a tale of land and sea.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The days to follow were busy ones for Jim Nestor and the boys. The mine was started up in better shape than ever before, new machinery put in, and extra workmen engaged. Letters were sent to the boys' folks, telling of all that had happened.<br /> "I want to say one thing," said Jerry, one day. "And that is, that it feels mighty good to be back in the United States again."<br /> "Exactly what I say," returned Ned.<br /> "Right you are," came from Chunky. He rubbed his hands together. "And as we are back, and all is well, why—er—let us have some dinner."<br /> And then, with a merry laugh at the lad who never wanted to miss a meal, the others followed Chunky to the table; and here as they sit down to a well-earned repast, we will take our departure.<br /> <br /> THE END.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Motor_Boys_Across_the_Plains;_Or,_the_Hermit_of_Lost_Lake_(Book_4)&diff=937 The Motor Boys Across the Plains; Or, the Hermit of Lost Lake (Book 4) 2026-04-13T08:02:04Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: Spacing of Paragraphs Chapter I</p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Young, Clarence"<br /> year_of_publication="1907"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/43509/pg43509-images.html"<br /> genre="Fiction"<br /> journal="The Motor Boys Across the Plains: OR THE HERMIT OF LOST LAKE"<br /> page_range="1-248"<br /> /><br /> <br /> ===Preface/Chapter I. - Ramming an Ox Cart (1-10) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model, nationality, West, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> PREFACE<br /> <br /> <br /> Dear Boys:<br /> <br /> Here it is at last—the fourth volume of "The Motor Boys Series," for which so many boys all over our land have been asking during the past year.<br /> <br /> To those who have read the other volumes in this line, this new tale needs no special introduction. To others, I would say that in the first volume, entitled, "The Motor Boys," I introduced three wide-awake American lads, Ned, Bob and Jerry, and told how they first won a bicycle race and then a great motor cycle contest,—the prize in the latter being a big touring car.<br /> <br /> Having obtained the automobile, the lads went west, and in the second volume, called, "The Motor Boys Overland," were related the particulars of a struggle for a valuable mine, a struggle which tested the boys' bravery to the utmost.<br /> <br /> While in the west the boys heard of a strange buried city in Mexico, and, in company with a learned college professor, journeyed to that locality. The marvellous adventures met with are told in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> Leaving the buried city, the boys started again for the locality of the mine, and in the present tale are told the particulars of some strange things that happened on the way. A portion of this story is based on facts, related to me while on an automobiling tour in the west, by an old ranchman who had participated in some of the occurrences.<br /> With best wishes, and hoping we shall meet again, I leave you to peruse<br /> the pages which follow.<br /> <div style='text-align: right;'>CLARENCE YOUNG.</div><br /> <i>March 1, 1907.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car part, technology, car model, passenger, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS<br /> </div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>CHAPTER I</div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>RAMMING AN OX CART</div><br /> <br /> Mingled with the frantic tooting of an automobile horn, there was the shrill shrieking of the brake-band as it gripped the wheel hub in a friction clutch.<br /> <br /> "Hi, Bob! Look out for that ox cart ahead!" exclaimed one of three sturdy youths in the touring car.<br /> <br /> "I should say so! Jam on the brakes, Bob!" put in the tallest of the trio, while an elderly man, who was in the rear seat with one of the boys, glanced carelessly up to see what was the trouble.<br /> <br /> "I have got the brake on, Jerry!" was the answer the lad at the steering wheel made. "Can't you and Ned hear it screeching!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, topography, nationality, animal, pedestrian, accident, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was speeding down a steep hill, seemingly headed straight toward a solitary Mexican who was moving slowly along in an antiquated ox-drawn vehicle.<br /> <br /> "Then why don't she slow up? You've got the power off, haven't you?"<br /> <br /> "Of course! Do you take me for an idiot!" yelled Bob, or, as his friends sometimes called him, because of his fatness, "Chunky." "Of course I've shut down, but something seems to be the matter with the brake pedal."<br /> <br /> "Have you tried the emergency?" asked Ned.<br /> <br /> "Sure!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, onomatopoeia, nationality, speed, animal, pedestrian, risk, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Toot! Toot! Toot!<br /> <br /> Again the horn honked out a warning to the Mexican, but he did not seem to hear.<br /> <br /> The big red touring car was gathering speed, in spite of the fact that it was not under power, and it bore down ever closer to the ox cart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, sound, metaphor, nationality, pedestrian, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "Cut out the muffler and let him hear the explosions," suggested Jerry.<br /> <br /> Bob did so, and the sounds that resulted were not unlike a Gatling gun battery going into action. This time the native heard.<br /> <br /> Glancing back, he gave a frightened whoop and jabbed the sharp goad into the ox. The animal turned squarely across the road, thus shutting off what small chance there might have been of the auto gliding past on either side.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, passenger, driver, nationality, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going to hit him sure!" yelled Ned. "I say Professor, you'd better hold on to your specimens. There's going to be all sorts of things doing in about two shakes of a rattlesnake's tail!"<br /> <br /> "What's that about a rattlesnake?" asked the old man, who, looking up from a box of bugs and stones on his lap, seemed aware, for the first time, of the danger that threatened.<br /> <br /> "Hi there! Get out of the way! Move the cart! Shake a leg! Pull to one side and let us have half the road!" yelled Jerry as a last desperate resort, standing up and shouting at the bewildered and frightened Mexican.<br /> <br /> "Oh pshaw! He don't understand United States!" cried Ned.<br /> <br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry ruefully.<br /> <br /> "Vamoose, is the proper word for telling a Mexican to get out of the road," suggested the professor calmly. "Perhaps if you shouted that at him he might—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, accident, driver, speed, scenery, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> What effect trying the right word might have had the boys had no chance of learning, for, the next instant, in spite of Bob's frantic working at the brake, the auto shot right at the ox cart. By the merest good luck, more than anything else, for Bob could steer neither to the right nor left, because the narrow road was hemmed in by high banks, the machine struck the smaller vehicle a glancing blow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, animal, nationality, pedestrian, health, passenger, driver, dust"><br /> <poem><br /> The force of the impact skidded the auto on two wheels up the side of the embankment, where, poking the front axle into a stump served to bring the car to a stop. The car was slewed around to one side, the ox was yanked from its feet, and, as the cart overturned, the Mexican, yelling voluble Spanish, pitched out into the road.<br /> <br /> Nor did the boys and the professor come off scathless, for the sudden stopping of their machine piled the occupants on the rear seat up in a heap on the floor of the tonneau, while Bob and Jerry, who were in front, went sprawling into the dust near the native.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, nationality, animal, dust, accident, metaphor, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds there was no sound save the yelling of the Mexican and the bellowing of the ox. Then the cloud of dust slowly drifted away, and Bob picked himself up, gazing ruefully about.<br /> <br /> "This is a pretty kettle of fish," he remarked.<br /> <br /> "I should say it was several of 'em," agreed Jerry, trying to get some of the dust from his mouth, ears and nose. "You certainly hit him, Chunky!"<br /> <br /> "It wasn't my fault! How did I know the brake wasn't going to work just the time it was most needed?"<br /> <br /> "Is anybody killed?" asked the professor, looking up over the edge of the tonneau, and not releasing his hold of several boxes which contained his specimens.<br /> <br /> "Don't seem to be, nor any one badly hurt, unless it's the ox or the auto," said Ned, taking a look. "The Mexican seems to be mad about something, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the native had arisen from his prostrate position and was shaking his fist at the Motor Boys and the professor, meanwhile, it would appear from his language, calling them all the names to which he could lay his tongue.<br /> <br /> "I guess he wants Bob's scalp," said Jerry with a smile.<br /> <br /> "It was as much his fault as mine," growled Chunky. "If he had pulled to one side, I could easily have passed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="nationality, health, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The Mexican, brushing the dust from his clothes, approached the auto party, and continued his rapid talk in Spanish. The boys, who had been long enough in Mexico to pick up considerable of the language, gathered that the native demanded two hundred dollars for the damage to himself, the cart and the ox, as well as for the injury to his dignity and feelings.<br /> <br /> "You'd better talk to him, Professor," suggested Jerry. "Offer him what you think is right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thereupon Professor Snodgrass, in mild terms explained how the accident had happened, saying it was no fault of the auto party.<br /> <br /> The Mexican, in language more forcible than polite, reiterated his demand, and announced that unless the money was instantly forthcoming, he would go to the nearest alcade and lodge a complaint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, nationality, animal, health, tree, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers knew what this meant, with the endless delays of Mexican justice, the summoning of witnesses and petty officers.<br /> <br /> "I wish there was some way out," said Jerry.<br /> <br /> As the Mexican had not been hurt, nor his cart or ox been damaged, there was really no excuse for the boys giving in to his demands.<br /> <br /> "Let's give him a few dollars and skip out," suggested Ned. "He can't catch us."<br /> <br /> This was easier said than done, for the auto was jammed up against a tree stump on a bank, and the ox cart, which, the native by this time had righted, blocked the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, all unexpectedly, there came a diversion that ended matters. Professor Snodgrass, with his usual care for his beloved specimens before himself, was examining the various boxes containing them. He opened one containing his latest acquisition of horned toads, big lizards, rattlesnakes and bats. The reptiles crawled, jumped and flew out, for they were all alive.<br /> <br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" exclaimed the Mexican as he caught sight of the repulsive creatures. "They are crazy Americanos!" he yelled.<br /> <br /> With a flying leap he jumped into his ox cart, and with goad and voice he urged the animal on to such advantage that, a few minutes later, all that was to be seen of him was a cloud of dust in the distance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, tree, accident, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> "Good riddance," said Bob. "Now to see how much our machine is damaged."<br /> <br /> Fortunately the auto had struck a rotten stump, and though with considerable force, the impact was not enough to cause any serious damage. Under the direction of Jerry the boys managed to get the machine back into the road, where they let it stand while they went to a near-by spring for a drink of water.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> While they are quenching their thirst an opportunity will be taken to present them to the reader in proper form.<br /> <br /> The three boys were Bob Baker, son of Andrew Baker, a banker, Ned Slade, the only heir of Aaron Slade, a department store proprietor, and Jerry Hopkins, the son of a widow. All three were about seventeen years of age, and lived in the city of Cresville, not far from Boston, Mass. Their companion was Professor Uriah Snodgrass, a learned man with many letters after his name, signifying the societies and institutions to which he belonged. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, risk, equipment, speed, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Those who have read the first book of this series, entitled, "The Motor Boys," need no introduction to the three lads. Sufficient to say that some time before this story opens they had taken part in some exciting bicycle races, the winning of which resulted in the acquiring of Motor cycles for each of them.<br /> <br /> On these machines they had had much fun and had also many adventures befall them. Taking part in a big race meet, one of them won an event which gave him a chance to get a big touring automobile, the same car in which they were now speeding through Mexico.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their adventures in the auto are set forth at length in the second volume of the series entitled, "The Motor Boys Overland," which tells of a tour across the country, in which they had to contend with their old enemy, Noddy Nixon, and his gang. Eventually the boys and Jim Nestor, a miner whom they befriended, gained some information of a long lost gold mine in Arizona.<br /> <br /> They made a dash for this and won it against heavy odds, after a fight with their enemies. The mine turned out well, and the boys and their friends made considerable money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The spirit of adventure would not drown in them. Just before reaching the diggings they made the acquaintance of Professor Snodgrass, who told a wonderful story of a buried city. How the boys found this ancient town of old Mexico, and the many adventures that befell them there, are told in the third book, called "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> <br /> Therein is related the strange happenings under ground, of the sunken road, the old temples, the rich treasures and the fights with the bandits. Also there is told of the rescue of the Mexican girl Maximina, and how she was taken from a band of criminals and restored to her friends.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, animal, road condition, safety, nationality"><br /> <poem><br /> These happenings brought the boys and the professor to the City of Mexico, where the auto was given a good overhauling, to prepare it for the trip back to the United States.<br /> <br /> The boys and the professor, the latter bearing with him his beloved specimens, started back for civilization, keeping to the best and most frequented roads, to avoid the brigands, with whom they had had more than one adventure on their first trip. It was while on this homeward journey that the incident of the Mexican and the ox cart befell them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="equipment, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Having slaked their thirst the boys and the professor went back to the auto where, gathering up the belongings that had become scattered from the upset, they prepared to resume their journey.<br /> <br /> "Get in; I'll run her for a while," said Jerry.<br /> <br /> "One minute! Stand still! Don't move if you value my happiness!" exclaimed the professor suddenly, dropping down on his hands and knees, and creeping forward through the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter II. - A Nest of Serpents (11-19) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER II<br /> <br /> A NEST OF SERPENTS<br /> <br /> "What is it; a rattlesnake?" asked Bob, in a hoarse whisper.<br /> "Or a Gila monster?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Quiet! No noise!" cautioned the professor. "I see a specimen worth ten dollars at the lowest calculation. I'll have him in a minute."<br /> "Is it a bug?" asked Chunky.<br /> "There! I have him!" yelled the scientist, making a sudden dive forward, sliding on his face, and clutching his hand deep into the grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As it happened there was a little puddle of water at that point, and the professor, in the excess of his zeal, pitched right into it.<br /> "Oh! Oh my! Oh dear! Phew! Wow! Help! Save me!" he exclaimed a moment later, as he tried to get out of the slough.<br /> The boys hurried to his aid, but the mud was soft and the professor had gone head first into the ooze, which held fast to him as though it was quicksand.<br /> "Get him by the heels and yank him out or he'll smother!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other boys followed his advice, and, in a little while the bug-collector was pulled from his uncomfortable and dangerous position. As he rolled about in the grass to get rid of some of the mud, he kept his right hand tightly closed.<br /> "What's the matter, are your fingers hurt?" asked Bob.<br /> "No sir, my fingers are not hurt!" snapped the professor, with the faintest tinge of impatience, which might be excused on the part of a man who has just dived into a mud hole. "My fingers are not hurt in the least. What I have here is one of the rarest specimens of the Mexican mosquito I have ever seen. I would go ten miles to get one."<br /> "I guess you're welcome to 'em," commented Jerry. "We don't want any."<br /> "That's because you don't understand the value of this specimen," replied the professor. "This mosquito will add to my fame, and I shall devote one whole chapter of my four books to it. This indeed has been a lucky day for me."<br /> "And unlucky for the rest of us," said Bob, as he thought of the spill.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, pleasure, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> It was found that a few minor repairs had to be made to the auto, and when these were completed it was nearly noon.<br /> "I vote we have dinner before we start again," spoke Bob.<br /> "There goes Chunky!" exclaimed Ned. "Never saw him when he wasn't thinking of something to eat!"<br /> "Well, I guess if the truth was known you are just as hungry as I am," expostulated Chunky. "This Mexican air gives me a good appetite."<br /> Bob's plan was voted a good one, so, with supplies and materials carried in the auto for camping purposes, a fire was soon built, and hot chocolate was being made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sick of canned stuff and those endless eggs, frijoles and tortillas," complained Bob. "I'd like a good beefsteak and some fish and bread and butter."<br /> "I don't know about the other things, but I think we could get some fish over in that little brook," said the professor, pointing to a stream that wound about the base of a near-by hill.<br /> A minute later the boys had their hooks and lines out. Poles were cut from trees, and, with some pieces of canned meat for bait they went fishing. They caught several large white fish, which the professor named in long Latin terms, and which, he said, were good to eat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while a savory smell filled the air, for Ned, who volunteered to act as cook, had put the fish on to broil with some strips of bacon, and soon there was a dinner fit for any king that ever wielded a scepter.<br /> Sipping their chocolate, the boys and the professor watched the sun slowly cross the zenith as they reclined in the shade of the big trees on either side of the road. Then each one half fell asleep in the lazy atmosphere.<br /> Jerry was the first to rouse up. He looked and saw it would soon be dusk, and then he awakened the others.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll have to travel, unless we want to sleep out in the open," he said.<br /> Thereupon they made preparations to leave, the professor gathering up his specimens, including the Mexican mosquito that had caused him such labor.<br /> "I think we'll head straight for the Rio Grande," said Jerry. "Once we get into Texas I expect we'll have some news from Nestor, as I wrote him to let us know how the mine was getting on, and, also, to inform us if he needed any help."<br /> "I'll be glad to see old Jim again," said Bob.<br /> "So will I," chimed in Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was soon chug-chugging over the road, headed toward the States, and the occupants were engaged with their thoughts. It was rapidly growing dusk, and the chief anxiety was to reach some town or village where they could spend the night. For, though they were used to staying in the open, they did not care to, now that the rainy season was coming on, when fevers were prevalent.<br /> The sun sank slowly to rest behind the big wooded hills as the auto glided along, and, almost before the boys realized it, darkness was upon them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Better light the lamps," suggested Ned. "No telling what we'll run into on this road. No use colliding with more ox carts, if we can help it."<br /> "I'll light up," volunteered Bob. "It will give me a chance to stretch my legs. I'm all cramped up from sitting still so long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry brought the big machine to a stop while Bob alighted and proceeded to illuminate the big search lamp and the smaller ones that burned oil. He had just started the acetylene gas aglow when, glancing forward he gave a cry of alarm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it?" cried Jerry, seeing that something was wrong. "Is it a mountain lion?"<br /> "It's worse!" cried Bob in a frightened voice.<br /> "What?"<br /> "A regular den of snakes! The horrible things are stretched right across the road, and we can't get past. Ugh! There are some whoppers!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, night, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Bob, who hated, above all creatures a snake, made a jump into the auto.<br /> "There's about a thousand of 'em!" he cried with a shudder.<br /> "Great!" exclaimed the professor. "I will have a chance to select some fine specimens. This is a rare fortune!"<br /> "Don't go out there!" gasped Bob. "You'll be bitten to death!"<br /> Just then there sounded on the stillness of the night a strange, whirring buzz. At the sound of it the professor started.<br /> "Rattlers!" he whispered. "I guess none of us will get out. Probably moccasins, cotton-mouths and vipers! There must be thousands of them!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> As he spoke he looked over the side of the car, and the exclamation he gave caused the boys to glance toward the ground. There they beheld a sight that filled them with terror.<br /> As the professor had said, the ground was literally covered with the snakes. The reptiles seemed to be moving in a vast body to some new location. There were big snakes and little ones, round fat ones, and long thin ones, and of many hues.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned. "Start the machine, Jerry!"<br /> "No! Don't!" called the professor. "You may kill a few, but the revolving wheels of the auto will fling some live ones up among us, and I have no desire to be bitten by any of these reptiles. They are too deadly. So keep the car still until they have passed. They are probably getting ready to go into winter quarters, or whatever corresponds to that in Mexico."<br /> "It will be lucky if they don't take a notion to climb up and investigate the machine and us," put in Jerry. "I have—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, health"><br /> <poem><br /> He gave a sudden start, for, at that instant one of the ugly reptiles, which had twined itself around the wheel spokes, reared its ugly head up, over the side of the front seat, and hissed, right in Jerry's face.<br /> "Here's one now!" the boy exclaimed as he made a motion to brush the snake aside.<br /> "Don't touch it as you value your life!" yelled the professor. "It's a diamond-backed rattler, and one of the most deadly!"<br /> "Here is another coming up on my side," called Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there are some coming up here!" shouted Ned. "They'll overwhelm us if we don't look out!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a time it seemed a serious matter. The snakes began twining up the sides of the car, and, though most of them dropped back to the ground again, a few maintained their position, and seemed to exhibit anger at the sight of the boys and the professor.<br /> "What shall we do?" asked Bob. "We can't run ahead, or go backward, and, if we stay here we're likely to be killed by the snakes."<br /> Jerry, who was feeling around in the bottom of the car for his rifle, gave a cry as his hand came in contact with something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, equipment, animal, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Get bitten?" asked the professor in alarm.<br /> "No, but I found this lariat," said Jerry in excited tones.<br /> "Are you going to lasso the snakes?" asked Ned, wondering if Jerry had gone crazy.<br /> "No, but you see this lariat is made of horse hair, and I think I can keep the snakes away with it."<br /> "How; by shaking it at 'em?"<br /> "No. I read in some book that snakes hated horse hair, and would never cross even a small ring of it."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "Well, if I run this lariat all around the auto the snakes will not cross it to come to us. Then we can stay here until they all disappear."<br /> "Good!" exclaimed Ned. "That's the ticket!"<br /> The reptiles that had climbed up the wheels had gone from sight. With the help of Ned and Bob, Jerry began to spread the horse-hair lariat in a circle about the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter III. - The Deserted Cabin (20-29) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, skill, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER III<br /> <br /> THE DESERTED CABIN<br /> <br /> In a few minutes the hair rope was all about the auto, spread out on the ground in an irregular circle. As the boys dropped it over the sides of the car the lariat struck several of the big snakes, and the reptiles shrunk away as though scorched by fire.<br /> "They're afraid of it all right!" exclaimed Ned. "I guess it will do the business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Sure enough, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the snakes to clear out of the vicinity of the hair rope. They glided off by scores, and soon there was a clear space all about the car, where, before, there had been hundreds of the crawling things.<br /> "Shake the lasso," suggested Bob, "and maybe it will scare them farther off."<br /> "Yes and we might try shooting a few now they are at a safe distance," put in Ned.<br /> "It's too bad I can't get some specimens," lamented the professor, "but I suppose you had better try to get rid of them."<br /> So Jerry, who had retained one end of the long lasso vibrated it rapidly, and, as it wiggled in sinuous folds toward the reptiles they made haste to get out of the way. Then Bob and Ned opened fire, killing several. In a little while there were no snakes to be seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, pleasure, risk, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we can go ahead now," said Jerry. "Who'll crank up the car? Don't all speak at once."<br /> "My arm is a bit sore," spoke Ned, rubbing his elbow.<br /> "Then you do it, Chunky," asked the steersman.<br /> "I think I have a stone in my foot," said Bob, making a wry face.<br /> "Ha! Ha!" laughed Jerry. "Why don't you two own up and say you're afraid there's a stray rattler or two under the machine, and you think it may bite you?"<br /> The two boys grinned sheepishly, and both made a motion to get out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, car part, passenger, dust, gasoline, driver, skill, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stay where you are," called the professor preparing to leave from the side door of the tonneau. "I'm used to snakes. I don't believe there are any left, but if there are I want them for specimens. I'll crank the car."<br /> So he got out and peered anxiously under the body, while the boys waited in anxiety.<br /> "No," called the scientist, in discouraged tones, "there are none left."<br /> He crawled out, covered with dust, which fact he did not seem to mind, and then turned the crank that sent the fly wheel over. Jerry turned on the gasolene and threw in the spark, and, the next instant the familiar chug-chug of the engine told that the auto was ready to bear the boys and Professor Snodgrass on their way. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, river, pleasure, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> They were headed on as straight a road as they could find to the Rio Grande, but, because of the conditions of the thoroughfares it would be several days before they could cross the big river and get into Texas. Their main concern now was to reach some place where there was shelter for the night.<br /> "Keep your eyes peeled for villages," called Ned. "We don't want to pass any. I think a good bed would go fine now."<br /> "A supper would go better," put in Bob.<br /> "Oh, of course! It wouldn't be Chunky if he didn't say something about eating," remarked Jerry with a laugh. "But there seems to be something ahead. It's a house at all events, and probably is the mark of the outskirts of the village."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, night, car part, nationality, parking, passenger, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> On the left side of the road, about a hundred yards ahead they saw an adobe, or mud hut. They could see no signs of life about in the half-darkness, illuminated as it was by the powerful search light, but this gave them no concern, as they knew the native Mexicans retired early.<br /> When they came opposite the hut Jerry brought the machine to a stop, and he and the other boys jumped out. The professor, who, as usual was arranging some specimens in one of the many small boxes he carried, remained in the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" shouted Bob. "Is any one home? Show a light. Can we get a supper here?"<br /> "Why don't you ask for a bed too?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Supper first," replied Chunky, rubbing his stomach with a reflective air.<br /> No replies came to the hail of the boys, and, in some wonder they approached nearer to the hut. Then they saw that the door was ajar, and that the cabin bore every appearance of being deserted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody home, I guess," said Jerry.<br /> "No, and there hasn't been for some time," added Ned.<br /> "Maybe there's a place to build a fire where we can cook a good meal," put in Bob, whereat his companions laughed.<br /> They went into the hut, and found, that, while it was in good condition, and furnished as well as the average native Mexican's abode, there was no sign of life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, car part, oil, equipment, night, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> "Might as well make ourselves to home," said Ned. "Come on in, professor," he called. "We'll stay here all night. No use traveling further when there is such a good shelter right at hand."<br /> It was now quite dark, and the boys brought in the two oil lamps from the auto, as well as a lantern, to illuminate the place. As they did so they disturbed a colony of bats which flew out with a great flutter of wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a charcoal stove, and plenty of fuel," said Bob, as he looked at the hearth. "Now we can cook something."<br /> "Well, seeing you are so fond of eating, we'll let you get the meal," said Jerry, and it was voted that Chunky should perform this office.<br /> Meanwhile the others brought in blankets to make beds on the frame work of cane that formed the sleeping quarters of whoever had last lived in the hut.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather queer sort of a shack," remarked Jerry, as he sat down in a corner on a pile of rugs. "Seems to have been left suddenly. They didn't even stop to take the dishes, and here is the remains of a meal," and he pointed to some dried frijoles in one corner of the main room or kitchen.<br /> "Perhaps the people who lived here were frightened away," came from Ned.<br /> "Well I'm tired enough not to let anything short of a regiment of soldiers in action scare me awake to-night," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Under Bob's direction supper was soon ready, and the travelers sat down to a good, if rather limited meal as far as variety went. There were no dishes to be washed, for they ate off wooden plates, of which they had a quantity and which they threw away after each meal. Then, after a good fire had been built on the hearth—for the night was likely to be chilly—the boys and the professor wrapped themselves up in their blankets and soon fell asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry must have been slumbering for several hours when he suddenly awakened as he heard a loud noise.<br /> "Who's there?" he called involuntarily, sitting up.<br /> It was so dark that at first he could distinguish nothing, but, as his eyes became used to the blackness he managed to make out, by the glow of the fire, a shadowy figure gliding toward the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" called the boy sharply, feeling under the rolled up blanket that served for a pillow, for his revolver. "Stop or I'll fire!"<br /> The shadowy figure halted. Then Jerry saw it drop down on all fours and begin to creep toward him. Though he was not a coward the boy felt his heart beating strangely, and he had a queer, creepy sensation down his spine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned, who was awakened by Jerry's voice.<br /> "Get your revolver, quick!" called Jerry. "There is some one in the hut besides ourselves! Look over by the fire!"<br /> "I see it! Shall I shoot?" asked Ned.<br /> There came a sudden crash, followed by a wild yell.<br /> "Help! Help! I'm killed! They are murdering me!" shouted Bob's voice. "They are choking me to death!"<br /> Bang! went Ned's gun. Fortunately it was aimed at the ceiling, or some one might have been hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" inquired the professor, who only just then awoke.<br /> "Robbers!" yelled Bob.<br /> "Brigands!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "Some one is in the cabin!" cried Jerry.<br /> By this time he had managed to creep over toward the fire, on which he threw some light wood. The glowing embers caught it, and as the blaze flared up it revealed a big monkey tangled up amid the folds of Bob's blanket, while Chunky was buried somewhere beneath the pile. The beast was struggling wildly to escape, but Bob, in his terror, had grabbed it by a leg.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop your noise!" commanded Jerry. "You're not hurt, Chunky!"<br /> "Are you sure they haven't killed me?" asked Bob, releasing his hold on the beast, which, with a wild chatter of fear, fled from the hut.<br /> "You ought to be able to give the best evidence on that score," said Jerry, as he lighted one of the lamps.<br /> "The fellow tried to choke me," sputtered Bob.<br /> "I guess the poor beast was as badly scared as you were," remarked the professor. "It was probably attracted in here by the light and warmth. Well, we seem bound to run up against excitement, night as well as day."<br /> "The monkey must have knocked something over," said Jerry. "I was awakened by the sound of something falling."<br /> They looked and saw that the beast had tried to eat the remains of the supper, and had upset a big pot.<br /> "I was sure it was a man, at first," explained Jerry, "and when I saw it go down and start over toward me I was afraid it was some of those Mexican brigands that traveled with Vasco Bilette and Noddy Nixon, when those rascals were on our trail."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was some time before the excitement caused by the monkey's visit died down sufficiently to allow the travelers to go to sleep again. It was morning when they awoke, and prepared to get breakfast.<br /> "We need some water to make coffee," said Jerry, who had agreed to get the morning meal. "As chief cook and bottle washer I delegate Bob to find some. Take the pail in the auto."<br /> Bob started for the receptacle, and, as he reached the door of the hut he gave a cry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry and Ned.<br /> "There's a man out here," replied Bob.<br /> "Well, he won't bite you," said Jerry. "Who is he?"<br /> "Pardon, senors," called a voice, and then, into the hut staggered a Mexican, who bore evidences of having passed through a hard fight. His face was cut and bruised, one arm hung limply at his side, and his clothing was torn.<br /> "What's the matter?" cried Jerry.<br /> Before the stranger could reply he had fallen forward in a faint.<br /> "Bring some water! Quick!" called Ned.<br /> "Let me see to him! I have a little liquor here!" exclaimed the professor, kneeling down beside the prostrate form.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IV. - News from the Mine (30-38) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="river, night, nationality, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IV<br /> <br /> NEWS FROM THE MINE<br /> <br /> By the use of the strong stimulant the Mexican was revived. His eyes opened, and he sat up, muttering something in Spanish which the boys could not catch.<br /> The professor, however, made reply, and, at the words the stranger seemed to brighten up. He drank some water, and then, at the suggestion of Mr. Snodgrass the boys brought him some food, which the native ate as if he had fasted for a week.<br /> His hunger satisfied, he began to talk rapidly to the professor, who listened attentively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" asked Jerry at length.<br /> "It seems that the poor man lives in this hut," explained the scientist. "Night before last some robbers came in, took nearly everything he had and beat him. Then, driving him into the forest they left him. Only just now did he dare to venture back, fearing to find his enemies in possession of his home. He is weak from lack of food and from the treatment he received."<br /> The boys felt sorry for the Mexican, and, at Jerry's suggestion they gave him a sum of money, which, while it was small enough to the travelers, meant a great deal to the native. He poured forth voluble thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, nationality, navigation, river, animal, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As the boys and the professor were anxious to get under way, a start was made as soon as it was found that the native was not badly hurt, and that he was able to summon help from friends in a near-by village if necessary. With final leave-takings the travelers started off.<br /> For several days and nights they journeyed north, toward the Rio Grande, which river separated them from the United States. Once they crossed that they would be in Texas.<br /> "And we can't get there any too soon," remarked Bob, one morning after a sleepless night, passed in the open, during which innumerable fleas attacked the travelers.<br /> It was toward dusk, one evening, about a week after having left the City of Mexico that the boys and the professor found themselves on a road, which, upon inquiry led to a small Mexican town, on the bank of the Rio Grande, nearly opposite Eagle Pass, Texas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we cross over to-night or wait until morning?" asked the professor of the boys. "Probably it would be better to wait until daylight. I could probably gather a few more specimens then."<br /> This was something of which the scientist, who rejoiced in such letters as A.M.; Ph.D.; M.D.; F. R. G. S.; A. G. S., etc., after his name, all indicating some college honor conferred upon him, never seemed to tire. He was making a collection for his own college, as well as gathering data for four large books, which, some day, he intended to issue.<br /> "I'd rather get over on our land if we can," said Ned, and he seemed to voice the sentiments of the others. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, rural, animal, risk, car part, gasoline, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided, somewhat against the professor's wish, to run the automobile on the big flat-bottomed scow, which served as a ferry, and proceed across the stream.<br /> Quite a crowd of villagers came out to see the auto as it chug-chugged up to the ferry landing, and not a few of the children and dogs were in danger of being run over until Ned, who was steering, cut out the muffler, and the explosions of the gasolene, unconfined by any pipes, made so much noise that all except the grown men were frightened away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was no one at the ferry house, and after diligent inquiries it was learned that the captain and crew of the boat had gone off to a dance about five miles away.<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay on this side after all," remarked the professor. "I think—"<br /> What he thought he did not say, for just then he happened to catch sight of something on the shoulder of one of the Mexicans, who had gathered in a fringe about the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stand still, my dear man!" called the professor, as with cat-like tread he crept toward the native.<br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" muttered the man, thinking, evidently, that the old scientist was out of his wits.<br /> "Don't move! Please don't move!" pleaded Mr. Snodgrass, forgetting in his excitement that his hearer could not understand his language. "There is a beautiful specimen of a Mexican katy-did on your coat. If I get it I will have a specimen worth at least thirty dollars!"<br /> He made a sudden motion. The Mexican mistook the import of it, and, seemingly thinking he was about to be assaulted, raised his hand in self defense, and aimed a blow at the professor.<br /> It was only a glancing one, but it knocked the scientist down, and he fell into the road.<br /> "There, the katy-did got away after all," Mr. Snodgrass exclaimed, not seeming to mind his personal mishap in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This time the professor spoke in Spanish. The Mexican understood, and was profuse in his apologies. He conversed rapidly with his companions, and, all at once there was a wild scramble after katy-dids. So successful was the hunt that the professor was fairly burdened with the insects. He took as many as he needed, and thanked his newly found friends for their efforts.<br /> Matters quieted down after a bit. Darkness fell rapidly and, the Mexican on whom the professor had seen the katy-did invited the travelers to dine with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He proved to be one of the principal men of the village, and his house, though not large, was well fitted up. The boys and the professor enjoyed the best meal they had eaten since leaving the City of Mexico.<br /> "Do me the honor to spend the night here," said the Mexican, after the meal.<br /> "Thank you, if it will not disturb your household arrangements, we will," replied the professor. "We must make an early start, however, and cross the river the first thing in the morning."<br /> "It will be impossible," replied Senor Gerardo, their host.<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Because to-morrow starts the Feast of San Juarez, which lasts for three days, and not a soul in town, including the ferry-master, will work in that time."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "If you do not cross to-night you will not be able to make the passage until the end of the week," was the answer.<br /> "Then let's start to-night," spoke Jerry. "We went over the Rio Grande after dark once before."<br /> "Yes, and a pretty mess we made of it," said Ned, referring to the collision they had with the house-boat, as told of in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought they said the ferry-master was away to a dance," put in Bob.<br /> "He is, Senor," replied their host, who managed to understand the boy's poor Spanish. "However, if he knew the Americanos wanted him, and would go for him in their big marvelous—fire-spitting wagon, and—er—that is if they offered him a small sum, he might be prevailed upon to leave the<br /> dance."<br /> "Let's try it, at all events," suggested Jerry. "I'm anxious to get over the line and into the United States. A stay of several days may mean one of a week. When these Mexicans get feasting they don't know when to stop."<br /> He spoke in English, so as not to offend their kind friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, animal, slowness, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> It was arranged that Jerry and Senor Gerardo should go in the auto for the ferry-master, and summon him to the river with his men, who could come on their fast ponies.<br /> This was done, and, though the master of the boat demurred at leaving the pleasures of the dance, he consented when Jerry casually showed a gold-piece. He and his men were soon mounted and galloped along, Jerry running the auto slowly to keep pace with them. The five miles were quickly covered and, while half the population of the village came out to see the strange machine ferried over, the boys and the professor bade farewell to the country where they had gone through so many strange adventures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="A"><br /> <poem><br /> It was nearly ten o'clock when the big flat-bottomed boat grounded on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande.<br /> "Hurrah for the United States!" exclaimed Bob. "Now I can get a decent meal without having to swallow red peppers, onions and chocolate!"<br /> "There goes Chunky again," laughingly complained Ned. "No sooner does he land than he wants to feed his stomach. I believe if he had been with Christopher Columbus the first thing he would have inquired about on landing at San Salvador would be what the Indians had good to eat."<br /> "Oh you're as bad as I am, every bit!" said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, rural, plains, animal, pedestrian, South"><br /> <poem><br /> Eagle's Pass, where the travelers landed, was a typical Texas town, with what passed for a hotel, a store and a few houses where the small population lived. It was on the edge of the border prairies and the outlying districts were occupied by cattle ranches.<br /> Nearly all, if not quite all, of the male population came down to the dock to see the unusual sight of a big touring automobile on the ferry boat. Many were the comments made by the ranchmen and herders.<br /> After much pulling and hauling the car was rolled from the big scow, and the travelers, glad to feel that they were once more in their own country, began to think of a place to spend the night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the nearest hotel?" asked Jerry of a man in the crowd.<br /> "Ain't but one, stranger, an' it's right in front of you," was the reply, as the cowboy pointed to a small, one story building across the street from the river front.<br /> "Is Professor Driedgrass in that bunch?" asked a voice as the travelers were contemplating the hostelry. "If he is I have a letter for him."<br /> "I am Professor Snodgrass," replied the scientist, looking toward the man who had last spoken.<br /> "Beg your pardon, Professor Snodgrass. I kinder got my brands mixed," the stranger went on. "Anyhow I'm th' postmaster here, an' I've been holdin' a letter for ye most a week. It says it's to be delivered to a man with three boys an' a choo-choo wagon, an' that description fits you."<br /> "Where's it from?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Come in a letter to me, from a feller named Nestor, up at a place in the mining section," was the reply. "Th' letter to me said you might likely pass this way on your journey back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter V. - Trouble Ahead (39-45) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river,"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER V<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AHEAD<br /> <br /> "I remember now, I did write to Nestor, telling him we were about to start back, and would probably cross the river at this place," spoke the professor. "I had forgotten all about it."<br /> "Well, here's your letter," said the postmaster. "Now allow me to welcome you to our city, which I do in the name of the Mayor—which individual you see in me—and the Common Council, which consists of Pete Blaston, only he ain't here, in consequent of bein' locked up for disturbin' th' peace an' quiet of the community by shootin' a Greaser."<br /> "Glad to meet you, I am sure," replied the scientist politely, as he received the letter from the dual official.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "What is the news from Nestor?" asked Jerry anxiously. "Is the mine all right?"<br /> "I'll tell you right away," replied Mr. Snodgrass, as, by the light of the gas lantern on the auto he read the letter.<br /> As he glanced rapidly over the pages his face took on an anxious look.<br /> "Is there anything wrong?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is indeed," replied the professor gravely. "The letter was written over a week ago, and, among other things Nestor says there is likely to be trouble over the mine."<br /> "What kind? Is Noddy Nixon trying to get it away from us again?" asked Jerry. <br /> "No," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "It appears our title is not as good as it might be. There is one of the former owners of the land where the mine is located who did not sign the deed. He was missing when the transfer was made, but Nestor did not know this, so there is a cloud on our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought we claimed the land from the government, and were the original owners," put in Ned.<br /> "It seems that a company of men owned the mine before we did, but they sold out to Nestor and some of his friends. They all signed the deed but this one man, and now some one has learned of this, and seeks to take the mine, on the theory that they have as good a claim to the holding as<br /> we have."<br /> "I should say that was trouble," sighed Bob. "To think of losing what we worked so hard to get!"<br /> "Well, there's no use crossing a bridge until you come to it," Professor Snodgrass went on. "Nestor and his friends are in possession yet, and that, you know, is nine of the ten points of the law."<br /> "Then if we can't do anything right away I move we have something to eat," suggested Bob.<br /> "It's a good suggestion," agreed the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had drawn a little to one side from the crowd of townspeople while talking about the letter from Nestor, but, having decided there was nothing to be done at present, they moved toward the hotel.<br /> "I reckon I've got some more mail for your outfit, Professor Hayseed—er I beg yer pardon—Snodgrass," said the postmaster-mayor. "There's letters fer chaps named Baker, Slade and Hopkins. Nestor sent 'em along with that other," and the dual official handed over three envelopes.<br /> "They're from home!" cried the boys in a chorus. And in the glare of oil lamps on the porch of the hotel they read the communications.<br /> The missives contained nothing but good news, to the effect that all the loved ones were well. Each one inquired anxiously how much longer the travelers expected to stay away, and urged them to come home as soon as they could.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, cowboy, nationality, metaphor, safety, weapon, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for that supper!" exclaimed Bob, as he put his letter away.<br /> If the meal was a rough one, prepared as it was by the Chinese cook, it was good, and the travelers enjoyed it thoroughly. As they rose from the table a cowboy entered the dining room and drawled out:<br /> "I say strangers, be you th' owners of that there rip-snortin' specimen of th' lower regions that runs on four wheels tied 'round with big sassages?"<br /> "Do you mean the automobile?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I reckon I do, if that's what ye call it."<br /> "Yes, it's our machine," replied Jerry.<br /> "Then if ye have any great love for th' workin' of it in the future, an' any regard or consideration for it's feelin' ye ought t' see to it."<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Nothin'," drawled the cowboy as he carefully pared his nails with a big bowie knife; "nothin' only Bronco Pete is amusin' his self by tryin' t' see how near he can come to stickin' his scalpin' steel inter th' tires!"<br /> "Great Scott! We must stop that!" exclaimed Jerry, running from the hotel toward where the auto had been left in the street. The other boys and the professor followed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, pleasure, cowboy, weapon, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> They found the machine surrounded by quite a crowd that seemed to be much amused at something which was taking place in its midst. Making their way to the inner circle of spectators the boys beheld an odd sight.<br /> A big cowboy, who, from appearances had indulged too freely in something stronger than water, was unsteadily trying to stick his big knife into the rubber tires.<br /> "Here! You mustn't do that," cried Jerry, sharply, laying his hand on the man's shoulder.<br /> "Look out for him! He's dangerous!" warned some of the bystanders.<br /> "I can't help it if he is," replied Jerry. "We can't let him ruin the tires."<br /> "This is the time I do it!" cried Bronco Pete, as he made a lunge for the front wheel. Jerry sprang forward and the crowd held its breath, for it seemed as if the boy was right in the path of the knife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Jerry knew what he was about. With a quick motion he kicked the cowboy lightly on the wrist, the blow knocking the knife from his hand, and sending it some distance away.<br /> "Look out now, sonny!" called a man to Jerry. "No one ever hit Pete an' lived after it."<br /> It seemed that Jerry was in a dangerous position. Pete, enraged at being foiled of his purpose, uttered a beast-like roar, and reached back to where his revolver rested at his hip in a belt. Jerry never moved an inch, but looked the man straight in the eye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! None of that Pete!" called a voice suddenly, and a big man pushed his way through the crowd, and grabbed the cowboy's arm before he had time to draw his gun. "If you don't want to get into trouble move on!"<br /> "All right, Marshall; all right," replied Pete, the desire of shooting seeming to die out as he looked at the newcomer. "I were only havin' a little fun with th' tenderfoot."<br /> "You didn't appear to scare him much," remarked the town marshall, who had seen the whole thing. "You had your nerve with you all right, son," he added, to Jerry.<br /> "That's what he had," commented Pete. "There ain't many men would have done what he did, an' I admire him for it. Put it there, stranger," and Pete, all the anger gone from him, extended a big hand, which Jerry grasped heartily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Three cheers for the 'tenderfoot,'" called some one, and they were given with a will for Jerry, as Pete, under the guidance of the marshall, moved unsteadily away.<br /> "I wouldn't have been in your boots one spell there, for a good bit," observed the postmaster as he came up. "Pete's about as bad as they come."<br /> "I didn't stop to think of the danger, or maybe I wouldn't have done as I did," said Jerry. "All I thought of was that he would spoil the tire, and it would take a long while to fix it."<br /> "Yes, and we don't want to delay any longer than we can help," spoke Ned in a low voice. "I'm anxious to get back to the mine and see what we can do to perfect our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VI. - On a Strange Road (46-54) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="storm, animal, rain, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, navigation, bridge"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VI<br /> <br /> ON A STRANGE ROAD<br /> <br /> For several days they made good progress, for the roads were in fair condition. The machine was kept headed as nearly as possible toward Arizona, though they often had to go some distance out of their way to get rid of bad places, or find a ford or bridge to cross a stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="South"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll soon be out of Texas," remarked Bob one afternoon, when they had passed through a small ranch town where they had dinner.<br /> "And I think we're going to get a wetting before we leave the big state," put in Ned.<br /> "I think you're right," agreed the professor, as he turned and looked at a bank of ugly dark clouds in the southwest. "A thunder shower is coming up, if I'm any judge. There doesn't seem to be any shelter, either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, North, driver, wind, lightning, thunder, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> As far as they could see there was nothing but a vast stretch of wild country, though, far to the north, there was a dark patch which looked as if it was a forest.<br /> "It's coming just at the wrong time," remarked Jerry, who was steering. "I was in hopes the storm would hold off a bit. Well, we shan't melt if it does rain."<br /> And that it was soon going to pour in the proverbial buckets full was evident. The wind began to blow a half gale, and the clouds, from which angry streaks of jagged lightning leaped, scurried forward. At the same time low mutterings of thunder were heard.<br /> "We're in for it," cried Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, rain, visibility, lightning, thunder, driver, equipment, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant the storm broke, and the whole landscape was blotted out in a veil of mist and rain which came down in sheets of water. Now and then the darkness would be illuminated by a vivid flash of fire from the sky artillery, and the thunder seemed to shake the earth.<br /> Jerry could barely see where to steer, so fiercely did the rain beat down. Fortunately they had time to put on their raincoats before the deluge hit them.<br /> The provisions and other things in the auto had, likewise, been covered up with canvas, so little damage would result from the downpour.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, braking, slowness, visibility, animal, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> "Look out!" yelled Ned suddenly to Jerry. "There's something ahead of us!"<br /> Jerry partially shut off the power, and, as the machine slowed down, he and the others peered forward to see what the object was.<br /> "It's some sort of an animal!" cried Bob, who had sharp eyes. "It's running along on four legs, right in front of the car!"<br /> "It's a bear, that's what it is!" shouted Ned. "A big black bear!"<br /> "Let me get it for a specimen!" exclaimed the professor, in his enthusiasm, not considering the size of the animal, nor the difficulties in the way of capturing it. "Let me get out! It's worth forty dollars if it's worth a cent!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, animal, sound, risk, car part, parking, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> At the sound of the excited voices, which the animal must have heard above the roar of the storm, the bear turned suddenly and faced the occupants of the car. So quickly was it done that Jerry had barely time to jam on the brakes in order to avoid a collision.<br /> "Why didn't you run him down, and we could have some bear steaks for supper?" asked Bob.<br /> "Because I don't think it's just healthy to run into a three hundred and fifty pound bear with a big auto," replied Jerry. "We might kill the bear, but we'd be sure to damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> The beast did not appear to be frightened at the sight of his natural enemies. Raising on its haunches the animal slowly ambled toward the stalled machine, growling in a menacing manner.<br /> "I believe he's going to attack us!" exclaimed the professor. "Let me get out my rifle!"<br /> But this was easier said than done. The weapons and ammunition were all under the canvas, and it would require several minutes to get at them.<br /> In the meanwhile the bear, showing every indication of rage was trying to climb up on the engine hood, despite the throbbing of the engine, which was going, though the gears were not thrown in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, risk, animal, storm, wind, rain, thunder, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Start the car and run over him!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Back up and get out of his way!" was Ned's advice to Jerry.<br /> "I've got to do something," muttered the steersman.<br /> Matters were getting critical. The storm was increasing in violence, with the wind lashing the rain into the faces of the travelers. The growls of the angry beast mingled with the rumble and rattle of thunder, and the machine was shaking under the efforts Bruin made to climb over the hood and into the front seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, car part, skill, driver, gasoline, animal, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hold on tight! I'm going to start!" yelled Jerry suddenly.<br /> He threw in the intermediate gear and opened wide the gasolene throttle. The car sprang forward like a thing alive. But the bear had too good a hold with his long sharp claws sticking in the ventilator holes of the hood, to be shaken off.<br /> "I should think he'd burn on the water radiator," said Ned.<br /> "His fur's too thick I guess," was Bob's reply.<br /> On went the auto, the boys and the professor clinging to it for dear life, while Bruin hung on, half crazed with fear and anger.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, sound, storm, visibility, rain, skill, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "How you going to get rid of him?" shouted Ned above the roar of the storm.<br /> "I'll show you," replied Jerry grimly.<br /> Some distance ahead the steersman had seen a sharp curve in the road. It was dimly discernible through the mist of water.<br /> "Hold tight everybody!" shouted Jerry a second or two before the turn was reached.<br /> Then, suddenly swinging around it, at as sharp an angle as he dared to make and not overturn the car, Jerry sent the auto skidding. The next instant, unable to stand the impetus of the turn, the bear lost its hold on the hood, and was flung, like a stone from a catapult, far off to the left, rolling over and over on the muddy ground.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, slowness, sound, animal, rain, storm, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "There, I guess it will be quite a while before he tries to eat up another live automobile," remarked Jerry as he slowed up a bit.<br /> Off in the distance they heard a sort of reproachful whine, as if Bruin objected to such treatment. Then the rain came down harder than ever, and all sight of the bear was lost.<br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned, as he felt a small stream of water trickling down his back. "Can't we strike for those woods we saw a while ago?"<br /> "I'm headed for them," spoke Jerry. "I just want to get my bearings. Guess we'd better light up, as it will soon be dusk."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="wind, rain, storm, car part, visibility, oil, road condition, navigation, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> After some difficulty in getting matches to burn in the wind and rain, the big search lights and the oil lanterns were lighted, and then, with four shafts of light cutting the misty darkness ahead of them the travelers proceeded.<br /> The roads seemed to be getting worse, but there was nothing to do except to keep on. Every now and then the machine would lurch into some hollow with force enough to almost break the springs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, North, car part, asphalt"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" cried Jerry suddenly. "Here are two roads. Which shall we take?"<br /> "The right seems to go a little more directly north," said the professor, peering forward. "Suppose we take that?"<br /> "Especially as it seems to be the better road," added Jerry.<br /> He turned the machine into it, and, to the surprise of all they felt the thoroughfare become hard and firm as the auto tires rolled over it. It was almost as smooth as asphalt, and the travelers were congratulating themselves on having made a wise choice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rain, storm, forest, scenery, visibility, metaphor, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> All at once the rain, which had been coming down in torrents, seemed to let up.<br /> "I believe it's clearing up," said Bob.<br /> "No, it's because we've run into a dense forest, and the trees above keep the rain off," spoke the professor.<br /> The others looked about them and saw that this was so. On every side the glare of the lamps showed big trunks and leafy branches, while ahead more trees could be observed.<br /> "Why it's just like a tunnel in the woods," said Bob. "See, the trees seem to meet in an arch overhead."<br /> "And what a fine road it is," put in Ned.<br /> "An altogether strange sort of road," agreed Jerry. "Suppose we stop and look about before we go any further? I don't like the looks of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, metaphor, macadam, road condition, forest, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the machine was brought to a halt, and the travelers alighted. They found it just as Bob had said, almost exactly like an immense tunnel in the forest. Beneath their feet the road was of the finest Macadam construction.<br /> "And to think of finding this in the midst of Texas," observed Jerry.<br /> "Some one built this road, and cut the trees to make this tunnel," remarked the professor. "I wonder what sort of a place we have stumbled into."<br /> "At all events it doesn't rain anything to speak of in here," said Bob, "and it's a good place to stay until the storm is over."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, forest, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry, in the meanwhile had walked on ahead some distance. In a few minutes he came hurrying back. His manner showed that he had seen something.<br /> "What is it?" asked the professor.<br /> "Don't make any noise, but follow me," replied the lad.<br /> In silence, and wondering what was about to happen, Bob, Ned and the scientist trailed after Jerry. He led them several hundred feet ahead of the automobile, and away from the glare of the lamps, the tunnel curving somewhat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See!" whispered Jerry, hoarsely.<br /> "Well, I never!"<br /> "That's queer!"<br /> There, about three hundred feet to the left of the main road and on a sort of side path, the travelers saw a small hut, brilliantly lighted up. Through an open window, a room could be seen, and several figures moving about in it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VII. - The Rescue of Tommy Bell (55-64) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VII<br /> <br /> THE RESCUE OF TOMMY BELL<br /> <br /> "I wonder who they can be, to hide off in the woods this way," whispered Bob.<br /> The next instant there floated out from the hut a cry of anguish. It was the voice of a boy, seemingly in great pain or fear, and the travelers heard the words:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! You are killing me! I don't know! I can't tell you, for I would if I could! Oh! Oh! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> "It's a gang torturing some one!" almost shouted Ned. "Let's go to the rescue!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have sprung forward had not Jerry laid a detaining hand on his arm.<br /> "Wait, Ned," counseled Jerry. "Some one there evidently needs our help, but we must go with caution. First we must get our guns. We may need them!"<br /> Once more the appealing cry burst out.<br /> "Quick!" whispered Jerry. "Professor, you and Bob go back for the rifles, and bring the bulls-eye lantern that has the dark slide to it. Ned and I will stay here and watch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Snodgrass and Bob lost no time. In less than five minutes they had rejoined Ned and Jerry.<br /> "Has anything happened?" asked Bob.<br /> "Nothing since," whispered Jerry. "Now we will go forward. Every one have his gun ready. I will carry the lantern."<br /> Almost as silently as shadows the four figures stole forward, Jerry showing a cautious gleam now and then to guide them on their way. They found there was a fairly good path leading up to the hut.<br /> They had covered half the distance when once more the cries of anguish burst out. This time they were followed by angry shouts, seemingly from several men, and voices in dispute could be heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of us had better creep forward and see what is going on inside the cabin," whispered Jerry. "We must know what sort of enemies we have to meet."<br /> "I'll go," volunteered Bob.<br /> "Better let me," suggested the professor. "I have had some experience in stalking animals, and I can probably advance more quietly than you can."<br /> They all saw the reasonableness of this and the scientist started off. Like a cat he made an advance until he was so close to the hut that he could peer into the uncurtained window. What he saw made him start back in terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the room were half a dozen roughly dressed men, all armed, and with brutal faces. The room was filled with smoke from cigars and pipes, and cards were scattered over a rough table in the middle of the apartment.<br /> But what attracted the attention of the professor and made his heart beat fast in anger, was the sight of a small, pale boy, bound with ropes up against a big stone fireplace, on the hearth of which logs were burning.<br /> In front of the lad stood one of the largest and strongest of the tough gang, and in his hand he held a redhot poker, which, as the scientist watched, he brought close to the bare legs of the terror-stricken lad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then came again those heart-rending cries:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! I would tell you where he is if I knew! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> The professor's blood boiled.<br /> "We'll soon put a stop to this horrible work!" he exclaimed to himself as he glided back to where the boys were and quickly made them acquainted with what he had seen.<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must rescue that boy!"<br /> As softly as they could, the travelers advanced toward the hut. They found the door and, while the others with rifles in readiness stood in a semi-circle about it, Jerry made ready to knock and demand admittance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If they don't open the door we must burst it in," said the boy. "The professor and I will look to that, while you and Ned, Bob, must stand ready to rush in right after us with your guns ready. But don't shoot unless your life is in danger, and then fire not to kill, but to wound."<br /> There was a minute of hesitation, for they all realized that it was taking a desperate chance to tackle such a rough gang in the midst of woods, far from civilization. But the sound of the poor boy's cries nerved them on as, once more, the pitiful appeal for mercy rang out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry sprang forward and gave several vigorous blows on the door with the butt of his gun. All at once silence took the place of the confusion inside the hut.<br /> "Who's there? What do you want?" asked a gruff voice.<br /> "Open the door! We want that boy!" cried Jerry.<br /> Confused murmurs from within told that the gang had been taken by surprise.<br /> "I don't know who you are, but whoever you are you had better move on, if you don't want a bullet through you," called the man who had first answered the knock. "This is none of your affair."<br /> "Open the door or we'll burst it in!" cried Jerry, knowing the best way to be successful in the fight was to act quickly and take the men by surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a laugh from within the hut. It was answered by a rending, crashing splintering sound as Jerry and the professor, using the stocks of their guns, began a vigorous attack on the portal. The door was strong enough, but the hinges were not, and, in less than half a minute the barrier had given way and, with a bound the travelers found themselves tumbling into the hut.<br /> Instantly confusion reigned. The men shouted hoarsely, and several tried to reach their guns, which were stacked in one corner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hands up!" commanded Jerry sharply, leveling his gun at the man who seemed to be the leader.<br /> "Why, they're nothing but boys! Knock 'em out of the way!" cried one of the gang. At the same time another began creeping up behind Jerry, his intention being to grab the lad from the back and disarm him.<br /> But Bob saw the movement, and, leveling his rifle at the fellow, told him to halt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess you've got the drop on us," growled the man whom Jerry was covering with the gun. "What's the game anyhow? Are you stage robbers?"<br /> "We want you to stop torturing that boy," cried Jerry.<br /> "Why, that's my kid, and I was only givin' him a taste of the rod because he wouldn't mind me; 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' is a good saying, you know."<br /> "Not from you!" snapped the professor. "Is this man your father?" the scientist asked the bound boy.<br /> "Speak up now! Ain't I your daddy?" put in the leader, scowling at the boy.<br /> "Tell the truth! Don't let him scare you!" said the professor reassuredly. "We are in charge here now. Is he your father?"<br /> "No—no—sir," stammered the poor little lad, and then he burst into tears.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought so!" commented the scientist. "Now you scoundrels clear out of here before we cause your arrest!"<br /> "You're talkin' mighty high," sneered the leader, "but look out! This matter is none of your affair, and that boy belongs to us!"<br /> "Take me away! Oh, please take me away! They'll kill me!" sobbed the lad.<br /> There was such a fiery look in the professor's eye as he leveled his gun at the gang of men that they started back, evidently fearing to be fired upon.<br /> "Come on!" called one. "We'll get some of the Mexicans and then we'll see who's runnin' things around here!"<br /> With that the gang sneaked out of the door, leaving the boys and the professor master of the situation. Their first act was to unbind the lad, who was almost fainting from pain and fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there any more of them?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Yes," said the boy faintly. "There are a lot of half-breed Mexicans in the gang. They are in a hut about a mile farther up the road, where they keep a lot of horses on a ranch."<br /> "Then perhaps we'd better get out of here while we have a chance," said the professor. "We can't fight a score or more. Let's take the boy and hurry away."<br /> "Come on then," said Jerry. "We'll get back to the auto. I only hope these men don't discover it and damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, equipment, risk, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> But when an attempt to start was made it was found that the boy, who said, in response to an inquiry from Ned, that his name was Tommy Bell, was unable to walk. The ropes bound about his legs had caused the blood to stagnate in the veins.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Jerry. "Bob, you and Ned go ahead with the lantern, and the professor and I will carry Tommy. Step lively now!"<br /> Moving in that order the procession started, and in a few minutes the travelers were back at the machine, which did not seem to have been disturbed. There was no sight or sound of the gang.<br /> Tommy was made as comfortable as possible, and then there was a brief consultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, forest, road condition, night, moonlight, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Which way had we better go?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I think it would be best to turn around," said Bob. "We'll run up against the gang if we go ahead."<br /> "The best road is straight ahead through this woods," spoke Tommy. "If you take the other your machine will get stuck."<br /> "Then we'll take this one, and trust to luck not to have any trouble with the gang," decided Jerry, as he cranked up the car.<br /> Just as they started the moon came out from the clouds, for the rain had ceased, and, though not many of the silver beams shone through the thick foliage, it was much lighter than it had been. Jerry threw in the gear and the next instant the car glided forward and shot along the tunnel of trees, leaving the hut where Tommy Bell had been a prisoner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, forest, scenery, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Is the Mexican camp near this main road?" asked the professor of Tommy.<br /> "About three hundred feet in," answered the boy, who was feeling much better.<br /> "How many men are at it?"<br /> "About one hundred, I guess, from what I heard them say."<br /> "Then I guess we'd better go past it on the fly," muttered Jerry, as he speeded up the machine until it was skimming along at a fast rate. In a little while there was a gleam of light through the trees ahead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound, risk, visibility, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the camp!" exclaimed Tommy.<br /> A minute later the travelers were made well aware of it, for, as they whizzed past in the auto, they heard shouts of anger, mingling with the sounds of rushing feet, while an occasional pistol shot rang out, the flash of fire cutting the darkness.<br /> "They saw us," spoke Bob. "Lucky it was pretty dark, or they might have damaged the auto."<br /> "To say nothing of ourselves," added Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VIII. - Pursued by Enemies (65-71) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VIII<br /> <br /> PURSUED BY ENEMIES<br /> <br /> As the auto sped along, Professor Snodgrass asked Tommy Bell how he had come to the hut in the forest.<br /> "Those men took me there," replied the boy.<br /> "And what did they try to make you do?" asked Jerry.<br /> "They wanted me to tell them where my father was," went on Tommy. "I could not because I did not know, and they burned me, because they did not believe I was telling the truth."<br /> "What did they want of your father?" inquired Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "They want him to sign some papers connected with some property," went on Tommy. "I don't know much about it, except that father used to work with those men developing a mine. It didn't pay, and they left it, after selling it to some other men. I lived with my father, and my mother was alive then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="safety, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boy stopped, and, at the mention of his mother's name began to cry softly.<br /> "Poor little lad," muttered the professor, putting his arm, with a sort of caressing motion about Tommy. "Don't cry, lad," the scientist went on, in what seemed a sort of husky voice, for he was very fond of children; "don't worry, we'll look out for you; won't we, boys?"<br /> "You bet!" exclaimed Jerry, Ned and Bob in one voice.<br /> The auto was slowed down now, as there seemed to be no danger of pursuit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After mother died," Tommy resumed, "and the mine did not pay, father started prospecting with Nat Richards and the others in that crowd. But they were bad men, and soon got the better of my dad, taking away what little money he had left.<br /> "This ruined my father, and he grew discouraged, for he was old, and in poor health. He wandered away and I haven't seen him for nearly a year. I traveled about, doing what little work I could get to do, until I struck Texas. One day, about a week ago, I passed a ranch, the same one<br /> we just came by. I asked for work, and got it. Then I found the same men owned it that had ruined my father.<br /> "As soon as Nat Richards saw me he demanded to know where dad was. I couldn't tell, and then he promised me one hundred dollars if I would tell. He said they needed my father's signature to a paper.<br /> "I don't know as I would have told them where dad was if I did know. When I kept on refusing to give them the information, Nat Richards grew ugly. He had me taken off to the hut where you found me, and said he'd starve me to death if I didn't tell.<br /> "I almost did die from hunger," Tommy went on with a catch in his voice. "Then they tried torture. They burned me on the legs with a hot poker. That's what they were doing when you came in," and, overcome again by the thought of all he had suffered Tommy cried bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, car part, accident, sound, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys and the professor did all they could to comfort the friendless lad, and, soon Tommy's grief wore off.<br /> "We'll take you along with us," said Jerry heartily, "and we'll try to help you find your father. Where did you see him last?"<br /> "He was in Arizona," answered Tommy.<br /> "That's just where we're headed for," exclaimed Bob. "We'll take you there all right."<br /> Jerry leaned forward to throw in the higher speed gear when there was a sudden ripping, breaking sound, and the auto began to slow up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, driver, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned.<br /> "Stripped the gear, I'm afraid," replied the steersman. "This is a nice pickle to be in."<br /> "Won't it run on the low or intermediate gear?" asked Bob.<br /> Jerry tried them, and found they were all right.<br /> "I guess we'd better stop here for the night," he said. "We may need the high gear any minute, and perhaps I can fix it in the morning. I have a spare wheel."<br /> "Then let's camp and have supper," said Bob eagerly. "I haven't eaten in a week by the way I feel."<br /> "Same here! I agree with you for once, Chunky," spoke Jerry. "It has been a long time since dinner, but with the excitement of the storm, the bear, and rescuing Tommy I didn't notice it before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while the camping outfit was taken from the automobile, and a fire started in the sheet-iron stove, with the charcoal that was carried to be used in emergencies, such as being unable to find dry wood after a rain.<br /> Ned ground the coffee, while Bob went in search of water, using the lantern to aid him in the somewhat dim forest, though the moon helped some. He found a spring close at hand, and soon a fragrant beverage was steaming under the trees. Then some bacon was placed in the frying pan, and the hard tack was taken from the tin and other things prepared.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Fall to!" commanded Ned, who was acting as cook, and fall to they all did, with a will.<br /> "Do you often camp out and eat in the woods like this?" asked Tommy. "I think it's jolly fun," and the lad, who was about twelve years old, laughed for the first time since his rescue. He, too, was eating with an appetite that showed he needed the food.<br /> Jerry briefly related some of their travel adventures, at which Tommy opened his eyes to their widest extent.<br /> "Cracky! But you have had stunning times!" he exclaimed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The meal having been finished, they began to think of getting some sleep. Blankets were brought out, and rolling themselves up in them the boys and the professor were soon in the land of nod.<br /> It was nearly dawn when Jerry was suddenly awakened by the far off baying of a dog. At first he could not imagine what the sound was, and sat up to listen more intently. Then a long, mournful howl was borne to him on the wind.<br /> "That's strange," he muttered. "There are very few dogs about here. I wonder what it is."<br /> At the same time Tommy Bell roused up, and he, too, heard the sound.<br /> "It's the gang after us!" he exclaimed. "They have a lot of hounds on the ranch! Hurry up! Let's get out of this!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, risk, night, speed, equipment, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark!" exclaimed Jerry, raising his hand.<br /> Then the boys heard, faint and far off, the sound of galloping horses.<br /> "They're coming!" cried Jerry.<br /> His cry awakened the others, who sat up bewildered and heavy from sound sleep.<br /> "Lively's the word!" called Jerry. "They're after us!"<br /> No further explanation was needed, for all knew what Jerry meant. There was a hasty piling of blankets into the auto; the stove was packed up, and, while the travelers jumped into the car, Jerry went in front to crank it up. The cheerful chug-chug told that the machinery was in good working order, and then, the boy, leaping into the steersman's seat, threw in the low gear for the start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, skill, sound, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> As he did so Ned glanced back and saw, coming around the bend of the forest road a score of horsemen and a pack of dogs.<br /> "Speed her up, Jerry!" called Bob.<br /> "I will!" was the exclamation, as Jerry leaned forward to throw in the high gear. A mournful screeching of the engine was the only response.<br /> "I forgot! The high gear is broken!" the steersman cried. "We can only use the intermediate, and that is not very fast!"<br /> "It's the best we can do, though!" said Bob. "We may get away from them!"<br /> On the intermediate cogs the auto made good speed, and, for a while, distanced the gang, the members of which, with shouts of rage, put their horses to their best effort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IX. - Into the Cave (72-80) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, risk, animal, topograpy"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="forest, metaphor, speed, animal, skill, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IX<br /> <br /> INTO THE CAVE<br /> <br /> The sun began to peep up from beneath the eastern hills, throwing a rosy light over the earth. The woods began to thin out, and the sides of the "tunnel," which had been dense, became more open, so that glimpses of the country could be seen now and then.<br /> The chase was now on in earnest. For some time, however, the auto kept well in advance of the horsemen, for Jerry used all the power possible on the differential gear. If the high speed one had been in working order there would have been no question of the outcome, but, for once, luck was against the boys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, road condition, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Nearer and nearer came the gang on horseback. They got so close that their shouts to halt could be plainly heard. But Jerry was not going to give up. He gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel with a firmer grasp.<br /> "We seem to be slacking up," observed Ned.<br /> "That's what we are," spoke Jerry. "The auto is going back on us."<br /> The car did seem to be dragging, and there was no excuse for it in the condition of the road, which was a fine level one.<br /> "The car needs repairing," said Jerry, "and the way I have to run it isn't the best thing in the world for it."<br /> "Do you think they'll catch up to us?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid so," muttered Jerry. "We are going the limit now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, metaphor, car part, accident, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The thunder of the horses sounded nearer and the shouts of the pursuing gang came more plainly on the morning breeze. The auto coughed and wheezed, seeming like a man who has run far and is about to collapse. The explosions became less frequent, and finally one of the cylinders ceased to work altogether, leaving only three in commission.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" muttered Jerry, as, by a hasty glance back he saw the men spurring their horses on.<br /> "You'd better give up!" one of the gang shouted.<br /> "Not yet, you scoundrels!" cried Jerry, as he advanced the sparkling lever to the final notch. This seemed to be the last straw to the auto engine, for with a dismal snort it stopped short.<br /> "This settles it," muttered Ned grimly. "We are done for."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, speed, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Fortunately, however, they were on a slight slope now, and the car, with the impetus it had gathered, began to glide down the hill under its own momentum.<br /> But the horsemen were not one thousand feet in the rear and were drawing nearer. There seemed to be no help at hand and there was every indication that the boys would fall into the hands of their desperate enemies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, tree, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> "How much farther can we go?" asked Tommy suddenly.<br /> "To the foot of the hill," replied Jerry. "Why do you ask?"<br /> "That's far enough!" exclaimed Tommy. "I guess we can escape them."<br /> "How?"<br /> "Steer straight for that dead pine tree," replied the young lad, "and when you get almost to it, make a wide turn to the right."<br /> "What good will that do?"<br /> "There's a big cave right at the foot of the hill," replied Tommy. "I know for I passed it as I was tramping toward the ranch. It is large enough to take in the auto, and maybe we can hold it against the gang."<br /> "Hurrah!" shouted Jerry, as he shifted the wheel to conform with Tommy's directions. "We'll beat 'em yet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, skill, speed, scenery, animal, risk, weapon, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> Straight toward the dead pine Jerry aimed, and, as he came to the bottom of the slope, he saw an opening in the bush-lined side of the hill, that told him the cave was at hand. Into it, by a skillful turn, he steered the auto, and the machine, running in about one hundred feet from the opening came to a stop, just as the horsemen came dashing up, much surprised by the sudden disappearance of those they were pursuing.<br /> "We're safe!" whispered Ned.<br /> "Not yet," said Jerry. "We must arm ourselves," and he began to get out the rifles from the bottom of the car, and hand them around to his companions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, scenery, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Outside the cavern, which was a natural one in the rocky side of the hill, there came confused shouts.<br /> "Where did they go?" they heard a voice ask.<br /> "Must have gone over some ledge and been killed," was the reply.<br /> "Then that settles it," said the first one. "That's just our bad luck!"<br /> Then came a curious cry, and, by it, the boys knew their hiding place was discovered.<br /> "Here are the tracks of the wheels!" the travelers heard some one shout. "They turned off somewhere about here."<br /> "Then they're in that cave," was the rejoinder.<br /> "Dismount!" came a sharp order.<br /> The boys could hear the men getting off their horses, and the animals being led away.<br /> "Get your carbines ready!" was the next command.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's time for us to act!" whispered Jerry. "We must each one take a gun, and stand at the mouth of the cave. We'll warn them not to enter. If they persist we will have to fire, but we must try not to hurt any one mortally. Aim at their legs!"<br /> In the half darkness of the cavern the boys and the professor each took a rifle and crept to the mouth of the opening. No sooner had they reached it than they heard the tramp of feet, and shadows told them the bad men were advancing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Halt!" cried Jerry, who had naturally assumed command.<br /> "Who are you?" asked the leader of the gang.<br /> "Never mind who we are," replied Jerry. "We are in possession of this cave, and we warn you not to come in!"<br /> "Big words for a kid!" sneered the leader.<br /> "You'll find we can back them up," spoke Jerry. Then, in lower tones, he bade his comrades stand in readiness.<br /> There was a consultation in whispers among the members of the gang, and then, seeming to feel that they had nothing to fear, they made a rush.<br /> "Fire!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Remembering his instructions, the boys and the professor aimed low. To the reports of the rifles there succeeded howls of pain. Several of the gang shot back, but, as it was dark in the cave they could not see to aim, and they did no damage.<br /> "Give them another volley!" yelled Jerry.<br /> Again the rifles spoke, and this time, to the chorus of howls there was added a command from the leader to retreat, and the men rushed from the cave, which was filled with smoke.<br /> "Are—are any of them killed?" asked Tommy.<br /> "I don't believe so," replied Jerry. "We fired too low to do much damage. I only wanted to let them know we were ready for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Waiting several minutes to see if there would be any further attack, Jerry cautiously advanced to the mouth of the cavern. In the semi-light he saw several blood stains, but the absence of any bodies told him the battle had not resulted fatally, for which he was thankful. Though the<br /> men were desperate characters, who, perhaps, would not stop at murder, the boy did not want the responsibility of killing any of them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They seem to have retreated," Jerry reported when he joined the others. "But I don't suppose they have gone for good. This probably will only make them more anxious to get Tommy away from us, for it is him they are after."<br /> "Do you think they want me?" asked the younger lad.<br /> "I am pretty sure, after what you have told us about the mine, that they would give a good deal to get you," replied Jerry. "Perhaps your signature may be as good as that of your father's in case—in case—" and Jerry stopped suddenly.<br /> "You mean in case dad is dead?" asked Tommy quietly.<br /> "Yes," answered Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't believe my father is dead," spoke the boy bravely. "Somehow I feel that he is alive, and that I will find him. But if the gang is after me, it is not right for you all to be in danger on my account. Give me up to them, I'm not afraid—that is, I'll try not to be. Let me go out and surrender, and perhaps they'll go away."<br /> "I'd like to see myself!" exclaimed Jerry. "You don't stir out of this cave, Tommy Bell, until we go! I'm not afraid of that gang. We've been in tighter places than this and gotten out; haven't we, fellows?"<br /> "You bet!" echoed Bob and Ned.<br /> "Then give me a gun and let me help fight," begged Tommy.<br /> "Can you shoot?" asked Jerry.<br /> "My father taught me," was all Tommy said, and Jerry gave him a rifle, at which Tommy's eyes sparkled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A cautious glance from the mouth of the cave showed that the gang had withdrawn some distance away. But that they had no notion of giving up the fight was evidenced by the fact that they were constructing a camp so as to command the entrance to the cavern.<br /> "I guess they're going to try and starve us out," remarked the professor. "Lucky we have plenty of provisions and ammunition on hand for a siege."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess we're just as well off here as anywhere," observed Jerry. "We'd have to lay up a few days at any rate, to fix the machine, and it might as well be in a good roomy cave, where the rain can't wet us."<br /> The boys waited an hour before laying aside their arms. Then, as the gang showed no signs of renewing the attack, they proceeded to make themselves more comfortable.<br /> "Might as well get ready to camp out," said Ned. "I'll set up the stove, and we'll have breakfast, though it is a little late."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> So while he set up the sheet iron apparatus, Jerry instructed Bob to stand guard at the mouth of the cavern, and to give instant notice of any activity on the part of the enemy.<br /> "But what will we do about eating breakfast?" asked Bob in a sorrowful voice.<br /> "Don't worry about that, 'Chunky,'" said Jerry. "I'll relieve you, or some one will, in time to get a meal. In the meantime keep a good watch."<br /> Then Jerry went back to help Ned, and, at the same time, make ready to repair the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter X. - Attacked by a Cougar (81-89) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, risk, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER X<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY A COUGAR<br /> <br /> "I say, Jerry," called Ned, "we're in a sort of a pickle."<br /> "How's that?"<br /> "Why, I started to make coffee and I got along all right until I came to the water."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "No, it's not at all well. In fact we ought to have a well here."<br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> "I mean there's no water in the cave!"<br /> "Great Scott! Is that so?" exclaimed Jerry. "I never thought of such a thing. Are you sure there's not a spring away in the rear?"<br /> "The professor and I made a good search," replied the temporary cook. "The cave comes to an end about three hundred feet back, and there's not a sign of water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, gasoline, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds Jerry was silent. Then he gave an exclamation.<br /> "I have it!" he cried. "We can use the emergency water supply on the auto. It is not very fresh, but it will do for coffee."<br /> "The very thing!" ejaculated Ned.<br /> It was fortunate that the auto carried an extra tank of water, as well as one of gasolene. They had often found it useful in getting a supply of the fluid for the radiator in places far from a supply, and the reserve tank had been built with that purpose in view. It held about ten gallons. Drawing on this Ned had a supply for his coffee which was soon boiling merrily on the stove, while some canned chicken and bacon were put on to fry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say, is anybody going to relieve me?" called Bob from his post on guard.<br /> He smelled the breakfast in preparation, and it added to his hunger.<br /> "I'll go," volunteered the professor. "I'm in no hurry to eat, and perhaps I may pick up a specimen or two. This cave ought to be a good place for them."<br /> Accordingly he took Bob's place, and soon the four boys were eating ravenously, and with as good appetites as if a band of bad men was not outside, ready to attack them at the first opportunity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, car part, engine, technology, skill, night"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to fix the machine," said Jerry as he rose from the ground that served as a table. "Light all the lamps, Ned, and then you and Bob come and help me. Tommy and the professor can take turns standing guard."<br /> It was no easy matter to take the automobile engine apart, and substitute a new gear for the broken one. It was also found necessary to insert new spark plugs, which had become covered with a coating of carbon; and the cylinders also needed cleaning, while the pistons had to be adjusted.<br /> The afternoon was spent in working at the auto, and by night such good progress had been made that Jerry said by the next evening it would be in shape to start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, night, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "That is if the gang let's us," spoke Ned.<br /> "We'll make a dash for it," replied Jerry. "We needn't fear them with the car in good order, for we can leave them behind in less than half an hour. We'll try to escape to-morrow about midnight."<br /> "In the meanwhile let's eat," suggested Bob, and his cry brought forth the usual chaffing about "Chunky's" appetite.<br /> Ned started to get supper. He went to the tank of the auto to draw some water for the tea, when he gave a cry of surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, accident, mud"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" called Jerry.<br /> "The water's gone!" exclaimed Ned. "That's a leak in the tank!"<br /> They all rushed to the car. There, on the ground under the reserve tank was a muddy spot, showing where the precious fluid had dripped away. A quick examination showed there was a small hole in the reservoir.<br /> "Now we are up against it," murmured Bob.<br /> "Not quite yet," said Jerry.<br /> "How can we get water without being shot?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is quite a bit left in the pipe coils of the radiator," answered Jerry. "It will be pretty poor stuff to drink I guess, but it's better than nothing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable of the fluid in the big brass radiator on the front of the car, and, though it was stale, and had been heated many times, as it circulated about the cylinders, still, it was better than none. Made into tea, which was served as a change from coffee, it did not taste so very bad.<br /> But the situation was grave. With only water enough on hand to last about half a day, the plight of the travelers was a critical one.<br /> "We'll have to have water for the car, as well as ourselves," spoke Ned. "We can't run the machine without water."<br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry dubiously. "Something will have to be done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> After the evening meal Jerry resumed his labors on the car, working at double speed, in which he was assisted by Ned and Bob. The professor and Tommy took turns watching at the cavern's mouth.<br /> But there seemed to be no need of this, as the men showed no inclination to make a second attack. They appeared to know that the boys were caught in a trap; a trap that contained no water. So they evidently felt sure of success sooner or later, and that without the danger of being wounded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, midnight, technology, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and his comrades worked to such advantage that shortly after midnight the auto was in shape to be used, and with the new high gear wheel in place. The car was given a good oiling, and was repacked in readiness for a quick start.<br /> "Now if we only had water," sighed Jerry, "we could slip out, and, I believe get away."<br /> But he knew it was useless to proceed without at least a full radiator. The extra tank, which had been repaired, could be filled later. The radiator coils were empty however. What had not been used for cooking had been made up into weak tea, as it was not considered healthful to drink the water as it came from the pipes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to do something," said Jerry decidedly. "If we stay here much longer we'll die of thirst. If we could only make a dash and get some water we could manage. Two pails full would do."<br /> "Let me go after them," exclaimed Tommy. "I'm not afraid. I can run fast. Maybe I can get out there by the brook, get the water and come back before any of them see me."<br /> "No you couldn't," spoke Jerry, pointing to where one of the men, as sentry, could be seen, from the mouth of the cave, walking up and down near the camp fire. "If any one goes I will, and I think I'd better start."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob and Ned both offered to make the dangerous attempt, and the professor insisted that he be allowed to try, as he knew how to move over ground very silently. But Jerry was firm in his determination.<br /> "I'm going to make the try about two o'clock," he said. "They'll be sounder asleep then."<br /> As he was very tired he stretched out in some blankets until it would be time to make the try. He fell asleep soon, and the others moved away, talking in whispers lest they disturb him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Almost exactly at the appointed hour Jerry awakened. He sat up, and, slipping a pair of Indian moccasins over his shoes, to enable him to move as silently as possible, he cautiously approached the mouth of the cavern, carrying two water pails with him.<br /> The moon had gone down and it was quite dark, which was favorable to Jerry's plans. As he got to the entrance of the cavern the boy looked toward the gang's camp. There seemed to be no sign of life, and Jerry thought perhaps the sentry had fallen asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As silent as a cat the lad made his way toward the stream, which he could hear gurgling and splashing over the stones. His throat was dry, for the last of the cold tea had been drunk, and his exertions had made him very thirsty. As he heard the sound of the brook he felt a fierce desire for water, so strong was it that he felt he would brave anything to get it.<br /> Foot by foot he advanced, crouching down as low as he could. He was beginning to feel that he would be successful, and not be detected. He could see the sparkle of the water about three hundred feet away, and his parched mouth and throat seemed to be as dry as leather. He could<br /> hardly swallow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On and on he went. Now he was about two hundred feet away and he was getting ready to make a dash for the brook.<br /> Suddenly he heard a clicking sound, and knew it was a rifle being cocked. Next there rang out on the night air the command:<br /> "Halt or I'll fire!"<br /> Poor Jerry was detected! He came to a stop, sick at heart at the failure of his plan.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a moment there was no other sound. The boy could not see who had discovered him, though he instinctively felt the eyes of the man on him. Suddenly there was a shaking in the tree somewhat to Jerry's left, and about one hundred feet away. Then came a rustle of the leaves on the ground and the boy made out the figure of a man, dimly, standing with rifle aimed straight at him.<br /> "Throw up your hands!" was the next order, and, letting the pails fall to the ground, Jerry obeyed.<br /> Then, all at once, there burst out on the air a most terrifying sound. It was a blood-curdling yell, a screech as if from some one in mortal agony. Jerry felt the cold chills go down his back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a crashing sound, and, from the tree under which the man stood who had aimed at the boy a dark body shot downward.<br /> The screech of the cougar, for such it was, mingled with the terrific yells of the sentry. Jerry dimly saw a confused tangle of man and beast. He heard the man shout for help. He heard his rifle go off, and then came sounds that told that the camp had been aroused.<br /> The attack of the cougar had come just in time. Jerry, taking advantage of the diversion, grabbed up his pails, and running to the brook filled them with water. Then, as fast as he could go, he ran toward the cave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XI. - A Runaway Auto (90-97) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, maintenance, car part, night, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XI<br /> <br /> A RUNAWAY AUTO<br /> <br /> Behind the boys sounded the yells and shouts of the men in camp, mingled with rifle shots and the screeching of several of the cougars, for, it developed, a band of three, grown desperate by hunger, had made an attack.<br /> "Are you hurt, Jerry?" cried Bob and Ned, as, with his pails of water, the boy staggered into the cave.<br /> "Not a bit, but I had a close shave," was the answer. "But we must be quick! Here! Help fill the radiator with the water."<br /> "Can't we drink any?" asked Bob who, like the others, was very thirsty.<br /> "Not a drop," said Jerry firmly. "We need every bit for the automobile. Without it we can't get away from here, and now is the only chance we may have to escape. We can drink later."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> While Jerry and Ned filled the radiator the other boys and the professor made ready for the escape. Everything was packed up and placed in the car, which, as soon as the coil was filled, would be ready to start and dash from the cave.<br /> "I'm afraid this is not going to be water enough," spoke Jerry as the second of the pails was emptied into the radiator.<br /> "Can't I make a dash for some more? There seems to be excitement enough in the camp to keep them from watching me," said Ned. "I'm going to try."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable activity among the ranch men. The cougars, though wounded, seemed to have temporarily lost all fear and made attack after attack on the men, who had to fire several volleys from their rifles.<br /> "Go ahead," said Jerry. "I'll start the engine slowly."<br /> Grabbing up the pails Ned walked from the cave.<br /> "I'm going to help, also," said Tommy.<br /> "No, you stay here," commanded Jerry. "Bob can go if he wants to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob joined Ned. They ran to the stream and had filled the pails when, just as they started on the way back, the wounded cougars, driven from the camp, came dashing after the boys.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" exclaimed Ned. "Run, Bob!"<br /> And run they did, as they had never run before, and left the beasts behind.<br /> "Have you the water?" asked Jerry eagerly as the boys came in.<br /> "We have!" exclaimed Bob. "And hard enough work we had getting it."<br /> "Good!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry hurriedly poured most of it into the radiator, though every one in the cave looked at the fluid with longing eyes.<br /> "I must get a drink soon, or I shall go half crazy!" said the professor suddenly. "I never was so thirsty in my life."<br /> "I'm saving just a little bit for each of us," spoke Jerry. "But it is a very small quantity, and will only serve to wet our mouths. If all goes well we shall soon have plenty."<br /> He distributed about a pint of the water among his companions, and though each one got only a little it brought welcome relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, speed, engine"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now we're ready to skip out!" announced Jerry as he screwed the cap on the radiator tank, and increased the speed of the engine. "But first we had better take a look outside to see if any of that gang are in sight."<br /> The professor, who had good eyes, went to the mouth of the cave, and, coming back, reported that he could see a dark mass moving on the further bank of the stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, road condition, speed, driver, passenger, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "They have evidently gotten over their scare about the cougars," Mr. Snodgrass said, "and are waiting to bag us. What are we going to do?"<br /> "There's only one thing to do," replied Jerry.<br /> "And that is what?"<br /> "We must make a dash for it. The road is fairly good, and I guess we can speed up enough to get out of the range of their bullets in a short time. They can't be very good shots or they would have killed the three cougars, with all the bullets they fired."<br /> So it was decided. They all took their places in the car, and Jerry, who, as if by mutual consent, assumed the place of steersman, leaned forward to throw in the gear clutches.<br /> "Here we go!" he cried. "Look out everybody!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="slowness, car part, visibility, risk, night, speed, sound, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly at first, but gathering speed, the auto moved out of the cave. The lamps lighted up the path, and, though the boys realized that the lanterns disclosed their position to their enemies, they had to use them for their own safety. It was too dark to do without them.<br /> A few seconds later and the car emerged from the cavern. As it shot out there came a chorus of angry cries from the camp of the ranchmen, and several shots were fired, though none of them came close enough to be uncomfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, skill, risk, navigation, visibility, night, river, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" cried Jerry again, as he increased the speed, and the auto fairly leaped forward. It swayed from side to side, and struck several ruts, so that the occupants were tossed about.<br /> But the main thing was that they went ahead, and away from their enemies. Jerry, peering as best he could into the darkness ahead, made a course for the stream, intending to go close to it, and then run along the bank, or near it, as he had noted in the afternoon that there was a fairly good road there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, speed, parking, river, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> Gradually the shouts of the men, and the firing of their guns died away, and the travelers began to breathe more freely. They had made their escape, and, for the present, were safe.<br /> "Oh do let's stop and get a drink!" pleaded Bob.<br /> "Not yet!" exclaimed Jerry. "Five minutes more will not kill you, and it may save all our lives," for he did not want to slack up while there was any danger of the ranchmen coming after them.<br /> The five minutes seemed like an hour to Bob, and the others, too, were impatient. But at last Jerry shut off the power and the machine came to a halt not far from the creek. Out scrambled the boys and the professor, and then, in spite of the danger of drinking snakes and lizards in the darkness, they all made for the stream, where they quenched their thirst from small collapsable cups which each one had been holding in readiness for just that chance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's better than an ice cream soda!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "You bet!" agreed Bob heartily. "I never tasted such fine water."<br /> "Very good!" said the professor.<br /> "I guess we can stop long enough to lay in a supply now," remarked Jerry. "We can start off again in five minutes, and in that time they can not catch up to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part, night, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> So the radiator was filled to the top, and the auxiliary tank likewise, while the boys indulged freely in the liquid, thinking, perhaps, they might have some of the characteristics of the camel, and could drink enough at one time to last a week or more.<br /> Then they started forward again, and the auto soon carried them beyond the possibility of capture that night. They camped out in the open, and, in spite of their rather exciting adventures they slept soundly, awaking as the sun rose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, passenger, mountain, topography, scenery, car part, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was given a chance to run the machine, and he took the front seat with Tommy, who was delighted to be there for the first time. They had not been going long before they found the land was rising.<br /> "We're coming into the mountains now," said Jerry.<br /> Up a long hill, with a gradual assent, puffed the auto. On either side were broad fields where tall Pampas grass was growing, amid which thousands of grasshoppers, or some similar insect, were singing.<br /> "Better be sure your brake is in good working order," suggested Jerry, as they came to the steep descent on the other side. "We don't want any more accidents."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned tried the ordinary brake. There was a clicking sound, followed by a snapping one.<br /> "Brake's busted!" exclaimed Jerry. "Try the emergency!"<br /> Ned did so. That, too, gave out only a faint screech, and did not grip the axle as it should.<br /> "Look out now!" yelled Jerry. "We're in for it!"<br /> An instant later the auto began to move forward at a rapid pace. All Ned's efforts to check it were in vain.<br /> "We're running away!" cried frightened Tommy. "I wish I'd stayed in back!"<br /> "Keep to the middle of the road!" Jerry cried above the noise of the auto rushing down the steep hill. At the bottom the road took a sharp turn, and the hearts of all beat rapidly with fear as they beheld it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XII. - Tommy Finds a Friend (98-106) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, agriculture"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, car part, driver, passenger, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XII<br /> <br /> TOMMY FINDS A FRIEND<br /> <br /> So rapidly did the machine shoot down the descent that it almost seemed the curved road was rushing to meet the travelers. Again and again Ned tried the brakes, but without avail. He had shut off the power at the first indication that something was wrong.<br /> "We can never make that turn!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid not," agreed Jerry.<br /> They were all clinging to the sides of the car, while Ned gripped the steering wheel with a desperate hold.<br /> "Look out for the turn!" cried the professor as they came to the sharp curve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, car part, risk, scenery, agriculture, speed, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> But, to the surprise of all, Ned, instead of shifting the wheel in at least an attempt to swing around the half circle kept straight on the course. The boy had resolved on another plan.<br /> Directly in front of him, and to the left of the road was a big field of tall waving Pampas grass, the plumes nodding eight feet above the ground. It was shut off from the thoroughfare by a frail wooden fence.<br /> "I'm going to steer into the grass!" cried Ned. "It's our only chance!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, accident, speed, agriculture, risk, plant, skill, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a splintering sound as the auto crashed through the fence, which offered no more resistance, because of the great speed, than a paper hoop does to a circus performer. Then it seemed to the travelers as though they had been plunged into a tossing, waving sea of grass.<br /> The tall Pampas plumes and the stems wrapped themselves about the boys and the professor, almost choking them by the pollen that was shaken off. The feathery-like tops tickled them in the eyes, nose and mouth as, carried by the runaway auto, they were dashed through them.<br /> But the grass had just the effect Ned had intended and hoped for. It clogged the wheels of the machine, and though soft, offered so much resistance that the machine soon began to slow down, as does a locomotive when it runs into a snow drift.<br /> After plowing through the field for about two hundred feet the car came to a final stop, with a little jolt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, risk, health, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Caramba!" yelled a voice and then followed such a string of Spanish that the boys thought they had run down a whole camp of Mexican herders.<br /> "Did we hit any one?" asked Jerry, peering forward as well as he could through the tall grass.<br /> "Caramba! Hit any one! The Americano pirates have killed Don Elvardo!" exclaimed the unseen one. "You have broken—!" and then followed such a confusion of words that the boys could not understand.<br /> "Have we broken your leg?" asked Jerry, speaking in Spanish this time.<br /> "Santa Maria! No! You have broken the cigarette I just rolled!" and with that the grass parted in front of the auto, and a little Mexican, wearing a suit profusely trimmed with silver braid, showed himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys felt like laughing as they beheld the woe-begone face of Don Elvardo. In his hand he held the remains of a cigarette.<br /> "Behold!" he went on tragically. "I am peacefully walking in my field, looking over my crop of Pampas, when I feel a desire to smoke. I sit me down and roll a cigarette. I am about to light it, when—Santa Maria! There is a rushing sound of ten thousand imps of darkness. My grass is mowed down as if by a sickle in the hands of a giant. I turn in fear! I see something coming! I can not tell what it is, for the tall grass hides it! I turn to flee! The infernal thing keeps after me! Presto! Caramba! It hits me so—"<br /> Don Elvardo illustrated by slapping himself vigorously on the thigh.<br /> "Then I fall! I am crushed! I am killed! I die in pain and fear! I arise! Behold, senor Americanos, my cigarette is broken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, agriculture, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're very sorry, of course," said Jerry politely. "But you see our auto ran away on the hill, and as the brakes would not work, the only thing to save our lives was to steer into this field. We did not know you were here, or we would have sent around to your house to ask permission to enter," added the lad sarcastically.<br /> "But I am here!" snapped the Mexican.<br /> "So we see," admitted Jerry. "We are willing to pay for any damage we have done."<br /> The Mexican's eyes sparkled, and he rubbed his hands as if in anticipation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That alters the case," said Don Elvardo. "The Americano senors are welcome ten thousand times to my field. I bid you welcome. I salute you. Pay. Oh, yes! It is but right that you should pay!" Again he rubbed his hands together.<br /> "About what would you say it was worth?" asked Ned.<br /> "I am no miser," replied the Mexican. "I do not wish to insult my friends the Americanos. I will only charge them for the damage to the grass. The broken fence is of no moment. Pay me one hundred dollars and I will say no more about the affair."<br /> "He's a robber!" said Jerry in a low voice. "We haven't done five dollars' damage to his crop and the fence combined."<br /> "I guess he will whistle for his one hundred dollars," said Ned.<br /> Don Elvardo heard him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, agriculture, plant, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "So!" he exclaimed. "You will not pay me one little hundred dollars for the damage. Caramba! Then it is I who shall at once lodge a complaint with the authorities. We will see if there is a law in the land, or if crazy Americanos can spoil a poor man's crop and pay nothing. We shall see!"<br /> "Offer him ten dollars," suggested Bob. The boys consulted together a minute or two. They wanted to be fair, but they did not care to be robbed. The professor had taken no part in the discussion. He seemed to be intently examining the tall grass on either side of the machine.<br /> Suddenly the scientist stepped from the side of the car, and rapidly made his way to the front, where Don Elvardo stood. Mr. Snodgrass gazed intently at the Mexican. Then he gave a leap toward the Don, exclaiming as he did so:<br /> "There it is! Right on your hat! Don't move an inch or it will jump away! I have it now! This is indeed a lucky day! Just a second and I'll have it!"<br /> With that the professor made a leap toward the Mexican with outstretched hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Diavolo?" screamed Don Elvardo as he saw the scientist coming for him. "Caramba! It is to murder me that you come!"<br /> Then, calling for help at the top of his voice, the Mexican turned and fled in terror, his course being marked through the tall grass by the wave-like motion he imparted to the plumes in his haste.<br /> "Why—why what in the world ails him?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "He probably thought you were going to choke him to death," said Jerry with a laugh. "In fact your actions were not so very far from giving that idea."<br /> "Why bless my soul!" ejaculated the professor. "All I wanted was to get a fine specimen of a blue grasshopper from his big hat, where the insect had alighted. It was worth about forty dollars."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I saw some just as good in a city once for twenty dollars," put in Tommy, "and they had more silver braid on."<br /> "What! A grasshopper with silver braid on?" cried the scientist.<br /> "I thought you said his hat was worth forty dollars," went on Tommy, somewhat embarrassed.<br /> "I was speaking of the blue grasshopper," explained Mr. Snodgrass. "My, I am sorry to have missed that one."<br /> "But you did a good service in scaring this Mexican away, as you did the chap with the ox cart," spoke Ned. "He might have made trouble for us."<br /> "And we had better get out of here while we have the chance," said Jerry. "He may come back any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="agriculture, plant, navigation, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the auto was turned around, and run over the same course by which it had entered the field. Otherwise it would have been almost impossible to have advanced, so thick was the grass. The road regained, the machine was sent along it at good speed, for fear Don Elvardo or some of his friends might appear.<br /> "We had better stop and fix the brakes," suggested Ned, after an hour's run.<br /> "And get dinner at the same time," put in Bob. "We'll kill two stones with the same automobile, as the poem says."<br /> "I guess you're a little twisted," remarked Ned, "but your intentions are good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, river, maintenance, car part, navigation, map"><br /> <poem><br /> A halt was made under a big tree, near a little stream, and soon a good fire was built and dinner was being cooked.<br /> It was found that some nuts had become loose on the brakes, and this trouble Jerry soon remedied. After the meal they sat about and talked a while.<br /> "We'll soon be in New Mexico," remarked Jerry, consulting a small map.<br /> "Will we?" asked Tommy. "I'm so glad."<br /> "Why?"<br /> "Because there's a man who was once a friend of my father at a place called Las Cruces. It's near the Rio Grande river. If we could go there I know Mr. Douglass would take care of me."<br /> "Then we'll go there," said Jerry. "It will be right on our route."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed this would be a good plan. That night the travelers stopped in a small village where they had good beds and meals. They resumed the journey next day, and for several days thereafter met with no mishaps as they speeded toward Las Cruces. They had left the lowlands and were well up among the hills by this time.<br /> One day, just at dusk, they rolled into Las Cruces and, after a little inquiry found Mr. Douglass, who was very glad to see Tommy.<br /> "I will be glad to take care of him for the present," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIII. - The Colored Man's Ghost (107-116) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="city, rural, pleasure, mechanic, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIII<br /> <br /> THE COLORED MAN'S GHOST<br /> <br /> The travelers found the town where Tommy's friend lived such a pleasant place that they spent several days there. It was a thriving place, and the auto was a source of endless wonder to most of the inhabitants, who had never seen one.<br /> Had the boys wished they could have made considerable money taking parties out in the car for short trips, but they knew they had a long journey before them and they wished to save the machine all they could. It needed some repairs which were made by the local blacksmith, and then the travelers were ready to move forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know how to thank you for all you did for me," said Tommy, as the boys were leaving. "You saved my life. Maybe I will have a chance to do you a good turn some day. If I have, you can bet I'll do it."<br /> "We know you will, Tommy," said Jerry. "Well, good-by. I hope we see you again."<br /> "Same here!" exclaimed Bob and Ned.<br /> They did not know how soon they were to meet their friend again, nor in what a peculiar manner he was able to aid them in return for what they had done for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, slowness, equipment, rural, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> For several days the auto skimmed along through a somewhat lonely country. The roads were not very good and a number of times progress was so slow that only a few miles were made between sunrise and sunset. Now and then the travelers would come to a lonely cabin, where they could replenish their food supply or get a night's lodging. But, in the main, they had to depend on their own resources.<br /> Occasionally they would reach a little settlement, where their arrival never failed to produce as much excitement as a fire and circus combined. Every day brought them nearer their gold mine, concerning which they were very anxious, as they had heard nothing further from Jim Nestor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, mountain, maintenance, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "The mine may have been taken away from him for all we know," chafed Jerry as he fretted at the delay caused by bad roads.<br /> "We'll hope for the best," said Ned. "No use crossing a bridge until you come to it."<br /> The travelers were well up among the lower mountains now, though compared with the heights they had still to scale the range was one of mere hills. One evening just at dusk, after a particularly hard day of travel, during which the auto had broken down several times, necessitating minor repairs, the Motor Boys came to a place where two roads divided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder which we had better take?" asked Bob, who was at the wheel.<br /> "The right," said Jerry.<br /> "The left," advised Ned.<br /> "Toss up a cent," suggested the professor. "Make it heads right and tails left."<br /> They did so. The coin came down heads up, and Bob turned the machine to the right. It had not proceeded far on this road when, about a mile ahead, the travelers saw a couple of log cabins.<br /> "Well, there's shelter for to-night, at all events," Jerry remarked, "and, I hope, supper as well. I'm getting a little tired of bacon and coffee."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> They found one of the cabins occupied by a negro, his wife, and seven children, the oldest a boy of sixteen and the youngest a little girl, just able to toddle.<br /> "Good evening," greeted the professor, "can we get supper and lodging anywhere about here?"<br /> "I reckon I kin fix yo' up on th' eatin' question, boss," remarked the darkey as he stood in the cabin door as the auto drew up, "but I 'clare t' goodness I can't find no room t' stable that there rip-snortin' beast ye got."<br /> "We don't expect you to take the auto in," spoke Jerry. "If you give us beds for ourselves, or even a room to sleep in we'll pay for it and glad to do it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Land sakes, I'd like t' 'blige yo', deed 'n I would boss," went on the negro, "but my cabin am jest crowded t' th' doah wif me an' my fambily. Yo' am welcome t' suthin' t' eat, but land a' massy whar I'se goin' t' have yo' sleep hab got me cogitatin'."<br /> "What's the matter with that other cabin?" asked Ned.<br /> "What other cabin?" asked the negro, not turning to look in the direction of the second shack, about a quarter of a mile down the road.<br /> "That one," went on Ned, pointing to it. "There may be room in it."<br /> "Oh I reckon there's room enough," replied the colored man, "only—well to tell you th' truff, boss, it ain't exackly healthy t' sleep in that cabin, er even t' talk about it. 'Scuse me but I don't want even t' look at it."<br /> "Why not?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The colored man seemed to hesitate. He fidgeted and seemed ready to go back into his house.<br /> "Why not?" asked Ned again.<br /> "Kase it's--it's got ghosts an' it's hanted!" exclaimed the negro, "an' it ain't safe fer any one to go near it, let alone sleep in it."<br /> "Nonsense," remarked the professor. "There are no such things as ghosts."<br /> "Yo' wouldn't say so if yo' went to that there cabin after dark," persisted the colored man. "'Tain't safe t' talk about it, so yo'll please 'scuse me."<br /> "But what sort of a ghost is it?" asked Jerry.<br /> "It's big an' it's white, an' it rattles chains an' groans sumthin' turrible," said the negro.<br /> "Did you ever see it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Did I ever see it, boss? Couse I done see it. Only t'other night it near skeered me to deff."<br /> "How long has it been there?" asked Bob.<br /> "'Bout a week I reckon," replied the negro. "Ever since Rastus Johnson moved away from th' cabin."<br /> "I guess we'll take a chance with the ghost for the sake of spending a night under shelter," said Jerry. "Meanwhile we can get supper here."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And a fine supper they had. Mrs. Jones, wife of the colored man, proved an excellent cook. She fried some chicken, made some corn bread, and that, with preserves and some good coffee, made up a meal which the travelers voted one of the finest they had eaten in many months.<br /> "Can we get breakfast here, also?" asked Jerry when supper was finished. <br /> "If yo' am alive," replied Jones solemnly.<br /> "If we're alive? What do you mean?"<br /> "Well I reckon ef yo' sleeps in that hanted cabin, there won't be any of yo' left t' want a meal in th' mo'nin'," explained Jones. "It's takin' yo'uns' lives in yo' hands t' go nigh it suah yo' is boahn!"<br /> All they could say did not induce the man to change his mind. He was plainly afraid of the cabin and the "ghost."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> But the travelers were determined not to let a little thing like that interfere with a chance to sleep under shelter. Accordingly they covered the auto with the tarpaulin provided for that purpose, and moved their blankets into the deserted cabin, which was fairly clean and in good condition. One of the big oil lamps gave sufficient light.<br /> The cabin contained only two rooms, one on the ground floor, and the other above it, reached by a movable ladder.<br /> "I think we had better sleep upstairs," said Jerry. "The door doesn't fasten very securely, and besides I think it will be drier there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they mounted the ladder, spread their blankets out on the floor, and were all soon fast asleep. None of them expected to be disturbed, for they laid the story of the ghost to an overwrought imagination of the colored man.<br /> So it was with a sudden feeling of terror that Jerry was awakened in the middle of the night by hearing a deep groan, seeming to come from the room below.<br /> He sat up, rubbing his eyes to further awaken himself, and then he became aware that Bob was also sitting up. He could see because of the moonlight streaming in through a window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you hear anything?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I thought so," answered Bob.<br /> "I thought I did," put in Ned, who, it seems had been awakened at the same time the others were.<br /> Once more there sounded an unmistakable groan. It came from the ground floor, and was so loud, penetrating and, in spite of the would-be bravery of the boys, so awful coming out of the darkness, that they shuddered.<br /> "What's that?" asked the professor, who also, this time, was roused from his slumbers.<br /> Before either of the boys could answer the groan was repeated and this time it was followed by the unmistakable clanking of chains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The colored man's ghost!" whispered Bob.<br /> "Nonsense!" exclaimed the professor, but, no sooner had he spoken than there came another weird noise, and the chains rattled louder than ever.<br /> "Light the lantern," whispered Jerry. "We must see what it is. Perhaps it's only some one playing a joke."<br /> "Let me take a look before you make a light," suggested the professor. "I can look down the ladder hole."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Softly he crawled over to the opening and peered down. As he did so the noises were repeated. The professor uttered an exclamation.<br /> "It bears the other descriptive marks of the creature the negro told about," he said, crawling back to where the boys were huddled together. "It is big and white and it seems to be trying to climb up the ladder."<br /> "Wait until I get my revolver," whispered Jerry. "We'll soon see if it's a ghost or not."<br /> "Don't fire," cautioned the professor. "It may be some one trying to scare us, but we have no right to fire at any one."<br /> "I'll give 'em a warning, at any rate," said the lad. He went to the opening and called down:<br /> "Tell us who you are or I'll shoot, do you hear?"<br /> A groan and the clanking of chains was the only answer. This was followed by a violent agitation and shaking of the ladder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bang!" went Jerry's revolver. He had fired into the air.<br /> Succeeding the report there was a silence. This was broken by a further clanking of chains. Then came a crash, and when the echo of this died away the sound of feet running away could be heard.<br /> "Pretty solid footsteps for a ghost," commented Ned.<br /> "Look! Look!" cried Bob, pointing out of the window.<br /> There, running down the moon-lit road the boys saw a big white mule, to the neck of which was fastened a chain that rattled with every step.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the ghost," said the professor. "I thought I recognized the voice as that of a quadruped with which I was familiar. The animal has probably broken loose from the field and came here in search of food."<br /> "Well it certainly scared me all right," admitted Bob. The others did not commit themselves, but there was no doubt but that they had several heart-flutters.<br /> "I wonder what that crash was?" asked Ned.<br /> The professor glanced down the hole leading to the first floor.<br /> "The ghost made it by kicking our ladder away," the scientist replied. "I wonder how we can get down."<br /> But the boys did not worry about this, being too sleepy. Soon they were all snoring again, and did not awaken until the sun was streaming in the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIV. - Trouble With a Bad Man (117-126) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="rural, navigation, pedestrian, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIV<br /> <br /> TROUBLE WITH A BAD MAN<br /> <br /> "This is a nice pickle!" exclaimed Bob, who was the first to rise.<br /> "What's the matter, lost your collar button?" sleepily inquired Jerry.<br /> "No, but the mule knocked the ladder down, and we'll have to jump or stay here."<br /> "It isn't far to the ground in this shanty," remarked Jerry. "Go ahead and drop down."<br /> "It may not be very far," said Bob, "but I don't want to take the chance."<br /> "Afraid you'll sprain your ankle?"<br /> "No, but I don't want to fall into the cistern."<br /> "Cistern? What are you talking about?"<br /> "Well," went on Bob, "there's a cistern right under this ladder opening. The mule pulled the cover off last night, and whoever drops down is going to land goodness knows where."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The others soon confirmed what Bob had said. When the cabin was built a cistern had been sunk in the middle of the ground floor. This had been covered, and the ladder rested on it when the travelers went to bed, but the mule, probably in search for a drink, uncovered it.<br /> "Can't get down without a ladder," observed Ned.<br /> "What's the matter with jumping from one of the outside windows?" asked Jerry.<br /> They thought the idea a good one until they saw that the only one there was opened onto a pile of sharp rocks, into which even a jump of fifteen feet might be dangerous.<br /> "What's to be done?" asked Bob.<br /> "Guess we'll have to wait until Jones comes to see if we are dead," replied Jerry. "Then he can cover the cistern and raise the ladder."<br /> "I guess we'll have a long wait for Jones," commented Ned. "He's so afraid of this place that he'll never come within hearing distance of it."<br /> "Let's yell out of the window," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They did so, uniting their voices in a volume of sound. It seemed to have no effect though, for there was no movement about the colored man's cabin.<br /> "Once more," urged the professor.<br /> This time they produced a result, for, down the road they could see Jones come to the door of his shack and peer out. Thereupon they waved their hands to him, and in a few minutes the colored man was standing as close as he seemed to dare to come to their shelter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is yo' all daid?" he asked in awed accents.<br /> "Not quite all of us," answered the professor, "but we will be unless you come in and hoist the ladder for us."<br /> "Did th'—th' ghost knock it down?" asked Jones. <br /> "It did," replied Bob, solemnly.<br /> "I knowed it! I knowed it! Maybe you'll believe me next time. Golly! I ain't goin' t' stay here," and Jones was about to run off down the road.<br /> "Here! Come back!" commanded the captives, and the colored man reluctantly did so.<br /> "I doan laik t' stay round yeah!" pleaded the negro. "'Tain't no ways healthy. What yo' done want, anyhow?"<br /> "We want you to hoist the ladder for us," said the professor. "Come now, don't be silly. The only ghost there was, and we saw it, was an old white mule with a chain on its neck."<br /> "Co'se it were! Dat's de form it took when I seed it!" cried Jones. "But it can take on any shape, dat ghost can. Next time it'll be a lion er a tiger er a elephant. Monstrous terrible things, ha'nts is. So de ghost done knocked de ladder down! I knowed it would do suthin'."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Amid a show of genuine fear the colored man entered the cabin, and after replacing the cistern cover cautiously raised the ladder. Then he ran out as if the ghost were after him.<br /> "I guess we'll never be able to convince Jones that there isn't a ghost here," said Jerry as they came down and started down the road toward the colored man's cabin, where they were to have breakfast.<br /> "Here's something that may prove to him that the mule was the ghost," spoke Ned, picking up a horse shoe, which was on the cabin floor.<br /> They showed it to the negro, but he only shook his head.<br /> "It looks like a hoss shoe, dat I admit," said Jones, "but it's enchanted. It'll turn inter a snake er a tiger er suthin' terruble 'fore long. I don't want nothin' t' do with it," and he cast it into the bushes by the side of the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="dust, rural, night, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> The excitement of the night had taken none of the travelers' appetites away, and they made a good meal. Then, once more they took the road, disappearing in a cloud of dust, while Jones, his wife, and the seven children stood and stared in wonder.<br /> They traveled all that day with only an occasional glimpse of civilization in the shape of some house or cabin. No villages were reached, it being a centre of vast grazing lands, where only a lonely herder, or, perhaps two, remained to guard the cattle. That night they camped in the open, and found it rather uncomfortable, for it began to rain about midnight.<br /> "I wish we were back in the cabin, with the ghost-mule and everything else," muttered Jerry, as he tried to find a dry spot to lie down on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, city, class"><br /> <poem><br /> But troubles can not last forever, and morning came finally, bringing a clear day and a bright sun which was very welcome.<br /> Breakfast over they took the road once more. About noon they came to a small town that boasted of what was called the "Imperial Hotel."<br /> "I suppose we'd better try the Imperial," suggested Ned. "It don't look very scrumptious, but you can't always tell by the appearance of a toad how far he can jump."<br /> The auto drew up in front of the inn with a noise that brought a score of men from the barroom.<br /> "Jumpin' Gila Monsters and rattlesnakes!" cried one of the men, evidently a miner from his dress. "I've read about them Satan go-carts, but I never believed in 'em. Sakes alive, but they do look funny without a hoss in front."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, sound, risk, city"><br /> <poem><br /> He and the others gathered about the car, asking so many questions that it took all the boys and the professor as well to answer them. When curiosity had been partially satisfied the boys went into the hotel. While there was nothing to make a weary traveler glad he had found it, the place was not as bad as many where the Motor Boys had stopped. They had a good meal, and decided to rest a few hours before proceeding.<br /> It was along about three o'clock. The crowd of men in the barroom had become larger as new comers arrived. It was also noisier and loud voices, and occasional threats to shoot, made the travelers think it was about time to move on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="class, risk, rural, city"><br /> <poem><br /> They were about to go to their machine when they were approached on the porch where they were sitting, by the miner who had first remarked about the auto. He had evidently been drinking more than was good for him, and was in a quarrelsome mood.<br /> "If you don't want to play with me you needn't," he called, evidently to some one inside. "I can find some one to shuffle the cards with me. Here, you kid"—to Jerry, "you come an' we'll have a little game."<br /> "Thank you, I don't play," said Jerry quietly.<br /> "What's that?" came the sharp return.<br /> "I said I didn't play."<br /> "Why hang my buttons! You got to play when I tell you to," cried the miner. "Pete Simmons ain't used to bein' told no. Here, sit down to this table an' deal the cards," and he grabbed Jerry by the arm, and attempted to force him into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go my arm!" exclaimed Jerry.<br /> "You do as I tell you or I'll make you!" exclaimed the brute. "I'm used to havin' my way!"<br /> "Take your hand off!" commanded Jerry, drawing back his fist, for he was strong and hot tempered.<br /> "Now be nice, be nice!" sneered the man. <br /> "Let go of him!" exclaimed Ned coming forward and standing beside his chum, while Bob also ranged up alongside. "We'll all take a hand in this if you force us to."<br /> "I can tackle the three of you with both hands tied behind my back," cried the miner, flushing with anger at being defied by the boys.<br /> "Count me in too," spoke Professor Snodgrass, joining the lads. "I don't want to fight, but I will if I have to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now the professor, though a mild man, was, by reason of his out-of-door life, in fine physical condition, and no mean antagonist, which fact the miner saw.<br /> "Oh well, I was only foolin'," the ugly chap remarked with a poor attempt at a smile. But his face showed his rage. He moved away in a few seconds, and shuffled to the end of the porch, where he soon fell asleep on a bench.<br /> Bob looked over and saw him, as the boys were discussing the program for the remainder of the day.<br /> "Let's play a trick on that brute," said Bob.<br /> "What kind?" asked Jerry.<br /> "You watch," replied Chunky. "You'll see some fun."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now it happened that the professor had among his collection of specimens several large stuffed snakes, for he was an expert taxidermist. There were also several horned toads and big lizards. Bob got several of the ugliest ones and, with the aid of the scientist, who entered into the<br /> plan to pay a well deserved lesson to the miner, arranged the things about the sleeper, on the bench and on the floor of the porch.<br /> By this time most of the crowd at the hotel was aware what was going on, and, as few of them had any too much love for Simmons they waited the outcome with interest. When the reptiles were placed in a circle about the sleeping miner, one of the men fired his revolver in the air. At the sound Simmons awoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first he did not notice the reptiles, as he was on his back, staring up at the sky. Then he suddenly sat up, and caught a glimpse of the ugly looking things. For a moment he seemed to be in doubt as to what he beheld. Then he let out a yell that could have been heard almost a half mile.<br /> "Wow!" he cried. "Take 'em away. I'll never drink another drop! Honest I won't! Oh! Oh! the horrible snakes! I'll shut my eyes so I can't see 'em!"<br /> But when he opened them again the reptiles were still there.<br /> "Oh! Oh! I see 'em still!" he yelled. "Take 'em away, somebody, please do. Oh I forgot! They ain't real! I only imagine I see 'em!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He got up on the bench and was dancing about in terror. Then he drew his revolver, and was about to fire into the midst of the snakes.<br /> "He'll ruin my specimens!" cried the professor.<br /> One of the men ran forward, and began collecting the reptiles. Simmons saw them being gathered up, and noticed that they were not wiggling. Then the truth of it dawned on him, and he knew he had been fooled. His companions laughed loud and long. But Simmons, unable to stand the jokes and jibes he knew would be poked at him, leaped over the porch railing and ran down the road as fast as he could go.<br /> "Serves him right!" was the general verdict.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XV. - The Story of Lost Lake (127-134) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, animal, car, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XV<br /> <br /> THE STORY OF LOST LAKE<br /> <br /> The trick Bob had played seemed to be much appreciated among the crowd of miners and herdsmen who were gathered at the hotel. They laughed loud and long over the sight Simmons had presented.<br /> "I guess he'll know better than to fool with the next lad that comes along in one of them choo-choo wagons," was the hotel proprietor's comment.<br /> Bob gathered up the specimens that belonged to the professor and they were put in the car, together with a fresh supply of provisions that were purchased at the village store.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we'll be traveling," suggested the professor. The boys agreed with him, for though they knew the pleasures of sleeping beneath a roof, yet the character of the men who stayed at the hotel was so rough that they feared further rows. So, in spite of the entreaties of the hotel keeper they started off, having inquired the best roads to take.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, pleasure, mountain"><br /> <poem><br /> Through the afternoon they bowled over a well elevated table land. The air was fine and bracing. Off in the distance to the west could be seen the first ranges of the big mountains.<br /> "That's where our mine is," said Jerry, his eyes shining.<br /> "Maybe it isn't ours after all," put in Bob.<br /> "Now there you go, Chunky. What do you want to call up unpleasant subjects for?" asked Ned reproachfully. "Anyhow it's our mine until some one takes it away from us, and I guess they'll have quite a fight, with Nestor on guard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, speed, vision, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The others thought so too. Jerry, who was steering, was sending the auto forward at a fast clip, when the professor, who always had his eyes open called out:<br /> "What's that just ahead of us? Looks like a bear."<br /> "Where?" asked Ned.<br /> "Right in line with that big rock," went on the scientist, who had very good eyes and could see a long distance.<br /> "It's only a tree stump," spoke Bob.<br /> "I didn't know tree stumps could move," went on Mr. Snodgrass, "for this one is certainly coming toward us. It's not a bear after all," he continued, now that the object was nearer. "It's a bull! That's what it is! It looks as if it meant to go for us!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys could now see that the beast was one of the big, long-horned western cattle. It had evidently strayed from the herd, or had been made an outcast because of a bad temper and a perpetual desire to fight. The latter seemed more likely, for, as the auto proceeded, and the bull came on, lessening the distance between the two, a defiant bellow of rage sounded.<br /> "I hope he don't try to ram us," spoke Jerry. "We don't want any more collisions."<br /> "See if you can't run away from him," suggested Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car part, sound, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the bull was about one hundred yards away. It was coming straight for the auto. Jerry opened the muffler and at the sound of the explosions the bull stopped short.<br /> At this point the road ran in a sort of depression, with hills rising on either side. It was rather narrow, so there was no chance to turn to one side. Jerry had to bring the machine to a stop or else run the risk of hitting the bull. He thought the animal might run away if it saw the machine coming toward him, but there was nothing sure about this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, this is a regular hold-up," said the professor. "I wonder whether the bull wants to collect toll?"<br /> The animal seemed to be growing angrier and angrier every minute. It bellowed loudly, pawed the earth with its hoofs, and shook the lowered head, armed with sharp horns. Occasionally the keen points would tear up the ground.<br /> "I wouldn't want him to strike one of our tires," remarked Ned. "It would be all up with it."<br /> "Hurrah! I have it!" cried Bob at length.<br /> He dove beneath the rear seat and pulled up a shining object.<br /> "The ammonia squirt gun!" he exclaimed. "The same we used on the hold-up tramps. Give the bull a dose of it!"<br /> "Good idea," commented Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, weapon, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The bulb of the automatic pistol was still filled with the fiery liquid, for the boys kept it loaded in readiness for use. Bob handed it over to Jerry. The latter took careful aim, and pressed the rubber. A fine stream of the powerful stuff struck the bull full in the face.<br /> With a bellow that fairly shook the ground near-by the bull reared up in the air, and coming down on all fours snorted with rage, shook its head to rid its eyes of the terrible burning, and then dashed madly away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now I guess we can get past," remarked Bob, "and get some supper. I'm as hungry as a bear."<br /> A good fire was soon started and Ned began to prepare the meal. While the others were setting out the dishes, or getting ready for the night camp, since it seemed there was no place for shelter in the neighborhood, the travelers were startled by a voice:<br /> "Evenin' strangers," called a tall, thin man who strolled down the slight hill at the foot of which the party were encamped. "Have you got a bite to spare?"<br /> "Plenty," replied the professor cheerfully. "Come right along. Supper will be ready in a little while. Are you hungry?"<br /> "Hungry? I should say so. I haven't had a bit to eat for two days, except what berries and old nuts I could gather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter? Get lost?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Exactly," replied the stranger. "My name's Johnson," he went on. "I was prospecting up in the hills, and got lost there."<br /> "Anybody with you?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a soul; I'm all alone. I used up the last of my grub in trying to find the trail, and I guess I'd been looking for it yet if I hadn't heard the noise of your steam engine here, and smelled the cooking. I s'pose you're huntin' for it, same as me."<br /> "Hunting for what?" asked the professor, struck by Johnson's manner.<br /> "Why Lost Lake, to be sure. Nobody comes out this far unless they're huntin' for the lake, but you're the first to come in a steam car without rails."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it's a free country," remarked the scientist, wishing to evade giving a direct answer, in the hope of learning something. "I guess we have a right to hunt for the lake."<br /> "Of course, of course you have, strangers," went on Johnson. "No offense. Have you struck a trace of it yet?"<br /> "Not yet," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "To tell you the truth," the professor went on, "we don't know much about this lost lake."<br /> "Nor no one else," said Johnson. "I'll tell you all I know, which isn't much. I've been looking for it 'most a year now."<br /> "Suppose we have supper first," suggested the professor as he noted the eyes Johnson was casting at the food. "We can talk afterward."<br /> "That's the best word I've heard in a good while," said the newcomer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate with a rapidity that left no doubt about his hunger. Nor were the others far behind him, as the crisp air of the mountain region had given them all famous appetites.<br /> "Now for Lost Lake," spoke Jerry when all had their fill.<br /> "It's supposed to be in those mountains over there," began Johnson, pointing to the range off in the west, now dimly discernible in the dusk. "It's said to be a beautiful sheet of water, with high peaks all around it. It was discovered forty years ago by a prospector, and he came to the nearest village with the news. But when he went to lead a party back they couldn't find the trail. Ever since then people have tried to find Lost Lake, but no one has ever succeeded. Many have been<br /> killed trying."<br /> "But why does any one want to find a lake hidden in the mountains?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Yes, tell us?" asked Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, for the gold on its banks, of course," said Johnson. "Didn't I say that? I meant to. The man who discovered it said there were pebbles of gold on the shores. He brought back a pocket full to prove it. I got the fever quite a few months ago, but nothing has come of all my efforts, and this time I nearly died. It was terrible up in the mountains. There's not a soul there I believe."<br /> "And you didn't even get a glimpse of the lake?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a look, young man. But I'm sure it's there. I'm going back to town, get a new outfit and some provisions, and have another try."<br /> He was another example of how the gold fever grips one.<br /> "Maybe we'll come across the lake, though we're not looking for it," said Jerry.<br /> "Maybe you will," assented the prospector. "That's generally the way. The first man was not hunting for it, but he came upon it one night when the moon was shining. If you do find it, look out for the old hermit, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVI. - A Lonely Cabin (135-143) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, health, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVI<br /> <br /> A LONELY CABIN<br /> <br /> "What hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why you haven't heard half the story of Lost Lake," went on Johnson. "There's supposed to be a sort of wild man who lives on the shores of the lake, and he murders travelers. At least that's the yarn they tell."<br /> "Was the hermit always there?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, only the last few years," replied Johnson. "He is said to be an old man with white hair. But I don't believe that part. Let me find the lake and the gold, and I won't worry about hermits."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The prospector camped with the travelers that night. They were all up early the next morning, and, at the professor's suggestion the boys gave Johnson plenty of provisions to last him until he could get back to civilization.<br /> "Maybe you would like to go along with us and look for the lake?" suggested Bob.<br /> "No, thank you," replied Johnson. "I'm afraid your chances of finding it are slimmer than mine are. I'll have another try all by myself. I'm much obliged for the help you've given me."<br /> Then, shouldering his pack, he started off down the trail, while the travelers, packing their things in the auto, set forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys talked about little save the story of Lost Lake, but the professor was too busy arranging his latest specimens to join in the conversation.<br /> "I'd like to find it and see the wild hermit," said Bob.<br /> "I don't s'pose you'd care anything about the gold," put in Ned.<br /> "Of course I would," replied Bob. "But we've got one gold mine now, what do we want of another?"<br /> "It might be well to have a second in case we lose the first," Jerry ventured. "Nothing like having plenty while you're at it."<br /> "I wouldn't like to be a hermit," went on Bob. "Think of always being hungry."<br /> "Chunky is thinking of misers, I guess," laughed Ned. "There's nothing to prevent a hermit from living off the fat of the land. If it wasn't for being lonesome I'd be a hermit for a while."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, passenger, driver, parking"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop the auto!" called the professor suddenly. "I just saw a fine specimen of a snapping turtle scoot across the road. I must have it. It's worth about twenty dollars to me. Stop the car! I must get out!"<br /> Ned, who was running the auto, shut off the power and the machine came to a stop. Before it had ceased to move Mr. Snodgrass had leaped out and was running back. He began a hurried but careful search over the ground. Then he was seen to spring forward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got it, I guess," remarked Jerry.<br /> An instant later there came a howl from the scientist, who was hidden from sight by the tall grass.<br /> "Help, boys! Help!"<br /> "What's the matter? Won't he let you catch him?" cried Ned.<br /> "He's caught me!" yelled the professor. "Come quick and bring a knife to cut his head off with!"<br /> The boys piled out of the auto in a hurry, Jerry stopping to grab up a big carving knife from the camp utensils.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When they came up to the professor they hardly knew whether to laugh or not. The turtle, which was a big one, had grabbed the scientist by the thumb, and was clinging so tightly that it was suspended in the air, swaying to and fro. Meanwhile Mr. Snodgrass was dancing about in pain.<br /> "Why don't you take hold of the turtle's shell in the other hand, and you won't feel the weight so much!" called Jerry.<br /> "I can't," replied the professor. "I have a rare specimen of a toad in my other hand, and I don't want to lose it. Oh boys! Hurry up, and pry the turtle's jaws open, but don't hurt him, for he's valuable."<br /> "Can't you put the toad in your pocket?" asked Ned, knowing the scientist had no scruples about loading his garments up with all sorts of things. "Then you would have one hand free."<br /> "I never thought of that," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I can do that, can't I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did so, and, once the toad was secure he took hold of the turtle, which relieved his lacerated thumb from the dragging weight.<br /> "He won't let go!" exclaimed the professor, after a vain attempt to pull the turtle loose. "It is a genuine snapper, and they have a grip like a bull dog. I am glad I found it, in spite of the pain," he added, though just then, the turtle took a fresh hold and the professor squirmed in<br /> agony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here; I'll cut its head off," said Jerry, coming forward with the knife.<br /> "No, no!" exclaimed the professor. "It is too valuable to spoil. Just take the point of the blade, and pry the jaws open while I hold it steady."<br /> Jerry tried to do this, but the turtle only seemed to grip the tighter, and the professor's thumb was bitten through nearly to the bone.<br /> "What shall I do?" wailed Mr. Snodgrass. "I don't want to kill it."<br /> "I have it!" exclaimed Ned. "There's a little puddle of water over there beside the road. Dip the turtle in it, and he'll think he can swim. Then he'll let go."<br /> "Good!" cried the professor as he proceeded to put the plan in operation. "Then I can save him alive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The scheme worked well. As soon as the turtle felt the water it let go, and started to swim off. But the puddle was too shallow, and the professor, watching his chance, grabbed the reptile again. This time he took care to catch it at the middle of the shell, where the turtle could<br /> not reach around and bite.<br /> "I have it, after all," remarked the scientist as he deposited his prize in a box, and proceeded to put some salve and a rag on his thumb. "It's a rare specimen. I'm glad I got it."<br /> "And we're all glad we didn't get it," spoke Jerry with a laugh in which the others joined. But the professor took it good naturedly. He was used to such accidents he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Resuming their journey, the travelers made only one more stop, that at noon, to get dinner. They had seen no signs of human habitation, and, as the afternoon wore on, and no house or cabin was seen, they began to feel that they might as well prepare to camp out again.<br /> As they were descending a gentle, sloping hill that led down into a small valley, just as the sun was setting, they saw, about a mile ahead a lonely cabin. The sight of smoke coming from the chimney told them there was some one at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hope whoever lives there can accommodate us," remarked Chunky. "My appetite's getting the upper hand of me again."<br /> "It don't look large enough to hold us all," observed Jerry.<br /> "There's a barn, or some sort of building, in the rear," remarked Ned. "Some of us can use that if the man or woman lets us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> A few minutes later the auto came to a stop in front of the cabin, which was indeed a lonely one, not another dwelling, large or small, showing in the whole valley.<br /> "Good evening," greeted an old man, with snow-white hair falling over his shoulders. He came to the door of the shack, and seemed to regard the coming travelers as a matter of course. "I am glad to see you," he went on. "You are just in time."<br /> "Time for what?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "For the great final and successful experiment," proceeded the aged man. "The test is about to begin. Come in and see me make gold from common earth. At last I have found the long-lost secret!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The eyes of the lonely man glowed with a strange light, and he seemed so excited that the boys did not know what to do.<br /> "Humor him," advised the professor in a whisper. "He is probably a harmless lunatic. Let him have his way, and pretend to agree with all he says."<br /> "Will you come in?" went on the old man. "I must proceed with my work."<br /> "We'll be glad to," went on the scientist. "That is, if we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> "My labors are now ended," the man said. "I have worked for twenty years on the secret of making gold from the baser metals. At last I have the correct method. I will be a millionaire in another month. But come in! Come in!"<br /> The boys, obeying Mr. Snodgrass's advice, went in, the scientist following them. They saw that the cabin, though small, was neat and clean. Nearly all of the first of two rooms was occupied by a large, rudely made furnace, while on a table near it stood all sorts of chemical apparatus. On the furnace a pot was boiling furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the last act in the drama of life," said the aged man. "See, I place in the pot these pieces of brass," and he showed the travelers some chunks of the yellow stuff. He put them in the pot, from which arose a cloud of steam.<br /> "Next I throw in this powder, which I have labored on for years. It is the secret that men would give their lives for."<br /> He threw the powder into the pot, which boiled more furiously than before, and a white cloud of steam arose. Then it died away, and the pot seemed to cool off.<br /> "Now for the gold!" exclaimed the chemist.<br /> He lifted the pot from the furnace, and, holding it with some thick cloths poured the water off into a hole in the ground floor of the cabin. Out toppled the pieces of brass which had been thrown in, but while they had been dull before, they now glittered with the yellow gleam of gold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The test! The test!" exclaimed the old man in a voice that trembled with eagerness.<br /> He placed one of the yellow pieces on the table, and put a few drops of gold-testing acid on it. There was a little hissing sound, and then, on the shiny surface of the piece of metal there came a dull black spot. The old man uttered a despairing cry.<br /> "Another failure!" he exclaimed. "It is brass still. I thought it would turn to gold! I must have made a mistake in mixing the powder."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVII. - The Indian and the Auto (144-151) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVII<br /> <br /> THE INDIAN AND THE AUTO<br /> <br /> For a few moments the scientist who hoped he had discovered the fabled power to transmute metals stared at the result of his latest trial. He appeared lost in thought. Then he seemed to recollect that there were strangers present.<br /> "I am sorry my experiment did not succeed," he said in a more quiet voice than he had yet used. "I hoped to show you what I can do. Well, I must try again. I think I know where I made the error. I had too much soda in the powder. I will use less next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We are sorry to interrupt your experiments," put in the professor, "but we are travelers, and our object in stopping here was to find out if you could take us in for the night."<br /> "Gladly," replied the old man. "There is a barn in the rear, but it has not been occupied in years; not since I came here. You are welcome to use that. Some of you can spend the night in the rear room. As for me I shall not go to bed. I must start at once and make up some fresh powders."<br /> "I think perhaps we had all better sleep in the barn," said the professor. "Then we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The truth of it was Mr. Snodgrass saw that the aged man was not altogether right in his head, and he preferred not to be too near in case the fellow should suddenly become violent.<br /> "Just as you like, just as you like," was the reply to the professor's decision, and the chemist seemed to be dreaming over some problem he was trying to solve.<br /> "May we cook some of our food on your stove?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why certainly. I beg your pardon for not mentioning supper," spoke the man, "but you see I am so used to getting a bite whenever I need it, so as not to interrupt my work, that I forgot there is such a thing as hospitality. Make yourselves at home, and, if you find anything in the cupboards help yourselves. Meanwhile please excuse me if I do not join you. I must go out and gather some roots and herbs I need in my experiments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car, lake"><br /> <poem><br /> He left the cabin, and, after bringing in some provisions from the auto, having first ascertained that there were few in the cabin, the travelers proceeded to make a meal.<br /> "Do you suppose he can be the hermit of Lost Lake?" asked Bob.<br /> "Well, he's certainly a hermit," spoke the professor, "but I don't believe there's a lake of any kind about here. Certainly if he was the hermit of the lake he would not be away off here. No, I am inclined to think we shall never see the lost lake or the hermit either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think it will be safe to stay here all night?" inquired Chunky.<br /> "I think so," was the professor's reply. "You see we will be out in another building, and we can fasten the door. If he tries to get in, which I am sure he will not, he will make noise enough to awaken us."<br /> "We could mount guard," suggested Ned.<br /> "It will not be necessary," Mr. Snodgrass said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nor did the travelers find it so. After their meal, having left a good supply of victuals for the old man in case he came back, they retired to the rear building where they slept soundly.<br /> After breakfast, which the old man did not spend more than five minutes over, the travelers prepared to resume their trip.<br /> "You had better stay one more night," urged the owner of the cabin. "I feel sure that I shall be successful to-night. I have discovered a new root. See, I call it gold threads," and he held up some bulbs that had been dug from the ground. Clinging to them were small yellow fibres or roots. "I found them last night, down in the hollow by the mineral spring," the man went on. "I am sure they are just what I need. Please stay; won't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, mountain, navigatio, plains, topography, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> But the professor told him, as gently as possible, that they must keep on. So, after bidding the gold-seeker good bye, and wishing him success, the boys and Mr. Snodgrass proceeded, the auto puffing along at a good rate.<br /> The weather continued fine and the air was bracing and cool, for they were well up among the foothills now. During the morning the road led up a gentle slope, but at noon they camped on a sort of ridge that marked the divide. On the other side was a vast plain, bounded at the further side by tall mountains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="plains, road condition, agriculture, navigation, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> It was well along in the afternoon, when having descended to the plain, the travelers found themselves bowling along a fine road, on either side of which were rolling fields. Mile after mile was covered, everyone enjoying the trip very much. The professor, however, was beginning to<br /> show signs of uneasiness. He fidgeted about in his seat, and seemed unable to remain quiet.<br /> "What's the matter?" asked Bob at length.<br /> "To tell you the truth," said the scientist, "I want to get out and get some specimens, but I did not like to ask you, for I do not want to delay the party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, engine, maintenance, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> They all voted that the professor should be given a chance to get as many specimens as he wanted. Accordingly Jerry brought the car to a stop, and the boys and the scientist got out.<br /> As the engine had not been running as smoothly as was desirable Jerry did not shut off the power, merely throwing out the gear clutches. He said he wanted to have the cylinders warm up, and so the engine was left going, though the car itself stood still.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The professor was soon busy gathering insects of various kinds from the tall grass, and even crawling on his hands and knees over the ground. The boys walked some distance off, to stretch their legs, for they were a little tired of sitting still so long.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who happened to glance back toward the auto, uttered a cry.<br /> "Look!" he shouted. "Some one is stealing our car and going off in it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, weapon, animal, car part, skill, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The others looked. The sight that met their eyes was enough to astonish any one. Climbing into the automobile was a big Indian, attired in gay colored blankets, a rifle slung across his back, while near him stood a Pinto pony, clean-cut and wiry.<br /> While they watched they saw the red man seat himself comfortably at the steering wheel, reach forward to throw the gear clutch in place, and then the car moved off, taking the Indian with it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! Come back!"<br /> "Stop that auto!"<br /> "Get out of that!"<br /> These were some of the things the boys yelled at the bold thief. But all of no avail. The Indian threw in the second gear, and the auto went faster than before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Come on! We must catch him!" cried Jerry, and he began to run in the direction the auto was fast disappearing in, down the road.<br /> "We can never catch him," called Bob.<br /> "Yes we can! He can't know anything about running an auto!" panted Jerry. "He'll put on the brake or pull the wrong lever next, and the machine will stop!"<br /> "That is unless he blows it up first or smashes it," said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, skill, Native American, navigation, engine, gasoline"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, appearing at this juncture.<br /> Bob was the only one left to tell him, as Jerry and Ned were running down the road at top speed. But it seemed that their race would be useless, for the auto was now running on third gear. And, strangest of all, the Indian seemed to know how to operate it. He kept a straight course, and the puffing of the exhaust told Jerry that the engine was running to perfection, with a good supply of gasolene, and the spark coming regularly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE INDIAN SEEMED TO KNOW HOW TO OPERATE IT.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, Native American risk, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who—ever—heard—of—an—Indian running—an—auto," panted Ned.<br /> "Running—away—with—one—you—mean," said Jerry, his breathing labored.<br /> Further and further away from the pursuing boys the auto went. It seemed hopeless to keep after it, but neither Jerry nor Ned would give up. They realized what it meant to lose their machine, though they could not understand how an Indian, in all his wild regalia, would think of getting into an auto.<br /> Suddenly there sounded down the road the patter of hoof beats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, gasoline, car part, sound, onomatopoeia"><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe that's more Indians," said Jerry turning around and slowing up in his running.<br /> "No," he added, "it's Bob on the Indian's pony. I wonder you or I didn't think of that."<br /> "He couldn't catch up with the auto if he had two ponies," growled Ned.<br /> "The only chance is that the gasolene may give out, or the sparker refuse to work, or that he may run into a sand bank," lamented Jerry.<br /> "And there don't seem to be much chance of either taking place right off," put in Ned. "Hark! What's that?"<br /> From down the road sounded the Toot! Toot! of the auto horn.<br /> "It sounds as if he was coming back," said Jerry. Just then Bob caught up to them on the pony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVIII. - Lost Lake Found (152-160) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, night, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, car, visibility, navigation, Native American, highway"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVIII<br /> <br /> LOST LAKE FOUND<br /> <br /> "Let me past! I'll catch him!" cried Bob.<br /> "Wait a minute! Maybe that's him coming back?" replied Jerry.<br /> Sure enough the next instant the auto, which had been lost to sight by reason of a turn in the road, came into view.<br /> Straight up the highway it came, the figure of the Indian, wrapped in his blanket, with his headdress of feathers, an altogether brilliant figure, seated at the wheel; a strange enough combination as any one will admit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, risk, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The red man acted as though he had been used to running autos all his life. He sat straight as an arrow, his hands grasping the wheel, which was sending the car straight for the boys.<br /> "He's just doing this to taunt us!" exclaimed Jerry. "I have a good notion to take a shot at one of the tires with my revolver and scare him into stopping."<br /> "Don't do it! You might kill him," said Ned, "and you wouldn't want to do that. But what does he mean by stealing the car, and then bringing it back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> A few seconds later the auto drew up in front of the boys, who had come to a halt. With an ease that bespoke long experience the Indian brought the machine to a stop, and then, while the lads looked on, so full of wonder at the whole occurrence that they did not know what to say, the red man grunted:<br /> "Heap fine wagon. Ugh! Indian like um, he buy um! How much?"<br /> "Look here!" burst out Jerry, so angry that he hardly took note of what the red man had said. "Do you know you are a—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. Wrapping his blankets closely about him, and drawing himself up to his full height of over six feet, the Indian said calmly:<br /> "I really beg your pardon for the unwarranted liberty I took with your car, but when I saw it standing out here, so far from civilization, I could not resist the temptation to take a ride. I trust you will overlook it."<br /> For a moment the boys were speechless, for the Indian they had supposed one from the half-wild plain tribes, and whose every appearance indicated that, had spoken in English as cultured as that of a college professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, pleasure, class, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "What—why—when—where?" stammered Jerry, and the Indian burst into a laugh.<br /> "I see I must explain," he said. "I am not what I seem."<br /> "Aren't you an Indian?" asked Ned.<br /> "A full blooded one, and the chief of a tribe," spoke the red man. "But I am not the half dime library sort.<br /> "You see," he went on, "I have just come back from the school at Carlisle, where I am taking a post graduate course. I felt a sudden longing to don the dress of my ancestors, and roam the broad fields. I did so, starting from my home on the reservation this morning. I came<br /> along and saw the auto. As I said, the temptation was too strong to resist. I got in and took a little spin, as you saw. I am sorry if I caused you annoyance, or made you fear your machine had been stolen."<br /> The eyes of the Indian twinkled and, beneath the paint on his face, the boys could see a smile coming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, animal, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "But how in the world did you learn to run a car?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Easy enough," was the answer. "I acted as chauffeur for several months this vacation to earn money enough to continue my studies. I got to be quite an expert. That is a fine car you have."<br /> "Well I'm stumped!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "How do you like my pony?" asked the red man. "I think we made a sort of unfair exchange, though, in spite of the fact that the animal is valuable. Now let me apologize once more, and then I will take my animal and go home."<br /> "You are welcome to the ride," said Jerry. "We were so surprised at first that we took you for a thief."<br /> "I don't blame you," spoke the Indian. "The sight of a red man in an automobile is enough to make any one wonder. Well, heap big chief, Whistling Wind in the Pine, must go."<br /> "Is that your name?" asked Ned.<br /> "It's my Indian one," was the answer, "but at the school I am known as Paul Rader. Now let me bid you good day, and a pleasant journey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, before they could ask him to take a ride with them, the boys saw the Indian leap on his pony, from which Bob had dismounted, and ride away at a smart gallop, his blanket flying out behind him in the wind.<br /> "Well, that's the limit!" exclaimed Ned. "To think of a wild-civilized Indian playing a trick like that."<br /> "I certainly thought he was as wild as they come," put in Bob. "I was afraid it was all up with us."<br /> Then the professor appeared and they told him the story.<br /> "I wish I had met him," said the professor.<br /> "What for; did you know him?" asked Jerry.<br /> "No, but he would probably be able to tell me where to get some fine specimens," remarked the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, scenery, speed, night, slowness, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> In a short time they were all in the auto again, and were bowling along over the table land, the machine humming in a way that told that the cylinders were working well. They camped for supper, and then, as it was a fine moon light night they determined to continue on slowly, as they<br /> wanted to make up for lost time.<br /> The moon rose early, a big silver disk shining among the trees, when the autoists started on their night journey.<br /> "This is great!" exclaimed Bob, who seemed to have forgotten his desire for a bed under shelter. "Wouldn't it be fun to have a lot of Indians chase us now?"<br /> "It might if they were tame ones," put in Jerry, who was steering, "but excuse me from any wild ones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, slowness, road condition, tree, mountain, night, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The road soon began a gentle ascent, and the auto ran more slowly up the hill. The road, too, became narrower, winding in and out. The trees, which had been scattering, were thicker, and the travelers could see they were getting well up among the mountains.<br /> "How late are you going to travel?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Until nearly midnight," was the answer. "The moon begins to go down then and it will not be very safe. But I think we ought to cover as big a distance as possible while we can. We have had delays enough."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, night, mountain, scenery, car part, slowness, road condition, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The only noise, besides the puffing of the machine, were the cries of owls, the chirping of crickets and katy-dids, with, now and then, the howl of a wolf or fox. In spite of the number in the party, there was a feeling of loneliness about being so far from civilization among the wilds of the mountain region.<br /> Up and up went the car, until the ascent became so steep that Jerry was obliged to run on the low gear. This made progress slow, and, because of the uneven road, so risky, that it seemed unwise to proceed further that night.<br /> "I'll slow up when we get to the top of this hill," said Jerry, "and we'll go into camp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, accident, slowness, risk, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> But he reckoned without knowing what sort of a hill it was, nor did he calculate on the auto failing to stop as soon as he expected. For that was what happened. Reaching the summit of the slope Jerry shut off the power.<br /> But something went wrong with the mechanism. The auto continued on, slowly to be sure, but with enough momentum to send it over the brow of the hill. Then it plunged down on the other side, gathering speed every minute.<br /> "Is she running away?" asked Ned. "Seems so to me."<br /> "She's not behaving as well as she should," replied Jerry, "but I have her under control. The brake is working all right," which fact he soon ascertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, topography, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> Faster and faster, however, in spite of the brake, did the auto plunge down the slope. Jerry kept his head, however, and was working to bring the machine to a halt. All at once Bob, looking up, saw where the road made a sudden turn to the left.<br /> "Look out for that!" he cried, pointing.<br /> Jerry tried to make the turn, but the steering wheel suddenly became a little stiff, so that, instead of the car being turned to the left, and around the bend, it kept straight on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, accident, speed, car part, road"><br /> <poem><br /> There was a crackling of brush and tree branches, and the big machine left the road and began plowing up the side of a slope, around the lower edge of which the road wound.<br /> "Duck!" cried Ned, as a tree branch hit him in the face.<br /> They all did so, and the next instant the big machine crashed through some briars, bending down several saplings in its journey. Then, having exhausted the momentum, the auto came to a stop, at the summit of the little slope, and Jerry jammed on the brakes to hold it there, the band this time gripping the axle firmly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! Oh look!" cried Ned, pointing ahead and down below them. <br /> There, in a sort of basin formed by high hills, lay a body of water, sparkling and beautiful in the moonlight, the shadows of tall black mountains reflected in its calm surface.<br /> "It's Lost Lake!" exclaimed Jerry, softly. "Boys! We have found Lost Lake! I am sure of it!"<br /> For a few seconds no one spoke after that, for they were all lost in wonder at the beauty and strangeness of the sight. It was so quiet that it seemed almost as if it was but a picture painted by a master's hand.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who was staring intently at the upper end of the lake, grasped Ned by the arm.<br /> "See," he whispered. "What's that? That thing in white?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIX. - The Ghost of the Lake (161-168) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="night, lake, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="visibility, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIX<br /> <br /> THE GHOST OF THE LAKE<br /> <br /> They all looked to where Bob pointed. At first they could make out nothing, but Bob insisted that he had seen some tall, white object moving.<br /> "It was just like the description of ghosts," he said, with a queer little laugh.<br /> "I see it," said Jerry, softly. "Right by the big white birch."<br /> "Sure enough," remarked the professor.<br /> Then they all beheld a tall white form in the pale moonlight, gliding from tree to tree, on the shore of the lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, it is picking up something from the shore," said Ned. "Maybe it's the hermit the miner told us about, gathering gold."<br /> "Nonsense," said Jerry. "It's probably a bit of fog, or it may be a white fox, or a wolf."<br /> "No fox or wolf is as big as that," insisted Ned. "I'll bet it's the hermit."<br /> "Whatever it is, it's gone now," put in Bob.<br /> And, sure enough, the object suddenly disappeared among the trees, and there was nothing in sight but the lake, the mountains and the moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we seem to have stumbled onto the lake," remarked Jerry. "If the auto had not misbehaved we would have taken the regular road, and Lost Lake would still be lost. As it is we have found it."<br /> "I hope we find some of the gold, as well," put in Ned. "We may need the yellow pebbles if our mine is gone."<br /> "Whatever we do, we shall stay here until morning," said Jerry. "It will be a good place to camp, anyhow, gold or no gold."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they all busied themselves in preparing to stay there for the rest of the night. A fire was built and a midnight supper was soon in preparation. They had good appetites, and, tired with the day's journey and events, they got out their blankets and slept soundly.<br /> By daylight the lake was seen to be a large sheet of water, rather irregular in outline, with many small bays and coves. Shimmering in the sunlight the water made a beautiful picture.<br /> "Here goes to see if there are any golden pebbles on the shore," remarked Bob, with a whoop as soon as he had crawled from the improvised bed. He did not have to stop and dress for the travelers slept in their clothes.<br /> Chunky climbed down the slope, along a rather rough path to the water. Some time later Jerry and Ned were about to follow, when they heard Bob yelling at the top of his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry.<br /> "Have you found the gold?" cried Ned.<br /> "Maybe the hermit has attacked him," suggested the professor.<br /> They all ran to the water's edge. When they reached the shore Bob was nowhere in sight.<br /> "Hi, Bob! Where are you?" cried Jerry looking around.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Chunky, suddenly, bobbing up from beneath the little waves about one hundred feet from shore.<br /> "Did you fall in?" asked the professor, anxiously.<br /> "No, I jumped in," replied the boy. "I'm in swimming. Come on in, the water's fine!"<br /> "Good for you!" called Ned and the next instant he was undressed and splashing out toward Bob. Jerry soon joined them, and even the professor took a dip. The water was somewhat cool, but after they were once in it was invigorating, and they swam about for half an hour, greatly enjoying the luxury of a bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark! What was that?" asked Ned, suddenly.<br /> There came a whirring of wings and a rustling of the leaves of the bushes off to the left. Then a bevy of birds sailed through the air.<br /> "Partridge, or some similar bird, I would say," was the professor's opinion.<br /> "And there goes a big rabbit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there's another!" exclaimed Jerry. "Say, we have struck a game country if we haven't a gold one. I say, what's the matter with having a hunt?"<br /> "Good!" cried Bob and Ned.<br /> "I think it would do no harm to replenish the larder with something fresh," remarked the professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly, after breakfast, guns were gotten ready and the boys and the professor tramped off through the woods, taking care not to go too far from the lake, as the trees were thick, and, as there were no trails blazed, it would be easy to get lost.<br /> Ned bagged the first partridge, and Bob came second, getting two in succession. Jerry had hard luck, for twice he missed easy shots. A little later, however, he bowled over a plump rabbit, and followed it up with a second. Then Ned got one, and Jerry succeeded in bagging a couple of fine birds.<br /> Some of the game was served for dinner, which was eaten by a campfire, and very fine it was voted. Then some was packed away in salt, against a possible time when provisions might be hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you say, shall we stay here another night or push on?" asked Jerry, about the middle of the afternoon.<br /> "If you ask me," said the professor, "I should say to remain here. I saw a number of fine and rare specimens I would like to gather."<br /> "The only thing is, perhaps we had better join Nestor as soon as possible," remarked Ned.<br /> "I think a few days' delay can do no harm," Mr. Snodgrass said. "From the tone of Nestor's letter I would say there was no immediate danger of the mine being claimed by others."<br /> "Then we'll stay," said Jerry. "I would like to investigate the lake a little more. We did not go very far along the shore. Perhaps there might be an outcropping of gold somewhere around this locality."<br /> "And maybe we will see the hermit, or the ghost, or whatever it is," added Ned. "Let's stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then we ought to rig up some kind of shelter," went on Jerry. "It may rain in the night, and it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to sleep in a mud puddle."<br /> "We can build a shack of boughs," said Bob.<br /> And this they did. They had often done the same thing before. Branches from a pine tree, stacked up against a sapling cut to fit between the crotches of two trees, with the same sort of boughs for a roof and<br /> floor, made a very good shelter. Rubber blankets on top insured the rain being kept out, and with woolen coverings for inside, beds were made that were very comfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, technology, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> When these preparations had been made it was growing dusk. While Bob and Ned were getting supper, and the professor was busy arranging his specimens gathered that day, Jerry removed one of the big search-lights from the auto.<br /> "What are doing that for?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm going to try and find out what that white thing is," said Jerry. "I'm going to rig up a lantern in front of the shack, facing the lake, and if the hermit or whatever it is, shows up, I'm going to flash the light on it."<br /> "Maybe it won't come to-night," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it did. It was along about midnight when Ned felt a light touch on his arm.<br /> "What's the matter?" he asked, sitting up.<br /> "Come on," whispered Jerry. "I see something down by the lake, and I want to investigate. Be careful, don't make any noise."<br /> Bob and the professor were both sleeping so soundly that they did not hear Jerry and Ned leave the shack.<br /> "Where is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "There," replied Jerry, pointing to a spot about three hundred feet away, and on the shore of the lake. "It was there a minute ago, but it's gone now. Watch, it will come back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, visibility, night"><br /> <poem><br /> He busied himself over the search-light, making ready to light it quickly and flash the beams on the ghost or hermit, or whatever it should prove to be.<br /> "There it is!" called Ned, in a hoarse whisper. "Right by that big rock that runs out into the water."<br /> "I see!" said Jerry, softly.<br /> There was a hissing sound as Jerry turned on the acetylene gas, a snapping sound as he lit the match, and then a slight puff as the vapor ignited. The next instant a glaring shaft of light shot down toward the lake, glint on a strange object.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There in the glare of the white beams stood the figure of an old man. His hair was snow white, and hung down long over his shoulders. He seemed bent with age, and this was made more pronounced because he bore a heavy bag on his back. He was right at the edge of the water.<br /> The sudden glare had startled him, and he turned in surprise and fear to see whence it came. His face stood out in strong relief, and Jerry started, for he dimly remembered seeing some one who looked like that some time before.<br /> Then, all at once the stillness of the night was broken by a shrill scream. Ned and Jerry were startled, and Bob and the professor, in the shack, were awakened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XX. - The Mysterious Woman (169-174) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="lake, rain, night"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XX<br /> <br /> THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN<br /> <br /> "Look!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> Then, as he and Jerry watched what took place in the circle of light, they beheld a woman, her long hair streaming down her back, run from the woods up to the old man. In her hand she held a big club, and with it she endeavored to strike the aged man. The latter dropped his sack, and seemed to engage in a struggle with the woman.<br /> "He's killing her!" exclaimed Ned. "This is the hermit we were warned against."<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must see what it means."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, just as he started down the slope, the search-light went out, leaving the place in utter blackness, for the moon was under a cloud. When Jerry had succeeded in getting the light going again, the man and woman were nowhere to be seen.<br /> "Well, that certainly was a queer sight," remarked Ned. "I wonder what it all means?"<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay here until we find out," said Jerry. "It looked as if there was going to be trouble, at one time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's all the excitement about?" asked the professor, coming out of the shack, followed by Bob.<br /> Jerry related what they had seen, and the professor agreed that it would be better to remain and make an investigation.<br /> "I say, you fellows are mean to go off alone and have a cracking adventure like that," objected Bob, in a grieved tone.<br /> "We didn't want to disturb your slumbers," said Ned.<br /> "Don't eat so much supper next time, and you will not sleep so sound," advised Jerry. But Bob was not to be appeased until promised that the next time Ned and Jerry went ghost hunting they would take him with them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having been so thoroughly aroused from their sleep the travelers decided to sit up a while and see if they could catch another glimpse of the strange man and woman. But, though they sat and talked for more than an hour, there was no further sign of the two queer creatures.<br /> "I'm going to bed," announced Bob at length, and the others decided to follow his example. They slept soundly until morning, though Jerry said afterward that he dreamed he was being chased across the frozen lake by a white haired man on a black horse. He got stuck in the ice, and was freezing to death, when he awakened to find that his blanket had slipped from him, and that a cold rain was blowing in through the cracks of the shack. Morning had dawned cold and dreary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wow! This isn't exactly pleasant!" exclaimed Jerry, as he poked his head out of the front of the screen of branches. "I wish there was a hotel handy."<br /> The others crawled from beneath the blankets, not in any too good humor at the dismal prospect.<br /> "And I'll bet there isn't any dry wood to be had," said Bob. "That means a cold breakfast."<br /> A search proved that he was right. Nor was there any charcoal, since the last had been used some days before, and they had been to no place where they could get more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just when a fellow needs a hot cup of coffee," went on Bob. "I never saw such beastly luck."<br /> Jerry said nothing. He seemed to be studying over some matter.<br /> "I have it," he exclaimed.<br /> "What? Some dry wood?" asked Ned with much eagerness.<br /> "No, but I know how to make some hot coffee," was the answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, equipment, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time in explaining. He first went to the auto where he got out rubber coats for himself and his companions. Then, ready to defy the rain, which was coming down at a good clip, Jerry hunted about until he found two large stones. These he set up a short distance apart, placing another each at the front and rear of the first two.<br /> "There's the stove," he remarked.<br /> "A heap of good it will do, with no fire in it," growled Bob.<br /> "Wait," advised Jerry.<br /> Taking the big search-light, which he had used the night previous, he removed the top, so that the flame could be used for cooking purposes. They prepared a good meal and enjoyed it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It continued to rain, and to fill in time the boys went fishing in the lake. Luck was with them and within half an hour they had ten fine fish, and then, though they could have taken many more, they did not, as Jerry<br /> said they would have no use for them.<br /> "Fish for dinner for me to-day," said Bob, while the others laughed at his usual exhibition of how fond of eating he was. The fish did prove an excellent dish, fried in corn meal on Jerry's improvised stove. Some bacon gave them a relish, and with hot coffee they felt they had as good a meal as many a hotel could serve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder where the professor is?" said Ned, when the meal was almost over. "I forgot that he wasn't with us."<br /> "He's off gathering birds, bugs or reptiles," said Jerry. "He'll come when he feels good and hungry."<br /> "He's more likely to forget all about being hungry if he gets chasing a fine specimen," remarked Ned. "I think I'll just take a stroll and see if I can come across him."<br /> "We'll go along," said Jerry and Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So the three started off together. They could easily follow the professor's trail, as he had broken through the underbrush, snapping off many twigs and breaking small branches. The boys wandered on for nearly a mile, but saw no sign of the scientist. They were about to turn back, and wait for him at camp, when Jerry held up his hand to indicate silence.<br /> "Hark!" he whispered.<br /> The others stood still, and, listening intently, heard above the patter of the raindrops, voices in conversation.<br /> "That's the professor," said Ned.<br /> "Some one is with him then," put in Jerry. "They are coming this way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sounds of persons advancing through the bushes could be heard. The voices also sounded plainer. A minute later the brush was parted and the professor, followed by a woman, came out into the little clearing where the boys were. At the sight of the woman, Jerry started, for he recognized her as the strange person who had been with the old man the night previous. The professor seemed excited about something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Boys, this lady has just told me some strange news," he said.<br /> "What is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Beware of the hermit of Lost Lake!" the woman exclaimed suddenly. "Have a care of him. Many poor travelers has he murdered. He would have murdered you last night if I had not prevented him."<br /> "So that's what it was all about," said Jerry, half aloud. The woman heard him, and turned:<br /> "Did you see him?" she asked. "Did you see me?"<br /> "I—we—" began Jerry.<br /> "You have been spying on me!" exclaimed the woman, growing much excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXI. - The Den of the Hermit (175-184) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="forest, lake, pleasure, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXI<br /> <br /> THE DEN OF THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "No, no!" said the professor calmly. "The boys were not spying. They happened to see a man and a woman on the shore of the lake last night, and they thought it might have been you."<br /> "It was me," said the woman. "I was trying to prevent him from coming and killing you all in your sleep."<br /> The boys began to feel a queer creepy sensation run up their spines, as if some one had poured cold water down their backs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's true," the strange creature went on. "I will tell you all about it. Listen to me," and she sat down on a stump.<br /> "Perhaps we had better go where there is shelter," suggested Jerry, for it was raining hard again, though the boys and the professor in their rubber coats did not mind it. The woman was drenched.<br /> "No," she said. "I can go to no place save these woods. I am safe from him here." She seemed nervous and excited, and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The old man is a hermit," she went on. "He has lived near this lake for many years. He kills travelers and takes their money. He tried to kill me but I escaped from him because I can run fast. Since then he has been after me. Last night he started for your camp, but I got a big club and stopped him. Then he ran away."<br /> "What was in the bag?" asked Ned.<br /> "What bag?" asked the woman.<br /> "The one the old man had on his back?"<br /> "Hush! Don't speak about it," was the reply. "He had a murdered man's body in there, and he threw it into the lake."<br /> "Are you sure?" asked the professor, thinking the woman might, perhaps, be trying to scare them away.<br /> "Positive," she replied. "I saw him kill the poor fellow, but the hermit did not know I was watching."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where does he live?" asked the professor.<br /> "He has a den in the darkest part of the woods," was the answer. "He takes travelers there and kills them. He does not know that I know where it is, but I do. Would you like to see it?"<br /> "Not if he is the kind of a person you say he is," spoke Jerry. "I think we had better steer clear of him."<br /> "I can take you there when he is not at home," said the woman. "Listen, once each week he takes a long trip over the mountain, to bury the gold he has taken from travelers. I can hide and watch him go. Then I could come and bring you to his den. Shall I?"<br /> "It might be a good plan," mused the professor. "If this man is a murderer he should be taken in charge by the authorities. Yes, come and let us know when he goes away. Perhaps we could capture him ourselves."<br /> "I'll come," said the woman. "Now I must go, for I hear some one coming," and, rising suddenly, she ran off at top speed through the woods. The boys listened intently but could hear no one approaching, and began to think the woman must have been mistaken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where did you meet her?" asked Jerry of the professor, when it was seen that the woman was not coming back.<br /> "She saw me while I was gathering some specimens," was the reply, "and she came up to warn me about the hermit. It seems that she lives not far away, and roams through the woods. Besides telling me about the old man, and to be on our guard against him, she showed me where to get some beautiful tree toads," and the scientist opened his pocket and showed it full of the little creatures.<br /> "Do you think she is telling the truth about the hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "There may be some exaggeration to it," rejoined the professor, "but I have heard of old half crazed men who lived in the woods as this one does, and who occasionally murdered lone travelers. We can't be too<br /> careful."<br /> "Besides, it did look as though she was trying to prevent him doing something last night," put in Jerry.<br /> "Well, we'll keep a good lookout," suggested the professor. "That's all we can do now, unless we decide to move on away from this place."<br /> "I would rather like to solve the mystery," said Jerry. "I do not think we have much to fear. He is an old man, and I guess we four are a match for him."<br /> "Then we had better do as the woman says, wait until she comes to lead us to his hut, or cabin, or whatever it is," the professor advised after a moment's thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That plan settled on, they made their way back to camp and the professor was given his rather late dinner. But he did not seem to mind this in the least.<br /> "Are you going to keep watch again to-night?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Of course. I want to get at the bottom of this. There is a mystery somewhere, and I think the hermit, the lost lake and the strange woman, together, can explain it."<br /> The rain stopped after supper, though it remained cloudy, and Jerry again prepared the gas lamp. It was arranged that he and Ned would stay up on guard until twelve o'clock and that Bob and the professor would take the rest of the night. Whichever party saw the hermit was at once to notify the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and Ned began their vigil. Several hours passed and it seemed they were to have their trouble for their pains. At length, however, just as they were preparing to turn in and let the others take their turn, Jerry saw a movement in the bushes about five hundred feet away, and down near the edge of the lake. The moon, shining faintly through the clouds, illuminated the scene.<br /> "Be ready to turn on the light when I say so," said Jerry to Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was all alert. Jerry, with his eyes straining to catch the slightest movement of the underbrush, peered through the darkness. Something white attracted him.<br /> "Now!" he whispered to Ned, and the light, that had been burning low, was suddenly turned on at full power.<br /> In its glare the two boys saw again the white haired hermit stealing along the edge of the water, the big bag on his back.<br /> "Call the others!" whispered Jerry to Ned. "I'll keep watch!"<br /> "All right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned softly went back to the shack where he awakened the professor and Bob. They were out in an instant, and made ready to go quietly down as close as they could to where the hermit was, while Jerry showed the way by the searchlight. But again they were doomed to disappointment, for, no sooner had Jerry turned the light so that it shown full on the old man, than he jumped as though struck by lightning and made a dive for the woods, into the black depths of which he disappeared.<br /> "I guess that's the last we'll see of him," said Ned.<br /> "He dropped his bag," cried Bob. "Let's get that and see what's in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this the professor and Ned ran down to the edge of the water, and soon returned with the sack the old man had carried on his back.<br /> "Open it and let's see if there are any murdered persons in it," said Jerry, with an uneasy laugh.<br /> Ned untied the string, and, not without some misgivings, peered inside.<br /> "Well I never," he exclaimed.<br /> "What is it?" asked Bob.<br /> "Fish! Nothing but fish!" replied Ned. "Fine ones at that. I guess all we have done is to have scared the poor old man away from his fishing grounds."<br /> "Certainly there is nothing suspicious in having a bag of fish," put in the professor. "I wonder if that strange woman could have been telling the truth."<br /> "We'll know better if she keeps her word and comes to take us to the hermit's den," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, lake, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> There seemed nothing more to do that night, so they all went to bed, not being disturbed until morning. They were awakened by the sun peeping in through the chinks in the shack, and they got up to find a fine day had succeeded the rainy one.<br /> The beams of Old Sol were bright and warm, and the first thing the travelers did was to go down and have a dip in the lake. Then breakfast was served, and when it was over Jerry and Ned started to overhaul the machine.<br /> "For," said Jerry, "we may want to leave at any time, and the car is in none too good condition since we plowed up the side of the mountain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, navigation, tree, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Several minor repairs were made and the auto was run down to the main road, where it stood in readiness for a quick start. It was some time after dinner before all this was done, and along about three o'clock the four travelers stretched out under the trees and took a well earned rest.<br /> "Now if that strange woman would—" began Ned.<br /> "Hush!" cautioned the professor, "some one is coming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hardly had he ceased speaking before the bushes opened and there appeared the figure of the queer woman, with her long hair hanging loose down her back.<br /> "Hush!" she whispered, placing her finger on her lips. "I have come to keep my promise. The hermit has gone over the mountain. Come, and I will take you to his hut, and you can see where he has murdered travelers."<br /> The boys hardly knew whether to obey or not, but a nod from Professor Snodgrass, to whom they looked, indicated they were to do as the woman wanted. So they arose and prepared to follow her. The professor brought up the rear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the woods their strange guide went, for several miles. At length she reached a thick part of the woods.<br /> "It is very close now," she said. "Wait until I take a look."<br /> The travelers halted, while the woman crept softly forward. She peered through the brush into a sort of clearing, and apparently seeing that everything was safe, she motioned for the others to advance.<br /> They did so, and, a moment later emerged from the woods into a place where many trees had been cut down. In the centre of this space was a small log cabin, and toward it the woman pointed.<br /> "There is his hut," she said. "Come on, I will lead the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She advanced with great caution, as though she feared to disturb some one. Closer and closer to the door she went, the others close behind her.<br /> "He never locks it, so we can go right in," she said.<br /> By this time she was near enough to grasp the latch. She raised it, and was about to enter, when the door suddenly swung back, and the old hermit himself, stepping out, stood before the astonished travelers.<br /> "There he is! There he is! There is the murderer!" cried the woman, pointing her finger at the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man did not appear greatly surprised. He looked from the woman to the boys and the professor, and remarked:<br /> "To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit?"<br /> "I we,—er—that is—we—er—I—" began the professor, finding it was hard to tell the truth.<br /> "Oh, it's poor old Kate," went on the hermit. "She has probably been telling you some strange stories. Will you not come into my cabin?"<br /> "Don't go into the murderer's hut!" cried the woman, as she turned and fled back through the underbrush, leaving the travelers in a somewhat queer situation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXIII. - Searching for the Hermit (195-202) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXIII<br /> <br /> SEARCHING FOR THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "Let's go to his help!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Come on!" cried Ned.<br /> "You had better not," said the woman, in a calm voice. "It is probably only the police after him for the many murders he has committed, and we had better not interfere. Besides if you want me to take you to your camp you had better come, as I have my house work to do before sunrise."<br /> She started to lead the way, and, though the boys felt inclined to follow and see what became of the hermit, they concluded it would be better to go back to camp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate seemed to have lost much of her excited manner as she led them through the woods, over a scarcely discernible path. Neither the fast gathering darkness nor the maze of trees seemed to confuse her. She made better progress than did the boys or the professor, as they were not familiar with the ground.<br /> "Well of all the queer adventures we've had," remarked Ned to Jerry, who had lagged somewhat in the rear with him, "this is the worst. Think of going to capture a murderer and then being led home by an insane woman! I wonder what will come next?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, car, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The journey to camp took some time, as the path was hard for the boys and professor to follow, and several times Kate had to wait for them to catch up to her. At last, however, she brought them out near the little open place where the auto stood, and the boys breathed a sigh of relief.<br /> "Our car is safe, anyhow," said Jerry. "Now for some sleep."<br /> "Ain't we going to have something to eat first?" demanded Bob in an aggrieved tone.<br /> The others laughed at Chunky's sorrowful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll see," said Jerry. "Perhaps you would like a cup of chocolate," he went on, turning to Kate.<br /> "No, thank you," she said. "I must not stay here. I want to see if they have captured the murderer, so I will go back," and, turning suddenly, she returned over the path they had come, her footsteps growing fainter and fainter.<br /> "Come on, let's make the chocolate," said Bob, when Kate had gone.<br /> Jerry soon had the beverage in preparation, and they all enjoyed it. Then they fixed up the beds in the shack, and soon were slumbering, too tired even to post a guard, though, as events proved, there was no need for one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Jerry, after breakfast had been eaten, "I suppose we may as well push on for Arizona. No use staying here since the mystery is solved."<br /> "I don't believe it is solved," spoke Professor Snodgrass, suddenly. "I'm not altogether satisfied about that hermit."<br /> "You don't think he's a murderer, do you?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, but there is something odd about him. I can not get over the feeling that I have met him before, or some relative of his. Yet I can not recall it clearly. He has certain queer little actions that remind me of some one. I would like to see him again."<br /> "If you want to, I think I could find our way back to the cabin in the day time," spoke Ned.<br /> "I took pretty good notice of the trail when we went over."<br /> "I wish you could," said the professor, eagerly. "I want to have a talk with that old man. Besides, I think I can get some more specimens at his hut. I saw a fine lizard around the door step in the afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided they would pay another visit to the hermit's cabin. Accordingly they started off after dinner, and, led by Ned, followed the trail. They went astray several times, and had to search about for the path, but finally they came to the place where Kate had halted them the day before to go forward and peer at the hut.<br /> "Shall we go right on now?" asked Ned, pausing to see what the rest wanted to do. "The cabin is just ahead."<br /> "Go on," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They came out into the little glade, in which the cabin stood. As they emerged from the woods they saw Kate standing in front of the hut, crying.<br /> "What is the matter?" asked the professor.<br /> "They have taken the poor old man away and killed him!" sobbed the woman.<br /> "It's another of her imaginations," said Ned, softly. "Probably the hermit is inside."<br /> But when they looked he was not to be seen, and his bed showed that it had not been slept in that night.<br /> "Will you help me hunt for him?" asked Kate.<br /> "Certainly we will," answered the professor.<br /> "Then follow me!" exclaimed the woman, striding off into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She led the way, explaining in disjointed sentences, yet so that she could be understood, that the old man frequently imagined some one was after him. At such times he would go to one or another of his hiding places, of which he had a number in the different parts of the woods.<br /> But this time he was not to be found easily. Place after place, including caves and deep ravines, were visited by the searchers, but there was no sign of the hermit.<br /> "I am sure he has been killed," said Kate in a sorrowful tone. "And he was the kindest man that ever lived."<br /> "I thought you said he was a murderer," spoke the professor, wondering in what strange channels the woman's mind ran.<br /> "So he is!" exclaimed Kate, "but he is a good murderer, and not one of the bad kind."<br /> "Poor woman," sighed Mr. Snodgrass. "Her mind is hopelessly gone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate started off in a different direction, and the boys and the professor followed her. She went at a rapid pace, and soon the travelers were aware that they were going up hill. The trail became more steep as they advanced, until they were panting from their exertions. Yet the crazy woman did not seem to become exhausted by the hard pace in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There is the hill!" she exclaimed at last, pointing upward, and the boys saw ahead of them a big half round mound, at the very summit of which was an immense tree.<br /> "He sometimes stays in that tree," spoke Kate, as they neared the big forest giant.<br /> "In the tree? I presume you mean he has a sort of platform built among the branches," said the professor. "A number of Indian tribes live that way."<br /> "He lives right inside the tree what little time he does live up here," replied Kate. "The trunk is hollow, and he crawls into it, and hides until all danger is past. We will soon see if he is there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An examination of the hollow trunk, however, showed that the hermit was not within, nor did the place disclose any signs of his having been there recently. Kate showed the despair she felt and the professor and the boys could not help feeling disappointed. For a while they stood beneath the spreading branches, wondering what would be best to do.<br /> All at once the professor, who had been intently gazing up into the leafy branches, gave utterance to an exclamation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There it is!" he cried. "A regular beauty! I must secure that if I never get another. Keep quiet, every one."<br /> "It's another specimen," said Jerry. "Can't you forget them for once, professor?"<br /> "This seems to be a sloth or an ant-bear," replied the scientist, as he made preparations to climb the tree. "It has long white whiskers, a black body and no tail. Wait until I crawl up and get it."<br /> "Never mind coming up, I'm coming down," spoke a voice, seeming to come from the animal, the capture of which the professor was intent upon.<br /> "Bless my soul, it's a combined sloth and parrot!" exclaimed the professor. "That is a rare animal-bird. I must secure it at all hazards. Help me, boys."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But there was no need for help, as, the next instant, two dangling legs descended from the lower branches of the tree, to be followed, a little later by a body, and then came a mass of white hair and whiskers.<br /> "It's the old hermit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes! It's him! it's him!" cried Kate. "He is safe! We have found him."<br /> "Be quiet!" cautioned the old man, when he had reached the ground. "There may be spies all around, though I think I have escaped them for the time being."<br /> "How did you get here?" asked Kate.<br /> "I ran as soon as I heard the noise of men coming after me," replied the aged man. "But I did not dare get into the hollow trunk, for fear of being seen. So I just crawled up into the branches, and there I'd be yet if the professor had not mistaken me for a specimen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can come down in safety," said Mr. Snodgrass, "as there seems to be no one in the neighborhood but ourselves."<br /> "That's good," was the rejoinder, "but there is no telling when some one may come. I think I will go back to my own cabin."<br /> The hermit started off with Kate, the others following. He had not proceeded far when he uttered an exclamation:<br /> "There is one of them!"<br /> At the same instant a roughly dressed man appeared in the narrow path, as if by magic. At sight of him the hermit turned and fled back into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXV. - Attacked by the Enemy (212-220) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, speed, mountain, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXV<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY<br /> <br /> "Are you sure the boy we have in mind is your son?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "We do not want to raise false hopes. Perhaps you may be mistaken."<br /> "Something tells me I can not be mistaken," exclaimed the hermit. "Tommy Bell is not a common name. Besides, I can describe my son, and then you will know whether he is the one you know," and he rapidly gave a short description of Tommy.<br /> "That's him all right," said Jerry, and the others agreed that the lad they had rescued from the hands of the rough men was, indeed, the son of the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I thought him dead," said the old man. "After I had been abused by the wicked gang that got me in their control I lost sight of poor Tommy. As soon as I could I made a search for him, but it was of no use."<br /> "Tommy thought you had wandered away from him," said Ned. "He told us his story after we had rescued him."<br /> "Then you saved his life, just as you have mine," broke in Mr. Bell. "I have much to thank you for. But first I must find my son. Where did you leave him?"<br /> "At a place called Las Cruces," replied the professor. Thereupon he told briefly how they had taken Tommy from the hands of the lawless gang and left him with a friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must go to him at once," exclaimed the old man. "I can hardly wait to start. To think that the boy I thought was dead is alive! And I suppose he thinks I am dead also," Mr. Bell went on.<br /> "He was going to search for you," replied Bob, "but he did not know where to start. We can send him word now."<br /> "I'll take him word myself!" cried Mr. Bell. "I'll start as soon as it is daylight."<br /> "Then you had better get some rest and sleep now," observed Mr. Snodgrass. "Come into the shack, and we will make you some hot coffee."<br /> The hermit begged them to go to no trouble on his account, but they insisted, and soon the coffee was boiling on the coals of the camp fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm too excited to sleep," remarked Mr. Bell, as he went inside the rough shelter to lie down. And so it would seem, for, every few minutes he would rouse up from his position, and ask some particular about his son. He appeared scarcely able to believe the good news. At length, however, he grew weary, and along toward morning fell into a doze.<br /> The others were so tired and sleepy from being awake the night before that they slumbered late, and the sun was quite high when Jerry roused himself, and sat up, wondering what day it was.<br /> He got up, took a plunge in the lake, and came back to start breakfast, finding that, in the meanwhile, the others in the camp, including Mr. Bell, had arisen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to start and find my son," cried the hermit.<br /> "You had better have something to eat first," suggested Mr. Snodgrass. "Then perhaps we can think of some plan to aid you."<br /> Though impatient to be gone the old man consented to remain to breakfast. He did not eat much, however, and seemed ready any minute to start on the long search for Tommy.<br /> "How would it be if we took you to the nearest town in our automobile," suggested the professor, when the meal was over. "From there you can get conveyances and reach Las Cruces in a short time. If you need any money—"<br /> "Thank you, I think I have enough for the present," interrupted Mr. Bell. "I do not need much. When I find Tommy I will bring him back with me, and we will be together once more. It seems too good to be true!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What will become of Kate in the meanwhile?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "Though she has queer ideas concerning you I think she is your friend. Will she be able to live in these woods all alone?"<br /> "Kate is able to take care of herself," was the reply. "She was in these woods before I came and she may be here after I am gone. But I will tell her where I am going, and that I expect to return."<br /> A trip was made to the hermit's hut, and, after several blasts had been blown on the conch horn, Kate appeared. She was overjoyed to see the aged man again, and was told of the latest developments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You had better hurry up then, and get away from these woods," said the woman.<br /> "Why so?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because there are a number of strange men lurking about," was the answer. "I think they are after this good old man. So be on your guard."<br /> "It is the same crowd," said Mr. Bell. "They hate to give me up."<br /> "What do they want of you?" asked Jerry. "You said you might tell us the secret some day, adding that perhaps we could help you. Maybe we can help you now."<br /> "You can help me, and you have helped me," said Mr. Bell. "I can tell you the rest of my story now. As I said I have long been in quest of some one. That some one is my son Tommy. I did not want to tell you of him before, as I was afraid the news would get out. Nor did I tell you why the gang wanted me in their power. It is because I hold the final title to a piece of valuable property, and they can not get possession of it until I sign off, which I refused to do!"<br /> "Why so?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Because I understand the property is now claimed by persons who, if not in the eyes of the law, are, still the rightful owners. If I should sign my rights away to the gang they would take the property away from the innocent holders now. So I refused to sign, and they have ruined me for<br /> it."<br /> "Never mind," said the professor, cheerfully. "We will get you out of their power, never fear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder if the gang that had Tommy is not the same one that had Mr. Bell in their power," suggested Bob. "He told us about men wanting him to sign papers that would give them control of some land."<br /> "They must be the same," commented Mr. Bell. "I will be on my guard now. Neither Tommy nor I will sign a single document. But now I must start."<br /> "Very well," said Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, engine, maintenance, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> There was no further cause for delay, so Jerry got the automobile ready, and, the various belongings having been stowed away, the engine was started, after a somewhat longer rest than usual, and, puffing away in a manner that awoke all the echoes of the forest, the car started toward the village at the foot of the slope. From there, it was arranged Mr. Bell would go forward to Las Cruces by stage coach, or whatever other means of travel presented themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, mountain, speed, driver, sound, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Once fairly on the road the spirits of all in the party rose. It was a fine day, and the fresh mountain air, crisp and cool, put new life into their veins.<br /> They were bowling along the road at a good clip with Jerry at the wheel, when, suddenly in the air above their heads, there sounded a shrill buzz.<br /> "That's a new kind of a bumble bee," cried Uriah Snodgrass. "I must have it for my collection."<br /> "I guess you wouldn't want many of that kind," said Mr. Bell, quietly.<br /> "Why not? I like all kinds."<br /> "That was a lead one," went on the old man.<br /> "You mean a bullet?" asked Bob. "Is some one firing at us?"<br /> "I'm afraid so," answered the hermit.<br /> Then came a distant report, followed by the peculiar buzzing sound.<br /> "Speed her up!" cried Bob to Jerry. "Let's get out of this danger zone. It's too much like being on the firing line to suit me."<br /> The auto, all this while was speeding along, and, soon, the shooters, whoever they were, had been left far in the rear. The sound of the bullets was no longer heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The reason they are doing it," answered Mr. Bell, "is that they want to get me alive. If I was to be killed their last chance of getting me to sign the papers would be gone."<br /> "But there is your son, Tommy," said Jerry. "He told us they wanted him to sign. If you were dead, he would be your heir, and his signature would be legal when he became of age. Perhaps the men could make use of it even before then."<br /> "I see! I see!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "It is important then that I live so I can beat them at their own game."<br /> "Unless you don't care about living on your own account or that of your son's," said the professor, grimly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, rural, speed, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> They kept on steady after this and at last reached the bottom of the mountain slope.<br /> "Now for the village," exclaimed Mr. Bell. "I shall soon see my boy!"<br /> Faster and faster went the auto. The traveling was good, and Jerry speeded the car to the last notch. About six o'clock they rolled into town, to the surprise of many of the inhabitants, who had never seen one of the puffing, snorting things, though they had read of them.<br /> A knot of curious persons gathered around the machine as Jerry brought it to a stop in front of the post-office. Several boys began to inspect every part. The travelers were about to alight when a shrill voice cried out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hey, Jerry! And Bob! And Ned! Hey there! Oh, how glad I am to see you!"<br /> For a moment the Motor Boys did not recognize the voice. Then Ned saw a lad trying to break through the crowd.<br /> "It's Tommy! It's Tommy Bell!" exclaimed Ned. "Hey, Tommy! You can't guess who we have with us!"<br /> "Tommy Bell! Did you say Tommy Bell!" exclaimed the hermit. "Where is he? Let me see him!"<br /> But Tommy had heard his parent's voice, and the next instant the boy had made a flying leap into the car, and was clasped in his father's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE NEXT INSTANT THE BOY HAD MADE A FLYING LEAP INTO THE CAR.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVI. - On the Road Again (221-226) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, slowness, mountain, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVI<br /> <br /> ON THE ROAD AGAIN<br /> <br /> "Where in the world did you come from?" asked Jerry of Tommy.<br /> "How did you get here?" inquired Ned.<br /> "How did you know where to find us?" Bob wanted to know.<br /> But to all these questions Tommy turned a deaf ear. He was so overjoyed at seeing his father, and the hermit was so excited at seeing his son once more, that neither had eyes nor ears for anything or any one except the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The crowd looked on curiously, the interest divided between the automobile and the meeting between father and son. Finally, when Mr. Bell and Tommy had, temporarily, exhausted the theme of telling each other how glad they were at being united, the boys had a chance to get a word in edgeways, and Tommy answered a few of their questions.<br /> He told them that he had remained for several days with his friend in Las Cruces, and how a traveling miner had, in a general conversation, mentioned the lake and told of the queer hermit that lived on the shores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Something in the description of this odd character impressed Tommy with the belief that the hermit might be his father, who had taken that method to escape the gang which wanted him to sign away his rights. Accordingly, the boy had started from Las Cruces and made his way to Deighton, the town where Mr. Bell expected to start in search of his son.<br /> "I got here this morning," said Tommy, "and I found a little work to do to earn some money. I was going to start up the mountain to-morrow and try and find the lake."<br /> "Now you don't have to," said Mr. Bell. "Well, it certainly is a queer world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers spent the night at the Deighton hotel, and, in the morning, after a good breakfast, assembled to talk over their plans for the future.<br /> "Do you intend to go back to Lost Lake, Mr. Bell?" asked the professor. "If you do, you and your son can ride that far in the automobile, since we are going back in that direction."<br /> "Where are you going after you leave Lost Lake?" asked Mr. Bell.<br /> "To Arizona," answered Jerry. "We have a mine there, and we must go to see how things are getting on."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, passenger, pleasure, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "That's rather odd," commented the hermit. "I have an interest in some mining property in Arizona, though I don't suppose it is anywhere near yours. But I have made up my mind not to go back to Lost Lake, except to bring away a few things that I left in the cabin. I would also like to provide for poor Kate. After that I think Tommy and I will go to Arizona and try our fortunes over again."<br /> "Then why not go with us?" spoke Jerry. "We have plenty of room in the machine, and we'd be glad of your company."<br /> "I would like to very much," said Mr. Bell, "if I thought I would not bother you."<br /> He was assured that he would be very welcome, and then he consented to go. A new stock of provisions was purchased, together with some ammunition and some other supplies for the auto. Then, amid the cheers of more than half the populace of Deighton, the travelers began their journey toward Lost Lake again.<br /> Mr. Bell had made arrangements with a family in the town to take charge of Kate whom he promised to send to them, for he knew he could depend on the woman to obey him and make the journey alone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, sound, car part, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> Lost Lake was reached on the second day, for the travelers were delayed by a landslide, and had to camp out one night. They found the camp and the hermit's hut undisturbed.<br /> "I guess none of the gang has been around lately," remarked Jerry.<br /> "I hope we have seen the last of them," put in Mr. Bell. "They certainly caused enough trouble."<br /> A few blasts on the horn brought Kate, and the poor demented woman was overjoyed to see her friends again. She made much of Tommy, who, she said, looked enough like his father to be recognized on the darkest night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first the crazy woman objected to being sent to Deighton, but Mr. Bell knew how to reason with her, and after some argument, she consented to go. She started away on the second morning, and, as the travelers learned later, eventually reached the family that had consented to care for her. Under skillful medical treatment Kate partly recovered her reason, and continued to live in Deighton for many years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, road condition, topography, car part, maintenance, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now," remarked the professor, when they had seen Kate started off on her journey, "I suppose it is time for us to move. So let's get started toward our mine, for I'm sure Nestor must be quite anxious to see us."<br /> "Onward it is, then!" exclaimed Ned. "All aboard, and may we have a safe trip!"<br /> With Ned at the steering wheel the auto was started off. The way was rather rougher than any they had yet traveled over, and for some distance the ascent was steep. But with a new set of batteries and spark plugs, and with everything on the car well adjusted, matters went along smoothly, though no very great speed could be attained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, topography, pleasure, rural, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> Mile after mile was covered, the auto mounting higher and higher amid the mountains. There were no signs of human habitation, not even a deserted miner's hut being passed the first two days of the trip.<br /> Of course there was no shelter to be had, and nights were spent in the open. But as the weather was mild, and as it did not rain, this was considered more a pleasure than a hardship.<br /> The third day they began to see signs that told them they were approaching a town. Now and then cabins and huts would be passed, mostly the lonely homes of solitary miners, who were prospecting for gold. Sometimes they would pass quite good sized camps, and about noon of the fourth day they were invited to come in and have a meal, which they were glad to do.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> The miners told them the nearest town was Sleighton, seventy-five miles away, and that it was the centre of activity for a large area of country round about.<br /> "And I wouldn't advise you folks to speed that there machine of yours when you strike the village," said one of the miners.<br /> "Why not?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because the marshal is very strict, and he ain't got no very great hankerin' fer choo-choo wagons."<br /> "We'll look out," promised Jerry. "We are in too much of a hurry to want any delays."<br /> "I wonder if we'll hear anything more of that gang," said Ned as they rode away from the mining camp. "It seems queer that they would drop the thing when they seemed so anxious to capture Mr. Bell."<br /> "We'll hear of them again, and in a way we won't like, I'm afraid," said the former hermit. "We'll have to be on the lookout."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVII. - Trouble at the Mine (227-236) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="health, law, risk, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, rain, equipment, Southwest"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVII<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AT THE MINE<br /> <br /> Several days' travel brought the party over the line into Arizona. They passed through a small village one noon, and, on inquiring their where-abouts were told that they were well within the borders of the state where their gold mine was located.<br /> It began to rain shortly after this, and their trip was rather unpleasant, but, well wrapped up in rubber coats, they managed to keep fairly dry. As for the auto it did not seem to mind what kind of weather it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, rain, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> They camped that night under a clump of pine trees which served as a partial shelter, and it was so wet that no fire could be built. Jerry resorted to the stove made from one of the search-lights, and made some hot chocolate that warmed them all up.<br /> The next day dawned clear, however, and with a better feeling the travelers took up their journey again. The way was becoming familiar to them, and they recognized many landmarks they had observed in their great race across the continent to secure the gold mine before Noddy Nixon and his crowd could win the claim, as told in detail in "The Motor Boys Overland."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> That night they stayed in the town where the government assay office was located and to reach which there had been such an exciting brush between the two automobiles, the one run by Noddy, and that run by the Motor Boys. They saw several men whom they knew slightly, and who appeared much surprised to see them again.<br /> "Well, well, well, where in the world did you come from?" asked the proprietor of the hotel, as the auto drew up in front of his place. He had been quite friendly with the boys while they stayed at the mine, and had sold them many supplies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been down to Mexico for a change of air," said Jerry.<br /> "I suppose it didn't agree with you, or you wouldn't be coming back so soon," went on the proprietor.<br /> "Well, we thought our mine needed looking after," Jerry remarked.<br /> "Looking after? I should say it did," the proprietor continued. "Jim Nestor was here the other day and he said if you didn't come back pretty soon and do something, there wouldn't be any mine."<br /> "Is that right?" asked Ned, thinking the man might be trying to scare them for a joke.<br /> "Straight as a string," was the answer. "It seems that the title to the place is in doubt."<br /> "I know, Nestor wrote us about that," put in Jerry. "But he is still in possession, isn't he?"<br /> "Can't say," replied the hotel man. "He was very anxious the last time I saw him, and that was a week ago. If I was you I'd look after it the first thing in the morning."<br /> "We will," said Jerry. "I wonder if the government office is closed."<br /> "Long ago," said the proprietor of the inn. "Why?"<br /> "I was thinking I could go there and find out what sort of claim there was against our property," answered the boy.<br /> "You'll have to wait until ten o'clock to-morrow morning," went on the man. "They've got a new official in charge and he takes more time off than he puts in. Some one ought to write to the President about it. There's lots of kicks about the way he acts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> Neither the boys nor the professor did much sleeping that night, because of worry over the mine tangle. They made an early breakfast and then started for their claim, which they expected to reach in about two hours unless something unexpected occurs.<br /> The way was familiar to them, and recalled many old memories of the exciting times they had in locating and proving their claim. They pointed out to Mr. Bell the various landmarks as they passed them, but the former hermit seemed to have fallen into a sort of stupor. His eyes had a vacant stare and he took no interest in what was being said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid he's going to be sick," said Jerry to the professor. "He has hardly spoken since we came into Arizona, and he used to be quite a talker."<br /> "I guess it is only the excitement wearing off," said Mr. Snodgrass. "He will be all right in a day or two. He has had a pretty hard life the last few weeks."<br /> Tommy was worried about his father, and sat beside him, holding his hand, now and then looking up into his face, as if he feared to lose his parent again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As they neared the mine Mr. Bell seemed to become more dazed. Yet he appeared to be struggling to recall something that he had once known and forgotten.<br /> Suddenly he stood up in the automobile, as the car passed a deserted and tumbled down hut and exclaimed:<br /> "See! There it is! There is the place!"<br /> "What place, father? What do you mean?" asked Tommy.<br /> But Mr. Bell sat down again, and seemed to have forgotten that he had spoken. The professor could note, however, that there was a struggle going on in the old man's mind.<br /> "I hope he does not become raving mad, yet it looks bad for him," the professor thought to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography, scenery, sound, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "Ten minutes more and we'll be there!" exclaimed Jerry, crowding on a little more speed. "I do hope Nestor is having no trouble."<br /> They were in the midst of a wild mountainous country now. On either side of the road were great bowlders, while a little further back was scrub timber which extended for a mile or more before the deeper woods were reached.<br /> They were just rounding the last turn of the road to swing into the straight stretch that would take them to the mine when there sounded on the air the crack of a rifle. An instant later Mr. Bell gave a convulsive start and fell over in his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, visibility, risk, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "They've killed him! They've shot him!" cried Tommy, while Jerry suddenly brought the machine to a stop. Glancing across to the left a small curling cloud of smoke could be seen floating above a big stone.<br /> "There's where the shot came from," said Ned.<br /> "Is he badly hurt?" asked Jerry of Professor Snodgrass, who was bending over Mr. Bell.<br /> "It is hard to say," was the answer. "The bullet struck him on the head, but there is so much blood I can't tell how bad the wound is. Push on to the mine. Perhaps Nestor can help us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry started the machine again. It had attained a good speed when, from the side of the road came a hail.<br /> "Motor Boys, ahoy!"<br /> "There's Nestor!" cried Ned, pointing to a man who stood in front of a small shanty. "Hello, Nestor!" he called.<br /> "Hello!" responded the miner, running down to the road. "Well, I am certainly glad to see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quick, Nestor!" exclaimed Mr. Snodgrass. "We have a wounded man here, and must get him to the shanty at the mine as soon as possible."<br /> "We can't do it," replied Nestor.<br /> "Why not?"<br /> "Didn't you get my letter?"<br /> "Only the one saying there might be a possibility of trouble."<br /> "Well trouble came all right. I've been driven from the mine, and it's in possession of a bad gang. So we can't take the wounded man there."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Jerry, seeing that Mr. Bell was bleeding badly.<br /> "Bring him into my cabin," said Nestor. "I came here after the gang drove me out. I can put you up, I guess."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, parking, equipment, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry ran the car up close to the shanty and Mr. Bell, who was unconscious, was carried in and laid as tenderly as possible on the single bunk of which the place boasted.<br /> "Now some warm water and clean clothes," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I must wash the wound and see how bad it is."<br /> "I haven't a bit of hot water," said Nestor.<br /> "There's plenty in the radiator of the auto," spoke Jerry. "Give me a pail and I'll soon get some."<br /> He soon had a plentiful supply that was almost boiling, and, cooling it somewhat, the naturalist carefully washed the blood from the wounded man's head. Then he examined the hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will he die?" asked Tommy, as he stood around, tearfully.<br /> "Not this time," replied Mr. Snodgrass, cheerfully. "The bullet appears to have only grazed the scalp a bit, but it probably gave him a pretty hard knock. He'll soon come around right I guess."<br /> Mr. Bell was made as comfortable as possible, and, as there was nothing to do but wait until he became conscious, he was left in charge of his son. Tommy was told to call as soon as his father showed signs of awakening, and then the others surrounded Nestor, eager to hear about<br /> the mine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess it's gone," said the old prospector. "As I wrote you, the title seems to have some flaw in it, and this gang, which came from somewhere to the southeast, found it out, and served papers on me. It appears that there is a man missing who holds the key to the situation, and who owns<br /> the majority of the mine, but he can't be found, and so our title is no good."<br /> The news depressed the spirits of all. They had been hoping that the trouble was small and temporary and that Nestor would find a way out. Now they stood to lose the mine they had struggled so hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you resist their claim?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You bet I did," replied Nestor. "I went to court over it, but the judge said though it was morally wrong to put me out, yet the others had the law on their side, and he had to decide against me.<br /> "I didn't give up even then, for I barricaded the place and defied 'em to get me out. But the sheriff came and said that was no way to do. He had the law with him, and he said it would be his duty to shoot me if I resisted. He advised going to a higher court, and so, rather than have any bloodshed I gave up, and decided to camp out here until you came. I've been here about two weeks now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then the mine's gone," remarked Jerry, sorrowfully.<br /> "We can try the courts," said Nestor, hopefully.<br /> "It would take years to settle the case," put in Mr. Snodgrass. "No, I guess you are beaten, boys."<br /> "I will not give up yet," said Jerry.<br /> "What are you going to do?" asked Ned.<br /> "I'm going to town, hire the best lawyer I can get, and see what he says. There may be a way out of this yet."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" exclaimed Bob. "I'm with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time. He hurried to the auto, and with Bob for company made the run to town in record time. He was directed to a lawyer's office, and, finding the attorney, who was a young chap, in, paid him a retainer and stated the case briefly.<br /> "I just want to know how we stand, what sort of a claim there is against our title, and what we can do to perfect it," said Jerry.<br /> "It's quite a lot of information to get at in a hurry," said the lawyer, "but I'll do my best. I'll be ready for you at four o'clock this afternoon."<br /> "I'll call for you then," went on Jerry, "and take you back to Nestor's shanty, where you can explain the whole thing to us."<br /> Then the boys, with a feeling of dread that their mine was gone forever, in spite of all they could do, went back to where the others were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVIII. - All's Well that Ends Well (237-248) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="law, health, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVIII<br /> <br /> ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL<br /> <br /> They found Mr. Bell in much the same condition as before, though Mr. Snodgrass said the wounded man's breathing was a little easier, which was a good sign.<br /> "And what about the mine?" asked the naturalist. Jerry told him the lawyer was coming.<br /> "I'm afraid it will be of little use," said the professor. "Nestor says they had a big lawyer to represent the gang, and they also have a large force in charge of the mine, taking out gold."<br /> "And it's our gold," exclaimed Jerry. "Oh, why didn't we get back sooner?"<br /> "It wouldn't have done much good," spoke Nestor. "I did all I could, but the law was on their side."<br /> "Of course, I didn't mean that you failed," Jerry hastened to add, for fear of hurting the old miner's feelings. "It's too bad, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, oil, navigation, law, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> After a somewhat gloomy dinner, which the professor tried to liven up by telling jokes and funny stories, Jerry oiled the machine, and, about two o'clock started back to town for the lawyer. He found the attorney waiting for him, with several big law books in a valise.<br /> "Any luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Not a great deal," was the answer.<br /> "Well, don't tell us until we are all together," went on Jerry. "I don't want to stand it all alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When, on arrival at Nestor's cabin, the lawyer proceeded to tell what he had learned, there were six very attentive listeners.<br /> The attorney went over the ground carefully, and told the boys, Nestor and Professor Snodgrass, much that they had already heard. How, because of a missing owner who held more than a half interest in the mine, the title was not good when the boys preëmpted it. In fact it was still the property of others, though about to lapse.<br /> "I don't understand all them legal terms," put in Nestor, "but didn't we make a good claim to the government for that mine?"<br /> "You did, as far as it went," replied the lawyer. "Uncle Sam gave you a title, but did not guarantee that some one did not have a better one, which it seems is the case."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But that gang hasn't a good title either, not if the owner of over half the shares is missing," went on Nestor.<br /> "No, but it seems, according to the records, that they have some sort of an agreement from this missing man that they are empowered to work the claim until he comes to demand his share."<br /> "If that's the case I'm for going up there and driving them out with a gun!" exclaimed Nestor. "They haven't any more right than we have, and we can at least make them go shares with us until this missing man shows up. What's the matter with attacking them to-night."<br /> "If you're going to resort to lawless means I'll have to throw up the case," said the attorney. "That is no way to talk."<br /> "Nestor doesn't mean it at all," put in Jerry. "Of course we will have no battle with that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are two ways we might proceed," the lawyer went on. "There may be more, but they are the only ones that suggest themselves to me from what time I was able to give to the case."<br /> "What would you advise?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You can apply to the courts for an injunction to prevent the working of the mine until the missing half-owner shows up."<br /> "But that would bar us as well as them," put in Jerry. <br /> "Yes, it would have that effect, if you secured the injunction, which is doubtful. It would be a long and costly litigation, I fear."<br /> "And what is the other plan?"<br /> "You might try to find the missing man, and buy him out, or make some arrangement with him. From what I can learn he and the others have quarreled and are opposed to each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the missing man?" asked Bob.<br /> "That is something on which I can not be of the least help to you," was the reply. "There is nothing to show where he is."<br /> "Then it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to search for him, and as long and costly as the injunction means," commented Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "I'm afraid it would," was the lawyer's answer.<br /> "What is the man's name?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I have it here," proceeded the attorney. "It is Mr. Well, no, that's not it. Oh yes! Here it is. Bell, that's it. Mr. Jackson Bell."<br /> "What?" fairly shouted the three boys at once.<br /> "What name?" inquired the professor, wondering if he had heard aright.<br /> "Jackson Bell," repeated the lawyer. "Why, do you know him?"<br /> "Know him?" went on Jerry, jumping up in his excitement. "Why he is in the next room this very minute! Well of all the strange pieces of luck!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they all tried to tell the lawyer at once the story of the hermit and his son, making such a jumble that the attorney had to beg them to stop, while he listened to one at a time. Finally the tale was related, and the boys and the professor as well, greatly excited, paused to see what the lawyer would say.<br /> "Then I don't see any further trouble to your getting possession of the mine," said the attorney. "If Mr. Bell is on your side, and you make a joint application to the court or even to the government agent, I am sure you will be given instant charge of the claim."<br /> "There is only one difficulty," said Mr. Snodgrass. "Mr. Bell is wounded. His mind was not strong before the shooting, and it may be altogether gone when he recovers consciousness. In that case—?"<br /> "In that case I'm afraid you are as badly off as before," finished the lawyer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door to the inner room, where Mr. Bell was in the bunk, opened, and Tommy came out, looking worried.<br /> "Is he worse, Tommy?" asked the professor.<br /> "He's acting very queer," replied the boy. "He is sitting up in bed, and is trying to get something out from under his shirt. He's talking something about a mine."<br /> "He is probably delirious," said Mr. Snodgrass. "We must have a doctor. I'm afraid it looks bad for us, boys."<br /> At that instant the form of Mr. Bell, weak and tottering, showed in the doorway. He seemed greatly excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There you are!" he cried tearing open his shirt and throwing a bundle, done up in oiled silk on the table. "There are the papers. There are the proofs to the mine. The gang did not get them after all!"<br /> "Calm yourself," spoke Mr. Snodgrass, in a soothing tone that one uses to sick children or fever patients.<br /> "I'm all right!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "Don't think I'm crazy. I was a little off my head, but the wound the bullet gave me, and the blood I lost, accomplished just what was needed. There, I tell you, are the papers proving my claim to the mine."<br /> "What mine?" asked the professor, while the others waited in anxiety for the answer.<br /> "The mine we were going to," responded the old man. "From the description you boys gave of it I recognize it as the same one I have more than a half share in. All the way up here I was trying to recall when I had been here before. I recognized the places, but my mind would not serve me. I had suffered so much that I was almost crazy. Then came the shot, and I did not know anything more, until I just woke up in that room, and remembered all about it. Now we will beat that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurrah!" cried Jerry, seizing Ned by the arms and starting to dance a hornpipe.<br /> "Are you sure you can not be mistaken about the mine?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, for it seemed hardly possible that the old hermit, whom they had rescued, should turn out to be the much-wanted missing owner.<br /> "There are the papers, you can see for yourself," replied Mr. Bell.<br /> The lawyer, at a sign from the professor, made a careful examination of the documents.<br /> "They seem to be all right," he said. "I have no doubt but that you can fully establish your claim, Mr. Bell."<br /> "It isn't my claim, sir."<br /> "Why I thought you said—"<br /> "Everything I have or own is the property of these noble boys and Professor Snodgrass," went on the former hermit. "They saved my life, and that of my son's. If I gave them a hundred mines I could not repay them."<br /> "But we do not want your share," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "It don't make any difference what you want, you've got to take it," said Mr. Bell, firmly.<br /> "We can settle that part later," put in the lawyer. "The thing to do now is to get possession of the mine. If you wish I will act for you."<br /> "Of course we want you to," said Jerry.<br /> "Very well. I will take these papers, and go to court with them. If I am successful, as I have no doubt I shall be, I will apply to the sheriff to oust the crowd that is in charge of the mine. Then you and Mr. Bell can take possession."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" fairly yelled Nestor, who was anxious to get back to the "diggings."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> The lawyer was hurried back to town in the auto. Nothing could be done that afternoon, as the court was closed. He promised to be on hand early in the morning.<br /> The boys could hardly sleep that night. Mr. Bell seemed to have fully recovered, and, beyond a slight pain where the bullet had hit him, he did not suffer. It was late when they went to bed, and somewhat late when they arose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going into town and see what's doing," said Jerry after breakfast.<br /> "So am I," cried Ned and Bob.<br /> "Better not," went on Jerry. "If I have to bring back the lawyer, and the sheriff and some of his deputies to read the riot act to the gang, I'll need all the room there is."<br /> So Jerry went off alone in the car. He did not find the lawyer in, but the attorney's clerk said he was at court.<br /> "I'll wait until he comes back," said Jerry, and he sat down in the office. Two hours later, the lawyer came in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, passenger, slowness, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "What luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "The very best. I have a peremptory order commanding that crowd to turn the mine over to your party and Mr. Bell. Come on, we'll get the sheriff and finish the thing right up."<br /> The sheriff was only too glad of a chance for some activity. He and three deputies, well armed, got into the car, and Jerry started off. To the boy the machine never seemed to move so slowly, but several times one of the deputies threatened to jump out if the auto did not slacken up a bit.<br /> Arriving at the cabin, Nestor, the two boys, and Professor Snodgrass were found anxiously waiting.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the mine!" cried Jerry, as he rapidly explained the success of the mission.<br /> "Wait till I get my gun," said Nestor.<br /> "No shooting unless we have to," warned the sheriff.<br /> Then they advanced on the mine. An eighth of a mile away they were halted by a guard. But an order from the sheriff, and a sight of the command from the court, made the guard give in, and he was sent back to the cabin, in custody of one of the deputies.<br /> Then, without any warning, the party descended on the others of the gang, who were all gathered in the main cabin at dinner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first it looked as if there was going to be trouble. Several made an attempt to get their guns, but Nestor, the sheriff, and his man, had covered them, and they saw that the game was up.<br /> "I'll read you this court order," said the sheriff.<br /> "You needn't bother," spoke the leader, whom the boys recognized as one of the men who had held Tommy a captive. Others in the gang were recognizable as men who had tried to capture Mr. Bell at Lost Lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We played a bold game, but we lost," said the leader, as he and his companions, gathering up their baggage, left the cabin, and made their way toward town. They did not go there, however,—since they feared further proceedings,—and were never heard of again.<br /> "Hurrah, now we have our mine back again!" cried Jerry. "I wonder if it is paying?"<br /> "Better than ever, by the looks of this stuff," answered Jim Nestor, picking up some newly-mined ore that lay on ground. "No wonder that crowd wanted to keep possession of the mine."<br /> There followed a general jollification. The boys got up a fine dinner, at which the sheriff, his men, and the lawyer were guests. An arrangement was made whereby Mr. Bell should retain a large interest in the mine, while the other share was divided between our friends as before. The lawyer received a generous fee, and the sheriff and his men were not forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Jerry, a week later, "we came out all right, didn't we? I presume our adventures are all over now."<br /> "Don't be too sure," put in Bob. "Something else may turn up soon." And Bob was right, as we shall learn in another volume, to be called, "The Motor Boys Afloat; Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway," a tale of land and sea.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The days to follow were busy ones for Jim Nestor and the boys. The mine was started up in better shape than ever before, new machinery put in, and extra workmen engaged. Letters were sent to the boys' folks, telling of all that had happened.<br /> "I want to say one thing," said Jerry, one day. "And that is, that it feels mighty good to be back in the United States again."<br /> "Exactly what I say," returned Ned.<br /> "Right you are," came from Chunky. He rubbed his hands together. "And as we are back, and all is well, why—er—let us have some dinner."<br /> And then, with a merry laugh at the lad who never wanted to miss a meal, the others followed Chunky to the table; and here as they sit down to a well-earned repast, we will take our departure.<br /> <br /> THE END.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Motor_Boys_Across_the_Plains;_Or,_the_Hermit_of_Lost_Lake_(Book_4)&diff=936 The Motor Boys Across the Plains; Or, the Hermit of Lost Lake (Book 4) 2026-04-13T07:49:59Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Young, Clarence"<br /> year_of_publication="1907"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/43509/pg43509-images.html"<br /> genre="Fiction"<br /> journal="The Motor Boys Across the Plains: OR THE HERMIT OF LOST LAKE"<br /> page_range="1-248"<br /> /><br /> <br /> ===Preface/Chapter I. - Ramming an Ox Cart (1-10) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model, nationality, West, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> PREFACE<br /> <br /> <br /> Dear Boys:<br /> <br /> Here it is at last—the fourth volume of "The Motor Boys Series," for which so many boys all over our land have been asking during the past year.<br /> <br /> To those who have read the other volumes in this line, this new tale needs no special introduction. To others, I would say that in the first volume, entitled, "The Motor Boys," I introduced three wide-awake American lads, Ned, Bob and Jerry, and told how they first won a bicycle race and then a great motor cycle contest,—the prize in the latter being a big touring car.<br /> <br /> Having obtained the automobile, the lads went west, and in the second volume, called, "The Motor Boys Overland," were related the particulars of a struggle for a valuable mine, a struggle which tested the boys' bravery to the utmost.<br /> <br /> While in the west the boys heard of a strange buried city in Mexico, and, in company with a learned college professor, journeyed to that locality. The marvellous adventures met with are told in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> Leaving the buried city, the boys started again for the locality of the mine, and in the present tale are told the particulars of some strange things that happened on the way. A portion of this story is based on facts, related to me while on an automobiling tour in the west, by an old ranchman who had participated in some of the occurrences.<br /> With best wishes, and hoping we shall meet again, I leave you to peruse<br /> the pages which follow.<br /> <div style='text-align: right;'>CLARENCE YOUNG.</div><br /> <i>March 1, 1907.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car part, technology, car model, passenger, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS<br /> </div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>CHAPTER I</div><br /> <br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>RAMMING AN OX CART</div><br /> <br /> Mingled with the frantic tooting of an automobile horn, there was the shrill shrieking of the brake-band as it gripped the wheel hub in a friction clutch.<br /> <br /> "Hi, Bob! Look out for that ox cart ahead!" exclaimed one of three sturdy youths in the touring car.<br /> <br /> "I should say so! Jam on the brakes, Bob!" put in the tallest of the trio, while an elderly man, who was in the rear seat with one of the boys, glanced carelessly up to see what was the trouble.<br /> <br /> "I have got the brake on, Jerry!" was the answer the lad at the steering wheel made. "Can't you and Ned hear it screeching!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, topography, nationality, animal, pedestrian, accident, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was speeding down a steep hill, seemingly headed straight toward a solitary Mexican who was moving slowly along in an antiquated ox-drawn vehicle.<br /> <br /> "Then why don't she slow up? You've got the power off, haven't you?"<br /> <br /> "Of course! Do you take me for an idiot!" yelled Bob, or, as his friends sometimes called him, because of his fatness, "Chunky." "Of course I've shut down, but something seems to be the matter with the brake pedal."<br /> <br /> "Have you tried the emergency?" asked Ned.<br /> <br /> "Sure!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, onomatopoeia, nationality, speed, animal, pedestrian, risk, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Toot! Toot! Toot!<br /> <br /> Again the horn honked out a warning to the Mexican, but he did not seem to hear.<br /> <br /> The big red touring car was gathering speed, in spite of the fact that it was not under power, and it bore down ever closer to the ox cart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, sound, metaphor, nationality, pedestrian, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "Cut out the muffler and let him hear the explosions," suggested Jerry.<br /> Bob did so, and the sounds that resulted were not unlike a Gatling gun battery going into action. This time the native heard.<br /> Glancing back, he gave a frightened whoop and jabbed the sharp goad into the ox. The animal turned squarely across the road, thus shutting off what small chance there might have been of the auto gliding past on either side.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, passenger, driver, nationality, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going to hit him sure!" yelled Ned. "I say Professor, you'd better hold on to your specimens. There's going to be all sorts of things doing in about two shakes of a rattlesnake's tail!"<br /> "What's that about a rattlesnake?" asked the old man, who, looking up from a box of bugs and stones on his lap, seemed aware, for the first time, of the danger that threatened.<br /> "Hi there! Get out of the way! Move the cart! Shake a leg! Pull to one side and let us have half the road!" yelled Jerry as a last desperate resort, standing up and shouting at the bewildered and frightened Mexican.<br /> "Oh pshaw! He don't understand United States!" cried Ned.<br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry ruefully.<br /> "Vamoose, is the proper word for telling a Mexican to get out of the road," suggested the professor calmly. "Perhaps if you shouted that at him he might—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, accident, driver, speed, scenery, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> What effect trying the right word might have had the boys had no chance of learning, for, the next instant, in spite of Bob's frantic working at the brake, the auto shot right at the ox cart. By the merest good luck, more than anything else, for Bob could steer neither to the right nor left, because the narrow road was hemmed in by high banks, the machine struck the smaller vehicle a glancing blow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, animal, nationality, pedestrian, health, passenger, driver, dust"><br /> <poem><br /> The force of the impact skidded the auto on two wheels up the side of the embankment, where, poking the front axle into a stump served to bring the car to a stop. The car was slewed around to one side, the ox was yanked from its feet, and, as the cart overturned, the Mexican, yelling voluble Spanish, pitched out into the road.<br /> Nor did the boys and the professor come off scathless, for the sudden stopping of their machine piled the occupants on the rear seat up in a heap on the floor of the tonneau, while Bob and Jerry, who were in front, went sprawling into the dust near the native.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, nationality, animal, dust, accident, metaphor, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds there was no sound save the yelling of the Mexican and the bellowing of the ox. Then the cloud of dust slowly drifted away, and Bob picked himself up, gazing ruefully about.<br /> "This is a pretty kettle of fish," he remarked.<br /> "I should say it was several of 'em," agreed Jerry, trying to get some of the dust from his mouth, ears and nose. "You certainly hit him, Chunky!"<br /> "It wasn't my fault! How did I know the brake wasn't going to work just the time it was most needed?"<br /> "Is anybody killed?" asked the professor, looking up over the edge of the tonneau, and not releasing his hold of several boxes which contained his specimens.<br /> "Don't seem to be, nor any one badly hurt, unless it's the ox or the auto," said Ned, taking a look. "The Mexican seems to be mad about something, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the native had arisen from his prostrate position and was shaking his fist at the Motor Boys and the professor, meanwhile, it would appear from his language, calling them all the names to which he could lay his tongue.<br /> "I guess he wants Bob's scalp," said Jerry with a smile.<br /> "It was as much his fault as mine," growled Chunky. "If he had pulled to one side, I could easily have passed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="nationality, health, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The Mexican, brushing the dust from his clothes, approached the auto party, and continued his rapid talk in Spanish. The boys, who had been long enough in Mexico to pick up considerable of the language, gathered that the native demanded two hundred dollars for the damage to himself, the cart and the ox, as well as for the injury to his dignity and feelings.<br /> "You'd better talk to him, Professor," suggested Jerry. "Offer him what you think is right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thereupon Professor Snodgrass, in mild terms explained how the accident had happened, saying it was no fault of the auto party.<br /> The Mexican, in language more forcible than polite, reiterated his demand, and announced that unless the money was instantly forthcoming, he would go to the nearest alcade and lodge a complaint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, nationality, animal, health, tree, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers knew what this meant, with the endless delays of Mexican justice, the summoning of witnesses and petty officers.<br /> "I wish there was some way out," said Jerry.<br /> As the Mexican had not been hurt, nor his cart or ox been damaged, there was really no excuse for the boys giving in to his demands.<br /> "Let's give him a few dollars and skip out," suggested Ned. "He can't catch us."<br /> This was easier said than done, for the auto was jammed up against a tree stump on a bank, and the ox cart, which, the native by this time had righted, blocked the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, all unexpectedly, there came a diversion that ended matters. Professor Snodgrass, with his usual care for his beloved specimens before himself, was examining the various boxes containing them. He opened one containing his latest acquisition of horned toads, big lizards, rattlesnakes and bats. The reptiles crawled, jumped and flew out, for they were all alive.<br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" exclaimed the Mexican as he caught sight of the repulsive creatures. "They are crazy Americanos!" he yelled.<br /> With a flying leap he jumped into his ox cart, and with goad and voice he urged the animal on to such advantage that, a few minutes later, all that was to be seen of him was a cloud of dust in the distance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, tree, accident, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> "Good riddance," said Bob. "Now to see how much our machine is damaged."<br /> Fortunately the auto had struck a rotten stump, and though with considerable force, the impact was not enough to cause any serious damage. Under the direction of Jerry the boys managed to get the machine back into the road, where they let it stand while they went to a near-by spring for a drink of water.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> While they are quenching their thirst an opportunity will be taken to present them to the reader in proper form.<br /> The three boys were Bob Baker, son of Andrew Baker, a banker, Ned Slade, the only heir of Aaron Slade, a department store proprietor, and Jerry Hopkins, the son of a widow. All three were about seventeen years of age, and lived in the city of Cresville, not far from Boston, Mass. Their companion was Professor Uriah Snodgrass, a learned man with many letters after his name, signifying the societies and institutions to which he belonged. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, risk, equipment, speed, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Those who have read the first book of this series, entitled, "The Motor Boys," need no introduction to the three lads. Sufficient to say that some time before this story opens they had taken part in some exciting bicycle races, the winning of which resulted in the acquiring of Motor cycles for each of them.<br /> On these machines they had had much fun and had also many adventures befall them. Taking part in a big race meet, one of them won an event which gave him a chance to get a big touring automobile, the same car in which they were now speeding through Mexico.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their adventures in the auto are set forth at length in the second volume of the series entitled, "The Motor Boys Overland," which tells of a tour across the country, in which they had to contend with their old enemy, Noddy Nixon, and his gang. Eventually the boys and Jim Nestor, a miner whom they befriended, gained some information of a long lost gold mine in Arizona.<br /> They made a dash for this and won it against heavy odds, after a fight with their enemies. The mine turned out well, and the boys and their friends made considerable money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The spirit of adventure would not drown in them. Just before reaching the diggings they made the acquaintance of Professor Snodgrass, who told a wonderful story of a buried city. How the boys found this ancient town of old Mexico, and the many adventures that befell them there, are told<br /> in the third book, called "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> Therein is related the strange happenings under ground, of the sunken road, the old temples, the rich treasures and the fights with the bandits. Also there is told of the rescue of the Mexican girl Maximina, and how she was taken from a band of criminals and restored to her friends.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, animal, road condition, safety, nationality"><br /> <poem><br /> These happenings brought the boys and the professor to the City of Mexico, where the auto was given a good overhauling, to prepare it for the trip back to the United States.<br /> The boys and the professor, the latter bearing with him his beloved specimens, started back for civilization, keeping to the best and most frequented roads, to avoid the brigands, with whom they had had more than one adventure on their first trip. It was while on this homeward journey that the incident of the Mexican and the ox cart befell them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="equipment, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Having slaked their thirst the boys and the professor went back to the auto where, gathering up the belongings that had become scattered from the upset, they prepared to resume their journey.<br /> "Get in; I'll run her for a while," said Jerry.<br /> "One minute! Stand still! Don't move if you value my happiness!" exclaimed the professor suddenly, dropping down on his hands and knees, and creeping forward through the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter II. - A Nest of Serpents (11-19) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER II<br /> <br /> A NEST OF SERPENTS<br /> <br /> "What is it; a rattlesnake?" asked Bob, in a hoarse whisper.<br /> "Or a Gila monster?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Quiet! No noise!" cautioned the professor. "I see a specimen worth ten dollars at the lowest calculation. I'll have him in a minute."<br /> "Is it a bug?" asked Chunky.<br /> "There! I have him!" yelled the scientist, making a sudden dive forward, sliding on his face, and clutching his hand deep into the grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As it happened there was a little puddle of water at that point, and the professor, in the excess of his zeal, pitched right into it.<br /> "Oh! Oh my! Oh dear! Phew! Wow! Help! Save me!" he exclaimed a moment later, as he tried to get out of the slough.<br /> The boys hurried to his aid, but the mud was soft and the professor had gone head first into the ooze, which held fast to him as though it was quicksand.<br /> "Get him by the heels and yank him out or he'll smother!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other boys followed his advice, and, in a little while the bug-collector was pulled from his uncomfortable and dangerous position. As he rolled about in the grass to get rid of some of the mud, he kept his right hand tightly closed.<br /> "What's the matter, are your fingers hurt?" asked Bob.<br /> "No sir, my fingers are not hurt!" snapped the professor, with the faintest tinge of impatience, which might be excused on the part of a man who has just dived into a mud hole. "My fingers are not hurt in the least. What I have here is one of the rarest specimens of the Mexican mosquito I have ever seen. I would go ten miles to get one."<br /> "I guess you're welcome to 'em," commented Jerry. "We don't want any."<br /> "That's because you don't understand the value of this specimen," replied the professor. "This mosquito will add to my fame, and I shall devote one whole chapter of my four books to it. This indeed has been a lucky day for me."<br /> "And unlucky for the rest of us," said Bob, as he thought of the spill.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, pleasure, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> It was found that a few minor repairs had to be made to the auto, and when these were completed it was nearly noon.<br /> "I vote we have dinner before we start again," spoke Bob.<br /> "There goes Chunky!" exclaimed Ned. "Never saw him when he wasn't thinking of something to eat!"<br /> "Well, I guess if the truth was known you are just as hungry as I am," expostulated Chunky. "This Mexican air gives me a good appetite."<br /> Bob's plan was voted a good one, so, with supplies and materials carried in the auto for camping purposes, a fire was soon built, and hot chocolate was being made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sick of canned stuff and those endless eggs, frijoles and tortillas," complained Bob. "I'd like a good beefsteak and some fish and bread and butter."<br /> "I don't know about the other things, but I think we could get some fish over in that little brook," said the professor, pointing to a stream that wound about the base of a near-by hill.<br /> A minute later the boys had their hooks and lines out. Poles were cut from trees, and, with some pieces of canned meat for bait they went fishing. They caught several large white fish, which the professor named in long Latin terms, and which, he said, were good to eat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while a savory smell filled the air, for Ned, who volunteered to act as cook, had put the fish on to broil with some strips of bacon, and soon there was a dinner fit for any king that ever wielded a scepter.<br /> Sipping their chocolate, the boys and the professor watched the sun slowly cross the zenith as they reclined in the shade of the big trees on either side of the road. Then each one half fell asleep in the lazy atmosphere.<br /> Jerry was the first to rouse up. He looked and saw it would soon be dusk, and then he awakened the others.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll have to travel, unless we want to sleep out in the open," he said.<br /> Thereupon they made preparations to leave, the professor gathering up his specimens, including the Mexican mosquito that had caused him such labor.<br /> "I think we'll head straight for the Rio Grande," said Jerry. "Once we get into Texas I expect we'll have some news from Nestor, as I wrote him to let us know how the mine was getting on, and, also, to inform us if he needed any help."<br /> "I'll be glad to see old Jim again," said Bob.<br /> "So will I," chimed in Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was soon chug-chugging over the road, headed toward the States, and the occupants were engaged with their thoughts. It was rapidly growing dusk, and the chief anxiety was to reach some town or village where they could spend the night. For, though they were used to staying in the open, they did not care to, now that the rainy season was coming on, when fevers were prevalent.<br /> The sun sank slowly to rest behind the big wooded hills as the auto glided along, and, almost before the boys realized it, darkness was upon them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Better light the lamps," suggested Ned. "No telling what we'll run into on this road. No use colliding with more ox carts, if we can help it."<br /> "I'll light up," volunteered Bob. "It will give me a chance to stretch my legs. I'm all cramped up from sitting still so long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry brought the big machine to a stop while Bob alighted and proceeded to illuminate the big search lamp and the smaller ones that burned oil. He had just started the acetylene gas aglow when, glancing forward he gave a cry of alarm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it?" cried Jerry, seeing that something was wrong. "Is it a mountain lion?"<br /> "It's worse!" cried Bob in a frightened voice.<br /> "What?"<br /> "A regular den of snakes! The horrible things are stretched right across the road, and we can't get past. Ugh! There are some whoppers!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, night, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Bob, who hated, above all creatures a snake, made a jump into the auto.<br /> "There's about a thousand of 'em!" he cried with a shudder.<br /> "Great!" exclaimed the professor. "I will have a chance to select some fine specimens. This is a rare fortune!"<br /> "Don't go out there!" gasped Bob. "You'll be bitten to death!"<br /> Just then there sounded on the stillness of the night a strange, whirring buzz. At the sound of it the professor started.<br /> "Rattlers!" he whispered. "I guess none of us will get out. Probably moccasins, cotton-mouths and vipers! There must be thousands of them!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> As he spoke he looked over the side of the car, and the exclamation he gave caused the boys to glance toward the ground. There they beheld a sight that filled them with terror.<br /> As the professor had said, the ground was literally covered with the snakes. The reptiles seemed to be moving in a vast body to some new location. There were big snakes and little ones, round fat ones, and long thin ones, and of many hues.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned. "Start the machine, Jerry!"<br /> "No! Don't!" called the professor. "You may kill a few, but the revolving wheels of the auto will fling some live ones up among us, and I have no desire to be bitten by any of these reptiles. They are too deadly. So keep the car still until they have passed. They are probably getting ready to go into winter quarters, or whatever corresponds to that in Mexico."<br /> "It will be lucky if they don't take a notion to climb up and investigate the machine and us," put in Jerry. "I have—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, health"><br /> <poem><br /> He gave a sudden start, for, at that instant one of the ugly reptiles, which had twined itself around the wheel spokes, reared its ugly head up, over the side of the front seat, and hissed, right in Jerry's face.<br /> "Here's one now!" the boy exclaimed as he made a motion to brush the snake aside.<br /> "Don't touch it as you value your life!" yelled the professor. "It's a diamond-backed rattler, and one of the most deadly!"<br /> "Here is another coming up on my side," called Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there are some coming up here!" shouted Ned. "They'll overwhelm us if we don't look out!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a time it seemed a serious matter. The snakes began twining up the sides of the car, and, though most of them dropped back to the ground again, a few maintained their position, and seemed to exhibit anger at the sight of the boys and the professor.<br /> "What shall we do?" asked Bob. "We can't run ahead, or go backward, and, if we stay here we're likely to be killed by the snakes."<br /> Jerry, who was feeling around in the bottom of the car for his rifle, gave a cry as his hand came in contact with something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, equipment, animal, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Get bitten?" asked the professor in alarm.<br /> "No, but I found this lariat," said Jerry in excited tones.<br /> "Are you going to lasso the snakes?" asked Ned, wondering if Jerry had gone crazy.<br /> "No, but you see this lariat is made of horse hair, and I think I can keep the snakes away with it."<br /> "How; by shaking it at 'em?"<br /> "No. I read in some book that snakes hated horse hair, and would never cross even a small ring of it."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "Well, if I run this lariat all around the auto the snakes will not cross it to come to us. Then we can stay here until they all disappear."<br /> "Good!" exclaimed Ned. "That's the ticket!"<br /> The reptiles that had climbed up the wheels had gone from sight. With the help of Ned and Bob, Jerry began to spread the horse-hair lariat in a circle about the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter III. - The Deserted Cabin (20-29) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, skill, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER III<br /> <br /> THE DESERTED CABIN<br /> <br /> In a few minutes the hair rope was all about the auto, spread out on the ground in an irregular circle. As the boys dropped it over the sides of the car the lariat struck several of the big snakes, and the reptiles shrunk away as though scorched by fire.<br /> "They're afraid of it all right!" exclaimed Ned. "I guess it will do the business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Sure enough, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the snakes to clear out of the vicinity of the hair rope. They glided off by scores, and soon there was a clear space all about the car, where, before, there had been hundreds of the crawling things.<br /> "Shake the lasso," suggested Bob, "and maybe it will scare them farther off."<br /> "Yes and we might try shooting a few now they are at a safe distance," put in Ned.<br /> "It's too bad I can't get some specimens," lamented the professor, "but I suppose you had better try to get rid of them."<br /> So Jerry, who had retained one end of the long lasso vibrated it rapidly, and, as it wiggled in sinuous folds toward the reptiles they made haste to get out of the way. Then Bob and Ned opened fire, killing several. In a little while there were no snakes to be seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, pleasure, risk, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we can go ahead now," said Jerry. "Who'll crank up the car? Don't all speak at once."<br /> "My arm is a bit sore," spoke Ned, rubbing his elbow.<br /> "Then you do it, Chunky," asked the steersman.<br /> "I think I have a stone in my foot," said Bob, making a wry face.<br /> "Ha! Ha!" laughed Jerry. "Why don't you two own up and say you're afraid there's a stray rattler or two under the machine, and you think it may bite you?"<br /> The two boys grinned sheepishly, and both made a motion to get out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, car part, passenger, dust, gasoline, driver, skill, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stay where you are," called the professor preparing to leave from the side door of the tonneau. "I'm used to snakes. I don't believe there are any left, but if there are I want them for specimens. I'll crank the car."<br /> So he got out and peered anxiously under the body, while the boys waited in anxiety.<br /> "No," called the scientist, in discouraged tones, "there are none left."<br /> He crawled out, covered with dust, which fact he did not seem to mind, and then turned the crank that sent the fly wheel over. Jerry turned on the gasolene and threw in the spark, and, the next instant the familiar chug-chug of the engine told that the auto was ready to bear the boys and Professor Snodgrass on their way. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, river, pleasure, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> They were headed on as straight a road as they could find to the Rio Grande, but, because of the conditions of the thoroughfares it would be several days before they could cross the big river and get into Texas. Their main concern now was to reach some place where there was shelter for the night.<br /> "Keep your eyes peeled for villages," called Ned. "We don't want to pass any. I think a good bed would go fine now."<br /> "A supper would go better," put in Bob.<br /> "Oh, of course! It wouldn't be Chunky if he didn't say something about eating," remarked Jerry with a laugh. "But there seems to be something ahead. It's a house at all events, and probably is the mark of the outskirts of the village."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, night, car part, nationality, parking, passenger, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> On the left side of the road, about a hundred yards ahead they saw an adobe, or mud hut. They could see no signs of life about in the half-darkness, illuminated as it was by the powerful search light, but this gave them no concern, as they knew the native Mexicans retired early.<br /> When they came opposite the hut Jerry brought the machine to a stop, and he and the other boys jumped out. The professor, who, as usual was arranging some specimens in one of the many small boxes he carried, remained in the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" shouted Bob. "Is any one home? Show a light. Can we get a supper here?"<br /> "Why don't you ask for a bed too?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Supper first," replied Chunky, rubbing his stomach with a reflective air.<br /> No replies came to the hail of the boys, and, in some wonder they approached nearer to the hut. Then they saw that the door was ajar, and that the cabin bore every appearance of being deserted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody home, I guess," said Jerry.<br /> "No, and there hasn't been for some time," added Ned.<br /> "Maybe there's a place to build a fire where we can cook a good meal," put in Bob, whereat his companions laughed.<br /> They went into the hut, and found, that, while it was in good condition, and furnished as well as the average native Mexican's abode, there was no sign of life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, car part, oil, equipment, night, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> "Might as well make ourselves to home," said Ned. "Come on in, professor," he called. "We'll stay here all night. No use traveling further when there is such a good shelter right at hand."<br /> It was now quite dark, and the boys brought in the two oil lamps from the auto, as well as a lantern, to illuminate the place. As they did so they disturbed a colony of bats which flew out with a great flutter of wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a charcoal stove, and plenty of fuel," said Bob, as he looked at the hearth. "Now we can cook something."<br /> "Well, seeing you are so fond of eating, we'll let you get the meal," said Jerry, and it was voted that Chunky should perform this office.<br /> Meanwhile the others brought in blankets to make beds on the frame work of cane that formed the sleeping quarters of whoever had last lived in the hut.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather queer sort of a shack," remarked Jerry, as he sat down in a corner on a pile of rugs. "Seems to have been left suddenly. They didn't even stop to take the dishes, and here is the remains of a meal," and he pointed to some dried frijoles in one corner of the main room or kitchen.<br /> "Perhaps the people who lived here were frightened away," came from Ned.<br /> "Well I'm tired enough not to let anything short of a regiment of soldiers in action scare me awake to-night," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Under Bob's direction supper was soon ready, and the travelers sat down to a good, if rather limited meal as far as variety went. There were no dishes to be washed, for they ate off wooden plates, of which they had a quantity and which they threw away after each meal. Then, after a good fire had been built on the hearth—for the night was likely to be chilly—the boys and the professor wrapped themselves up in their blankets and soon fell asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry must have been slumbering for several hours when he suddenly awakened as he heard a loud noise.<br /> "Who's there?" he called involuntarily, sitting up.<br /> It was so dark that at first he could distinguish nothing, but, as his eyes became used to the blackness he managed to make out, by the glow of the fire, a shadowy figure gliding toward the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" called the boy sharply, feeling under the rolled up blanket that served for a pillow, for his revolver. "Stop or I'll fire!"<br /> The shadowy figure halted. Then Jerry saw it drop down on all fours and begin to creep toward him. Though he was not a coward the boy felt his heart beating strangely, and he had a queer, creepy sensation down his spine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned, who was awakened by Jerry's voice.<br /> "Get your revolver, quick!" called Jerry. "There is some one in the hut besides ourselves! Look over by the fire!"<br /> "I see it! Shall I shoot?" asked Ned.<br /> There came a sudden crash, followed by a wild yell.<br /> "Help! Help! I'm killed! They are murdering me!" shouted Bob's voice. "They are choking me to death!"<br /> Bang! went Ned's gun. Fortunately it was aimed at the ceiling, or some one might have been hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" inquired the professor, who only just then awoke.<br /> "Robbers!" yelled Bob.<br /> "Brigands!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "Some one is in the cabin!" cried Jerry.<br /> By this time he had managed to creep over toward the fire, on which he threw some light wood. The glowing embers caught it, and as the blaze flared up it revealed a big monkey tangled up amid the folds of Bob's blanket, while Chunky was buried somewhere beneath the pile. The beast was struggling wildly to escape, but Bob, in his terror, had grabbed it by a leg.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop your noise!" commanded Jerry. "You're not hurt, Chunky!"<br /> "Are you sure they haven't killed me?" asked Bob, releasing his hold on the beast, which, with a wild chatter of fear, fled from the hut.<br /> "You ought to be able to give the best evidence on that score," said Jerry, as he lighted one of the lamps.<br /> "The fellow tried to choke me," sputtered Bob.<br /> "I guess the poor beast was as badly scared as you were," remarked the professor. "It was probably attracted in here by the light and warmth. Well, we seem bound to run up against excitement, night as well as day."<br /> "The monkey must have knocked something over," said Jerry. "I was awakened by the sound of something falling."<br /> They looked and saw that the beast had tried to eat the remains of the supper, and had upset a big pot.<br /> "I was sure it was a man, at first," explained Jerry, "and when I saw it go down and start over toward me I was afraid it was some of those Mexican brigands that traveled with Vasco Bilette and Noddy Nixon, when those rascals were on our trail."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was some time before the excitement caused by the monkey's visit died down sufficiently to allow the travelers to go to sleep again. It was morning when they awoke, and prepared to get breakfast.<br /> "We need some water to make coffee," said Jerry, who had agreed to get the morning meal. "As chief cook and bottle washer I delegate Bob to find some. Take the pail in the auto."<br /> Bob started for the receptacle, and, as he reached the door of the hut he gave a cry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry and Ned.<br /> "There's a man out here," replied Bob.<br /> "Well, he won't bite you," said Jerry. "Who is he?"<br /> "Pardon, senors," called a voice, and then, into the hut staggered a Mexican, who bore evidences of having passed through a hard fight. His face was cut and bruised, one arm hung limply at his side, and his clothing was torn.<br /> "What's the matter?" cried Jerry.<br /> Before the stranger could reply he had fallen forward in a faint.<br /> "Bring some water! Quick!" called Ned.<br /> "Let me see to him! I have a little liquor here!" exclaimed the professor, kneeling down beside the prostrate form.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IV. - News from the Mine (30-38) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="river, night, nationality, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IV<br /> <br /> NEWS FROM THE MINE<br /> <br /> By the use of the strong stimulant the Mexican was revived. His eyes opened, and he sat up, muttering something in Spanish which the boys could not catch.<br /> The professor, however, made reply, and, at the words the stranger seemed to brighten up. He drank some water, and then, at the suggestion of Mr. Snodgrass the boys brought him some food, which the native ate as if he had fasted for a week.<br /> His hunger satisfied, he began to talk rapidly to the professor, who listened attentively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" asked Jerry at length.<br /> "It seems that the poor man lives in this hut," explained the scientist. "Night before last some robbers came in, took nearly everything he had and beat him. Then, driving him into the forest they left him. Only just now did he dare to venture back, fearing to find his enemies in possession of his home. He is weak from lack of food and from the treatment he received."<br /> The boys felt sorry for the Mexican, and, at Jerry's suggestion they gave him a sum of money, which, while it was small enough to the travelers, meant a great deal to the native. He poured forth voluble thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, nationality, navigation, river, animal, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As the boys and the professor were anxious to get under way, a start was made as soon as it was found that the native was not badly hurt, and that he was able to summon help from friends in a near-by village if necessary. With final leave-takings the travelers started off.<br /> For several days and nights they journeyed north, toward the Rio Grande, which river separated them from the United States. Once they crossed that they would be in Texas.<br /> "And we can't get there any too soon," remarked Bob, one morning after a sleepless night, passed in the open, during which innumerable fleas attacked the travelers.<br /> It was toward dusk, one evening, about a week after having left the City of Mexico that the boys and the professor found themselves on a road, which, upon inquiry led to a small Mexican town, on the bank of the Rio Grande, nearly opposite Eagle Pass, Texas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we cross over to-night or wait until morning?" asked the professor of the boys. "Probably it would be better to wait until daylight. I could probably gather a few more specimens then."<br /> This was something of which the scientist, who rejoiced in such letters as A.M.; Ph.D.; M.D.; F. R. G. S.; A. G. S., etc., after his name, all indicating some college honor conferred upon him, never seemed to tire. He was making a collection for his own college, as well as gathering data for four large books, which, some day, he intended to issue.<br /> "I'd rather get over on our land if we can," said Ned, and he seemed to voice the sentiments of the others. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, rural, animal, risk, car part, gasoline, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided, somewhat against the professor's wish, to run the automobile on the big flat-bottomed scow, which served as a ferry, and proceed across the stream.<br /> Quite a crowd of villagers came out to see the auto as it chug-chugged up to the ferry landing, and not a few of the children and dogs were in danger of being run over until Ned, who was steering, cut out the muffler, and the explosions of the gasolene, unconfined by any pipes, made so much noise that all except the grown men were frightened away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was no one at the ferry house, and after diligent inquiries it was learned that the captain and crew of the boat had gone off to a dance about five miles away.<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay on this side after all," remarked the professor. "I think—"<br /> What he thought he did not say, for just then he happened to catch sight of something on the shoulder of one of the Mexicans, who had gathered in a fringe about the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stand still, my dear man!" called the professor, as with cat-like tread he crept toward the native.<br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" muttered the man, thinking, evidently, that the old scientist was out of his wits.<br /> "Don't move! Please don't move!" pleaded Mr. Snodgrass, forgetting in his excitement that his hearer could not understand his language. "There is a beautiful specimen of a Mexican katy-did on your coat. If I get it I will have a specimen worth at least thirty dollars!"<br /> He made a sudden motion. The Mexican mistook the import of it, and, seemingly thinking he was about to be assaulted, raised his hand in self defense, and aimed a blow at the professor.<br /> It was only a glancing one, but it knocked the scientist down, and he fell into the road.<br /> "There, the katy-did got away after all," Mr. Snodgrass exclaimed, not seeming to mind his personal mishap in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This time the professor spoke in Spanish. The Mexican understood, and was profuse in his apologies. He conversed rapidly with his companions, and, all at once there was a wild scramble after katy-dids. So successful was the hunt that the professor was fairly burdened with the insects. He took as many as he needed, and thanked his newly found friends for their efforts.<br /> Matters quieted down after a bit. Darkness fell rapidly and, the Mexican on whom the professor had seen the katy-did invited the travelers to dine with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He proved to be one of the principal men of the village, and his house, though not large, was well fitted up. The boys and the professor enjoyed the best meal they had eaten since leaving the City of Mexico.<br /> "Do me the honor to spend the night here," said the Mexican, after the meal.<br /> "Thank you, if it will not disturb your household arrangements, we will," replied the professor. "We must make an early start, however, and cross the river the first thing in the morning."<br /> "It will be impossible," replied Senor Gerardo, their host.<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Because to-morrow starts the Feast of San Juarez, which lasts for three days, and not a soul in town, including the ferry-master, will work in that time."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "If you do not cross to-night you will not be able to make the passage until the end of the week," was the answer.<br /> "Then let's start to-night," spoke Jerry. "We went over the Rio Grande after dark once before."<br /> "Yes, and a pretty mess we made of it," said Ned, referring to the collision they had with the house-boat, as told of in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought they said the ferry-master was away to a dance," put in Bob.<br /> "He is, Senor," replied their host, who managed to understand the boy's poor Spanish. "However, if he knew the Americanos wanted him, and would go for him in their big marvelous—fire-spitting wagon, and—er—that is if they offered him a small sum, he might be prevailed upon to leave the<br /> dance."<br /> "Let's try it, at all events," suggested Jerry. "I'm anxious to get over the line and into the United States. A stay of several days may mean one of a week. When these Mexicans get feasting they don't know when to stop."<br /> He spoke in English, so as not to offend their kind friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, animal, slowness, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> It was arranged that Jerry and Senor Gerardo should go in the auto for the ferry-master, and summon him to the river with his men, who could come on their fast ponies.<br /> This was done, and, though the master of the boat demurred at leaving the pleasures of the dance, he consented when Jerry casually showed a gold-piece. He and his men were soon mounted and galloped along, Jerry running the auto slowly to keep pace with them. The five miles were quickly covered and, while half the population of the village came out to see the strange machine ferried over, the boys and the professor bade farewell to the country where they had gone through so many strange adventures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="A"><br /> <poem><br /> It was nearly ten o'clock when the big flat-bottomed boat grounded on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande.<br /> "Hurrah for the United States!" exclaimed Bob. "Now I can get a decent meal without having to swallow red peppers, onions and chocolate!"<br /> "There goes Chunky again," laughingly complained Ned. "No sooner does he land than he wants to feed his stomach. I believe if he had been with Christopher Columbus the first thing he would have inquired about on landing at San Salvador would be what the Indians had good to eat."<br /> "Oh you're as bad as I am, every bit!" said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, rural, plains, animal, pedestrian, South"><br /> <poem><br /> Eagle's Pass, where the travelers landed, was a typical Texas town, with what passed for a hotel, a store and a few houses where the small population lived. It was on the edge of the border prairies and the outlying districts were occupied by cattle ranches.<br /> Nearly all, if not quite all, of the male population came down to the dock to see the unusual sight of a big touring automobile on the ferry boat. Many were the comments made by the ranchmen and herders.<br /> After much pulling and hauling the car was rolled from the big scow, and the travelers, glad to feel that they were once more in their own country, began to think of a place to spend the night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the nearest hotel?" asked Jerry of a man in the crowd.<br /> "Ain't but one, stranger, an' it's right in front of you," was the reply, as the cowboy pointed to a small, one story building across the street from the river front.<br /> "Is Professor Driedgrass in that bunch?" asked a voice as the travelers were contemplating the hostelry. "If he is I have a letter for him."<br /> "I am Professor Snodgrass," replied the scientist, looking toward the man who had last spoken.<br /> "Beg your pardon, Professor Snodgrass. I kinder got my brands mixed," the stranger went on. "Anyhow I'm th' postmaster here, an' I've been holdin' a letter for ye most a week. It says it's to be delivered to a man with three boys an' a choo-choo wagon, an' that description fits you."<br /> "Where's it from?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Come in a letter to me, from a feller named Nestor, up at a place in the mining section," was the reply. "Th' letter to me said you might likely pass this way on your journey back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter V. - Trouble Ahead (39-45) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river,"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER V<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AHEAD<br /> <br /> "I remember now, I did write to Nestor, telling him we were about to start back, and would probably cross the river at this place," spoke the professor. "I had forgotten all about it."<br /> "Well, here's your letter," said the postmaster. "Now allow me to welcome you to our city, which I do in the name of the Mayor—which individual you see in me—and the Common Council, which consists of Pete Blaston, only he ain't here, in consequent of bein' locked up for disturbin' th' peace an' quiet of the community by shootin' a Greaser."<br /> "Glad to meet you, I am sure," replied the scientist politely, as he received the letter from the dual official.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "What is the news from Nestor?" asked Jerry anxiously. "Is the mine all right?"<br /> "I'll tell you right away," replied Mr. Snodgrass, as, by the light of the gas lantern on the auto he read the letter.<br /> As he glanced rapidly over the pages his face took on an anxious look.<br /> "Is there anything wrong?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is indeed," replied the professor gravely. "The letter was written over a week ago, and, among other things Nestor says there is likely to be trouble over the mine."<br /> "What kind? Is Noddy Nixon trying to get it away from us again?" asked Jerry. <br /> "No," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "It appears our title is not as good as it might be. There is one of the former owners of the land where the mine is located who did not sign the deed. He was missing when the transfer was made, but Nestor did not know this, so there is a cloud on our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought we claimed the land from the government, and were the original owners," put in Ned.<br /> "It seems that a company of men owned the mine before we did, but they sold out to Nestor and some of his friends. They all signed the deed but this one man, and now some one has learned of this, and seeks to take the mine, on the theory that they have as good a claim to the holding as<br /> we have."<br /> "I should say that was trouble," sighed Bob. "To think of losing what we worked so hard to get!"<br /> "Well, there's no use crossing a bridge until you come to it," Professor Snodgrass went on. "Nestor and his friends are in possession yet, and that, you know, is nine of the ten points of the law."<br /> "Then if we can't do anything right away I move we have something to eat," suggested Bob.<br /> "It's a good suggestion," agreed the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had drawn a little to one side from the crowd of townspeople while talking about the letter from Nestor, but, having decided there was nothing to be done at present, they moved toward the hotel.<br /> "I reckon I've got some more mail for your outfit, Professor Hayseed—er I beg yer pardon—Snodgrass," said the postmaster-mayor. "There's letters fer chaps named Baker, Slade and Hopkins. Nestor sent 'em along with that other," and the dual official handed over three envelopes.<br /> "They're from home!" cried the boys in a chorus. And in the glare of oil lamps on the porch of the hotel they read the communications.<br /> The missives contained nothing but good news, to the effect that all the loved ones were well. Each one inquired anxiously how much longer the travelers expected to stay away, and urged them to come home as soon as they could.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, cowboy, nationality, metaphor, safety, weapon, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for that supper!" exclaimed Bob, as he put his letter away.<br /> If the meal was a rough one, prepared as it was by the Chinese cook, it was good, and the travelers enjoyed it thoroughly. As they rose from the table a cowboy entered the dining room and drawled out:<br /> "I say strangers, be you th' owners of that there rip-snortin' specimen of th' lower regions that runs on four wheels tied 'round with big sassages?"<br /> "Do you mean the automobile?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I reckon I do, if that's what ye call it."<br /> "Yes, it's our machine," replied Jerry.<br /> "Then if ye have any great love for th' workin' of it in the future, an' any regard or consideration for it's feelin' ye ought t' see to it."<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Nothin'," drawled the cowboy as he carefully pared his nails with a big bowie knife; "nothin' only Bronco Pete is amusin' his self by tryin' t' see how near he can come to stickin' his scalpin' steel inter th' tires!"<br /> "Great Scott! We must stop that!" exclaimed Jerry, running from the hotel toward where the auto had been left in the street. The other boys and the professor followed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, pleasure, cowboy, weapon, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> They found the machine surrounded by quite a crowd that seemed to be much amused at something which was taking place in its midst. Making their way to the inner circle of spectators the boys beheld an odd sight.<br /> A big cowboy, who, from appearances had indulged too freely in something stronger than water, was unsteadily trying to stick his big knife into the rubber tires.<br /> "Here! You mustn't do that," cried Jerry, sharply, laying his hand on the man's shoulder.<br /> "Look out for him! He's dangerous!" warned some of the bystanders.<br /> "I can't help it if he is," replied Jerry. "We can't let him ruin the tires."<br /> "This is the time I do it!" cried Bronco Pete, as he made a lunge for the front wheel. Jerry sprang forward and the crowd held its breath, for it seemed as if the boy was right in the path of the knife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Jerry knew what he was about. With a quick motion he kicked the cowboy lightly on the wrist, the blow knocking the knife from his hand, and sending it some distance away.<br /> "Look out now, sonny!" called a man to Jerry. "No one ever hit Pete an' lived after it."<br /> It seemed that Jerry was in a dangerous position. Pete, enraged at being foiled of his purpose, uttered a beast-like roar, and reached back to where his revolver rested at his hip in a belt. Jerry never moved an inch, but looked the man straight in the eye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! None of that Pete!" called a voice suddenly, and a big man pushed his way through the crowd, and grabbed the cowboy's arm before he had time to draw his gun. "If you don't want to get into trouble move on!"<br /> "All right, Marshall; all right," replied Pete, the desire of shooting seeming to die out as he looked at the newcomer. "I were only havin' a little fun with th' tenderfoot."<br /> "You didn't appear to scare him much," remarked the town marshall, who had seen the whole thing. "You had your nerve with you all right, son," he added, to Jerry.<br /> "That's what he had," commented Pete. "There ain't many men would have done what he did, an' I admire him for it. Put it there, stranger," and Pete, all the anger gone from him, extended a big hand, which Jerry grasped heartily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Three cheers for the 'tenderfoot,'" called some one, and they were given with a will for Jerry, as Pete, under the guidance of the marshall, moved unsteadily away.<br /> "I wouldn't have been in your boots one spell there, for a good bit," observed the postmaster as he came up. "Pete's about as bad as they come."<br /> "I didn't stop to think of the danger, or maybe I wouldn't have done as I did," said Jerry. "All I thought of was that he would spoil the tire, and it would take a long while to fix it."<br /> "Yes, and we don't want to delay any longer than we can help," spoke Ned in a low voice. "I'm anxious to get back to the mine and see what we can do to perfect our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VI. - On a Strange Road (46-54) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="storm, animal, rain, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, navigation, bridge"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VI<br /> <br /> ON A STRANGE ROAD<br /> <br /> For several days they made good progress, for the roads were in fair condition. The machine was kept headed as nearly as possible toward Arizona, though they often had to go some distance out of their way to get rid of bad places, or find a ford or bridge to cross a stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="South"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll soon be out of Texas," remarked Bob one afternoon, when they had passed through a small ranch town where they had dinner.<br /> "And I think we're going to get a wetting before we leave the big state," put in Ned.<br /> "I think you're right," agreed the professor, as he turned and looked at a bank of ugly dark clouds in the southwest. "A thunder shower is coming up, if I'm any judge. There doesn't seem to be any shelter, either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, North, driver, wind, lightning, thunder, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> As far as they could see there was nothing but a vast stretch of wild country, though, far to the north, there was a dark patch which looked as if it was a forest.<br /> "It's coming just at the wrong time," remarked Jerry, who was steering. "I was in hopes the storm would hold off a bit. Well, we shan't melt if it does rain."<br /> And that it was soon going to pour in the proverbial buckets full was evident. The wind began to blow a half gale, and the clouds, from which angry streaks of jagged lightning leaped, scurried forward. At the same time low mutterings of thunder were heard.<br /> "We're in for it," cried Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, rain, visibility, lightning, thunder, driver, equipment, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant the storm broke, and the whole landscape was blotted out in a veil of mist and rain which came down in sheets of water. Now and then the darkness would be illuminated by a vivid flash of fire from the sky artillery, and the thunder seemed to shake the earth.<br /> Jerry could barely see where to steer, so fiercely did the rain beat down. Fortunately they had time to put on their raincoats before the deluge hit them.<br /> The provisions and other things in the auto had, likewise, been covered up with canvas, so little damage would result from the downpour.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, braking, slowness, visibility, animal, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> "Look out!" yelled Ned suddenly to Jerry. "There's something ahead of us!"<br /> Jerry partially shut off the power, and, as the machine slowed down, he and the others peered forward to see what the object was.<br /> "It's some sort of an animal!" cried Bob, who had sharp eyes. "It's running along on four legs, right in front of the car!"<br /> "It's a bear, that's what it is!" shouted Ned. "A big black bear!"<br /> "Let me get it for a specimen!" exclaimed the professor, in his enthusiasm, not considering the size of the animal, nor the difficulties in the way of capturing it. "Let me get out! It's worth forty dollars if it's worth a cent!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, animal, sound, risk, car part, parking, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> At the sound of the excited voices, which the animal must have heard above the roar of the storm, the bear turned suddenly and faced the occupants of the car. So quickly was it done that Jerry had barely time to jam on the brakes in order to avoid a collision.<br /> "Why didn't you run him down, and we could have some bear steaks for supper?" asked Bob.<br /> "Because I don't think it's just healthy to run into a three hundred and fifty pound bear with a big auto," replied Jerry. "We might kill the bear, but we'd be sure to damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> The beast did not appear to be frightened at the sight of his natural enemies. Raising on its haunches the animal slowly ambled toward the stalled machine, growling in a menacing manner.<br /> "I believe he's going to attack us!" exclaimed the professor. "Let me get out my rifle!"<br /> But this was easier said than done. The weapons and ammunition were all under the canvas, and it would require several minutes to get at them.<br /> In the meanwhile the bear, showing every indication of rage was trying to climb up on the engine hood, despite the throbbing of the engine, which was going, though the gears were not thrown in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, risk, animal, storm, wind, rain, thunder, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Start the car and run over him!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Back up and get out of his way!" was Ned's advice to Jerry.<br /> "I've got to do something," muttered the steersman.<br /> Matters were getting critical. The storm was increasing in violence, with the wind lashing the rain into the faces of the travelers. The growls of the angry beast mingled with the rumble and rattle of thunder, and the machine was shaking under the efforts Bruin made to climb over the hood and into the front seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, car part, skill, driver, gasoline, animal, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hold on tight! I'm going to start!" yelled Jerry suddenly.<br /> He threw in the intermediate gear and opened wide the gasolene throttle. The car sprang forward like a thing alive. But the bear had too good a hold with his long sharp claws sticking in the ventilator holes of the hood, to be shaken off.<br /> "I should think he'd burn on the water radiator," said Ned.<br /> "His fur's too thick I guess," was Bob's reply.<br /> On went the auto, the boys and the professor clinging to it for dear life, while Bruin hung on, half crazed with fear and anger.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, sound, storm, visibility, rain, skill, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "How you going to get rid of him?" shouted Ned above the roar of the storm.<br /> "I'll show you," replied Jerry grimly.<br /> Some distance ahead the steersman had seen a sharp curve in the road. It was dimly discernible through the mist of water.<br /> "Hold tight everybody!" shouted Jerry a second or two before the turn was reached.<br /> Then, suddenly swinging around it, at as sharp an angle as he dared to make and not overturn the car, Jerry sent the auto skidding. The next instant, unable to stand the impetus of the turn, the bear lost its hold on the hood, and was flung, like a stone from a catapult, far off to the left, rolling over and over on the muddy ground.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, slowness, sound, animal, rain, storm, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "There, I guess it will be quite a while before he tries to eat up another live automobile," remarked Jerry as he slowed up a bit.<br /> Off in the distance they heard a sort of reproachful whine, as if Bruin objected to such treatment. Then the rain came down harder than ever, and all sight of the bear was lost.<br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned, as he felt a small stream of water trickling down his back. "Can't we strike for those woods we saw a while ago?"<br /> "I'm headed for them," spoke Jerry. "I just want to get my bearings. Guess we'd better light up, as it will soon be dusk."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="wind, rain, storm, car part, visibility, oil, road condition, navigation, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> After some difficulty in getting matches to burn in the wind and rain, the big search lights and the oil lanterns were lighted, and then, with four shafts of light cutting the misty darkness ahead of them the travelers proceeded.<br /> The roads seemed to be getting worse, but there was nothing to do except to keep on. Every now and then the machine would lurch into some hollow with force enough to almost break the springs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, North, car part, asphalt"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" cried Jerry suddenly. "Here are two roads. Which shall we take?"<br /> "The right seems to go a little more directly north," said the professor, peering forward. "Suppose we take that?"<br /> "Especially as it seems to be the better road," added Jerry.<br /> He turned the machine into it, and, to the surprise of all they felt the thoroughfare become hard and firm as the auto tires rolled over it. It was almost as smooth as asphalt, and the travelers were congratulating themselves on having made a wise choice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rain, storm, forest, scenery, visibility, metaphor, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> All at once the rain, which had been coming down in torrents, seemed to let up.<br /> "I believe it's clearing up," said Bob.<br /> "No, it's because we've run into a dense forest, and the trees above keep the rain off," spoke the professor.<br /> The others looked about them and saw that this was so. On every side the glare of the lamps showed big trunks and leafy branches, while ahead more trees could be observed.<br /> "Why it's just like a tunnel in the woods," said Bob. "See, the trees seem to meet in an arch overhead."<br /> "And what a fine road it is," put in Ned.<br /> "An altogether strange sort of road," agreed Jerry. "Suppose we stop and look about before we go any further? I don't like the looks of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, metaphor, macadam, road condition, forest, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the machine was brought to a halt, and the travelers alighted. They found it just as Bob had said, almost exactly like an immense tunnel in the forest. Beneath their feet the road was of the finest Macadam construction.<br /> "And to think of finding this in the midst of Texas," observed Jerry.<br /> "Some one built this road, and cut the trees to make this tunnel," remarked the professor. "I wonder what sort of a place we have stumbled into."<br /> "At all events it doesn't rain anything to speak of in here," said Bob, "and it's a good place to stay until the storm is over."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, forest, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry, in the meanwhile had walked on ahead some distance. In a few minutes he came hurrying back. His manner showed that he had seen something.<br /> "What is it?" asked the professor.<br /> "Don't make any noise, but follow me," replied the lad.<br /> In silence, and wondering what was about to happen, Bob, Ned and the scientist trailed after Jerry. He led them several hundred feet ahead of the automobile, and away from the glare of the lamps, the tunnel curving somewhat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See!" whispered Jerry, hoarsely.<br /> "Well, I never!"<br /> "That's queer!"<br /> There, about three hundred feet to the left of the main road and on a sort of side path, the travelers saw a small hut, brilliantly lighted up. Through an open window, a room could be seen, and several figures moving about in it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VII. - The Rescue of Tommy Bell (55-64) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VII<br /> <br /> THE RESCUE OF TOMMY BELL<br /> <br /> "I wonder who they can be, to hide off in the woods this way," whispered Bob.<br /> The next instant there floated out from the hut a cry of anguish. It was the voice of a boy, seemingly in great pain or fear, and the travelers heard the words:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! You are killing me! I don't know! I can't tell you, for I would if I could! Oh! Oh! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> "It's a gang torturing some one!" almost shouted Ned. "Let's go to the rescue!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have sprung forward had not Jerry laid a detaining hand on his arm.<br /> "Wait, Ned," counseled Jerry. "Some one there evidently needs our help, but we must go with caution. First we must get our guns. We may need them!"<br /> Once more the appealing cry burst out.<br /> "Quick!" whispered Jerry. "Professor, you and Bob go back for the rifles, and bring the bulls-eye lantern that has the dark slide to it. Ned and I will stay here and watch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Snodgrass and Bob lost no time. In less than five minutes they had rejoined Ned and Jerry.<br /> "Has anything happened?" asked Bob.<br /> "Nothing since," whispered Jerry. "Now we will go forward. Every one have his gun ready. I will carry the lantern."<br /> Almost as silently as shadows the four figures stole forward, Jerry showing a cautious gleam now and then to guide them on their way. They found there was a fairly good path leading up to the hut.<br /> They had covered half the distance when once more the cries of anguish burst out. This time they were followed by angry shouts, seemingly from several men, and voices in dispute could be heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of us had better creep forward and see what is going on inside the cabin," whispered Jerry. "We must know what sort of enemies we have to meet."<br /> "I'll go," volunteered Bob.<br /> "Better let me," suggested the professor. "I have had some experience in stalking animals, and I can probably advance more quietly than you can."<br /> They all saw the reasonableness of this and the scientist started off. Like a cat he made an advance until he was so close to the hut that he could peer into the uncurtained window. What he saw made him start back in terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the room were half a dozen roughly dressed men, all armed, and with brutal faces. The room was filled with smoke from cigars and pipes, and cards were scattered over a rough table in the middle of the apartment.<br /> But what attracted the attention of the professor and made his heart beat fast in anger, was the sight of a small, pale boy, bound with ropes up against a big stone fireplace, on the hearth of which logs were burning.<br /> In front of the lad stood one of the largest and strongest of the tough gang, and in his hand he held a redhot poker, which, as the scientist watched, he brought close to the bare legs of the terror-stricken lad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then came again those heart-rending cries:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! I would tell you where he is if I knew! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> The professor's blood boiled.<br /> "We'll soon put a stop to this horrible work!" he exclaimed to himself as he glided back to where the boys were and quickly made them acquainted with what he had seen.<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must rescue that boy!"<br /> As softly as they could, the travelers advanced toward the hut. They found the door and, while the others with rifles in readiness stood in a semi-circle about it, Jerry made ready to knock and demand admittance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If they don't open the door we must burst it in," said the boy. "The professor and I will look to that, while you and Ned, Bob, must stand ready to rush in right after us with your guns ready. But don't shoot unless your life is in danger, and then fire not to kill, but to wound."<br /> There was a minute of hesitation, for they all realized that it was taking a desperate chance to tackle such a rough gang in the midst of woods, far from civilization. But the sound of the poor boy's cries nerved them on as, once more, the pitiful appeal for mercy rang out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry sprang forward and gave several vigorous blows on the door with the butt of his gun. All at once silence took the place of the confusion inside the hut.<br /> "Who's there? What do you want?" asked a gruff voice.<br /> "Open the door! We want that boy!" cried Jerry.<br /> Confused murmurs from within told that the gang had been taken by surprise.<br /> "I don't know who you are, but whoever you are you had better move on, if you don't want a bullet through you," called the man who had first answered the knock. "This is none of your affair."<br /> "Open the door or we'll burst it in!" cried Jerry, knowing the best way to be successful in the fight was to act quickly and take the men by surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a laugh from within the hut. It was answered by a rending, crashing splintering sound as Jerry and the professor, using the stocks of their guns, began a vigorous attack on the portal. The door was strong enough, but the hinges were not, and, in less than half a minute the barrier had given way and, with a bound the travelers found themselves tumbling into the hut.<br /> Instantly confusion reigned. The men shouted hoarsely, and several tried to reach their guns, which were stacked in one corner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hands up!" commanded Jerry sharply, leveling his gun at the man who seemed to be the leader.<br /> "Why, they're nothing but boys! Knock 'em out of the way!" cried one of the gang. At the same time another began creeping up behind Jerry, his intention being to grab the lad from the back and disarm him.<br /> But Bob saw the movement, and, leveling his rifle at the fellow, told him to halt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess you've got the drop on us," growled the man whom Jerry was covering with the gun. "What's the game anyhow? Are you stage robbers?"<br /> "We want you to stop torturing that boy," cried Jerry.<br /> "Why, that's my kid, and I was only givin' him a taste of the rod because he wouldn't mind me; 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' is a good saying, you know."<br /> "Not from you!" snapped the professor. "Is this man your father?" the scientist asked the bound boy.<br /> "Speak up now! Ain't I your daddy?" put in the leader, scowling at the boy.<br /> "Tell the truth! Don't let him scare you!" said the professor reassuredly. "We are in charge here now. Is he your father?"<br /> "No—no—sir," stammered the poor little lad, and then he burst into tears.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought so!" commented the scientist. "Now you scoundrels clear out of here before we cause your arrest!"<br /> "You're talkin' mighty high," sneered the leader, "but look out! This matter is none of your affair, and that boy belongs to us!"<br /> "Take me away! Oh, please take me away! They'll kill me!" sobbed the lad.<br /> There was such a fiery look in the professor's eye as he leveled his gun at the gang of men that they started back, evidently fearing to be fired upon.<br /> "Come on!" called one. "We'll get some of the Mexicans and then we'll see who's runnin' things around here!"<br /> With that the gang sneaked out of the door, leaving the boys and the professor master of the situation. Their first act was to unbind the lad, who was almost fainting from pain and fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there any more of them?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Yes," said the boy faintly. "There are a lot of half-breed Mexicans in the gang. They are in a hut about a mile farther up the road, where they keep a lot of horses on a ranch."<br /> "Then perhaps we'd better get out of here while we have a chance," said the professor. "We can't fight a score or more. Let's take the boy and hurry away."<br /> "Come on then," said Jerry. "We'll get back to the auto. I only hope these men don't discover it and damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, equipment, risk, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> But when an attempt to start was made it was found that the boy, who said, in response to an inquiry from Ned, that his name was Tommy Bell, was unable to walk. The ropes bound about his legs had caused the blood to stagnate in the veins.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Jerry. "Bob, you and Ned go ahead with the lantern, and the professor and I will carry Tommy. Step lively now!"<br /> Moving in that order the procession started, and in a few minutes the travelers were back at the machine, which did not seem to have been disturbed. There was no sight or sound of the gang.<br /> Tommy was made as comfortable as possible, and then there was a brief consultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, forest, road condition, night, moonlight, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Which way had we better go?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I think it would be best to turn around," said Bob. "We'll run up against the gang if we go ahead."<br /> "The best road is straight ahead through this woods," spoke Tommy. "If you take the other your machine will get stuck."<br /> "Then we'll take this one, and trust to luck not to have any trouble with the gang," decided Jerry, as he cranked up the car.<br /> Just as they started the moon came out from the clouds, for the rain had ceased, and, though not many of the silver beams shone through the thick foliage, it was much lighter than it had been. Jerry threw in the gear and the next instant the car glided forward and shot along the tunnel of trees, leaving the hut where Tommy Bell had been a prisoner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, forest, scenery, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Is the Mexican camp near this main road?" asked the professor of Tommy.<br /> "About three hundred feet in," answered the boy, who was feeling much better.<br /> "How many men are at it?"<br /> "About one hundred, I guess, from what I heard them say."<br /> "Then I guess we'd better go past it on the fly," muttered Jerry, as he speeded up the machine until it was skimming along at a fast rate. In a little while there was a gleam of light through the trees ahead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound, risk, visibility, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the camp!" exclaimed Tommy.<br /> A minute later the travelers were made well aware of it, for, as they whizzed past in the auto, they heard shouts of anger, mingling with the sounds of rushing feet, while an occasional pistol shot rang out, the flash of fire cutting the darkness.<br /> "They saw us," spoke Bob. "Lucky it was pretty dark, or they might have damaged the auto."<br /> "To say nothing of ourselves," added Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VIII. - Pursued by Enemies (65-71) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VIII<br /> <br /> PURSUED BY ENEMIES<br /> <br /> As the auto sped along, Professor Snodgrass asked Tommy Bell how he had come to the hut in the forest.<br /> "Those men took me there," replied the boy.<br /> "And what did they try to make you do?" asked Jerry.<br /> "They wanted me to tell them where my father was," went on Tommy. "I could not because I did not know, and they burned me, because they did not believe I was telling the truth."<br /> "What did they want of your father?" inquired Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "They want him to sign some papers connected with some property," went on Tommy. "I don't know much about it, except that father used to work with those men developing a mine. It didn't pay, and they left it, after selling it to some other men. I lived with my father, and my mother was alive then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="safety, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boy stopped, and, at the mention of his mother's name began to cry softly.<br /> "Poor little lad," muttered the professor, putting his arm, with a sort of caressing motion about Tommy. "Don't cry, lad," the scientist went on, in what seemed a sort of husky voice, for he was very fond of children; "don't worry, we'll look out for you; won't we, boys?"<br /> "You bet!" exclaimed Jerry, Ned and Bob in one voice.<br /> The auto was slowed down now, as there seemed to be no danger of pursuit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After mother died," Tommy resumed, "and the mine did not pay, father started prospecting with Nat Richards and the others in that crowd. But they were bad men, and soon got the better of my dad, taking away what little money he had left.<br /> "This ruined my father, and he grew discouraged, for he was old, and in poor health. He wandered away and I haven't seen him for nearly a year. I traveled about, doing what little work I could get to do, until I struck Texas. One day, about a week ago, I passed a ranch, the same one<br /> we just came by. I asked for work, and got it. Then I found the same men owned it that had ruined my father.<br /> "As soon as Nat Richards saw me he demanded to know where dad was. I couldn't tell, and then he promised me one hundred dollars if I would tell. He said they needed my father's signature to a paper.<br /> "I don't know as I would have told them where dad was if I did know. When I kept on refusing to give them the information, Nat Richards grew ugly. He had me taken off to the hut where you found me, and said he'd starve me to death if I didn't tell.<br /> "I almost did die from hunger," Tommy went on with a catch in his voice. "Then they tried torture. They burned me on the legs with a hot poker. That's what they were doing when you came in," and, overcome again by the thought of all he had suffered Tommy cried bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, car part, accident, sound, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys and the professor did all they could to comfort the friendless lad, and, soon Tommy's grief wore off.<br /> "We'll take you along with us," said Jerry heartily, "and we'll try to help you find your father. Where did you see him last?"<br /> "He was in Arizona," answered Tommy.<br /> "That's just where we're headed for," exclaimed Bob. "We'll take you there all right."<br /> Jerry leaned forward to throw in the higher speed gear when there was a sudden ripping, breaking sound, and the auto began to slow up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, driver, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned.<br /> "Stripped the gear, I'm afraid," replied the steersman. "This is a nice pickle to be in."<br /> "Won't it run on the low or intermediate gear?" asked Bob.<br /> Jerry tried them, and found they were all right.<br /> "I guess we'd better stop here for the night," he said. "We may need the high gear any minute, and perhaps I can fix it in the morning. I have a spare wheel."<br /> "Then let's camp and have supper," said Bob eagerly. "I haven't eaten in a week by the way I feel."<br /> "Same here! I agree with you for once, Chunky," spoke Jerry. "It has been a long time since dinner, but with the excitement of the storm, the bear, and rescuing Tommy I didn't notice it before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while the camping outfit was taken from the automobile, and a fire started in the sheet-iron stove, with the charcoal that was carried to be used in emergencies, such as being unable to find dry wood after a rain.<br /> Ned ground the coffee, while Bob went in search of water, using the lantern to aid him in the somewhat dim forest, though the moon helped some. He found a spring close at hand, and soon a fragrant beverage was steaming under the trees. Then some bacon was placed in the frying pan, and the hard tack was taken from the tin and other things prepared.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Fall to!" commanded Ned, who was acting as cook, and fall to they all did, with a will.<br /> "Do you often camp out and eat in the woods like this?" asked Tommy. "I think it's jolly fun," and the lad, who was about twelve years old, laughed for the first time since his rescue. He, too, was eating with an appetite that showed he needed the food.<br /> Jerry briefly related some of their travel adventures, at which Tommy opened his eyes to their widest extent.<br /> "Cracky! But you have had stunning times!" he exclaimed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The meal having been finished, they began to think of getting some sleep. Blankets were brought out, and rolling themselves up in them the boys and the professor were soon in the land of nod.<br /> It was nearly dawn when Jerry was suddenly awakened by the far off baying of a dog. At first he could not imagine what the sound was, and sat up to listen more intently. Then a long, mournful howl was borne to him on the wind.<br /> "That's strange," he muttered. "There are very few dogs about here. I wonder what it is."<br /> At the same time Tommy Bell roused up, and he, too, heard the sound.<br /> "It's the gang after us!" he exclaimed. "They have a lot of hounds on the ranch! Hurry up! Let's get out of this!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, risk, night, speed, equipment, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark!" exclaimed Jerry, raising his hand.<br /> Then the boys heard, faint and far off, the sound of galloping horses.<br /> "They're coming!" cried Jerry.<br /> His cry awakened the others, who sat up bewildered and heavy from sound sleep.<br /> "Lively's the word!" called Jerry. "They're after us!"<br /> No further explanation was needed, for all knew what Jerry meant. There was a hasty piling of blankets into the auto; the stove was packed up, and, while the travelers jumped into the car, Jerry went in front to crank it up. The cheerful chug-chug told that the machinery was in good working order, and then, the boy, leaping into the steersman's seat, threw in the low gear for the start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, skill, sound, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> As he did so Ned glanced back and saw, coming around the bend of the forest road a score of horsemen and a pack of dogs.<br /> "Speed her up, Jerry!" called Bob.<br /> "I will!" was the exclamation, as Jerry leaned forward to throw in the high gear. A mournful screeching of the engine was the only response.<br /> "I forgot! The high gear is broken!" the steersman cried. "We can only use the intermediate, and that is not very fast!"<br /> "It's the best we can do, though!" said Bob. "We may get away from them!"<br /> On the intermediate cogs the auto made good speed, and, for a while, distanced the gang, the members of which, with shouts of rage, put their horses to their best effort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IX. - Into the Cave (72-80) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, risk, animal, topograpy"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="forest, metaphor, speed, animal, skill, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IX<br /> <br /> INTO THE CAVE<br /> <br /> The sun began to peep up from beneath the eastern hills, throwing a rosy light over the earth. The woods began to thin out, and the sides of the "tunnel," which had been dense, became more open, so that glimpses of the country could be seen now and then.<br /> The chase was now on in earnest. For some time, however, the auto kept well in advance of the horsemen, for Jerry used all the power possible on the differential gear. If the high speed one had been in working order there would have been no question of the outcome, but, for once, luck was against the boys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, road condition, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Nearer and nearer came the gang on horseback. They got so close that their shouts to halt could be plainly heard. But Jerry was not going to give up. He gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel with a firmer grasp.<br /> "We seem to be slacking up," observed Ned.<br /> "That's what we are," spoke Jerry. "The auto is going back on us."<br /> The car did seem to be dragging, and there was no excuse for it in the condition of the road, which was a fine level one.<br /> "The car needs repairing," said Jerry, "and the way I have to run it isn't the best thing in the world for it."<br /> "Do you think they'll catch up to us?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid so," muttered Jerry. "We are going the limit now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, metaphor, car part, accident, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The thunder of the horses sounded nearer and the shouts of the pursuing gang came more plainly on the morning breeze. The auto coughed and wheezed, seeming like a man who has run far and is about to collapse. The explosions became less frequent, and finally one of the cylinders ceased to work altogether, leaving only three in commission.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" muttered Jerry, as, by a hasty glance back he saw the men spurring their horses on.<br /> "You'd better give up!" one of the gang shouted.<br /> "Not yet, you scoundrels!" cried Jerry, as he advanced the sparkling lever to the final notch. This seemed to be the last straw to the auto engine, for with a dismal snort it stopped short.<br /> "This settles it," muttered Ned grimly. "We are done for."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, speed, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Fortunately, however, they were on a slight slope now, and the car, with the impetus it had gathered, began to glide down the hill under its own momentum.<br /> But the horsemen were not one thousand feet in the rear and were drawing nearer. There seemed to be no help at hand and there was every indication that the boys would fall into the hands of their desperate enemies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, tree, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> "How much farther can we go?" asked Tommy suddenly.<br /> "To the foot of the hill," replied Jerry. "Why do you ask?"<br /> "That's far enough!" exclaimed Tommy. "I guess we can escape them."<br /> "How?"<br /> "Steer straight for that dead pine tree," replied the young lad, "and when you get almost to it, make a wide turn to the right."<br /> "What good will that do?"<br /> "There's a big cave right at the foot of the hill," replied Tommy. "I know for I passed it as I was tramping toward the ranch. It is large enough to take in the auto, and maybe we can hold it against the gang."<br /> "Hurrah!" shouted Jerry, as he shifted the wheel to conform with Tommy's directions. "We'll beat 'em yet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, skill, speed, scenery, animal, risk, weapon, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> Straight toward the dead pine Jerry aimed, and, as he came to the bottom of the slope, he saw an opening in the bush-lined side of the hill, that told him the cave was at hand. Into it, by a skillful turn, he steered the auto, and the machine, running in about one hundred feet from the opening came to a stop, just as the horsemen came dashing up, much surprised by the sudden disappearance of those they were pursuing.<br /> "We're safe!" whispered Ned.<br /> "Not yet," said Jerry. "We must arm ourselves," and he began to get out the rifles from the bottom of the car, and hand them around to his companions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, scenery, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Outside the cavern, which was a natural one in the rocky side of the hill, there came confused shouts.<br /> "Where did they go?" they heard a voice ask.<br /> "Must have gone over some ledge and been killed," was the reply.<br /> "Then that settles it," said the first one. "That's just our bad luck!"<br /> Then came a curious cry, and, by it, the boys knew their hiding place was discovered.<br /> "Here are the tracks of the wheels!" the travelers heard some one shout. "They turned off somewhere about here."<br /> "Then they're in that cave," was the rejoinder.<br /> "Dismount!" came a sharp order.<br /> The boys could hear the men getting off their horses, and the animals being led away.<br /> "Get your carbines ready!" was the next command.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's time for us to act!" whispered Jerry. "We must each one take a gun, and stand at the mouth of the cave. We'll warn them not to enter. If they persist we will have to fire, but we must try not to hurt any one mortally. Aim at their legs!"<br /> In the half darkness of the cavern the boys and the professor each took a rifle and crept to the mouth of the opening. No sooner had they reached it than they heard the tramp of feet, and shadows told them the bad men were advancing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Halt!" cried Jerry, who had naturally assumed command.<br /> "Who are you?" asked the leader of the gang.<br /> "Never mind who we are," replied Jerry. "We are in possession of this cave, and we warn you not to come in!"<br /> "Big words for a kid!" sneered the leader.<br /> "You'll find we can back them up," spoke Jerry. Then, in lower tones, he bade his comrades stand in readiness.<br /> There was a consultation in whispers among the members of the gang, and then, seeming to feel that they had nothing to fear, they made a rush.<br /> "Fire!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Remembering his instructions, the boys and the professor aimed low. To the reports of the rifles there succeeded howls of pain. Several of the gang shot back, but, as it was dark in the cave they could not see to aim, and they did no damage.<br /> "Give them another volley!" yelled Jerry.<br /> Again the rifles spoke, and this time, to the chorus of howls there was added a command from the leader to retreat, and the men rushed from the cave, which was filled with smoke.<br /> "Are—are any of them killed?" asked Tommy.<br /> "I don't believe so," replied Jerry. "We fired too low to do much damage. I only wanted to let them know we were ready for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Waiting several minutes to see if there would be any further attack, Jerry cautiously advanced to the mouth of the cavern. In the semi-light he saw several blood stains, but the absence of any bodies told him the battle had not resulted fatally, for which he was thankful. Though the<br /> men were desperate characters, who, perhaps, would not stop at murder, the boy did not want the responsibility of killing any of them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They seem to have retreated," Jerry reported when he joined the others. "But I don't suppose they have gone for good. This probably will only make them more anxious to get Tommy away from us, for it is him they are after."<br /> "Do you think they want me?" asked the younger lad.<br /> "I am pretty sure, after what you have told us about the mine, that they would give a good deal to get you," replied Jerry. "Perhaps your signature may be as good as that of your father's in case—in case—" and Jerry stopped suddenly.<br /> "You mean in case dad is dead?" asked Tommy quietly.<br /> "Yes," answered Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't believe my father is dead," spoke the boy bravely. "Somehow I feel that he is alive, and that I will find him. But if the gang is after me, it is not right for you all to be in danger on my account. Give me up to them, I'm not afraid—that is, I'll try not to be. Let me go out and surrender, and perhaps they'll go away."<br /> "I'd like to see myself!" exclaimed Jerry. "You don't stir out of this cave, Tommy Bell, until we go! I'm not afraid of that gang. We've been in tighter places than this and gotten out; haven't we, fellows?"<br /> "You bet!" echoed Bob and Ned.<br /> "Then give me a gun and let me help fight," begged Tommy.<br /> "Can you shoot?" asked Jerry.<br /> "My father taught me," was all Tommy said, and Jerry gave him a rifle, at which Tommy's eyes sparkled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A cautious glance from the mouth of the cave showed that the gang had withdrawn some distance away. But that they had no notion of giving up the fight was evidenced by the fact that they were constructing a camp so as to command the entrance to the cavern.<br /> "I guess they're going to try and starve us out," remarked the professor. "Lucky we have plenty of provisions and ammunition on hand for a siege."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess we're just as well off here as anywhere," observed Jerry. "We'd have to lay up a few days at any rate, to fix the machine, and it might as well be in a good roomy cave, where the rain can't wet us."<br /> The boys waited an hour before laying aside their arms. Then, as the gang showed no signs of renewing the attack, they proceeded to make themselves more comfortable.<br /> "Might as well get ready to camp out," said Ned. "I'll set up the stove, and we'll have breakfast, though it is a little late."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> So while he set up the sheet iron apparatus, Jerry instructed Bob to stand guard at the mouth of the cavern, and to give instant notice of any activity on the part of the enemy.<br /> "But what will we do about eating breakfast?" asked Bob in a sorrowful voice.<br /> "Don't worry about that, 'Chunky,'" said Jerry. "I'll relieve you, or some one will, in time to get a meal. In the meantime keep a good watch."<br /> Then Jerry went back to help Ned, and, at the same time, make ready to repair the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter X. - Attacked by a Cougar (81-89) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, risk, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER X<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY A COUGAR<br /> <br /> "I say, Jerry," called Ned, "we're in a sort of a pickle."<br /> "How's that?"<br /> "Why, I started to make coffee and I got along all right until I came to the water."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "No, it's not at all well. In fact we ought to have a well here."<br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> "I mean there's no water in the cave!"<br /> "Great Scott! Is that so?" exclaimed Jerry. "I never thought of such a thing. Are you sure there's not a spring away in the rear?"<br /> "The professor and I made a good search," replied the temporary cook. "The cave comes to an end about three hundred feet back, and there's not a sign of water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, gasoline, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds Jerry was silent. Then he gave an exclamation.<br /> "I have it!" he cried. "We can use the emergency water supply on the auto. It is not very fresh, but it will do for coffee."<br /> "The very thing!" ejaculated Ned.<br /> It was fortunate that the auto carried an extra tank of water, as well as one of gasolene. They had often found it useful in getting a supply of the fluid for the radiator in places far from a supply, and the reserve tank had been built with that purpose in view. It held about ten gallons. Drawing on this Ned had a supply for his coffee which was soon boiling merrily on the stove, while some canned chicken and bacon were put on to fry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say, is anybody going to relieve me?" called Bob from his post on guard.<br /> He smelled the breakfast in preparation, and it added to his hunger.<br /> "I'll go," volunteered the professor. "I'm in no hurry to eat, and perhaps I may pick up a specimen or two. This cave ought to be a good place for them."<br /> Accordingly he took Bob's place, and soon the four boys were eating ravenously, and with as good appetites as if a band of bad men was not outside, ready to attack them at the first opportunity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, car part, engine, technology, skill, night"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to fix the machine," said Jerry as he rose from the ground that served as a table. "Light all the lamps, Ned, and then you and Bob come and help me. Tommy and the professor can take turns standing guard."<br /> It was no easy matter to take the automobile engine apart, and substitute a new gear for the broken one. It was also found necessary to insert new spark plugs, which had become covered with a coating of carbon; and the cylinders also needed cleaning, while the pistons had to be adjusted.<br /> The afternoon was spent in working at the auto, and by night such good progress had been made that Jerry said by the next evening it would be in shape to start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, night, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "That is if the gang let's us," spoke Ned.<br /> "We'll make a dash for it," replied Jerry. "We needn't fear them with the car in good order, for we can leave them behind in less than half an hour. We'll try to escape to-morrow about midnight."<br /> "In the meanwhile let's eat," suggested Bob, and his cry brought forth the usual chaffing about "Chunky's" appetite.<br /> Ned started to get supper. He went to the tank of the auto to draw some water for the tea, when he gave a cry of surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, accident, mud"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" called Jerry.<br /> "The water's gone!" exclaimed Ned. "That's a leak in the tank!"<br /> They all rushed to the car. There, on the ground under the reserve tank was a muddy spot, showing where the precious fluid had dripped away. A quick examination showed there was a small hole in the reservoir.<br /> "Now we are up against it," murmured Bob.<br /> "Not quite yet," said Jerry.<br /> "How can we get water without being shot?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is quite a bit left in the pipe coils of the radiator," answered Jerry. "It will be pretty poor stuff to drink I guess, but it's better than nothing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable of the fluid in the big brass radiator on the front of the car, and, though it was stale, and had been heated many times, as it circulated about the cylinders, still, it was better than none. Made into tea, which was served as a change from coffee, it did not taste so very bad.<br /> But the situation was grave. With only water enough on hand to last about half a day, the plight of the travelers was a critical one.<br /> "We'll have to have water for the car, as well as ourselves," spoke Ned. "We can't run the machine without water."<br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry dubiously. "Something will have to be done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> After the evening meal Jerry resumed his labors on the car, working at double speed, in which he was assisted by Ned and Bob. The professor and Tommy took turns watching at the cavern's mouth.<br /> But there seemed to be no need of this, as the men showed no inclination to make a second attack. They appeared to know that the boys were caught in a trap; a trap that contained no water. So they evidently felt sure of success sooner or later, and that without the danger of being wounded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, midnight, technology, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and his comrades worked to such advantage that shortly after midnight the auto was in shape to be used, and with the new high gear wheel in place. The car was given a good oiling, and was repacked in readiness for a quick start.<br /> "Now if we only had water," sighed Jerry, "we could slip out, and, I believe get away."<br /> But he knew it was useless to proceed without at least a full radiator. The extra tank, which had been repaired, could be filled later. The radiator coils were empty however. What had not been used for cooking had been made up into weak tea, as it was not considered healthful to drink the water as it came from the pipes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to do something," said Jerry decidedly. "If we stay here much longer we'll die of thirst. If we could only make a dash and get some water we could manage. Two pails full would do."<br /> "Let me go after them," exclaimed Tommy. "I'm not afraid. I can run fast. Maybe I can get out there by the brook, get the water and come back before any of them see me."<br /> "No you couldn't," spoke Jerry, pointing to where one of the men, as sentry, could be seen, from the mouth of the cave, walking up and down near the camp fire. "If any one goes I will, and I think I'd better start."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob and Ned both offered to make the dangerous attempt, and the professor insisted that he be allowed to try, as he knew how to move over ground very silently. But Jerry was firm in his determination.<br /> "I'm going to make the try about two o'clock," he said. "They'll be sounder asleep then."<br /> As he was very tired he stretched out in some blankets until it would be time to make the try. He fell asleep soon, and the others moved away, talking in whispers lest they disturb him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Almost exactly at the appointed hour Jerry awakened. He sat up, and, slipping a pair of Indian moccasins over his shoes, to enable him to move as silently as possible, he cautiously approached the mouth of the cavern, carrying two water pails with him.<br /> The moon had gone down and it was quite dark, which was favorable to Jerry's plans. As he got to the entrance of the cavern the boy looked toward the gang's camp. There seemed to be no sign of life, and Jerry thought perhaps the sentry had fallen asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As silent as a cat the lad made his way toward the stream, which he could hear gurgling and splashing over the stones. His throat was dry, for the last of the cold tea had been drunk, and his exertions had made him very thirsty. As he heard the sound of the brook he felt a fierce desire for water, so strong was it that he felt he would brave anything to get it.<br /> Foot by foot he advanced, crouching down as low as he could. He was beginning to feel that he would be successful, and not be detected. He could see the sparkle of the water about three hundred feet away, and his parched mouth and throat seemed to be as dry as leather. He could<br /> hardly swallow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On and on he went. Now he was about two hundred feet away and he was getting ready to make a dash for the brook.<br /> Suddenly he heard a clicking sound, and knew it was a rifle being cocked. Next there rang out on the night air the command:<br /> "Halt or I'll fire!"<br /> Poor Jerry was detected! He came to a stop, sick at heart at the failure of his plan.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a moment there was no other sound. The boy could not see who had discovered him, though he instinctively felt the eyes of the man on him. Suddenly there was a shaking in the tree somewhat to Jerry's left, and about one hundred feet away. Then came a rustle of the leaves on the ground and the boy made out the figure of a man, dimly, standing with rifle aimed straight at him.<br /> "Throw up your hands!" was the next order, and, letting the pails fall to the ground, Jerry obeyed.<br /> Then, all at once, there burst out on the air a most terrifying sound. It was a blood-curdling yell, a screech as if from some one in mortal agony. Jerry felt the cold chills go down his back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a crashing sound, and, from the tree under which the man stood who had aimed at the boy a dark body shot downward.<br /> The screech of the cougar, for such it was, mingled with the terrific yells of the sentry. Jerry dimly saw a confused tangle of man and beast. He heard the man shout for help. He heard his rifle go off, and then came sounds that told that the camp had been aroused.<br /> The attack of the cougar had come just in time. Jerry, taking advantage of the diversion, grabbed up his pails, and running to the brook filled them with water. Then, as fast as he could go, he ran toward the cave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XI. - A Runaway Auto (90-97) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, maintenance, car part, night, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XI<br /> <br /> A RUNAWAY AUTO<br /> <br /> Behind the boys sounded the yells and shouts of the men in camp, mingled with rifle shots and the screeching of several of the cougars, for, it developed, a band of three, grown desperate by hunger, had made an attack.<br /> "Are you hurt, Jerry?" cried Bob and Ned, as, with his pails of water, the boy staggered into the cave.<br /> "Not a bit, but I had a close shave," was the answer. "But we must be quick! Here! Help fill the radiator with the water."<br /> "Can't we drink any?" asked Bob who, like the others, was very thirsty.<br /> "Not a drop," said Jerry firmly. "We need every bit for the automobile. Without it we can't get away from here, and now is the only chance we may have to escape. We can drink later."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> While Jerry and Ned filled the radiator the other boys and the professor made ready for the escape. Everything was packed up and placed in the car, which, as soon as the coil was filled, would be ready to start and dash from the cave.<br /> "I'm afraid this is not going to be water enough," spoke Jerry as the second of the pails was emptied into the radiator.<br /> "Can't I make a dash for some more? There seems to be excitement enough in the camp to keep them from watching me," said Ned. "I'm going to try."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable activity among the ranch men. The cougars, though wounded, seemed to have temporarily lost all fear and made attack after attack on the men, who had to fire several volleys from their rifles.<br /> "Go ahead," said Jerry. "I'll start the engine slowly."<br /> Grabbing up the pails Ned walked from the cave.<br /> "I'm going to help, also," said Tommy.<br /> "No, you stay here," commanded Jerry. "Bob can go if he wants to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob joined Ned. They ran to the stream and had filled the pails when, just as they started on the way back, the wounded cougars, driven from the camp, came dashing after the boys.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" exclaimed Ned. "Run, Bob!"<br /> And run they did, as they had never run before, and left the beasts behind.<br /> "Have you the water?" asked Jerry eagerly as the boys came in.<br /> "We have!" exclaimed Bob. "And hard enough work we had getting it."<br /> "Good!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry hurriedly poured most of it into the radiator, though every one in the cave looked at the fluid with longing eyes.<br /> "I must get a drink soon, or I shall go half crazy!" said the professor suddenly. "I never was so thirsty in my life."<br /> "I'm saving just a little bit for each of us," spoke Jerry. "But it is a very small quantity, and will only serve to wet our mouths. If all goes well we shall soon have plenty."<br /> He distributed about a pint of the water among his companions, and though each one got only a little it brought welcome relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, speed, engine"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now we're ready to skip out!" announced Jerry as he screwed the cap on the radiator tank, and increased the speed of the engine. "But first we had better take a look outside to see if any of that gang are in sight."<br /> The professor, who had good eyes, went to the mouth of the cave, and, coming back, reported that he could see a dark mass moving on the further bank of the stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, road condition, speed, driver, passenger, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "They have evidently gotten over their scare about the cougars," Mr. Snodgrass said, "and are waiting to bag us. What are we going to do?"<br /> "There's only one thing to do," replied Jerry.<br /> "And that is what?"<br /> "We must make a dash for it. The road is fairly good, and I guess we can speed up enough to get out of the range of their bullets in a short time. They can't be very good shots or they would have killed the three cougars, with all the bullets they fired."<br /> So it was decided. They all took their places in the car, and Jerry, who, as if by mutual consent, assumed the place of steersman, leaned forward to throw in the gear clutches.<br /> "Here we go!" he cried. "Look out everybody!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="slowness, car part, visibility, risk, night, speed, sound, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly at first, but gathering speed, the auto moved out of the cave. The lamps lighted up the path, and, though the boys realized that the lanterns disclosed their position to their enemies, they had to use them for their own safety. It was too dark to do without them.<br /> A few seconds later and the car emerged from the cavern. As it shot out there came a chorus of angry cries from the camp of the ranchmen, and several shots were fired, though none of them came close enough to be uncomfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, skill, risk, navigation, visibility, night, river, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" cried Jerry again, as he increased the speed, and the auto fairly leaped forward. It swayed from side to side, and struck several ruts, so that the occupants were tossed about.<br /> But the main thing was that they went ahead, and away from their enemies. Jerry, peering as best he could into the darkness ahead, made a course for the stream, intending to go close to it, and then run along the bank, or near it, as he had noted in the afternoon that there was a fairly good road there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, speed, parking, river, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> Gradually the shouts of the men, and the firing of their guns died away, and the travelers began to breathe more freely. They had made their escape, and, for the present, were safe.<br /> "Oh do let's stop and get a drink!" pleaded Bob.<br /> "Not yet!" exclaimed Jerry. "Five minutes more will not kill you, and it may save all our lives," for he did not want to slack up while there was any danger of the ranchmen coming after them.<br /> The five minutes seemed like an hour to Bob, and the others, too, were impatient. But at last Jerry shut off the power and the machine came to a halt not far from the creek. Out scrambled the boys and the professor, and then, in spite of the danger of drinking snakes and lizards in the darkness, they all made for the stream, where they quenched their thirst from small collapsable cups which each one had been holding in readiness for just that chance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's better than an ice cream soda!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "You bet!" agreed Bob heartily. "I never tasted such fine water."<br /> "Very good!" said the professor.<br /> "I guess we can stop long enough to lay in a supply now," remarked Jerry. "We can start off again in five minutes, and in that time they can not catch up to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part, night, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> So the radiator was filled to the top, and the auxiliary tank likewise, while the boys indulged freely in the liquid, thinking, perhaps, they might have some of the characteristics of the camel, and could drink enough at one time to last a week or more.<br /> Then they started forward again, and the auto soon carried them beyond the possibility of capture that night. They camped out in the open, and, in spite of their rather exciting adventures they slept soundly, awaking as the sun rose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, passenger, mountain, topography, scenery, car part, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was given a chance to run the machine, and he took the front seat with Tommy, who was delighted to be there for the first time. They had not been going long before they found the land was rising.<br /> "We're coming into the mountains now," said Jerry.<br /> Up a long hill, with a gradual assent, puffed the auto. On either side were broad fields where tall Pampas grass was growing, amid which thousands of grasshoppers, or some similar insect, were singing.<br /> "Better be sure your brake is in good working order," suggested Jerry, as they came to the steep descent on the other side. "We don't want any more accidents."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned tried the ordinary brake. There was a clicking sound, followed by a snapping one.<br /> "Brake's busted!" exclaimed Jerry. "Try the emergency!"<br /> Ned did so. That, too, gave out only a faint screech, and did not grip the axle as it should.<br /> "Look out now!" yelled Jerry. "We're in for it!"<br /> An instant later the auto began to move forward at a rapid pace. All Ned's efforts to check it were in vain.<br /> "We're running away!" cried frightened Tommy. "I wish I'd stayed in back!"<br /> "Keep to the middle of the road!" Jerry cried above the noise of the auto rushing down the steep hill. At the bottom the road took a sharp turn, and the hearts of all beat rapidly with fear as they beheld it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XII. - Tommy Finds a Friend (98-106) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, agriculture"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, car part, driver, passenger, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XII<br /> <br /> TOMMY FINDS A FRIEND<br /> <br /> So rapidly did the machine shoot down the descent that it almost seemed the curved road was rushing to meet the travelers. Again and again Ned tried the brakes, but without avail. He had shut off the power at the first indication that something was wrong.<br /> "We can never make that turn!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid not," agreed Jerry.<br /> They were all clinging to the sides of the car, while Ned gripped the steering wheel with a desperate hold.<br /> "Look out for the turn!" cried the professor as they came to the sharp curve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, car part, risk, scenery, agriculture, speed, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> But, to the surprise of all, Ned, instead of shifting the wheel in at least an attempt to swing around the half circle kept straight on the course. The boy had resolved on another plan.<br /> Directly in front of him, and to the left of the road was a big field of tall waving Pampas grass, the plumes nodding eight feet above the ground. It was shut off from the thoroughfare by a frail wooden fence.<br /> "I'm going to steer into the grass!" cried Ned. "It's our only chance!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, accident, speed, agriculture, risk, plant, skill, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a splintering sound as the auto crashed through the fence, which offered no more resistance, because of the great speed, than a paper hoop does to a circus performer. Then it seemed to the travelers as though they had been plunged into a tossing, waving sea of grass.<br /> The tall Pampas plumes and the stems wrapped themselves about the boys and the professor, almost choking them by the pollen that was shaken off. The feathery-like tops tickled them in the eyes, nose and mouth as, carried by the runaway auto, they were dashed through them.<br /> But the grass had just the effect Ned had intended and hoped for. It clogged the wheels of the machine, and though soft, offered so much resistance that the machine soon began to slow down, as does a locomotive when it runs into a snow drift.<br /> After plowing through the field for about two hundred feet the car came to a final stop, with a little jolt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, risk, health, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Caramba!" yelled a voice and then followed such a string of Spanish that the boys thought they had run down a whole camp of Mexican herders.<br /> "Did we hit any one?" asked Jerry, peering forward as well as he could through the tall grass.<br /> "Caramba! Hit any one! The Americano pirates have killed Don Elvardo!" exclaimed the unseen one. "You have broken—!" and then followed such a confusion of words that the boys could not understand.<br /> "Have we broken your leg?" asked Jerry, speaking in Spanish this time.<br /> "Santa Maria! No! You have broken the cigarette I just rolled!" and with that the grass parted in front of the auto, and a little Mexican, wearing a suit profusely trimmed with silver braid, showed himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys felt like laughing as they beheld the woe-begone face of Don Elvardo. In his hand he held the remains of a cigarette.<br /> "Behold!" he went on tragically. "I am peacefully walking in my field, looking over my crop of Pampas, when I feel a desire to smoke. I sit me down and roll a cigarette. I am about to light it, when—Santa Maria! There is a rushing sound of ten thousand imps of darkness. My grass is mowed down as if by a sickle in the hands of a giant. I turn in fear! I see something coming! I can not tell what it is, for the tall grass hides it! I turn to flee! The infernal thing keeps after me! Presto! Caramba! It hits me so—"<br /> Don Elvardo illustrated by slapping himself vigorously on the thigh.<br /> "Then I fall! I am crushed! I am killed! I die in pain and fear! I arise! Behold, senor Americanos, my cigarette is broken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, agriculture, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're very sorry, of course," said Jerry politely. "But you see our auto ran away on the hill, and as the brakes would not work, the only thing to save our lives was to steer into this field. We did not know you were here, or we would have sent around to your house to ask permission to enter," added the lad sarcastically.<br /> "But I am here!" snapped the Mexican.<br /> "So we see," admitted Jerry. "We are willing to pay for any damage we have done."<br /> The Mexican's eyes sparkled, and he rubbed his hands as if in anticipation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That alters the case," said Don Elvardo. "The Americano senors are welcome ten thousand times to my field. I bid you welcome. I salute you. Pay. Oh, yes! It is but right that you should pay!" Again he rubbed his hands together.<br /> "About what would you say it was worth?" asked Ned.<br /> "I am no miser," replied the Mexican. "I do not wish to insult my friends the Americanos. I will only charge them for the damage to the grass. The broken fence is of no moment. Pay me one hundred dollars and I will say no more about the affair."<br /> "He's a robber!" said Jerry in a low voice. "We haven't done five dollars' damage to his crop and the fence combined."<br /> "I guess he will whistle for his one hundred dollars," said Ned.<br /> Don Elvardo heard him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, agriculture, plant, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "So!" he exclaimed. "You will not pay me one little hundred dollars for the damage. Caramba! Then it is I who shall at once lodge a complaint with the authorities. We will see if there is a law in the land, or if crazy Americanos can spoil a poor man's crop and pay nothing. We shall see!"<br /> "Offer him ten dollars," suggested Bob. The boys consulted together a minute or two. They wanted to be fair, but they did not care to be robbed. The professor had taken no part in the discussion. He seemed to be intently examining the tall grass on either side of the machine.<br /> Suddenly the scientist stepped from the side of the car, and rapidly made his way to the front, where Don Elvardo stood. Mr. Snodgrass gazed intently at the Mexican. Then he gave a leap toward the Don, exclaiming as he did so:<br /> "There it is! Right on your hat! Don't move an inch or it will jump away! I have it now! This is indeed a lucky day! Just a second and I'll have it!"<br /> With that the professor made a leap toward the Mexican with outstretched hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Diavolo?" screamed Don Elvardo as he saw the scientist coming for him. "Caramba! It is to murder me that you come!"<br /> Then, calling for help at the top of his voice, the Mexican turned and fled in terror, his course being marked through the tall grass by the wave-like motion he imparted to the plumes in his haste.<br /> "Why—why what in the world ails him?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "He probably thought you were going to choke him to death," said Jerry with a laugh. "In fact your actions were not so very far from giving that idea."<br /> "Why bless my soul!" ejaculated the professor. "All I wanted was to get a fine specimen of a blue grasshopper from his big hat, where the insect had alighted. It was worth about forty dollars."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I saw some just as good in a city once for twenty dollars," put in Tommy, "and they had more silver braid on."<br /> "What! A grasshopper with silver braid on?" cried the scientist.<br /> "I thought you said his hat was worth forty dollars," went on Tommy, somewhat embarrassed.<br /> "I was speaking of the blue grasshopper," explained Mr. Snodgrass. "My, I am sorry to have missed that one."<br /> "But you did a good service in scaring this Mexican away, as you did the chap with the ox cart," spoke Ned. "He might have made trouble for us."<br /> "And we had better get out of here while we have the chance," said Jerry. "He may come back any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="agriculture, plant, navigation, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the auto was turned around, and run over the same course by which it had entered the field. Otherwise it would have been almost impossible to have advanced, so thick was the grass. The road regained, the machine was sent along it at good speed, for fear Don Elvardo or some of his friends might appear.<br /> "We had better stop and fix the brakes," suggested Ned, after an hour's run.<br /> "And get dinner at the same time," put in Bob. "We'll kill two stones with the same automobile, as the poem says."<br /> "I guess you're a little twisted," remarked Ned, "but your intentions are good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, river, maintenance, car part, navigation, map"><br /> <poem><br /> A halt was made under a big tree, near a little stream, and soon a good fire was built and dinner was being cooked.<br /> It was found that some nuts had become loose on the brakes, and this trouble Jerry soon remedied. After the meal they sat about and talked a while.<br /> "We'll soon be in New Mexico," remarked Jerry, consulting a small map.<br /> "Will we?" asked Tommy. "I'm so glad."<br /> "Why?"<br /> "Because there's a man who was once a friend of my father at a place called Las Cruces. It's near the Rio Grande river. If we could go there I know Mr. Douglass would take care of me."<br /> "Then we'll go there," said Jerry. "It will be right on our route."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed this would be a good plan. That night the travelers stopped in a small village where they had good beds and meals. They resumed the journey next day, and for several days thereafter met with no mishaps as they speeded toward Las Cruces. They had left the lowlands and were well up among the hills by this time.<br /> One day, just at dusk, they rolled into Las Cruces and, after a little inquiry found Mr. Douglass, who was very glad to see Tommy.<br /> "I will be glad to take care of him for the present," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIII. - The Colored Man's Ghost (107-116) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="city, rural, pleasure, mechanic, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIII<br /> <br /> THE COLORED MAN'S GHOST<br /> <br /> The travelers found the town where Tommy's friend lived such a pleasant place that they spent several days there. It was a thriving place, and the auto was a source of endless wonder to most of the inhabitants, who had never seen one.<br /> Had the boys wished they could have made considerable money taking parties out in the car for short trips, but they knew they had a long journey before them and they wished to save the machine all they could. It needed some repairs which were made by the local blacksmith, and then the travelers were ready to move forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know how to thank you for all you did for me," said Tommy, as the boys were leaving. "You saved my life. Maybe I will have a chance to do you a good turn some day. If I have, you can bet I'll do it."<br /> "We know you will, Tommy," said Jerry. "Well, good-by. I hope we see you again."<br /> "Same here!" exclaimed Bob and Ned.<br /> They did not know how soon they were to meet their friend again, nor in what a peculiar manner he was able to aid them in return for what they had done for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, slowness, equipment, rural, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> For several days the auto skimmed along through a somewhat lonely country. The roads were not very good and a number of times progress was so slow that only a few miles were made between sunrise and sunset. Now and then the travelers would come to a lonely cabin, where they could replenish their food supply or get a night's lodging. But, in the main, they had to depend on their own resources.<br /> Occasionally they would reach a little settlement, where their arrival never failed to produce as much excitement as a fire and circus combined. Every day brought them nearer their gold mine, concerning which they were very anxious, as they had heard nothing further from Jim Nestor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, mountain, maintenance, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "The mine may have been taken away from him for all we know," chafed Jerry as he fretted at the delay caused by bad roads.<br /> "We'll hope for the best," said Ned. "No use crossing a bridge until you come to it."<br /> The travelers were well up among the lower mountains now, though compared with the heights they had still to scale the range was one of mere hills. One evening just at dusk, after a particularly hard day of travel, during which the auto had broken down several times, necessitating minor repairs, the Motor Boys came to a place where two roads divided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder which we had better take?" asked Bob, who was at the wheel.<br /> "The right," said Jerry.<br /> "The left," advised Ned.<br /> "Toss up a cent," suggested the professor. "Make it heads right and tails left."<br /> They did so. The coin came down heads up, and Bob turned the machine to the right. It had not proceeded far on this road when, about a mile ahead, the travelers saw a couple of log cabins.<br /> "Well, there's shelter for to-night, at all events," Jerry remarked, "and, I hope, supper as well. I'm getting a little tired of bacon and coffee."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> They found one of the cabins occupied by a negro, his wife, and seven children, the oldest a boy of sixteen and the youngest a little girl, just able to toddle.<br /> "Good evening," greeted the professor, "can we get supper and lodging anywhere about here?"<br /> "I reckon I kin fix yo' up on th' eatin' question, boss," remarked the darkey as he stood in the cabin door as the auto drew up, "but I 'clare t' goodness I can't find no room t' stable that there rip-snortin' beast ye got."<br /> "We don't expect you to take the auto in," spoke Jerry. "If you give us beds for ourselves, or even a room to sleep in we'll pay for it and glad to do it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Land sakes, I'd like t' 'blige yo', deed 'n I would boss," went on the negro, "but my cabin am jest crowded t' th' doah wif me an' my fambily. Yo' am welcome t' suthin' t' eat, but land a' massy whar I'se goin' t' have yo' sleep hab got me cogitatin'."<br /> "What's the matter with that other cabin?" asked Ned.<br /> "What other cabin?" asked the negro, not turning to look in the direction of the second shack, about a quarter of a mile down the road.<br /> "That one," went on Ned, pointing to it. "There may be room in it."<br /> "Oh I reckon there's room enough," replied the colored man, "only—well to tell you th' truff, boss, it ain't exackly healthy t' sleep in that cabin, er even t' talk about it. 'Scuse me but I don't want even t' look at it."<br /> "Why not?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The colored man seemed to hesitate. He fidgeted and seemed ready to go back into his house.<br /> "Why not?" asked Ned again.<br /> "Kase it's--it's got ghosts an' it's hanted!" exclaimed the negro, "an' it ain't safe fer any one to go near it, let alone sleep in it."<br /> "Nonsense," remarked the professor. "There are no such things as ghosts."<br /> "Yo' wouldn't say so if yo' went to that there cabin after dark," persisted the colored man. "'Tain't safe t' talk about it, so yo'll please 'scuse me."<br /> "But what sort of a ghost is it?" asked Jerry.<br /> "It's big an' it's white, an' it rattles chains an' groans sumthin' turrible," said the negro.<br /> "Did you ever see it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Did I ever see it, boss? Couse I done see it. Only t'other night it near skeered me to deff."<br /> "How long has it been there?" asked Bob.<br /> "'Bout a week I reckon," replied the negro. "Ever since Rastus Johnson moved away from th' cabin."<br /> "I guess we'll take a chance with the ghost for the sake of spending a night under shelter," said Jerry. "Meanwhile we can get supper here."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And a fine supper they had. Mrs. Jones, wife of the colored man, proved an excellent cook. She fried some chicken, made some corn bread, and that, with preserves and some good coffee, made up a meal which the travelers voted one of the finest they had eaten in many months.<br /> "Can we get breakfast here, also?" asked Jerry when supper was finished. <br /> "If yo' am alive," replied Jones solemnly.<br /> "If we're alive? What do you mean?"<br /> "Well I reckon ef yo' sleeps in that hanted cabin, there won't be any of yo' left t' want a meal in th' mo'nin'," explained Jones. "It's takin' yo'uns' lives in yo' hands t' go nigh it suah yo' is boahn!"<br /> All they could say did not induce the man to change his mind. He was plainly afraid of the cabin and the "ghost."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> But the travelers were determined not to let a little thing like that interfere with a chance to sleep under shelter. Accordingly they covered the auto with the tarpaulin provided for that purpose, and moved their blankets into the deserted cabin, which was fairly clean and in good condition. One of the big oil lamps gave sufficient light.<br /> The cabin contained only two rooms, one on the ground floor, and the other above it, reached by a movable ladder.<br /> "I think we had better sleep upstairs," said Jerry. "The door doesn't fasten very securely, and besides I think it will be drier there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they mounted the ladder, spread their blankets out on the floor, and were all soon fast asleep. None of them expected to be disturbed, for they laid the story of the ghost to an overwrought imagination of the colored man.<br /> So it was with a sudden feeling of terror that Jerry was awakened in the middle of the night by hearing a deep groan, seeming to come from the room below.<br /> He sat up, rubbing his eyes to further awaken himself, and then he became aware that Bob was also sitting up. He could see because of the moonlight streaming in through a window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you hear anything?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I thought so," answered Bob.<br /> "I thought I did," put in Ned, who, it seems had been awakened at the same time the others were.<br /> Once more there sounded an unmistakable groan. It came from the ground floor, and was so loud, penetrating and, in spite of the would-be bravery of the boys, so awful coming out of the darkness, that they shuddered.<br /> "What's that?" asked the professor, who also, this time, was roused from his slumbers.<br /> Before either of the boys could answer the groan was repeated and this time it was followed by the unmistakable clanking of chains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The colored man's ghost!" whispered Bob.<br /> "Nonsense!" exclaimed the professor, but, no sooner had he spoken than there came another weird noise, and the chains rattled louder than ever.<br /> "Light the lantern," whispered Jerry. "We must see what it is. Perhaps it's only some one playing a joke."<br /> "Let me take a look before you make a light," suggested the professor. "I can look down the ladder hole."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Softly he crawled over to the opening and peered down. As he did so the noises were repeated. The professor uttered an exclamation.<br /> "It bears the other descriptive marks of the creature the negro told about," he said, crawling back to where the boys were huddled together. "It is big and white and it seems to be trying to climb up the ladder."<br /> "Wait until I get my revolver," whispered Jerry. "We'll soon see if it's a ghost or not."<br /> "Don't fire," cautioned the professor. "It may be some one trying to scare us, but we have no right to fire at any one."<br /> "I'll give 'em a warning, at any rate," said the lad. He went to the opening and called down:<br /> "Tell us who you are or I'll shoot, do you hear?"<br /> A groan and the clanking of chains was the only answer. This was followed by a violent agitation and shaking of the ladder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bang!" went Jerry's revolver. He had fired into the air.<br /> Succeeding the report there was a silence. This was broken by a further clanking of chains. Then came a crash, and when the echo of this died away the sound of feet running away could be heard.<br /> "Pretty solid footsteps for a ghost," commented Ned.<br /> "Look! Look!" cried Bob, pointing out of the window.<br /> There, running down the moon-lit road the boys saw a big white mule, to the neck of which was fastened a chain that rattled with every step.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the ghost," said the professor. "I thought I recognized the voice as that of a quadruped with which I was familiar. The animal has probably broken loose from the field and came here in search of food."<br /> "Well it certainly scared me all right," admitted Bob. The others did not commit themselves, but there was no doubt but that they had several heart-flutters.<br /> "I wonder what that crash was?" asked Ned.<br /> The professor glanced down the hole leading to the first floor.<br /> "The ghost made it by kicking our ladder away," the scientist replied. "I wonder how we can get down."<br /> But the boys did not worry about this, being too sleepy. Soon they were all snoring again, and did not awaken until the sun was streaming in the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIV. - Trouble With a Bad Man (117-126) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="rural, navigation, pedestrian, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIV<br /> <br /> TROUBLE WITH A BAD MAN<br /> <br /> "This is a nice pickle!" exclaimed Bob, who was the first to rise.<br /> "What's the matter, lost your collar button?" sleepily inquired Jerry.<br /> "No, but the mule knocked the ladder down, and we'll have to jump or stay here."<br /> "It isn't far to the ground in this shanty," remarked Jerry. "Go ahead and drop down."<br /> "It may not be very far," said Bob, "but I don't want to take the chance."<br /> "Afraid you'll sprain your ankle?"<br /> "No, but I don't want to fall into the cistern."<br /> "Cistern? What are you talking about?"<br /> "Well," went on Bob, "there's a cistern right under this ladder opening. The mule pulled the cover off last night, and whoever drops down is going to land goodness knows where."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The others soon confirmed what Bob had said. When the cabin was built a cistern had been sunk in the middle of the ground floor. This had been covered, and the ladder rested on it when the travelers went to bed, but the mule, probably in search for a drink, uncovered it.<br /> "Can't get down without a ladder," observed Ned.<br /> "What's the matter with jumping from one of the outside windows?" asked Jerry.<br /> They thought the idea a good one until they saw that the only one there was opened onto a pile of sharp rocks, into which even a jump of fifteen feet might be dangerous.<br /> "What's to be done?" asked Bob.<br /> "Guess we'll have to wait until Jones comes to see if we are dead," replied Jerry. "Then he can cover the cistern and raise the ladder."<br /> "I guess we'll have a long wait for Jones," commented Ned. "He's so afraid of this place that he'll never come within hearing distance of it."<br /> "Let's yell out of the window," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They did so, uniting their voices in a volume of sound. It seemed to have no effect though, for there was no movement about the colored man's cabin.<br /> "Once more," urged the professor.<br /> This time they produced a result, for, down the road they could see Jones come to the door of his shack and peer out. Thereupon they waved their hands to him, and in a few minutes the colored man was standing as close as he seemed to dare to come to their shelter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is yo' all daid?" he asked in awed accents.<br /> "Not quite all of us," answered the professor, "but we will be unless you come in and hoist the ladder for us."<br /> "Did th'—th' ghost knock it down?" asked Jones. <br /> "It did," replied Bob, solemnly.<br /> "I knowed it! I knowed it! Maybe you'll believe me next time. Golly! I ain't goin' t' stay here," and Jones was about to run off down the road.<br /> "Here! Come back!" commanded the captives, and the colored man reluctantly did so.<br /> "I doan laik t' stay round yeah!" pleaded the negro. "'Tain't no ways healthy. What yo' done want, anyhow?"<br /> "We want you to hoist the ladder for us," said the professor. "Come now, don't be silly. The only ghost there was, and we saw it, was an old white mule with a chain on its neck."<br /> "Co'se it were! Dat's de form it took when I seed it!" cried Jones. "But it can take on any shape, dat ghost can. Next time it'll be a lion er a tiger er a elephant. Monstrous terrible things, ha'nts is. So de ghost done knocked de ladder down! I knowed it would do suthin'."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Amid a show of genuine fear the colored man entered the cabin, and after replacing the cistern cover cautiously raised the ladder. Then he ran out as if the ghost were after him.<br /> "I guess we'll never be able to convince Jones that there isn't a ghost here," said Jerry as they came down and started down the road toward the colored man's cabin, where they were to have breakfast.<br /> "Here's something that may prove to him that the mule was the ghost," spoke Ned, picking up a horse shoe, which was on the cabin floor.<br /> They showed it to the negro, but he only shook his head.<br /> "It looks like a hoss shoe, dat I admit," said Jones, "but it's enchanted. It'll turn inter a snake er a tiger er suthin' terruble 'fore long. I don't want nothin' t' do with it," and he cast it into the bushes by the side of the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="dust, rural, night, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> The excitement of the night had taken none of the travelers' appetites away, and they made a good meal. Then, once more they took the road, disappearing in a cloud of dust, while Jones, his wife, and the seven children stood and stared in wonder.<br /> They traveled all that day with only an occasional glimpse of civilization in the shape of some house or cabin. No villages were reached, it being a centre of vast grazing lands, where only a lonely herder, or, perhaps two, remained to guard the cattle. That night they camped in the open, and found it rather uncomfortable, for it began to rain about midnight.<br /> "I wish we were back in the cabin, with the ghost-mule and everything else," muttered Jerry, as he tried to find a dry spot to lie down on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, city, class"><br /> <poem><br /> But troubles can not last forever, and morning came finally, bringing a clear day and a bright sun which was very welcome.<br /> Breakfast over they took the road once more. About noon they came to a small town that boasted of what was called the "Imperial Hotel."<br /> "I suppose we'd better try the Imperial," suggested Ned. "It don't look very scrumptious, but you can't always tell by the appearance of a toad how far he can jump."<br /> The auto drew up in front of the inn with a noise that brought a score of men from the barroom.<br /> "Jumpin' Gila Monsters and rattlesnakes!" cried one of the men, evidently a miner from his dress. "I've read about them Satan go-carts, but I never believed in 'em. Sakes alive, but they do look funny without a hoss in front."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, sound, risk, city"><br /> <poem><br /> He and the others gathered about the car, asking so many questions that it took all the boys and the professor as well to answer them. When curiosity had been partially satisfied the boys went into the hotel. While there was nothing to make a weary traveler glad he had found it, the place was not as bad as many where the Motor Boys had stopped. They had a good meal, and decided to rest a few hours before proceeding.<br /> It was along about three o'clock. The crowd of men in the barroom had become larger as new comers arrived. It was also noisier and loud voices, and occasional threats to shoot, made the travelers think it was about time to move on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="class, risk, rural, city"><br /> <poem><br /> They were about to go to their machine when they were approached on the porch where they were sitting, by the miner who had first remarked about the auto. He had evidently been drinking more than was good for him, and was in a quarrelsome mood.<br /> "If you don't want to play with me you needn't," he called, evidently to some one inside. "I can find some one to shuffle the cards with me. Here, you kid"—to Jerry, "you come an' we'll have a little game."<br /> "Thank you, I don't play," said Jerry quietly.<br /> "What's that?" came the sharp return.<br /> "I said I didn't play."<br /> "Why hang my buttons! You got to play when I tell you to," cried the miner. "Pete Simmons ain't used to bein' told no. Here, sit down to this table an' deal the cards," and he grabbed Jerry by the arm, and attempted to force him into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go my arm!" exclaimed Jerry.<br /> "You do as I tell you or I'll make you!" exclaimed the brute. "I'm used to havin' my way!"<br /> "Take your hand off!" commanded Jerry, drawing back his fist, for he was strong and hot tempered.<br /> "Now be nice, be nice!" sneered the man. <br /> "Let go of him!" exclaimed Ned coming forward and standing beside his chum, while Bob also ranged up alongside. "We'll all take a hand in this if you force us to."<br /> "I can tackle the three of you with both hands tied behind my back," cried the miner, flushing with anger at being defied by the boys.<br /> "Count me in too," spoke Professor Snodgrass, joining the lads. "I don't want to fight, but I will if I have to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now the professor, though a mild man, was, by reason of his out-of-door life, in fine physical condition, and no mean antagonist, which fact the miner saw.<br /> "Oh well, I was only foolin'," the ugly chap remarked with a poor attempt at a smile. But his face showed his rage. He moved away in a few seconds, and shuffled to the end of the porch, where he soon fell asleep on a bench.<br /> Bob looked over and saw him, as the boys were discussing the program for the remainder of the day.<br /> "Let's play a trick on that brute," said Bob.<br /> "What kind?" asked Jerry.<br /> "You watch," replied Chunky. "You'll see some fun."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now it happened that the professor had among his collection of specimens several large stuffed snakes, for he was an expert taxidermist. There were also several horned toads and big lizards. Bob got several of the ugliest ones and, with the aid of the scientist, who entered into the<br /> plan to pay a well deserved lesson to the miner, arranged the things about the sleeper, on the bench and on the floor of the porch.<br /> By this time most of the crowd at the hotel was aware what was going on, and, as few of them had any too much love for Simmons they waited the outcome with interest. When the reptiles were placed in a circle about the sleeping miner, one of the men fired his revolver in the air. At the sound Simmons awoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first he did not notice the reptiles, as he was on his back, staring up at the sky. Then he suddenly sat up, and caught a glimpse of the ugly looking things. For a moment he seemed to be in doubt as to what he beheld. Then he let out a yell that could have been heard almost a half mile.<br /> "Wow!" he cried. "Take 'em away. I'll never drink another drop! Honest I won't! Oh! Oh! the horrible snakes! I'll shut my eyes so I can't see 'em!"<br /> But when he opened them again the reptiles were still there.<br /> "Oh! Oh! I see 'em still!" he yelled. "Take 'em away, somebody, please do. Oh I forgot! They ain't real! I only imagine I see 'em!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He got up on the bench and was dancing about in terror. Then he drew his revolver, and was about to fire into the midst of the snakes.<br /> "He'll ruin my specimens!" cried the professor.<br /> One of the men ran forward, and began collecting the reptiles. Simmons saw them being gathered up, and noticed that they were not wiggling. Then the truth of it dawned on him, and he knew he had been fooled. His companions laughed loud and long. But Simmons, unable to stand the jokes and jibes he knew would be poked at him, leaped over the porch railing and ran down the road as fast as he could go.<br /> "Serves him right!" was the general verdict.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XV. - The Story of Lost Lake (127-134) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, animal, car, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XV<br /> <br /> THE STORY OF LOST LAKE<br /> <br /> The trick Bob had played seemed to be much appreciated among the crowd of miners and herdsmen who were gathered at the hotel. They laughed loud and long over the sight Simmons had presented.<br /> "I guess he'll know better than to fool with the next lad that comes along in one of them choo-choo wagons," was the hotel proprietor's comment.<br /> Bob gathered up the specimens that belonged to the professor and they were put in the car, together with a fresh supply of provisions that were purchased at the village store.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we'll be traveling," suggested the professor. The boys agreed with him, for though they knew the pleasures of sleeping beneath a roof, yet the character of the men who stayed at the hotel was so rough that they feared further rows. So, in spite of the entreaties of the hotel keeper they started off, having inquired the best roads to take.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, pleasure, mountain"><br /> <poem><br /> Through the afternoon they bowled over a well elevated table land. The air was fine and bracing. Off in the distance to the west could be seen the first ranges of the big mountains.<br /> "That's where our mine is," said Jerry, his eyes shining.<br /> "Maybe it isn't ours after all," put in Bob.<br /> "Now there you go, Chunky. What do you want to call up unpleasant subjects for?" asked Ned reproachfully. "Anyhow it's our mine until some one takes it away from us, and I guess they'll have quite a fight, with Nestor on guard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, speed, vision, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The others thought so too. Jerry, who was steering, was sending the auto forward at a fast clip, when the professor, who always had his eyes open called out:<br /> "What's that just ahead of us? Looks like a bear."<br /> "Where?" asked Ned.<br /> "Right in line with that big rock," went on the scientist, who had very good eyes and could see a long distance.<br /> "It's only a tree stump," spoke Bob.<br /> "I didn't know tree stumps could move," went on Mr. Snodgrass, "for this one is certainly coming toward us. It's not a bear after all," he continued, now that the object was nearer. "It's a bull! That's what it is! It looks as if it meant to go for us!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys could now see that the beast was one of the big, long-horned western cattle. It had evidently strayed from the herd, or had been made an outcast because of a bad temper and a perpetual desire to fight. The latter seemed more likely, for, as the auto proceeded, and the bull came on, lessening the distance between the two, a defiant bellow of rage sounded.<br /> "I hope he don't try to ram us," spoke Jerry. "We don't want any more collisions."<br /> "See if you can't run away from him," suggested Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car part, sound, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the bull was about one hundred yards away. It was coming straight for the auto. Jerry opened the muffler and at the sound of the explosions the bull stopped short.<br /> At this point the road ran in a sort of depression, with hills rising on either side. It was rather narrow, so there was no chance to turn to one side. Jerry had to bring the machine to a stop or else run the risk of hitting the bull. He thought the animal might run away if it saw the machine coming toward him, but there was nothing sure about this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, this is a regular hold-up," said the professor. "I wonder whether the bull wants to collect toll?"<br /> The animal seemed to be growing angrier and angrier every minute. It bellowed loudly, pawed the earth with its hoofs, and shook the lowered head, armed with sharp horns. Occasionally the keen points would tear up the ground.<br /> "I wouldn't want him to strike one of our tires," remarked Ned. "It would be all up with it."<br /> "Hurrah! I have it!" cried Bob at length.<br /> He dove beneath the rear seat and pulled up a shining object.<br /> "The ammonia squirt gun!" he exclaimed. "The same we used on the hold-up tramps. Give the bull a dose of it!"<br /> "Good idea," commented Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, weapon, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The bulb of the automatic pistol was still filled with the fiery liquid, for the boys kept it loaded in readiness for use. Bob handed it over to Jerry. The latter took careful aim, and pressed the rubber. A fine stream of the powerful stuff struck the bull full in the face.<br /> With a bellow that fairly shook the ground near-by the bull reared up in the air, and coming down on all fours snorted with rage, shook its head to rid its eyes of the terrible burning, and then dashed madly away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now I guess we can get past," remarked Bob, "and get some supper. I'm as hungry as a bear."<br /> A good fire was soon started and Ned began to prepare the meal. While the others were setting out the dishes, or getting ready for the night camp, since it seemed there was no place for shelter in the neighborhood, the travelers were startled by a voice:<br /> "Evenin' strangers," called a tall, thin man who strolled down the slight hill at the foot of which the party were encamped. "Have you got a bite to spare?"<br /> "Plenty," replied the professor cheerfully. "Come right along. Supper will be ready in a little while. Are you hungry?"<br /> "Hungry? I should say so. I haven't had a bit to eat for two days, except what berries and old nuts I could gather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter? Get lost?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Exactly," replied the stranger. "My name's Johnson," he went on. "I was prospecting up in the hills, and got lost there."<br /> "Anybody with you?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a soul; I'm all alone. I used up the last of my grub in trying to find the trail, and I guess I'd been looking for it yet if I hadn't heard the noise of your steam engine here, and smelled the cooking. I s'pose you're huntin' for it, same as me."<br /> "Hunting for what?" asked the professor, struck by Johnson's manner.<br /> "Why Lost Lake, to be sure. Nobody comes out this far unless they're huntin' for the lake, but you're the first to come in a steam car without rails."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it's a free country," remarked the scientist, wishing to evade giving a direct answer, in the hope of learning something. "I guess we have a right to hunt for the lake."<br /> "Of course, of course you have, strangers," went on Johnson. "No offense. Have you struck a trace of it yet?"<br /> "Not yet," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "To tell you the truth," the professor went on, "we don't know much about this lost lake."<br /> "Nor no one else," said Johnson. "I'll tell you all I know, which isn't much. I've been looking for it 'most a year now."<br /> "Suppose we have supper first," suggested the professor as he noted the eyes Johnson was casting at the food. "We can talk afterward."<br /> "That's the best word I've heard in a good while," said the newcomer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate with a rapidity that left no doubt about his hunger. Nor were the others far behind him, as the crisp air of the mountain region had given them all famous appetites.<br /> "Now for Lost Lake," spoke Jerry when all had their fill.<br /> "It's supposed to be in those mountains over there," began Johnson, pointing to the range off in the west, now dimly discernible in the dusk. "It's said to be a beautiful sheet of water, with high peaks all around it. It was discovered forty years ago by a prospector, and he came to the nearest village with the news. But when he went to lead a party back they couldn't find the trail. Ever since then people have tried to find Lost Lake, but no one has ever succeeded. Many have been<br /> killed trying."<br /> "But why does any one want to find a lake hidden in the mountains?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Yes, tell us?" asked Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, for the gold on its banks, of course," said Johnson. "Didn't I say that? I meant to. The man who discovered it said there were pebbles of gold on the shores. He brought back a pocket full to prove it. I got the fever quite a few months ago, but nothing has come of all my efforts, and this time I nearly died. It was terrible up in the mountains. There's not a soul there I believe."<br /> "And you didn't even get a glimpse of the lake?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a look, young man. But I'm sure it's there. I'm going back to town, get a new outfit and some provisions, and have another try."<br /> He was another example of how the gold fever grips one.<br /> "Maybe we'll come across the lake, though we're not looking for it," said Jerry.<br /> "Maybe you will," assented the prospector. "That's generally the way. The first man was not hunting for it, but he came upon it one night when the moon was shining. If you do find it, look out for the old hermit, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVI. - A Lonely Cabin (135-143) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, health, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVI<br /> <br /> A LONELY CABIN<br /> <br /> "What hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why you haven't heard half the story of Lost Lake," went on Johnson. "There's supposed to be a sort of wild man who lives on the shores of the lake, and he murders travelers. At least that's the yarn they tell."<br /> "Was the hermit always there?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, only the last few years," replied Johnson. "He is said to be an old man with white hair. But I don't believe that part. Let me find the lake and the gold, and I won't worry about hermits."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The prospector camped with the travelers that night. They were all up early the next morning, and, at the professor's suggestion the boys gave Johnson plenty of provisions to last him until he could get back to civilization.<br /> "Maybe you would like to go along with us and look for the lake?" suggested Bob.<br /> "No, thank you," replied Johnson. "I'm afraid your chances of finding it are slimmer than mine are. I'll have another try all by myself. I'm much obliged for the help you've given me."<br /> Then, shouldering his pack, he started off down the trail, while the travelers, packing their things in the auto, set forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys talked about little save the story of Lost Lake, but the professor was too busy arranging his latest specimens to join in the conversation.<br /> "I'd like to find it and see the wild hermit," said Bob.<br /> "I don't s'pose you'd care anything about the gold," put in Ned.<br /> "Of course I would," replied Bob. "But we've got one gold mine now, what do we want of another?"<br /> "It might be well to have a second in case we lose the first," Jerry ventured. "Nothing like having plenty while you're at it."<br /> "I wouldn't like to be a hermit," went on Bob. "Think of always being hungry."<br /> "Chunky is thinking of misers, I guess," laughed Ned. "There's nothing to prevent a hermit from living off the fat of the land. If it wasn't for being lonesome I'd be a hermit for a while."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, passenger, driver, parking"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop the auto!" called the professor suddenly. "I just saw a fine specimen of a snapping turtle scoot across the road. I must have it. It's worth about twenty dollars to me. Stop the car! I must get out!"<br /> Ned, who was running the auto, shut off the power and the machine came to a stop. Before it had ceased to move Mr. Snodgrass had leaped out and was running back. He began a hurried but careful search over the ground. Then he was seen to spring forward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got it, I guess," remarked Jerry.<br /> An instant later there came a howl from the scientist, who was hidden from sight by the tall grass.<br /> "Help, boys! Help!"<br /> "What's the matter? Won't he let you catch him?" cried Ned.<br /> "He's caught me!" yelled the professor. "Come quick and bring a knife to cut his head off with!"<br /> The boys piled out of the auto in a hurry, Jerry stopping to grab up a big carving knife from the camp utensils.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When they came up to the professor they hardly knew whether to laugh or not. The turtle, which was a big one, had grabbed the scientist by the thumb, and was clinging so tightly that it was suspended in the air, swaying to and fro. Meanwhile Mr. Snodgrass was dancing about in pain.<br /> "Why don't you take hold of the turtle's shell in the other hand, and you won't feel the weight so much!" called Jerry.<br /> "I can't," replied the professor. "I have a rare specimen of a toad in my other hand, and I don't want to lose it. Oh boys! Hurry up, and pry the turtle's jaws open, but don't hurt him, for he's valuable."<br /> "Can't you put the toad in your pocket?" asked Ned, knowing the scientist had no scruples about loading his garments up with all sorts of things. "Then you would have one hand free."<br /> "I never thought of that," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I can do that, can't I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did so, and, once the toad was secure he took hold of the turtle, which relieved his lacerated thumb from the dragging weight.<br /> "He won't let go!" exclaimed the professor, after a vain attempt to pull the turtle loose. "It is a genuine snapper, and they have a grip like a bull dog. I am glad I found it, in spite of the pain," he added, though just then, the turtle took a fresh hold and the professor squirmed in<br /> agony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here; I'll cut its head off," said Jerry, coming forward with the knife.<br /> "No, no!" exclaimed the professor. "It is too valuable to spoil. Just take the point of the blade, and pry the jaws open while I hold it steady."<br /> Jerry tried to do this, but the turtle only seemed to grip the tighter, and the professor's thumb was bitten through nearly to the bone.<br /> "What shall I do?" wailed Mr. Snodgrass. "I don't want to kill it."<br /> "I have it!" exclaimed Ned. "There's a little puddle of water over there beside the road. Dip the turtle in it, and he'll think he can swim. Then he'll let go."<br /> "Good!" cried the professor as he proceeded to put the plan in operation. "Then I can save him alive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The scheme worked well. As soon as the turtle felt the water it let go, and started to swim off. But the puddle was too shallow, and the professor, watching his chance, grabbed the reptile again. This time he took care to catch it at the middle of the shell, where the turtle could<br /> not reach around and bite.<br /> "I have it, after all," remarked the scientist as he deposited his prize in a box, and proceeded to put some salve and a rag on his thumb. "It's a rare specimen. I'm glad I got it."<br /> "And we're all glad we didn't get it," spoke Jerry with a laugh in which the others joined. But the professor took it good naturedly. He was used to such accidents he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Resuming their journey, the travelers made only one more stop, that at noon, to get dinner. They had seen no signs of human habitation, and, as the afternoon wore on, and no house or cabin was seen, they began to feel that they might as well prepare to camp out again.<br /> As they were descending a gentle, sloping hill that led down into a small valley, just as the sun was setting, they saw, about a mile ahead a lonely cabin. The sight of smoke coming from the chimney told them there was some one at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hope whoever lives there can accommodate us," remarked Chunky. "My appetite's getting the upper hand of me again."<br /> "It don't look large enough to hold us all," observed Jerry.<br /> "There's a barn, or some sort of building, in the rear," remarked Ned. "Some of us can use that if the man or woman lets us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> A few minutes later the auto came to a stop in front of the cabin, which was indeed a lonely one, not another dwelling, large or small, showing in the whole valley.<br /> "Good evening," greeted an old man, with snow-white hair falling over his shoulders. He came to the door of the shack, and seemed to regard the coming travelers as a matter of course. "I am glad to see you," he went on. "You are just in time."<br /> "Time for what?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "For the great final and successful experiment," proceeded the aged man. "The test is about to begin. Come in and see me make gold from common earth. At last I have found the long-lost secret!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The eyes of the lonely man glowed with a strange light, and he seemed so excited that the boys did not know what to do.<br /> "Humor him," advised the professor in a whisper. "He is probably a harmless lunatic. Let him have his way, and pretend to agree with all he says."<br /> "Will you come in?" went on the old man. "I must proceed with my work."<br /> "We'll be glad to," went on the scientist. "That is, if we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> "My labors are now ended," the man said. "I have worked for twenty years on the secret of making gold from the baser metals. At last I have the correct method. I will be a millionaire in another month. But come in! Come in!"<br /> The boys, obeying Mr. Snodgrass's advice, went in, the scientist following them. They saw that the cabin, though small, was neat and clean. Nearly all of the first of two rooms was occupied by a large, rudely made furnace, while on a table near it stood all sorts of chemical apparatus. On the furnace a pot was boiling furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the last act in the drama of life," said the aged man. "See, I place in the pot these pieces of brass," and he showed the travelers some chunks of the yellow stuff. He put them in the pot, from which arose a cloud of steam.<br /> "Next I throw in this powder, which I have labored on for years. It is the secret that men would give their lives for."<br /> He threw the powder into the pot, which boiled more furiously than before, and a white cloud of steam arose. Then it died away, and the pot seemed to cool off.<br /> "Now for the gold!" exclaimed the chemist.<br /> He lifted the pot from the furnace, and, holding it with some thick cloths poured the water off into a hole in the ground floor of the cabin. Out toppled the pieces of brass which had been thrown in, but while they had been dull before, they now glittered with the yellow gleam of gold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The test! The test!" exclaimed the old man in a voice that trembled with eagerness.<br /> He placed one of the yellow pieces on the table, and put a few drops of gold-testing acid on it. There was a little hissing sound, and then, on the shiny surface of the piece of metal there came a dull black spot. The old man uttered a despairing cry.<br /> "Another failure!" he exclaimed. "It is brass still. I thought it would turn to gold! I must have made a mistake in mixing the powder."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVII. - The Indian and the Auto (144-151) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVII<br /> <br /> THE INDIAN AND THE AUTO<br /> <br /> For a few moments the scientist who hoped he had discovered the fabled power to transmute metals stared at the result of his latest trial. He appeared lost in thought. Then he seemed to recollect that there were strangers present.<br /> "I am sorry my experiment did not succeed," he said in a more quiet voice than he had yet used. "I hoped to show you what I can do. Well, I must try again. I think I know where I made the error. I had too much soda in the powder. I will use less next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We are sorry to interrupt your experiments," put in the professor, "but we are travelers, and our object in stopping here was to find out if you could take us in for the night."<br /> "Gladly," replied the old man. "There is a barn in the rear, but it has not been occupied in years; not since I came here. You are welcome to use that. Some of you can spend the night in the rear room. As for me I shall not go to bed. I must start at once and make up some fresh powders."<br /> "I think perhaps we had all better sleep in the barn," said the professor. "Then we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The truth of it was Mr. Snodgrass saw that the aged man was not altogether right in his head, and he preferred not to be too near in case the fellow should suddenly become violent.<br /> "Just as you like, just as you like," was the reply to the professor's decision, and the chemist seemed to be dreaming over some problem he was trying to solve.<br /> "May we cook some of our food on your stove?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why certainly. I beg your pardon for not mentioning supper," spoke the man, "but you see I am so used to getting a bite whenever I need it, so as not to interrupt my work, that I forgot there is such a thing as hospitality. Make yourselves at home, and, if you find anything in the cupboards help yourselves. Meanwhile please excuse me if I do not join you. I must go out and gather some roots and herbs I need in my experiments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car, lake"><br /> <poem><br /> He left the cabin, and, after bringing in some provisions from the auto, having first ascertained that there were few in the cabin, the travelers proceeded to make a meal.<br /> "Do you suppose he can be the hermit of Lost Lake?" asked Bob.<br /> "Well, he's certainly a hermit," spoke the professor, "but I don't believe there's a lake of any kind about here. Certainly if he was the hermit of the lake he would not be away off here. No, I am inclined to think we shall never see the lost lake or the hermit either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think it will be safe to stay here all night?" inquired Chunky.<br /> "I think so," was the professor's reply. "You see we will be out in another building, and we can fasten the door. If he tries to get in, which I am sure he will not, he will make noise enough to awaken us."<br /> "We could mount guard," suggested Ned.<br /> "It will not be necessary," Mr. Snodgrass said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nor did the travelers find it so. After their meal, having left a good supply of victuals for the old man in case he came back, they retired to the rear building where they slept soundly.<br /> After breakfast, which the old man did not spend more than five minutes over, the travelers prepared to resume their trip.<br /> "You had better stay one more night," urged the owner of the cabin. "I feel sure that I shall be successful to-night. I have discovered a new root. See, I call it gold threads," and he held up some bulbs that had been dug from the ground. Clinging to them were small yellow fibres or roots. "I found them last night, down in the hollow by the mineral spring," the man went on. "I am sure they are just what I need. Please stay; won't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, mountain, navigatio, plains, topography, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> But the professor told him, as gently as possible, that they must keep on. So, after bidding the gold-seeker good bye, and wishing him success, the boys and Mr. Snodgrass proceeded, the auto puffing along at a good rate.<br /> The weather continued fine and the air was bracing and cool, for they were well up among the foothills now. During the morning the road led up a gentle slope, but at noon they camped on a sort of ridge that marked the divide. On the other side was a vast plain, bounded at the further side by tall mountains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="plains, road condition, agriculture, navigation, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> It was well along in the afternoon, when having descended to the plain, the travelers found themselves bowling along a fine road, on either side of which were rolling fields. Mile after mile was covered, everyone enjoying the trip very much. The professor, however, was beginning to<br /> show signs of uneasiness. He fidgeted about in his seat, and seemed unable to remain quiet.<br /> "What's the matter?" asked Bob at length.<br /> "To tell you the truth," said the scientist, "I want to get out and get some specimens, but I did not like to ask you, for I do not want to delay the party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, engine, maintenance, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> They all voted that the professor should be given a chance to get as many specimens as he wanted. Accordingly Jerry brought the car to a stop, and the boys and the scientist got out.<br /> As the engine had not been running as smoothly as was desirable Jerry did not shut off the power, merely throwing out the gear clutches. He said he wanted to have the cylinders warm up, and so the engine was left going, though the car itself stood still.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The professor was soon busy gathering insects of various kinds from the tall grass, and even crawling on his hands and knees over the ground. The boys walked some distance off, to stretch their legs, for they were a little tired of sitting still so long.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who happened to glance back toward the auto, uttered a cry.<br /> "Look!" he shouted. "Some one is stealing our car and going off in it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, weapon, animal, car part, skill, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The others looked. The sight that met their eyes was enough to astonish any one. Climbing into the automobile was a big Indian, attired in gay colored blankets, a rifle slung across his back, while near him stood a Pinto pony, clean-cut and wiry.<br /> While they watched they saw the red man seat himself comfortably at the steering wheel, reach forward to throw the gear clutch in place, and then the car moved off, taking the Indian with it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! Come back!"<br /> "Stop that auto!"<br /> "Get out of that!"<br /> These were some of the things the boys yelled at the bold thief. But all of no avail. The Indian threw in the second gear, and the auto went faster than before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Come on! We must catch him!" cried Jerry, and he began to run in the direction the auto was fast disappearing in, down the road.<br /> "We can never catch him," called Bob.<br /> "Yes we can! He can't know anything about running an auto!" panted Jerry. "He'll put on the brake or pull the wrong lever next, and the machine will stop!"<br /> "That is unless he blows it up first or smashes it," said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, skill, Native American, navigation, engine, gasoline"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, appearing at this juncture.<br /> Bob was the only one left to tell him, as Jerry and Ned were running down the road at top speed. But it seemed that their race would be useless, for the auto was now running on third gear. And, strangest of all, the Indian seemed to know how to operate it. He kept a straight course, and the puffing of the exhaust told Jerry that the engine was running to perfection, with a good supply of gasolene, and the spark coming regularly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE INDIAN SEEMED TO KNOW HOW TO OPERATE IT.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, Native American risk, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who—ever—heard—of—an—Indian running—an—auto," panted Ned.<br /> "Running—away—with—one—you—mean," said Jerry, his breathing labored.<br /> Further and further away from the pursuing boys the auto went. It seemed hopeless to keep after it, but neither Jerry nor Ned would give up. They realized what it meant to lose their machine, though they could not understand how an Indian, in all his wild regalia, would think of getting into an auto.<br /> Suddenly there sounded down the road the patter of hoof beats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, gasoline, car part, sound, onomatopoeia"><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe that's more Indians," said Jerry turning around and slowing up in his running.<br /> "No," he added, "it's Bob on the Indian's pony. I wonder you or I didn't think of that."<br /> "He couldn't catch up with the auto if he had two ponies," growled Ned.<br /> "The only chance is that the gasolene may give out, or the sparker refuse to work, or that he may run into a sand bank," lamented Jerry.<br /> "And there don't seem to be much chance of either taking place right off," put in Ned. "Hark! What's that?"<br /> From down the road sounded the Toot! Toot! of the auto horn.<br /> "It sounds as if he was coming back," said Jerry. Just then Bob caught up to them on the pony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVIII. - Lost Lake Found (152-160) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, night, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, car, visibility, navigation, Native American, highway"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVIII<br /> <br /> LOST LAKE FOUND<br /> <br /> "Let me past! I'll catch him!" cried Bob.<br /> "Wait a minute! Maybe that's him coming back?" replied Jerry.<br /> Sure enough the next instant the auto, which had been lost to sight by reason of a turn in the road, came into view.<br /> Straight up the highway it came, the figure of the Indian, wrapped in his blanket, with his headdress of feathers, an altogether brilliant figure, seated at the wheel; a strange enough combination as any one will admit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, risk, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The red man acted as though he had been used to running autos all his life. He sat straight as an arrow, his hands grasping the wheel, which was sending the car straight for the boys.<br /> "He's just doing this to taunt us!" exclaimed Jerry. "I have a good notion to take a shot at one of the tires with my revolver and scare him into stopping."<br /> "Don't do it! You might kill him," said Ned, "and you wouldn't want to do that. But what does he mean by stealing the car, and then bringing it back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> A few seconds later the auto drew up in front of the boys, who had come to a halt. With an ease that bespoke long experience the Indian brought the machine to a stop, and then, while the lads looked on, so full of wonder at the whole occurrence that they did not know what to say, the red man grunted:<br /> "Heap fine wagon. Ugh! Indian like um, he buy um! How much?"<br /> "Look here!" burst out Jerry, so angry that he hardly took note of what the red man had said. "Do you know you are a—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. Wrapping his blankets closely about him, and drawing himself up to his full height of over six feet, the Indian said calmly:<br /> "I really beg your pardon for the unwarranted liberty I took with your car, but when I saw it standing out here, so far from civilization, I could not resist the temptation to take a ride. I trust you will overlook it."<br /> For a moment the boys were speechless, for the Indian they had supposed one from the half-wild plain tribes, and whose every appearance indicated that, had spoken in English as cultured as that of a college professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, pleasure, class, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "What—why—when—where?" stammered Jerry, and the Indian burst into a laugh.<br /> "I see I must explain," he said. "I am not what I seem."<br /> "Aren't you an Indian?" asked Ned.<br /> "A full blooded one, and the chief of a tribe," spoke the red man. "But I am not the half dime library sort.<br /> "You see," he went on, "I have just come back from the school at Carlisle, where I am taking a post graduate course. I felt a sudden longing to don the dress of my ancestors, and roam the broad fields. I did so, starting from my home on the reservation this morning. I came<br /> along and saw the auto. As I said, the temptation was too strong to resist. I got in and took a little spin, as you saw. I am sorry if I caused you annoyance, or made you fear your machine had been stolen."<br /> The eyes of the Indian twinkled and, beneath the paint on his face, the boys could see a smile coming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, animal, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "But how in the world did you learn to run a car?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Easy enough," was the answer. "I acted as chauffeur for several months this vacation to earn money enough to continue my studies. I got to be quite an expert. That is a fine car you have."<br /> "Well I'm stumped!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "How do you like my pony?" asked the red man. "I think we made a sort of unfair exchange, though, in spite of the fact that the animal is valuable. Now let me apologize once more, and then I will take my animal and go home."<br /> "You are welcome to the ride," said Jerry. "We were so surprised at first that we took you for a thief."<br /> "I don't blame you," spoke the Indian. "The sight of a red man in an automobile is enough to make any one wonder. Well, heap big chief, Whistling Wind in the Pine, must go."<br /> "Is that your name?" asked Ned.<br /> "It's my Indian one," was the answer, "but at the school I am known as Paul Rader. Now let me bid you good day, and a pleasant journey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, before they could ask him to take a ride with them, the boys saw the Indian leap on his pony, from which Bob had dismounted, and ride away at a smart gallop, his blanket flying out behind him in the wind.<br /> "Well, that's the limit!" exclaimed Ned. "To think of a wild-civilized Indian playing a trick like that."<br /> "I certainly thought he was as wild as they come," put in Bob. "I was afraid it was all up with us."<br /> Then the professor appeared and they told him the story.<br /> "I wish I had met him," said the professor.<br /> "What for; did you know him?" asked Jerry.<br /> "No, but he would probably be able to tell me where to get some fine specimens," remarked the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, scenery, speed, night, slowness, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> In a short time they were all in the auto again, and were bowling along over the table land, the machine humming in a way that told that the cylinders were working well. They camped for supper, and then, as it was a fine moon light night they determined to continue on slowly, as they<br /> wanted to make up for lost time.<br /> The moon rose early, a big silver disk shining among the trees, when the autoists started on their night journey.<br /> "This is great!" exclaimed Bob, who seemed to have forgotten his desire for a bed under shelter. "Wouldn't it be fun to have a lot of Indians chase us now?"<br /> "It might if they were tame ones," put in Jerry, who was steering, "but excuse me from any wild ones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, slowness, road condition, tree, mountain, night, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The road soon began a gentle ascent, and the auto ran more slowly up the hill. The road, too, became narrower, winding in and out. The trees, which had been scattering, were thicker, and the travelers could see they were getting well up among the mountains.<br /> "How late are you going to travel?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Until nearly midnight," was the answer. "The moon begins to go down then and it will not be very safe. But I think we ought to cover as big a distance as possible while we can. We have had delays enough."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, night, mountain, scenery, car part, slowness, road condition, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The only noise, besides the puffing of the machine, were the cries of owls, the chirping of crickets and katy-dids, with, now and then, the howl of a wolf or fox. In spite of the number in the party, there was a feeling of loneliness about being so far from civilization among the wilds of the mountain region.<br /> Up and up went the car, until the ascent became so steep that Jerry was obliged to run on the low gear. This made progress slow, and, because of the uneven road, so risky, that it seemed unwise to proceed further that night.<br /> "I'll slow up when we get to the top of this hill," said Jerry, "and we'll go into camp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, accident, slowness, risk, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> But he reckoned without knowing what sort of a hill it was, nor did he calculate on the auto failing to stop as soon as he expected. For that was what happened. Reaching the summit of the slope Jerry shut off the power.<br /> But something went wrong with the mechanism. The auto continued on, slowly to be sure, but with enough momentum to send it over the brow of the hill. Then it plunged down on the other side, gathering speed every minute.<br /> "Is she running away?" asked Ned. "Seems so to me."<br /> "She's not behaving as well as she should," replied Jerry, "but I have her under control. The brake is working all right," which fact he soon ascertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, topography, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> Faster and faster, however, in spite of the brake, did the auto plunge down the slope. Jerry kept his head, however, and was working to bring the machine to a halt. All at once Bob, looking up, saw where the road made a sudden turn to the left.<br /> "Look out for that!" he cried, pointing.<br /> Jerry tried to make the turn, but the steering wheel suddenly became a little stiff, so that, instead of the car being turned to the left, and around the bend, it kept straight on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, accident, speed, car part, road"><br /> <poem><br /> There was a crackling of brush and tree branches, and the big machine left the road and began plowing up the side of a slope, around the lower edge of which the road wound.<br /> "Duck!" cried Ned, as a tree branch hit him in the face.<br /> They all did so, and the next instant the big machine crashed through some briars, bending down several saplings in its journey. Then, having exhausted the momentum, the auto came to a stop, at the summit of the little slope, and Jerry jammed on the brakes to hold it there, the band this time gripping the axle firmly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! Oh look!" cried Ned, pointing ahead and down below them. <br /> There, in a sort of basin formed by high hills, lay a body of water, sparkling and beautiful in the moonlight, the shadows of tall black mountains reflected in its calm surface.<br /> "It's Lost Lake!" exclaimed Jerry, softly. "Boys! We have found Lost Lake! I am sure of it!"<br /> For a few seconds no one spoke after that, for they were all lost in wonder at the beauty and strangeness of the sight. It was so quiet that it seemed almost as if it was but a picture painted by a master's hand.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who was staring intently at the upper end of the lake, grasped Ned by the arm.<br /> "See," he whispered. "What's that? That thing in white?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIX. - The Ghost of the Lake (161-168) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="night, lake, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="visibility, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIX<br /> <br /> THE GHOST OF THE LAKE<br /> <br /> They all looked to where Bob pointed. At first they could make out nothing, but Bob insisted that he had seen some tall, white object moving.<br /> "It was just like the description of ghosts," he said, with a queer little laugh.<br /> "I see it," said Jerry, softly. "Right by the big white birch."<br /> "Sure enough," remarked the professor.<br /> Then they all beheld a tall white form in the pale moonlight, gliding from tree to tree, on the shore of the lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, it is picking up something from the shore," said Ned. "Maybe it's the hermit the miner told us about, gathering gold."<br /> "Nonsense," said Jerry. "It's probably a bit of fog, or it may be a white fox, or a wolf."<br /> "No fox or wolf is as big as that," insisted Ned. "I'll bet it's the hermit."<br /> "Whatever it is, it's gone now," put in Bob.<br /> And, sure enough, the object suddenly disappeared among the trees, and there was nothing in sight but the lake, the mountains and the moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we seem to have stumbled onto the lake," remarked Jerry. "If the auto had not misbehaved we would have taken the regular road, and Lost Lake would still be lost. As it is we have found it."<br /> "I hope we find some of the gold, as well," put in Ned. "We may need the yellow pebbles if our mine is gone."<br /> "Whatever we do, we shall stay here until morning," said Jerry. "It will be a good place to camp, anyhow, gold or no gold."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they all busied themselves in preparing to stay there for the rest of the night. A fire was built and a midnight supper was soon in preparation. They had good appetites, and, tired with the day's journey and events, they got out their blankets and slept soundly.<br /> By daylight the lake was seen to be a large sheet of water, rather irregular in outline, with many small bays and coves. Shimmering in the sunlight the water made a beautiful picture.<br /> "Here goes to see if there are any golden pebbles on the shore," remarked Bob, with a whoop as soon as he had crawled from the improvised bed. He did not have to stop and dress for the travelers slept in their clothes.<br /> Chunky climbed down the slope, along a rather rough path to the water. Some time later Jerry and Ned were about to follow, when they heard Bob yelling at the top of his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry.<br /> "Have you found the gold?" cried Ned.<br /> "Maybe the hermit has attacked him," suggested the professor.<br /> They all ran to the water's edge. When they reached the shore Bob was nowhere in sight.<br /> "Hi, Bob! Where are you?" cried Jerry looking around.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Chunky, suddenly, bobbing up from beneath the little waves about one hundred feet from shore.<br /> "Did you fall in?" asked the professor, anxiously.<br /> "No, I jumped in," replied the boy. "I'm in swimming. Come on in, the water's fine!"<br /> "Good for you!" called Ned and the next instant he was undressed and splashing out toward Bob. Jerry soon joined them, and even the professor took a dip. The water was somewhat cool, but after they were once in it was invigorating, and they swam about for half an hour, greatly enjoying the luxury of a bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark! What was that?" asked Ned, suddenly.<br /> There came a whirring of wings and a rustling of the leaves of the bushes off to the left. Then a bevy of birds sailed through the air.<br /> "Partridge, or some similar bird, I would say," was the professor's opinion.<br /> "And there goes a big rabbit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there's another!" exclaimed Jerry. "Say, we have struck a game country if we haven't a gold one. I say, what's the matter with having a hunt?"<br /> "Good!" cried Bob and Ned.<br /> "I think it would do no harm to replenish the larder with something fresh," remarked the professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly, after breakfast, guns were gotten ready and the boys and the professor tramped off through the woods, taking care not to go too far from the lake, as the trees were thick, and, as there were no trails blazed, it would be easy to get lost.<br /> Ned bagged the first partridge, and Bob came second, getting two in succession. Jerry had hard luck, for twice he missed easy shots. A little later, however, he bowled over a plump rabbit, and followed it up with a second. Then Ned got one, and Jerry succeeded in bagging a couple of fine birds.<br /> Some of the game was served for dinner, which was eaten by a campfire, and very fine it was voted. Then some was packed away in salt, against a possible time when provisions might be hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you say, shall we stay here another night or push on?" asked Jerry, about the middle of the afternoon.<br /> "If you ask me," said the professor, "I should say to remain here. I saw a number of fine and rare specimens I would like to gather."<br /> "The only thing is, perhaps we had better join Nestor as soon as possible," remarked Ned.<br /> "I think a few days' delay can do no harm," Mr. Snodgrass said. "From the tone of Nestor's letter I would say there was no immediate danger of the mine being claimed by others."<br /> "Then we'll stay," said Jerry. "I would like to investigate the lake a little more. We did not go very far along the shore. Perhaps there might be an outcropping of gold somewhere around this locality."<br /> "And maybe we will see the hermit, or the ghost, or whatever it is," added Ned. "Let's stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then we ought to rig up some kind of shelter," went on Jerry. "It may rain in the night, and it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to sleep in a mud puddle."<br /> "We can build a shack of boughs," said Bob.<br /> And this they did. They had often done the same thing before. Branches from a pine tree, stacked up against a sapling cut to fit between the crotches of two trees, with the same sort of boughs for a roof and<br /> floor, made a very good shelter. Rubber blankets on top insured the rain being kept out, and with woolen coverings for inside, beds were made that were very comfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, technology, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> When these preparations had been made it was growing dusk. While Bob and Ned were getting supper, and the professor was busy arranging his specimens gathered that day, Jerry removed one of the big search-lights from the auto.<br /> "What are doing that for?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm going to try and find out what that white thing is," said Jerry. "I'm going to rig up a lantern in front of the shack, facing the lake, and if the hermit or whatever it is, shows up, I'm going to flash the light on it."<br /> "Maybe it won't come to-night," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it did. It was along about midnight when Ned felt a light touch on his arm.<br /> "What's the matter?" he asked, sitting up.<br /> "Come on," whispered Jerry. "I see something down by the lake, and I want to investigate. Be careful, don't make any noise."<br /> Bob and the professor were both sleeping so soundly that they did not hear Jerry and Ned leave the shack.<br /> "Where is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "There," replied Jerry, pointing to a spot about three hundred feet away, and on the shore of the lake. "It was there a minute ago, but it's gone now. Watch, it will come back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, visibility, night"><br /> <poem><br /> He busied himself over the search-light, making ready to light it quickly and flash the beams on the ghost or hermit, or whatever it should prove to be.<br /> "There it is!" called Ned, in a hoarse whisper. "Right by that big rock that runs out into the water."<br /> "I see!" said Jerry, softly.<br /> There was a hissing sound as Jerry turned on the acetylene gas, a snapping sound as he lit the match, and then a slight puff as the vapor ignited. The next instant a glaring shaft of light shot down toward the lake, glint on a strange object.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There in the glare of the white beams stood the figure of an old man. His hair was snow white, and hung down long over his shoulders. He seemed bent with age, and this was made more pronounced because he bore a heavy bag on his back. He was right at the edge of the water.<br /> The sudden glare had startled him, and he turned in surprise and fear to see whence it came. His face stood out in strong relief, and Jerry started, for he dimly remembered seeing some one who looked like that some time before.<br /> Then, all at once the stillness of the night was broken by a shrill scream. Ned and Jerry were startled, and Bob and the professor, in the shack, were awakened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XX. - The Mysterious Woman (169-174) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="lake, rain, night"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XX<br /> <br /> THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN<br /> <br /> "Look!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> Then, as he and Jerry watched what took place in the circle of light, they beheld a woman, her long hair streaming down her back, run from the woods up to the old man. In her hand she held a big club, and with it she endeavored to strike the aged man. The latter dropped his sack, and seemed to engage in a struggle with the woman.<br /> "He's killing her!" exclaimed Ned. "This is the hermit we were warned against."<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must see what it means."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, just as he started down the slope, the search-light went out, leaving the place in utter blackness, for the moon was under a cloud. When Jerry had succeeded in getting the light going again, the man and woman were nowhere to be seen.<br /> "Well, that certainly was a queer sight," remarked Ned. "I wonder what it all means?"<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay here until we find out," said Jerry. "It looked as if there was going to be trouble, at one time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's all the excitement about?" asked the professor, coming out of the shack, followed by Bob.<br /> Jerry related what they had seen, and the professor agreed that it would be better to remain and make an investigation.<br /> "I say, you fellows are mean to go off alone and have a cracking adventure like that," objected Bob, in a grieved tone.<br /> "We didn't want to disturb your slumbers," said Ned.<br /> "Don't eat so much supper next time, and you will not sleep so sound," advised Jerry. But Bob was not to be appeased until promised that the next time Ned and Jerry went ghost hunting they would take him with them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having been so thoroughly aroused from their sleep the travelers decided to sit up a while and see if they could catch another glimpse of the strange man and woman. But, though they sat and talked for more than an hour, there was no further sign of the two queer creatures.<br /> "I'm going to bed," announced Bob at length, and the others decided to follow his example. They slept soundly until morning, though Jerry said afterward that he dreamed he was being chased across the frozen lake by a white haired man on a black horse. He got stuck in the ice, and was freezing to death, when he awakened to find that his blanket had slipped from him, and that a cold rain was blowing in through the cracks of the shack. Morning had dawned cold and dreary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wow! This isn't exactly pleasant!" exclaimed Jerry, as he poked his head out of the front of the screen of branches. "I wish there was a hotel handy."<br /> The others crawled from beneath the blankets, not in any too good humor at the dismal prospect.<br /> "And I'll bet there isn't any dry wood to be had," said Bob. "That means a cold breakfast."<br /> A search proved that he was right. Nor was there any charcoal, since the last had been used some days before, and they had been to no place where they could get more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just when a fellow needs a hot cup of coffee," went on Bob. "I never saw such beastly luck."<br /> Jerry said nothing. He seemed to be studying over some matter.<br /> "I have it," he exclaimed.<br /> "What? Some dry wood?" asked Ned with much eagerness.<br /> "No, but I know how to make some hot coffee," was the answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, equipment, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time in explaining. He first went to the auto where he got out rubber coats for himself and his companions. Then, ready to defy the rain, which was coming down at a good clip, Jerry hunted about until he found two large stones. These he set up a short distance apart, placing another each at the front and rear of the first two.<br /> "There's the stove," he remarked.<br /> "A heap of good it will do, with no fire in it," growled Bob.<br /> "Wait," advised Jerry.<br /> Taking the big search-light, which he had used the night previous, he removed the top, so that the flame could be used for cooking purposes. They prepared a good meal and enjoyed it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It continued to rain, and to fill in time the boys went fishing in the lake. Luck was with them and within half an hour they had ten fine fish, and then, though they could have taken many more, they did not, as Jerry<br /> said they would have no use for them.<br /> "Fish for dinner for me to-day," said Bob, while the others laughed at his usual exhibition of how fond of eating he was. The fish did prove an excellent dish, fried in corn meal on Jerry's improvised stove. Some bacon gave them a relish, and with hot coffee they felt they had as good a meal as many a hotel could serve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder where the professor is?" said Ned, when the meal was almost over. "I forgot that he wasn't with us."<br /> "He's off gathering birds, bugs or reptiles," said Jerry. "He'll come when he feels good and hungry."<br /> "He's more likely to forget all about being hungry if he gets chasing a fine specimen," remarked Ned. "I think I'll just take a stroll and see if I can come across him."<br /> "We'll go along," said Jerry and Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So the three started off together. They could easily follow the professor's trail, as he had broken through the underbrush, snapping off many twigs and breaking small branches. The boys wandered on for nearly a mile, but saw no sign of the scientist. They were about to turn back, and wait for him at camp, when Jerry held up his hand to indicate silence.<br /> "Hark!" he whispered.<br /> The others stood still, and, listening intently, heard above the patter of the raindrops, voices in conversation.<br /> "That's the professor," said Ned.<br /> "Some one is with him then," put in Jerry. "They are coming this way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sounds of persons advancing through the bushes could be heard. The voices also sounded plainer. A minute later the brush was parted and the professor, followed by a woman, came out into the little clearing where the boys were. At the sight of the woman, Jerry started, for he recognized her as the strange person who had been with the old man the night previous. The professor seemed excited about something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Boys, this lady has just told me some strange news," he said.<br /> "What is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Beware of the hermit of Lost Lake!" the woman exclaimed suddenly. "Have a care of him. Many poor travelers has he murdered. He would have murdered you last night if I had not prevented him."<br /> "So that's what it was all about," said Jerry, half aloud. The woman heard him, and turned:<br /> "Did you see him?" she asked. "Did you see me?"<br /> "I—we—" began Jerry.<br /> "You have been spying on me!" exclaimed the woman, growing much excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXI. - The Den of the Hermit (175-184) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="forest, lake, pleasure, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXI<br /> <br /> THE DEN OF THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "No, no!" said the professor calmly. "The boys were not spying. They happened to see a man and a woman on the shore of the lake last night, and they thought it might have been you."<br /> "It was me," said the woman. "I was trying to prevent him from coming and killing you all in your sleep."<br /> The boys began to feel a queer creepy sensation run up their spines, as if some one had poured cold water down their backs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's true," the strange creature went on. "I will tell you all about it. Listen to me," and she sat down on a stump.<br /> "Perhaps we had better go where there is shelter," suggested Jerry, for it was raining hard again, though the boys and the professor in their rubber coats did not mind it. The woman was drenched.<br /> "No," she said. "I can go to no place save these woods. I am safe from him here." She seemed nervous and excited, and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The old man is a hermit," she went on. "He has lived near this lake for many years. He kills travelers and takes their money. He tried to kill me but I escaped from him because I can run fast. Since then he has been after me. Last night he started for your camp, but I got a big club and stopped him. Then he ran away."<br /> "What was in the bag?" asked Ned.<br /> "What bag?" asked the woman.<br /> "The one the old man had on his back?"<br /> "Hush! Don't speak about it," was the reply. "He had a murdered man's body in there, and he threw it into the lake."<br /> "Are you sure?" asked the professor, thinking the woman might, perhaps, be trying to scare them away.<br /> "Positive," she replied. "I saw him kill the poor fellow, but the hermit did not know I was watching."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where does he live?" asked the professor.<br /> "He has a den in the darkest part of the woods," was the answer. "He takes travelers there and kills them. He does not know that I know where it is, but I do. Would you like to see it?"<br /> "Not if he is the kind of a person you say he is," spoke Jerry. "I think we had better steer clear of him."<br /> "I can take you there when he is not at home," said the woman. "Listen, once each week he takes a long trip over the mountain, to bury the gold he has taken from travelers. I can hide and watch him go. Then I could come and bring you to his den. Shall I?"<br /> "It might be a good plan," mused the professor. "If this man is a murderer he should be taken in charge by the authorities. Yes, come and let us know when he goes away. Perhaps we could capture him ourselves."<br /> "I'll come," said the woman. "Now I must go, for I hear some one coming," and, rising suddenly, she ran off at top speed through the woods. The boys listened intently but could hear no one approaching, and began to think the woman must have been mistaken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where did you meet her?" asked Jerry of the professor, when it was seen that the woman was not coming back.<br /> "She saw me while I was gathering some specimens," was the reply, "and she came up to warn me about the hermit. It seems that she lives not far away, and roams through the woods. Besides telling me about the old man, and to be on our guard against him, she showed me where to get some beautiful tree toads," and the scientist opened his pocket and showed it full of the little creatures.<br /> "Do you think she is telling the truth about the hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "There may be some exaggeration to it," rejoined the professor, "but I have heard of old half crazed men who lived in the woods as this one does, and who occasionally murdered lone travelers. We can't be too<br /> careful."<br /> "Besides, it did look as though she was trying to prevent him doing something last night," put in Jerry.<br /> "Well, we'll keep a good lookout," suggested the professor. "That's all we can do now, unless we decide to move on away from this place."<br /> "I would rather like to solve the mystery," said Jerry. "I do not think we have much to fear. He is an old man, and I guess we four are a match for him."<br /> "Then we had better do as the woman says, wait until she comes to lead us to his hut, or cabin, or whatever it is," the professor advised after a moment's thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That plan settled on, they made their way back to camp and the professor was given his rather late dinner. But he did not seem to mind this in the least.<br /> "Are you going to keep watch again to-night?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Of course. I want to get at the bottom of this. There is a mystery somewhere, and I think the hermit, the lost lake and the strange woman, together, can explain it."<br /> The rain stopped after supper, though it remained cloudy, and Jerry again prepared the gas lamp. It was arranged that he and Ned would stay up on guard until twelve o'clock and that Bob and the professor would take the rest of the night. Whichever party saw the hermit was at once to notify the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and Ned began their vigil. Several hours passed and it seemed they were to have their trouble for their pains. At length, however, just as they were preparing to turn in and let the others take their turn, Jerry saw a movement in the bushes about five hundred feet away, and down near the edge of the lake. The moon, shining faintly through the clouds, illuminated the scene.<br /> "Be ready to turn on the light when I say so," said Jerry to Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was all alert. Jerry, with his eyes straining to catch the slightest movement of the underbrush, peered through the darkness. Something white attracted him.<br /> "Now!" he whispered to Ned, and the light, that had been burning low, was suddenly turned on at full power.<br /> In its glare the two boys saw again the white haired hermit stealing along the edge of the water, the big bag on his back.<br /> "Call the others!" whispered Jerry to Ned. "I'll keep watch!"<br /> "All right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned softly went back to the shack where he awakened the professor and Bob. They were out in an instant, and made ready to go quietly down as close as they could to where the hermit was, while Jerry showed the way by the searchlight. But again they were doomed to disappointment, for, no sooner had Jerry turned the light so that it shown full on the old man, than he jumped as though struck by lightning and made a dive for the woods, into the black depths of which he disappeared.<br /> "I guess that's the last we'll see of him," said Ned.<br /> "He dropped his bag," cried Bob. "Let's get that and see what's in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this the professor and Ned ran down to the edge of the water, and soon returned with the sack the old man had carried on his back.<br /> "Open it and let's see if there are any murdered persons in it," said Jerry, with an uneasy laugh.<br /> Ned untied the string, and, not without some misgivings, peered inside.<br /> "Well I never," he exclaimed.<br /> "What is it?" asked Bob.<br /> "Fish! Nothing but fish!" replied Ned. "Fine ones at that. I guess all we have done is to have scared the poor old man away from his fishing grounds."<br /> "Certainly there is nothing suspicious in having a bag of fish," put in the professor. "I wonder if that strange woman could have been telling the truth."<br /> "We'll know better if she keeps her word and comes to take us to the hermit's den," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, lake, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> There seemed nothing more to do that night, so they all went to bed, not being disturbed until morning. They were awakened by the sun peeping in through the chinks in the shack, and they got up to find a fine day had succeeded the rainy one.<br /> The beams of Old Sol were bright and warm, and the first thing the travelers did was to go down and have a dip in the lake. Then breakfast was served, and when it was over Jerry and Ned started to overhaul the machine.<br /> "For," said Jerry, "we may want to leave at any time, and the car is in none too good condition since we plowed up the side of the mountain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, navigation, tree, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Several minor repairs were made and the auto was run down to the main road, where it stood in readiness for a quick start. It was some time after dinner before all this was done, and along about three o'clock the four travelers stretched out under the trees and took a well earned rest.<br /> "Now if that strange woman would—" began Ned.<br /> "Hush!" cautioned the professor, "some one is coming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hardly had he ceased speaking before the bushes opened and there appeared the figure of the queer woman, with her long hair hanging loose down her back.<br /> "Hush!" she whispered, placing her finger on her lips. "I have come to keep my promise. The hermit has gone over the mountain. Come, and I will take you to his hut, and you can see where he has murdered travelers."<br /> The boys hardly knew whether to obey or not, but a nod from Professor Snodgrass, to whom they looked, indicated they were to do as the woman wanted. So they arose and prepared to follow her. The professor brought up the rear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the woods their strange guide went, for several miles. At length she reached a thick part of the woods.<br /> "It is very close now," she said. "Wait until I take a look."<br /> The travelers halted, while the woman crept softly forward. She peered through the brush into a sort of clearing, and apparently seeing that everything was safe, she motioned for the others to advance.<br /> They did so, and, a moment later emerged from the woods into a place where many trees had been cut down. In the centre of this space was a small log cabin, and toward it the woman pointed.<br /> "There is his hut," she said. "Come on, I will lead the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She advanced with great caution, as though she feared to disturb some one. Closer and closer to the door she went, the others close behind her.<br /> "He never locks it, so we can go right in," she said.<br /> By this time she was near enough to grasp the latch. She raised it, and was about to enter, when the door suddenly swung back, and the old hermit himself, stepping out, stood before the astonished travelers.<br /> "There he is! There he is! There is the murderer!" cried the woman, pointing her finger at the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man did not appear greatly surprised. He looked from the woman to the boys and the professor, and remarked:<br /> "To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit?"<br /> "I we,—er—that is—we—er—I—" began the professor, finding it was hard to tell the truth.<br /> "Oh, it's poor old Kate," went on the hermit. "She has probably been telling you some strange stories. Will you not come into my cabin?"<br /> "Don't go into the murderer's hut!" cried the woman, as she turned and fled back through the underbrush, leaving the travelers in a somewhat queer situation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXIII. - Searching for the Hermit (195-202) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXIII<br /> <br /> SEARCHING FOR THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "Let's go to his help!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Come on!" cried Ned.<br /> "You had better not," said the woman, in a calm voice. "It is probably only the police after him for the many murders he has committed, and we had better not interfere. Besides if you want me to take you to your camp you had better come, as I have my house work to do before sunrise."<br /> She started to lead the way, and, though the boys felt inclined to follow and see what became of the hermit, they concluded it would be better to go back to camp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate seemed to have lost much of her excited manner as she led them through the woods, over a scarcely discernible path. Neither the fast gathering darkness nor the maze of trees seemed to confuse her. She made better progress than did the boys or the professor, as they were not familiar with the ground.<br /> "Well of all the queer adventures we've had," remarked Ned to Jerry, who had lagged somewhat in the rear with him, "this is the worst. Think of going to capture a murderer and then being led home by an insane woman! I wonder what will come next?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, car, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The journey to camp took some time, as the path was hard for the boys and professor to follow, and several times Kate had to wait for them to catch up to her. At last, however, she brought them out near the little open place where the auto stood, and the boys breathed a sigh of relief.<br /> "Our car is safe, anyhow," said Jerry. "Now for some sleep."<br /> "Ain't we going to have something to eat first?" demanded Bob in an aggrieved tone.<br /> The others laughed at Chunky's sorrowful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll see," said Jerry. "Perhaps you would like a cup of chocolate," he went on, turning to Kate.<br /> "No, thank you," she said. "I must not stay here. I want to see if they have captured the murderer, so I will go back," and, turning suddenly, she returned over the path they had come, her footsteps growing fainter and fainter.<br /> "Come on, let's make the chocolate," said Bob, when Kate had gone.<br /> Jerry soon had the beverage in preparation, and they all enjoyed it. Then they fixed up the beds in the shack, and soon were slumbering, too tired even to post a guard, though, as events proved, there was no need for one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Jerry, after breakfast had been eaten, "I suppose we may as well push on for Arizona. No use staying here since the mystery is solved."<br /> "I don't believe it is solved," spoke Professor Snodgrass, suddenly. "I'm not altogether satisfied about that hermit."<br /> "You don't think he's a murderer, do you?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, but there is something odd about him. I can not get over the feeling that I have met him before, or some relative of his. Yet I can not recall it clearly. He has certain queer little actions that remind me of some one. I would like to see him again."<br /> "If you want to, I think I could find our way back to the cabin in the day time," spoke Ned.<br /> "I took pretty good notice of the trail when we went over."<br /> "I wish you could," said the professor, eagerly. "I want to have a talk with that old man. Besides, I think I can get some more specimens at his hut. I saw a fine lizard around the door step in the afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided they would pay another visit to the hermit's cabin. Accordingly they started off after dinner, and, led by Ned, followed the trail. They went astray several times, and had to search about for the path, but finally they came to the place where Kate had halted them the day before to go forward and peer at the hut.<br /> "Shall we go right on now?" asked Ned, pausing to see what the rest wanted to do. "The cabin is just ahead."<br /> "Go on," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They came out into the little glade, in which the cabin stood. As they emerged from the woods they saw Kate standing in front of the hut, crying.<br /> "What is the matter?" asked the professor.<br /> "They have taken the poor old man away and killed him!" sobbed the woman.<br /> "It's another of her imaginations," said Ned, softly. "Probably the hermit is inside."<br /> But when they looked he was not to be seen, and his bed showed that it had not been slept in that night.<br /> "Will you help me hunt for him?" asked Kate.<br /> "Certainly we will," answered the professor.<br /> "Then follow me!" exclaimed the woman, striding off into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She led the way, explaining in disjointed sentences, yet so that she could be understood, that the old man frequently imagined some one was after him. At such times he would go to one or another of his hiding places, of which he had a number in the different parts of the woods.<br /> But this time he was not to be found easily. Place after place, including caves and deep ravines, were visited by the searchers, but there was no sign of the hermit.<br /> "I am sure he has been killed," said Kate in a sorrowful tone. "And he was the kindest man that ever lived."<br /> "I thought you said he was a murderer," spoke the professor, wondering in what strange channels the woman's mind ran.<br /> "So he is!" exclaimed Kate, "but he is a good murderer, and not one of the bad kind."<br /> "Poor woman," sighed Mr. Snodgrass. "Her mind is hopelessly gone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate started off in a different direction, and the boys and the professor followed her. She went at a rapid pace, and soon the travelers were aware that they were going up hill. The trail became more steep as they advanced, until they were panting from their exertions. Yet the crazy woman did not seem to become exhausted by the hard pace in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There is the hill!" she exclaimed at last, pointing upward, and the boys saw ahead of them a big half round mound, at the very summit of which was an immense tree.<br /> "He sometimes stays in that tree," spoke Kate, as they neared the big forest giant.<br /> "In the tree? I presume you mean he has a sort of platform built among the branches," said the professor. "A number of Indian tribes live that way."<br /> "He lives right inside the tree what little time he does live up here," replied Kate. "The trunk is hollow, and he crawls into it, and hides until all danger is past. We will soon see if he is there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An examination of the hollow trunk, however, showed that the hermit was not within, nor did the place disclose any signs of his having been there recently. Kate showed the despair she felt and the professor and the boys could not help feeling disappointed. For a while they stood beneath the spreading branches, wondering what would be best to do.<br /> All at once the professor, who had been intently gazing up into the leafy branches, gave utterance to an exclamation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There it is!" he cried. "A regular beauty! I must secure that if I never get another. Keep quiet, every one."<br /> "It's another specimen," said Jerry. "Can't you forget them for once, professor?"<br /> "This seems to be a sloth or an ant-bear," replied the scientist, as he made preparations to climb the tree. "It has long white whiskers, a black body and no tail. Wait until I crawl up and get it."<br /> "Never mind coming up, I'm coming down," spoke a voice, seeming to come from the animal, the capture of which the professor was intent upon.<br /> "Bless my soul, it's a combined sloth and parrot!" exclaimed the professor. "That is a rare animal-bird. I must secure it at all hazards. Help me, boys."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But there was no need for help, as, the next instant, two dangling legs descended from the lower branches of the tree, to be followed, a little later by a body, and then came a mass of white hair and whiskers.<br /> "It's the old hermit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes! It's him! it's him!" cried Kate. "He is safe! We have found him."<br /> "Be quiet!" cautioned the old man, when he had reached the ground. "There may be spies all around, though I think I have escaped them for the time being."<br /> "How did you get here?" asked Kate.<br /> "I ran as soon as I heard the noise of men coming after me," replied the aged man. "But I did not dare get into the hollow trunk, for fear of being seen. So I just crawled up into the branches, and there I'd be yet if the professor had not mistaken me for a specimen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can come down in safety," said Mr. Snodgrass, "as there seems to be no one in the neighborhood but ourselves."<br /> "That's good," was the rejoinder, "but there is no telling when some one may come. I think I will go back to my own cabin."<br /> The hermit started off with Kate, the others following. He had not proceeded far when he uttered an exclamation:<br /> "There is one of them!"<br /> At the same instant a roughly dressed man appeared in the narrow path, as if by magic. At sight of him the hermit turned and fled back into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXV. - Attacked by the Enemy (212-220) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, speed, mountain, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXV<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY<br /> <br /> "Are you sure the boy we have in mind is your son?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "We do not want to raise false hopes. Perhaps you may be mistaken."<br /> "Something tells me I can not be mistaken," exclaimed the hermit. "Tommy Bell is not a common name. Besides, I can describe my son, and then you will know whether he is the one you know," and he rapidly gave a short description of Tommy.<br /> "That's him all right," said Jerry, and the others agreed that the lad they had rescued from the hands of the rough men was, indeed, the son of the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I thought him dead," said the old man. "After I had been abused by the wicked gang that got me in their control I lost sight of poor Tommy. As soon as I could I made a search for him, but it was of no use."<br /> "Tommy thought you had wandered away from him," said Ned. "He told us his story after we had rescued him."<br /> "Then you saved his life, just as you have mine," broke in Mr. Bell. "I have much to thank you for. But first I must find my son. Where did you leave him?"<br /> "At a place called Las Cruces," replied the professor. Thereupon he told briefly how they had taken Tommy from the hands of the lawless gang and left him with a friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must go to him at once," exclaimed the old man. "I can hardly wait to start. To think that the boy I thought was dead is alive! And I suppose he thinks I am dead also," Mr. Bell went on.<br /> "He was going to search for you," replied Bob, "but he did not know where to start. We can send him word now."<br /> "I'll take him word myself!" cried Mr. Bell. "I'll start as soon as it is daylight."<br /> "Then you had better get some rest and sleep now," observed Mr. Snodgrass. "Come into the shack, and we will make you some hot coffee."<br /> The hermit begged them to go to no trouble on his account, but they insisted, and soon the coffee was boiling on the coals of the camp fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm too excited to sleep," remarked Mr. Bell, as he went inside the rough shelter to lie down. And so it would seem, for, every few minutes he would rouse up from his position, and ask some particular about his son. He appeared scarcely able to believe the good news. At length, however, he grew weary, and along toward morning fell into a doze.<br /> The others were so tired and sleepy from being awake the night before that they slumbered late, and the sun was quite high when Jerry roused himself, and sat up, wondering what day it was.<br /> He got up, took a plunge in the lake, and came back to start breakfast, finding that, in the meanwhile, the others in the camp, including Mr. Bell, had arisen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to start and find my son," cried the hermit.<br /> "You had better have something to eat first," suggested Mr. Snodgrass. "Then perhaps we can think of some plan to aid you."<br /> Though impatient to be gone the old man consented to remain to breakfast. He did not eat much, however, and seemed ready any minute to start on the long search for Tommy.<br /> "How would it be if we took you to the nearest town in our automobile," suggested the professor, when the meal was over. "From there you can get conveyances and reach Las Cruces in a short time. If you need any money—"<br /> "Thank you, I think I have enough for the present," interrupted Mr. Bell. "I do not need much. When I find Tommy I will bring him back with me, and we will be together once more. It seems too good to be true!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What will become of Kate in the meanwhile?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "Though she has queer ideas concerning you I think she is your friend. Will she be able to live in these woods all alone?"<br /> "Kate is able to take care of herself," was the reply. "She was in these woods before I came and she may be here after I am gone. But I will tell her where I am going, and that I expect to return."<br /> A trip was made to the hermit's hut, and, after several blasts had been blown on the conch horn, Kate appeared. She was overjoyed to see the aged man again, and was told of the latest developments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You had better hurry up then, and get away from these woods," said the woman.<br /> "Why so?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because there are a number of strange men lurking about," was the answer. "I think they are after this good old man. So be on your guard."<br /> "It is the same crowd," said Mr. Bell. "They hate to give me up."<br /> "What do they want of you?" asked Jerry. "You said you might tell us the secret some day, adding that perhaps we could help you. Maybe we can help you now."<br /> "You can help me, and you have helped me," said Mr. Bell. "I can tell you the rest of my story now. As I said I have long been in quest of some one. That some one is my son Tommy. I did not want to tell you of him before, as I was afraid the news would get out. Nor did I tell you why the gang wanted me in their power. It is because I hold the final title to a piece of valuable property, and they can not get possession of it until I sign off, which I refused to do!"<br /> "Why so?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Because I understand the property is now claimed by persons who, if not in the eyes of the law, are, still the rightful owners. If I should sign my rights away to the gang they would take the property away from the innocent holders now. So I refused to sign, and they have ruined me for<br /> it."<br /> "Never mind," said the professor, cheerfully. "We will get you out of their power, never fear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder if the gang that had Tommy is not the same one that had Mr. Bell in their power," suggested Bob. "He told us about men wanting him to sign papers that would give them control of some land."<br /> "They must be the same," commented Mr. Bell. "I will be on my guard now. Neither Tommy nor I will sign a single document. But now I must start."<br /> "Very well," said Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, engine, maintenance, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> There was no further cause for delay, so Jerry got the automobile ready, and, the various belongings having been stowed away, the engine was started, after a somewhat longer rest than usual, and, puffing away in a manner that awoke all the echoes of the forest, the car started toward the village at the foot of the slope. From there, it was arranged Mr. Bell would go forward to Las Cruces by stage coach, or whatever other means of travel presented themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, mountain, speed, driver, sound, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Once fairly on the road the spirits of all in the party rose. It was a fine day, and the fresh mountain air, crisp and cool, put new life into their veins.<br /> They were bowling along the road at a good clip with Jerry at the wheel, when, suddenly in the air above their heads, there sounded a shrill buzz.<br /> "That's a new kind of a bumble bee," cried Uriah Snodgrass. "I must have it for my collection."<br /> "I guess you wouldn't want many of that kind," said Mr. Bell, quietly.<br /> "Why not? I like all kinds."<br /> "That was a lead one," went on the old man.<br /> "You mean a bullet?" asked Bob. "Is some one firing at us?"<br /> "I'm afraid so," answered the hermit.<br /> Then came a distant report, followed by the peculiar buzzing sound.<br /> "Speed her up!" cried Bob to Jerry. "Let's get out of this danger zone. It's too much like being on the firing line to suit me."<br /> The auto, all this while was speeding along, and, soon, the shooters, whoever they were, had been left far in the rear. The sound of the bullets was no longer heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The reason they are doing it," answered Mr. Bell, "is that they want to get me alive. If I was to be killed their last chance of getting me to sign the papers would be gone."<br /> "But there is your son, Tommy," said Jerry. "He told us they wanted him to sign. If you were dead, he would be your heir, and his signature would be legal when he became of age. Perhaps the men could make use of it even before then."<br /> "I see! I see!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "It is important then that I live so I can beat them at their own game."<br /> "Unless you don't care about living on your own account or that of your son's," said the professor, grimly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, rural, speed, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> They kept on steady after this and at last reached the bottom of the mountain slope.<br /> "Now for the village," exclaimed Mr. Bell. "I shall soon see my boy!"<br /> Faster and faster went the auto. The traveling was good, and Jerry speeded the car to the last notch. About six o'clock they rolled into town, to the surprise of many of the inhabitants, who had never seen one of the puffing, snorting things, though they had read of them.<br /> A knot of curious persons gathered around the machine as Jerry brought it to a stop in front of the post-office. Several boys began to inspect every part. The travelers were about to alight when a shrill voice cried out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hey, Jerry! And Bob! And Ned! Hey there! Oh, how glad I am to see you!"<br /> For a moment the Motor Boys did not recognize the voice. Then Ned saw a lad trying to break through the crowd.<br /> "It's Tommy! It's Tommy Bell!" exclaimed Ned. "Hey, Tommy! You can't guess who we have with us!"<br /> "Tommy Bell! Did you say Tommy Bell!" exclaimed the hermit. "Where is he? Let me see him!"<br /> But Tommy had heard his parent's voice, and the next instant the boy had made a flying leap into the car, and was clasped in his father's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE NEXT INSTANT THE BOY HAD MADE A FLYING LEAP INTO THE CAR.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVI. - On the Road Again (221-226) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, slowness, mountain, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVI<br /> <br /> ON THE ROAD AGAIN<br /> <br /> "Where in the world did you come from?" asked Jerry of Tommy.<br /> "How did you get here?" inquired Ned.<br /> "How did you know where to find us?" Bob wanted to know.<br /> But to all these questions Tommy turned a deaf ear. He was so overjoyed at seeing his father, and the hermit was so excited at seeing his son once more, that neither had eyes nor ears for anything or any one except the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The crowd looked on curiously, the interest divided between the automobile and the meeting between father and son. Finally, when Mr. Bell and Tommy had, temporarily, exhausted the theme of telling each other how glad they were at being united, the boys had a chance to get a word in edgeways, and Tommy answered a few of their questions.<br /> He told them that he had remained for several days with his friend in Las Cruces, and how a traveling miner had, in a general conversation, mentioned the lake and told of the queer hermit that lived on the shores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Something in the description of this odd character impressed Tommy with the belief that the hermit might be his father, who had taken that method to escape the gang which wanted him to sign away his rights. Accordingly, the boy had started from Las Cruces and made his way to Deighton, the town where Mr. Bell expected to start in search of his son.<br /> "I got here this morning," said Tommy, "and I found a little work to do to earn some money. I was going to start up the mountain to-morrow and try and find the lake."<br /> "Now you don't have to," said Mr. Bell. "Well, it certainly is a queer world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers spent the night at the Deighton hotel, and, in the morning, after a good breakfast, assembled to talk over their plans for the future.<br /> "Do you intend to go back to Lost Lake, Mr. Bell?" asked the professor. "If you do, you and your son can ride that far in the automobile, since we are going back in that direction."<br /> "Where are you going after you leave Lost Lake?" asked Mr. Bell.<br /> "To Arizona," answered Jerry. "We have a mine there, and we must go to see how things are getting on."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, passenger, pleasure, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "That's rather odd," commented the hermit. "I have an interest in some mining property in Arizona, though I don't suppose it is anywhere near yours. But I have made up my mind not to go back to Lost Lake, except to bring away a few things that I left in the cabin. I would also like to provide for poor Kate. After that I think Tommy and I will go to Arizona and try our fortunes over again."<br /> "Then why not go with us?" spoke Jerry. "We have plenty of room in the machine, and we'd be glad of your company."<br /> "I would like to very much," said Mr. Bell, "if I thought I would not bother you."<br /> He was assured that he would be very welcome, and then he consented to go. A new stock of provisions was purchased, together with some ammunition and some other supplies for the auto. Then, amid the cheers of more than half the populace of Deighton, the travelers began their journey toward Lost Lake again.<br /> Mr. Bell had made arrangements with a family in the town to take charge of Kate whom he promised to send to them, for he knew he could depend on the woman to obey him and make the journey alone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, sound, car part, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> Lost Lake was reached on the second day, for the travelers were delayed by a landslide, and had to camp out one night. They found the camp and the hermit's hut undisturbed.<br /> "I guess none of the gang has been around lately," remarked Jerry.<br /> "I hope we have seen the last of them," put in Mr. Bell. "They certainly caused enough trouble."<br /> A few blasts on the horn brought Kate, and the poor demented woman was overjoyed to see her friends again. She made much of Tommy, who, she said, looked enough like his father to be recognized on the darkest night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first the crazy woman objected to being sent to Deighton, but Mr. Bell knew how to reason with her, and after some argument, she consented to go. She started away on the second morning, and, as the travelers learned later, eventually reached the family that had consented to care for her. Under skillful medical treatment Kate partly recovered her reason, and continued to live in Deighton for many years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, road condition, topography, car part, maintenance, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now," remarked the professor, when they had seen Kate started off on her journey, "I suppose it is time for us to move. So let's get started toward our mine, for I'm sure Nestor must be quite anxious to see us."<br /> "Onward it is, then!" exclaimed Ned. "All aboard, and may we have a safe trip!"<br /> With Ned at the steering wheel the auto was started off. The way was rather rougher than any they had yet traveled over, and for some distance the ascent was steep. But with a new set of batteries and spark plugs, and with everything on the car well adjusted, matters went along smoothly, though no very great speed could be attained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, topography, pleasure, rural, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> Mile after mile was covered, the auto mounting higher and higher amid the mountains. There were no signs of human habitation, not even a deserted miner's hut being passed the first two days of the trip.<br /> Of course there was no shelter to be had, and nights were spent in the open. But as the weather was mild, and as it did not rain, this was considered more a pleasure than a hardship.<br /> The third day they began to see signs that told them they were approaching a town. Now and then cabins and huts would be passed, mostly the lonely homes of solitary miners, who were prospecting for gold. Sometimes they would pass quite good sized camps, and about noon of the fourth day they were invited to come in and have a meal, which they were glad to do.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> The miners told them the nearest town was Sleighton, seventy-five miles away, and that it was the centre of activity for a large area of country round about.<br /> "And I wouldn't advise you folks to speed that there machine of yours when you strike the village," said one of the miners.<br /> "Why not?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because the marshal is very strict, and he ain't got no very great hankerin' fer choo-choo wagons."<br /> "We'll look out," promised Jerry. "We are in too much of a hurry to want any delays."<br /> "I wonder if we'll hear anything more of that gang," said Ned as they rode away from the mining camp. "It seems queer that they would drop the thing when they seemed so anxious to capture Mr. Bell."<br /> "We'll hear of them again, and in a way we won't like, I'm afraid," said the former hermit. "We'll have to be on the lookout."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVII. - Trouble at the Mine (227-236) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="health, law, risk, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, rain, equipment, Southwest"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVII<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AT THE MINE<br /> <br /> Several days' travel brought the party over the line into Arizona. They passed through a small village one noon, and, on inquiring their where-abouts were told that they were well within the borders of the state where their gold mine was located.<br /> It began to rain shortly after this, and their trip was rather unpleasant, but, well wrapped up in rubber coats, they managed to keep fairly dry. As for the auto it did not seem to mind what kind of weather it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, rain, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> They camped that night under a clump of pine trees which served as a partial shelter, and it was so wet that no fire could be built. Jerry resorted to the stove made from one of the search-lights, and made some hot chocolate that warmed them all up.<br /> The next day dawned clear, however, and with a better feeling the travelers took up their journey again. The way was becoming familiar to them, and they recognized many landmarks they had observed in their great race across the continent to secure the gold mine before Noddy Nixon and his crowd could win the claim, as told in detail in "The Motor Boys Overland."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> That night they stayed in the town where the government assay office was located and to reach which there had been such an exciting brush between the two automobiles, the one run by Noddy, and that run by the Motor Boys. They saw several men whom they knew slightly, and who appeared much surprised to see them again.<br /> "Well, well, well, where in the world did you come from?" asked the proprietor of the hotel, as the auto drew up in front of his place. He had been quite friendly with the boys while they stayed at the mine, and had sold them many supplies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been down to Mexico for a change of air," said Jerry.<br /> "I suppose it didn't agree with you, or you wouldn't be coming back so soon," went on the proprietor.<br /> "Well, we thought our mine needed looking after," Jerry remarked.<br /> "Looking after? I should say it did," the proprietor continued. "Jim Nestor was here the other day and he said if you didn't come back pretty soon and do something, there wouldn't be any mine."<br /> "Is that right?" asked Ned, thinking the man might be trying to scare them for a joke.<br /> "Straight as a string," was the answer. "It seems that the title to the place is in doubt."<br /> "I know, Nestor wrote us about that," put in Jerry. "But he is still in possession, isn't he?"<br /> "Can't say," replied the hotel man. "He was very anxious the last time I saw him, and that was a week ago. If I was you I'd look after it the first thing in the morning."<br /> "We will," said Jerry. "I wonder if the government office is closed."<br /> "Long ago," said the proprietor of the inn. "Why?"<br /> "I was thinking I could go there and find out what sort of claim there was against our property," answered the boy.<br /> "You'll have to wait until ten o'clock to-morrow morning," went on the man. "They've got a new official in charge and he takes more time off than he puts in. Some one ought to write to the President about it. There's lots of kicks about the way he acts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> Neither the boys nor the professor did much sleeping that night, because of worry over the mine tangle. They made an early breakfast and then started for their claim, which they expected to reach in about two hours unless something unexpected occurs.<br /> The way was familiar to them, and recalled many old memories of the exciting times they had in locating and proving their claim. They pointed out to Mr. Bell the various landmarks as they passed them, but the former hermit seemed to have fallen into a sort of stupor. His eyes had a vacant stare and he took no interest in what was being said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid he's going to be sick," said Jerry to the professor. "He has hardly spoken since we came into Arizona, and he used to be quite a talker."<br /> "I guess it is only the excitement wearing off," said Mr. Snodgrass. "He will be all right in a day or two. He has had a pretty hard life the last few weeks."<br /> Tommy was worried about his father, and sat beside him, holding his hand, now and then looking up into his face, as if he feared to lose his parent again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As they neared the mine Mr. Bell seemed to become more dazed. Yet he appeared to be struggling to recall something that he had once known and forgotten.<br /> Suddenly he stood up in the automobile, as the car passed a deserted and tumbled down hut and exclaimed:<br /> "See! There it is! There is the place!"<br /> "What place, father? What do you mean?" asked Tommy.<br /> But Mr. Bell sat down again, and seemed to have forgotten that he had spoken. The professor could note, however, that there was a struggle going on in the old man's mind.<br /> "I hope he does not become raving mad, yet it looks bad for him," the professor thought to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography, scenery, sound, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "Ten minutes more and we'll be there!" exclaimed Jerry, crowding on a little more speed. "I do hope Nestor is having no trouble."<br /> They were in the midst of a wild mountainous country now. On either side of the road were great bowlders, while a little further back was scrub timber which extended for a mile or more before the deeper woods were reached.<br /> They were just rounding the last turn of the road to swing into the straight stretch that would take them to the mine when there sounded on the air the crack of a rifle. An instant later Mr. Bell gave a convulsive start and fell over in his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, visibility, risk, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "They've killed him! They've shot him!" cried Tommy, while Jerry suddenly brought the machine to a stop. Glancing across to the left a small curling cloud of smoke could be seen floating above a big stone.<br /> "There's where the shot came from," said Ned.<br /> "Is he badly hurt?" asked Jerry of Professor Snodgrass, who was bending over Mr. Bell.<br /> "It is hard to say," was the answer. "The bullet struck him on the head, but there is so much blood I can't tell how bad the wound is. Push on to the mine. Perhaps Nestor can help us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry started the machine again. It had attained a good speed when, from the side of the road came a hail.<br /> "Motor Boys, ahoy!"<br /> "There's Nestor!" cried Ned, pointing to a man who stood in front of a small shanty. "Hello, Nestor!" he called.<br /> "Hello!" responded the miner, running down to the road. "Well, I am certainly glad to see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quick, Nestor!" exclaimed Mr. Snodgrass. "We have a wounded man here, and must get him to the shanty at the mine as soon as possible."<br /> "We can't do it," replied Nestor.<br /> "Why not?"<br /> "Didn't you get my letter?"<br /> "Only the one saying there might be a possibility of trouble."<br /> "Well trouble came all right. I've been driven from the mine, and it's in possession of a bad gang. So we can't take the wounded man there."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Jerry, seeing that Mr. Bell was bleeding badly.<br /> "Bring him into my cabin," said Nestor. "I came here after the gang drove me out. I can put you up, I guess."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, parking, equipment, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry ran the car up close to the shanty and Mr. Bell, who was unconscious, was carried in and laid as tenderly as possible on the single bunk of which the place boasted.<br /> "Now some warm water and clean clothes," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I must wash the wound and see how bad it is."<br /> "I haven't a bit of hot water," said Nestor.<br /> "There's plenty in the radiator of the auto," spoke Jerry. "Give me a pail and I'll soon get some."<br /> He soon had a plentiful supply that was almost boiling, and, cooling it somewhat, the naturalist carefully washed the blood from the wounded man's head. Then he examined the hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will he die?" asked Tommy, as he stood around, tearfully.<br /> "Not this time," replied Mr. Snodgrass, cheerfully. "The bullet appears to have only grazed the scalp a bit, but it probably gave him a pretty hard knock. He'll soon come around right I guess."<br /> Mr. Bell was made as comfortable as possible, and, as there was nothing to do but wait until he became conscious, he was left in charge of his son. Tommy was told to call as soon as his father showed signs of awakening, and then the others surrounded Nestor, eager to hear about<br /> the mine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess it's gone," said the old prospector. "As I wrote you, the title seems to have some flaw in it, and this gang, which came from somewhere to the southeast, found it out, and served papers on me. It appears that there is a man missing who holds the key to the situation, and who owns<br /> the majority of the mine, but he can't be found, and so our title is no good."<br /> The news depressed the spirits of all. They had been hoping that the trouble was small and temporary and that Nestor would find a way out. Now they stood to lose the mine they had struggled so hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you resist their claim?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You bet I did," replied Nestor. "I went to court over it, but the judge said though it was morally wrong to put me out, yet the others had the law on their side, and he had to decide against me.<br /> "I didn't give up even then, for I barricaded the place and defied 'em to get me out. But the sheriff came and said that was no way to do. He had the law with him, and he said it would be his duty to shoot me if I resisted. He advised going to a higher court, and so, rather than have any bloodshed I gave up, and decided to camp out here until you came. I've been here about two weeks now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then the mine's gone," remarked Jerry, sorrowfully.<br /> "We can try the courts," said Nestor, hopefully.<br /> "It would take years to settle the case," put in Mr. Snodgrass. "No, I guess you are beaten, boys."<br /> "I will not give up yet," said Jerry.<br /> "What are you going to do?" asked Ned.<br /> "I'm going to town, hire the best lawyer I can get, and see what he says. There may be a way out of this yet."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" exclaimed Bob. "I'm with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time. He hurried to the auto, and with Bob for company made the run to town in record time. He was directed to a lawyer's office, and, finding the attorney, who was a young chap, in, paid him a retainer and stated the case briefly.<br /> "I just want to know how we stand, what sort of a claim there is against our title, and what we can do to perfect it," said Jerry.<br /> "It's quite a lot of information to get at in a hurry," said the lawyer, "but I'll do my best. I'll be ready for you at four o'clock this afternoon."<br /> "I'll call for you then," went on Jerry, "and take you back to Nestor's shanty, where you can explain the whole thing to us."<br /> Then the boys, with a feeling of dread that their mine was gone forever, in spite of all they could do, went back to where the others were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVIII. - All's Well that Ends Well (237-248) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="law, health, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVIII<br /> <br /> ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL<br /> <br /> They found Mr. Bell in much the same condition as before, though Mr. Snodgrass said the wounded man's breathing was a little easier, which was a good sign.<br /> "And what about the mine?" asked the naturalist. Jerry told him the lawyer was coming.<br /> "I'm afraid it will be of little use," said the professor. "Nestor says they had a big lawyer to represent the gang, and they also have a large force in charge of the mine, taking out gold."<br /> "And it's our gold," exclaimed Jerry. "Oh, why didn't we get back sooner?"<br /> "It wouldn't have done much good," spoke Nestor. "I did all I could, but the law was on their side."<br /> "Of course, I didn't mean that you failed," Jerry hastened to add, for fear of hurting the old miner's feelings. "It's too bad, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, oil, navigation, law, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> After a somewhat gloomy dinner, which the professor tried to liven up by telling jokes and funny stories, Jerry oiled the machine, and, about two o'clock started back to town for the lawyer. He found the attorney waiting for him, with several big law books in a valise.<br /> "Any luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Not a great deal," was the answer.<br /> "Well, don't tell us until we are all together," went on Jerry. "I don't want to stand it all alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When, on arrival at Nestor's cabin, the lawyer proceeded to tell what he had learned, there were six very attentive listeners.<br /> The attorney went over the ground carefully, and told the boys, Nestor and Professor Snodgrass, much that they had already heard. How, because of a missing owner who held more than a half interest in the mine, the title was not good when the boys preëmpted it. In fact it was still the property of others, though about to lapse.<br /> "I don't understand all them legal terms," put in Nestor, "but didn't we make a good claim to the government for that mine?"<br /> "You did, as far as it went," replied the lawyer. "Uncle Sam gave you a title, but did not guarantee that some one did not have a better one, which it seems is the case."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But that gang hasn't a good title either, not if the owner of over half the shares is missing," went on Nestor.<br /> "No, but it seems, according to the records, that they have some sort of an agreement from this missing man that they are empowered to work the claim until he comes to demand his share."<br /> "If that's the case I'm for going up there and driving them out with a gun!" exclaimed Nestor. "They haven't any more right than we have, and we can at least make them go shares with us until this missing man shows up. What's the matter with attacking them to-night."<br /> "If you're going to resort to lawless means I'll have to throw up the case," said the attorney. "That is no way to talk."<br /> "Nestor doesn't mean it at all," put in Jerry. "Of course we will have no battle with that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are two ways we might proceed," the lawyer went on. "There may be more, but they are the only ones that suggest themselves to me from what time I was able to give to the case."<br /> "What would you advise?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You can apply to the courts for an injunction to prevent the working of the mine until the missing half-owner shows up."<br /> "But that would bar us as well as them," put in Jerry. <br /> "Yes, it would have that effect, if you secured the injunction, which is doubtful. It would be a long and costly litigation, I fear."<br /> "And what is the other plan?"<br /> "You might try to find the missing man, and buy him out, or make some arrangement with him. From what I can learn he and the others have quarreled and are opposed to each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the missing man?" asked Bob.<br /> "That is something on which I can not be of the least help to you," was the reply. "There is nothing to show where he is."<br /> "Then it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to search for him, and as long and costly as the injunction means," commented Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "I'm afraid it would," was the lawyer's answer.<br /> "What is the man's name?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I have it here," proceeded the attorney. "It is Mr. Well, no, that's not it. Oh yes! Here it is. Bell, that's it. Mr. Jackson Bell."<br /> "What?" fairly shouted the three boys at once.<br /> "What name?" inquired the professor, wondering if he had heard aright.<br /> "Jackson Bell," repeated the lawyer. "Why, do you know him?"<br /> "Know him?" went on Jerry, jumping up in his excitement. "Why he is in the next room this very minute! Well of all the strange pieces of luck!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they all tried to tell the lawyer at once the story of the hermit and his son, making such a jumble that the attorney had to beg them to stop, while he listened to one at a time. Finally the tale was related, and the boys and the professor as well, greatly excited, paused to see what the lawyer would say.<br /> "Then I don't see any further trouble to your getting possession of the mine," said the attorney. "If Mr. Bell is on your side, and you make a joint application to the court or even to the government agent, I am sure you will be given instant charge of the claim."<br /> "There is only one difficulty," said Mr. Snodgrass. "Mr. Bell is wounded. His mind was not strong before the shooting, and it may be altogether gone when he recovers consciousness. In that case—?"<br /> "In that case I'm afraid you are as badly off as before," finished the lawyer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door to the inner room, where Mr. Bell was in the bunk, opened, and Tommy came out, looking worried.<br /> "Is he worse, Tommy?" asked the professor.<br /> "He's acting very queer," replied the boy. "He is sitting up in bed, and is trying to get something out from under his shirt. He's talking something about a mine."<br /> "He is probably delirious," said Mr. Snodgrass. "We must have a doctor. I'm afraid it looks bad for us, boys."<br /> At that instant the form of Mr. Bell, weak and tottering, showed in the doorway. He seemed greatly excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There you are!" he cried tearing open his shirt and throwing a bundle, done up in oiled silk on the table. "There are the papers. There are the proofs to the mine. The gang did not get them after all!"<br /> "Calm yourself," spoke Mr. Snodgrass, in a soothing tone that one uses to sick children or fever patients.<br /> "I'm all right!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "Don't think I'm crazy. I was a little off my head, but the wound the bullet gave me, and the blood I lost, accomplished just what was needed. There, I tell you, are the papers proving my claim to the mine."<br /> "What mine?" asked the professor, while the others waited in anxiety for the answer.<br /> "The mine we were going to," responded the old man. "From the description you boys gave of it I recognize it as the same one I have more than a half share in. All the way up here I was trying to recall when I had been here before. I recognized the places, but my mind would not serve me. I had suffered so much that I was almost crazy. Then came the shot, and I did not know anything more, until I just woke up in that room, and remembered all about it. Now we will beat that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurrah!" cried Jerry, seizing Ned by the arms and starting to dance a hornpipe.<br /> "Are you sure you can not be mistaken about the mine?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, for it seemed hardly possible that the old hermit, whom they had rescued, should turn out to be the much-wanted missing owner.<br /> "There are the papers, you can see for yourself," replied Mr. Bell.<br /> The lawyer, at a sign from the professor, made a careful examination of the documents.<br /> "They seem to be all right," he said. "I have no doubt but that you can fully establish your claim, Mr. Bell."<br /> "It isn't my claim, sir."<br /> "Why I thought you said—"<br /> "Everything I have or own is the property of these noble boys and Professor Snodgrass," went on the former hermit. "They saved my life, and that of my son's. If I gave them a hundred mines I could not repay them."<br /> "But we do not want your share," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "It don't make any difference what you want, you've got to take it," said Mr. Bell, firmly.<br /> "We can settle that part later," put in the lawyer. "The thing to do now is to get possession of the mine. If you wish I will act for you."<br /> "Of course we want you to," said Jerry.<br /> "Very well. I will take these papers, and go to court with them. If I am successful, as I have no doubt I shall be, I will apply to the sheriff to oust the crowd that is in charge of the mine. Then you and Mr. Bell can take possession."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" fairly yelled Nestor, who was anxious to get back to the "diggings."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> The lawyer was hurried back to town in the auto. Nothing could be done that afternoon, as the court was closed. He promised to be on hand early in the morning.<br /> The boys could hardly sleep that night. Mr. Bell seemed to have fully recovered, and, beyond a slight pain where the bullet had hit him, he did not suffer. It was late when they went to bed, and somewhat late when they arose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going into town and see what's doing," said Jerry after breakfast.<br /> "So am I," cried Ned and Bob.<br /> "Better not," went on Jerry. "If I have to bring back the lawyer, and the sheriff and some of his deputies to read the riot act to the gang, I'll need all the room there is."<br /> So Jerry went off alone in the car. He did not find the lawyer in, but the attorney's clerk said he was at court.<br /> "I'll wait until he comes back," said Jerry, and he sat down in the office. Two hours later, the lawyer came in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, passenger, slowness, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "What luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "The very best. I have a peremptory order commanding that crowd to turn the mine over to your party and Mr. Bell. Come on, we'll get the sheriff and finish the thing right up."<br /> The sheriff was only too glad of a chance for some activity. He and three deputies, well armed, got into the car, and Jerry started off. To the boy the machine never seemed to move so slowly, but several times one of the deputies threatened to jump out if the auto did not slacken up a bit.<br /> Arriving at the cabin, Nestor, the two boys, and Professor Snodgrass were found anxiously waiting.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the mine!" cried Jerry, as he rapidly explained the success of the mission.<br /> "Wait till I get my gun," said Nestor.<br /> "No shooting unless we have to," warned the sheriff.<br /> Then they advanced on the mine. An eighth of a mile away they were halted by a guard. But an order from the sheriff, and a sight of the command from the court, made the guard give in, and he was sent back to the cabin, in custody of one of the deputies.<br /> Then, without any warning, the party descended on the others of the gang, who were all gathered in the main cabin at dinner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first it looked as if there was going to be trouble. Several made an attempt to get their guns, but Nestor, the sheriff, and his man, had covered them, and they saw that the game was up.<br /> "I'll read you this court order," said the sheriff.<br /> "You needn't bother," spoke the leader, whom the boys recognized as one of the men who had held Tommy a captive. Others in the gang were recognizable as men who had tried to capture Mr. Bell at Lost Lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We played a bold game, but we lost," said the leader, as he and his companions, gathering up their baggage, left the cabin, and made their way toward town. They did not go there, however,—since they feared further proceedings,—and were never heard of again.<br /> "Hurrah, now we have our mine back again!" cried Jerry. "I wonder if it is paying?"<br /> "Better than ever, by the looks of this stuff," answered Jim Nestor, picking up some newly-mined ore that lay on ground. "No wonder that crowd wanted to keep possession of the mine."<br /> There followed a general jollification. The boys got up a fine dinner, at which the sheriff, his men, and the lawyer were guests. An arrangement was made whereby Mr. Bell should retain a large interest in the mine, while the other share was divided between our friends as before. The lawyer received a generous fee, and the sheriff and his men were not forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Jerry, a week later, "we came out all right, didn't we? I presume our adventures are all over now."<br /> "Don't be too sure," put in Bob. "Something else may turn up soon." And Bob was right, as we shall learn in another volume, to be called, "The Motor Boys Afloat; Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway," a tale of land and sea.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The days to follow were busy ones for Jim Nestor and the boys. The mine was started up in better shape than ever before, new machinery put in, and extra workmen engaged. Letters were sent to the boys' folks, telling of all that had happened.<br /> "I want to say one thing," said Jerry, one day. "And that is, that it feels mighty good to be back in the United States again."<br /> "Exactly what I say," returned Ned.<br /> "Right you are," came from Chunky. He rubbed his hands together. "And as we are back, and all is well, why—er—let us have some dinner."<br /> And then, with a merry laugh at the lad who never wanted to miss a meal, the others followed Chunky to the table; and here as they sit down to a well-earned repast, we will take our departure.<br /> <br /> THE END.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Motor_Boys_Across_the_Plains;_Or,_the_Hermit_of_Lost_Lake_(Book_4)&diff=935 The Motor Boys Across the Plains; Or, the Hermit of Lost Lake (Book 4) 2026-04-13T07:39:43Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Young, Clarence"<br /> year_of_publication="1907"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/43509/pg43509-images.html"<br /> genre="Fiction"<br /> journal="The Motor Boys Across the Plains: OR THE HERMIT OF LOST LAKE"<br /> page_range="1-248"<br /> /><br /> <br /> ===Preface/Chapter I. - Ramming an Ox Cart (1-10) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model, nationality, West, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> PREFACE<br /> <br /> <br /> Dear Boys:<br /> <br /> Here it is at last—the fourth volume of "The Motor Boys Series," for which so many boys all over our land have been asking during the past year.<br /> <br /> To those who have read the other volumes in this line, this new tale needs no special introduction. To others, I would say that in the first volume, entitled, "The Motor Boys," I introduced three wide-awake American lads, Ned, Bob and Jerry, and told how they first won a bicycle race and then a great motor cycle contest,—the prize in the latter being a big touring car.<br /> <br /> Having obtained the automobile, the lads went west, and in the second volume, called, "The Motor Boys Overland," were related the particulars of a struggle for a valuable mine, a struggle which tested the boys' bravery to the utmost.<br /> <br /> While in the west the boys heard of a strange buried city in Mexico, and, in company with a learned college professor, journeyed to that locality. The marvellous adventures met with are told in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> Leaving the buried city, the boys started again for the locality of the mine, and in the present tale are told the particulars of some strange things that happened on the way. A portion of this story is based on facts, related to me while on an automobiling tour in the west, by an old ranchman who had participated in some of the occurrences.<br /> With best wishes, and hoping we shall meet again, I leave you to peruse<br /> the pages which follow.<br /> <div style='text-align: right;'>CLARENCE YOUNG.</div><br /> <i>March 1, 1907.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car part, technology, car model, passenger, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> THE MOTOR BOYS ACROSS THE PLAINS<br /> <br /> CHAPTER I<br /> <br /> RAMMING AN OX CART<br /> <br /> Mingled with the frantic tooting of an automobile horn, there was the shrill shrieking of the brake-band as it gripped the wheel hub in a friction clutch.<br /> "Hi, Bob! Look out for that ox cart ahead!" exclaimed one of three sturdy youths in the touring car.<br /> "I should say so! Jam on the brakes, Bob!" put in the tallest of the trio, while an elderly man, who was in the rear seat with one of the boys, glanced carelessly up to see what was the trouble.<br /> "I have got the brake on, Jerry!" was the answer the lad at the steering wheel made. "Can't you and Ned hear it screeching!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, topography, nationality, animal, pedestrian, accident, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was speeding down a steep hill, seemingly headed straight toward a solitary Mexican who was moving slowly along in an antiquated ox-drawn vehicle.<br /> "Then why don't she slow up? You've got the power off, haven't you?"<br /> "Of course! Do you take me for an idiot!" yelled Bob, or, as his friends sometimes called him, because of his fatness, "Chunky." "Of course I've shut down, but something seems to be the matter with the brake pedal."<br /> "Have you tried the emergency?" asked Ned.<br /> "Sure!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, onomatopoeia, nationality, speed, animal, pedestrian, risk, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Toot! Toot! Toot!<br /> Again the horn honked out a warning to the Mexican, but he did not seem to hear.<br /> The big red touring car was gathering speed, in spite of the fact that it was not under power, and it bore down ever closer to the ox cart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, sound, metaphor, nationality, pedestrian, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "Cut out the muffler and let him hear the explosions," suggested Jerry.<br /> Bob did so, and the sounds that resulted were not unlike a Gatling gun battery going into action. This time the native heard.<br /> Glancing back, he gave a frightened whoop and jabbed the sharp goad into the ox. The animal turned squarely across the road, thus shutting off what small chance there might have been of the auto gliding past on either side.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, passenger, driver, nationality, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going to hit him sure!" yelled Ned. "I say Professor, you'd better hold on to your specimens. There's going to be all sorts of things doing in about two shakes of a rattlesnake's tail!"<br /> "What's that about a rattlesnake?" asked the old man, who, looking up from a box of bugs and stones on his lap, seemed aware, for the first time, of the danger that threatened.<br /> "Hi there! Get out of the way! Move the cart! Shake a leg! Pull to one side and let us have half the road!" yelled Jerry as a last desperate resort, standing up and shouting at the bewildered and frightened Mexican.<br /> "Oh pshaw! He don't understand United States!" cried Ned.<br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry ruefully.<br /> "Vamoose, is the proper word for telling a Mexican to get out of the road," suggested the professor calmly. "Perhaps if you shouted that at him he might—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car part, accident, driver, speed, scenery, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> What effect trying the right word might have had the boys had no chance of learning, for, the next instant, in spite of Bob's frantic working at the brake, the auto shot right at the ox cart. By the merest good luck, more than anything else, for Bob could steer neither to the right nor left, because the narrow road was hemmed in by high banks, the machine struck the smaller vehicle a glancing blow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, animal, nationality, pedestrian, health, passenger, driver, dust"><br /> <poem><br /> The force of the impact skidded the auto on two wheels up the side of the embankment, where, poking the front axle into a stump served to bring the car to a stop. The car was slewed around to one side, the ox was yanked from its feet, and, as the cart overturned, the Mexican, yelling voluble Spanish, pitched out into the road.<br /> Nor did the boys and the professor come off scathless, for the sudden stopping of their machine piled the occupants on the rear seat up in a heap on the floor of the tonneau, while Bob and Jerry, who were in front, went sprawling into the dust near the native.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, nationality, animal, dust, accident, metaphor, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds there was no sound save the yelling of the Mexican and the bellowing of the ox. Then the cloud of dust slowly drifted away, and Bob picked himself up, gazing ruefully about.<br /> "This is a pretty kettle of fish," he remarked.<br /> "I should say it was several of 'em," agreed Jerry, trying to get some of the dust from his mouth, ears and nose. "You certainly hit him, Chunky!"<br /> "It wasn't my fault! How did I know the brake wasn't going to work just the time it was most needed?"<br /> "Is anybody killed?" asked the professor, looking up over the edge of the tonneau, and not releasing his hold of several boxes which contained his specimens.<br /> "Don't seem to be, nor any one badly hurt, unless it's the ox or the auto," said Ned, taking a look. "The Mexican seems to be mad about something, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the native had arisen from his prostrate position and was shaking his fist at the Motor Boys and the professor, meanwhile, it would appear from his language, calling them all the names to which he could lay his tongue.<br /> "I guess he wants Bob's scalp," said Jerry with a smile.<br /> "It was as much his fault as mine," growled Chunky. "If he had pulled to one side, I could easily have passed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="nationality, health, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The Mexican, brushing the dust from his clothes, approached the auto party, and continued his rapid talk in Spanish. The boys, who had been long enough in Mexico to pick up considerable of the language, gathered that the native demanded two hundred dollars for the damage to himself, the cart and the ox, as well as for the injury to his dignity and feelings.<br /> "You'd better talk to him, Professor," suggested Jerry. "Offer him what you think is right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thereupon Professor Snodgrass, in mild terms explained how the accident had happened, saying it was no fault of the auto party.<br /> The Mexican, in language more forcible than polite, reiterated his demand, and announced that unless the money was instantly forthcoming, he would go to the nearest alcade and lodge a complaint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, nationality, animal, health, tree, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers knew what this meant, with the endless delays of Mexican justice, the summoning of witnesses and petty officers.<br /> "I wish there was some way out," said Jerry.<br /> As the Mexican had not been hurt, nor his cart or ox been damaged, there was really no excuse for the boys giving in to his demands.<br /> "Let's give him a few dollars and skip out," suggested Ned. "He can't catch us."<br /> This was easier said than done, for the auto was jammed up against a tree stump on a bank, and the ox cart, which, the native by this time had righted, blocked the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, all unexpectedly, there came a diversion that ended matters. Professor Snodgrass, with his usual care for his beloved specimens before himself, was examining the various boxes containing them. He opened one containing his latest acquisition of horned toads, big lizards, rattlesnakes and bats. The reptiles crawled, jumped and flew out, for they were all alive.<br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" exclaimed the Mexican as he caught sight of the repulsive creatures. "They are crazy Americanos!" he yelled.<br /> With a flying leap he jumped into his ox cart, and with goad and voice he urged the animal on to such advantage that, a few minutes later, all that was to be seen of him was a cloud of dust in the distance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, tree, accident, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> "Good riddance," said Bob. "Now to see how much our machine is damaged."<br /> Fortunately the auto had struck a rotten stump, and though with considerable force, the impact was not enough to cause any serious damage. Under the direction of Jerry the boys managed to get the machine back into the road, where they let it stand while they went to a near-by spring for a drink of water.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> While they are quenching their thirst an opportunity will be taken to present them to the reader in proper form.<br /> The three boys were Bob Baker, son of Andrew Baker, a banker, Ned Slade, the only heir of Aaron Slade, a department store proprietor, and Jerry Hopkins, the son of a widow. All three were about seventeen years of age, and lived in the city of Cresville, not far from Boston, Mass. Their companion was Professor Uriah Snodgrass, a learned man with many letters after his name, signifying the societies and institutions to which he belonged. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, risk, equipment, speed, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Those who have read the first book of this series, entitled, "The Motor Boys," need no introduction to the three lads. Sufficient to say that some time before this story opens they had taken part in some exciting bicycle races, the winning of which resulted in the acquiring of Motor cycles for each of them.<br /> On these machines they had had much fun and had also many adventures befall them. Taking part in a big race meet, one of them won an event which gave him a chance to get a big touring automobile, the same car in which they were now speeding through Mexico.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their adventures in the auto are set forth at length in the second volume of the series entitled, "The Motor Boys Overland," which tells of a tour across the country, in which they had to contend with their old enemy, Noddy Nixon, and his gang. Eventually the boys and Jim Nestor, a miner whom they befriended, gained some information of a long lost gold mine in Arizona.<br /> They made a dash for this and won it against heavy odds, after a fight with their enemies. The mine turned out well, and the boys and their friends made considerable money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The spirit of adventure would not drown in them. Just before reaching the diggings they made the acquaintance of Professor Snodgrass, who told a wonderful story of a buried city. How the boys found this ancient town of old Mexico, and the many adventures that befell them there, are told<br /> in the third book, called "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> Therein is related the strange happenings under ground, of the sunken road, the old temples, the rich treasures and the fights with the bandits. Also there is told of the rescue of the Mexican girl Maximina, and how she was taken from a band of criminals and restored to her friends.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, animal, road condition, safety, nationality"><br /> <poem><br /> These happenings brought the boys and the professor to the City of Mexico, where the auto was given a good overhauling, to prepare it for the trip back to the United States.<br /> The boys and the professor, the latter bearing with him his beloved specimens, started back for civilization, keeping to the best and most frequented roads, to avoid the brigands, with whom they had had more than one adventure on their first trip. It was while on this homeward journey that the incident of the Mexican and the ox cart befell them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="equipment, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Having slaked their thirst the boys and the professor went back to the auto where, gathering up the belongings that had become scattered from the upset, they prepared to resume their journey.<br /> "Get in; I'll run her for a while," said Jerry.<br /> "One minute! Stand still! Don't move if you value my happiness!" exclaimed the professor suddenly, dropping down on his hands and knees, and creeping forward through the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter II. - A Nest of Serpents (11-19) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="risk, animal, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER II<br /> <br /> A NEST OF SERPENTS<br /> <br /> "What is it; a rattlesnake?" asked Bob, in a hoarse whisper.<br /> "Or a Gila monster?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Quiet! No noise!" cautioned the professor. "I see a specimen worth ten dollars at the lowest calculation. I'll have him in a minute."<br /> "Is it a bug?" asked Chunky.<br /> "There! I have him!" yelled the scientist, making a sudden dive forward, sliding on his face, and clutching his hand deep into the grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As it happened there was a little puddle of water at that point, and the professor, in the excess of his zeal, pitched right into it.<br /> "Oh! Oh my! Oh dear! Phew! Wow! Help! Save me!" he exclaimed a moment later, as he tried to get out of the slough.<br /> The boys hurried to his aid, but the mud was soft and the professor had gone head first into the ooze, which held fast to him as though it was quicksand.<br /> "Get him by the heels and yank him out or he'll smother!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other boys followed his advice, and, in a little while the bug-collector was pulled from his uncomfortable and dangerous position. As he rolled about in the grass to get rid of some of the mud, he kept his right hand tightly closed.<br /> "What's the matter, are your fingers hurt?" asked Bob.<br /> "No sir, my fingers are not hurt!" snapped the professor, with the faintest tinge of impatience, which might be excused on the part of a man who has just dived into a mud hole. "My fingers are not hurt in the least. What I have here is one of the rarest specimens of the Mexican mosquito I have ever seen. I would go ten miles to get one."<br /> "I guess you're welcome to 'em," commented Jerry. "We don't want any."<br /> "That's because you don't understand the value of this specimen," replied the professor. "This mosquito will add to my fame, and I shall devote one whole chapter of my four books to it. This indeed has been a lucky day for me."<br /> "And unlucky for the rest of us," said Bob, as he thought of the spill.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, pleasure, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> It was found that a few minor repairs had to be made to the auto, and when these were completed it was nearly noon.<br /> "I vote we have dinner before we start again," spoke Bob.<br /> "There goes Chunky!" exclaimed Ned. "Never saw him when he wasn't thinking of something to eat!"<br /> "Well, I guess if the truth was known you are just as hungry as I am," expostulated Chunky. "This Mexican air gives me a good appetite."<br /> Bob's plan was voted a good one, so, with supplies and materials carried in the auto for camping purposes, a fire was soon built, and hot chocolate was being made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sick of canned stuff and those endless eggs, frijoles and tortillas," complained Bob. "I'd like a good beefsteak and some fish and bread and butter."<br /> "I don't know about the other things, but I think we could get some fish over in that little brook," said the professor, pointing to a stream that wound about the base of a near-by hill.<br /> A minute later the boys had their hooks and lines out. Poles were cut from trees, and, with some pieces of canned meat for bait they went fishing. They caught several large white fish, which the professor named in long Latin terms, and which, he said, were good to eat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while a savory smell filled the air, for Ned, who volunteered to act as cook, had put the fish on to broil with some strips of bacon, and soon there was a dinner fit for any king that ever wielded a scepter.<br /> Sipping their chocolate, the boys and the professor watched the sun slowly cross the zenith as they reclined in the shade of the big trees on either side of the road. Then each one half fell asleep in the lazy atmosphere.<br /> Jerry was the first to rouse up. He looked and saw it would soon be dusk, and then he awakened the others.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll have to travel, unless we want to sleep out in the open," he said.<br /> Thereupon they made preparations to leave, the professor gathering up his specimens, including the Mexican mosquito that had caused him such labor.<br /> "I think we'll head straight for the Rio Grande," said Jerry. "Once we get into Texas I expect we'll have some news from Nestor, as I wrote him to let us know how the mine was getting on, and, also, to inform us if he needed any help."<br /> "I'll be glad to see old Jim again," said Bob.<br /> "So will I," chimed in Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The auto was soon chug-chugging over the road, headed toward the States, and the occupants were engaged with their thoughts. It was rapidly growing dusk, and the chief anxiety was to reach some town or village where they could spend the night. For, though they were used to staying in the open, they did not care to, now that the rainy season was coming on, when fevers were prevalent.<br /> The sun sank slowly to rest behind the big wooded hills as the auto glided along, and, almost before the boys realized it, darkness was upon them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Better light the lamps," suggested Ned. "No telling what we'll run into on this road. No use colliding with more ox carts, if we can help it."<br /> "I'll light up," volunteered Bob. "It will give me a chance to stretch my legs. I'm all cramped up from sitting still so long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry brought the big machine to a stop while Bob alighted and proceeded to illuminate the big search lamp and the smaller ones that burned oil. He had just started the acetylene gas aglow when, glancing forward he gave a cry of alarm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it?" cried Jerry, seeing that something was wrong. "Is it a mountain lion?"<br /> "It's worse!" cried Bob in a frightened voice.<br /> "What?"<br /> "A regular den of snakes! The horrible things are stretched right across the road, and we can't get past. Ugh! There are some whoppers!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, night, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Bob, who hated, above all creatures a snake, made a jump into the auto.<br /> "There's about a thousand of 'em!" he cried with a shudder.<br /> "Great!" exclaimed the professor. "I will have a chance to select some fine specimens. This is a rare fortune!"<br /> "Don't go out there!" gasped Bob. "You'll be bitten to death!"<br /> Just then there sounded on the stillness of the night a strange, whirring buzz. At the sound of it the professor started.<br /> "Rattlers!" he whispered. "I guess none of us will get out. Probably moccasins, cotton-mouths and vipers! There must be thousands of them!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, risk, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> As he spoke he looked over the side of the car, and the exclamation he gave caused the boys to glance toward the ground. There they beheld a sight that filled them with terror.<br /> As the professor had said, the ground was literally covered with the snakes. The reptiles seemed to be moving in a vast body to some new location. There were big snakes and little ones, round fat ones, and long thin ones, and of many hues.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, car part, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned. "Start the machine, Jerry!"<br /> "No! Don't!" called the professor. "You may kill a few, but the revolving wheels of the auto will fling some live ones up among us, and I have no desire to be bitten by any of these reptiles. They are too deadly. So keep the car still until they have passed. They are probably getting ready to go into winter quarters, or whatever corresponds to that in Mexico."<br /> "It will be lucky if they don't take a notion to climb up and investigate the machine and us," put in Jerry. "I have—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, animal, health"><br /> <poem><br /> He gave a sudden start, for, at that instant one of the ugly reptiles, which had twined itself around the wheel spokes, reared its ugly head up, over the side of the front seat, and hissed, right in Jerry's face.<br /> "Here's one now!" the boy exclaimed as he made a motion to brush the snake aside.<br /> "Don't touch it as you value your life!" yelled the professor. "It's a diamond-backed rattler, and one of the most deadly!"<br /> "Here is another coming up on my side," called Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there are some coming up here!" shouted Ned. "They'll overwhelm us if we don't look out!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a time it seemed a serious matter. The snakes began twining up the sides of the car, and, though most of them dropped back to the ground again, a few maintained their position, and seemed to exhibit anger at the sight of the boys and the professor.<br /> "What shall we do?" asked Bob. "We can't run ahead, or go backward, and, if we stay here we're likely to be killed by the snakes."<br /> Jerry, who was feeling around in the bottom of the car for his rifle, gave a cry as his hand came in contact with something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, equipment, animal, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Get bitten?" asked the professor in alarm.<br /> "No, but I found this lariat," said Jerry in excited tones.<br /> "Are you going to lasso the snakes?" asked Ned, wondering if Jerry had gone crazy.<br /> "No, but you see this lariat is made of horse hair, and I think I can keep the snakes away with it."<br /> "How; by shaking it at 'em?"<br /> "No. I read in some book that snakes hated horse hair, and would never cross even a small ring of it."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "Well, if I run this lariat all around the auto the snakes will not cross it to come to us. Then we can stay here until they all disappear."<br /> "Good!" exclaimed Ned. "That's the ticket!"<br /> The reptiles that had climbed up the wheels had gone from sight. With the help of Ned and Bob, Jerry began to spread the horse-hair lariat in a circle about the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter III. - The Deserted Cabin (20-29) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, skill, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER III<br /> <br /> THE DESERTED CABIN<br /> <br /> In a few minutes the hair rope was all about the auto, spread out on the ground in an irregular circle. As the boys dropped it over the sides of the car the lariat struck several of the big snakes, and the reptiles shrunk away as though scorched by fire.<br /> "They're afraid of it all right!" exclaimed Ned. "I guess it will do the business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Sure enough, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the snakes to clear out of the vicinity of the hair rope. They glided off by scores, and soon there was a clear space all about the car, where, before, there had been hundreds of the crawling things.<br /> "Shake the lasso," suggested Bob, "and maybe it will scare them farther off."<br /> "Yes and we might try shooting a few now they are at a safe distance," put in Ned.<br /> "It's too bad I can't get some specimens," lamented the professor, "but I suppose you had better try to get rid of them."<br /> So Jerry, who had retained one end of the long lasso vibrated it rapidly, and, as it wiggled in sinuous folds toward the reptiles they made haste to get out of the way. Then Bob and Ned opened fire, killing several. In a little while there were no snakes to be seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, pleasure, risk, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we can go ahead now," said Jerry. "Who'll crank up the car? Don't all speak at once."<br /> "My arm is a bit sore," spoke Ned, rubbing his elbow.<br /> "Then you do it, Chunky," asked the steersman.<br /> "I think I have a stone in my foot," said Bob, making a wry face.<br /> "Ha! Ha!" laughed Jerry. "Why don't you two own up and say you're afraid there's a stray rattler or two under the machine, and you think it may bite you?"<br /> The two boys grinned sheepishly, and both made a motion to get out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, car part, passenger, dust, gasoline, driver, skill, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stay where you are," called the professor preparing to leave from the side door of the tonneau. "I'm used to snakes. I don't believe there are any left, but if there are I want them for specimens. I'll crank the car."<br /> So he got out and peered anxiously under the body, while the boys waited in anxiety.<br /> "No," called the scientist, in discouraged tones, "there are none left."<br /> He crawled out, covered with dust, which fact he did not seem to mind, and then turned the crank that sent the fly wheel over. Jerry turned on the gasolene and threw in the spark, and, the next instant the familiar chug-chug of the engine told that the auto was ready to bear the boys and Professor Snodgrass on their way. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, river, pleasure, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> They were headed on as straight a road as they could find to the Rio Grande, but, because of the conditions of the thoroughfares it would be several days before they could cross the big river and get into Texas. Their main concern now was to reach some place where there was shelter for the night.<br /> "Keep your eyes peeled for villages," called Ned. "We don't want to pass any. I think a good bed would go fine now."<br /> "A supper would go better," put in Bob.<br /> "Oh, of course! It wouldn't be Chunky if he didn't say something about eating," remarked Jerry with a laugh. "But there seems to be something ahead. It's a house at all events, and probably is the mark of the outskirts of the village."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, night, car part, nationality, parking, passenger, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> On the left side of the road, about a hundred yards ahead they saw an adobe, or mud hut. They could see no signs of life about in the half-darkness, illuminated as it was by the powerful search light, but this gave them no concern, as they knew the native Mexicans retired early.<br /> When they came opposite the hut Jerry brought the machine to a stop, and he and the other boys jumped out. The professor, who, as usual was arranging some specimens in one of the many small boxes he carried, remained in the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" shouted Bob. "Is any one home? Show a light. Can we get a supper here?"<br /> "Why don't you ask for a bed too?" inquired Ned.<br /> "Supper first," replied Chunky, rubbing his stomach with a reflective air.<br /> No replies came to the hail of the boys, and, in some wonder they approached nearer to the hut. Then they saw that the door was ajar, and that the cabin bore every appearance of being deserted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody home, I guess," said Jerry.<br /> "No, and there hasn't been for some time," added Ned.<br /> "Maybe there's a place to build a fire where we can cook a good meal," put in Bob, whereat his companions laughed.<br /> They went into the hut, and found, that, while it was in good condition, and furnished as well as the average native Mexican's abode, there was no sign of life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, car part, oil, equipment, night, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> "Might as well make ourselves to home," said Ned. "Come on in, professor," he called. "We'll stay here all night. No use traveling further when there is such a good shelter right at hand."<br /> It was now quite dark, and the boys brought in the two oil lamps from the auto, as well as a lantern, to illuminate the place. As they did so they disturbed a colony of bats which flew out with a great flutter of wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a charcoal stove, and plenty of fuel," said Bob, as he looked at the hearth. "Now we can cook something."<br /> "Well, seeing you are so fond of eating, we'll let you get the meal," said Jerry, and it was voted that Chunky should perform this office.<br /> Meanwhile the others brought in blankets to make beds on the frame work of cane that formed the sleeping quarters of whoever had last lived in the hut.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather queer sort of a shack," remarked Jerry, as he sat down in a corner on a pile of rugs. "Seems to have been left suddenly. They didn't even stop to take the dishes, and here is the remains of a meal," and he pointed to some dried frijoles in one corner of the main room or kitchen.<br /> "Perhaps the people who lived here were frightened away," came from Ned.<br /> "Well I'm tired enough not to let anything short of a regiment of soldiers in action scare me awake to-night," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Under Bob's direction supper was soon ready, and the travelers sat down to a good, if rather limited meal as far as variety went. There were no dishes to be washed, for they ate off wooden plates, of which they had a quantity and which they threw away after each meal. Then, after a good fire had been built on the hearth—for the night was likely to be chilly—the boys and the professor wrapped themselves up in their blankets and soon fell asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry must have been slumbering for several hours when he suddenly awakened as he heard a loud noise.<br /> "Who's there?" he called involuntarily, sitting up.<br /> It was so dark that at first he could distinguish nothing, but, as his eyes became used to the blackness he managed to make out, by the glow of the fire, a shadowy figure gliding toward the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" called the boy sharply, feeling under the rolled up blanket that served for a pillow, for his revolver. "Stop or I'll fire!"<br /> The shadowy figure halted. Then Jerry saw it drop down on all fours and begin to creep toward him. Though he was not a coward the boy felt his heart beating strangely, and he had a queer, creepy sensation down his spine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned, who was awakened by Jerry's voice.<br /> "Get your revolver, quick!" called Jerry. "There is some one in the hut besides ourselves! Look over by the fire!"<br /> "I see it! Shall I shoot?" asked Ned.<br /> There came a sudden crash, followed by a wild yell.<br /> "Help! Help! I'm killed! They are murdering me!" shouted Bob's voice. "They are choking me to death!"<br /> Bang! went Ned's gun. Fortunately it was aimed at the ceiling, or some one might have been hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" inquired the professor, who only just then awoke.<br /> "Robbers!" yelled Bob.<br /> "Brigands!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "Some one is in the cabin!" cried Jerry.<br /> By this time he had managed to creep over toward the fire, on which he threw some light wood. The glowing embers caught it, and as the blaze flared up it revealed a big monkey tangled up amid the folds of Bob's blanket, while Chunky was buried somewhere beneath the pile. The beast was struggling wildly to escape, but Bob, in his terror, had grabbed it by a leg.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop your noise!" commanded Jerry. "You're not hurt, Chunky!"<br /> "Are you sure they haven't killed me?" asked Bob, releasing his hold on the beast, which, with a wild chatter of fear, fled from the hut.<br /> "You ought to be able to give the best evidence on that score," said Jerry, as he lighted one of the lamps.<br /> "The fellow tried to choke me," sputtered Bob.<br /> "I guess the poor beast was as badly scared as you were," remarked the professor. "It was probably attracted in here by the light and warmth. Well, we seem bound to run up against excitement, night as well as day."<br /> "The monkey must have knocked something over," said Jerry. "I was awakened by the sound of something falling."<br /> They looked and saw that the beast had tried to eat the remains of the supper, and had upset a big pot.<br /> "I was sure it was a man, at first," explained Jerry, "and when I saw it go down and start over toward me I was afraid it was some of those Mexican brigands that traveled with Vasco Bilette and Noddy Nixon, when those rascals were on our trail."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was some time before the excitement caused by the monkey's visit died down sufficiently to allow the travelers to go to sleep again. It was morning when they awoke, and prepared to get breakfast.<br /> "We need some water to make coffee," said Jerry, who had agreed to get the morning meal. "As chief cook and bottle washer I delegate Bob to find some. Take the pail in the auto."<br /> Bob started for the receptacle, and, as he reached the door of the hut he gave a cry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry and Ned.<br /> "There's a man out here," replied Bob.<br /> "Well, he won't bite you," said Jerry. "Who is he?"<br /> "Pardon, senors," called a voice, and then, into the hut staggered a Mexican, who bore evidences of having passed through a hard fight. His face was cut and bruised, one arm hung limply at his side, and his clothing was torn.<br /> "What's the matter?" cried Jerry.<br /> Before the stranger could reply he had fallen forward in a faint.<br /> "Bring some water! Quick!" called Ned.<br /> "Let me see to him! I have a little liquor here!" exclaimed the professor, kneeling down beside the prostrate form.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IV. - News from the Mine (30-38) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="river, night, nationality, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IV<br /> <br /> NEWS FROM THE MINE<br /> <br /> By the use of the strong stimulant the Mexican was revived. His eyes opened, and he sat up, muttering something in Spanish which the boys could not catch.<br /> The professor, however, made reply, and, at the words the stranger seemed to brighten up. He drank some water, and then, at the suggestion of Mr. Snodgrass the boys brought him some food, which the native ate as if he had fasted for a week.<br /> His hunger satisfied, he began to talk rapidly to the professor, who listened attentively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" asked Jerry at length.<br /> "It seems that the poor man lives in this hut," explained the scientist. "Night before last some robbers came in, took nearly everything he had and beat him. Then, driving him into the forest they left him. Only just now did he dare to venture back, fearing to find his enemies in possession of his home. He is weak from lack of food and from the treatment he received."<br /> The boys felt sorry for the Mexican, and, at Jerry's suggestion they gave him a sum of money, which, while it was small enough to the travelers, meant a great deal to the native. He poured forth voluble thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, nationality, navigation, river, animal, night, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As the boys and the professor were anxious to get under way, a start was made as soon as it was found that the native was not badly hurt, and that he was able to summon help from friends in a near-by village if necessary. With final leave-takings the travelers started off.<br /> For several days and nights they journeyed north, toward the Rio Grande, which river separated them from the United States. Once they crossed that they would be in Texas.<br /> "And we can't get there any too soon," remarked Bob, one morning after a sleepless night, passed in the open, during which innumerable fleas attacked the travelers.<br /> It was toward dusk, one evening, about a week after having left the City of Mexico that the boys and the professor found themselves on a road, which, upon inquiry led to a small Mexican town, on the bank of the Rio Grande, nearly opposite Eagle Pass, Texas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we cross over to-night or wait until morning?" asked the professor of the boys. "Probably it would be better to wait until daylight. I could probably gather a few more specimens then."<br /> This was something of which the scientist, who rejoiced in such letters as A.M.; Ph.D.; M.D.; F. R. G. S.; A. G. S., etc., after his name, all indicating some college honor conferred upon him, never seemed to tire. He was making a collection for his own college, as well as gathering data for four large books, which, some day, he intended to issue.<br /> "I'd rather get over on our land if we can," said Ned, and he seemed to voice the sentiments of the others. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, rural, animal, risk, car part, gasoline, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided, somewhat against the professor's wish, to run the automobile on the big flat-bottomed scow, which served as a ferry, and proceed across the stream.<br /> Quite a crowd of villagers came out to see the auto as it chug-chugged up to the ferry landing, and not a few of the children and dogs were in danger of being run over until Ned, who was steering, cut out the muffler, and the explosions of the gasolene, unconfined by any pipes, made so much noise that all except the grown men were frightened away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was no one at the ferry house, and after diligent inquiries it was learned that the captain and crew of the boat had gone off to a dance about five miles away.<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay on this side after all," remarked the professor. "I think—"<br /> What he thought he did not say, for just then he happened to catch sight of something on the shoulder of one of the Mexicans, who had gathered in a fringe about the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Stand still, my dear man!" called the professor, as with cat-like tread he crept toward the native.<br /> "Diabalo! Santa Maria! Carramba!" muttered the man, thinking, evidently, that the old scientist was out of his wits.<br /> "Don't move! Please don't move!" pleaded Mr. Snodgrass, forgetting in his excitement that his hearer could not understand his language. "There is a beautiful specimen of a Mexican katy-did on your coat. If I get it I will have a specimen worth at least thirty dollars!"<br /> He made a sudden motion. The Mexican mistook the import of it, and, seemingly thinking he was about to be assaulted, raised his hand in self defense, and aimed a blow at the professor.<br /> It was only a glancing one, but it knocked the scientist down, and he fell into the road.<br /> "There, the katy-did got away after all," Mr. Snodgrass exclaimed, not seeming to mind his personal mishap in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This time the professor spoke in Spanish. The Mexican understood, and was profuse in his apologies. He conversed rapidly with his companions, and, all at once there was a wild scramble after katy-dids. So successful was the hunt that the professor was fairly burdened with the insects. He took as many as he needed, and thanked his newly found friends for their efforts.<br /> Matters quieted down after a bit. Darkness fell rapidly and, the Mexican on whom the professor had seen the katy-did invited the travelers to dine with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He proved to be one of the principal men of the village, and his house, though not large, was well fitted up. The boys and the professor enjoyed the best meal they had eaten since leaving the City of Mexico.<br /> "Do me the honor to spend the night here," said the Mexican, after the meal.<br /> "Thank you, if it will not disturb your household arrangements, we will," replied the professor. "We must make an early start, however, and cross the river the first thing in the morning."<br /> "It will be impossible," replied Senor Gerardo, their host.<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Because to-morrow starts the Feast of San Juarez, which lasts for three days, and not a soul in town, including the ferry-master, will work in that time."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "If you do not cross to-night you will not be able to make the passage until the end of the week," was the answer.<br /> "Then let's start to-night," spoke Jerry. "We went over the Rio Grande after dark once before."<br /> "Yes, and a pretty mess we made of it," said Ned, referring to the collision they had with the house-boat, as told of in "The Motor Boys in Mexico."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought they said the ferry-master was away to a dance," put in Bob.<br /> "He is, Senor," replied their host, who managed to understand the boy's poor Spanish. "However, if he knew the Americanos wanted him, and would go for him in their big marvelous—fire-spitting wagon, and—er—that is if they offered him a small sum, he might be prevailed upon to leave the<br /> dance."<br /> "Let's try it, at all events," suggested Jerry. "I'm anxious to get over the line and into the United States. A stay of several days may mean one of a week. When these Mexicans get feasting they don't know when to stop."<br /> He spoke in English, so as not to offend their kind friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river, animal, slowness, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> It was arranged that Jerry and Senor Gerardo should go in the auto for the ferry-master, and summon him to the river with his men, who could come on their fast ponies.<br /> This was done, and, though the master of the boat demurred at leaving the pleasures of the dance, he consented when Jerry casually showed a gold-piece. He and his men were soon mounted and galloped along, Jerry running the auto slowly to keep pace with them. The five miles were quickly covered and, while half the population of the village came out to see the strange machine ferried over, the boys and the professor bade farewell to the country where they had gone through so many strange adventures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="A"><br /> <poem><br /> It was nearly ten o'clock when the big flat-bottomed boat grounded on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande.<br /> "Hurrah for the United States!" exclaimed Bob. "Now I can get a decent meal without having to swallow red peppers, onions and chocolate!"<br /> "There goes Chunky again," laughingly complained Ned. "No sooner does he land than he wants to feed his stomach. I believe if he had been with Christopher Columbus the first thing he would have inquired about on landing at San Salvador would be what the Indians had good to eat."<br /> "Oh you're as bad as I am, every bit!" said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, rural, plains, animal, pedestrian, South"><br /> <poem><br /> Eagle's Pass, where the travelers landed, was a typical Texas town, with what passed for a hotel, a store and a few houses where the small population lived. It was on the edge of the border prairies and the outlying districts were occupied by cattle ranches.<br /> Nearly all, if not quite all, of the male population came down to the dock to see the unusual sight of a big touring automobile on the ferry boat. Many were the comments made by the ranchmen and herders.<br /> After much pulling and hauling the car was rolled from the big scow, and the travelers, glad to feel that they were once more in their own country, began to think of a place to spend the night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the nearest hotel?" asked Jerry of a man in the crowd.<br /> "Ain't but one, stranger, an' it's right in front of you," was the reply, as the cowboy pointed to a small, one story building across the street from the river front.<br /> "Is Professor Driedgrass in that bunch?" asked a voice as the travelers were contemplating the hostelry. "If he is I have a letter for him."<br /> "I am Professor Snodgrass," replied the scientist, looking toward the man who had last spoken.<br /> "Beg your pardon, Professor Snodgrass. I kinder got my brands mixed," the stranger went on. "Anyhow I'm th' postmaster here, an' I've been holdin' a letter for ye most a week. It says it's to be delivered to a man with three boys an' a choo-choo wagon, an' that description fits you."<br /> "Where's it from?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Come in a letter to me, from a feller named Nestor, up at a place in the mining section," was the reply. "Th' letter to me said you might likely pass this way on your journey back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter V. - Trouble Ahead (39-45) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="river,"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER V<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AHEAD<br /> <br /> "I remember now, I did write to Nestor, telling him we were about to start back, and would probably cross the river at this place," spoke the professor. "I had forgotten all about it."<br /> "Well, here's your letter," said the postmaster. "Now allow me to welcome you to our city, which I do in the name of the Mayor—which individual you see in me—and the Common Council, which consists of Pete Blaston, only he ain't here, in consequent of bein' locked up for disturbin' th' peace an' quiet of the community by shootin' a Greaser."<br /> "Glad to meet you, I am sure," replied the scientist politely, as he received the letter from the dual official.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "What is the news from Nestor?" asked Jerry anxiously. "Is the mine all right?"<br /> "I'll tell you right away," replied Mr. Snodgrass, as, by the light of the gas lantern on the auto he read the letter.<br /> As he glanced rapidly over the pages his face took on an anxious look.<br /> "Is there anything wrong?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is indeed," replied the professor gravely. "The letter was written over a week ago, and, among other things Nestor says there is likely to be trouble over the mine."<br /> "What kind? Is Noddy Nixon trying to get it away from us again?" asked Jerry. <br /> "No," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "It appears our title is not as good as it might be. There is one of the former owners of the land where the mine is located who did not sign the deed. He was missing when the transfer was made, but Nestor did not know this, so there is a cloud on our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I thought we claimed the land from the government, and were the original owners," put in Ned.<br /> "It seems that a company of men owned the mine before we did, but they sold out to Nestor and some of his friends. They all signed the deed but this one man, and now some one has learned of this, and seeks to take the mine, on the theory that they have as good a claim to the holding as<br /> we have."<br /> "I should say that was trouble," sighed Bob. "To think of losing what we worked so hard to get!"<br /> "Well, there's no use crossing a bridge until you come to it," Professor Snodgrass went on. "Nestor and his friends are in possession yet, and that, you know, is nine of the ten points of the law."<br /> "Then if we can't do anything right away I move we have something to eat," suggested Bob.<br /> "It's a good suggestion," agreed the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had drawn a little to one side from the crowd of townspeople while talking about the letter from Nestor, but, having decided there was nothing to be done at present, they moved toward the hotel.<br /> "I reckon I've got some more mail for your outfit, Professor Hayseed—er I beg yer pardon—Snodgrass," said the postmaster-mayor. "There's letters fer chaps named Baker, Slade and Hopkins. Nestor sent 'em along with that other," and the dual official handed over three envelopes.<br /> "They're from home!" cried the boys in a chorus. And in the glare of oil lamps on the porch of the hotel they read the communications.<br /> The missives contained nothing but good news, to the effect that all the loved ones were well. Each one inquired anxiously how much longer the travelers expected to stay away, and urged them to come home as soon as they could.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, cowboy, nationality, metaphor, safety, weapon, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for that supper!" exclaimed Bob, as he put his letter away.<br /> If the meal was a rough one, prepared as it was by the Chinese cook, it was good, and the travelers enjoyed it thoroughly. As they rose from the table a cowboy entered the dining room and drawled out:<br /> "I say strangers, be you th' owners of that there rip-snortin' specimen of th' lower regions that runs on four wheels tied 'round with big sassages?"<br /> "Do you mean the automobile?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I reckon I do, if that's what ye call it."<br /> "Yes, it's our machine," replied Jerry.<br /> "Then if ye have any great love for th' workin' of it in the future, an' any regard or consideration for it's feelin' ye ought t' see to it."<br /> "Why so?"<br /> "Nothin'," drawled the cowboy as he carefully pared his nails with a big bowie knife; "nothin' only Bronco Pete is amusin' his self by tryin' t' see how near he can come to stickin' his scalpin' steel inter th' tires!"<br /> "Great Scott! We must stop that!" exclaimed Jerry, running from the hotel toward where the auto had been left in the street. The other boys and the professor followed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, pleasure, cowboy, weapon, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> They found the machine surrounded by quite a crowd that seemed to be much amused at something which was taking place in its midst. Making their way to the inner circle of spectators the boys beheld an odd sight.<br /> A big cowboy, who, from appearances had indulged too freely in something stronger than water, was unsteadily trying to stick his big knife into the rubber tires.<br /> "Here! You mustn't do that," cried Jerry, sharply, laying his hand on the man's shoulder.<br /> "Look out for him! He's dangerous!" warned some of the bystanders.<br /> "I can't help it if he is," replied Jerry. "We can't let him ruin the tires."<br /> "This is the time I do it!" cried Bronco Pete, as he made a lunge for the front wheel. Jerry sprang forward and the crowd held its breath, for it seemed as if the boy was right in the path of the knife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Jerry knew what he was about. With a quick motion he kicked the cowboy lightly on the wrist, the blow knocking the knife from his hand, and sending it some distance away.<br /> "Look out now, sonny!" called a man to Jerry. "No one ever hit Pete an' lived after it."<br /> It seemed that Jerry was in a dangerous position. Pete, enraged at being foiled of his purpose, uttered a beast-like roar, and reached back to where his revolver rested at his hip in a belt. Jerry never moved an inch, but looked the man straight in the eye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! None of that Pete!" called a voice suddenly, and a big man pushed his way through the crowd, and grabbed the cowboy's arm before he had time to draw his gun. "If you don't want to get into trouble move on!"<br /> "All right, Marshall; all right," replied Pete, the desire of shooting seeming to die out as he looked at the newcomer. "I were only havin' a little fun with th' tenderfoot."<br /> "You didn't appear to scare him much," remarked the town marshall, who had seen the whole thing. "You had your nerve with you all right, son," he added, to Jerry.<br /> "That's what he had," commented Pete. "There ain't many men would have done what he did, an' I admire him for it. Put it there, stranger," and Pete, all the anger gone from him, extended a big hand, which Jerry grasped heartily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, risk, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "Three cheers for the 'tenderfoot,'" called some one, and they were given with a will for Jerry, as Pete, under the guidance of the marshall, moved unsteadily away.<br /> "I wouldn't have been in your boots one spell there, for a good bit," observed the postmaster as he came up. "Pete's about as bad as they come."<br /> "I didn't stop to think of the danger, or maybe I wouldn't have done as I did," said Jerry. "All I thought of was that he would spoil the tire, and it would take a long while to fix it."<br /> "Yes, and we don't want to delay any longer than we can help," spoke Ned in a low voice. "I'm anxious to get back to the mine and see what we can do to perfect our title."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VI. - On a Strange Road (46-54) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="storm, animal, rain, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, navigation, bridge"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VI<br /> <br /> ON A STRANGE ROAD<br /> <br /> For several days they made good progress, for the roads were in fair condition. The machine was kept headed as nearly as possible toward Arizona, though they often had to go some distance out of their way to get rid of bad places, or find a ford or bridge to cross a stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="South"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll soon be out of Texas," remarked Bob one afternoon, when they had passed through a small ranch town where they had dinner.<br /> "And I think we're going to get a wetting before we leave the big state," put in Ned.<br /> "I think you're right," agreed the professor, as he turned and looked at a bank of ugly dark clouds in the southwest. "A thunder shower is coming up, if I'm any judge. There doesn't seem to be any shelter, either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, North, driver, wind, lightning, thunder, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> As far as they could see there was nothing but a vast stretch of wild country, though, far to the north, there was a dark patch which looked as if it was a forest.<br /> "It's coming just at the wrong time," remarked Jerry, who was steering. "I was in hopes the storm would hold off a bit. Well, we shan't melt if it does rain."<br /> And that it was soon going to pour in the proverbial buckets full was evident. The wind began to blow a half gale, and the clouds, from which angry streaks of jagged lightning leaped, scurried forward. At the same time low mutterings of thunder were heard.<br /> "We're in for it," cried Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, rain, visibility, lightning, thunder, driver, equipment, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant the storm broke, and the whole landscape was blotted out in a veil of mist and rain which came down in sheets of water. Now and then the darkness would be illuminated by a vivid flash of fire from the sky artillery, and the thunder seemed to shake the earth.<br /> Jerry could barely see where to steer, so fiercely did the rain beat down. Fortunately they had time to put on their raincoats before the deluge hit them.<br /> The provisions and other things in the auto had, likewise, been covered up with canvas, so little damage would result from the downpour.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, braking, slowness, visibility, animal, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> "Look out!" yelled Ned suddenly to Jerry. "There's something ahead of us!"<br /> Jerry partially shut off the power, and, as the machine slowed down, he and the others peered forward to see what the object was.<br /> "It's some sort of an animal!" cried Bob, who had sharp eyes. "It's running along on four legs, right in front of the car!"<br /> "It's a bear, that's what it is!" shouted Ned. "A big black bear!"<br /> "Let me get it for a specimen!" exclaimed the professor, in his enthusiasm, not considering the size of the animal, nor the difficulties in the way of capturing it. "Let me get out! It's worth forty dollars if it's worth a cent!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="storm, animal, sound, risk, car part, parking, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> At the sound of the excited voices, which the animal must have heard above the roar of the storm, the bear turned suddenly and faced the occupants of the car. So quickly was it done that Jerry had barely time to jam on the brakes in order to avoid a collision.<br /> "Why didn't you run him down, and we could have some bear steaks for supper?" asked Bob.<br /> "Because I don't think it's just healthy to run into a three hundred and fifty pound bear with a big auto," replied Jerry. "We might kill the bear, but we'd be sure to damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> The beast did not appear to be frightened at the sight of his natural enemies. Raising on its haunches the animal slowly ambled toward the stalled machine, growling in a menacing manner.<br /> "I believe he's going to attack us!" exclaimed the professor. "Let me get out my rifle!"<br /> But this was easier said than done. The weapons and ammunition were all under the canvas, and it would require several minutes to get at them.<br /> In the meanwhile the bear, showing every indication of rage was trying to climb up on the engine hood, despite the throbbing of the engine, which was going, though the gears were not thrown in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, driver, risk, animal, storm, wind, rain, thunder, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Start the car and run over him!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Back up and get out of his way!" was Ned's advice to Jerry.<br /> "I've got to do something," muttered the steersman.<br /> Matters were getting critical. The storm was increasing in violence, with the wind lashing the rain into the faces of the travelers. The growls of the angry beast mingled with the rumble and rattle of thunder, and the machine was shaking under the efforts Bruin made to climb over the hood and into the front seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, car part, skill, driver, gasoline, animal, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hold on tight! I'm going to start!" yelled Jerry suddenly.<br /> He threw in the intermediate gear and opened wide the gasolene throttle. The car sprang forward like a thing alive. But the bear had too good a hold with his long sharp claws sticking in the ventilator holes of the hood, to be shaken off.<br /> "I should think he'd burn on the water radiator," said Ned.<br /> "His fur's too thick I guess," was Bob's reply.<br /> On went the auto, the boys and the professor clinging to it for dear life, while Bruin hung on, half crazed with fear and anger.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="passenger, sound, storm, visibility, rain, skill, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "How you going to get rid of him?" shouted Ned above the roar of the storm.<br /> "I'll show you," replied Jerry grimly.<br /> Some distance ahead the steersman had seen a sharp curve in the road. It was dimly discernible through the mist of water.<br /> "Hold tight everybody!" shouted Jerry a second or two before the turn was reached.<br /> Then, suddenly swinging around it, at as sharp an angle as he dared to make and not overturn the car, Jerry sent the auto skidding. The next instant, unable to stand the impetus of the turn, the bear lost its hold on the hood, and was flung, like a stone from a catapult, far off to the left, rolling over and over on the muddy ground.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, slowness, sound, animal, rain, storm, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "There, I guess it will be quite a while before he tries to eat up another live automobile," remarked Jerry as he slowed up a bit.<br /> Off in the distance they heard a sort of reproachful whine, as if Bruin objected to such treatment. Then the rain came down harder than ever, and all sight of the bear was lost.<br /> "Let's get out of this!" exclaimed Ned, as he felt a small stream of water trickling down his back. "Can't we strike for those woods we saw a while ago?"<br /> "I'm headed for them," spoke Jerry. "I just want to get my bearings. Guess we'd better light up, as it will soon be dusk."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="wind, rain, storm, car part, visibility, oil, road condition, navigation, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> After some difficulty in getting matches to burn in the wind and rain, the big search lights and the oil lanterns were lighted, and then, with four shafts of light cutting the misty darkness ahead of them the travelers proceeded.<br /> The roads seemed to be getting worse, but there was nothing to do except to keep on. Every now and then the machine would lurch into some hollow with force enough to almost break the springs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, North, car part, asphalt"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello!" cried Jerry suddenly. "Here are two roads. Which shall we take?"<br /> "The right seems to go a little more directly north," said the professor, peering forward. "Suppose we take that?"<br /> "Especially as it seems to be the better road," added Jerry.<br /> He turned the machine into it, and, to the surprise of all they felt the thoroughfare become hard and firm as the auto tires rolled over it. It was almost as smooth as asphalt, and the travelers were congratulating themselves on having made a wise choice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rain, storm, forest, scenery, visibility, metaphor, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> All at once the rain, which had been coming down in torrents, seemed to let up.<br /> "I believe it's clearing up," said Bob.<br /> "No, it's because we've run into a dense forest, and the trees above keep the rain off," spoke the professor.<br /> The others looked about them and saw that this was so. On every side the glare of the lamps showed big trunks and leafy branches, while ahead more trees could be observed.<br /> "Why it's just like a tunnel in the woods," said Bob. "See, the trees seem to meet in an arch overhead."<br /> "And what a fine road it is," put in Ned.<br /> "An altogether strange sort of road," agreed Jerry. "Suppose we stop and look about before we go any further? I don't like the looks of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, metaphor, macadam, road condition, forest, storm"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the machine was brought to a halt, and the travelers alighted. They found it just as Bob had said, almost exactly like an immense tunnel in the forest. Beneath their feet the road was of the finest Macadam construction.<br /> "And to think of finding this in the midst of Texas," observed Jerry.<br /> "Some one built this road, and cut the trees to make this tunnel," remarked the professor. "I wonder what sort of a place we have stumbled into."<br /> "At all events it doesn't rain anything to speak of in here," said Bob, "and it's a good place to stay until the storm is over."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, forest, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry, in the meanwhile had walked on ahead some distance. In a few minutes he came hurrying back. His manner showed that he had seen something.<br /> "What is it?" asked the professor.<br /> "Don't make any noise, but follow me," replied the lad.<br /> In silence, and wondering what was about to happen, Bob, Ned and the scientist trailed after Jerry. He led them several hundred feet ahead of the automobile, and away from the glare of the lamps, the tunnel curving somewhat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See!" whispered Jerry, hoarsely.<br /> "Well, I never!"<br /> "That's queer!"<br /> There, about three hundred feet to the left of the main road and on a sort of side path, the travelers saw a small hut, brilliantly lighted up. Through an open window, a room could be seen, and several figures moving about in it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VII. - The Rescue of Tommy Bell (55-64) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VII<br /> <br /> THE RESCUE OF TOMMY BELL<br /> <br /> "I wonder who they can be, to hide off in the woods this way," whispered Bob.<br /> The next instant there floated out from the hut a cry of anguish. It was the voice of a boy, seemingly in great pain or fear, and the travelers heard the words:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! You are killing me! I don't know! I can't tell you, for I would if I could! Oh! Oh! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> "It's a gang torturing some one!" almost shouted Ned. "Let's go to the rescue!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have sprung forward had not Jerry laid a detaining hand on his arm.<br /> "Wait, Ned," counseled Jerry. "Some one there evidently needs our help, but we must go with caution. First we must get our guns. We may need them!"<br /> Once more the appealing cry burst out.<br /> "Quick!" whispered Jerry. "Professor, you and Bob go back for the rifles, and bring the bulls-eye lantern that has the dark slide to it. Ned and I will stay here and watch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Snodgrass and Bob lost no time. In less than five minutes they had rejoined Ned and Jerry.<br /> "Has anything happened?" asked Bob.<br /> "Nothing since," whispered Jerry. "Now we will go forward. Every one have his gun ready. I will carry the lantern."<br /> Almost as silently as shadows the four figures stole forward, Jerry showing a cautious gleam now and then to guide them on their way. They found there was a fairly good path leading up to the hut.<br /> They had covered half the distance when once more the cries of anguish burst out. This time they were followed by angry shouts, seemingly from several men, and voices in dispute could be heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of us had better creep forward and see what is going on inside the cabin," whispered Jerry. "We must know what sort of enemies we have to meet."<br /> "I'll go," volunteered Bob.<br /> "Better let me," suggested the professor. "I have had some experience in stalking animals, and I can probably advance more quietly than you can."<br /> They all saw the reasonableness of this and the scientist started off. Like a cat he made an advance until he was so close to the hut that he could peer into the uncurtained window. What he saw made him start back in terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the room were half a dozen roughly dressed men, all armed, and with brutal faces. The room was filled with smoke from cigars and pipes, and cards were scattered over a rough table in the middle of the apartment.<br /> But what attracted the attention of the professor and made his heart beat fast in anger, was the sight of a small, pale boy, bound with ropes up against a big stone fireplace, on the hearth of which logs were burning.<br /> In front of the lad stood one of the largest and strongest of the tough gang, and in his hand he held a redhot poker, which, as the scientist watched, he brought close to the bare legs of the terror-stricken lad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then came again those heart-rending cries:<br /> "Oh don't! Please don't! I would tell you where he is if I knew! Please don't burn me again!"<br /> The professor's blood boiled.<br /> "We'll soon put a stop to this horrible work!" he exclaimed to himself as he glided back to where the boys were and quickly made them acquainted with what he had seen.<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must rescue that boy!"<br /> As softly as they could, the travelers advanced toward the hut. They found the door and, while the others with rifles in readiness stood in a semi-circle about it, Jerry made ready to knock and demand admittance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If they don't open the door we must burst it in," said the boy. "The professor and I will look to that, while you and Ned, Bob, must stand ready to rush in right after us with your guns ready. But don't shoot unless your life is in danger, and then fire not to kill, but to wound."<br /> There was a minute of hesitation, for they all realized that it was taking a desperate chance to tackle such a rough gang in the midst of woods, far from civilization. But the sound of the poor boy's cries nerved them on as, once more, the pitiful appeal for mercy rang out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry sprang forward and gave several vigorous blows on the door with the butt of his gun. All at once silence took the place of the confusion inside the hut.<br /> "Who's there? What do you want?" asked a gruff voice.<br /> "Open the door! We want that boy!" cried Jerry.<br /> Confused murmurs from within told that the gang had been taken by surprise.<br /> "I don't know who you are, but whoever you are you had better move on, if you don't want a bullet through you," called the man who had first answered the knock. "This is none of your affair."<br /> "Open the door or we'll burst it in!" cried Jerry, knowing the best way to be successful in the fight was to act quickly and take the men by surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a laugh from within the hut. It was answered by a rending, crashing splintering sound as Jerry and the professor, using the stocks of their guns, began a vigorous attack on the portal. The door was strong enough, but the hinges were not, and, in less than half a minute the barrier had given way and, with a bound the travelers found themselves tumbling into the hut.<br /> Instantly confusion reigned. The men shouted hoarsely, and several tried to reach their guns, which were stacked in one corner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hands up!" commanded Jerry sharply, leveling his gun at the man who seemed to be the leader.<br /> "Why, they're nothing but boys! Knock 'em out of the way!" cried one of the gang. At the same time another began creeping up behind Jerry, his intention being to grab the lad from the back and disarm him.<br /> But Bob saw the movement, and, leveling his rifle at the fellow, told him to halt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess you've got the drop on us," growled the man whom Jerry was covering with the gun. "What's the game anyhow? Are you stage robbers?"<br /> "We want you to stop torturing that boy," cried Jerry.<br /> "Why, that's my kid, and I was only givin' him a taste of the rod because he wouldn't mind me; 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' is a good saying, you know."<br /> "Not from you!" snapped the professor. "Is this man your father?" the scientist asked the bound boy.<br /> "Speak up now! Ain't I your daddy?" put in the leader, scowling at the boy.<br /> "Tell the truth! Don't let him scare you!" said the professor reassuredly. "We are in charge here now. Is he your father?"<br /> "No—no—sir," stammered the poor little lad, and then he burst into tears.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought so!" commented the scientist. "Now you scoundrels clear out of here before we cause your arrest!"<br /> "You're talkin' mighty high," sneered the leader, "but look out! This matter is none of your affair, and that boy belongs to us!"<br /> "Take me away! Oh, please take me away! They'll kill me!" sobbed the lad.<br /> There was such a fiery look in the professor's eye as he leveled his gun at the gang of men that they started back, evidently fearing to be fired upon.<br /> "Come on!" called one. "We'll get some of the Mexicans and then we'll see who's runnin' things around here!"<br /> With that the gang sneaked out of the door, leaving the boys and the professor master of the situation. Their first act was to unbind the lad, who was almost fainting from pain and fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there any more of them?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Yes," said the boy faintly. "There are a lot of half-breed Mexicans in the gang. They are in a hut about a mile farther up the road, where they keep a lot of horses on a ranch."<br /> "Then perhaps we'd better get out of here while we have a chance," said the professor. "We can't fight a score or more. Let's take the boy and hurry away."<br /> "Come on then," said Jerry. "We'll get back to the auto. I only hope these men don't discover it and damage the car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, equipment, risk, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> But when an attempt to start was made it was found that the boy, who said, in response to an inquiry from Ned, that his name was Tommy Bell, was unable to walk. The ropes bound about his legs had caused the blood to stagnate in the veins.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Jerry. "Bob, you and Ned go ahead with the lantern, and the professor and I will carry Tommy. Step lively now!"<br /> Moving in that order the procession started, and in a few minutes the travelers were back at the machine, which did not seem to have been disturbed. There was no sight or sound of the gang.<br /> Tommy was made as comfortable as possible, and then there was a brief consultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, forest, road condition, night, moonlight, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Which way had we better go?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I think it would be best to turn around," said Bob. "We'll run up against the gang if we go ahead."<br /> "The best road is straight ahead through this woods," spoke Tommy. "If you take the other your machine will get stuck."<br /> "Then we'll take this one, and trust to luck not to have any trouble with the gang," decided Jerry, as he cranked up the car.<br /> Just as they started the moon came out from the clouds, for the rain had ceased, and, though not many of the silver beams shone through the thick foliage, it was much lighter than it had been. Jerry threw in the gear and the next instant the car glided forward and shot along the tunnel of trees, leaving the hut where Tommy Bell had been a prisoner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, forest, scenery, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Is the Mexican camp near this main road?" asked the professor of Tommy.<br /> "About three hundred feet in," answered the boy, who was feeling much better.<br /> "How many men are at it?"<br /> "About one hundred, I guess, from what I heard them say."<br /> "Then I guess we'd better go past it on the fly," muttered Jerry, as he speeded up the machine until it was skimming along at a fast rate. In a little while there was a gleam of light through the trees ahead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound, risk, visibility, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the camp!" exclaimed Tommy.<br /> A minute later the travelers were made well aware of it, for, as they whizzed past in the auto, they heard shouts of anger, mingling with the sounds of rushing feet, while an occasional pistol shot rang out, the flash of fire cutting the darkness.<br /> "They saw us," spoke Bob. "Lucky it was pretty dark, or they might have damaged the auto."<br /> "To say nothing of ourselves," added Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter VIII. - Pursued by Enemies (65-71) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER VIII<br /> <br /> PURSUED BY ENEMIES<br /> <br /> As the auto sped along, Professor Snodgrass asked Tommy Bell how he had come to the hut in the forest.<br /> "Those men took me there," replied the boy.<br /> "And what did they try to make you do?" asked Jerry.<br /> "They wanted me to tell them where my father was," went on Tommy. "I could not because I did not know, and they burned me, because they did not believe I was telling the truth."<br /> "What did they want of your father?" inquired Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "They want him to sign some papers connected with some property," went on Tommy. "I don't know much about it, except that father used to work with those men developing a mine. It didn't pay, and they left it, after selling it to some other men. I lived with my father, and my mother was alive then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="safety, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boy stopped, and, at the mention of his mother's name began to cry softly.<br /> "Poor little lad," muttered the professor, putting his arm, with a sort of caressing motion about Tommy. "Don't cry, lad," the scientist went on, in what seemed a sort of husky voice, for he was very fond of children; "don't worry, we'll look out for you; won't we, boys?"<br /> "You bet!" exclaimed Jerry, Ned and Bob in one voice.<br /> The auto was slowed down now, as there seemed to be no danger of pursuit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After mother died," Tommy resumed, "and the mine did not pay, father started prospecting with Nat Richards and the others in that crowd. But they were bad men, and soon got the better of my dad, taking away what little money he had left.<br /> "This ruined my father, and he grew discouraged, for he was old, and in poor health. He wandered away and I haven't seen him for nearly a year. I traveled about, doing what little work I could get to do, until I struck Texas. One day, about a week ago, I passed a ranch, the same one<br /> we just came by. I asked for work, and got it. Then I found the same men owned it that had ruined my father.<br /> "As soon as Nat Richards saw me he demanded to know where dad was. I couldn't tell, and then he promised me one hundred dollars if I would tell. He said they needed my father's signature to a paper.<br /> "I don't know as I would have told them where dad was if I did know. When I kept on refusing to give them the information, Nat Richards grew ugly. He had me taken off to the hut where you found me, and said he'd starve me to death if I didn't tell.<br /> "I almost did die from hunger," Tommy went on with a catch in his voice. "Then they tried torture. They burned me on the legs with a hot poker. That's what they were doing when you came in," and, overcome again by the thought of all he had suffered Tommy cried bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, car part, accident, sound, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys and the professor did all they could to comfort the friendless lad, and, soon Tommy's grief wore off.<br /> "We'll take you along with us," said Jerry heartily, "and we'll try to help you find your father. Where did you see him last?"<br /> "He was in Arizona," answered Tommy.<br /> "That's just where we're headed for," exclaimed Bob. "We'll take you there all right."<br /> Jerry leaned forward to throw in the higher speed gear when there was a sudden ripping, breaking sound, and the auto began to slow up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, driver, car part, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Ned.<br /> "Stripped the gear, I'm afraid," replied the steersman. "This is a nice pickle to be in."<br /> "Won't it run on the low or intermediate gear?" asked Bob.<br /> Jerry tried them, and found they were all right.<br /> "I guess we'd better stop here for the night," he said. "We may need the high gear any minute, and perhaps I can fix it in the morning. I have a spare wheel."<br /> "Then let's camp and have supper," said Bob eagerly. "I haven't eaten in a week by the way I feel."<br /> "Same here! I agree with you for once, Chunky," spoke Jerry. "It has been a long time since dinner, but with the excitement of the storm, the bear, and rescuing Tommy I didn't notice it before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> In a little while the camping outfit was taken from the automobile, and a fire started in the sheet-iron stove, with the charcoal that was carried to be used in emergencies, such as being unable to find dry wood after a rain.<br /> Ned ground the coffee, while Bob went in search of water, using the lantern to aid him in the somewhat dim forest, though the moon helped some. He found a spring close at hand, and soon a fragrant beverage was steaming under the trees. Then some bacon was placed in the frying pan, and the hard tack was taken from the tin and other things prepared.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Fall to!" commanded Ned, who was acting as cook, and fall to they all did, with a will.<br /> "Do you often camp out and eat in the woods like this?" asked Tommy. "I think it's jolly fun," and the lad, who was about twelve years old, laughed for the first time since his rescue. He, too, was eating with an appetite that showed he needed the food.<br /> Jerry briefly related some of their travel adventures, at which Tommy opened his eyes to their widest extent.<br /> "Cracky! But you have had stunning times!" he exclaimed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The meal having been finished, they began to think of getting some sleep. Blankets were brought out, and rolling themselves up in them the boys and the professor were soon in the land of nod.<br /> It was nearly dawn when Jerry was suddenly awakened by the far off baying of a dog. At first he could not imagine what the sound was, and sat up to listen more intently. Then a long, mournful howl was borne to him on the wind.<br /> "That's strange," he muttered. "There are very few dogs about here. I wonder what it is."<br /> At the same time Tommy Bell roused up, and he, too, heard the sound.<br /> "It's the gang after us!" he exclaimed. "They have a lot of hounds on the ranch! Hurry up! Let's get out of this!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, risk, night, speed, equipment, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark!" exclaimed Jerry, raising his hand.<br /> Then the boys heard, faint and far off, the sound of galloping horses.<br /> "They're coming!" cried Jerry.<br /> His cry awakened the others, who sat up bewildered and heavy from sound sleep.<br /> "Lively's the word!" called Jerry. "They're after us!"<br /> No further explanation was needed, for all knew what Jerry meant. There was a hasty piling of blankets into the auto; the stove was packed up, and, while the travelers jumped into the car, Jerry went in front to crank it up. The cheerful chug-chug told that the machinery was in good working order, and then, the boy, leaping into the steersman's seat, threw in the low gear for the start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, skill, sound, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> As he did so Ned glanced back and saw, coming around the bend of the forest road a score of horsemen and a pack of dogs.<br /> "Speed her up, Jerry!" called Bob.<br /> "I will!" was the exclamation, as Jerry leaned forward to throw in the high gear. A mournful screeching of the engine was the only response.<br /> "I forgot! The high gear is broken!" the steersman cried. "We can only use the intermediate, and that is not very fast!"<br /> "It's the best we can do, though!" said Bob. "We may get away from them!"<br /> On the intermediate cogs the auto made good speed, and, for a while, distanced the gang, the members of which, with shouts of rage, put their horses to their best effort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter IX. - Into the Cave (72-80) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, risk, animal, topograpy"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="forest, metaphor, speed, animal, skill, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER IX<br /> <br /> INTO THE CAVE<br /> <br /> The sun began to peep up from beneath the eastern hills, throwing a rosy light over the earth. The woods began to thin out, and the sides of the "tunnel," which had been dense, became more open, so that glimpses of the country could be seen now and then.<br /> The chase was now on in earnest. For some time, however, the auto kept well in advance of the horsemen, for Jerry used all the power possible on the differential gear. If the high speed one had been in working order there would have been no question of the outcome, but, for once, luck was against the boys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, road condition, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Nearer and nearer came the gang on horseback. They got so close that their shouts to halt could be plainly heard. But Jerry was not going to give up. He gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel with a firmer grasp.<br /> "We seem to be slacking up," observed Ned.<br /> "That's what we are," spoke Jerry. "The auto is going back on us."<br /> The car did seem to be dragging, and there was no excuse for it in the condition of the road, which was a fine level one.<br /> "The car needs repairing," said Jerry, "and the way I have to run it isn't the best thing in the world for it."<br /> "Do you think they'll catch up to us?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid so," muttered Jerry. "We are going the limit now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, metaphor, car part, accident, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The thunder of the horses sounded nearer and the shouts of the pursuing gang came more plainly on the morning breeze. The auto coughed and wheezed, seeming like a man who has run far and is about to collapse. The explosions became less frequent, and finally one of the cylinders ceased to work altogether, leaving only three in commission.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" muttered Jerry, as, by a hasty glance back he saw the men spurring their horses on.<br /> "You'd better give up!" one of the gang shouted.<br /> "Not yet, you scoundrels!" cried Jerry, as he advanced the sparkling lever to the final notch. This seemed to be the last straw to the auto engine, for with a dismal snort it stopped short.<br /> "This settles it," muttered Ned grimly. "We are done for."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, speed, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Fortunately, however, they were on a slight slope now, and the car, with the impetus it had gathered, began to glide down the hill under its own momentum.<br /> But the horsemen were not one thousand feet in the rear and were drawing nearer. There seemed to be no help at hand and there was every indication that the boys would fall into the hands of their desperate enemies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, tree, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> "How much farther can we go?" asked Tommy suddenly.<br /> "To the foot of the hill," replied Jerry. "Why do you ask?"<br /> "That's far enough!" exclaimed Tommy. "I guess we can escape them."<br /> "How?"<br /> "Steer straight for that dead pine tree," replied the young lad, "and when you get almost to it, make a wide turn to the right."<br /> "What good will that do?"<br /> "There's a big cave right at the foot of the hill," replied Tommy. "I know for I passed it as I was tramping toward the ranch. It is large enough to take in the auto, and maybe we can hold it against the gang."<br /> "Hurrah!" shouted Jerry, as he shifted the wheel to conform with Tommy's directions. "We'll beat 'em yet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, skill, speed, scenery, animal, risk, weapon, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> Straight toward the dead pine Jerry aimed, and, as he came to the bottom of the slope, he saw an opening in the bush-lined side of the hill, that told him the cave was at hand. Into it, by a skillful turn, he steered the auto, and the machine, running in about one hundred feet from the opening came to a stop, just as the horsemen came dashing up, much surprised by the sudden disappearance of those they were pursuing.<br /> "We're safe!" whispered Ned.<br /> "Not yet," said Jerry. "We must arm ourselves," and he began to get out the rifles from the bottom of the car, and hand them around to his companions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, scenery, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Outside the cavern, which was a natural one in the rocky side of the hill, there came confused shouts.<br /> "Where did they go?" they heard a voice ask.<br /> "Must have gone over some ledge and been killed," was the reply.<br /> "Then that settles it," said the first one. "That's just our bad luck!"<br /> Then came a curious cry, and, by it, the boys knew their hiding place was discovered.<br /> "Here are the tracks of the wheels!" the travelers heard some one shout. "They turned off somewhere about here."<br /> "Then they're in that cave," was the rejoinder.<br /> "Dismount!" came a sharp order.<br /> The boys could hear the men getting off their horses, and the animals being led away.<br /> "Get your carbines ready!" was the next command.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's time for us to act!" whispered Jerry. "We must each one take a gun, and stand at the mouth of the cave. We'll warn them not to enter. If they persist we will have to fire, but we must try not to hurt any one mortally. Aim at their legs!"<br /> In the half darkness of the cavern the boys and the professor each took a rifle and crept to the mouth of the opening. No sooner had they reached it than they heard the tramp of feet, and shadows told them the bad men were advancing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Halt!" cried Jerry, who had naturally assumed command.<br /> "Who are you?" asked the leader of the gang.<br /> "Never mind who we are," replied Jerry. "We are in possession of this cave, and we warn you not to come in!"<br /> "Big words for a kid!" sneered the leader.<br /> "You'll find we can back them up," spoke Jerry. Then, in lower tones, he bade his comrades stand in readiness.<br /> There was a consultation in whispers among the members of the gang, and then, seeming to feel that they had nothing to fear, they made a rush.<br /> "Fire!" cried Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Remembering his instructions, the boys and the professor aimed low. To the reports of the rifles there succeeded howls of pain. Several of the gang shot back, but, as it was dark in the cave they could not see to aim, and they did no damage.<br /> "Give them another volley!" yelled Jerry.<br /> Again the rifles spoke, and this time, to the chorus of howls there was added a command from the leader to retreat, and the men rushed from the cave, which was filled with smoke.<br /> "Are—are any of them killed?" asked Tommy.<br /> "I don't believe so," replied Jerry. "We fired too low to do much damage. I only wanted to let them know we were ready for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Waiting several minutes to see if there would be any further attack, Jerry cautiously advanced to the mouth of the cavern. In the semi-light he saw several blood stains, but the absence of any bodies told him the battle had not resulted fatally, for which he was thankful. Though the<br /> men were desperate characters, who, perhaps, would not stop at murder, the boy did not want the responsibility of killing any of them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They seem to have retreated," Jerry reported when he joined the others. "But I don't suppose they have gone for good. This probably will only make them more anxious to get Tommy away from us, for it is him they are after."<br /> "Do you think they want me?" asked the younger lad.<br /> "I am pretty sure, after what you have told us about the mine, that they would give a good deal to get you," replied Jerry. "Perhaps your signature may be as good as that of your father's in case—in case—" and Jerry stopped suddenly.<br /> "You mean in case dad is dead?" asked Tommy quietly.<br /> "Yes," answered Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't believe my father is dead," spoke the boy bravely. "Somehow I feel that he is alive, and that I will find him. But if the gang is after me, it is not right for you all to be in danger on my account. Give me up to them, I'm not afraid—that is, I'll try not to be. Let me go out and surrender, and perhaps they'll go away."<br /> "I'd like to see myself!" exclaimed Jerry. "You don't stir out of this cave, Tommy Bell, until we go! I'm not afraid of that gang. We've been in tighter places than this and gotten out; haven't we, fellows?"<br /> "You bet!" echoed Bob and Ned.<br /> "Then give me a gun and let me help fight," begged Tommy.<br /> "Can you shoot?" asked Jerry.<br /> "My father taught me," was all Tommy said, and Jerry gave him a rifle, at which Tommy's eyes sparkled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A cautious glance from the mouth of the cave showed that the gang had withdrawn some distance away. But that they had no notion of giving up the fight was evidenced by the fact that they were constructing a camp so as to command the entrance to the cavern.<br /> "I guess they're going to try and starve us out," remarked the professor. "Lucky we have plenty of provisions and ammunition on hand for a siege."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess we're just as well off here as anywhere," observed Jerry. "We'd have to lay up a few days at any rate, to fix the machine, and it might as well be in a good roomy cave, where the rain can't wet us."<br /> The boys waited an hour before laying aside their arms. Then, as the gang showed no signs of renewing the attack, they proceeded to make themselves more comfortable.<br /> "Might as well get ready to camp out," said Ned. "I'll set up the stove, and we'll have breakfast, though it is a little late."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> So while he set up the sheet iron apparatus, Jerry instructed Bob to stand guard at the mouth of the cavern, and to give instant notice of any activity on the part of the enemy.<br /> "But what will we do about eating breakfast?" asked Bob in a sorrowful voice.<br /> "Don't worry about that, 'Chunky,'" said Jerry. "I'll relieve you, or some one will, in time to get a meal. In the meantime keep a good watch."<br /> Then Jerry went back to help Ned, and, at the same time, make ready to repair the machine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter X. - Attacked by a Cougar (81-89) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="maintenance, risk, animal, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER X<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY A COUGAR<br /> <br /> "I say, Jerry," called Ned, "we're in a sort of a pickle."<br /> "How's that?"<br /> "Why, I started to make coffee and I got along all right until I came to the water."<br /> "Well?"<br /> "No, it's not at all well. In fact we ought to have a well here."<br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> "I mean there's no water in the cave!"<br /> "Great Scott! Is that so?" exclaimed Jerry. "I never thought of such a thing. Are you sure there's not a spring away in the rear?"<br /> "The professor and I made a good search," replied the temporary cook. "The cave comes to an end about three hundred feet back, and there's not a sign of water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, gasoline, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> For a few seconds Jerry was silent. Then he gave an exclamation.<br /> "I have it!" he cried. "We can use the emergency water supply on the auto. It is not very fresh, but it will do for coffee."<br /> "The very thing!" ejaculated Ned.<br /> It was fortunate that the auto carried an extra tank of water, as well as one of gasolene. They had often found it useful in getting a supply of the fluid for the radiator in places far from a supply, and the reserve tank had been built with that purpose in view. It held about ten gallons. Drawing on this Ned had a supply for his coffee which was soon boiling merrily on the stove, while some canned chicken and bacon were put on to fry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say, is anybody going to relieve me?" called Bob from his post on guard.<br /> He smelled the breakfast in preparation, and it added to his hunger.<br /> "I'll go," volunteered the professor. "I'm in no hurry to eat, and perhaps I may pick up a specimen or two. This cave ought to be a good place for them."<br /> Accordingly he took Bob's place, and soon the four boys were eating ravenously, and with as good appetites as if a band of bad men was not outside, ready to attack them at the first opportunity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, car part, engine, technology, skill, night"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to fix the machine," said Jerry as he rose from the ground that served as a table. "Light all the lamps, Ned, and then you and Bob come and help me. Tommy and the professor can take turns standing guard."<br /> It was no easy matter to take the automobile engine apart, and substitute a new gear for the broken one. It was also found necessary to insert new spark plugs, which had become covered with a coating of carbon; and the cylinders also needed cleaning, while the pistons had to be adjusted.<br /> The afternoon was spent in working at the auto, and by night such good progress had been made that Jerry said by the next evening it would be in shape to start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, night, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> "That is if the gang let's us," spoke Ned.<br /> "We'll make a dash for it," replied Jerry. "We needn't fear them with the car in good order, for we can leave them behind in less than half an hour. We'll try to escape to-morrow about midnight."<br /> "In the meanwhile let's eat," suggested Bob, and his cry brought forth the usual chaffing about "Chunky's" appetite.<br /> Ned started to get supper. He went to the tank of the auto to draw some water for the tea, when he gave a cry of surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, accident, mud"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the trouble?" called Jerry.<br /> "The water's gone!" exclaimed Ned. "That's a leak in the tank!"<br /> They all rushed to the car. There, on the ground under the reserve tank was a muddy spot, showing where the precious fluid had dripped away. A quick examination showed there was a small hole in the reservoir.<br /> "Now we are up against it," murmured Bob.<br /> "Not quite yet," said Jerry.<br /> "How can we get water without being shot?" asked Ned.<br /> "There is quite a bit left in the pipe coils of the radiator," answered Jerry. "It will be pretty poor stuff to drink I guess, but it's better than nothing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable of the fluid in the big brass radiator on the front of the car, and, though it was stale, and had been heated many times, as it circulated about the cylinders, still, it was better than none. Made into tea, which was served as a change from coffee, it did not taste so very bad.<br /> But the situation was grave. With only water enough on hand to last about half a day, the plight of the travelers was a critical one.<br /> "We'll have to have water for the car, as well as ourselves," spoke Ned. "We can't run the machine without water."<br /> "That's so," admitted Jerry dubiously. "Something will have to be done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> After the evening meal Jerry resumed his labors on the car, working at double speed, in which he was assisted by Ned and Bob. The professor and Tommy took turns watching at the cavern's mouth.<br /> But there seemed to be no need of this, as the men showed no inclination to make a second attack. They appeared to know that the boys were caught in a trap; a trap that contained no water. So they evidently felt sure of success sooner or later, and that without the danger of being wounded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, midnight, technology, car part, oil"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and his comrades worked to such advantage that shortly after midnight the auto was in shape to be used, and with the new high gear wheel in place. The car was given a good oiling, and was repacked in readiness for a quick start.<br /> "Now if we only had water," sighed Jerry, "we could slip out, and, I believe get away."<br /> But he knew it was useless to proceed without at least a full radiator. The extra tank, which had been repaired, could be filled later. The radiator coils were empty however. What had not been used for cooking had been made up into weak tea, as it was not considered healthful to drink the water as it came from the pipes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to do something," said Jerry decidedly. "If we stay here much longer we'll die of thirst. If we could only make a dash and get some water we could manage. Two pails full would do."<br /> "Let me go after them," exclaimed Tommy. "I'm not afraid. I can run fast. Maybe I can get out there by the brook, get the water and come back before any of them see me."<br /> "No you couldn't," spoke Jerry, pointing to where one of the men, as sentry, could be seen, from the mouth of the cave, walking up and down near the camp fire. "If any one goes I will, and I think I'd better start."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob and Ned both offered to make the dangerous attempt, and the professor insisted that he be allowed to try, as he knew how to move over ground very silently. But Jerry was firm in his determination.<br /> "I'm going to make the try about two o'clock," he said. "They'll be sounder asleep then."<br /> As he was very tired he stretched out in some blankets until it would be time to make the try. He fell asleep soon, and the others moved away, talking in whispers lest they disturb him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Almost exactly at the appointed hour Jerry awakened. He sat up, and, slipping a pair of Indian moccasins over his shoes, to enable him to move as silently as possible, he cautiously approached the mouth of the cavern, carrying two water pails with him.<br /> The moon had gone down and it was quite dark, which was favorable to Jerry's plans. As he got to the entrance of the cavern the boy looked toward the gang's camp. There seemed to be no sign of life, and Jerry thought perhaps the sentry had fallen asleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As silent as a cat the lad made his way toward the stream, which he could hear gurgling and splashing over the stones. His throat was dry, for the last of the cold tea had been drunk, and his exertions had made him very thirsty. As he heard the sound of the brook he felt a fierce desire for water, so strong was it that he felt he would brave anything to get it.<br /> Foot by foot he advanced, crouching down as low as he could. He was beginning to feel that he would be successful, and not be detected. He could see the sparkle of the water about three hundred feet away, and his parched mouth and throat seemed to be as dry as leather. He could<br /> hardly swallow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On and on he went. Now he was about two hundred feet away and he was getting ready to make a dash for the brook.<br /> Suddenly he heard a clicking sound, and knew it was a rifle being cocked. Next there rang out on the night air the command:<br /> "Halt or I'll fire!"<br /> Poor Jerry was detected! He came to a stop, sick at heart at the failure of his plan.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a moment there was no other sound. The boy could not see who had discovered him, though he instinctively felt the eyes of the man on him. Suddenly there was a shaking in the tree somewhat to Jerry's left, and about one hundred feet away. Then came a rustle of the leaves on the ground and the boy made out the figure of a man, dimly, standing with rifle aimed straight at him.<br /> "Throw up your hands!" was the next order, and, letting the pails fall to the ground, Jerry obeyed.<br /> Then, all at once, there burst out on the air a most terrifying sound. It was a blood-curdling yell, a screech as if from some one in mortal agony. Jerry felt the cold chills go down his back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a crashing sound, and, from the tree under which the man stood who had aimed at the boy a dark body shot downward.<br /> The screech of the cougar, for such it was, mingled with the terrific yells of the sentry. Jerry dimly saw a confused tangle of man and beast. He heard the man shout for help. He heard his rifle go off, and then came sounds that told that the camp had been aroused.<br /> The attack of the cougar had come just in time. Jerry, taking advantage of the diversion, grabbed up his pails, and running to the brook filled them with water. Then, as fast as he could go, he ran toward the cave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XI. - A Runaway Auto (90-97) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, maintenance, car part, night, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, sound, risk, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XI<br /> <br /> A RUNAWAY AUTO<br /> <br /> Behind the boys sounded the yells and shouts of the men in camp, mingled with rifle shots and the screeching of several of the cougars, for, it developed, a band of three, grown desperate by hunger, had made an attack.<br /> "Are you hurt, Jerry?" cried Bob and Ned, as, with his pails of water, the boy staggered into the cave.<br /> "Not a bit, but I had a close shave," was the answer. "But we must be quick! Here! Help fill the radiator with the water."<br /> "Can't we drink any?" asked Bob who, like the others, was very thirsty.<br /> "Not a drop," said Jerry firmly. "We need every bit for the automobile. Without it we can't get away from here, and now is the only chance we may have to escape. We can drink later."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, equipment, speed, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> While Jerry and Ned filled the radiator the other boys and the professor made ready for the escape. Everything was packed up and placed in the car, which, as soon as the coil was filled, would be ready to start and dash from the cave.<br /> "I'm afraid this is not going to be water enough," spoke Jerry as the second of the pails was emptied into the radiator.<br /> "Can't I make a dash for some more? There seems to be excitement enough in the camp to keep them from watching me," said Ned. "I'm going to try."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> There was considerable activity among the ranch men. The cougars, though wounded, seemed to have temporarily lost all fear and made attack after attack on the men, who had to fire several volleys from their rifles.<br /> "Go ahead," said Jerry. "I'll start the engine slowly."<br /> Grabbing up the pails Ned walked from the cave.<br /> "I'm going to help, also," said Tommy.<br /> "No, you stay here," commanded Jerry. "Bob can go if he wants to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bob joined Ned. They ran to the stream and had filled the pails when, just as they started on the way back, the wounded cougars, driven from the camp, came dashing after the boys.<br /> "Now we're in for it!" exclaimed Ned. "Run, Bob!"<br /> And run they did, as they had never run before, and left the beasts behind.<br /> "Have you the water?" asked Jerry eagerly as the boys came in.<br /> "We have!" exclaimed Bob. "And hard enough work we had getting it."<br /> "Good!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry hurriedly poured most of it into the radiator, though every one in the cave looked at the fluid with longing eyes.<br /> "I must get a drink soon, or I shall go half crazy!" said the professor suddenly. "I never was so thirsty in my life."<br /> "I'm saving just a little bit for each of us," spoke Jerry. "But it is a very small quantity, and will only serve to wet our mouths. If all goes well we shall soon have plenty."<br /> He distributed about a pint of the water among his companions, and though each one got only a little it brought welcome relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, speed, engine"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now we're ready to skip out!" announced Jerry as he screwed the cap on the radiator tank, and increased the speed of the engine. "But first we had better take a look outside to see if any of that gang are in sight."<br /> The professor, who had good eyes, went to the mouth of the cave, and, coming back, reported that he could see a dark mass moving on the further bank of the stream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="risk, road condition, speed, driver, passenger, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "They have evidently gotten over their scare about the cougars," Mr. Snodgrass said, "and are waiting to bag us. What are we going to do?"<br /> "There's only one thing to do," replied Jerry.<br /> "And that is what?"<br /> "We must make a dash for it. The road is fairly good, and I guess we can speed up enough to get out of the range of their bullets in a short time. They can't be very good shots or they would have killed the three cougars, with all the bullets they fired."<br /> So it was decided. They all took their places in the car, and Jerry, who, as if by mutual consent, assumed the place of steersman, leaned forward to throw in the gear clutches.<br /> "Here we go!" he cried. "Look out everybody!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="slowness, car part, visibility, risk, night, speed, sound, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly at first, but gathering speed, the auto moved out of the cave. The lamps lighted up the path, and, though the boys realized that the lanterns disclosed their position to their enemies, they had to use them for their own safety. It was too dark to do without them.<br /> A few seconds later and the car emerged from the cavern. As it shot out there came a chorus of angry cries from the camp of the ranchmen, and several shots were fired, though none of them came close enough to be uncomfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, skill, risk, navigation, visibility, night, river, road condition"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" cried Jerry again, as he increased the speed, and the auto fairly leaped forward. It swayed from side to side, and struck several ruts, so that the occupants were tossed about.<br /> But the main thing was that they went ahead, and away from their enemies. Jerry, peering as best he could into the darkness ahead, made a course for the stream, intending to go close to it, and then run along the bank, or near it, as he had noted in the afternoon that there was a fairly good road there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, speed, parking, river, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> Gradually the shouts of the men, and the firing of their guns died away, and the travelers began to breathe more freely. They had made their escape, and, for the present, were safe.<br /> "Oh do let's stop and get a drink!" pleaded Bob.<br /> "Not yet!" exclaimed Jerry. "Five minutes more will not kill you, and it may save all our lives," for he did not want to slack up while there was any danger of the ranchmen coming after them.<br /> The five minutes seemed like an hour to Bob, and the others, too, were impatient. But at last Jerry shut off the power and the machine came to a halt not far from the creek. Out scrambled the boys and the professor, and then, in spite of the danger of drinking snakes and lizards in the darkness, they all made for the stream, where they quenched their thirst from small collapsable cups which each one had been holding in readiness for just that chance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's better than an ice cream soda!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> "You bet!" agreed Bob heartily. "I never tasted such fine water."<br /> "Very good!" said the professor.<br /> "I guess we can stop long enough to lay in a supply now," remarked Jerry. "We can start off again in five minutes, and in that time they can not catch up to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, car part, night, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> So the radiator was filled to the top, and the auxiliary tank likewise, while the boys indulged freely in the liquid, thinking, perhaps, they might have some of the characteristics of the camel, and could drink enough at one time to last a week or more.<br /> Then they started forward again, and the auto soon carried them beyond the possibility of capture that night. They camped out in the open, and, in spite of their rather exciting adventures they slept soundly, awaking as the sun rose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, passenger, mountain, topography, scenery, car part, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was given a chance to run the machine, and he took the front seat with Tommy, who was delighted to be there for the first time. They had not been going long before they found the land was rising.<br /> "We're coming into the mountains now," said Jerry.<br /> Up a long hill, with a gradual assent, puffed the auto. On either side were broad fields where tall Pampas grass was growing, amid which thousands of grasshoppers, or some similar insect, were singing.<br /> "Better be sure your brake is in good working order," suggested Jerry, as they came to the steep descent on the other side. "We don't want any more accidents."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Ned tried the ordinary brake. There was a clicking sound, followed by a snapping one.<br /> "Brake's busted!" exclaimed Jerry. "Try the emergency!"<br /> Ned did so. That, too, gave out only a faint screech, and did not grip the axle as it should.<br /> "Look out now!" yelled Jerry. "We're in for it!"<br /> An instant later the auto began to move forward at a rapid pace. All Ned's efforts to check it were in vain.<br /> "We're running away!" cried frightened Tommy. "I wish I'd stayed in back!"<br /> "Keep to the middle of the road!" Jerry cried above the noise of the auto rushing down the steep hill. At the bottom the road took a sharp turn, and the hearts of all beat rapidly with fear as they beheld it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XII. - Tommy Finds a Friend (98-106) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="accident, car part, risk, agriculture"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, car part, driver, passenger, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XII<br /> <br /> TOMMY FINDS A FRIEND<br /> <br /> So rapidly did the machine shoot down the descent that it almost seemed the curved road was rushing to meet the travelers. Again and again Ned tried the brakes, but without avail. He had shut off the power at the first indication that something was wrong.<br /> "We can never make that turn!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "I'm afraid not," agreed Jerry.<br /> They were all clinging to the sides of the car, while Ned gripped the steering wheel with a desperate hold.<br /> "Look out for the turn!" cried the professor as they came to the sharp curve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="skill, car part, risk, scenery, agriculture, speed, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> But, to the surprise of all, Ned, instead of shifting the wheel in at least an attempt to swing around the half circle kept straight on the course. The boy had resolved on another plan.<br /> Directly in front of him, and to the left of the road was a big field of tall waving Pampas grass, the plumes nodding eight feet above the ground. It was shut off from the thoroughfare by a frail wooden fence.<br /> "I'm going to steer into the grass!" cried Ned. "It's our only chance!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, accident, speed, agriculture, risk, plant, skill, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> The next instant there was a splintering sound as the auto crashed through the fence, which offered no more resistance, because of the great speed, than a paper hoop does to a circus performer. Then it seemed to the travelers as though they had been plunged into a tossing, waving sea of grass.<br /> The tall Pampas plumes and the stems wrapped themselves about the boys and the professor, almost choking them by the pollen that was shaken off. The feathery-like tops tickled them in the eyes, nose and mouth as, carried by the runaway auto, they were dashed through them.<br /> But the grass had just the effect Ned had intended and hoped for. It clogged the wheels of the machine, and though soft, offered so much resistance that the machine soon began to slow down, as does a locomotive when it runs into a snow drift.<br /> After plowing through the field for about two hundred feet the car came to a final stop, with a little jolt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="nationality, risk, health, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Caramba!" yelled a voice and then followed such a string of Spanish that the boys thought they had run down a whole camp of Mexican herders.<br /> "Did we hit any one?" asked Jerry, peering forward as well as he could through the tall grass.<br /> "Caramba! Hit any one! The Americano pirates have killed Don Elvardo!" exclaimed the unseen one. "You have broken—!" and then followed such a confusion of words that the boys could not understand.<br /> "Have we broken your leg?" asked Jerry, speaking in Spanish this time.<br /> "Santa Maria! No! You have broken the cigarette I just rolled!" and with that the grass parted in front of the auto, and a little Mexican, wearing a suit profusely trimmed with silver braid, showed himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys felt like laughing as they beheld the woe-begone face of Don Elvardo. In his hand he held the remains of a cigarette.<br /> "Behold!" he went on tragically. "I am peacefully walking in my field, looking over my crop of Pampas, when I feel a desire to smoke. I sit me down and roll a cigarette. I am about to light it, when—Santa Maria! There is a rushing sound of ten thousand imps of darkness. My grass is mowed down as if by a sickle in the hands of a giant. I turn in fear! I see something coming! I can not tell what it is, for the tall grass hides it! I turn to flee! The infernal thing keeps after me! Presto! Caramba! It hits me so—"<br /> Don Elvardo illustrated by slapping himself vigorously on the thigh.<br /> "Then I fall! I am crushed! I am killed! I die in pain and fear! I arise! Behold, senor Americanos, my cigarette is broken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, car part, agriculture, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're very sorry, of course," said Jerry politely. "But you see our auto ran away on the hill, and as the brakes would not work, the only thing to save our lives was to steer into this field. We did not know you were here, or we would have sent around to your house to ask permission to enter," added the lad sarcastically.<br /> "But I am here!" snapped the Mexican.<br /> "So we see," admitted Jerry. "We are willing to pay for any damage we have done."<br /> The Mexican's eyes sparkled, and he rubbed his hands as if in anticipation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That alters the case," said Don Elvardo. "The Americano senors are welcome ten thousand times to my field. I bid you welcome. I salute you. Pay. Oh, yes! It is but right that you should pay!" Again he rubbed his hands together.<br /> "About what would you say it was worth?" asked Ned.<br /> "I am no miser," replied the Mexican. "I do not wish to insult my friends the Americanos. I will only charge them for the damage to the grass. The broken fence is of no moment. Pay me one hundred dollars and I will say no more about the affair."<br /> "He's a robber!" said Jerry in a low voice. "We haven't done five dollars' damage to his crop and the fence combined."<br /> "I guess he will whistle for his one hundred dollars," said Ned.<br /> Don Elvardo heard him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, agriculture, plant, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "So!" he exclaimed. "You will not pay me one little hundred dollars for the damage. Caramba! Then it is I who shall at once lodge a complaint with the authorities. We will see if there is a law in the land, or if crazy Americanos can spoil a poor man's crop and pay nothing. We shall see!"<br /> "Offer him ten dollars," suggested Bob. The boys consulted together a minute or two. They wanted to be fair, but they did not care to be robbed. The professor had taken no part in the discussion. He seemed to be intently examining the tall grass on either side of the machine.<br /> Suddenly the scientist stepped from the side of the car, and rapidly made his way to the front, where Don Elvardo stood. Mr. Snodgrass gazed intently at the Mexican. Then he gave a leap toward the Don, exclaiming as he did so:<br /> "There it is! Right on your hat! Don't move an inch or it will jump away! I have it now! This is indeed a lucky day! Just a second and I'll have it!"<br /> With that the professor made a leap toward the Mexican with outstretched hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Santa Maria! Diavolo?" screamed Don Elvardo as he saw the scientist coming for him. "Caramba! It is to murder me that you come!"<br /> Then, calling for help at the top of his voice, the Mexican turned and fled in terror, his course being marked through the tall grass by the wave-like motion he imparted to the plumes in his haste.<br /> "Why—why what in the world ails him?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "He probably thought you were going to choke him to death," said Jerry with a laugh. "In fact your actions were not so very far from giving that idea."<br /> "Why bless my soul!" ejaculated the professor. "All I wanted was to get a fine specimen of a blue grasshopper from his big hat, where the insect had alighted. It was worth about forty dollars."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I saw some just as good in a city once for twenty dollars," put in Tommy, "and they had more silver braid on."<br /> "What! A grasshopper with silver braid on?" cried the scientist.<br /> "I thought you said his hat was worth forty dollars," went on Tommy, somewhat embarrassed.<br /> "I was speaking of the blue grasshopper," explained Mr. Snodgrass. "My, I am sorry to have missed that one."<br /> "But you did a good service in scaring this Mexican away, as you did the chap with the ox cart," spoke Ned. "He might have made trouble for us."<br /> "And we had better get out of here while we have the chance," said Jerry. "He may come back any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="agriculture, plant, navigation, maintenance, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly the auto was turned around, and run over the same course by which it had entered the field. Otherwise it would have been almost impossible to have advanced, so thick was the grass. The road regained, the machine was sent along it at good speed, for fear Don Elvardo or some of his friends might appear.<br /> "We had better stop and fix the brakes," suggested Ned, after an hour's run.<br /> "And get dinner at the same time," put in Bob. "We'll kill two stones with the same automobile, as the poem says."<br /> "I guess you're a little twisted," remarked Ned, "but your intentions are good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, river, maintenance, car part, navigation, map"><br /> <poem><br /> A halt was made under a big tree, near a little stream, and soon a good fire was built and dinner was being cooked.<br /> It was found that some nuts had become loose on the brakes, and this trouble Jerry soon remedied. After the meal they sat about and talked a while.<br /> "We'll soon be in New Mexico," remarked Jerry, consulting a small map.<br /> "Will we?" asked Tommy. "I'm so glad."<br /> "Why?"<br /> "Because there's a man who was once a friend of my father at a place called Las Cruces. It's near the Rio Grande river. If we could go there I know Mr. Douglass would take care of me."<br /> "Then we'll go there," said Jerry. "It will be right on our route."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed this would be a good plan. That night the travelers stopped in a small village where they had good beds and meals. They resumed the journey next day, and for several days thereafter met with no mishaps as they speeded toward Las Cruces. They had left the lowlands and were well up among the hills by this time.<br /> One day, just at dusk, they rolled into Las Cruces and, after a little inquiry found Mr. Douglass, who was very glad to see Tommy.<br /> "I will be glad to take care of him for the present," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIII. - The Colored Man's Ghost (107-116) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="city, rural, pleasure, mechanic, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIII<br /> <br /> THE COLORED MAN'S GHOST<br /> <br /> The travelers found the town where Tommy's friend lived such a pleasant place that they spent several days there. It was a thriving place, and the auto was a source of endless wonder to most of the inhabitants, who had never seen one.<br /> Had the boys wished they could have made considerable money taking parties out in the car for short trips, but they knew they had a long journey before them and they wished to save the machine all they could. It needed some repairs which were made by the local blacksmith, and then the travelers were ready to move forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know how to thank you for all you did for me," said Tommy, as the boys were leaving. "You saved my life. Maybe I will have a chance to do you a good turn some day. If I have, you can bet I'll do it."<br /> "We know you will, Tommy," said Jerry. "Well, good-by. I hope we see you again."<br /> "Same here!" exclaimed Bob and Ned.<br /> They did not know how soon they were to meet their friend again, nor in what a peculiar manner he was able to aid them in return for what they had done for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, road condition, slowness, equipment, rural, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> For several days the auto skimmed along through a somewhat lonely country. The roads were not very good and a number of times progress was so slow that only a few miles were made between sunrise and sunset. Now and then the travelers would come to a lonely cabin, where they could replenish their food supply or get a night's lodging. But, in the main, they had to depend on their own resources.<br /> Occasionally they would reach a little settlement, where their arrival never failed to produce as much excitement as a fire and circus combined. Every day brought them nearer their gold mine, concerning which they were very anxious, as they had heard nothing further from Jim Nestor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, mountain, maintenance, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "The mine may have been taken away from him for all we know," chafed Jerry as he fretted at the delay caused by bad roads.<br /> "We'll hope for the best," said Ned. "No use crossing a bridge until you come to it."<br /> The travelers were well up among the lower mountains now, though compared with the heights they had still to scale the range was one of mere hills. One evening just at dusk, after a particularly hard day of travel, during which the auto had broken down several times, necessitating minor repairs, the Motor Boys came to a place where two roads divided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder which we had better take?" asked Bob, who was at the wheel.<br /> "The right," said Jerry.<br /> "The left," advised Ned.<br /> "Toss up a cent," suggested the professor. "Make it heads right and tails left."<br /> They did so. The coin came down heads up, and Bob turned the machine to the right. It had not proceeded far on this road when, about a mile ahead, the travelers saw a couple of log cabins.<br /> "Well, there's shelter for to-night, at all events," Jerry remarked, "and, I hope, supper as well. I'm getting a little tired of bacon and coffee."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, rural, African American"><br /> <poem><br /> They found one of the cabins occupied by a negro, his wife, and seven children, the oldest a boy of sixteen and the youngest a little girl, just able to toddle.<br /> "Good evening," greeted the professor, "can we get supper and lodging anywhere about here?"<br /> "I reckon I kin fix yo' up on th' eatin' question, boss," remarked the darkey as he stood in the cabin door as the auto drew up, "but I 'clare t' goodness I can't find no room t' stable that there rip-snortin' beast ye got."<br /> "We don't expect you to take the auto in," spoke Jerry. "If you give us beds for ourselves, or even a room to sleep in we'll pay for it and glad to do it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Land sakes, I'd like t' 'blige yo', deed 'n I would boss," went on the negro, "but my cabin am jest crowded t' th' doah wif me an' my fambily. Yo' am welcome t' suthin' t' eat, but land a' massy whar I'se goin' t' have yo' sleep hab got me cogitatin'."<br /> "What's the matter with that other cabin?" asked Ned.<br /> "What other cabin?" asked the negro, not turning to look in the direction of the second shack, about a quarter of a mile down the road.<br /> "That one," went on Ned, pointing to it. "There may be room in it."<br /> "Oh I reckon there's room enough," replied the colored man, "only—well to tell you th' truff, boss, it ain't exackly healthy t' sleep in that cabin, er even t' talk about it. 'Scuse me but I don't want even t' look at it."<br /> "Why not?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The colored man seemed to hesitate. He fidgeted and seemed ready to go back into his house.<br /> "Why not?" asked Ned again.<br /> "Kase it's--it's got ghosts an' it's hanted!" exclaimed the negro, "an' it ain't safe fer any one to go near it, let alone sleep in it."<br /> "Nonsense," remarked the professor. "There are no such things as ghosts."<br /> "Yo' wouldn't say so if yo' went to that there cabin after dark," persisted the colored man. "'Tain't safe t' talk about it, so yo'll please 'scuse me."<br /> "But what sort of a ghost is it?" asked Jerry.<br /> "It's big an' it's white, an' it rattles chains an' groans sumthin' turrible," said the negro.<br /> "Did you ever see it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Did I ever see it, boss? Couse I done see it. Only t'other night it near skeered me to deff."<br /> "How long has it been there?" asked Bob.<br /> "'Bout a week I reckon," replied the negro. "Ever since Rastus Johnson moved away from th' cabin."<br /> "I guess we'll take a chance with the ghost for the sake of spending a night under shelter," said Jerry. "Meanwhile we can get supper here."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And a fine supper they had. Mrs. Jones, wife of the colored man, proved an excellent cook. She fried some chicken, made some corn bread, and that, with preserves and some good coffee, made up a meal which the travelers voted one of the finest they had eaten in many months.<br /> "Can we get breakfast here, also?" asked Jerry when supper was finished. <br /> "If yo' am alive," replied Jones solemnly.<br /> "If we're alive? What do you mean?"<br /> "Well I reckon ef yo' sleeps in that hanted cabin, there won't be any of yo' left t' want a meal in th' mo'nin'," explained Jones. "It's takin' yo'uns' lives in yo' hands t' go nigh it suah yo' is boahn!"<br /> All they could say did not induce the man to change his mind. He was plainly afraid of the cabin and the "ghost."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, night, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> But the travelers were determined not to let a little thing like that interfere with a chance to sleep under shelter. Accordingly they covered the auto with the tarpaulin provided for that purpose, and moved their blankets into the deserted cabin, which was fairly clean and in good condition. One of the big oil lamps gave sufficient light.<br /> The cabin contained only two rooms, one on the ground floor, and the other above it, reached by a movable ladder.<br /> "I think we had better sleep upstairs," said Jerry. "The door doesn't fasten very securely, and besides I think it will be drier there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they mounted the ladder, spread their blankets out on the floor, and were all soon fast asleep. None of them expected to be disturbed, for they laid the story of the ghost to an overwrought imagination of the colored man.<br /> So it was with a sudden feeling of terror that Jerry was awakened in the middle of the night by hearing a deep groan, seeming to come from the room below.<br /> He sat up, rubbing his eyes to further awaken himself, and then he became aware that Bob was also sitting up. He could see because of the moonlight streaming in through a window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you hear anything?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I thought so," answered Bob.<br /> "I thought I did," put in Ned, who, it seems had been awakened at the same time the others were.<br /> Once more there sounded an unmistakable groan. It came from the ground floor, and was so loud, penetrating and, in spite of the would-be bravery of the boys, so awful coming out of the darkness, that they shuddered.<br /> "What's that?" asked the professor, who also, this time, was roused from his slumbers.<br /> Before either of the boys could answer the groan was repeated and this time it was followed by the unmistakable clanking of chains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The colored man's ghost!" whispered Bob.<br /> "Nonsense!" exclaimed the professor, but, no sooner had he spoken than there came another weird noise, and the chains rattled louder than ever.<br /> "Light the lantern," whispered Jerry. "We must see what it is. Perhaps it's only some one playing a joke."<br /> "Let me take a look before you make a light," suggested the professor. "I can look down the ladder hole."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Softly he crawled over to the opening and peered down. As he did so the noises were repeated. The professor uttered an exclamation.<br /> "It bears the other descriptive marks of the creature the negro told about," he said, crawling back to where the boys were huddled together. "It is big and white and it seems to be trying to climb up the ladder."<br /> "Wait until I get my revolver," whispered Jerry. "We'll soon see if it's a ghost or not."<br /> "Don't fire," cautioned the professor. "It may be some one trying to scare us, but we have no right to fire at any one."<br /> "I'll give 'em a warning, at any rate," said the lad. He went to the opening and called down:<br /> "Tell us who you are or I'll shoot, do you hear?"<br /> A groan and the clanking of chains was the only answer. This was followed by a violent agitation and shaking of the ladder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bang!" went Jerry's revolver. He had fired into the air.<br /> Succeeding the report there was a silence. This was broken by a further clanking of chains. Then came a crash, and when the echo of this died away the sound of feet running away could be heard.<br /> "Pretty solid footsteps for a ghost," commented Ned.<br /> "Look! Look!" cried Bob, pointing out of the window.<br /> There, running down the moon-lit road the boys saw a big white mule, to the neck of which was fastened a chain that rattled with every step.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the ghost," said the professor. "I thought I recognized the voice as that of a quadruped with which I was familiar. The animal has probably broken loose from the field and came here in search of food."<br /> "Well it certainly scared me all right," admitted Bob. The others did not commit themselves, but there was no doubt but that they had several heart-flutters.<br /> "I wonder what that crash was?" asked Ned.<br /> The professor glanced down the hole leading to the first floor.<br /> "The ghost made it by kicking our ladder away," the scientist replied. "I wonder how we can get down."<br /> But the boys did not worry about this, being too sleepy. Soon they were all snoring again, and did not awaken until the sun was streaming in the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIV. - Trouble With a Bad Man (117-126) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="rural, navigation, pedestrian, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIV<br /> <br /> TROUBLE WITH A BAD MAN<br /> <br /> "This is a nice pickle!" exclaimed Bob, who was the first to rise.<br /> "What's the matter, lost your collar button?" sleepily inquired Jerry.<br /> "No, but the mule knocked the ladder down, and we'll have to jump or stay here."<br /> "It isn't far to the ground in this shanty," remarked Jerry. "Go ahead and drop down."<br /> "It may not be very far," said Bob, "but I don't want to take the chance."<br /> "Afraid you'll sprain your ankle?"<br /> "No, but I don't want to fall into the cistern."<br /> "Cistern? What are you talking about?"<br /> "Well," went on Bob, "there's a cistern right under this ladder opening. The mule pulled the cover off last night, and whoever drops down is going to land goodness knows where."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The others soon confirmed what Bob had said. When the cabin was built a cistern had been sunk in the middle of the ground floor. This had been covered, and the ladder rested on it when the travelers went to bed, but the mule, probably in search for a drink, uncovered it.<br /> "Can't get down without a ladder," observed Ned.<br /> "What's the matter with jumping from one of the outside windows?" asked Jerry.<br /> They thought the idea a good one until they saw that the only one there was opened onto a pile of sharp rocks, into which even a jump of fifteen feet might be dangerous.<br /> "What's to be done?" asked Bob.<br /> "Guess we'll have to wait until Jones comes to see if we are dead," replied Jerry. "Then he can cover the cistern and raise the ladder."<br /> "I guess we'll have a long wait for Jones," commented Ned. "He's so afraid of this place that he'll never come within hearing distance of it."<br /> "Let's yell out of the window," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They did so, uniting their voices in a volume of sound. It seemed to have no effect though, for there was no movement about the colored man's cabin.<br /> "Once more," urged the professor.<br /> This time they produced a result, for, down the road they could see Jones come to the door of his shack and peer out. Thereupon they waved their hands to him, and in a few minutes the colored man was standing as close as he seemed to dare to come to their shelter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is yo' all daid?" he asked in awed accents.<br /> "Not quite all of us," answered the professor, "but we will be unless you come in and hoist the ladder for us."<br /> "Did th'—th' ghost knock it down?" asked Jones. <br /> "It did," replied Bob, solemnly.<br /> "I knowed it! I knowed it! Maybe you'll believe me next time. Golly! I ain't goin' t' stay here," and Jones was about to run off down the road.<br /> "Here! Come back!" commanded the captives, and the colored man reluctantly did so.<br /> "I doan laik t' stay round yeah!" pleaded the negro. "'Tain't no ways healthy. What yo' done want, anyhow?"<br /> "We want you to hoist the ladder for us," said the professor. "Come now, don't be silly. The only ghost there was, and we saw it, was an old white mule with a chain on its neck."<br /> "Co'se it were! Dat's de form it took when I seed it!" cried Jones. "But it can take on any shape, dat ghost can. Next time it'll be a lion er a tiger er a elephant. Monstrous terrible things, ha'nts is. So de ghost done knocked de ladder down! I knowed it would do suthin'."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Amid a show of genuine fear the colored man entered the cabin, and after replacing the cistern cover cautiously raised the ladder. Then he ran out as if the ghost were after him.<br /> "I guess we'll never be able to convince Jones that there isn't a ghost here," said Jerry as they came down and started down the road toward the colored man's cabin, where they were to have breakfast.<br /> "Here's something that may prove to him that the mule was the ghost," spoke Ned, picking up a horse shoe, which was on the cabin floor.<br /> They showed it to the negro, but he only shook his head.<br /> "It looks like a hoss shoe, dat I admit," said Jones, "but it's enchanted. It'll turn inter a snake er a tiger er suthin' terruble 'fore long. I don't want nothin' t' do with it," and he cast it into the bushes by the side of the road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="dust, rural, night, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> The excitement of the night had taken none of the travelers' appetites away, and they made a good meal. Then, once more they took the road, disappearing in a cloud of dust, while Jones, his wife, and the seven children stood and stared in wonder.<br /> They traveled all that day with only an occasional glimpse of civilization in the shape of some house or cabin. No villages were reached, it being a centre of vast grazing lands, where only a lonely herder, or, perhaps two, remained to guard the cattle. That night they camped in the open, and found it rather uncomfortable, for it began to rain about midnight.<br /> "I wish we were back in the cabin, with the ghost-mule and everything else," muttered Jerry, as he tried to find a dry spot to lie down on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, city, class"><br /> <poem><br /> But troubles can not last forever, and morning came finally, bringing a clear day and a bright sun which was very welcome.<br /> Breakfast over they took the road once more. About noon they came to a small town that boasted of what was called the "Imperial Hotel."<br /> "I suppose we'd better try the Imperial," suggested Ned. "It don't look very scrumptious, but you can't always tell by the appearance of a toad how far he can jump."<br /> The auto drew up in front of the inn with a noise that brought a score of men from the barroom.<br /> "Jumpin' Gila Monsters and rattlesnakes!" cried one of the men, evidently a miner from his dress. "I've read about them Satan go-carts, but I never believed in 'em. Sakes alive, but they do look funny without a hoss in front."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, sound, risk, city"><br /> <poem><br /> He and the others gathered about the car, asking so many questions that it took all the boys and the professor as well to answer them. When curiosity had been partially satisfied the boys went into the hotel. While there was nothing to make a weary traveler glad he had found it, the place was not as bad as many where the Motor Boys had stopped. They had a good meal, and decided to rest a few hours before proceeding.<br /> It was along about three o'clock. The crowd of men in the barroom had become larger as new comers arrived. It was also noisier and loud voices, and occasional threats to shoot, made the travelers think it was about time to move on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="class, risk, rural, city"><br /> <poem><br /> They were about to go to their machine when they were approached on the porch where they were sitting, by the miner who had first remarked about the auto. He had evidently been drinking more than was good for him, and was in a quarrelsome mood.<br /> "If you don't want to play with me you needn't," he called, evidently to some one inside. "I can find some one to shuffle the cards with me. Here, you kid"—to Jerry, "you come an' we'll have a little game."<br /> "Thank you, I don't play," said Jerry quietly.<br /> "What's that?" came the sharp return.<br /> "I said I didn't play."<br /> "Why hang my buttons! You got to play when I tell you to," cried the miner. "Pete Simmons ain't used to bein' told no. Here, sit down to this table an' deal the cards," and he grabbed Jerry by the arm, and attempted to force him into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go my arm!" exclaimed Jerry.<br /> "You do as I tell you or I'll make you!" exclaimed the brute. "I'm used to havin' my way!"<br /> "Take your hand off!" commanded Jerry, drawing back his fist, for he was strong and hot tempered.<br /> "Now be nice, be nice!" sneered the man. <br /> "Let go of him!" exclaimed Ned coming forward and standing beside his chum, while Bob also ranged up alongside. "We'll all take a hand in this if you force us to."<br /> "I can tackle the three of you with both hands tied behind my back," cried the miner, flushing with anger at being defied by the boys.<br /> "Count me in too," spoke Professor Snodgrass, joining the lads. "I don't want to fight, but I will if I have to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now the professor, though a mild man, was, by reason of his out-of-door life, in fine physical condition, and no mean antagonist, which fact the miner saw.<br /> "Oh well, I was only foolin'," the ugly chap remarked with a poor attempt at a smile. But his face showed his rage. He moved away in a few seconds, and shuffled to the end of the porch, where he soon fell asleep on a bench.<br /> Bob looked over and saw him, as the boys were discussing the program for the remainder of the day.<br /> "Let's play a trick on that brute," said Bob.<br /> "What kind?" asked Jerry.<br /> "You watch," replied Chunky. "You'll see some fun."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now it happened that the professor had among his collection of specimens several large stuffed snakes, for he was an expert taxidermist. There were also several horned toads and big lizards. Bob got several of the ugliest ones and, with the aid of the scientist, who entered into the<br /> plan to pay a well deserved lesson to the miner, arranged the things about the sleeper, on the bench and on the floor of the porch.<br /> By this time most of the crowd at the hotel was aware what was going on, and, as few of them had any too much love for Simmons they waited the outcome with interest. When the reptiles were placed in a circle about the sleeping miner, one of the men fired his revolver in the air. At the sound Simmons awoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first he did not notice the reptiles, as he was on his back, staring up at the sky. Then he suddenly sat up, and caught a glimpse of the ugly looking things. For a moment he seemed to be in doubt as to what he beheld. Then he let out a yell that could have been heard almost a half mile.<br /> "Wow!" he cried. "Take 'em away. I'll never drink another drop! Honest I won't! Oh! Oh! the horrible snakes! I'll shut my eyes so I can't see 'em!"<br /> But when he opened them again the reptiles were still there.<br /> "Oh! Oh! I see 'em still!" he yelled. "Take 'em away, somebody, please do. Oh I forgot! They ain't real! I only imagine I see 'em!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He got up on the bench and was dancing about in terror. Then he drew his revolver, and was about to fire into the midst of the snakes.<br /> "He'll ruin my specimens!" cried the professor.<br /> One of the men ran forward, and began collecting the reptiles. Simmons saw them being gathered up, and noticed that they were not wiggling. Then the truth of it dawned on him, and he knew he had been fooled. His companions laughed loud and long. But Simmons, unable to stand the jokes and jibes he knew would be poked at him, leaped over the porch railing and ran down the road as fast as he could go.<br /> "Serves him right!" was the general verdict.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XV. - The Story of Lost Lake (127-134) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, pedestrian, animal, car, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XV<br /> <br /> THE STORY OF LOST LAKE<br /> <br /> The trick Bob had played seemed to be much appreciated among the crowd of miners and herdsmen who were gathered at the hotel. They laughed loud and long over the sight Simmons had presented.<br /> "I guess he'll know better than to fool with the next lad that comes along in one of them choo-choo wagons," was the hotel proprietor's comment.<br /> Bob gathered up the specimens that belonged to the professor and they were put in the car, together with a fresh supply of provisions that were purchased at the village store.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess we'll be traveling," suggested the professor. The boys agreed with him, for though they knew the pleasures of sleeping beneath a roof, yet the character of the men who stayed at the hotel was so rough that they feared further rows. So, in spite of the entreaties of the hotel keeper they started off, having inquired the best roads to take.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, pleasure, mountain"><br /> <poem><br /> Through the afternoon they bowled over a well elevated table land. The air was fine and bracing. Off in the distance to the west could be seen the first ranges of the big mountains.<br /> "That's where our mine is," said Jerry, his eyes shining.<br /> "Maybe it isn't ours after all," put in Bob.<br /> "Now there you go, Chunky. What do you want to call up unpleasant subjects for?" asked Ned reproachfully. "Anyhow it's our mine until some one takes it away from us, and I guess they'll have quite a fight, with Nestor on guard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, speed, vision, animal"><br /> <poem><br /> The others thought so too. Jerry, who was steering, was sending the auto forward at a fast clip, when the professor, who always had his eyes open called out:<br /> "What's that just ahead of us? Looks like a bear."<br /> "Where?" asked Ned.<br /> "Right in line with that big rock," went on the scientist, who had very good eyes and could see a long distance.<br /> "It's only a tree stump," spoke Bob.<br /> "I didn't know tree stumps could move," went on Mr. Snodgrass, "for this one is certainly coming toward us. It's not a bear after all," he continued, now that the object was nearer. "It's a bull! That's what it is! It looks as if it meant to go for us!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> The boys could now see that the beast was one of the big, long-horned western cattle. It had evidently strayed from the herd, or had been made an outcast because of a bad temper and a perpetual desire to fight. The latter seemed more likely, for, as the auto proceeded, and the bull came on, lessening the distance between the two, a defiant bellow of rage sounded.<br /> "I hope he don't try to ram us," spoke Jerry. "We don't want any more collisions."<br /> "See if you can't run away from him," suggested Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car part, sound, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> By this time the bull was about one hundred yards away. It was coming straight for the auto. Jerry opened the muffler and at the sound of the explosions the bull stopped short.<br /> At this point the road ran in a sort of depression, with hills rising on either side. It was rather narrow, so there was no chance to turn to one side. Jerry had to bring the machine to a stop or else run the risk of hitting the bull. He thought the animal might run away if it saw the machine coming toward him, but there was nothing sure about this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, sound, car part, equipment, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, this is a regular hold-up," said the professor. "I wonder whether the bull wants to collect toll?"<br /> The animal seemed to be growing angrier and angrier every minute. It bellowed loudly, pawed the earth with its hoofs, and shook the lowered head, armed with sharp horns. Occasionally the keen points would tear up the ground.<br /> "I wouldn't want him to strike one of our tires," remarked Ned. "It would be all up with it."<br /> "Hurrah! I have it!" cried Bob at length.<br /> He dove beneath the rear seat and pulled up a shining object.<br /> "The ammonia squirt gun!" he exclaimed. "The same we used on the hold-up tramps. Give the bull a dose of it!"<br /> "Good idea," commented Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, weapon, animal, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The bulb of the automatic pistol was still filled with the fiery liquid, for the boys kept it loaded in readiness for use. Bob handed it over to Jerry. The latter took careful aim, and pressed the rubber. A fine stream of the powerful stuff struck the bull full in the face.<br /> With a bellow that fairly shook the ground near-by the bull reared up in the air, and coming down on all fours snorted with rage, shook its head to rid its eyes of the terrible burning, and then dashed madly away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now I guess we can get past," remarked Bob, "and get some supper. I'm as hungry as a bear."<br /> A good fire was soon started and Ned began to prepare the meal. While the others were setting out the dishes, or getting ready for the night camp, since it seemed there was no place for shelter in the neighborhood, the travelers were startled by a voice:<br /> "Evenin' strangers," called a tall, thin man who strolled down the slight hill at the foot of which the party were encamped. "Have you got a bite to spare?"<br /> "Plenty," replied the professor cheerfully. "Come right along. Supper will be ready in a little while. Are you hungry?"<br /> "Hungry? I should say so. I haven't had a bit to eat for two days, except what berries and old nuts I could gather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter? Get lost?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Exactly," replied the stranger. "My name's Johnson," he went on. "I was prospecting up in the hills, and got lost there."<br /> "Anybody with you?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a soul; I'm all alone. I used up the last of my grub in trying to find the trail, and I guess I'd been looking for it yet if I hadn't heard the noise of your steam engine here, and smelled the cooking. I s'pose you're huntin' for it, same as me."<br /> "Hunting for what?" asked the professor, struck by Johnson's manner.<br /> "Why Lost Lake, to be sure. Nobody comes out this far unless they're huntin' for the lake, but you're the first to come in a steam car without rails."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it's a free country," remarked the scientist, wishing to evade giving a direct answer, in the hope of learning something. "I guess we have a right to hunt for the lake."<br /> "Of course, of course you have, strangers," went on Johnson. "No offense. Have you struck a trace of it yet?"<br /> "Not yet," replied Mr. Snodgrass. "To tell you the truth," the professor went on, "we don't know much about this lost lake."<br /> "Nor no one else," said Johnson. "I'll tell you all I know, which isn't much. I've been looking for it 'most a year now."<br /> "Suppose we have supper first," suggested the professor as he noted the eyes Johnson was casting at the food. "We can talk afterward."<br /> "That's the best word I've heard in a good while," said the newcomer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate with a rapidity that left no doubt about his hunger. Nor were the others far behind him, as the crisp air of the mountain region had given them all famous appetites.<br /> "Now for Lost Lake," spoke Jerry when all had their fill.<br /> "It's supposed to be in those mountains over there," began Johnson, pointing to the range off in the west, now dimly discernible in the dusk. "It's said to be a beautiful sheet of water, with high peaks all around it. It was discovered forty years ago by a prospector, and he came to the nearest village with the news. But when he went to lead a party back they couldn't find the trail. Ever since then people have tried to find Lost Lake, but no one has ever succeeded. Many have been<br /> killed trying."<br /> "But why does any one want to find a lake hidden in the mountains?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Yes, tell us?" asked Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, for the gold on its banks, of course," said Johnson. "Didn't I say that? I meant to. The man who discovered it said there were pebbles of gold on the shores. He brought back a pocket full to prove it. I got the fever quite a few months ago, but nothing has come of all my efforts, and this time I nearly died. It was terrible up in the mountains. There's not a soul there I believe."<br /> "And you didn't even get a glimpse of the lake?" asked Ned.<br /> "Nary a look, young man. But I'm sure it's there. I'm going back to town, get a new outfit and some provisions, and have another try."<br /> He was another example of how the gold fever grips one.<br /> "Maybe we'll come across the lake, though we're not looking for it," said Jerry.<br /> "Maybe you will," assented the prospector. "That's generally the way. The first man was not hunting for it, but he came upon it one night when the moon was shining. If you do find it, look out for the old hermit, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVI. - A Lonely Cabin (135-143) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, health, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVI<br /> <br /> A LONELY CABIN<br /> <br /> "What hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why you haven't heard half the story of Lost Lake," went on Johnson. "There's supposed to be a sort of wild man who lives on the shores of the lake, and he murders travelers. At least that's the yarn they tell."<br /> "Was the hermit always there?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, only the last few years," replied Johnson. "He is said to be an old man with white hair. But I don't believe that part. Let me find the lake and the gold, and I won't worry about hermits."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The prospector camped with the travelers that night. They were all up early the next morning, and, at the professor's suggestion the boys gave Johnson plenty of provisions to last him until he could get back to civilization.<br /> "Maybe you would like to go along with us and look for the lake?" suggested Bob.<br /> "No, thank you," replied Johnson. "I'm afraid your chances of finding it are slimmer than mine are. I'll have another try all by myself. I'm much obliged for the help you've given me."<br /> Then, shouldering his pack, he started off down the trail, while the travelers, packing their things in the auto, set forward again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The boys talked about little save the story of Lost Lake, but the professor was too busy arranging his latest specimens to join in the conversation.<br /> "I'd like to find it and see the wild hermit," said Bob.<br /> "I don't s'pose you'd care anything about the gold," put in Ned.<br /> "Of course I would," replied Bob. "But we've got one gold mine now, what do we want of another?"<br /> "It might be well to have a second in case we lose the first," Jerry ventured. "Nothing like having plenty while you're at it."<br /> "I wouldn't like to be a hermit," went on Bob. "Think of always being hungry."<br /> "Chunky is thinking of misers, I guess," laughed Ned. "There's nothing to prevent a hermit from living off the fat of the land. If it wasn't for being lonesome I'd be a hermit for a while."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, passenger, driver, parking"><br /> <poem><br /> "Stop the auto!" called the professor suddenly. "I just saw a fine specimen of a snapping turtle scoot across the road. I must have it. It's worth about twenty dollars to me. Stop the car! I must get out!"<br /> Ned, who was running the auto, shut off the power and the machine came to a stop. Before it had ceased to move Mr. Snodgrass had leaped out and was running back. He began a hurried but careful search over the ground. Then he was seen to spring forward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, weapon, risk, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got it, I guess," remarked Jerry.<br /> An instant later there came a howl from the scientist, who was hidden from sight by the tall grass.<br /> "Help, boys! Help!"<br /> "What's the matter? Won't he let you catch him?" cried Ned.<br /> "He's caught me!" yelled the professor. "Come quick and bring a knife to cut his head off with!"<br /> The boys piled out of the auto in a hurry, Jerry stopping to grab up a big carving knife from the camp utensils.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When they came up to the professor they hardly knew whether to laugh or not. The turtle, which was a big one, had grabbed the scientist by the thumb, and was clinging so tightly that it was suspended in the air, swaying to and fro. Meanwhile Mr. Snodgrass was dancing about in pain.<br /> "Why don't you take hold of the turtle's shell in the other hand, and you won't feel the weight so much!" called Jerry.<br /> "I can't," replied the professor. "I have a rare specimen of a toad in my other hand, and I don't want to lose it. Oh boys! Hurry up, and pry the turtle's jaws open, but don't hurt him, for he's valuable."<br /> "Can't you put the toad in your pocket?" asked Ned, knowing the scientist had no scruples about loading his garments up with all sorts of things. "Then you would have one hand free."<br /> "I never thought of that," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I can do that, can't I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did so, and, once the toad was secure he took hold of the turtle, which relieved his lacerated thumb from the dragging weight.<br /> "He won't let go!" exclaimed the professor, after a vain attempt to pull the turtle loose. "It is a genuine snapper, and they have a grip like a bull dog. I am glad I found it, in spite of the pain," he added, though just then, the turtle took a fresh hold and the professor squirmed in<br /> agony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here; I'll cut its head off," said Jerry, coming forward with the knife.<br /> "No, no!" exclaimed the professor. "It is too valuable to spoil. Just take the point of the blade, and pry the jaws open while I hold it steady."<br /> Jerry tried to do this, but the turtle only seemed to grip the tighter, and the professor's thumb was bitten through nearly to the bone.<br /> "What shall I do?" wailed Mr. Snodgrass. "I don't want to kill it."<br /> "I have it!" exclaimed Ned. "There's a little puddle of water over there beside the road. Dip the turtle in it, and he'll think he can swim. Then he'll let go."<br /> "Good!" cried the professor as he proceeded to put the plan in operation. "Then I can save him alive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The scheme worked well. As soon as the turtle felt the water it let go, and started to swim off. But the puddle was too shallow, and the professor, watching his chance, grabbed the reptile again. This time he took care to catch it at the middle of the shell, where the turtle could<br /> not reach around and bite.<br /> "I have it, after all," remarked the scientist as he deposited his prize in a box, and proceeded to put some salve and a rag on his thumb. "It's a rare specimen. I'm glad I got it."<br /> "And we're all glad we didn't get it," spoke Jerry with a laugh in which the others joined. But the professor took it good naturedly. He was used to such accidents he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery, topography"><br /> <poem><br /> Resuming their journey, the travelers made only one more stop, that at noon, to get dinner. They had seen no signs of human habitation, and, as the afternoon wore on, and no house or cabin was seen, they began to feel that they might as well prepare to camp out again.<br /> As they were descending a gentle, sloping hill that led down into a small valley, just as the sun was setting, they saw, about a mile ahead a lonely cabin. The sight of smoke coming from the chimney told them there was some one at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hope whoever lives there can accommodate us," remarked Chunky. "My appetite's getting the upper hand of me again."<br /> "It don't look large enough to hold us all," observed Jerry.<br /> "There's a barn, or some sort of building, in the rear," remarked Ned. "Some of us can use that if the man or woman lets us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> A few minutes later the auto came to a stop in front of the cabin, which was indeed a lonely one, not another dwelling, large or small, showing in the whole valley.<br /> "Good evening," greeted an old man, with snow-white hair falling over his shoulders. He came to the door of the shack, and seemed to regard the coming travelers as a matter of course. "I am glad to see you," he went on. "You are just in time."<br /> "Time for what?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "For the great final and successful experiment," proceeded the aged man. "The test is about to begin. Come in and see me make gold from common earth. At last I have found the long-lost secret!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The eyes of the lonely man glowed with a strange light, and he seemed so excited that the boys did not know what to do.<br /> "Humor him," advised the professor in a whisper. "He is probably a harmless lunatic. Let him have his way, and pretend to agree with all he says."<br /> "Will you come in?" went on the old man. "I must proceed with my work."<br /> "We'll be glad to," went on the scientist. "That is, if we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> "My labors are now ended," the man said. "I have worked for twenty years on the secret of making gold from the baser metals. At last I have the correct method. I will be a millionaire in another month. But come in! Come in!"<br /> The boys, obeying Mr. Snodgrass's advice, went in, the scientist following them. They saw that the cabin, though small, was neat and clean. Nearly all of the first of two rooms was occupied by a large, rudely made furnace, while on a table near it stood all sorts of chemical apparatus. On the furnace a pot was boiling furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the last act in the drama of life," said the aged man. "See, I place in the pot these pieces of brass," and he showed the travelers some chunks of the yellow stuff. He put them in the pot, from which arose a cloud of steam.<br /> "Next I throw in this powder, which I have labored on for years. It is the secret that men would give their lives for."<br /> He threw the powder into the pot, which boiled more furiously than before, and a white cloud of steam arose. Then it died away, and the pot seemed to cool off.<br /> "Now for the gold!" exclaimed the chemist.<br /> He lifted the pot from the furnace, and, holding it with some thick cloths poured the water off into a hole in the ground floor of the cabin. Out toppled the pieces of brass which had been thrown in, but while they had been dull before, they now glittered with the yellow gleam of gold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The test! The test!" exclaimed the old man in a voice that trembled with eagerness.<br /> He placed one of the yellow pieces on the table, and put a few drops of gold-testing acid on it. There was a little hissing sound, and then, on the shiny surface of the piece of metal there came a dull black spot. The old man uttered a despairing cry.<br /> "Another failure!" he exclaimed. "It is brass still. I thought it would turn to gold! I must have made a mistake in mixing the powder."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVII. - The Indian and the Auto (144-151) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, speed, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVII<br /> <br /> THE INDIAN AND THE AUTO<br /> <br /> For a few moments the scientist who hoped he had discovered the fabled power to transmute metals stared at the result of his latest trial. He appeared lost in thought. Then he seemed to recollect that there were strangers present.<br /> "I am sorry my experiment did not succeed," he said in a more quiet voice than he had yet used. "I hoped to show you what I can do. Well, I must try again. I think I know where I made the error. I had too much soda in the powder. I will use less next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We are sorry to interrupt your experiments," put in the professor, "but we are travelers, and our object in stopping here was to find out if you could take us in for the night."<br /> "Gladly," replied the old man. "There is a barn in the rear, but it has not been occupied in years; not since I came here. You are welcome to use that. Some of you can spend the night in the rear room. As for me I shall not go to bed. I must start at once and make up some fresh powders."<br /> "I think perhaps we had all better sleep in the barn," said the professor. "Then we will not disturb you at your labors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The truth of it was Mr. Snodgrass saw that the aged man was not altogether right in his head, and he preferred not to be too near in case the fellow should suddenly become violent.<br /> "Just as you like, just as you like," was the reply to the professor's decision, and the chemist seemed to be dreaming over some problem he was trying to solve.<br /> "May we cook some of our food on your stove?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Why certainly. I beg your pardon for not mentioning supper," spoke the man, "but you see I am so used to getting a bite whenever I need it, so as not to interrupt my work, that I forgot there is such a thing as hospitality. Make yourselves at home, and, if you find anything in the cupboards help yourselves. Meanwhile please excuse me if I do not join you. I must go out and gather some roots and herbs I need in my experiments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, car, lake"><br /> <poem><br /> He left the cabin, and, after bringing in some provisions from the auto, having first ascertained that there were few in the cabin, the travelers proceeded to make a meal.<br /> "Do you suppose he can be the hermit of Lost Lake?" asked Bob.<br /> "Well, he's certainly a hermit," spoke the professor, "but I don't believe there's a lake of any kind about here. Certainly if he was the hermit of the lake he would not be away off here. No, I am inclined to think we shall never see the lost lake or the hermit either."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think it will be safe to stay here all night?" inquired Chunky.<br /> "I think so," was the professor's reply. "You see we will be out in another building, and we can fasten the door. If he tries to get in, which I am sure he will not, he will make noise enough to awaken us."<br /> "We could mount guard," suggested Ned.<br /> "It will not be necessary," Mr. Snodgrass said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nor did the travelers find it so. After their meal, having left a good supply of victuals for the old man in case he came back, they retired to the rear building where they slept soundly.<br /> After breakfast, which the old man did not spend more than five minutes over, the travelers prepared to resume their trip.<br /> "You had better stay one more night," urged the owner of the cabin. "I feel sure that I shall be successful to-night. I have discovered a new root. See, I call it gold threads," and he held up some bulbs that had been dug from the ground. Clinging to them were small yellow fibres or roots. "I found them last night, down in the hollow by the mineral spring," the man went on. "I am sure they are just what I need. Please stay; won't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, mountain, navigatio, plains, topography, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> But the professor told him, as gently as possible, that they must keep on. So, after bidding the gold-seeker good bye, and wishing him success, the boys and Mr. Snodgrass proceeded, the auto puffing along at a good rate.<br /> The weather continued fine and the air was bracing and cool, for they were well up among the foothills now. During the morning the road led up a gentle slope, but at noon they camped on a sort of ridge that marked the divide. On the other side was a vast plain, bounded at the further side by tall mountains.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="plains, road condition, agriculture, navigation, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> It was well along in the afternoon, when having descended to the plain, the travelers found themselves bowling along a fine road, on either side of which were rolling fields. Mile after mile was covered, everyone enjoying the trip very much. The professor, however, was beginning to<br /> show signs of uneasiness. He fidgeted about in his seat, and seemed unable to remain quiet.<br /> "What's the matter?" asked Bob at length.<br /> "To tell you the truth," said the scientist, "I want to get out and get some specimens, but I did not like to ask you, for I do not want to delay the party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, engine, maintenance, car part, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> They all voted that the professor should be given a chance to get as many specimens as he wanted. Accordingly Jerry brought the car to a stop, and the boys and the scientist got out.<br /> As the engine had not been running as smoothly as was desirable Jerry did not shut off the power, merely throwing out the gear clutches. He said he wanted to have the cylinders warm up, and so the engine was left going, though the car itself stood still.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="animal, risk, car"><br /> <poem><br /> The professor was soon busy gathering insects of various kinds from the tall grass, and even crawling on his hands and knees over the ground. The boys walked some distance off, to stretch their legs, for they were a little tired of sitting still so long.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who happened to glance back toward the auto, uttered a cry.<br /> "Look!" he shouted. "Some one is stealing our car and going off in it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, weapon, animal, car part, skill, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The others looked. The sight that met their eyes was enough to astonish any one. Climbing into the automobile was a big Indian, attired in gay colored blankets, a rifle slung across his back, while near him stood a Pinto pony, clean-cut and wiry.<br /> While they watched they saw the red man seat himself comfortably at the steering wheel, reach forward to throw the gear clutch in place, and then the car moved off, taking the Indian with it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here! Come back!"<br /> "Stop that auto!"<br /> "Get out of that!"<br /> These were some of the things the boys yelled at the bold thief. But all of no avail. The Indian threw in the second gear, and the auto went faster than before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "Come on! We must catch him!" cried Jerry, and he began to run in the direction the auto was fast disappearing in, down the road.<br /> "We can never catch him," called Bob.<br /> "Yes we can! He can't know anything about running an auto!" panted Jerry. "He'll put on the brake or pull the wrong lever next, and the machine will stop!"<br /> "That is unless he blows it up first or smashes it," said Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, skill, Native American, navigation, engine, gasoline"><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, appearing at this juncture.<br /> Bob was the only one left to tell him, as Jerry and Ned were running down the road at top speed. But it seemed that their race would be useless, for the auto was now running on third gear. And, strangest of all, the Indian seemed to know how to operate it. He kept a straight course, and the puffing of the exhaust told Jerry that the engine was running to perfection, with a good supply of gasolene, and the spark coming regularly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE INDIAN SEEMED TO KNOW HOW TO OPERATE IT.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, Native American risk, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who—ever—heard—of—an—Indian running—an—auto," panted Ned.<br /> "Running—away—with—one—you—mean," said Jerry, his breathing labored.<br /> Further and further away from the pursuing boys the auto went. It seemed hopeless to keep after it, but neither Jerry nor Ned would give up. They realized what it meant to lose their machine, though they could not understand how an Indian, in all his wild regalia, would think of getting into an auto.<br /> Suddenly there sounded down the road the patter of hoof beats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, animal, gasoline, car part, sound, onomatopoeia"><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe that's more Indians," said Jerry turning around and slowing up in his running.<br /> "No," he added, "it's Bob on the Indian's pony. I wonder you or I didn't think of that."<br /> "He couldn't catch up with the auto if he had two ponies," growled Ned.<br /> "The only chance is that the gasolene may give out, or the sparker refuse to work, or that he may run into a sand bank," lamented Jerry.<br /> "And there don't seem to be much chance of either taking place right off," put in Ned. "Hark! What's that?"<br /> From down the road sounded the Toot! Toot! of the auto horn.<br /> "It sounds as if he was coming back," said Jerry. Just then Bob caught up to them on the pony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XVIII. - Lost Lake Found (152-160) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, night, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, car, visibility, navigation, Native American, highway"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XVIII<br /> <br /> LOST LAKE FOUND<br /> <br /> "Let me past! I'll catch him!" cried Bob.<br /> "Wait a minute! Maybe that's him coming back?" replied Jerry.<br /> Sure enough the next instant the auto, which had been lost to sight by reason of a turn in the road, came into view.<br /> Straight up the highway it came, the figure of the Indian, wrapped in his blanket, with his headdress of feathers, an altogether brilliant figure, seated at the wheel; a strange enough combination as any one will admit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, car part, risk, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> The red man acted as though he had been used to running autos all his life. He sat straight as an arrow, his hands grasping the wheel, which was sending the car straight for the boys.<br /> "He's just doing this to taunt us!" exclaimed Jerry. "I have a good notion to take a shot at one of the tires with my revolver and scare him into stopping."<br /> "Don't do it! You might kill him," said Ned, "and you wouldn't want to do that. But what does he mean by stealing the car, and then bringing it back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, Native American, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> A few seconds later the auto drew up in front of the boys, who had come to a halt. With an ease that bespoke long experience the Indian brought the machine to a stop, and then, while the lads looked on, so full of wonder at the whole occurrence that they did not know what to say, the red man grunted:<br /> "Heap fine wagon. Ugh! Indian like um, he buy um! How much?"<br /> "Look here!" burst out Jerry, so angry that he hardly took note of what the red man had said. "Do you know you are a—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. Wrapping his blankets closely about him, and drawing himself up to his full height of over six feet, the Indian said calmly:<br /> "I really beg your pardon for the unwarranted liberty I took with your car, but when I saw it standing out here, so far from civilization, I could not resist the temptation to take a ride. I trust you will overlook it."<br /> For a moment the boys were speechless, for the Indian they had supposed one from the half-wild plain tribes, and whose every appearance indicated that, had spoken in English as cultured as that of a college professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, pleasure, class, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "What—why—when—where?" stammered Jerry, and the Indian burst into a laugh.<br /> "I see I must explain," he said. "I am not what I seem."<br /> "Aren't you an Indian?" asked Ned.<br /> "A full blooded one, and the chief of a tribe," spoke the red man. "But I am not the half dime library sort.<br /> "You see," he went on, "I have just come back from the school at Carlisle, where I am taking a post graduate course. I felt a sudden longing to don the dress of my ancestors, and roam the broad fields. I did so, starting from my home on the reservation this morning. I came<br /> along and saw the auto. As I said, the temptation was too strong to resist. I got in and took a little spin, as you saw. I am sorry if I caused you annoyance, or made you fear your machine had been stolen."<br /> The eyes of the Indian twinkled and, beneath the paint on his face, the boys could see a smile coming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="Native American, skill, animal, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "But how in the world did you learn to run a car?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Easy enough," was the answer. "I acted as chauffeur for several months this vacation to earn money enough to continue my studies. I got to be quite an expert. That is a fine car you have."<br /> "Well I'm stumped!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "How do you like my pony?" asked the red man. "I think we made a sort of unfair exchange, though, in spite of the fact that the animal is valuable. Now let me apologize once more, and then I will take my animal and go home."<br /> "You are welcome to the ride," said Jerry. "We were so surprised at first that we took you for a thief."<br /> "I don't blame you," spoke the Indian. "The sight of a red man in an automobile is enough to make any one wonder. Well, heap big chief, Whistling Wind in the Pine, must go."<br /> "Is that your name?" asked Ned.<br /> "It's my Indian one," was the answer, "but at the school I am known as Paul Rader. Now let me bid you good day, and a pleasant journey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, before they could ask him to take a ride with them, the boys saw the Indian leap on his pony, from which Bob had dismounted, and ride away at a smart gallop, his blanket flying out behind him in the wind.<br /> "Well, that's the limit!" exclaimed Ned. "To think of a wild-civilized Indian playing a trick like that."<br /> "I certainly thought he was as wild as they come," put in Bob. "I was afraid it was all up with us."<br /> Then the professor appeared and they told him the story.<br /> "I wish I had met him," said the professor.<br /> "What for; did you know him?" asked Jerry.<br /> "No, but he would probably be able to tell me where to get some fine specimens," remarked the scientist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, scenery, speed, night, slowness, driver, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> In a short time they were all in the auto again, and were bowling along over the table land, the machine humming in a way that told that the cylinders were working well. They camped for supper, and then, as it was a fine moon light night they determined to continue on slowly, as they<br /> wanted to make up for lost time.<br /> The moon rose early, a big silver disk shining among the trees, when the autoists started on their night journey.<br /> "This is great!" exclaimed Bob, who seemed to have forgotten his desire for a bed under shelter. "Wouldn't it be fun to have a lot of Indians chase us now?"<br /> "It might if they were tame ones," put in Jerry, who was steering, "but excuse me from any wild ones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="topography, slowness, road condition, tree, mountain, night, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The road soon began a gentle ascent, and the auto ran more slowly up the hill. The road, too, became narrower, winding in and out. The trees, which had been scattering, were thicker, and the travelers could see they were getting well up among the mountains.<br /> "How late are you going to travel?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Until nearly midnight," was the answer. "The moon begins to go down then and it will not be very safe. But I think we ought to cover as big a distance as possible while we can. We have had delays enough."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sound, animal, night, mountain, scenery, car part, slowness, road condition, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> The only noise, besides the puffing of the machine, were the cries of owls, the chirping of crickets and katy-dids, with, now and then, the howl of a wolf or fox. In spite of the number in the party, there was a feeling of loneliness about being so far from civilization among the wilds of the mountain region.<br /> Up and up went the car, until the ascent became so steep that Jerry was obliged to run on the low gear. This made progress slow, and, because of the uneven road, so risky, that it seemed unwise to proceed further that night.<br /> "I'll slow up when we get to the top of this hill," said Jerry, "and we'll go into camp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, accident, slowness, risk, car part, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> But he reckoned without knowing what sort of a hill it was, nor did he calculate on the auto failing to stop as soon as he expected. For that was what happened. Reaching the summit of the slope Jerry shut off the power.<br /> But something went wrong with the mechanism. The auto continued on, slowly to be sure, but with enough momentum to send it over the brow of the hill. Then it plunged down on the other side, gathering speed every minute.<br /> "Is she running away?" asked Ned. "Seems so to me."<br /> "She's not behaving as well as she should," replied Jerry, "but I have her under control. The brake is working all right," which fact he soon ascertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, risk, topography, accident"><br /> <poem><br /> Faster and faster, however, in spite of the brake, did the auto plunge down the slope. Jerry kept his head, however, and was working to bring the machine to a halt. All at once Bob, looking up, saw where the road made a sudden turn to the left.<br /> "Look out for that!" he cried, pointing.<br /> Jerry tried to make the turn, but the steering wheel suddenly became a little stiff, so that, instead of the car being turned to the left, and around the bend, it kept straight on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, accident, speed, car part, road"><br /> <poem><br /> There was a crackling of brush and tree branches, and the big machine left the road and began plowing up the side of a slope, around the lower edge of which the road wound.<br /> "Duck!" cried Ned, as a tree branch hit him in the face.<br /> They all did so, and the next instant the big machine crashed through some briars, bending down several saplings in its journey. Then, having exhausted the momentum, the auto came to a stop, at the summit of the little slope, and Jerry jammed on the brakes to hold it there, the band this time gripping the axle firmly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! Oh look!" cried Ned, pointing ahead and down below them. <br /> There, in a sort of basin formed by high hills, lay a body of water, sparkling and beautiful in the moonlight, the shadows of tall black mountains reflected in its calm surface.<br /> "It's Lost Lake!" exclaimed Jerry, softly. "Boys! We have found Lost Lake! I am sure of it!"<br /> For a few seconds no one spoke after that, for they were all lost in wonder at the beauty and strangeness of the sight. It was so quiet that it seemed almost as if it was but a picture painted by a master's hand.<br /> Suddenly Bob, who was staring intently at the upper end of the lake, grasped Ned by the arm.<br /> "See," he whispered. "What's that? That thing in white?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XIX. - The Ghost of the Lake (161-168) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="night, lake, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="visibility, tree"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XIX<br /> <br /> THE GHOST OF THE LAKE<br /> <br /> They all looked to where Bob pointed. At first they could make out nothing, but Bob insisted that he had seen some tall, white object moving.<br /> "It was just like the description of ghosts," he said, with a queer little laugh.<br /> "I see it," said Jerry, softly. "Right by the big white birch."<br /> "Sure enough," remarked the professor.<br /> Then they all beheld a tall white form in the pale moonlight, gliding from tree to tree, on the shore of the lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, it is picking up something from the shore," said Ned. "Maybe it's the hermit the miner told us about, gathering gold."<br /> "Nonsense," said Jerry. "It's probably a bit of fog, or it may be a white fox, or a wolf."<br /> "No fox or wolf is as big as that," insisted Ned. "I'll bet it's the hermit."<br /> "Whatever it is, it's gone now," put in Bob.<br /> And, sure enough, the object suddenly disappeared among the trees, and there was nothing in sight but the lake, the mountains and the moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we seem to have stumbled onto the lake," remarked Jerry. "If the auto had not misbehaved we would have taken the regular road, and Lost Lake would still be lost. As it is we have found it."<br /> "I hope we find some of the gold, as well," put in Ned. "We may need the yellow pebbles if our mine is gone."<br /> "Whatever we do, we shall stay here until morning," said Jerry. "It will be a good place to camp, anyhow, gold or no gold."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So they all busied themselves in preparing to stay there for the rest of the night. A fire was built and a midnight supper was soon in preparation. They had good appetites, and, tired with the day's journey and events, they got out their blankets and slept soundly.<br /> By daylight the lake was seen to be a large sheet of water, rather irregular in outline, with many small bays and coves. Shimmering in the sunlight the water made a beautiful picture.<br /> "Here goes to see if there are any golden pebbles on the shore," remarked Bob, with a whoop as soon as he had crawled from the improvised bed. He did not have to stop and dress for the travelers slept in their clothes.<br /> Chunky climbed down the slope, along a rather rough path to the water. Some time later Jerry and Ned were about to follow, when they heard Bob yelling at the top of his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter?" called Jerry.<br /> "Have you found the gold?" cried Ned.<br /> "Maybe the hermit has attacked him," suggested the professor.<br /> They all ran to the water's edge. When they reached the shore Bob was nowhere in sight.<br /> "Hi, Bob! Where are you?" cried Jerry looking around.<br /> "Here!" exclaimed Chunky, suddenly, bobbing up from beneath the little waves about one hundred feet from shore.<br /> "Did you fall in?" asked the professor, anxiously.<br /> "No, I jumped in," replied the boy. "I'm in swimming. Come on in, the water's fine!"<br /> "Good for you!" called Ned and the next instant he was undressed and splashing out toward Bob. Jerry soon joined them, and even the professor took a dip. The water was somewhat cool, but after they were once in it was invigorating, and they swam about for half an hour, greatly enjoying the luxury of a bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hark! What was that?" asked Ned, suddenly.<br /> There came a whirring of wings and a rustling of the leaves of the bushes off to the left. Then a bevy of birds sailed through the air.<br /> "Partridge, or some similar bird, I would say," was the professor's opinion.<br /> "And there goes a big rabbit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes, and there's another!" exclaimed Jerry. "Say, we have struck a game country if we haven't a gold one. I say, what's the matter with having a hunt?"<br /> "Good!" cried Bob and Ned.<br /> "I think it would do no harm to replenish the larder with something fresh," remarked the professor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Accordingly, after breakfast, guns were gotten ready and the boys and the professor tramped off through the woods, taking care not to go too far from the lake, as the trees were thick, and, as there were no trails blazed, it would be easy to get lost.<br /> Ned bagged the first partridge, and Bob came second, getting two in succession. Jerry had hard luck, for twice he missed easy shots. A little later, however, he bowled over a plump rabbit, and followed it up with a second. Then Ned got one, and Jerry succeeded in bagging a couple of fine birds.<br /> Some of the game was served for dinner, which was eaten by a campfire, and very fine it was voted. Then some was packed away in salt, against a possible time when provisions might be hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you say, shall we stay here another night or push on?" asked Jerry, about the middle of the afternoon.<br /> "If you ask me," said the professor, "I should say to remain here. I saw a number of fine and rare specimens I would like to gather."<br /> "The only thing is, perhaps we had better join Nestor as soon as possible," remarked Ned.<br /> "I think a few days' delay can do no harm," Mr. Snodgrass said. "From the tone of Nestor's letter I would say there was no immediate danger of the mine being claimed by others."<br /> "Then we'll stay," said Jerry. "I would like to investigate the lake a little more. We did not go very far along the shore. Perhaps there might be an outcropping of gold somewhere around this locality."<br /> "And maybe we will see the hermit, or the ghost, or whatever it is," added Ned. "Let's stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then we ought to rig up some kind of shelter," went on Jerry. "It may rain in the night, and it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to sleep in a mud puddle."<br /> "We can build a shack of boughs," said Bob.<br /> And this they did. They had often done the same thing before. Branches from a pine tree, stacked up against a sapling cut to fit between the crotches of two trees, with the same sort of boughs for a roof and<br /> floor, made a very good shelter. Rubber blankets on top insured the rain being kept out, and with woolen coverings for inside, beds were made that were very comfortable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, technology, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> When these preparations had been made it was growing dusk. While Bob and Ned were getting supper, and the professor was busy arranging his specimens gathered that day, Jerry removed one of the big search-lights from the auto.<br /> "What are doing that for?" asked Bob.<br /> "I'm going to try and find out what that white thing is," said Jerry. "I'm going to rig up a lantern in front of the shack, facing the lake, and if the hermit or whatever it is, shows up, I'm going to flash the light on it."<br /> "Maybe it won't come to-night," suggested Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it did. It was along about midnight when Ned felt a light touch on his arm.<br /> "What's the matter?" he asked, sitting up.<br /> "Come on," whispered Jerry. "I see something down by the lake, and I want to investigate. Be careful, don't make any noise."<br /> Bob and the professor were both sleeping so soundly that they did not hear Jerry and Ned leave the shack.<br /> "Where is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "There," replied Jerry, pointing to a spot about three hundred feet away, and on the shore of the lake. "It was there a minute ago, but it's gone now. Watch, it will come back."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="equipment, visibility, night"><br /> <poem><br /> He busied himself over the search-light, making ready to light it quickly and flash the beams on the ghost or hermit, or whatever it should prove to be.<br /> "There it is!" called Ned, in a hoarse whisper. "Right by that big rock that runs out into the water."<br /> "I see!" said Jerry, softly.<br /> There was a hissing sound as Jerry turned on the acetylene gas, a snapping sound as he lit the match, and then a slight puff as the vapor ignited. The next instant a glaring shaft of light shot down toward the lake, glint on a strange object.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There in the glare of the white beams stood the figure of an old man. His hair was snow white, and hung down long over his shoulders. He seemed bent with age, and this was made more pronounced because he bore a heavy bag on his back. He was right at the edge of the water.<br /> The sudden glare had startled him, and he turned in surprise and fear to see whence it came. His face stood out in strong relief, and Jerry started, for he dimly remembered seeing some one who looked like that some time before.<br /> Then, all at once the stillness of the night was broken by a shrill scream. Ned and Jerry were startled, and Bob and the professor, in the shack, were awakened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XX. - The Mysterious Woman (169-174) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="lake, rain, night"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XX<br /> <br /> THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN<br /> <br /> "Look!" exclaimed Ned.<br /> Then, as he and Jerry watched what took place in the circle of light, they beheld a woman, her long hair streaming down her back, run from the woods up to the old man. In her hand she held a big club, and with it she endeavored to strike the aged man. The latter dropped his sack, and seemed to engage in a struggle with the woman.<br /> "He's killing her!" exclaimed Ned. "This is the hermit we were warned against."<br /> "Come on!" cried Jerry. "We must see what it means."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, just as he started down the slope, the search-light went out, leaving the place in utter blackness, for the moon was under a cloud. When Jerry had succeeded in getting the light going again, the man and woman were nowhere to be seen.<br /> "Well, that certainly was a queer sight," remarked Ned. "I wonder what it all means?"<br /> "I guess we'll have to stay here until we find out," said Jerry. "It looked as if there was going to be trouble, at one time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's all the excitement about?" asked the professor, coming out of the shack, followed by Bob.<br /> Jerry related what they had seen, and the professor agreed that it would be better to remain and make an investigation.<br /> "I say, you fellows are mean to go off alone and have a cracking adventure like that," objected Bob, in a grieved tone.<br /> "We didn't want to disturb your slumbers," said Ned.<br /> "Don't eat so much supper next time, and you will not sleep so sound," advised Jerry. But Bob was not to be appeased until promised that the next time Ned and Jerry went ghost hunting they would take him with them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having been so thoroughly aroused from their sleep the travelers decided to sit up a while and see if they could catch another glimpse of the strange man and woman. But, though they sat and talked for more than an hour, there was no further sign of the two queer creatures.<br /> "I'm going to bed," announced Bob at length, and the others decided to follow his example. They slept soundly until morning, though Jerry said afterward that he dreamed he was being chased across the frozen lake by a white haired man on a black horse. He got stuck in the ice, and was freezing to death, when he awakened to find that his blanket had slipped from him, and that a cold rain was blowing in through the cracks of the shack. Morning had dawned cold and dreary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wow! This isn't exactly pleasant!" exclaimed Jerry, as he poked his head out of the front of the screen of branches. "I wish there was a hotel handy."<br /> The others crawled from beneath the blankets, not in any too good humor at the dismal prospect.<br /> "And I'll bet there isn't any dry wood to be had," said Bob. "That means a cold breakfast."<br /> A search proved that he was right. Nor was there any charcoal, since the last had been used some days before, and they had been to no place where they could get more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just when a fellow needs a hot cup of coffee," went on Bob. "I never saw such beastly luck."<br /> Jerry said nothing. He seemed to be studying over some matter.<br /> "I have it," he exclaimed.<br /> "What? Some dry wood?" asked Ned with much eagerness.<br /> "No, but I know how to make some hot coffee," was the answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car, equipment, rain"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time in explaining. He first went to the auto where he got out rubber coats for himself and his companions. Then, ready to defy the rain, which was coming down at a good clip, Jerry hunted about until he found two large stones. These he set up a short distance apart, placing another each at the front and rear of the first two.<br /> "There's the stove," he remarked.<br /> "A heap of good it will do, with no fire in it," growled Bob.<br /> "Wait," advised Jerry.<br /> Taking the big search-light, which he had used the night previous, he removed the top, so that the flame could be used for cooking purposes. They prepared a good meal and enjoyed it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It continued to rain, and to fill in time the boys went fishing in the lake. Luck was with them and within half an hour they had ten fine fish, and then, though they could have taken many more, they did not, as Jerry<br /> said they would have no use for them.<br /> "Fish for dinner for me to-day," said Bob, while the others laughed at his usual exhibition of how fond of eating he was. The fish did prove an excellent dish, fried in corn meal on Jerry's improvised stove. Some bacon gave them a relish, and with hot coffee they felt they had as good a meal as many a hotel could serve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder where the professor is?" said Ned, when the meal was almost over. "I forgot that he wasn't with us."<br /> "He's off gathering birds, bugs or reptiles," said Jerry. "He'll come when he feels good and hungry."<br /> "He's more likely to forget all about being hungry if he gets chasing a fine specimen," remarked Ned. "I think I'll just take a stroll and see if I can come across him."<br /> "We'll go along," said Jerry and Bob.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So the three started off together. They could easily follow the professor's trail, as he had broken through the underbrush, snapping off many twigs and breaking small branches. The boys wandered on for nearly a mile, but saw no sign of the scientist. They were about to turn back, and wait for him at camp, when Jerry held up his hand to indicate silence.<br /> "Hark!" he whispered.<br /> The others stood still, and, listening intently, heard above the patter of the raindrops, voices in conversation.<br /> "That's the professor," said Ned.<br /> "Some one is with him then," put in Jerry. "They are coming this way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sounds of persons advancing through the bushes could be heard. The voices also sounded plainer. A minute later the brush was parted and the professor, followed by a woman, came out into the little clearing where the boys were. At the sight of the woman, Jerry started, for he recognized her as the strange person who had been with the old man the night previous. The professor seemed excited about something.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Boys, this lady has just told me some strange news," he said.<br /> "What is it?" asked Ned.<br /> "Beware of the hermit of Lost Lake!" the woman exclaimed suddenly. "Have a care of him. Many poor travelers has he murdered. He would have murdered you last night if I had not prevented him."<br /> "So that's what it was all about," said Jerry, half aloud. The woman heard him, and turned:<br /> "Did you see him?" she asked. "Did you see me?"<br /> "I—we—" began Jerry.<br /> "You have been spying on me!" exclaimed the woman, growing much excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXI. - The Den of the Hermit (175-184) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="forest, lake, pleasure, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXI<br /> <br /> THE DEN OF THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "No, no!" said the professor calmly. "The boys were not spying. They happened to see a man and a woman on the shore of the lake last night, and they thought it might have been you."<br /> "It was me," said the woman. "I was trying to prevent him from coming and killing you all in your sleep."<br /> The boys began to feel a queer creepy sensation run up their spines, as if some one had poured cold water down their backs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's true," the strange creature went on. "I will tell you all about it. Listen to me," and she sat down on a stump.<br /> "Perhaps we had better go where there is shelter," suggested Jerry, for it was raining hard again, though the boys and the professor in their rubber coats did not mind it. The woman was drenched.<br /> "No," she said. "I can go to no place save these woods. I am safe from him here." She seemed nervous and excited, and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The old man is a hermit," she went on. "He has lived near this lake for many years. He kills travelers and takes their money. He tried to kill me but I escaped from him because I can run fast. Since then he has been after me. Last night he started for your camp, but I got a big club and stopped him. Then he ran away."<br /> "What was in the bag?" asked Ned.<br /> "What bag?" asked the woman.<br /> "The one the old man had on his back?"<br /> "Hush! Don't speak about it," was the reply. "He had a murdered man's body in there, and he threw it into the lake."<br /> "Are you sure?" asked the professor, thinking the woman might, perhaps, be trying to scare them away.<br /> "Positive," she replied. "I saw him kill the poor fellow, but the hermit did not know I was watching."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where does he live?" asked the professor.<br /> "He has a den in the darkest part of the woods," was the answer. "He takes travelers there and kills them. He does not know that I know where it is, but I do. Would you like to see it?"<br /> "Not if he is the kind of a person you say he is," spoke Jerry. "I think we had better steer clear of him."<br /> "I can take you there when he is not at home," said the woman. "Listen, once each week he takes a long trip over the mountain, to bury the gold he has taken from travelers. I can hide and watch him go. Then I could come and bring you to his den. Shall I?"<br /> "It might be a good plan," mused the professor. "If this man is a murderer he should be taken in charge by the authorities. Yes, come and let us know when he goes away. Perhaps we could capture him ourselves."<br /> "I'll come," said the woman. "Now I must go, for I hear some one coming," and, rising suddenly, she ran off at top speed through the woods. The boys listened intently but could hear no one approaching, and began to think the woman must have been mistaken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where did you meet her?" asked Jerry of the professor, when it was seen that the woman was not coming back.<br /> "She saw me while I was gathering some specimens," was the reply, "and she came up to warn me about the hermit. It seems that she lives not far away, and roams through the woods. Besides telling me about the old man, and to be on our guard against him, she showed me where to get some beautiful tree toads," and the scientist opened his pocket and showed it full of the little creatures.<br /> "Do you think she is telling the truth about the hermit?" asked Jerry.<br /> "There may be some exaggeration to it," rejoined the professor, "but I have heard of old half crazed men who lived in the woods as this one does, and who occasionally murdered lone travelers. We can't be too<br /> careful."<br /> "Besides, it did look as though she was trying to prevent him doing something last night," put in Jerry.<br /> "Well, we'll keep a good lookout," suggested the professor. "That's all we can do now, unless we decide to move on away from this place."<br /> "I would rather like to solve the mystery," said Jerry. "I do not think we have much to fear. He is an old man, and I guess we four are a match for him."<br /> "Then we had better do as the woman says, wait until she comes to lead us to his hut, or cabin, or whatever it is," the professor advised after a moment's thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That plan settled on, they made their way back to camp and the professor was given his rather late dinner. But he did not seem to mind this in the least.<br /> "Are you going to keep watch again to-night?" asked Bob of Jerry.<br /> "Of course. I want to get at the bottom of this. There is a mystery somewhere, and I think the hermit, the lost lake and the strange woman, together, can explain it."<br /> The rain stopped after supper, though it remained cloudy, and Jerry again prepared the gas lamp. It was arranged that he and Ned would stay up on guard until twelve o'clock and that Bob and the professor would take the rest of the night. Whichever party saw the hermit was at once to notify the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry and Ned began their vigil. Several hours passed and it seemed they were to have their trouble for their pains. At length, however, just as they were preparing to turn in and let the others take their turn, Jerry saw a movement in the bushes about five hundred feet away, and down near the edge of the lake. The moon, shining faintly through the clouds, illuminated the scene.<br /> "Be ready to turn on the light when I say so," said Jerry to Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned was all alert. Jerry, with his eyes straining to catch the slightest movement of the underbrush, peered through the darkness. Something white attracted him.<br /> "Now!" he whispered to Ned, and the light, that had been burning low, was suddenly turned on at full power.<br /> In its glare the two boys saw again the white haired hermit stealing along the edge of the water, the big bag on his back.<br /> "Call the others!" whispered Jerry to Ned. "I'll keep watch!"<br /> "All right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ned softly went back to the shack where he awakened the professor and Bob. They were out in an instant, and made ready to go quietly down as close as they could to where the hermit was, while Jerry showed the way by the searchlight. But again they were doomed to disappointment, for, no sooner had Jerry turned the light so that it shown full on the old man, than he jumped as though struck by lightning and made a dive for the woods, into the black depths of which he disappeared.<br /> "I guess that's the last we'll see of him," said Ned.<br /> "He dropped his bag," cried Bob. "Let's get that and see what's in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this the professor and Ned ran down to the edge of the water, and soon returned with the sack the old man had carried on his back.<br /> "Open it and let's see if there are any murdered persons in it," said Jerry, with an uneasy laugh.<br /> Ned untied the string, and, not without some misgivings, peered inside.<br /> "Well I never," he exclaimed.<br /> "What is it?" asked Bob.<br /> "Fish! Nothing but fish!" replied Ned. "Fine ones at that. I guess all we have done is to have scared the poor old man away from his fishing grounds."<br /> "Certainly there is nothing suspicious in having a bag of fish," put in the professor. "I wonder if that strange woman could have been telling the truth."<br /> "We'll know better if she keeps her word and comes to take us to the hermit's den," said Jerry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="sunshine, lake, maintenance"><br /> <poem><br /> There seemed nothing more to do that night, so they all went to bed, not being disturbed until morning. They were awakened by the sun peeping in through the chinks in the shack, and they got up to find a fine day had succeeded the rainy one.<br /> The beams of Old Sol were bright and warm, and the first thing the travelers did was to go down and have a dip in the lake. Then breakfast was served, and when it was over Jerry and Ned started to overhaul the machine.<br /> "For," said Jerry, "we may want to leave at any time, and the car is in none too good condition since we plowed up the side of the mountain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, navigation, tree, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Several minor repairs were made and the auto was run down to the main road, where it stood in readiness for a quick start. It was some time after dinner before all this was done, and along about three o'clock the four travelers stretched out under the trees and took a well earned rest.<br /> "Now if that strange woman would—" began Ned.<br /> "Hush!" cautioned the professor, "some one is coming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hardly had he ceased speaking before the bushes opened and there appeared the figure of the queer woman, with her long hair hanging loose down her back.<br /> "Hush!" she whispered, placing her finger on her lips. "I have come to keep my promise. The hermit has gone over the mountain. Come, and I will take you to his hut, and you can see where he has murdered travelers."<br /> The boys hardly knew whether to obey or not, but a nod from Professor Snodgrass, to whom they looked, indicated they were to do as the woman wanted. So they arose and prepared to follow her. The professor brought up the rear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the woods their strange guide went, for several miles. At length she reached a thick part of the woods.<br /> "It is very close now," she said. "Wait until I take a look."<br /> The travelers halted, while the woman crept softly forward. She peered through the brush into a sort of clearing, and apparently seeing that everything was safe, she motioned for the others to advance.<br /> They did so, and, a moment later emerged from the woods into a place where many trees had been cut down. In the centre of this space was a small log cabin, and toward it the woman pointed.<br /> "There is his hut," she said. "Come on, I will lead the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She advanced with great caution, as though she feared to disturb some one. Closer and closer to the door she went, the others close behind her.<br /> "He never locks it, so we can go right in," she said.<br /> By this time she was near enough to grasp the latch. She raised it, and was about to enter, when the door suddenly swung back, and the old hermit himself, stepping out, stood before the astonished travelers.<br /> "There he is! There he is! There is the murderer!" cried the woman, pointing her finger at the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man did not appear greatly surprised. He looked from the woman to the boys and the professor, and remarked:<br /> "To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit?"<br /> "I we,—er—that is—we—er—I—" began the professor, finding it was hard to tell the truth.<br /> "Oh, it's poor old Kate," went on the hermit. "She has probably been telling you some strange stories. Will you not come into my cabin?"<br /> "Don't go into the murderer's hut!" cried the woman, as she turned and fled back through the underbrush, leaving the travelers in a somewhat queer situation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXIII. - Searching for the Hermit (195-202) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXIII<br /> <br /> SEARCHING FOR THE HERMIT<br /> <br /> "Let's go to his help!" exclaimed Bob.<br /> "Come on!" cried Ned.<br /> "You had better not," said the woman, in a calm voice. "It is probably only the police after him for the many murders he has committed, and we had better not interfere. Besides if you want me to take you to your camp you had better come, as I have my house work to do before sunrise."<br /> She started to lead the way, and, though the boys felt inclined to follow and see what became of the hermit, they concluded it would be better to go back to camp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate seemed to have lost much of her excited manner as she led them through the woods, over a scarcely discernible path. Neither the fast gathering darkness nor the maze of trees seemed to confuse her. She made better progress than did the boys or the professor, as they were not familiar with the ground.<br /> "Well of all the queer adventures we've had," remarked Ned to Jerry, who had lagged somewhat in the rear with him, "this is the worst. Think of going to capture a murderer and then being led home by an insane woman! I wonder what will come next?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="road condition, car, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> The journey to camp took some time, as the path was hard for the boys and professor to follow, and several times Kate had to wait for them to catch up to her. At last, however, she brought them out near the little open place where the auto stood, and the boys breathed a sigh of relief.<br /> "Our car is safe, anyhow," said Jerry. "Now for some sleep."<br /> "Ain't we going to have something to eat first?" demanded Bob in an aggrieved tone.<br /> The others laughed at Chunky's sorrowful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll see," said Jerry. "Perhaps you would like a cup of chocolate," he went on, turning to Kate.<br /> "No, thank you," she said. "I must not stay here. I want to see if they have captured the murderer, so I will go back," and, turning suddenly, she returned over the path they had come, her footsteps growing fainter and fainter.<br /> "Come on, let's make the chocolate," said Bob, when Kate had gone.<br /> Jerry soon had the beverage in preparation, and they all enjoyed it. Then they fixed up the beds in the shack, and soon were slumbering, too tired even to post a guard, though, as events proved, there was no need for one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Jerry, after breakfast had been eaten, "I suppose we may as well push on for Arizona. No use staying here since the mystery is solved."<br /> "I don't believe it is solved," spoke Professor Snodgrass, suddenly. "I'm not altogether satisfied about that hermit."<br /> "You don't think he's a murderer, do you?" asked Ned.<br /> "No, but there is something odd about him. I can not get over the feeling that I have met him before, or some relative of his. Yet I can not recall it clearly. He has certain queer little actions that remind me of some one. I would like to see him again."<br /> "If you want to, I think I could find our way back to the cabin in the day time," spoke Ned.<br /> "I took pretty good notice of the trail when we went over."<br /> "I wish you could," said the professor, eagerly. "I want to have a talk with that old man. Besides, I think I can get some more specimens at his hut. I saw a fine lizard around the door step in the afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was decided they would pay another visit to the hermit's cabin. Accordingly they started off after dinner, and, led by Ned, followed the trail. They went astray several times, and had to search about for the path, but finally they came to the place where Kate had halted them the day before to go forward and peer at the hut.<br /> "Shall we go right on now?" asked Ned, pausing to see what the rest wanted to do. "The cabin is just ahead."<br /> "Go on," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They came out into the little glade, in which the cabin stood. As they emerged from the woods they saw Kate standing in front of the hut, crying.<br /> "What is the matter?" asked the professor.<br /> "They have taken the poor old man away and killed him!" sobbed the woman.<br /> "It's another of her imaginations," said Ned, softly. "Probably the hermit is inside."<br /> But when they looked he was not to be seen, and his bed showed that it had not been slept in that night.<br /> "Will you help me hunt for him?" asked Kate.<br /> "Certainly we will," answered the professor.<br /> "Then follow me!" exclaimed the woman, striding off into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She led the way, explaining in disjointed sentences, yet so that she could be understood, that the old man frequently imagined some one was after him. At such times he would go to one or another of his hiding places, of which he had a number in the different parts of the woods.<br /> But this time he was not to be found easily. Place after place, including caves and deep ravines, were visited by the searchers, but there was no sign of the hermit.<br /> "I am sure he has been killed," said Kate in a sorrowful tone. "And he was the kindest man that ever lived."<br /> "I thought you said he was a murderer," spoke the professor, wondering in what strange channels the woman's mind ran.<br /> "So he is!" exclaimed Kate, "but he is a good murderer, and not one of the bad kind."<br /> "Poor woman," sighed Mr. Snodgrass. "Her mind is hopelessly gone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Kate started off in a different direction, and the boys and the professor followed her. She went at a rapid pace, and soon the travelers were aware that they were going up hill. The trail became more steep as they advanced, until they were panting from their exertions. Yet the crazy woman did not seem to become exhausted by the hard pace in the least.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There is the hill!" she exclaimed at last, pointing upward, and the boys saw ahead of them a big half round mound, at the very summit of which was an immense tree.<br /> "He sometimes stays in that tree," spoke Kate, as they neared the big forest giant.<br /> "In the tree? I presume you mean he has a sort of platform built among the branches," said the professor. "A number of Indian tribes live that way."<br /> "He lives right inside the tree what little time he does live up here," replied Kate. "The trunk is hollow, and he crawls into it, and hides until all danger is past. We will soon see if he is there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An examination of the hollow trunk, however, showed that the hermit was not within, nor did the place disclose any signs of his having been there recently. Kate showed the despair she felt and the professor and the boys could not help feeling disappointed. For a while they stood beneath the spreading branches, wondering what would be best to do.<br /> All at once the professor, who had been intently gazing up into the leafy branches, gave utterance to an exclamation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There it is!" he cried. "A regular beauty! I must secure that if I never get another. Keep quiet, every one."<br /> "It's another specimen," said Jerry. "Can't you forget them for once, professor?"<br /> "This seems to be a sloth or an ant-bear," replied the scientist, as he made preparations to climb the tree. "It has long white whiskers, a black body and no tail. Wait until I crawl up and get it."<br /> "Never mind coming up, I'm coming down," spoke a voice, seeming to come from the animal, the capture of which the professor was intent upon.<br /> "Bless my soul, it's a combined sloth and parrot!" exclaimed the professor. "That is a rare animal-bird. I must secure it at all hazards. Help me, boys."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But there was no need for help, as, the next instant, two dangling legs descended from the lower branches of the tree, to be followed, a little later by a body, and then came a mass of white hair and whiskers.<br /> "It's the old hermit!" cried Bob.<br /> "Yes! It's him! it's him!" cried Kate. "He is safe! We have found him."<br /> "Be quiet!" cautioned the old man, when he had reached the ground. "There may be spies all around, though I think I have escaped them for the time being."<br /> "How did you get here?" asked Kate.<br /> "I ran as soon as I heard the noise of men coming after me," replied the aged man. "But I did not dare get into the hollow trunk, for fear of being seen. So I just crawled up into the branches, and there I'd be yet if the professor had not mistaken me for a specimen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can come down in safety," said Mr. Snodgrass, "as there seems to be no one in the neighborhood but ourselves."<br /> "That's good," was the rejoinder, "but there is no telling when some one may come. I think I will go back to my own cabin."<br /> The hermit started off with Kate, the others following. He had not proceeded far when he uttered an exclamation:<br /> "There is one of them!"<br /> At the same instant a roughly dressed man appeared in the narrow path, as if by magic. At sight of him the hermit turned and fled back into the woods.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXV. - Attacked by the Enemy (212-220) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, speed, mountain, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXV<br /> <br /> ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY<br /> <br /> "Are you sure the boy we have in mind is your son?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "We do not want to raise false hopes. Perhaps you may be mistaken."<br /> "Something tells me I can not be mistaken," exclaimed the hermit. "Tommy Bell is not a common name. Besides, I can describe my son, and then you will know whether he is the one you know," and he rapidly gave a short description of Tommy.<br /> "That's him all right," said Jerry, and the others agreed that the lad they had rescued from the hands of the rough men was, indeed, the son of the hermit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I thought him dead," said the old man. "After I had been abused by the wicked gang that got me in their control I lost sight of poor Tommy. As soon as I could I made a search for him, but it was of no use."<br /> "Tommy thought you had wandered away from him," said Ned. "He told us his story after we had rescued him."<br /> "Then you saved his life, just as you have mine," broke in Mr. Bell. "I have much to thank you for. But first I must find my son. Where did you leave him?"<br /> "At a place called Las Cruces," replied the professor. Thereupon he told briefly how they had taken Tommy from the hands of the lawless gang and left him with a friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must go to him at once," exclaimed the old man. "I can hardly wait to start. To think that the boy I thought was dead is alive! And I suppose he thinks I am dead also," Mr. Bell went on.<br /> "He was going to search for you," replied Bob, "but he did not know where to start. We can send him word now."<br /> "I'll take him word myself!" cried Mr. Bell. "I'll start as soon as it is daylight."<br /> "Then you had better get some rest and sleep now," observed Mr. Snodgrass. "Come into the shack, and we will make you some hot coffee."<br /> The hermit begged them to go to no trouble on his account, but they insisted, and soon the coffee was boiling on the coals of the camp fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm too excited to sleep," remarked Mr. Bell, as he went inside the rough shelter to lie down. And so it would seem, for, every few minutes he would rouse up from his position, and ask some particular about his son. He appeared scarcely able to believe the good news. At length, however, he grew weary, and along toward morning fell into a doze.<br /> The others were so tired and sleepy from being awake the night before that they slumbered late, and the sun was quite high when Jerry roused himself, and sat up, wondering what day it was.<br /> He got up, took a plunge in the lake, and came back to start breakfast, finding that, in the meanwhile, the others in the camp, including Mr. Bell, had arisen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now to start and find my son," cried the hermit.<br /> "You had better have something to eat first," suggested Mr. Snodgrass. "Then perhaps we can think of some plan to aid you."<br /> Though impatient to be gone the old man consented to remain to breakfast. He did not eat much, however, and seemed ready any minute to start on the long search for Tommy.<br /> "How would it be if we took you to the nearest town in our automobile," suggested the professor, when the meal was over. "From there you can get conveyances and reach Las Cruces in a short time. If you need any money—"<br /> "Thank you, I think I have enough for the present," interrupted Mr. Bell. "I do not need much. When I find Tommy I will bring him back with me, and we will be together once more. It seems too good to be true!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What will become of Kate in the meanwhile?" asked Mr. Snodgrass. "Though she has queer ideas concerning you I think she is your friend. Will she be able to live in these woods all alone?"<br /> "Kate is able to take care of herself," was the reply. "She was in these woods before I came and she may be here after I am gone. But I will tell her where I am going, and that I expect to return."<br /> A trip was made to the hermit's hut, and, after several blasts had been blown on the conch horn, Kate appeared. She was overjoyed to see the aged man again, and was told of the latest developments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You had better hurry up then, and get away from these woods," said the woman.<br /> "Why so?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because there are a number of strange men lurking about," was the answer. "I think they are after this good old man. So be on your guard."<br /> "It is the same crowd," said Mr. Bell. "They hate to give me up."<br /> "What do they want of you?" asked Jerry. "You said you might tell us the secret some day, adding that perhaps we could help you. Maybe we can help you now."<br /> "You can help me, and you have helped me," said Mr. Bell. "I can tell you the rest of my story now. As I said I have long been in quest of some one. That some one is my son Tommy. I did not want to tell you of him before, as I was afraid the news would get out. Nor did I tell you why the gang wanted me in their power. It is because I hold the final title to a piece of valuable property, and they can not get possession of it until I sign off, which I refused to do!"<br /> "Why so?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "Because I understand the property is now claimed by persons who, if not in the eyes of the law, are, still the rightful owners. If I should sign my rights away to the gang they would take the property away from the innocent holders now. So I refused to sign, and they have ruined me for<br /> it."<br /> "Never mind," said the professor, cheerfully. "We will get you out of their power, never fear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder if the gang that had Tommy is not the same one that had Mr. Bell in their power," suggested Bob. "He told us about men wanting him to sign papers that would give them control of some land."<br /> "They must be the same," commented Mr. Bell. "I will be on my guard now. Neither Tommy nor I will sign a single document. But now I must start."<br /> "Very well," said Ned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="car part, equipment, engine, maintenance, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> There was no further cause for delay, so Jerry got the automobile ready, and, the various belongings having been stowed away, the engine was started, after a somewhat longer rest than usual, and, puffing away in a manner that awoke all the echoes of the forest, the car started toward the village at the foot of the slope. From there, it was arranged Mr. Bell would go forward to Las Cruces by stage coach, or whatever other means of travel presented themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pleasure, mountain, speed, driver, sound, risk, weapon"><br /> <poem><br /> Once fairly on the road the spirits of all in the party rose. It was a fine day, and the fresh mountain air, crisp and cool, put new life into their veins.<br /> They were bowling along the road at a good clip with Jerry at the wheel, when, suddenly in the air above their heads, there sounded a shrill buzz.<br /> "That's a new kind of a bumble bee," cried Uriah Snodgrass. "I must have it for my collection."<br /> "I guess you wouldn't want many of that kind," said Mr. Bell, quietly.<br /> "Why not? I like all kinds."<br /> "That was a lead one," went on the old man.<br /> "You mean a bullet?" asked Bob. "Is some one firing at us?"<br /> "I'm afraid so," answered the hermit.<br /> Then came a distant report, followed by the peculiar buzzing sound.<br /> "Speed her up!" cried Bob to Jerry. "Let's get out of this danger zone. It's too much like being on the firing line to suit me."<br /> The auto, all this while was speeding along, and, soon, the shooters, whoever they were, had been left far in the rear. The sound of the bullets was no longer heard.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The reason they are doing it," answered Mr. Bell, "is that they want to get me alive. If I was to be killed their last chance of getting me to sign the papers would be gone."<br /> "But there is your son, Tommy," said Jerry. "He told us they wanted him to sign. If you were dead, he would be your heir, and his signature would be legal when he became of age. Perhaps the men could make use of it even before then."<br /> "I see! I see!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "It is important then that I live so I can beat them at their own game."<br /> "Unless you don't care about living on your own account or that of your son's," said the professor, grimly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, rural, speed, pedestrian"><br /> <poem><br /> They kept on steady after this and at last reached the bottom of the mountain slope.<br /> "Now for the village," exclaimed Mr. Bell. "I shall soon see my boy!"<br /> Faster and faster went the auto. The traveling was good, and Jerry speeded the car to the last notch. About six o'clock they rolled into town, to the surprise of many of the inhabitants, who had never seen one of the puffing, snorting things, though they had read of them.<br /> A knot of curious persons gathered around the machine as Jerry brought it to a stop in front of the post-office. Several boys began to inspect every part. The travelers were about to alight when a shrill voice cried out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Hey, Jerry! And Bob! And Ned! Hey there! Oh, how glad I am to see you!"<br /> For a moment the Motor Boys did not recognize the voice. Then Ned saw a lad trying to break through the crowd.<br /> "It's Tommy! It's Tommy Bell!" exclaimed Ned. "Hey, Tommy! You can't guess who we have with us!"<br /> "Tommy Bell! Did you say Tommy Bell!" exclaimed the hermit. "Where is he? Let me see him!"<br /> But Tommy had heard his parent's voice, and the next instant the boy had made a flying leap into the car, and was clasped in his father's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> [Illustration: THE NEXT INSTANT THE BOY HAD MADE A FLYING LEAP INTO THE CAR.]<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVI. - On the Road Again (221-226) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, slowness, mountain, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVI<br /> <br /> ON THE ROAD AGAIN<br /> <br /> "Where in the world did you come from?" asked Jerry of Tommy.<br /> "How did you get here?" inquired Ned.<br /> "How did you know where to find us?" Bob wanted to know.<br /> But to all these questions Tommy turned a deaf ear. He was so overjoyed at seeing his father, and the hermit was so excited at seeing his son once more, that neither had eyes nor ears for anything or any one except the other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="pedestrian, car, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The crowd looked on curiously, the interest divided between the automobile and the meeting between father and son. Finally, when Mr. Bell and Tommy had, temporarily, exhausted the theme of telling each other how glad they were at being united, the boys had a chance to get a word in edgeways, and Tommy answered a few of their questions.<br /> He told them that he had remained for several days with his friend in Las Cruces, and how a traveling miner had, in a general conversation, mentioned the lake and told of the queer hermit that lived on the shores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Something in the description of this odd character impressed Tommy with the belief that the hermit might be his father, who had taken that method to escape the gang which wanted him to sign away his rights. Accordingly, the boy had started from Las Cruces and made his way to Deighton, the town where Mr. Bell expected to start in search of his son.<br /> "I got here this morning," said Tommy, "and I found a little work to do to earn some money. I was going to start up the mountain to-morrow and try and find the lake."<br /> "Now you don't have to," said Mr. Bell. "Well, it certainly is a queer world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The travelers spent the night at the Deighton hotel, and, in the morning, after a good breakfast, assembled to talk over their plans for the future.<br /> "Do you intend to go back to Lost Lake, Mr. Bell?" asked the professor. "If you do, you and your son can ride that far in the automobile, since we are going back in that direction."<br /> "Where are you going after you leave Lost Lake?" asked Mr. Bell.<br /> "To Arizona," answered Jerry. "We have a mine there, and we must go to see how things are getting on."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="lake, passenger, pleasure, equipment, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "That's rather odd," commented the hermit. "I have an interest in some mining property in Arizona, though I don't suppose it is anywhere near yours. But I have made up my mind not to go back to Lost Lake, except to bring away a few things that I left in the cabin. I would also like to provide for poor Kate. After that I think Tommy and I will go to Arizona and try our fortunes over again."<br /> "Then why not go with us?" spoke Jerry. "We have plenty of room in the machine, and we'd be glad of your company."<br /> "I would like to very much," said Mr. Bell, "if I thought I would not bother you."<br /> He was assured that he would be very welcome, and then he consented to go. A new stock of provisions was purchased, together with some ammunition and some other supplies for the auto. Then, amid the cheers of more than half the populace of Deighton, the travelers began their journey toward Lost Lake again.<br /> Mr. Bell had made arrangements with a family in the town to take charge of Kate whom he promised to send to them, for he knew he could depend on the woman to obey him and make the journey alone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="accident, sound, car part, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> Lost Lake was reached on the second day, for the travelers were delayed by a landslide, and had to camp out one night. They found the camp and the hermit's hut undisturbed.<br /> "I guess none of the gang has been around lately," remarked Jerry.<br /> "I hope we have seen the last of them," put in Mr. Bell. "They certainly caused enough trouble."<br /> A few blasts on the horn brought Kate, and the poor demented woman was overjoyed to see her friends again. She made much of Tommy, who, she said, looked enough like his father to be recognized on the darkest night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first the crazy woman objected to being sent to Deighton, but Mr. Bell knew how to reason with her, and after some argument, she consented to go. She started away on the second morning, and, as the travelers learned later, eventually reached the family that had consented to care for her. Under skillful medical treatment Kate partly recovered her reason, and continued to live in Deighton for many years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="driver, road condition, topography, car part, maintenance, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Now," remarked the professor, when they had seen Kate started off on her journey, "I suppose it is time for us to move. So let's get started toward our mine, for I'm sure Nestor must be quite anxious to see us."<br /> "Onward it is, then!" exclaimed Ned. "All aboard, and may we have a safe trip!"<br /> With Ned at the steering wheel the auto was started off. The way was rather rougher than any they had yet traveled over, and for some distance the ascent was steep. But with a new set of batteries and spark plugs, and with everything on the car well adjusted, matters went along smoothly, though no very great speed could be attained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="mountain, topography, pleasure, rural, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> Mile after mile was covered, the auto mounting higher and higher amid the mountains. There were no signs of human habitation, not even a deserted miner's hut being passed the first two days of the trip.<br /> Of course there was no shelter to be had, and nights were spent in the open. But as the weather was mild, and as it did not rain, this was considered more a pleasure than a hardship.<br /> The third day they began to see signs that told them they were approaching a town. Now and then cabins and huts would be passed, mostly the lonely homes of solitary miners, who were prospecting for gold. Sometimes they would pass quite good sized camps, and about noon of the fourth day they were invited to come in and have a meal, which they were glad to do.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> The miners told them the nearest town was Sleighton, seventy-five miles away, and that it was the centre of activity for a large area of country round about.<br /> "And I wouldn't advise you folks to speed that there machine of yours when you strike the village," said one of the miners.<br /> "Why not?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Because the marshal is very strict, and he ain't got no very great hankerin' fer choo-choo wagons."<br /> "We'll look out," promised Jerry. "We are in too much of a hurry to want any delays."<br /> "I wonder if we'll hear anything more of that gang," said Ned as they rode away from the mining camp. "It seems queer that they would drop the thing when they seemed so anxious to capture Mr. Bell."<br /> "We'll hear of them again, and in a way we won't like, I'm afraid," said the former hermit. "We'll have to be on the lookout."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVII. - Trouble at the Mine (227-236) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="health, law, risk, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, rural, rain, equipment, Southwest"><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVII<br /> <br /> TROUBLE AT THE MINE<br /> <br /> Several days' travel brought the party over the line into Arizona. They passed through a small village one noon, and, on inquiring their where-abouts were told that they were well within the borders of the state where their gold mine was located.<br /> It began to rain shortly after this, and their trip was rather unpleasant, but, well wrapped up in rubber coats, they managed to keep fairly dry. As for the auto it did not seem to mind what kind of weather it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="tree, rain, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> They camped that night under a clump of pine trees which served as a partial shelter, and it was so wet that no fire could be built. Jerry resorted to the stove made from one of the search-lights, and made some hot chocolate that warmed them all up.<br /> The next day dawned clear, however, and with a better feeling the travelers took up their journey again. The way was becoming familiar to them, and they recognized many landmarks they had observed in their great race across the continent to secure the gold mine before Noddy Nixon and his crowd could win the claim, as told in detail in "The Motor Boys Overland."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, equipment"><br /> <poem><br /> That night they stayed in the town where the government assay office was located and to reach which there had been such an exciting brush between the two automobiles, the one run by Noddy, and that run by the Motor Boys. They saw several men whom they knew slightly, and who appeared much surprised to see them again.<br /> "Well, well, well, where in the world did you come from?" asked the proprietor of the hotel, as the auto drew up in front of his place. He had been quite friendly with the boys while they stayed at the mine, and had sold them many supplies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been down to Mexico for a change of air," said Jerry.<br /> "I suppose it didn't agree with you, or you wouldn't be coming back so soon," went on the proprietor.<br /> "Well, we thought our mine needed looking after," Jerry remarked.<br /> "Looking after? I should say it did," the proprietor continued. "Jim Nestor was here the other day and he said if you didn't come back pretty soon and do something, there wouldn't be any mine."<br /> "Is that right?" asked Ned, thinking the man might be trying to scare them for a joke.<br /> "Straight as a string," was the answer. "It seems that the title to the place is in doubt."<br /> "I know, Nestor wrote us about that," put in Jerry. "But he is still in possession, isn't he?"<br /> "Can't say," replied the hotel man. "He was very anxious the last time I saw him, and that was a week ago. If I was you I'd look after it the first thing in the morning."<br /> "We will," said Jerry. "I wonder if the government office is closed."<br /> "Long ago," said the proprietor of the inn. "Why?"<br /> "I was thinking I could go there and find out what sort of claim there was against our property," answered the boy.<br /> "You'll have to wait until ten o'clock to-morrow morning," went on the man. "They've got a new official in charge and he takes more time off than he puts in. Some one ought to write to the President about it. There's lots of kicks about the way he acts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, scenery"><br /> <poem><br /> Neither the boys nor the professor did much sleeping that night, because of worry over the mine tangle. They made an early breakfast and then started for their claim, which they expected to reach in about two hours unless something unexpected occurs.<br /> The way was familiar to them, and recalled many old memories of the exciting times they had in locating and proving their claim. They pointed out to Mr. Bell the various landmarks as they passed them, but the former hermit seemed to have fallen into a sort of stupor. His eyes had a vacant stare and he took no interest in what was being said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid he's going to be sick," said Jerry to the professor. "He has hardly spoken since we came into Arizona, and he used to be quite a talker."<br /> "I guess it is only the excitement wearing off," said Mr. Snodgrass. "He will be all right in a day or two. He has had a pretty hard life the last few weeks."<br /> Tommy was worried about his father, and sat beside him, holding his hand, now and then looking up into his face, as if he feared to lose his parent again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="scenery, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> As they neared the mine Mr. Bell seemed to become more dazed. Yet he appeared to be struggling to recall something that he had once known and forgotten.<br /> Suddenly he stood up in the automobile, as the car passed a deserted and tumbled down hut and exclaimed:<br /> "See! There it is! There is the place!"<br /> "What place, father? What do you mean?" asked Tommy.<br /> But Mr. Bell sat down again, and seemed to have forgotten that he had spoken. The professor could note, however, that there was a struggle going on in the old man's mind.<br /> "I hope he does not become raving mad, yet it looks bad for him," the professor thought to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="navigation, speed, topography, scenery, sound, risk, forest"><br /> <poem><br /> "Ten minutes more and we'll be there!" exclaimed Jerry, crowding on a little more speed. "I do hope Nestor is having no trouble."<br /> They were in the midst of a wild mountainous country now. On either side of the road were great bowlders, while a little further back was scrub timber which extended for a mile or more before the deeper woods were reached.<br /> They were just rounding the last turn of the road to swing into the straight stretch that would take them to the mine when there sounded on the air the crack of a rifle. An instant later Mr. Bell gave a convulsive start and fell over in his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="parking, visibility, risk, health"><br /> <poem><br /> "They've killed him! They've shot him!" cried Tommy, while Jerry suddenly brought the machine to a stop. Glancing across to the left a small curling cloud of smoke could be seen floating above a big stone.<br /> "There's where the shot came from," said Ned.<br /> "Is he badly hurt?" asked Jerry of Professor Snodgrass, who was bending over Mr. Bell.<br /> "It is hard to say," was the answer. "The bullet struck him on the head, but there is so much blood I can't tell how bad the wound is. Push on to the mine. Perhaps Nestor can help us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry started the machine again. It had attained a good speed when, from the side of the road came a hail.<br /> "Motor Boys, ahoy!"<br /> "There's Nestor!" cried Ned, pointing to a man who stood in front of a small shanty. "Hello, Nestor!" he called.<br /> "Hello!" responded the miner, running down to the road. "Well, I am certainly glad to see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quick, Nestor!" exclaimed Mr. Snodgrass. "We have a wounded man here, and must get him to the shanty at the mine as soon as possible."<br /> "We can't do it," replied Nestor.<br /> "Why not?"<br /> "Didn't you get my letter?"<br /> "Only the one saying there might be a possibility of trouble."<br /> "Well trouble came all right. I've been driven from the mine, and it's in possession of a bad gang. So we can't take the wounded man there."<br /> "What are we to do?" asked Jerry, seeing that Mr. Bell was bleeding badly.<br /> "Bring him into my cabin," said Nestor. "I came here after the gang drove me out. I can put you up, I guess."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="health, parking, equipment, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry ran the car up close to the shanty and Mr. Bell, who was unconscious, was carried in and laid as tenderly as possible on the single bunk of which the place boasted.<br /> "Now some warm water and clean clothes," said Mr. Snodgrass. "I must wash the wound and see how bad it is."<br /> "I haven't a bit of hot water," said Nestor.<br /> "There's plenty in the radiator of the auto," spoke Jerry. "Give me a pail and I'll soon get some."<br /> He soon had a plentiful supply that was almost boiling, and, cooling it somewhat, the naturalist carefully washed the blood from the wounded man's head. Then he examined the hurt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will he die?" asked Tommy, as he stood around, tearfully.<br /> "Not this time," replied Mr. Snodgrass, cheerfully. "The bullet appears to have only grazed the scalp a bit, but it probably gave him a pretty hard knock. He'll soon come around right I guess."<br /> Mr. Bell was made as comfortable as possible, and, as there was nothing to do but wait until he became conscious, he was left in charge of his son. Tommy was told to call as soon as his father showed signs of awakening, and then the others surrounded Nestor, eager to hear about<br /> the mine.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess it's gone," said the old prospector. "As I wrote you, the title seems to have some flaw in it, and this gang, which came from somewhere to the southeast, found it out, and served papers on me. It appears that there is a man missing who holds the key to the situation, and who owns<br /> the majority of the mine, but he can't be found, and so our title is no good."<br /> The news depressed the spirits of all. They had been hoping that the trouble was small and temporary and that Nestor would find a way out. Now they stood to lose the mine they had struggled so hard to get.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you resist their claim?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You bet I did," replied Nestor. "I went to court over it, but the judge said though it was morally wrong to put me out, yet the others had the law on their side, and he had to decide against me.<br /> "I didn't give up even then, for I barricaded the place and defied 'em to get me out. But the sheriff came and said that was no way to do. He had the law with him, and he said it would be his duty to shoot me if I resisted. He advised going to a higher court, and so, rather than have any bloodshed I gave up, and decided to camp out here until you came. I've been here about two weeks now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then the mine's gone," remarked Jerry, sorrowfully.<br /> "We can try the courts," said Nestor, hopefully.<br /> "It would take years to settle the case," put in Mr. Snodgrass. "No, I guess you are beaten, boys."<br /> "I will not give up yet," said Jerry.<br /> "What are you going to do?" asked Ned.<br /> "I'm going to town, hire the best lawyer I can get, and see what he says. There may be a way out of this yet."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" exclaimed Bob. "I'm with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, navigation, rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Jerry lost no time. He hurried to the auto, and with Bob for company made the run to town in record time. He was directed to a lawyer's office, and, finding the attorney, who was a young chap, in, paid him a retainer and stated the case briefly.<br /> "I just want to know how we stand, what sort of a claim there is against our title, and what we can do to perfect it," said Jerry.<br /> "It's quite a lot of information to get at in a hurry," said the lawyer, "but I'll do my best. I'll be ready for you at four o'clock this afternoon."<br /> "I'll call for you then," went on Jerry, "and take you back to Nestor's shanty, where you can explain the whole thing to us."<br /> Then the boys, with a feeling of dread that their mine was gone forever, in spite of all they could do, went back to where the others were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> === Chapter XXVIII. - All's Well that Ends Well (237-248) ===<br /> <paragraph keywords="law, health, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CHAPTER XXVIII<br /> <br /> ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL<br /> <br /> They found Mr. Bell in much the same condition as before, though Mr. Snodgrass said the wounded man's breathing was a little easier, which was a good sign.<br /> "And what about the mine?" asked the naturalist. Jerry told him the lawyer was coming.<br /> "I'm afraid it will be of little use," said the professor. "Nestor says they had a big lawyer to represent the gang, and they also have a large force in charge of the mine, taking out gold."<br /> "And it's our gold," exclaimed Jerry. "Oh, why didn't we get back sooner?"<br /> "It wouldn't have done much good," spoke Nestor. "I did all I could, but the law was on their side."<br /> "Of course, I didn't mean that you failed," Jerry hastened to add, for fear of hurting the old miner's feelings. "It's too bad, that's all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="maintenance, oil, navigation, law, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> After a somewhat gloomy dinner, which the professor tried to liven up by telling jokes and funny stories, Jerry oiled the machine, and, about two o'clock started back to town for the lawyer. He found the attorney waiting for him, with several big law books in a valise.<br /> "Any luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "Not a great deal," was the answer.<br /> "Well, don't tell us until we are all together," went on Jerry. "I don't want to stand it all alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When, on arrival at Nestor's cabin, the lawyer proceeded to tell what he had learned, there were six very attentive listeners.<br /> The attorney went over the ground carefully, and told the boys, Nestor and Professor Snodgrass, much that they had already heard. How, because of a missing owner who held more than a half interest in the mine, the title was not good when the boys preëmpted it. In fact it was still the property of others, though about to lapse.<br /> "I don't understand all them legal terms," put in Nestor, "but didn't we make a good claim to the government for that mine?"<br /> "You did, as far as it went," replied the lawyer. "Uncle Sam gave you a title, but did not guarantee that some one did not have a better one, which it seems is the case."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But that gang hasn't a good title either, not if the owner of over half the shares is missing," went on Nestor.<br /> "No, but it seems, according to the records, that they have some sort of an agreement from this missing man that they are empowered to work the claim until he comes to demand his share."<br /> "If that's the case I'm for going up there and driving them out with a gun!" exclaimed Nestor. "They haven't any more right than we have, and we can at least make them go shares with us until this missing man shows up. What's the matter with attacking them to-night."<br /> "If you're going to resort to lawless means I'll have to throw up the case," said the attorney. "That is no way to talk."<br /> "Nestor doesn't mean it at all," put in Jerry. "Of course we will have no battle with that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are two ways we might proceed," the lawyer went on. "There may be more, but they are the only ones that suggest themselves to me from what time I was able to give to the case."<br /> "What would you advise?" asked Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "You can apply to the courts for an injunction to prevent the working of the mine until the missing half-owner shows up."<br /> "But that would bar us as well as them," put in Jerry. <br /> "Yes, it would have that effect, if you secured the injunction, which is doubtful. It would be a long and costly litigation, I fear."<br /> "And what is the other plan?"<br /> "You might try to find the missing man, and buy him out, or make some arrangement with him. From what I can learn he and the others have quarreled and are opposed to each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is the missing man?" asked Bob.<br /> "That is something on which I can not be of the least help to you," was the reply. "There is nothing to show where he is."<br /> "Then it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to search for him, and as long and costly as the injunction means," commented Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "I'm afraid it would," was the lawyer's answer.<br /> "What is the man's name?" asked Jerry.<br /> "I have it here," proceeded the attorney. "It is Mr. Well, no, that's not it. Oh yes! Here it is. Bell, that's it. Mr. Jackson Bell."<br /> "What?" fairly shouted the three boys at once.<br /> "What name?" inquired the professor, wondering if he had heard aright.<br /> "Jackson Bell," repeated the lawyer. "Why, do you know him?"<br /> "Know him?" went on Jerry, jumping up in his excitement. "Why he is in the next room this very minute! Well of all the strange pieces of luck!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they all tried to tell the lawyer at once the story of the hermit and his son, making such a jumble that the attorney had to beg them to stop, while he listened to one at a time. Finally the tale was related, and the boys and the professor as well, greatly excited, paused to see what the lawyer would say.<br /> "Then I don't see any further trouble to your getting possession of the mine," said the attorney. "If Mr. Bell is on your side, and you make a joint application to the court or even to the government agent, I am sure you will be given instant charge of the claim."<br /> "There is only one difficulty," said Mr. Snodgrass. "Mr. Bell is wounded. His mind was not strong before the shooting, and it may be altogether gone when he recovers consciousness. In that case—?"<br /> "In that case I'm afraid you are as badly off as before," finished the lawyer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door to the inner room, where Mr. Bell was in the bunk, opened, and Tommy came out, looking worried.<br /> "Is he worse, Tommy?" asked the professor.<br /> "He's acting very queer," replied the boy. "He is sitting up in bed, and is trying to get something out from under his shirt. He's talking something about a mine."<br /> "He is probably delirious," said Mr. Snodgrass. "We must have a doctor. I'm afraid it looks bad for us, boys."<br /> At that instant the form of Mr. Bell, weak and tottering, showed in the doorway. He seemed greatly excited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There you are!" he cried tearing open his shirt and throwing a bundle, done up in oiled silk on the table. "There are the papers. There are the proofs to the mine. The gang did not get them after all!"<br /> "Calm yourself," spoke Mr. Snodgrass, in a soothing tone that one uses to sick children or fever patients.<br /> "I'm all right!" exclaimed Mr. Bell. "Don't think I'm crazy. I was a little off my head, but the wound the bullet gave me, and the blood I lost, accomplished just what was needed. There, I tell you, are the papers proving my claim to the mine."<br /> "What mine?" asked the professor, while the others waited in anxiety for the answer.<br /> "The mine we were going to," responded the old man. "From the description you boys gave of it I recognize it as the same one I have more than a half share in. All the way up here I was trying to recall when I had been here before. I recognized the places, but my mind would not serve me. I had suffered so much that I was almost crazy. Then came the shot, and I did not know anything more, until I just woke up in that room, and remembered all about it. Now we will beat that gang."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurrah!" cried Jerry, seizing Ned by the arms and starting to dance a hornpipe.<br /> "Are you sure you can not be mistaken about the mine?" asked Mr. Snodgrass, for it seemed hardly possible that the old hermit, whom they had rescued, should turn out to be the much-wanted missing owner.<br /> "There are the papers, you can see for yourself," replied Mr. Bell.<br /> The lawyer, at a sign from the professor, made a careful examination of the documents.<br /> "They seem to be all right," he said. "I have no doubt but that you can fully establish your claim, Mr. Bell."<br /> "It isn't my claim, sir."<br /> "Why I thought you said—"<br /> "Everything I have or own is the property of these noble boys and Professor Snodgrass," went on the former hermit. "They saved my life, and that of my son's. If I gave them a hundred mines I could not repay them."<br /> "But we do not want your share," said Mr. Snodgrass.<br /> "It don't make any difference what you want, you've got to take it," said Mr. Bell, firmly.<br /> "We can settle that part later," put in the lawyer. "The thing to do now is to get possession of the mine. If you wish I will act for you."<br /> "Of course we want you to," said Jerry.<br /> "Very well. I will take these papers, and go to court with them. If I am successful, as I have no doubt I shall be, I will apply to the sheriff to oust the crowd that is in charge of the mine. Then you and Mr. Bell can take possession."<br /> "That's the way to talk!" fairly yelled Nestor, who was anxious to get back to the "diggings."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="speed, law, health"><br /> <poem><br /> The lawyer was hurried back to town in the auto. Nothing could be done that afternoon, as the court was closed. He promised to be on hand early in the morning.<br /> The boys could hardly sleep that night. Mr. Bell seemed to have fully recovered, and, beyond a slight pain where the bullet had hit him, he did not suffer. It was late when they went to bed, and somewhat late when they arose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="rural, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going into town and see what's doing," said Jerry after breakfast.<br /> "So am I," cried Ned and Bob.<br /> "Better not," went on Jerry. "If I have to bring back the lawyer, and the sheriff and some of his deputies to read the riot act to the gang, I'll need all the room there is."<br /> So Jerry went off alone in the car. He did not find the lawyer in, but the attorney's clerk said he was at court.<br /> "I'll wait until he comes back," said Jerry, and he sat down in the office. Two hours later, the lawyer came in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords="law, passenger, slowness, risk"><br /> <poem><br /> "What luck?" asked Jerry.<br /> "The very best. I have a peremptory order commanding that crowd to turn the mine over to your party and Mr. Bell. Come on, we'll get the sheriff and finish the thing right up."<br /> The sheriff was only too glad of a chance for some activity. He and three deputies, well armed, got into the car, and Jerry started off. To the boy the machine never seemed to move so slowly, but several times one of the deputies threatened to jump out if the auto did not slacken up a bit.<br /> Arriving at the cabin, Nestor, the two boys, and Professor Snodgrass were found anxiously waiting.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now for the mine!" cried Jerry, as he rapidly explained the success of the mission.<br /> "Wait till I get my gun," said Nestor.<br /> "No shooting unless we have to," warned the sheriff.<br /> Then they advanced on the mine. An eighth of a mile away they were halted by a guard. But an order from the sheriff, and a sight of the command from the court, made the guard give in, and he was sent back to the cabin, in custody of one of the deputies.<br /> Then, without any warning, the party descended on the others of the gang, who were all gathered in the main cabin at dinner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At first it looked as if there was going to be trouble. Several made an attempt to get their guns, but Nestor, the sheriff, and his man, had covered them, and they saw that the game was up.<br /> "I'll read you this court order," said the sheriff.<br /> "You needn't bother," spoke the leader, whom the boys recognized as one of the men who had held Tommy a captive. Others in the gang were recognizable as men who had tried to capture Mr. Bell at Lost Lake.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We played a bold game, but we lost," said the leader, as he and his companions, gathering up their baggage, left the cabin, and made their way toward town. They did not go there, however,—since they feared further proceedings,—and were never heard of again.<br /> "Hurrah, now we have our mine back again!" cried Jerry. "I wonder if it is paying?"<br /> "Better than ever, by the looks of this stuff," answered Jim Nestor, picking up some newly-mined ore that lay on ground. "No wonder that crowd wanted to keep possession of the mine."<br /> There followed a general jollification. The boys got up a fine dinner, at which the sheriff, his men, and the lawyer were guests. An arrangement was made whereby Mr. Bell should retain a large interest in the mine, while the other share was divided between our friends as before. The lawyer received a generous fee, and the sheriff and his men were not forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Jerry, a week later, "we came out all right, didn't we? I presume our adventures are all over now."<br /> "Don't be too sure," put in Bob. "Something else may turn up soon." And Bob was right, as we shall learn in another volume, to be called, "The Motor Boys Afloat; Or, The Stirring Cruise of the Dartaway," a tale of land and sea.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The days to follow were busy ones for Jim Nestor and the boys. The mine was started up in better shape than ever before, new machinery put in, and extra workmen engaged. Letters were sent to the boys' folks, telling of all that had happened.<br /> "I want to say one thing," said Jerry, one day. "And that is, that it feels mighty good to be back in the United States again."<br /> "Exactly what I say," returned Ned.<br /> "Right you are," came from Chunky. He rubbed his hands together. "And as we are back, and all is well, why—er—let us have some dinner."<br /> And then, with a merry laugh at the lad who never wanted to miss a meal, the others followed Chunky to the table; and here as they sit down to a well-earned repast, we will take our departure.<br /> <br /> THE END.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=Fables_in_Slang&diff=934 Fables in Slang 2026-04-13T07:02:41Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: Created page with "<meta author="Ade, George" additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25322/pg25322-images.html" genre="Fiction" journal="Fables in Slang" publisher="" year_of_publication="1899" page_range="135-142" other_data="" /> <annotations> == <div style='text-align: center;'><i>THE</i> FABLE <i>OF</i> SISTER MAE, <i>WHO</i> DID <i>AS</i> WELL <i>AS</i> COULD BE EXPECTED</div> == <paragraph keywords=""> <poem> TWO Sisters lived in Chicago, th..."</p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Ade, George"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25322/pg25322-images.html"<br /> genre="Fiction"<br /> journal="Fables in Slang"<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1899"<br /> page_range="135-142"<br /> other_data=""<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> == <div style='text-align: center;'><i>THE</i> FABLE <i>OF</i> SISTER MAE, <i>WHO</i> DID <i>AS</i> WELL <i>AS</i> COULD BE EXPECTED</div> ==<br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> TWO Sisters lived in Chicago, the Home of Opportunity. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Luella was a Good Girl, who had taken Prizes at the Mission Sunday School, but she was Plain, much. Her Features did not seem to know the value of Team Work. Her Clothes fit her Intermittently, as it were. She was what would be called a Lumpy Dresser. But she had a good Heart. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Luella found Employment at a Hat Factory. All she had to do was to put Red Linings in Hats for the Country Trade; and every Saturday Evening, when Work was called on account of Darkness, the Boss met her as she went out and crowded three Dollars on her. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> The other Sister was Different. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> She began as Mary, then changed to Marie, and her Finish was Mae. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> From earliest Youth she had lacked Industry and Application. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> She was short on Intellect but long on Shape. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> The Vain Pleasures of the World attracted her. By skipping the Long Words she could read how Rupert Bansiford led Sibyl Gray into the Conservatory and made Love that scorched the Begonias. Sometimes she just Ached to light out with an Opera Company. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> When she couldn't stand up Luella for any more Car Fare she went out looking for Work, and hoping she wouldn't find it. The sagacious Proprietor of a Lunch Room employed her as Cashier. In a little While she learned to count Money, and could hold down the Job. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> \[Illustration: THE BOSS; (Description: A woodcut-style illustration showing a man with spectacles and scissors in his pocket handing a coin to another person. Tools including a ruler and iron are visible in the background.)\] <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Marie was a Strong Card. The Male Patrons of the Establishment hovered around the Desk long after paying their Checks. Within a Month the Receipts of the Place had doubled. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> It was often remarked that Marie was a Pippin. Her Date Book had to be kept on the Double Entry System. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Although her Grammar was Sad, it made no Odds. Her Picture was on many a Button. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> A Credit Man from the Wholesale House across the Street told her that any time she wanted to see the Telegraph Poles rush past, she could tear Transportation out of his Book. But Marie turned him down for a Bucket Shop Man, who was not Handsome, but was awful Generous. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, pedestrian, gender"> <br /> <poem> <br /> \[Illustration: MAE; (Description: A woodcut-style illustration showing a woman driving a car past a crowd.)\] <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> They were Married, and went to live in a Flat with a Quarter-Sawed Oak Chiffonier and Pink Rugs. She was Mae at this Stage of the Game. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Shortly after this, Wheat jumped twenty-two points, and the Husband didn't do a Thing. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Mae bought a Thumb Ring and a Pug Dog, and began to speak of the Swede Help as "The Maid." <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Then she decided that she wanted to live in a House, because, in a Flat, One could never be sure of One's Neighbors. So they moved into a Sarcophagus on the Boulevard, right in between two Old Families, who had made their Money soon after the Fire, and Ice began to form on the hottest Days. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"> <br /> <poem> <br /> Mae bought an Automobile, and blew her Allowance against Beauty Doctors. The Smell of Cooking made her Faint, and she couldn't see where the Working Classes came in at all. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> When she attended the theater a Box was none too good. Husband went along, in evening clothes and a Yachting Cap, and he had two large Diamonds in his Shirt Front. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> Sometimes she went to a Vogner Concert, and sat through it, and she wouldn't Admit any more that the Russell Brothers, as the Irish Chambermaids, hit her just about Right. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> She was determined to break into Society if she had to use an Ax. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> At last she Got There; but it cost her many a Reed Bird and several Gross of Cold Quarts. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> In the Hey-Day of Prosperity did Mae forget Luella? No, indeed. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> She took Luella away from the Hat Factory, where the Pay was three Dollars a Week, and gave her a Position as Assistant Cook at five Dollars. <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""> <br /> <poem> <br /> MORAL: <i>Industry and Perseverance bring a sure Reward.</i> <br /> </poem> <br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=Ade,_George&diff=933 Ade, George 2026-04-13T06:56:21Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: Created page with "{{Infobox Author | gender = Male | ethnicity = American | nationality = American | life span = 1866-1944 }}"</p> <hr /> <div>{{Infobox Author<br /> | gender = Male<br /> | ethnicity = American<br /> | nationality = American<br /> | life span = 1866-1944<br /> }}</div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Beautiful_and_Damned&diff=796 The Beautiful and Damned 2026-02-27T07:40:49Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html"<br /> genre="Novel"<br /> journal=""<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1922"<br /> page_range="1-449"<br /> other_data="Other text data"<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (1-30)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> IN 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore. The year in which this story opens found him wearying; his campaign had grown desultory; 1861 was creeping up slowly on 1895; his thoughts ran a great deal on the Civil War, somewhat on his dead wife and son, almost infinitesimally on his grandson Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in his career Adam Patch had married an anæmic lady of thirty, Alicia Withers, who brought him one hundred thousand dollars and an impeccable entré into the banking circles of New York. Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never obtained even a private printing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This Fifth Avenue Chesterfield married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrune, the Boston "Society Contralto," and the single child of the union was, at the request of his grandfather, christened Anthony Comstock Patch. When he went to Harvard, the Comstock dropped out of his name to a nether hell of oblivion and was never heard of thereafter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together—so often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at five, the year of his mother's death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical. She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of the Southern negro.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid. After Henrietta Lebrune Patch had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, father and son lived up at grampa's in Tarrytown, and Ulysses came daily to Anthony's nursery and expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Anthony hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to Atlantic City, "oh, some time soon now"; but none of them ever materialized. One trip they did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PAST AND PERSON OF THE HERO</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly, until, for the first time since her marriage, her person held for one day an unquestioned supremacy over her own drawing room. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed—it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; enormous, as nearly exhaustive as a boy's could be—his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. So Anthony kept up a correspondence with a half dozen "Stamp and Coin" companies and it was rare that the mail failed to bring him new stamp-books or packages of glittering approval sheets—there was a mysterious fascination in transferring his acquisitions interminably from one book to another. His stamps were his greatest happiness and he bestowed impatient frowns on any one who interrupted him at play with them; they devoured his allowance every month, and he lay awake at night musing untiringly on their variety and many-colored splendor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At sixteen he had lived almost entirely within himself, an inarticulate boy, thoroughly un-American, and politely bewildered by his contemporaries. The two preceding years had been spent in Europe with a private tutor, who persuaded him that Harvard was the thing; it would "open doors," it would be a tremendous tonic, it would give him innumerable self-sacrificing and devoted friends. So he went to Harvard—there was no other logical thing to be done with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oblivious to the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never to have a part.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. He made the Pudding. He drank—quietly and in the proper tradition. It was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well." In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then abroad again—to Rome this time, where he dallied with architecture and painting in turn, took up the violin, and wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets, supposedly the ruminations of a thirteenth-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It became established among his Harvard intimates that he was in Rome, and those of them who were abroad that year looked him up and discovered with him, on many moonlight excursions, much in the city that was older than the Renaissance or indeed than the republic. Maury Noble, from Philadelphia, for instance, remained two months, and together they realized the peculiar charm of Latin women and had a delightful sense of being very young and free in a civilization that was very old and free. Not a few acquaintances of his grandfather's called on him, and had he so desired he might have been <i>persona grata</i> with the diplomatic set—indeed, he found that his inclinations tended more and more toward conviviality, but that long adolescent aloofness and consequent shyness still dictated to his conduct.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He returned to America in 1912 because of one of his grandfather's sudden illnesses, and after an excessively tiresome talk with the perpetually convalescent old man he decided to put off until his grandfather's death the idea of living permanently abroad. After a prolonged search he took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and to all appearances settled down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In 1913 Anthony Patch's adjustment of himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of melancholy humor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One of those men devoid of the symmetry of feature essential to the Aryan ideal, he was yet, here and there, considered handsome—moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE REPROACHLESS APARTMENT</div></poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, city, urban, road, affect, haptic, metaphor, driving, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it seemed to Anthony, were the uprights of a gigantic ladder stretching from Washington Square to Central Park. Coming up-town on top of a bus toward Fifty-second Street invariably gave him the sensation of hoisting himself hand by hand on a series of treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps to the sidewalk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block, pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses—and then in a jiffy he was under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was burned to a murky black.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment—Anthony's bedroom and bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them were immense. Under the ceilings of the former even the great canopied bed seemed of only average size. On the floor an exotic rug of crimson velvet was soft as fleece on his bare feet. His bathroom, in contrast to the rather portentous character of his bedroom, was gay, bright, extremely habitable and even faintly facetious. Framed around the walls were photographs of four celebrated thespian beauties of the day: Julia Sanderson as "The Sunshine Girl," Ina Claire as "The Quaker Girl," Billie Burke as "The Mind-the-Paint Girl," and Hazel Dawn as "The Pink Lady." Between Billie Burke and Hazel Dawn hung a print representing a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun—this, claimed Anthony, symbolized the cold shower.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The bathtub, equipped with an ingenious bookholder, was low and large. Beside it a wall wardrobe bulged with sufficient linen for three men and with a generation of neckties. There was no skimpy glorified towel of a carpet—instead, a rich rug, like the one in his bedroom a miracle of softness, that seemed almost to massage the wet foot emerging from the tub. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> All in all a room to conjure with—it was easy to see that Anthony dressed there, arranged his immaculate hair there, in fact did everything but sleep and eat there. It was his pride, this bathroom. He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NOR DOES HE SPIN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The apartment was kept clean by an English servant with the singularly, almost theatrically, appropriate name of Bounds, whose technic was marred only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. Had he been entirely Anthony's Bounds this defect would have been summarily remedied, but he was also the Bounds of two other gentlemen in the neighborhood. From eight until eleven in the morning he was entirely Anthony's. He arrived with the mail and cooked breakfast. At nine-thirty he pulled the edge of Anthony's blanket and spoke a few terse words—Anthony never remembered clearly what they were and rather suspected they were deprecative; then he served breakfast on a card-table in the front room, made the bed and, after asking with some hostility if there was anything else, withdrew.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the mornings, at least once a week, Anthony went to see his broker. His income was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who had never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance, judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in contemplating his grandfather's money—even more, for the latter appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and explicitly—money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a <i>raison d'être</i> in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well again—the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and wire fences guarding the estate—this, said the public, was because it was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth—who before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general reprobate—ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better," Anthony said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last week, pulled out his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Train late?" he asked mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot, but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of meek accusation in his voice—and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentions—and simultaneously a glimmer in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the room—he detested Shuttleworth—but the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that you're here you ought to <i>do</i> something," said his grandfather softly, "accomplish something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony waited for him to speak of "leaving something done when you pass on." Then he made a suggestion:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought—it seemed to me that perhaps I'm best qualified to write—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—history," finished Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "History? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, sir. A history of the Middle Ages." Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said "Middle Ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Middle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see I've lived so much abroad—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why you should write about the Middle Ages, I don't know. Dark Ages, we used to call 'em. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that they're over now." He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the "corruption of the monasteries." Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think you'll be able to do any work in New York—or do you really intend to work at all?" This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, yes, I do, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When'll you be done?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there'll be an outline, you see—and a lot of preliminary reading."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd have done enough of that already."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothing—and contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>AFTERNOON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of "Erewhon." It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he was singing as he turned on the tap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes;</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul la-a-dy</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>My . . . heart . . . cries—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatre—Caramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was glad <i>he</i> wasn't going to work on <i>his</i> book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he sang lightly,<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possible—and, if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are glad to see each other now—their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp, restless—he is at rest now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven o'clock. Where's the Caramel? (<i>Impatiently</i>.) I wish he'd finish that interminable novel. I've spent more time hungry——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: He's got a new name for it. "The Demon Lover "—not bad, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>interested</i>) "The Demon Lover"? Oh "woman wailing"—No—not a bit bad! Not bad at all—d'you think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>His eyes narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval</i>) Drove me crazy the other day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: How?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That habit of taking notes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems I'd said something night before that he considered material but he'd forgotten it—so he had at me. He'd say "Can't you try to concentrate?" And I'd say "You bore me to tears. How do I remember?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (MAURY <i>laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Dick doesn't necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: That rather impressive talent——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. (<i>Silence, and then:</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced</i>) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>With laughter</i>) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? Just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Still considering his own last observation</i>) I remember.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Let's order. He'll be—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Sure. Let's order. I told him—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (<i>He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw</i>.) Here y'are, Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A NEW VOICE: (<i>Fiercely</i>) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Débutantes still after you, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>In person</i> RICHARD CARAMEL <i>is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>When he reaches the table he shakes hands with</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> MAURY. <i>He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Fixing</i> ANTHONY <i>eagerly with the bright eye</i>) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Noble æsthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: We never pass out, my beardless boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: All in our parties are characterized by a certain haughty distinction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: The particularly silly sort who boast about being "tanks"! Trouble is you're both in the eighteenth century. School of the Old English Squire. Drink quietly until you roll under the table. Never have a good time. Oh, no, that isn't done at all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: This from Chapter Six, I'll bet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Going to the theatre?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening doing some deep thinking over of life's problems. The thing is tersely called "The Woman." I presume that she will "pay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: My God! Is that what it is? Let's go to the Follies again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I'm tired of it. I've seen it three times. (<i>To</i> DICK.) The first time, we went out after Act One and found a most amazing bar. When we came back we entered the wrong theatre.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Had a protracted dispute with a scared young couple we thought were in our seats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>As though talking to himself</i>) I think—that when I've done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I'll do a musical comedy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I know—with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to. And all the critics will groan and grunt about "Dear old Pinafore." And I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Pompously</i>) Art isn't meaningless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: In other words, Dick, you're playing before a grand stand peopled with ghosts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Give a good show anyhow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY:(<i>To</i> MAURY) On the contrary, I'd feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, even admitting all that, be a decent pragmatist and grant a poor man the instinct to live. Would you want every one to accept that sophistic rot?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Yeah, I suppose so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, sir! I believe that every one in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don't complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligences.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Here the soup arrives and what</i> MAURY <i>might have gone on to say is lost for all time</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward they visited a ticket speculator and, at a price, obtained seats for a new musical comedy called "High Jinks." In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see the first-night crowd come in. There were opera cloaks stitched of myriad, many-colored silks and furs; there were jewels dripping from arms and throats and ear-tips of white and rose; there were innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial lake of laughter. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the play they parted—Maury was going to a dance at Sherry's, Anthony homeward and to bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin—too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices and craning their necks here and there in fatuous supercilious glances. They were dressed in suits of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; their turn-over collars were notched at the Adam's apple; they wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passed a bewildered old lady borne along like a basket of eggs between two men who exclaimed to her of the wonders of Times Square—explained them so quickly that the old lady, trying to be impartially interested, waved her head here and there like a piece of wind-worried old orange-peel. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the Astor, mama!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! See the chariot race sign——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's where we were to-day. No, <i>there!</i>”"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good gracious! . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You should worry and grow thin like a dime." He recognized the current witticism of the year as it issued stridently from one of the pairs at his elbow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I says to him, I says——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, haptic, sound, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughter hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He turned thankfully down the hush that blew like a dark wind out of a cross-street, passed a bakery-restaurant in whose windows a dozen roast chickens turned over and over on an automatic spit. From the door came a smell that was hot, doughy, and pink. A drug-store next, exhaling medicines, spilt soda water and a pleasant undertone from the cosmetic counter; then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling, smelling folded and vaguely yellow. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store and emerged feeling better—the cigar store was cheerful, humanity in a navy blue mist, buying a luxury . . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, there was a loneliness here——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> His cigarette, its smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as it passed the illusion faded; it diminished to the faintest of drums—then to a far-away droning eagle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car, road, risk, safety, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> There were the bells and the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long conversation with a voice that was in the white wind, a conversation that took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself</i>) Whither shall I journey now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Petulantly</i>) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Fifteen years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: And what's the name of the place?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In astonishment</i>) What?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Very much depressed</i>) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Even so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What of me? What chance shall I have?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>After a dissatisfied pause</i>) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It's expected that they'll be very busy shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What will I be? Tell me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it's not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a "susciety gurl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What's that?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as</i> THE VOICE <i>scratching its head</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>At length</i>) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Placidly</i>) It all sounds so vulgar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In a whisper</i>) Will I be paid?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Yes, as usual—in love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips</i>) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Soberly</i>) You will love it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The dialogue ends here, with</i> BEAUTY <i>still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>All this took place seven years before</i> ANTHONY <i>sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (31-73)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PORTRAIT OF A SIREN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CRISPNESS folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony's mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, to bear children unto three dozen millionaires. Five dozen virtuous females of the second layer were proclaiming not only this fitness, but in addition a tremendous undaunted ambition toward the first three dozen young men, who were of course invited to each of the ninety-six parties—as were the young lady's group of family friends, acquaintances, college boys, and eager young outsiders. To continue, there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city's shoes: Jewesses were coming out into a society of Jewish men and women, from Riverside to the Bronx, and looking forward to a rising young broker or jeweller and a kosher wedding; Irish girls were casting their eyes, with license at last to do so, upon a society of young Tammany politicians, pious undertakers, and grown-up choirboys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> And, naturally, the city caught the contagious air of entré—the working girls, poor ugly souls, wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted male—as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subway's foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles came out with new dances. And the railroads came out with new schedules containing new mistakes instead of the old ones that the commuters had grown used to. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The City was coming out!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, ran unexpectedly into Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West, that were just coming into fashionable approval. His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable hand shake, exploded into sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cold as the devil— Good Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, and took notes while she talked—so she couldn't see me, you know, just as though I were writing casually—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had seized Anthony's arm and was walking him briskly up Madison Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where to?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nowhere in particular."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, then what's the use?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They stopped and stared at each other, and Anthony wondered if the cold made his own face as repellent as Dick Caramel's, whose nose was crimson, whose bulging brow was blue, whose yellow unmatched eyes were red and watery at the rims. After a moment they began walking again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Done some good work on my novel." Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. "But I have to get out once in a while." He glanced at Anthony apologetically, as though craving encouragement. "I have to talk. I guess very few people ever really <i>think</i>, I mean sit down and ponder and have ideas in sequence. I do my thinking in writing or conversation. You've got to have a start, sort of—something to defend or contradict—don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't mind carrying you, Dick, but with that coat—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "that on paper your first paragraph contains the idea you're going to damn or enlarge on. In conversation you've got your vis-à-vis's last statement—but when you simply <i>ponder</i>, why, your ideas just succeed each other like magic-lantern pictures and each one forces out the last."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They passed Forty-fifth Street and slowed down slightly. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke and frosted breath into the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's walk up to the Plaza and have an egg-nog," suggested Anthony. "Do you good. Air'll get the rotten nicotine out of your lungs. Come on—I'll let you talk about your book all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to if it bores you. I mean you needn't do it as a favor." The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: "Bore me? I should say not!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin—" began Dick, but Anthony interrupted by stretching out his arms and breathing forth a low cry of exultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good weather!" he exclaimed, "isn't it? Makes me feel about ten. I mean it makes me feel as I should have felt when I was ten. Murderous! Oh, God! one minute it's my world, and the next I'm the world's fool. To-day it's my world and everything's easy, easy. Even Nothing is easy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin up at the Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter—has lately anyway—with her mother and father."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Didn't know you had cousins in New York."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Her name's Gloria. She's from home—Kansas City. Her mother's a practising Bilphist, and her father's quite dull but a perfect gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are they? Literary material?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They try to be. All the old man does is tell me he just met the most wonderful character for a novel. Then he tells me about some idiotic friend of his and then he says: '<i>There's</i> a character for you! Why don't you write him up? Everybody'd be interested in <i>him</i>.' Or else he tells me about Japan or Paris, or some other very obvious place, and says: 'Why don't you write a story about that place? That'd be a wonderful setting for a story!'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the girl?" inquired Anthony casually, "Gloria—Gloria what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gilbert. Oh, you've heard of her—Gloria Gilbert. Goes to dances at colleges—all that sort of thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard her name."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-looking—in fact damned attractive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care for young girls as a rule," said Anthony, frowning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was not strictly true. While it seemed to him that the average débutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness interested him enormously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's darn nice—not a brain in her head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a one-syllabled snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By that you mean that she hasn't a line of literary patter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick, you know what passes as brains in a girl for you. Earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. The kind who when they were sixteen argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrong—and whether it was immoral for freshmen to drink beer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was offended. His scowl crinkled like crushed paper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No—" he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; kind who just at present sit in corners and confer on the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick turned to him, a curious falling in his whole countenance. His question was almost an appeal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I were a sort of inferior."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was confused, but he was also cold and a little uncomfortable, so he took refuge in attack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think your brains matter, Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course they matter!" exclaimed Dick angrily. "What do you mean? Why don't they matter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You might know too much for your pen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I couldn't possibly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can imagine," insisted Anthony, "a man knowing too much for his talent to express. Like me. Suppose, for instance, I have more wisdom than you, and less talent. It would tend to make me inarticulate. You, on the contrary, have enough water to fill the pail and a big enough pail to hold the water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't follow you at all," complained Dick in a crestfallen tone. Infinitely dismayed, he seemed to bulge in protest. He was staring intently at Anthony and caroming off a succession of passers-by, who reproached him with fierce, resentful glances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I simply mean that a talent like Wells's could carry the intelligence of a Spencer. But an inferior talent can only be graceful when it's carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick considered, unable to decide the exact degree of criticism intended by Anthony's remarks. But Anthony, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Say I am proud and sane and wise—an Athenian among Greeks. Well, I might fail where a lesser man would succeed. He could imitate, he could adorn, he could be enthusiastic, he could be hopefully constructive. But this hypothetical me would be too proud to imitate, too sane to be enthusiastic, too sophisticated to be Utopian, too Grecian to adorn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then you don't think the artist works from his intelligence?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. He goes on improving, if he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because it's his mode of living. Don't tell me you like this 'Divine Function of the Artist' business?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not accustomed even to refer to myself as an artist."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick," said Anthony, changing his tone, "I want to beg your pardon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For that outburst. I'm honestly sorry. I was talking for effect."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Dick rejoined:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've often said you were a Philistine at heart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a crackling dusk when they turned in under the white façade of the Plaza and tasted slowly the foam and yellow thickness of an egg-nog. Anthony looked at his companion. Richard Caramel's nose and brow were slowly approaching a like pigmentation; the red was leaving the one, the blue deserting the other. Glancing in a mirror, Anthony was glad to find that his own skin had not discolored. On the contrary, a faint glow had kindled in his cheeks—he fancied that he had never looked so well.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Enough for me," said Dick, his tone that of an athlete in training. "I want to go up and see the Gilberts. Won't you come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—yes. If you don't dedicate me to the parents and dash off in the corner with Dora."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not Dora—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A clerk announced them over the phone, and ascending to the tenth floor they followed a winding corridor and knocked at 1088. The door was answered by a middle-aged lady—Mrs. Gilbert herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" She spoke in the conventional American lady-lady language. "Well, I'm <i>aw</i>fully glad to see you—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hasty interjections by Dick, and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mr. Pats? Well, do come in, and leave your coat there." She pointed to a chair and changed her inflection to a deprecatory laugh full of minute gasps. "This is really lovely—lovely. Why, Richard, you haven't been here for <i>so</i> long—no!—no!" The latter monosyllables served half as responses, half as periods, to some vague starts from Dick. "Well, do sit down and tell me what you've been doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One crossed and recrossed; one stood and bowed ever so gently; one smiled again and again with helpless stupidity; one wondered if she would ever sit down—at length one slid thankfully into a chair and settled for a pleasant call.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it's because you've been busy—as much as anything else," smiled Mrs. Gilbert somewhat ambiguously. The "as much as anything else" she used to balance all her more rickety sentences. She had two other ones: "at least that's the way I look at it" and "pure and simple"—these three, alternated, gave each of her remarks an air of being a general reflection on life, as though she had calculated all causes and, at length, put her finger on the ultimate one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel's face, Anthony saw, was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who are of no further value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you a writer too, Mr. Pats? . . . Well, perhaps we can all bask in Richard's fame."—Gentle laughter led by Mrs. Gilbert.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's out," she said, with an air of laying down an axiom from which she would proceed to derive results. "She's dancing somewhere. Gloria goes, goes, goes. I tell her I don't see how she stands it. She dances all afternoon and all night, until I think she's going to wear herself to a shadow. Her father is very worried about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled from one to the other. They both smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was composed, Anthony perceived, of a succession of semicircles and parabolas, like those figures that gifted folk make on the typewriter: head, arms, bust, hips, thighs, and ankles were in a bewildering tier of roundnesses. Well ordered and clean she was, with hair of an artificially rich gray; her large face sheltered weather-beaten blue eyes and was adorned with just the faintest white mustache.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," she remarked to Anthony, "that Richard is an ancient soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the tense pause that followed, Anthony considered a pun—something about Dick having been much walked upon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We all have souls of different ages," continued Mrs. Gilbert radiantly; "at least that's what I say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps so," agreed Anthony with an air of quickening to a hopeful idea. The voice bubbled on:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has a very young soul—irresponsible, as much as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's sparkling, Aunt Catherine," said Richard pleasantly. "A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," confessed Mrs. Gilbert, "all I know is that she goes and goes and goes—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The number of goings to Gloria's discredit was lost in the rattle of the door-knob as it turned to admit Mr. Gilbert. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was a short man with a mustache resting like a small white cloud beneath his undistinguished nose. He had reached the stage where his value as a social creature was a black and imponderable negative. His ideas were the popular delusions of twenty years before; his mind steered a wabbly and anæmic course in the wake of the daily newspaper editorials. After graduating from a small but terrifying Western university, he had entered the celluloid business, and as this required only the minute measure of intelligence he brought to it, he did well for several years—in fact until about 1911, when he began exchanging contracts for vague agreements with the moving picture industry. The moving picture industry had decided about 1912 to gobble him up, and at this time he was, so to speak, delicately balanced on its tongue. Meanwhile he was supervising manager of the Associated Mid-western Film Materials Company, spending six months of each year in New York and the remainder in Kansas City and St. Louis. He felt credulously that there was a good thing coming to him—and his wife thought so, and his daughter thought so too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals, she was always in a mix-up—he had irritated her once and she had used toward him words that he had not thought were part of her vocabulary. His wife was easier. After fifteen years of incessant guerilla warfare he had conquered her—it was a war of muddled optimism against organized dulness, and something in the number of "yes's" with which he could poison a conversation had won him the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes-yes," he would say, "yes-yes-yes-yes. Let me see. That was the summer of—let me see—ninety-one or ninety-two—Yes-yes-yes-yes——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fifteen years of yes's had beaten Mrs. Gilbert. Fifteen further years of that incessant unaffirmative affirmative, accompanied by the perpetual flicking of ash-mushrooms from thirty-two thousand cigars, had broken her. To this husband of hers she made the last concession of married life, which is more complete, more irrevocable, than the first—she listened to him. She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance—actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She introduced him to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is Mr. Pats," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> The young man and the old touched flesh; Mr. Gilbert's hand was soft, worn away to the pulpy semblance of a squeezed grapefruit. Then husband and wife exchanged greetings—he told her it had grown colder out; he said he had walked down to a news-stand on Forty-fourth Street for a Kansas City paper. He had intended to ride back in the bus but he had found it too cold, yes, yes, yes, yes, too cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert added flavor to his adventure by being impressed with his courage in braving the harsh air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you <i>are</i> spunky!" she exclaimed admiringly. "You <i>are</i> spunky. I wouldn't have gone out for anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert with true masculine impassivity disregarded the awe he had excited in his wife. He turned to the two young men and triumphantly routed them on the subject of the weather. Richard Caramel was called on to remember the month of November in Kansas. No sooner had the theme been pushed toward him, however, than it was violently fished back to be lingered over, pawed over, elongated, and generally devitalized by its sponsor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> The immemorial thesis that the days somewhere were warm but the nights very pleasant was successfully propounded and they decided the exact distance on an obscure railroad between two points that Dick had inadvertently mentioned. Anthony fixed Mr. Gilbert with a steady stare and went into a trance through which, after a moment, Mrs. Gilbert's smiling voice penetrated:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems as though the cold were damper here—it seems to eat into my bones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the tip of Mr. Gilbert's tongue, he could not be blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She ought to be here any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you met my daughter, Mr.——?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't had the pleasure. I've heard Dick speak of her often."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She and Richard are cousins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes?" Anthony smiled with some effort. He was not used to the society of his seniors, and his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness. It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick being cousins. He managed within the next minute to throw an agonized glance at his friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was afraid they'd have to toddle off.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea—something about being glad they'd come, anyhow, even if they'd only seen an old lady 'way too old to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one bar in three-four time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Would they come again soon?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria would be <i>aw</i>fully sorry!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bang!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A LADY'S LEGS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure—and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker; but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious purpose and significant design—as though Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go along the earth and to see all the billions of humans who bred and wept and slew each other here and there upon it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in America, he was sallying into the search for amusement with the same consistent absorption. He who had never taken more than a few cocktails or a pint of wine at a sitting, taught himself to drink as he would have taught himself Greek—like Greek it would be the gateway to a wealth of new sensations, new psychic states, new reactions in joy or misery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His habits were a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth Street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home. Foremost on the latter list were Anthony Patch and Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury's mother lived with her married son in Philadelphia, and there Maury went usually for the week-ends, so one Saturday night when Anthony, prowling the chilly streets in a fit of utter boredom, dropped in at the Molton Arms he was overjoyed to find that Mr. Noble was at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His spirits soared faster than the flying elevator. This was so good, so extremely good, to be about to talk to Maury—who would be equally happy at seeing him. They would look at each other with a deep affection just behind their eyes which both would conceal beneath some attenuated raillery. Had it been summer they would have gone out together and indolently sipped two long Tom Collinses, as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill's, or a thimbleful of Maury's Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and catlike, in his favorite chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There he was! The room closed about Anthony, warmed him. The glow of that strong persuasive mind, that temperament almost Oriental in its outward impassivity, warmed Anthony's restless soul and brought him a peace that could be likened only to the peace a stupid woman gives. One must understand all—else one must take all for granted. Maury filled the room, tigerlike, godlike. The winds outside were stilled; the brass candlesticks on the mantel glowed like tapers before an altar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What keeps you here to-day?" Anthony spread himself over a yielding sofa and made an elbow-rest among the pillows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Just been here an hour. Tea dance—and I stayed so late I missed my train to Philadelphia."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange to stay so long," commented Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather. What'd you do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine. Little usher at Keith's. I told you about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paid me a call about three and stayed till five. Peculiar little soul—she gets me. She's so utterly stupid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was silent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange as it may seem," continued Anthony, "so far as I'm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> He had known her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the Park. She had a vague family—a shadowy aunt and uncle who shared with her an apartment in the labyrinthine hundreds. She was company, familiar and faintly intimate and restful. Further than that he did not care to experiment—not from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She has two stunts," he informed Maury; "one of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say 'You cra-a-azy!' when some one makes a remark that's over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in my imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury stirred in his chair and spoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Remarkable that a person can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that actually takes the whole universe in the most matter-of-fact way. From the influence of Rousseau to the bearing of the tariff rates on her dinner, the whole phenomenon is utterly strange to her. She's just been carried along from an age of spearheads and plunked down here with the equipment of an archer for going into a pistol duel. You could sweep away the entire crust of history and she'd never know the difference."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish our Richard would write about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, surely you don't think she's worth writing about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As much as anybody," he answered, yawning. "You know I was thinking to-day that I have a great confidence in Dick. So long as he sticks to people and not to ideas, and as long as his inspirations come from life and not from art, and always granting a normal growth, I believe he'll be a big man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think the appearance of the black note-book would prove that he's going to life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony raised himself on his elbow and answered eagerly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he accurately transcribe his own sister?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they were off for half an hour on literature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A classic," suggested Anthony, "is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a time the subject temporarily lost its tang. The interest of the two young men was not particularly technical. They were in love with generalities. Anthony had recently discovered Samuel Butler and the brisk aphorisms in the note-book seemed to him the quintessence of criticism. Maury, his whole mind so thoroughly mellowed by the very hardness of his scheme of life, seemed inevitably the wiser of the two, yet in the actual stuff of their intelligences they were not, it seemed, fundamentally different.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They drifted from letters to the curiosities of each other's day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Whose tea was it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "People named Abercrombie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why'd you stay late? Meet a luscious débutante?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you really?" Anthony's voice lifted in surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a débutante exactly. Said she came out two winters ago in Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of left-over?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," answered Maury with some amusement, "I think that's the last thing I'd say about her. She seemed—well, somehow the youngest person there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Not too young to make you miss a train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young enough. Beautiful child."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled in his one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Maury, you're in your second childhood. What do you mean by beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gazed helplessly into space.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't describe her exactly—except to say that she was beautiful. She was—tremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was a sort of attenuated vice. She's a nervous kind—said she always ate gum-drops at teas because she had to stand around so long in one place."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd you talk about—Bergson? Bilphism? Whether the one-step is immoral?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As a matter of fact we did talk on Bilphism. Seems her mother's a Bilphist. Mostly, though, we talked about legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony rocked in glee.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My God! Whose legs?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hers. She talked a lot about hers. As though they were a sort of choice bric-à-brac. She aroused a great desire to see them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is she—a dancer?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I found she was a cousin of Dick's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony sat upright so suddenly that the pillow he released stood on end like a live thing and dove to the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Name's Gloria Gilbert?" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes. Isn't she remarkable?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure I don't know—but for sheer dulness her father—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," interrupted Maury with implacable conviction, "her family may be as sad as professional mourners but I'm inclined to think that she's a quite authentic and original character. The outer signs of the cut-and-dried Yale prom girl and all that—but different, very emphatically different."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, go on!" urged Anthony. "Soon as Dick told me she didn't have a brain in her head I knew she must be pretty good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he say that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Swore to it," said Anthony with another snorting laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what he means by brains in a woman is—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," interrupted Anthony eagerly, "he means a smattering of literary misinformation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's it. The kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes it's a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin too—her own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely she usually approximated it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You sat enraptured by her low alto?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze, if I remember rightly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's got you going—oh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in his family!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Snowing hard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Another winter." Maury's voice from the window was almost a whisper.<br /> "We're growing old, Anthony. I'm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to thirty, and then I'm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was silent for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>are</i> old, Maury," he agreed at length. "The first signs of a very dissolute and wabbly senescence—you have spent the afternoon talking about tan and a lady's legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury pulled down the shade with a sudden harsh snap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come—oh, for a Caramel to take notes—and another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonys—yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After all, Anthony, it's you who are very romantic and young. It's you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. It's me who tries again and again to be moved—let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me. Nothing—quite—stirs me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet," he murmured after another long pause, "there was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old—like me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TURBULENCE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony turned over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the rug was beckoning and perishable to his perishable feet, and Bounds, horribly inappropriate in his soft collar, was of stuff as fading as the gauze of frozen breath he uttered. He was close to the bed, his hand still lowered where he had been jerking at the upper blanket, his dark-brown eyes fixed imperturbably upon his master.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bows!" muttered the drowsy god. "Thachew, Bows?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's I, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved his head, forced his eyes wide, and blinked triumphantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you get off—yeow-ow-oh-oh-oh God!—" Anthony yawned insufferably and the contents of his brain seemed to fall together in a dense hash. He made a fresh start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you come around about four and serve some tea and sandwiches or something?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered with chilling lack of inspiration. "Some sandwiches," he repeated helplessly, "oh, some cheese sandwiches and jelly ones and chicken and olive, I guess. Never mind breakfast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The strain of invention was too much. He shut his eyes wearily, let his head roll to rest inertly, and quickly relaxed what he had regained of muscular control. Out of a crevice of his mind crept the vague but inevitable spectre of the night before—but it proved in this case to be nothing but a seemingly interminable conversation with Richard Caramel, who had called on him at midnight; they had drunk four bottles of beer and munched dry crusts of bread while Anthony listened to a reading of the first part of "The Demon Lover."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Came a voice now after many hours. Anthony disregarded it, as sleep closed over him, folded down upon him, crept up into the byways of his mind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly he was awake, saying: "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For how many, sir?" It was still Bounds, standing patient and motionless at the foot of the bed—Bounds who divided his manner among three gentlemen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How many what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think, sir, I'd better know how many are coming. I'll have to plan for the sandwiches, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Two," muttered Anthony huskily; "lady and a gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds said, "Thank you, sir," and moved away, bearing with him his humiliating reproachful soft collar, reproachful to each of the three gentlemen, who only demanded of him a third.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a long time Anthony arose and drew an opalescent dressing grown of brown and blue over his slim pleasant figure. With a last yawn he went into the bathroom, and turning on the dresser light (the bathroom had no outside exposure) he contemplated himself in the mirror with some interest. A wretched apparition, he thought; he usually thought so in the morning—sleep made his face unnaturally pale. He lit a cigarette and glanced through several letters and the morning Tribune.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour later, shaven and dressed, he was sitting at his desk looking at a small piece of paper he had taken out of his wallet. It was scrawled with semi-legible memoranda: "See Mr. Howland at five. Get hair-cut. See about Rivers' bill. Go book-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And under the last: "Cash in bank, $690 (crossed out), $612 (crossed out), $607."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally, down at the bottom and in a hurried scrawl: "Dick and Gloria Gilbert for tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This last item brought him obvious satisfaction. His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the uneaten sandwiches.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a growing lack of color in Anthony's days. He felt it constantly and sometimes traced it to a talk he had had with Maury Noble a month before. That anything so ingenuous, so priggish, as a sense of waste should oppress him was absurd, but there was no denying the fact that some unwelcome survival of a fetish had drawn him three weeks before down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours of acute and startling panic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In justification of his manner of living there was first, of course, The Meaninglessness of Life. As aides and ministers, pages and squires, butlers and lackeys to this great Khan there were a thousand books glowing on his shelves, there was his apartment and all the money that was to be his when the old man up the river should choke on his last morality. From a world fraught with the menace of débutantes and the stupidity of many Geraldines he was thankfully delivered—rather should he emulate the feline immobility of Maury and wear proudly the culminative wisdom of the numbered generations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Over and against these things was something which his brain persistently analyzed and dealt with as a tiresome complex but which, though logically disposed of and bravely trampled under foot, had sent him out through the soft slush of late November to a library which had none of the books he most wanted. It is fair to analyze Anthony as far as he could analyze himself; further than that it is, of course, presumption. He found in himself a growing horror and loneliness. The idea of eating alone frightened him; in preference he dined often with men he detested. Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —If I am essentially weak, he thought, I need work to do, work to do. It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity, with neither the poise of Maury nor the enthusiasm of Dick. It seemed a tragedy to want nothing—and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was—some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After cocktails and luncheon at the University Club Anthony felt better. He had run into two men from his class at Harvard, and in contrast to the gray heaviness of their conversation his life assumed color. Both of them were married: one spent his coffee time in sketching an extra-nuptial adventure to the bland and appreciative smiles of the other. Both of them, he thought, were Mr. Gilberts in embryo; the number of their "yes's" would have to be quadrupled, their natures crabbed by twenty years—then they would be no more than obsolete and broken machines, pseudo-wise and valueless, nursed to an utter senility by the women they had broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ah, he was more than that, as he paced the long carpet in the lounge after dinner, pausing at the window to look into the harried street. He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a stray boyishness he saw himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam. The clarity of his mind, its sophistication, its versatile intelligence, all at their maturity and dominated by some purpose yet to be born would find him work to do. On this minor his dream faded—work to do: he tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lustreless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people—and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lord Verulam! Talleyrand!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment the grayness returned. His cocktails had died, making him sleepy, somewhat befogged and inclined to be surly. Lord Verulam—he? The very thought was bitter. Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to be satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The buzzer rang at the door. Anthony sprang up and lifted the tube to his ear. It was Richard Caramel's voice, stilted and facetious:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Announcing Miss Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BEAUTIFUL LADY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he said, smiling and holding the door ajar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick bowed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, this is Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" she cried, holding out a little gloved hand. Under her fur coat her dress was Alice-blue, with white lace crinkled stiffly about her throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let me take your things."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony stretched out his arms and the brown mass of fur tumbled into them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you think of her, Anthony?" Richard Caramel demanded barbarously. "Isn't she beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" cried the girl defiantly—withal unmoved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was dazzling—alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance. Her hair, full of a heavenly glamour, was gay against the winter color of the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved about, magician-like, turning the mushroom lamp into an orange glory. The stirred fire burnished the copper andirons on the hearth——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a solid block of ice," murmured Gloria casually, glancing around with eyes whose irises were of the most delicate and transparent bluish white. "What a slick fire! We found a place where you could stand on an iron-bar grating, sort of, and it blew warm air up at you—but Dick wouldn't wait there with me. I told him to go on alone and let me be happy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Conventional enough this. She seemed talking for her own pleasure, without effort. Anthony, sitting at one end of the sofa, examined her profile against the foreground of the lamp: the exquisite regularity of nose and upper lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold—but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Think you've got the best name I've heard," she was saying, still apparently to herself; her glance rested on him a moment and then flitted past him—to the Italian bracket-lamps clinging like luminous yellow turtles at intervals along the walls, to the books row upon row, then to her cousin on the other side. "Anthony Patch. Only you ought to look sort of like a horse, with a long narrow face—and you ought to be in tatters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all the Patch part, though. How should Anthony look?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You look like Anthony," she assured him seriously—he thought she had scarcely seen him—"rather majestic," she continued, "and solemn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony indulged in a disconcerted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only I like alliterative names," she went on, "all except mine. Mine's too flamboyant. I used to know two girls named Jinks, though, and just think if they'd been named anything except what they were named—Judy Jinks and Jerry Jinks. Cute, what? Don't you think?" Her childish mouth was parted, awaiting a rejoinder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody in the next generation," suggested Dick, "will be named Peter or Barbara—because at present all the piquant literary characters are named Peter or Barbara."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony continued the prophecy:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course Gladys and Eleanor, having graced the last generation of heroines and being at present in their social prime, will be passed on to the next generation of shop-girls——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Displacing Ella and Stella," interrupted Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Pearl and Jewel," Gloria added cordially, "and Earl and Elmer and Minnie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then I'll come along," remarked Dick, "and picking up the obsolete name, Jewel, I'll attach it to some quaint and attractive character and it'll start its career all over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice took up the thread of subject and wove along with faintly upturning, half-humorous intonations for sentence ends—as though defying interruption—and intervals of shadowy laughter. Dick had told her that Anthony's man was named Bounds—she thought that was wonderful! Dick had made some sad pun about Bounds doing patchwork, but if there was one thing worse than a pun, she said, it was a person who, as the inevitable come-back to a pun, gave the perpetrator a mock-reproachful look.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where are you from?" inquired Anthony. He knew, but beauty had rendered him thoughtless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Kansas City, Missouri."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They put her out the same time they barred cigarettes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did they bar cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a reformer or something, isn't he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I blush for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So do I," she confessed. "I detest reformers, especially the sort who try to reform me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there many of those?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens. It's 'Oh, Gloria, if you smoke so many cigarettes you'll lose your pretty complexion!' and 'Oh, Gloria, why don't you marry and settle down?'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony agreed emphatically while he wondered who had had the temerity to speak thus to such a personage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then," she continued, "there are all the subtle reformers who tell you the wild stories they've heard about you and how they've been sticking up for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw, at length, that her eyes were gray, very level and cool, and when they rested on him he understood what Maury had meant by saying she was very young and very old. She talked always about herself as a very charming child might talk, and her comments on her tastes and distastes were unaffected and spontaneous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must confess," said Anthony gravely, "that even <i>I</i>'ve heard one thing about you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Alert at once, she sat up straight. Those eyes, with the grayness and eternity of a cliff of soft granite, caught his.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe anything any one tells me about myself—don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Invariably!" agreed the two men in unison.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not sure that I ought to," teased Anthony, smiling unwillingly. She was so obviously interested, in a state of almost laughable self-absorption.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He means your nickname," said her cousin.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What name?" inquired Anthony, politely puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Instantly she was shy—then she laughed, rolled back against the cushions, and turned her eyes up as she spoke:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Coast-to-Coast Gloria." Her voice was full of laughter, laughter undefined as the varying shadows playing between fire and lamp upon her hair. "O Lord!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Still Anthony was puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>Me</i>”, I mean. That's what some silly boys coined for <i>me</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you see, Anthony," explained Dick, "traveller of a nation-wide notoriety and all that. Isn't that what you've heard? She's been called that for years—since she was seventeen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony's eyes became sad and humorous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this female Methuselah you've brought in here, Caramel?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She disregarded this, possibly rather resented it, for she switched back to the main topic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>have</i> you heard of me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Something about your physique."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said, coolly disappointed, "that all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your tan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My tan?" She was puzzled. Her hand rose to her throat, rested there an instant as though the fingers were feeling variants of color.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember Maury Noble? Man you met about a month ago. You made a great impression."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She thought a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember—but he didn't call me up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was afraid to, I don't doubt."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was black dark without now and Anthony wondered that his apartment had ever seemed gray—so warm and friendly were the books and pictures on the walls and the good Bounds offering tea from a respectful shadow and the three nice people giving out waves of interest and laughter back and forth across the happy fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DISSATISFACTION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill room at the Plaza. Her fur-trimmed suit was gray—"because with gray you <i>have</i> to wear a lot of paint," she explained—and a small toque sat rakishly on her head, allowing yellow ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a child's hands should be.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As they entered, the orchestra were sounding the preliminary whimpers to a maxixe, a tune full of castanets and facile faintly languorous violin harmonies, appropriate to the crowded winter grill teeming with an excited college crowd, high-spirited at the approach of the holidays. Carefully, Gloria considered several locations, and rather to Anthony's annoyance paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naïve was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abstractedly she watched the dancers for a few moments, commenting murmurously as a couple eddied near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a pretty girl in blue"—and as Anthony looked obediently—" there! No. behind you—there!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," he agreed helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You didn't see her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd rather look at you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know, but she was pretty. Except that she had big ankles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Was she?—I mean, did she?" he said indifferently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A girl's salutation came from a couple dancing close to them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Gloria! O Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's that?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Somebody." She caught sight of another face. "Hello, Muriel!" Then to Anthony: "There's Muriel Kane. Now I think she's attractive, 'cept not very." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled appreciatively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Attractive, 'cept not very," he repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled—was interested immediately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why is that funny?" Her tone was pathetically intent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It just was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want to dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. But let's sit," she decided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And talk about you? You love to talk about you, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes." Caught in a vanity, she laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I imagine your autobiography would be a classic."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick says I haven't got one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick!" he exclaimed. "What does he know about you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing. But he says the biography of every woman begins with the first kiss that counts, and ends when her last child is laid in her arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's talking from his book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He says unloved women have no biographies—they have histories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Surely you don't claim to be unloved!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I suppose not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why haven't you a biography? Haven't you ever had a kiss that counted?" As the words left his lips he drew in his breath sharply as though to suck them back. This <i>baby</i>!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know what you mean 'counts,'" she objected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd tell me how old you are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Twenty-two," she said, meeting his eyes gravely. "How old did you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About eighteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to start being that. I don't like being twenty-two. I hate it more than anything in the world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Being twenty-two?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Getting old and everything. Getting married."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever want to marry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to have responsibility and a lot of children to take care of."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Evidently she did not doubt that on her lips all things were good. He waited rather breathlessly for her next remark, expecting it to follow up her last. She was smiling, without amusement but pleasantly, and after an interval half a dozen words fell into the space between them:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I had some gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You shall!" He beckoned to a waiter and sent him to the cigar counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you mind? I love gum-drops. Everybody kids me about it because I'm always whacking away at one—whenever my daddy's not around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not at all.—Who are all these children?" he asked suddenly. "Do you know them all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, but they're from—oh, from everywhere, I suppose. Don't you ever come here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very seldom. I don't care particularly for 'nice girls.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Immediately he had her attention. She turned a definite shoulder to the dancers, relaxed in her chair, and demanded:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>do</i>” you do with yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thanks to a cocktail Anthony welcomed the question. In a mood to talk, he wanted, moreover, to impress this girl whose interest seemed so tantalizingly elusive—she stopped to browse in unexpected pastures, hurried quickly over the inobviously obvious. He wanted to pose. He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do nothing," he began, realizing simultaneously that his words were to lack the debonair grace he craved for them. "I do nothing, for there's nothing I can do that's worth doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?" He had neither surprised her nor even held her, yet she had certainly understood him, if indeed he had said aught worth understanding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you approve of lazy men?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose so, if they're gracefully lazy. Is that possible for an American?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not?" he demanded, discomfited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But her mind had left the subject and wandered up ten floors.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My daddy's mad at me," she observed dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle"—his words gathered conviction—"it astonishes me. It—it—I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off. She watched him inscrutably. He waited for her to agree or disagree, but she did neither.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever form judgments on things?" he asked with some exasperation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her head and her eyes wandered back to the dancers as she answered:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. I don't know anything about—what you should do, or what anybody should do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he admitted apologetically, "neither do I, of course, but——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just think of people," she continued, "whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't want to do anything?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a second he was startled, almost as though she had meant this literally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sleep?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe—and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me. But I never want to change people or get excited over them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a quaint little determinist," laughed Anthony. "It's your world, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—" she said with a quick upward glance, "isn't it? As long as I'm—young."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had paused slightly before the last word and Anthony suspected that she had started to say "beautiful." It was undeniably what she had intended.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes brightened and he waited for her to enlarge on the theme. He had drawn her out, at any rate—he bent forward slightly to catch the words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But "Let's dance!" was all she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ADMIRATION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That winter afternoon at the Plaza was the first of a succession of "dates" Anthony made with her in the blurred and stimulating days before Christmas. Invariably she was busy. What particular strata of the city's social life claimed her he was a long time finding out. It seemed to matter very little. She attended the semi-public charity dances at the big hotels; he saw her several times at dinner parties in Sherry's, and once as he waited for her to dress, Mrs. Gilbert, apropos of her daughter's habit of "going," rattled off an amazing holiday programme that included half a dozen dances to which Anthony had received cards.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He made engagements with her several times for lunch and tea—the former were hurried and, to him at least, rather unsatisfactory occasions, for she was sleepy-eyed and casual, incapable of concentrating upon anything or of giving consecutive attention to his remarks. When after two of these sallow meals he accused her of tendering him the skin and bones of the day she laughed and gave him a tea-time three days off. This was infinitely more satisfactory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One Sunday afternoon just before Christmas he called up and found her in the lull directly after some important but mysterious quarrel: she informed him in a tone of mingled wrath and amusement that she had sent a man out of her apartment—here Anthony speculated violently—and that the man had been giving a little dinner for her that very night and that of course she wasn't going. So Anthony took her to supper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go to something!" she proposed as they went down in the elevator. "I want to see a show, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Inquiry at the hotel ticket desk disclosed only two Sunday night "concerts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They're always the same," she complained unhappily, "same old Yiddish comedians. Oh, let's go somewhere!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To conceal a guilty suspicion that he should have arranged a performance of some kind for her approval Anthony affected a knowing cheerfulness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go to a good cabaret."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've seen every one in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll find a new one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in wretched humor; that was evident. Her gray eyes were granite now indeed. When she wasn't speaking she stared straight in front of her as if at some distasteful abstraction in the lobby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, come on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, passenger, navigation, city, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He followed her, a graceful girl even in her enveloping fur, out to a taxicab, and, with an air of having a definite place in mind, instructed the driver to go over to Broadway and then turn south. He made several casual attempts at conversation but as she adopted an impenetrable armor of silence and answered him in sentences as morose as the cold darkness of the taxicab he gave up, and assuming a like mood fell into a dim gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, urban, car"><br /> <poem><br /> A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony's eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign spelling "Marathon" in glorious yellow script, adorned with electrical leaves and flowers that alternately vanished and beamed upon the wet and glistening street. He leaned and rapped on the taxi-window and in a moment was receiving information from a colored doorman: Yes, this was a cabaret. Fine cabaret. Bes' showina city!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we try it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door and prepared to follow it; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this unsung palace of pleasure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gay habitats of the very rich and the very poor, the very dashing and the very criminal, not to mention the lately exploited very Bohemian, are made known to the awed high school girls of Augusta, Georgia, and Redwing, Minnesota, not only through the bepictured and entrancing spreads of the Sunday theatrical supplements but through the shocked and alarmful eyes of Mr. Rupert Hughes and other chroniclers of the mad pace of America. But the excursions of Harlem onto Broadway, the deviltries of the dull and the revelries of the respectable are a matter of esoteric knowledge only to the participants themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tip circulates—and in the place knowingly mentioned, gather the lower moral-classes on Saturday and Sunday nights—the little troubled men who are pictured in the comics as "the Consumer" or "the Public." They have made sure that the place has three qualifications: it is cheap; it imitates with a sort of shoddy and mechanical wistfulness the glittering antics of the great cafés in the theatre district; and—this, above all, important—it is a place where they can "take a nice girl," which means, of course, that every one has become equally harmless, timid, and uninteresting through lack of money and imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people with hyphenated occupations: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks—clerks of the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery and broken hopes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They name these brummagem cabarets after Pullman cars. The "Marathon"! Not for them the salacious similes borrowed from the cafés of Paris! This is where their docile patrons bring their "nice women," whose starved fancies are only too willing to believe that the scene is comparatively gay and joyous, and even faintly immoral. This is life! Who cares for the morrow?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abandoned people!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Gloria, seated, looked about them. At the next table a party of four were in process of being joined by a party of three, two men and a girl, who were evidently late—and the manner of the girl was a study in national sociology. She was meeting some new men—and she was pretending desperately. By gesture she was pretending and by words and by the scarcely perceptible motionings of her eyelids that she belonged to a class a little superior to the class with which she now had to do, that a while ago she had been, and presently would again be, in a higher, rarer air. She was almost painfully refined—she wore a last year's hat covered with violets no more yearningly pretentious and palpably artificial than herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fascinated, Anthony and Gloria watched the girl sit down and radiate the impression that she was only condescendingly present. For <i>me</i>, her eyes said, this is practically a slumming expedition, to be cloaked with belittling laughter and semi-apologetics.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And the other women passionately poured out the impression that though they were in the crowd they were not of it. This was not the sort of place to which they were accustomed; they had dropped in because it was near by and convenient—every party in the restaurant poured out that impression . . . who knew? They were forever changing class, all of them—the women often marrying above their opportunities, the men striking suddenly a magnificent opulence: a sufficiently preposterous advertising scheme, a celestialized ice cream cone. Meanwhile, they met here to eat, closing their eyes to the economy displayed in infrequent changings of table-cloths, in the casualness of the cabaret performers, most of all in the colloquial carelessness and familiarity of the waiters. One was sure that these waiters were not impressed by their patrons. One expected that presently they would sit at the tables . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you object to this?" inquired Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's face warmed and for the first time that evening she smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love it," she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-à-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor—and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the illusion snapped like a nest of threads; the room grouped itself around him, voices, faces, movement; the garish shimmer of the lights overhead became real, became portentous; breath began, the slow respiration that she and he took in time with this docile hundred, the rise and fall of bosoms, the eternal meaningless play and interplay and tossing and reiterating of word and phrase—all these wrenched his senses open to the suffocating pressure of life—and then her voice came at him, cool as the suspended dream he had left behind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I belong here," she murmured, "I'm like these people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an instant this seemed a sardonic and unnecessary paradox hurled at him across the impassable distances she created about herself. Her entrancement had increased—her eyes rested upon a Semitic violinist who swayed his shoulders to the rhythm of the year's mellowest fox-trot:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"Something—goes</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Ring-a-ting-a-ling-a-ling</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Right in-your ear——"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she spoke, from the centre of this pervasive illusion of her own. It amazed him. It was like blasphemy from the mouth of a child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm like they are—like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a young idiot!" he insisted wildly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her blond head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I <i>am</i> like them. . . . You ought to see. . . . You don't know me." She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. "I've got a streak of what you'd call cheapness. I don't know where I get it but it's—oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I'm this because of this or that because of that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down <i>now</i>, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What were you thinking?" she asked.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just that I'm not a realist," he said, and then: "No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance—that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it—then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (74-128)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FROM his undergraduate days as editor of The Harvard Crimson Richard Caramel had desired to write. But as a senior he had picked up the glorified illusion that certain men were set aside for "service" and, going into the world, were to accomplish a vague yearnful something which would react either in eternal reward or, at the least, in the personal satisfaction of having striven for the greatest good of the greatest number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This spirit has long rocked the colleges in America. It begins, as a rule, during the immaturities and facile impressions of freshman year—sometimes back in preparatory school. Prosperous apostles known for their emotional acting go the rounds of the universities and, by frightening the amiable sheep and dulling the quickening of interest and intellectual curiosity which is the purpose of all education, distil a mysterious conviction of sin, harking back to childhood crimes and to the ever-present menace of "women." To these lectures go the wicked youths to cheer and joke and the timid to swallow the tasty pills, which would be harmless if administered to farmers' wives and pious drug-clerks but are rather dangerous medicine for these "future leaders of men."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This octopus was strong enough to wind a sinuous tentacle about Richard Caramel. The year after his graduation it called him into the slums of New York to muck about with bewildered Italians as secretary to an "Alien Young Men's Rescue Association." He labored at it over a year before the monotony began to weary him. The aliens kept coming inexhaustibly—Italians, Poles, Scandinavians, Czechs, Armenians—with the same wrongs, the same exceptionally ugly faces and very much the same smells, though he fancied that these grew more profuse and diverse as the months passed. His eventual conclusions about the expediency of service were vague, but concerning his own relation to it they were abrupt and decisive. Any amiable young man, his head ringing with the latest crusade, could accomplish as much as he could with the débris of Europe—and it was time for him to write.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had been living in a down-town Y.M.C.A., but when he quit the task of making sow-ear purses out of sows' ears, he moved up-town and went to work immediately as a reporter for The Sun. He kept at this for a year, doing desultory writing on the side, with little success, and then one day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career. On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the horses' hoofs in the snow. . . This he handed in. Next morning a marked copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note: "Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen the snow threatening—and had postponed the parade until another day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover.". . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, the Monday of the months, Richard Caramel's nose was blue constantly, a sardonic blue, vaguely suggestive of the flames licking around a sinner. His book was nearly ready, and as it grew in completeness it seemed to grow also in its demands, sapping him, overpowering him, until he walked haggard and conquered in its shadow. Not only to Anthony and Maury did he pour out his hopes and boasts and indecisions, but to any one who could be prevailed upon to listen. He called on polite but bewildered publishers, he discussed it with his casual vis-à-vis at the Harvard Club; it was even claimed by Anthony that he had been discovered, one Sunday night, debating the transposition of Chapter Two with a literary ticket-collector in the chill and dismal recesses of a Harlem subway station. And latest among his confidantes was Mrs. Gilbert, who sat with him by the hour and alternated between Bilphism and literature in an intense cross-fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shakespeare was a Bilphist," she assured him through a fixed smile. "Oh, yes! He was a Bilphist. It's been proved."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this Dick would look a bit blank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you've read 'Hamlet' you can't help but see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he—he lived in a more credulous age—a more religious age."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she demanded the whole loaf:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, but you see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the <i>bon mot</i> of her belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula—which was perhaps not a formula; it was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of all formulas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm <i>sure</i> it will. I went to Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's <i>mad</i> about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be <i>extraordinary</i>. But she'd never seen you or known anything about you—not even your <i>name</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his own traffic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my friends are joshing me—oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care. I think a person ought to be able to take joshing. But I've got a sort of conviction," he concluded gloomily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're an ancient soul, I always say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe I am." Dick had reached the stage where he no longer fought, but submitted. He <i>must</i> be an ancient soul, he fancied grotesquely; so old as to be absolutely rotten. However, the reiteration of the phrase still somewhat embarrassed him and sent uncomfortable shivers up his back. He changed the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is my distinguished cousin Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's on the go somewhere, with some one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick paused, considered, and then, screwing up his face into what was evidently begun as a smile but ended as a terrifying frown, delivered a comment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert started, beamed half a second too late, and breathed her "Really?" in the tone of a detective play-whisper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I <i>think</i> so," corrected Dick gravely. "She's the first girl I've ever seen him with, so much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, of course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see her settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not claiming I'm right, mind you," he assured the infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back at him. "I'm saying nothing that I'd want Gloria to know. But I think Mad Anthony is interested—tremendously so. He talks about her constantly. In any one else that'd be a bad sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria is a very young soul—" began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria'd be a very young nut not to marry him." He stopped and faced her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and strained to its ultimate show of intensity—this as if to make up by his sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. "Gloria's a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She's uncontrollable. How she's done it I don't know, but lately she's picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn't seem to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were—" He paused for breath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes," interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anæmic attempt to hide the immense interest with which she listened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "there it is. I mean that the men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate. Now they aren't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast—her bosom trembled, inflated, remained so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in a torrent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? He knew Gloria. He'd seen enough of Gloria to know how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so spoiled—in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed sticks. Perhaps—one never knew—it was this that had given that health and <i>hardiness</i> to her whole personality. And then ever since she was twelve years old she'd had boys about her so thick—oh, so thick one couldn't <i>move</i>. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to single them out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college—they lasted on an average of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came—a new one—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his father. The others had been—wretched. They never seemed to know when she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind. They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her, making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they would never get over Gloria . . . at least two of them had since married, though. . . . But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill—to this day Mr. Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no longer bothered to refuse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as a private engagement—with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena. She was sure it had, because—this must go no further—she had come in unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed. She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a new man came.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers! Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in desperation! Young men threatening South America! . . . Young men writing the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick fancied that Mrs. Gilbert's eyes had seen some of these letters.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents, substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths and beginning again—with the next.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was absolutely going to no more college dances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This had begun the change—not so much in her actual habits, for she danced, and had as many "dates" as ever—but they were dates in a different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly—enjoying the crowds around her, the manner in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous, and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about her—for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night in a chiffon evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine—it had been in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career—she became suddenly anæsthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties, who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she insulted would return like a domestic animal—but indifferently, without contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more—she yawned at them. She seemed—and it was so strange—she seemed to her mother to be growing cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his aunt's discourse waxed in content—it stands here pruned by half, of all side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own mental distresses—he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired head, expressing—almost anything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a sense Gloria's past was an old story to him. He had followed it with the eyes of a journalist, for he was going to write a book about her some day. But his interests, just at present, were family interests. He wanted to know, in particular, who was this Joseph Bloeckman that he had seen her with several times; and those two girls she was with constantly, "this" Rachael Jerryl and "this" Miss Kane—surely Miss Kane wasn't exactly the sort one would associate with Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But the moment had passed. Mrs. Gilbert having climbed the hill of exposition was about to glide swiftly down the ski-jump of collapse. Her eyes were like a blue sky seen through two round, red window-casements. The flesh about her mouth was trembling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And at the moment the door opened, admitting into the room Gloria and the two young ladies lately mentioned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO YOUNG WOMEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do, Mrs. Gilbert!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Miss Kane and Miss Jerryl are presented to Mr. Richard Caramel. "This is Dick" (laughter).<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard so much about you," says Miss Kane between a giggle and a shout.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do," says Miss Jerryl shyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel tries to move about as if his figure were better. He is torn between his innate cordiality and the fact that he considers these girls rather common—not at all the Farmover type.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria has disappeared into the bedroom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do sit down," beams Mrs. Gilbert, who is by now quite herself. "Take off your things." Dick is afraid she will make some remark about the age of his soul, but he forgets his qualms in completing a conscientious, novelist's examination of the two young women. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel Kane had originated in a rising family of East Orange. She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between plumpness and width. Her hair was black and elaborately arranged. This, in conjunction with her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the prominent motion picture actress. People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she believed them. She suspected hopefully that they were afraid of her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the impression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag that she constantly carried, waving it wildly, beseechingly—and, alas, to little spectacular avail. She was also tremendously timely: she knew the latest songs, all the latest songs—when one of them was played on the phonograph she would rise to her feet and rock her shoulders back and forth and snap her fingers, and if there was no music she would accompany herself by humming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"—and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria—he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, passenger, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "We had the most <i>hectic</i> time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely <i>nutty</i>! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was <i>pet</i>rified, but Gloria simply <i>wouldn't</i> get off."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all <i>howled</i>, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "—your mother and I."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A pause—Muriel turned to Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a great writer, aren't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul—like Richard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Ancient Soul breathed a gasp of relief—it was out at last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then as if she had been considering it for five minutes, Gloria made a sudden announcement:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to give a party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, can I come?" cried Muriel with facetious daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A dinner. Seven people: Muriel and Rachael and I, and you, Dick, and Anthony, and that man named Noble—I liked him—and Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel and Rachael went into soft and purring ecstasies of enthusiasm. Mrs. Gilbert blinked and beamed. With an air of casualness Dick broke in with a question:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenting a faint hostility, Gloria turned to him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Joseph Bloeckman? He's the moving picture man. Vice-president of 'Films Par Excellence.' He and father do a lot of business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, will you all come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They would all come. A date was arranged within the week. Dick rose, adjusted hat, coat, and muffler, and gave out a general smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By-by," said Muriel, waving her hand gaily, "call me up some time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel blushed for her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DEPLORABLE END OF THE CHEVALIER O'KEEFE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon at the Beaux Arts—afterward they went up to his apartment and he wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine Burke, usher at Keith's, had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her, for since a lamentable affair with a débutante the preceding summer, when he had discovered that after half a dozen kisses a proposal was expected, he had been wary of girls of his own class. It was only too easy to turn a critical eye on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy—but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance on one's social level.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine, curled up at the foot of the lounge, considered him with narrow slanting eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You drink all the time, don't you?" she said suddenly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, I suppose so," replied Anthony in some surprise. "Don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nope. I go on parties sometimes—you know, about once a week, but I only take two or three drinks. You and your friends keep on drinking all the time. I should think you'd ruin your health."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was somewhat touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, aren't you sweet to worry about me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't drink so very much," he declared. "Last month I didn't touch a drop for three weeks. And I only get really tight about once a week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you have something to drink every day and you're only twenty-five. Haven't you any ambition? Think what you'll be at forty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sincerely trust that I won't live that long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She clicked her tongue with her teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!" she said as he mixed another cocktail—and then: "Are you any relation to Adam Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, he's my grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?" She was obviously thrilled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Absolutely."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's funny. My daddy used to work for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a queer old man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is he nice?" she demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, in private life he's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell us about him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why," Anthony considered "—he's all shrunken up and he's got the remains of some gray hair that always looks as though the wind were in it. He's very moral."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's done a lot of good," said Geraldine with intense gravity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rot!" scoffed Anthony. "He's a pious ass—a chickenbrain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her mind left the subject and flitted on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you live with him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't I board in a Methodist parsonage?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she made a little clicking sound to express disapproval. Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart—how completely moral she would still be after the inevitable wave came that would wash her off the sands of respectability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you hate him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder. I never liked him. You never like people who do things for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does he hate you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but I don't suppose it matters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine was persistently interested. She held her glass, untasted, between finger and thumb and regarded him with eyes in which there was a touch of awe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you mean a hypocrite?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Anthony impatiently, "maybe he's not. But he doesn't like the things that I like, and so, as far as I'm concerned, he's uninteresting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hm." Her curiosity seemed, at length, satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a funny one," she commented thoughtfully. "Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They don't—but I shouldn't blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She scorned this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll fall in love someday. Oh, you will—I know." She nodded wisely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It'd be idiotic to be overconfident. That's what ruined the Chevalier O'Keefe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who was he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A creature of my splendid mind. He's my one creation, the Chevalier."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cra-a-azy!" she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope-ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no!" objected Anthony, "oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn't play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won't bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess I can understand anything that's got any sense to it," answered Geraldine a bit testily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what about him? Did he die?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and 'reddish hair.' He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O'Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called—well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire's. It was the rule at St. Voltaire's that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier's farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then he rode out to St. Voltaire's, slew his horse at the door, and presented the carcass to the monastery cook.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At five o'clock that night he felt, for the first time, free—forever free from sex. No woman could enter the monastery; no monk could descend below the second story. So as he climbed the winding stair that led to his cell at the very top of the Tower of Chastity he paused for a moment by an open window which looked down fifty feet on to a road below. It was all so beautiful, he thought, this world that he was leaving, the golden shower of sun beating down upon the long fields, the spray of trees in the distance, the vineyards, quiet and green, freshening wide miles before him. He leaned his elbows on the window casement and gazed at the winding road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, as it happened, Thérèse, a peasant girl of sixteen from a neighboring village, was at that moment passing along this same road that ran in front of the monastery. Five minutes before, the little piece of ribbon which held up the stocking on her pretty left leg had worn through and broken. Being a girl of rare modesty she had thought to wait until she arrived home before repairing it, but it had bothered her to such an extent that she felt she could endure it no longer. So, as she passed the Tower of Chastity, she stopped and with a pretty gesture lifted her skirt—as little as possible, be it said to her credit—to adjust her garter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Up in the tower the newest arrival in the ancient monastery of St. Voltaire, as though pulled forward by a gigantic and irresistible hand, leaned from the window. Further he leaned and further until suddenly one of the stones loosened under his weight, broke from its cement with a soft powdery sound—and, first headlong, then head over heels, finally in a vast and impressive revolution tumbled the Chevalier O'Keefe, bound for the hard earth and eternal damnation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thérèse was so much upset by the occurrence that she ran all the way home and for ten years spent an hour a day in secret prayer for the soul of the monk whose neck and vows were simultaneously broken on that unfortunate Sunday afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And the Chevalier O'Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. What do you think, Geraldine?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine, lost long before, could only smile roguishly, wave her first finger at him, and repeat her bridge-all, her explain-all:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Crazy!" she said, "you cra-a-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His thin face was kindly, she thought, and his eyes quite gentle. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because, unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part about the stocking!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi she stood for a moment in the doorway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>will</i> get married," she was insisting, "you wait and see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was playing with an ancient tennis ball, and he bounced it carefully on the floor several times before he answered with a soupçon of acidity:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a little idiot, Geraldine."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled provokingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That'd be silly too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it would, would it? Well, I'll just bet you'll marry somebody inside of a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony bounced the tennis ball very hard. This was one of his handsome days, she thought; a sort of intensity had displaced the melancholy in his dark eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine," he said, at length, "in the first place I have no one I want to marry; in the second place I haven't enough money to support two people; in the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people of my type; in the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the abstract consideration of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine only narrowed her eyes knowingly, made her clicking sound, and said she must be going. It was late.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Call me up soon," she reminded him as he kissed her good-by, "you haven't for three weeks, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I will," he promised fervently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He shut the door and coming back into the room stood for a moment lost in thought with the tennis-ball still clasped in his hand. There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully—assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought with emotion—aloud, ejaculative, for he was hurt and confused.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No <i>idea</i> of getting married, by <i>God</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of a sudden he hurled the tennis ball violently across the room, where it barely missed the lamp, and, rebounding here and there for a moment, lay still upon the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SIGNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For her dinner Gloria had taken a table in the Cascades at the Biltmore, and when the men met in the hall outside a little after eight, "that person Bloeckman" was the target of six masculine eyes. He was a stoutening, ruddy Jew of about thirty-five, with an expressive face under smooth sandy hair—and, no doubt, in most business gatherings his personality would have been considered ingratiating. He sauntered up to the three younger men, who stood in a group smoking as they waited for their hostess, and introduced himself with a little too evident assurance—nevertheless it is to be doubted whether he received the intended impression of faint and ironic chill: there was no hint of understanding in his manner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You related to Adam J. Patch?" he inquired of Anthony, emitting two slender strings of smoke from nostrils overwide.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony admitted it with the ghost of a smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a fine man," pronounced Bloeckman profoundly. "He's a fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," agreed Anthony, "he certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman squinted at his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Time these girls were showing up . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony waited breathlessly; it came——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . but then," with a widening smile, "you know how women are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The three young men nodded; Bloeckman looked casually about him, his eyes resting critically on the ceiling and then passing lower. His expression combined that of a Middle Western farmer appraising his wheat crop and that of an actor wondering whether he is observed—the public manner of all good Americans. As he finished his survey he turned back quickly to the reticent trio, determined to strike to their very heart and core.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You college men? . . . Harvard, eh. I see the Princeton boys beat you fellows in hockey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Unfortunate man. He had drawn another blank. They had been three years out and heeded only the big football games. Whether, after the failure of this sally, Mr. Bloeckman would have perceived himself to be in a cynical atmosphere is problematical, for——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria arrived. Muriel arrived. Rachael arrived. After a hurried "Hello, people!" uttered by Gloria and echoed by the other two, the three swept by into the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A moment later Muriel appeared in a state of elaborate undress and <i>crept</i> toward them. She was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker up and thrower away of men, an unscrupulous and fundamentally unmoved toyer with affections. Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury at first sight—a woman with wide hips affecting a panther-like litheness! As they waited the extra three minutes for Gloria, and, by polite assumption, for Rachael, he was unable to take his eyes from her. She would turn her head away, lowering her eyelashes and biting her nether lip in an amazing exhibition of coyness. She would rest her hands on her hips and sway from side to side in tune to the music, saying:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you ever hear such perfect ragtime? I just can't make my shoulders behave when I hear that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman clapped his hands gallantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to be on the stage."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to be!" cried Muriel; "will you back me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sure will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With becoming modesty Muriel ceased her motions and turned to Maury, asking what he had "seen" this year. He interpreted this as referring to the dramatic world, and they had a gay and exhilarating exchange of titles, after this manner:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Have you seen "Peg o' My Heart"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Eagerly</i>) It's wonderful! You want to see it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Have you seen "Omar, the Tentmaker"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: No, but I hear it's wonderful. I'm very anxious to see it. Have you seen "Fair and Warmer"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Hopefully</i>) Yes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't think it's very good. It's trashy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Faintly</i>) Yes, that's true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: But I went to "Within the Law" last night and I thought it was fine. Have you seen "The Little Café"?. . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This continued until they ran out of plays. Dick, meanwhile, turned to Mr. Bloeckman, determined to extract what gold he could from this unpromising load.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hear all the new novels are sold to the moving pictures as soon as they come out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. Of course the main thing in a moving picture is a strong story."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, I suppose so."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So many novels are all full of talk and psychology. Of course those aren't as valuable to us. It's impossible to make much of that interesting on the screen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You want plots first," said Richard brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course. Plots first—" He paused, shifted his gaze. His pause spread, included the others with all the authority of a warning finger. Gloria followed by Rachael was coming out of the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Among other things it developed during dinner that Joseph Bloeckman never danced, but spent the music time watching the others with the bored tolerance of an elder among children. He was a dignified man and a proud one. Born in Munich he had begun his American career as a peanut vender with a travelling circus. At eighteen he was a side show ballyhoo; later, the manager of the side show, and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more financial ability, more imagination, and more practical ideas . . . and now he sat here and contemplated the immortal Gloria for whom young Stuart Holcome had gone from New York to Pasadena—watched her, and knew that presently she would cease dancing and come back to sit on his left hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hoped she would hurry. The oysters had been standing some minutes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile Anthony, who had been placed on Gloria's left hand, was dancing with her, always in a certain fourth of the floor. This, had there been stags, would have been a delicate tribute to the girl, meaning "Damn you, don't cut in!" It was very consciously intimate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, looking down at her, "you look mighty sweet to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She met his eyes over the horizontal half foot that separated them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you—Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In fact you're uncomfortably beautiful," he added. There was no smile this time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you're very charming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't this nice?" he laughed. "We actually approve of each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, usually?" She had caught quickly at his remark, as she always did at any unexplained allusion to herself, however faint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lowered his voice, and when he spoke there was in it no more than a wisp of badinage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does a priest approve the Pope?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—but that's probably the vaguest compliment I ever received."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I can muster a few bromides."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I wouldn't have you strain yourself. Look at Muriel! Right here next to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced over his shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a translation of the song into some foreign tongue but became eventually apparent as an attempt to fill out the metre of the song with the only words she knew—the words of the title—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"He's a rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-time picking man,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-picking, picking, pick, pick,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-pick, pick, pick."</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —and so on, into phrases still more strange and barbaric. When she caught the amused glances of Anthony and Gloria she acknowledged them only with a faint smile and a half-closing of her eyes, to indicate that the music entering into her soul had put her into an ecstatic and exceedingly seductive trance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The music ended and they returned to their table, whose solitary but dignified occupant arose and tendered each of them a smile so ingratiating that it was as if he were shaking their hands and congratulating them on a brilliant performance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blockhead never will dance! I think he has a wooden leg," remarked Gloria to the table at large. The three young men started and the gentleman referred to winced perceptibly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was the one rough spot in the course of Bloeckman's acquaintance with Gloria. She relentlessly punned on his name. First it had been "Block-house," lately, the more invidious "Blockhead." He had requested with a strong undertone of irony that she use his first name, and this she had done obediently several times—then slipping, helpless, repentant but dissolved in laughter, back into "Blockhead."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a very sad and thoughtless thing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid Mr. Bloeckman thinks we're a frivolous crowd," sighed Muriel, waving a balanced oyster in his direction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He has that air," murmured Rachael. Anthony tried to remember whether she had said anything before. He thought not. It was her initial remark. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman suddenly cleared his throat and said in a loud, distinct voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary. When a man speaks he's merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the stunned pause that followed this astounding remark, Anthony choked suddenly on an oyster and hurried his napkin to his face. Rachael and Muriel raised a mild if somewhat surprised laugh, in which Dick and Maury joined, both of them red in the face and restraining uproariousness with the most apparent difficulty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—My God!" thought Anthony. "It's a subtitle from one of his movies. The man's memorized it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria alone made no sound. She fixed Mr. Bloeckman with a glance of silent reproach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for the love of Heaven! Where on earth did you dig that up?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman looked at her uncertainly, not sure of her intention. But in a moment he recovered his poise and assumed the bland and consciously tolerant smile of an intellectual among spoiled and callow youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The soup came up from the kitchen—but simultaneously the orchestra leader came up from the bar, where he had absorbed the tone color inherent in a seidel of beer. So the soup was left to cool during the delivery of a ballad entitled "Everything's at Home Except Your Wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers. Several times Anthony wondered what Bloeckman was telling her. He was chewing a cigar back and forth in his mouth, and had expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ten o'clock found Gloria and Anthony beginning a dance. Just as they were out of ear-shot of the table she said in a low voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance over by the door. I want to go down to the drug-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Obediently Anthony guided her through the crowd in the designated direction; in the hall she left him for a moment, to reappear with a cloak over her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want some gum-drops," she said, humorously apologetic; "you can't guess what for this time. It's just that I want to bite my finger-nails, and I will if I don't get some gum-drops." She sighed, and resumed as they stepped into the empty elevator: "I've been biting 'em all day. A bit nervous, you see. Excuse the pun. It was unintentional—the words just arranged themselves. Gloria Gilbert, the female wag."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Reaching the ground floor they naïvely avoided the hotel candy counter, descended the wide front staircase, and walking through several corridors found a drug-store in the Grand Central Station. After an intense examination of the perfume counter she made her purchase. Then on some mutual unmentioned impulse they strolled, arm in arm, not in the direction from which they had come, but out into Forty-third Street.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, sound, urban, city, night, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The night was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left, and for a hushed moment the traffic sounds and the murmur of water flowing in the gutters seemed an illusive and rarefied prolongation of that music to which they had lately danced. When Anthony spoke it was with surety that his words came from something breathless and desirous that the night had conceived in their two hearts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's take a taxi and ride around a bit!" he suggested, without looking at her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, Gloria, Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, city, night, sound, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> A cab yawned at the curb. As it moved off like a boat on a labyrinthine ocean and lost itself among the inchoate night masses of the great buildings, among the now stilled, now strident, cries and clangings, Anthony put his arm around the girl, drew her over to him and kissed her damp, childish mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was silent. She turned her face up to him, pale under the wisps and patches of light that trailed in like moonshine through a foliage. Her eyes were gleaming ripples in the white lake of her face; the shadows of her hair bordered the brow with a persuasive unintimate dusk. No love was there, surely; nor the imprint of any love. Her beauty was cool as this damp breeze, as the moist softness of her own lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're such a swan in this light," he whispered after a moment. There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted in out of the dark. Anthony laughed, noiselessly and exultantly, turning his face up and away from her, half in an overpowering rush of triumph, half lest her sight of him should spoil the splendid immobility of her expression. Such a kiss—it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="urban, city, night, visibility, affect, pleasure, sound, car"><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The buildings fell away in melted shadows; this was the Park now, and after a long while the great white ghost of the Metropolitan Museum moved majestically past, echoing sonorously to the rush of the cab.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria! Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes appeared to regard him out of many thousand years: all emotion she might have felt, all words she might have uttered, would have seemed inadequate beside the adequacy of her silence, ineloquent against the eloquence of her beauty—and of her body, close to him, slender and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell him to turn around," she murmured, "and drive pretty fast going back. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Up in the supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane looked up with roguishness extraordinary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, where have <i>you</i> been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To call up mother," answered Gloria coolly. "I promised her I would. Did we miss a dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then followed an incident that though slight in itself Anthony had cause to reflect on many years afterward. Joseph Bloeckman, leaning well back in his chair, fixed him with a peculiar glance, in which several emotions were curiously and inextricably mingled. He did not greet Gloria except by rising, and he immediately resumed a conversation with Richard Caramel about the influence of literature on the moving pictures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The stark and unexpected miracle of a night fades out with the lingering death of the last stars and the premature birth of the first newsboys. The flame retreats to some remote and platonic fire; the white heat has gone from the iron and the glow from the coal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Along the shelves of Anthony's library, filling a wall amply, crept a chill and insolent pencil of sunlight touching with frigid disapproval Thérèse of France and Ann the Superwoman, Jenny of the Orient Ballet and Zuleika the Conjurer—and Hoosier Cora—then down a shelf and into the years, resting pityingly on the over-invoked shades of Helen, Thaïs, Salome, and Cleopatra.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, shaved and bathed, sat in his most deeply cushioned chair and watched it until at the steady rising of the sun it lay glinting for a moment on the silk ends of the rug—and went out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was ten o'clock. The Sunday Times, scattered about his feet, proclaimed by rotogravure and editorial, by social revelation and sporting sheet, that the world had been tremendously engrossed during the past week in the business of moving toward some splendid if somewhat indeterminate goal. For his part Anthony had been once to his grandfather's, twice to his broker's, and three times to his tailor's—and in the last hour of the week's last day he had kissed a very beautiful and charming girl.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he reached home his imagination had been teeming with high-pitched, unfamiliar dreams. There was suddenly no question on his mind, no eternal problem for a solution and re-solution. He had experienced an emotion that was neither mental nor physical, nor merely a mixture of the two, and the love of life absorbed him for the present to the exclusion of all else. He was content to let the experiment remain isolated and unique. Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere—of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and débutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many <i>females</i>, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So far as he could see, she had neither submitted to any will of his nor caressed his vanity—except as her pleasure in his company was a caress. Indeed he had no reason for thinking she had given him aught that she did not give to others. This was as it should be. The idea of an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed on would proclaim themselves unharmed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having decided this he went to the phone and called up the Plaza Hotel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was out. Her mother knew neither where she had gone nor when she would return.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was somehow at this point that the first wrongness in the case asserted itself. There was an element of callousness, almost of indecency, in Gloria's absence from home. He suspected that by going out she had intrigued him into a disadvantage. Returning she would find his name, and smile. Most discreetly! He should have waited a few hours in order to drive home the utter inconsequence with which he regarded the incident. What an asinine blunder! She would think he considered himself particularly favored. She would think he was reacting with the most inept intimacy to a quite trivial episode.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered that during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded that man. Him—Anthony Patch! Horror!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and <i>snap!</i>—the poor plate could but develop, confined like all things to its nature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Anthony, lying upon his couch and staring at the orange lamp, passed his thin fingers incessantly through his dark hair and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and Jewels and Jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her cheeks in faint pastel, milky lace to rest in pale disarray against her neck—damask was used but to cover priests and divans in these days, and cloth of Samarand was remembered only by the romantic poets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She would go elsewhere after a while, tilting her head a hundred ways under a hundred bonnets, seeking in vain for mock cherries to match her lips or plumes that were graceful as her own supple body.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Noon would come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and comic women.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, road, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter. . . . Then—then night would come drifting down and perhaps another damp. The signs would spill their light into the street. Who knew? No wiser than he, they haply sought to recapture that picture done in cream and shadow they had seen on the hushed Avenue the night before. And they might, ah, they might! A thousand taxis would yawn at a thousand corners, and only to him was that kiss forever lost and done. In a thousand guises Thaïs would hail a cab and turn up her face for loving. And her pallor would be virginal and lovely, and her kiss chaste as the moon. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He sprang excitedly to his feet. How inappropriate that she should be out! He had realized at last what he wanted—to kiss her again, to find rest in her great immobility. She was the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony dressed and went out, as he should have done long before, and down to Richard Caramel's room to hear the last revision of the last chapter of "The Demon Lover." He did not call Gloria again until six. He did not find her in until eight and—oh, climax of anticlimaxes!—she could give him no engagement until Tuesday afternoon. A broken piece of gutta-percha clattered to the floor as he banged up the phone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BLACK MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tuesday was freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if she remembered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I called you four times on Sunday," he told her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was surprise in her voice and interest in her expression. Silently he cursed himself for having told her. He might have known her pride did not deal in such petty triumphs. Even then he had not guessed at the truth—that never having had to worry about men she had seldom used the wary subterfuges, the playings out and haulings in, that were the stock in trade of her sisterhood. When she liked a man, that was trick enough. Did she think she loved him—there was an ultimate and fatal thrust. Her charm endlessly preserved itself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was anxious to see you," he said simply. "I want to talk to you—I mean really talk, somewhere where we can be alone. May I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He swallowed a sudden lump of panic. He felt that she knew what he wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean, not at a tea table," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, all right, but not to-day. I want to get some exercise. Let's walk!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was bitter and raw. All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue. It was almost impossible to talk, and discomfort made him distracted, so much so that he turned at Sixty-first Street to find that she was no longer beside him. He looked around. She was forty feet in the rear standing motionless, her face half hidden in her fur coat collar, moved either by anger or laughter—he could not determine which. He started back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let me interrupt your walk!" she called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm mighty sorry," he answered in confusion. "Did I go too fast?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm cold," she announced. "I want to go home. And you walk too fast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Side by side they started for the Plaza. He wished he could see her face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Men don't usually get so absorbed in themselves when they're with me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very interesting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It <i>is</i> rather too cold to walk," he said, briskly, to hide his annoyance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer and he wondered if she would dismiss him at the hotel entrance. She walked in without speaking, however, and to the elevator, throwing him a single remark as she entered it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd better come up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hesitated for the fraction of a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better call some other time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just as you say." Her words were murmured as an aside. The main concern of life was the adjusting of some stray wisps of hair in the elevator mirror. Her cheeks were brilliant, her eyes sparkled—she had never seemed so lovely, so exquisitely to be desired.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Despising himself, he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong—in his own eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet significant encounter he had been completely defeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> However, by the time she reappeared in the sitting-room he had explained himself to himself with sophistic satisfaction. After all he had done the strongest thing, he thought. He had wanted to come up, he had come. Yet what happened later on that afternoon must be traced to the indignity he had experienced in the elevator; the girl was worrying him intolerably, so much so that when she came out he involuntarily drifted into criticism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A business friend of father's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Odd sort of fellow!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He doesn't like you either," she said with a sudden smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm flattered at his notice. He evidently considers me a—" He broke off with "Is he in love with you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The deuce you don't," he insisted. "Of course he is. I remember the look he gave me when we got back to the table. He'd probably have had me quietly assaulted by a delegation of movie supes if you hadn't invented that phone call."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He didn't mind. I told him afterward what really happened."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You told him!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He asked me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like that very well," he remonstrated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you don't?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business is it of his?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None. That's why I told him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony in a turmoil bit savagely at his mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why should I lie?" she demanded directly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I do. It happened to interest him to know that I kissed you, and I happened to be in a good humor, so I satisfied his curiosity by a simple and precise 'yes.' Being rather a sensible man, after his fashion, he dropped the subject."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except to say that he hated me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it worries you? Well, if you must probe this stupendous matter to its depths he didn't say he hated you. I simply know he does."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It doesn't wor——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, let's drop it!" she cried spiritedly. "It's a most uninteresting matter to me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a tremendous effort Anthony made his acquiescence a twist of subject, and they drifted into an ancient question-and-answer game concerned with each other's pasts, gradually warming as they discovered the age-old, immemorial resemblances in tastes and ideas. They said things that were more revealing than they intended—but each pretended to accept the other at face, or rather word, value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third—before long the best lines cancel out—and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping that such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," Anthony was saying earnestly, "that the position of a man with neither necessity nor ambition is unfortunate. Heaven knows it'd be pathetic of me to be sorry for myself—yet, sometimes I envy Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her silence was encouragement. It was as near as she ever came to an intentional lure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—And there used to be dignified occupations for a gentleman who had leisure, things a little more constructive than filling up the landscape with smoke or juggling some one else's money. There's science, of course: sometimes I wish I'd taken a good foundation, say at Boston Tech. But now, by golly, I'd have to sit down for two years and struggle through the fundamentals of physics and chemistry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've told you I don't know what anybody ought to do," she said ungraciously, and at her indifference his rancor was born again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Aren't you interested in anything except yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glared; his growing enjoyment in the conversation was ripped to shreds. She had been irritable and vindictive all day, and it seemed to him that for this moment he hated her hard selfishness. He stared morosely at the fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him—as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He moved closer and taking her hand pulled her ever so gently toward him until she half lay against his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he kissed her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he whispered very softly. Again she had made a magic, subtle and pervading as a spilt perfume, irresistible and sweet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward, neither the next day nor after many years, could he remember the important things of that afternoon. Had she been moved? In his arms had she spoken a little—or at all? What measure of enjoyment had she taken in his kisses? And had she at any time lost herself ever so little?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, for him there was no doubt. He had risen and paced the floor in sheer ecstasy. That such a girl should be; should poise curled in a corner of the couch like a swallow newly landed from a clean swift flight, watching him with inscrutable eyes. He would stop his pacing and, half shy each time at first, drop his arm around her and find her kiss.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn't want to fall in love. He wasn't coming to see her any more—already she had haunted too many of his ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow—only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He <i>would</i> come back—eternally. He should have known!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn't do—and wouldn't last." As he spoke there was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in ourselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her. He remembered it in this form—perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and polished it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As always when he was with her she seemed to grow gradually older until at the end ruminations too deep for words would be wintering in her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour passed, and the fire leaped up in little ecstasies as though its fading life was sweet. It was five now, and the clock over the mantel became articulate in sound. Then as if a brutish sensibility in him was reminded by those thin, tinny beats that the petals were falling from the flowered afternoon, Anthony pulled her quickly to her feet and held her helpless, without breath, in a kiss that was neither a game nor a tribute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her arms fell to her side. In an instant she was free.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't!" she said quietly. "I don't want that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She sat down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her. A frown had gathered between her eyes. Anthony sank down beside her and closed his hand over hers. It was lifeless and unresponsive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!" He made a motion as if to put his arm about her but she drew away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want that," she repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry," he said, a little impatiently. "I—I didn't know you made such fine distinctions."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She did not answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't you kiss me, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to." It seemed to him she had not moved for hours.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A sudden change, isn't it?" Annoyance was growing in his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She appeared uninterested. It was almost as though she were looking at some one else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No reply. He rose and regarded her angrily, uncertainly. Again he sat down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, Gloria, won't you kiss me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No." Her lips, parting for the word, had just faintly stirred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again he got to his feet, this time with less decision, less confidence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right—I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was aware of a certain irremediable lack of originality in his remarks. Indeed he felt that the whole atmosphere had grown oppressive. He wished she would speak, rail at him, cry out upon him, anything but this pervasive and chilling silence. He cursed himself for a weak fool; his clearest desire was to move her, to hurt her, to see her wince. Helplessly, involuntarily, he erred again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're tired of kissing me I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw her lips curl slightly and his last dignity left him. She spoke, at length:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I believe you've made that remark several times before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked about him immediately, saw his hat and coat on a chair—blundered into them, during an intolerable moment. Looking again at the couch he perceived that she had not turned, not even moved. With a shaken, immediately regretted "good-by" he went quickly but without dignity from the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For over a moment Gloria made no sound. Her lips were still curled; her glance was straight, proud, remote. Then her eyes blurred a little, and she murmured three words half aloud to the death-bound fire:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by, you ass!" she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PANIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man had had the hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden of his despair. Instead of seizing the girl and holding her by sheer strength until she became passive to his desire, instead of beating down her will by the force of his own, he had walked, defeated and powerless, from her door, with the corners of his mouth drooping and what force there might have been in his grief and rage hidden behind the manner of a whipped schoolboy. At one minute she had liked him tremendously—ah, she had nearly loved him. In the next he had become a thing of indifference to her, an insolent and efficiently humiliated man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had no great self-reproach—some, of course, but there were other things dominant in him now, far more urgent. He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life. By her three minutes of utter unwavering indifference the girl had lifted herself from a high but somehow casual position in his mind, to be instead his complete preoccupation. However much his wild thoughts varied between a passionate desire for her kisses and an equally passionate craving to hurt and mar her, the residue of his mind craved in finer fashion to possess the triumphant soul that had shone through those three minutes. She was beautiful—but especially she was without mercy. He must own that strength that could send him away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At present no such analysis was possible to Anthony. His clarity of mind, all those endless resources which he thought his irony had brought him were swept aside. Not only for that night but for the days and weeks that followed his books were to be but furniture and his friends only people who lived and walked in a nebulous outer world from which he was trying to escape—that world was cold and full of bleak wind, and for a little while he had seen into a warm house where fires shone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> About midnight he began to realize that he was hungry. He went down into Fifty-second Street, where it was so cold that he could scarcely see; the moisture froze on his lashes and in the corners of his lips. Everywhere dreariness had come down from the north, settling upon the thin and cheerless street, where black bundled figures blacker still against the night, moved stumbling along the sidewalk through the shrieking wind, sliding their feet cautiously ahead as though they were on skis. Anthony turned over toward Sixth Avenue, so absorbed in his thoughts as not to notice that several passers-by had stared at him. His overcoat was wide open, and the wind was biting in, hard and full of merciless death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a while a waitress spoke to him, a fat waitress with black-rimmed eye-glasses from which dangled a long black cord.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Order, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up resentfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wanna order or doncha?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course," he protested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I ast you three times. This ain't no rest-room."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was after two. He was down around Thirtieth Street somewhere, and after a moment he found and translated the<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>S'DLIHC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> in a white semicircle of letters upon the glass front. The place was inhabited sparsely by three or four bleak and half-frozen night-hawks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me some bacon and eggs and coffee, please."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The waitress bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, hurried away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> God! Gloria's kisses had been such flowers. He remembered as though it had been years ago the low freshness of her voice, the beautiful lines of her body shining through her clothes, her face lily-colored under the lamps of the street—under the lamps.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Misery struck at him again, piling a sort of terror upon the ache and yearning. He had lost her. It was true—no denying it, no softening it. But a new idea had seared his sky—what of Bloeckman! What would happen now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be worn—a bright flower in his button-hole, safe and secure from the things she feared. He felt that she had been playing with the idea of marrying Bloeckman, and it was well possible that this disappointment in Anthony might throw her on sudden impulse into Bloeckman's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idea drove him childishly frantic. He wanted to kill Bloeckman and make him suffer for his hideous presumption. He was saying this over and over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate and fright in his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, behind this obscene jealousy, Anthony was in love at last, profoundly and truly in love, as the word goes between man and woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His coffee appeared at his elbow and gave off for a certain time a gradually diminishing wisp of steam. The night manager, seated at his desk, glanced at the motionless figure alone at the last table, and then with a sigh moved down upon him just as the hour hand crossed the figure three on the big clock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WISDOM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew to his self-respect.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own from out the effortless past.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Memory is short," he thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe." Oh, memory is very short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly be. Wasn't it possible, the more possible because she had never loved him, that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men. He winced. The implication struck out at him—other men. Two months—God! Better three weeks, two weeks——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought this the second evening after the catastrophe when he was undressing, and at this point he threw himself down on the bed and lay there, trembling very slightly and looking at the top of the canopy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two weeks—that was worse than no time at all. In two weeks he would approach her much as he would have to now, without personality or confidence—remaining still the man who had gone too far and then for a period that in time was but a moment but in fact an eternity, whined. No, two weeks was too short a time. Whatever poignancy there had been for her in that afternoon must have time to dull. He must give her a period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly, with a true perspective that would remember his pleasantness as well as his humiliation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off, finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then—silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give the desired impression when they met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE INTERVAL</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed completely, the six weeks held many abominable days. He dreaded the sight of Dick and Maury, imagining wildly that they knew all—but when the three met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre of attention; "The Demon Lover" had been accepted for immediate publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He no longer craved the warmth and security of Maury's society which had cheered him no further back than November. Only Gloria could give that now and no one else ever again. So Dick's success rejoiced him only casually and worried him not a little. It meant that the world was going ahead—writing and reading and publishing—and living. And he wanted the world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks—while Gloria forgot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO ENCOUNTERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine's company. He took her once to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him, not as Gloria had, but quieting those erotic sensibilities in him that worried over Gloria. It didn't matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss—to be enjoyed to the utmost for its short moment. To Geraldine things belonged in definite pigeonholes: a kiss was one thing, anything further was quite another; a kiss was all right; the other things were "bad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first was—he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding a single sentence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash—the effect being given of a tug bringing in an ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he muttered inanely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young—with a man he had never seen before!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that the barber's chair was vacated and he read down the newspaper column three times in succession.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink, so it was inevitable that they should converse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Mr. Patch," said Bloeckman amiably enough.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the fluctuations of the mercury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you come in here much?" inquired Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, very seldom." He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until lately, been his favorite.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nice bar. One of the best bars in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He was in evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll be hurrying on. I'm going to dinner with Miss Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced himself as his vis-à-vis's prospective murderer he could not have struck a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous effort he mustered a rigid—oh, so rigid—smile, and said a conventional good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with grief and fear and abominable imaginings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WEAKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in his apartment trying to read "L'Éducation Sentimental," and something in the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free, they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy's. The Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs. Gilbert's voice, soft as maple syrup running into a glass container, had for him a quality of horror in its single "Hello-o-ah?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Miss Gloria's not feeling well. She's lying down, asleep. Who shall I say called?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody!" he shouted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SERENADE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first thing he said to her was: "Why, you've bobbed your hair!" and she answered: "Yes, isn't it gorgeous?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all sunshine outdoors," he said gravely. "Don't you want to take a walk?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt so bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire's chaotic message to whosoever would listen: something about "I worked and I saved and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, road, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" she cried, "I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there's ever been any winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, though!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All women <i>are</i> birds," he ventured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What kind am I?"—quick and eager.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls—and robin girls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I—a buzzard?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed and shook her head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick's a fox terrier, a trick fox terrier," she continued.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Maury's a cat." Simultaneously it occurred to him how like Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a discreet silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever make long engagements?" he pleaded, "even if it's a week ahead, I think it'd be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and afternoon both."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It would be, wouldn't it?" She thought for a moment. "Let's do it next Sunday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. I'll map out a programme that'll take up every minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They would sit on the lounge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore—for he was young now as he would never be again, and more triumphant than death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Six o'clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won a hundred-yard dash!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, "I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that he loved her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He phoned next morning—no hesitation now, no uncertainty—instead a delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all I called you up to say—dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm glad you did."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I could see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You will, to-morrow night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a long time, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes—" Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Couldn't I come to-night?" He dared anything in the glory and revelation of that almost whispered "yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have a date."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I might—I might be able to break it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"—a sheer cry, a rhapsody. "Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another pause and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—I'm glad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony's face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night! His dark eyes were gleaming—around his mouth were lines it was a kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink, starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very still, and looking at him wide-eyed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one triumphant and enduring embrace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ==<i>BOOK TWO</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (129-190)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE RADIANT HOUR</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> AFTER a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in "practical discussions," as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not as much as I do you," the critic of belles-lettres would insist. "If you really loved me you'd want every one to know it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do," she protested; "I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're twins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ecstatic thought!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mother says"—she hesitated uncertainly—"mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and—and in love before they're born."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bilphism gained its easiest convert. . . . After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why did you laugh?" she cried, "you've done that twice before. There's nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don't mind playing the fool, and I don't mind having you do it, but I can't stand it when we're together."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't say you're sorry! If you can't think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a pause. Anthony was depressed. . . . At length Gloria murmured:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I was mean."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You weren't. I was the one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Peace was restored—the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression—yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known it—for three weeks Gloria had seen no one else—and she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughter's attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warm——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> —Yet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabs—quaint device—and the staid bill of fares on which they scribbled "you know I do," pushing it over for the other to see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, Gloria," he would cry, "please let me explain!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't explain. Kiss me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think that's right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I don't like this kiss-and-forget."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't want to argue. I think it's wonderful that we <i>can</i> kiss and forget, and when we can't it'll be time to argue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that Anthony arose and punched himself into his overcoat—for a moment it appeared that the scene of the preceding February was to be repeated, but knowing how deeply she was moved he retained his dignity with his pride, and in a moment Gloria was sobbing in his arms, her lovely face miserable as a frightened little girl's.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile they kept unfolding to each other, unwillingly, by curious reactions and evasions, by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to no avail. She possessed him now—nor did she desire the dead years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony," she would say, "always when I'm mean to you I'm sorry afterward. I'd give my right hand to save you one little moment's pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely—taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfort—of these she never complained until they were over—or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why do you like Muriel?" he demanded one day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't—very much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why do you go with her?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just for some one to go with. They're no exertion, those girls. They sort of believe everything I tell 'em—but I rather like Rachael. I think she's cute—and so clean and slick, don't you? I used to have other friends—in Kansas City and at school—casual, all of them, girls who just flitted into my range and out of it for no more reason than that boys took us places together. They didn't interest me after environment stopped throwing us together. Now they're mostly married. What does it matter—they were all just people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You like men better, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, much better. I've got a man's mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later she told him about the beginnings of her friendship with Bloeckman. One day in Delmonico's, Gloria and Rachael had come upon Bloeckman and Mr. Gilbert having luncheon and curiosity had impelled her to make it a party of four. She had liked him—rather. He was a relief from younger men, satisfied as he was with so little. He humored her and he laughed, whether he understood her or not. She met him several times, despite the open disapproval of her parents, and within a month he had asked her to marry him, tendering her everything from a villa in Italy to a brilliant career on the screen. She had laughed in his face—and he had laughed too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But he had not given up. To the time of Anthony's arrival in the arena he had been making steady progress. She treated him rather well—except that she had called him always by an invidious nickname—perceiving, meanwhile, that he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The night before the engagement was announced she told Bloeckman. It was a heavy blow. She did not enlighten Anthony as to the details, but she implied that he had not hesitated to argue with her. Anthony gathered that the interview had terminated on a stormy note, with Gloria very cool and unmoved lying in her corner of the sofa and Joseph Bloeckman of "Films Par Excellence" pacing the carpet with eyes narrowed and head bowed. Gloria had been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to show it. In a final burst of kindness she had tried to make him hate her, there at the last. But Anthony, understanding that Gloria's indifference was her strongest appeal, judged how futile this must have been. He wondered, often but quite casually, about Bloeckman—finally he forgot him entirely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>HEYDAY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, sunshine, navigation, river, road, metaphor, traffic, city, urban, sound, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon they found front seats on the sunny roof of a bus and rode for hours from the fading Square up along the sullied river, and then, as the stray beams fled the westward streets, sailed down the turgid Avenue, darkening with ominous bees from the department stores. The traffic was clotted and gripped in a patternless jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the crowd as they waited for the moan of the traffic whistle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't it good!" cried Gloria. "Look!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, driver, traffic"><br /> <poem><br /> A miller's wagon, stark white with flour, driven by a powdery clown, passed in front of them behind a white horse and his black team-mate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a pity!" she complained; "they'd look so beautiful in the dusk, if only both horses were white. I'm mighty happy just this minute, in this city."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony shook his head in disagreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think the city's a mountebank. Always struggling to approach the tremendous and impressive urbanity ascribed to it. Trying to be romantically metropolitan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't. I think it is impressive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Momentarily. But it's really a transparent, artificial sort of spectacle. It's got its press-agented stars and its flimsy, unenduring stage settings and, I'll admit, the greatest army of supers ever assembled—" He paused, laughed shortly, and added: "Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, traffic, law, pedestrian, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll bet policemen think people are fools," said Gloria thoughtfully, as she watched a large but cowardly lady being helped across the street. "He always sees them frightened and inefficient and old—they are," she added. And then: "We'd better get off. I told mother I'd have an early supper and go to bed. She says I look tired, damn it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish we were married," he muttered soberly; "there'll be no good night then and we can do just as we want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't it be good! I think we ought to travel a lot. I want to go to the Mediterranean and Italy. And I'd like to go on the stage some time—say for about a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. I'll write a play for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't that be good! And I'll act in it. And then some time when we have more money"—old Adam's death was always thus tactfully alluded to—"we'll build a magnificent estate, won't we?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, with private swimming pools."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens of them. And private rivers. Oh, I wish it were now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Odd coincidence—he had just been wishing that very thing. They plunged like divers into the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic to each other . . . both were walking alone in a dispassionate garden with a ghost found in a dream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them look back and see that the loves of other summers long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their years. Always the most poignant moments were when some artificial barrier kept them apart: in the theatre their hands would steal together, join, give and return gentle pressures through the long dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes—not knowing that they were but following in the footsteps of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment. And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen days now—fifteen—fourteen——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE DISGRESSIONS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Just before the engagement was announced Anthony had gone up to Tarrytown to see his grandfather, who, a little more wizened and grizzly as time played its ultimate chuckling tricks, greeted the news with profound cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you're going to get married, are you?" He said this with such a dubious mildness and shook his head up and down so many times that Anthony was not a little depressed. While he was unaware of his grandfather's intentions he presumed that a large part of the money would come to him. A good deal would go in charities, of course; a good deal to carry on the business of reform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to work?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—" temporized Anthony, somewhat disconcerted. "I <i>am</i> working. You know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, I mean work," said Adam Patch dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not quite sure yet what I'll do. I'm not exactly a beggar, grampa," he asserted with some spirit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man considered this with eyes half closed. Then almost apologetically he asked:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much do you save a year?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing so far——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so after just managing to get along on your money you've decided that by some miracle two of you can get along on it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has some money of her own. Enough to buy clothes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without considering this question impertinent, Anthony answered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About a hundred a month."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's altogether about seventy-five hundred a year." Then he added softly: "It ought to be plenty. If you have any sense it ought to be plenty. But the question is whether you have any or not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it is." It was shameful to be compelled to endure this pious browbeating from the old man, and his next words were stiffened with vanity. "I can manage very well. You seem convinced that I'm utterly worthless. At any rate I came up here simply to tell you that I'm getting married in June. Good-by, sir." With this he turned away and headed for the door, unaware that in that instant his grandfather, for the first time, rather liked him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait!" called Adam Patch, "I want to talk to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony faced about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sit down. Stay all night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Anthony resumed his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to see Gloria to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's her name?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "New York girl? Some one you know?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's from the Middle West."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business her father in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a celluloid corporation or trust or something. They're from Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You going to be married out there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, no, sir. We thought we'd be married in New York—rather quietly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Like to have the wedding out here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated. The suggestion made no appeal to him, but it was certainly the part of wisdom to give the old man, if possible, a proprietary interest in his married life. In addition Anthony was a little touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very kind of you, grampa, but wouldn't it be a lot of trouble?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everything's a lot of trouble. Your father was married here—but in the old house."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—I thought he was married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch considered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. He <i>was</i> married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony felt a moment's embarrassment at having made the correction, and he covered it up with words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll speak to Gloria about it. Personally I'd like to, but of course it's up to the Gilberts, you see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His grandfather drew a long sigh, half closed his eyes, and sank back in his chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a hurry?" he asked in a different tone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not especially."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder," began Adam Patch, looking out with a mild, kindly glance at the lilac bushes that rustled against the windows, "I wonder if you ever think about the after-life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—sometimes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think a great deal about the after-life." His eyes were dim but his voice was confident and clear. "I was sitting here to-day thinking about what's lying in wait for us, and somehow I began to remember an afternoon nearly sixty-five years ago, when I was playing with my little sister Annie, down where that summer-house is now." He pointed out into the long flower-garden, his eyes trembling of tears, his voice shaking.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I began thinking—and it seemed to me that <i>you</i> ought to think a little more about the after-life. You ought to be—steadier"—he paused and seemed to grope about for the right word—"more industrious—why——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then his expression altered, his entire personality seemed to snap together like a trap, and when he continued the softness had gone from his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—Why, when I was just two years older than you," he rasped with a cunning chuckle, "I sent three members of the firm of Wrenn and Hunt to the poorhouse."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started with embarrassment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, good-by," added his grandfather suddenly, "you'll miss your train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony left the house unusually elated, and strangely sorry for the old man; not because his wealth could buy him "neither youth nor digestion" but because he had asked Anthony to be married there, and because he had forgotten something about his son's wedding that he should have remembered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel, who was one of the ushers, caused Anthony and Gloria much distress in the last few weeks by continually stealing the rays of their spot-light. "The Demon Lover" had been published in April, and it interrupted the love affair as it may be said to have interrupted everything its author came in contact with. It was a highly original, rather overwritten piece of sustained description concerned with a Don Juan of the New York slums. As Maury and Anthony had said before, as the more hospitable critics were saying then, there was no writer in America with such power to describe the atavistic and unsubtle reactions of that section of society.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The book hesitated and then suddenly "went." Editions, small at first, then larger, crowded each other week by week. A spokesman of the Salvation Army denounced it as a cynical misrepresentation of all the uplift taking place in the underworld. Clever press-agenting spread the unfounded rumor that "Gypsy" Smith was beginning a libel suit because one of the principal characters was a burlesque of himself. It was barred from the public library of Burlington, Iowa, and a Mid-Western columnist announced by innuendo that Richard Caramel was in a sanitarium with delirium tremens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The author, indeed, spent his days in a state of pleasant madness. The book was in his conversation three-fourths of the time—he wanted to know if one had heard "the latest"; he would go into a store and in a loud voice order books to be charged to him, in order to catch a chance morsel of recognition from clerk or customer. He knew to a town in what sections of the country it was selling best; he knew exactly what he cleared on each edition, and when he met any one who had not read it, or, as it happened only too often, had not heard of it, he succumbed to moody depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was natural for Anthony and Gloria to decide, in their jealousy, that he was so swollen with conceit as to be a bore. To Dick's great annoyance Gloria publicly boasted that she had never read "The Demon Lover," and didn't intend to until every one stopped talking about it. As a matter of fact, she had no time to read now, for the presents were pouring in—first a scattering, then an avalanche, varying from the bric-à-brac of forgotten family friends to the photographs of forgotten poor relations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gave them an elaborate "drinking set," which included silver goblets, cocktail shaker, and bottle-openers. The extortion from Dick was more conventional—a tea set from Tiffany's. From Joseph Bloeckman came a simple and exquisite travelling clock, with his card. There was even a cigarette-holder from Bounds; this touched Anthony and made him want to weep—indeed, any emotion short of hysteria seemed natural in the half-dozen people who were swept up by this tremendous sacrifice to convention. The room set aside in the Plaza bulged with offerings sent by Harvard friends and by associates of his grandfather, with remembrances of Gloria's Farmover days, and with rather pathetic trophies from her former beaux, which last arrived with esoteric, melancholy messages, written on cards tucked carefully inside, beginning "I little thought when—" or "I'm sure I wish you all the happiness—" or even "When you get this I shall be on my way to——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The most munificent gift was simultaneously the most disappointing. It was a concession of Adam Patch's—a check for five thousand dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To most of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in her unsmiling face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Darn nice, isn't it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No answer until an hour later when she would give him a careful account of her precise reaction to the gift, whether it would have been improved by being smaller or larger, whether she was surprised at getting it, and, if so, just how much surprised.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert arranged and rearranged a hypothetical house, distributing the gifts among the different rooms, tabulating articles as "second-best clock" or "silver to use <i>every</i> day," and embarrassing Anthony and Gloria by semi-facetious references to a room she called the nursery. She was pleased by old Adam's gift and thereafter had it that he was a very ancient soul, "as much as anything else." As Adam Patch never quite decided whether she referred to the advancing senility of his mind or to some private and psychic schema of her own, it cannot be said to have pleased him. Indeed he always spoke of her to Anthony as "that old woman, the mother," as though she were a character in a comedy he had seen staged many times before. Concerning Gloria he was unable to make up his mind. She attracted him but, as she herself told Anthony, he had decided that she was frivolous and was afraid to approve of her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Five days!—A dancing platform was being erected on the lawn at Tarrytown. Four days!—A special train was chartered to convey the guests to and from New York. Three days!——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE DIARY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> She was dressed in blue silk pajamas and standing by her bed with her hand on the light to put the room in darkness, when she changed her mind and opening a table drawer brought out a little black book—a "Line-a-day" diary. This she had kept for seven years. Many of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial "I am going to keep a diary for my children." Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time—in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fashionable at Yale—she had been flattered because "Touch down" Michaud had "rushed" her all evening. She sighed, remembering the grown-up satin dress she had been so proud of and the orchestra playing "Yama-yama, My Yama Man" and "Jungle-Town." So long ago!—the names: Eltynge Reardon, Jim Parsons, "Curly" McGregor, Kenneth Cowan, "Fish-eye" Fry (whom she had liked for being so ugly), Carter Kirby—he had sent her a present; so had Tudor Baird;—Marty Reffer, the first man she had been in love with for more than a day, and Stuart Holcome, who had run away with her in his automobile and tried to make her marry him by force. And Larry Fenwick, whom she had always admired because he had told her one night that if she wouldn't kiss him she could get out of his car and walk home. What a list!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And, after all, an obsolete list. She was in love now, set for the eternal romance that was to be the synthesis of all romance, yet sad for these men and these moonlights and for the "thrills" she had had—and the kisses. The past—her past, oh, what a joy! She had been exuberantly happy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Turning over the pages her eyes rested idly on the scattered entries of the past four months. She read the last few carefully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, tree, moonlight"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 1st</i>.—I know Bill Carstairs hates me because I was so disagreeable, but I hate to be sentimentalized over sometimes. We drove out to the Rockyear Country Club and the most wonderful moon kept shining through the trees. My silver dress is getting tarnished. Funny how one forgets the other nights at Rockyear—with Kenneth Cowan when I loved him so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 3rd</i>.—After two hours of Schroeder who, they inform me, has millions, I've decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men. There's nothing so often overdone and from to-day I swear to be amused. We talked about 'love'—how banal! With how many men have I talked about love?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 11th</i>.—Patch actually called up to-day! and when he forswore me about a month ago he fairly raged out the door. I'm gradually losing faith in any man being susceptible to fatal injuries.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 20th</i>.—Spent the day with Anthony. Maybe I'll marry him some time. I kind of like his ideas—he stimulates all the originality in me. Blockhead came around about ten in his new car and took me out Riverside Drive. I liked him to-night: he's so considerate. He knew I didn't want to talk so he was quiet all during the ride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 21st</i>.—Woke up thinking of Anthony and sure enough he called and sounded sweet on the phone—so I broke a date for him. To-day I feel I'd break anything for him, including the ten commandments and my neck. He's coming at eight and I shall wear pink and look very fresh and starched——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She paused here, remembering that after he had gone that night she had undressed with the shivering April air streaming in the windows. Yet it seemed she had not felt the cold, warmed by the profound banalities burning in her heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next entry occurred a few days later:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 24th</i>.—I want to marry Anthony, because husbands are so often 'husbands' and I must marry a lover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are four general types of husbands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (1) The husband who always wants to stay in in the evening, has no vices and works for a salary. Totally undesirable!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (2) The atavistic master whose mistress one is, to wait on his pleasure. This sort always considers every pretty woman 'shallow,' a sort of peacock with arrested development.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (3) Next comes the worshipper, the idolater of his wife and all that is his, to the utter oblivion of everything else. This sort demands an emotional actress for a wife. God! it must be an exertion to be thought righteous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (4) And Anthony—a temporarily passionate lover with wisdom enough to realize when it has flown and that it must fly. And I want to get married to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What grubworms women are to crawl on their bellies through colorless marriages! Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting—it's going to be the performance, the live, lovely, glamourous performance, and the world shall be the scenery. I refuse to dedicate my life to posterity. Surely one owes as much to the current generation as to one's unwanted children. What a fate—to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers. . . . Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Such children, however, poor dear babies, have little in common with the wedded state.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 7th</i>.—Moral question: Was it wrong to make Bloeckman love me? Because I did really make him. He was almost sweetly sad to-night. How opportune it was that my throat is swollen plunk together and tears were easy to muster. But he's just the past—buried already in my plentiful lavender.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 8th</i>.—And to-day I've promised not to chew my mouth. Well, I won't, I suppose—but if he'd only asked me not to eat!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blowing bubbles—that's what we're doing, Anthony and me. And we blew such beautiful ones to-day, and they'll explode and then we'll blow more and more, I guess—bubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water is used up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the June 8th's of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girl—it was the name, Bob Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it was—and, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember. Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a moment she found a pencil and holding it unsteadily drew three parallel lines beneath the last entry. Then she printed FINIS in large capitals, put the book back in the drawer, and crept into bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BREATH OF THE CAVE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment after the bridal dinner, Anthony snapped out his lights and, feeling impersonal and fragile as a piece of china waiting on a serving table, got into bed. It was a warm night—a sheet was enough for comfort—and through his wide-open windows came sound, evanescent and summery, alive with remote anticipation. He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colorful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust. And there was something beyond that; he knew now. There was the union of his soul with Gloria's, whose radiant fire and freshness was the living material of which the dead beauty of books was made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving sound—something the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness—and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that a new note separated itself jarringly from the soft crying of the night. It was a noise from an areaway within a hundred feet from his rear window, the noise of a woman's laughter. It began low, incessant and whining—some servant-maid with her fellow, he thought—and then it grew in volume and became hysterical, until it reminded him of a girl he had seen overcome with nervous laughter at a vaudeville performance. Then it sank, receded, only to rise again and include words—a coarse joke, some bit of obscure horseplay he could not distinguish. It would break off for a moment and he would just catch the low rumble of a man's voice, then begin again—interminably; at first annoying, then strangely terrible. He shivered, and getting up out of bed went to the window. It had reached a high point, tensed and stifled, almost the quality of a scream—then it ceased and left behind it a silence empty and menacing as the greater silence overhead. Anthony stood by the window a moment longer before he returned to his bed. He found himself upset and shaken. Try as he might to strangle his reaction, some animal quality in that unrestrained laughter had grasped at his imagination, and for the first time in four months aroused his old aversion and horror toward all the business of life. The room had grown smothery. He wanted to be out in some cool and bitter breeze, miles above the cities, and to live serene and detached back in the corners of his mind. Life was that sound out there, that ghastly reiterated female sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my <i>God</i>!" he cried, drawing in his breath sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Burying his face in the pillows he tried in vain to concentrate upon the details of the next day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MORNING</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the gray light he found that it was only five o'clock. He regretted nervously that he had awakened so early—he would appear fagged at the wedding. He envied Gloria who could hide her fatigue with careful pigmentation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In his bathroom he contemplated himself in the mirror and saw that he was unusually white—half a dozen small imperfections stood out against the morning pallor of his complexion, and overnight he had grown the faint stubble of a beard—the general effect, he fancied, was unprepossessing, haggard, half unwell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On his dressing table were spread a number of articles which he told over carefully with suddenly fumbling fingers—their tickets to California, the book of traveller's checks, his watch, set to the half minute, the key to his apartment, which he must not forget to give to Maury, and, most important of all, the ring. It was of platinum set around with small emeralds; Gloria had insisted on this; she had always wanted an emerald wedding ring, she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the third present he had given her; first had come the engagement ring, and then a little gold cigarette-case. He would be giving her many things now—clothes and jewels and friends and excitement. It seemed absurd that from now on he would pay for all her meals. It was going to cost: he wondered if he had not underestimated for this trip, and if he had not better cash a larger check. The question worried him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was the day—unsought, unsuspected six months before, but now breaking in yellow light through his east window, dancing along the carpet as though the sun were smiling at some ancient and reiterated gag of his own.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a nervous one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By God!" he muttered to himself, "I'm as good as married!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE USHERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Six young men in</i> CROSS PATCH'S <i>library growing more and more cheery under the influence of Mumm's Extra Dry, set surreptitiously in cold pails by the bookcases.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FIRST YOUNG MAN: By golly! Believe me, in my next book I'm going to do a wedding scene that'll knock 'em cold!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE SECOND YOUNG MAN: Met a débutante th'other day said she thought your book was powerful. As a rule young girls cry for this primitive business.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE THIRD YOUNG MAN: Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Walking up and down outside talking to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: Lord! Did you see the minister? Most peculiar looking teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Think they're natural. Funny thing people having gold teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: They say they love 'em. My dentist told me once a woman came to him and insisted on having two of her teeth covered with gold. No reason at all. All right the way they were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Hear you got out a book, Dicky. 'Gratulations!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Stiffly</i>) Thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Innocently</i>) What is it? College stories?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>More stiffly</i>) No. Not college stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Pity! Hasn't been a good book about Harvard for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Touchily</i>) Why don't you supply the lack?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model"><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: I think I saw a squad of guests turn the drive in a Packard just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Might open a couple more bottles on the strength of that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: It was the shock of my life when I heard the old man was going to have a wet wedding. Rabid prohibitionist, you know.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Snapping his fingers excitedly</i>) By gad! I knew I'd forgotten something. Kept thinking it was my vest.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What was it?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Maliciously</i>) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Facetiously</i>) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN <i>looks nervously at his watch. Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an ass I am!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding. Name's Haines or Hampton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Hurriedly spurring his imagination</i>) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my glass, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Who? Old Adam?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: He's my uncle, Otis.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Yes, Cable, she is.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, Dicky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why are all grooms given the title of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Maury, the professional cynic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Faker yourself! What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: You don't know yourself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Don't hedge!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, natural selection?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Wrong.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I give it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There <i>is</i> a connection.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What is it then?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion</i>) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Frowning</i>) Let me just think a minute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Sitting up suddenly</i>) Listen!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Weightily</i>) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to God I'd sent that present.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCH'S organ</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There were five hundred eyes boring through the back of his cutaway and the sun glinting on the clergyman's inappropriately bourgeois teeth. With difficulty he restrained a laugh. Gloria was saying something in a clear proud voice and he tried to think that the affair was irrevocable, that every second was significant, that his life was being slashed into two periods and that the face of the world was changing before him. He tried to recapture that ecstatic sensation of ten weeks before. All these emotions eluded him, he did not even feel the physical nervousness of that very morning—it was all one gigantic aftermath. And those gold teeth! He wondered if the clergyman were married; he wondered perversely if a clergyman could perform his own marriage service. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But as he took Gloria into his arms he was conscious of a strong reaction. The blood was moving in his veins now. A languorous and pleasant content settled like a weight upon him, bringing responsibility and possession. He was married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening—and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Late one night they arrived in Santa Barbara, where the night clerk at the Hotel Lafcadio refused to admit them, on the grounds that they were not married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The clerk thought that Gloria was beautiful. He did not think that anything so beautiful as Gloria could be moral.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"CON AMORE"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That first half-year—the trip West, the long months' loiter along the California coast, and the gray house near Greenwich where they lived until late autumn made the country dreary—those days, those places, saw the enraptured hours. The breathless idyl of their engagement gave way, first, to the intense romance of the more passionate relationship. The breathless idyl left them, fled on to other lovers; they looked around one day and it was gone, how they scarcely knew. Had either of them lost the other in the days of the idyl, the love lost would have been ever to the loser that dim desire without fulfilment which stands back of all life. But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idyl passed, bearing with it its extortion of youth. Came a day when Gloria found that other men no longer bored her; came a day when Anthony discovered that he could sit again late into the evening, talking with Dick of those tremendous abstractions that had once occupied his world. But, knowing they had had the best of love, they clung to what remained. Love lingered—by way of long conversations at night into those stark hours when the mind thins and sharpens and the borrowings from dreams become the stuff of all life, by way of deep and intimate kindnesses they developed toward each other, by way of their laughing at the same absurdities and thinking the same things noble and the same things sad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was, first of all, a time of discovery. The things they found in each other were so diverse, so intermixed and, moreover, so sugared with love as to seem at the time not so much discoveries as isolated phenomena—to be allowed for, and to be forgotten. Anthony found that he was living with a girl of tremendous nervous tension and of the most high-handed selfishness. Gloria knew within a month that her husband was an utter coward toward any one of a million phantasms created by his imagination. Her perception was intermittent, for this cowardice sprang out, became almost obscenely evident, then faded and vanished as though it had been only a creation of her own mind. Her reactions to it were not those attributed to her sex—it roused her neither to disgust nor to a premature feeling of motherhood. Herself almost completely without physical fear, she was unable to understand, and so she made the most of what she felt to be his fear's redeeming feature, which was that though he was a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain—when his imagination was given play—he had yet a sort of dashing recklessness that moved her on its brief occasions almost to admiration, and a pride that usually steadied him when he thought he was observed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed, risk, affect, safety, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The trait first showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough café she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred in a San Francisco hotel, when they had been married a week, gave the matter certainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after midnight and pitch dark in their room. Gloria was dozing off and Anthony's even breathing beside her made her suppose that he was asleep, when suddenly she saw him raise himself on his elbow and stare at the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it, dearest?" she murmured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing"—he had relaxed to his pillow and turned toward her—"nothing, my darling wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable. . . . Come into my arms," she added in a rush of tenderness; "I can sleep so well, so well with you in my arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Coming into Gloria's arms had a quite definite meaning. It required that he should slide one arm under her shoulder, lock both arms about her, and arrange himself as nearly as possible as a sort of three-sided crib for her luxurious ease. Anthony, who tossed, whose arms went tinglingly to sleep after half an hour of that position, would wait until she was asleep and roll her gently over to her side of the bed—then, left to his own devices, he would curl himself into his usual knots.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, having attained sentimental comfort, retired into her doze. Five minutes ticked away on Bloeckman's travelling clock; silence lay all about the room, over the unfamiliar, impersonal furniture and the half-oppressive ceiling that melted imperceptibly into invisible walls on both sides. Then there was suddenly a rattling flutter at the window, staccato and loud upon the hushed, pent air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a leap Anthony was out of the bed and standing tense beside it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" he cried in an awful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria lay very still, wide awake now and engrossed not so much in the rattling as in the rigid breathless figure whose voice had reached from the bedside into that ominous dark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sound stopped; the room was quiet as before—then Anthony pouring words in at the telephone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Some one just tried to get into the room! . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's some one at the window!" His voice was emphatic now, faintly terrified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right! Hurry!" He hung up the receiver; stood motionless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . There was a rush and commotion at the door, a knocking—Anthony went to open it upon an excited night clerk with three bell-boys grouped staring behind him. Between thumb and finger the night clerk held a wet pen with the threat of a weapon; one of the bell-boys had seized a telephone directory and was looking at it sheepishly. Simultaneously the group was joined by the hastily summoned house-detective, and as one man they surged into the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lights sprang on with a click. Gathering a piece of sheet about her Gloria dove away from sight, shutting her eyes to keep out the horror of this unpremeditated visitation. There was no vestige of an idea in her stricken sensibilities save that her Anthony was at grievous fault.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The night clerk was speaking from the window, his tone half of the servant, half of the teacher reproving a schoolboy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody out there," he declared conclusively; "my golly, nobody <i>could</i> be out there. This here's a sheer fall to the street of fifty feet. It was the wind you heard, tugging at the blind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she was sorry for him. She wanted only to comfort him and draw him back tenderly into her arms, to tell them to go away because the thing their presence connotated was odious. Yet she could not raise her head for shame. She heard a broken sentence, apologies, conventions of the employee and one unrestrained snicker from a bell-boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been nervous as the devil all evening," Anthony was saying; "somehow that noise just shook me—I was only about half awake."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sure, I understand," said the night clerk with comfortable tact; "been that way myself."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door closed; the lights snapped out; Anthony crossed the floor quietly and crept into bed. Gloria, feigning to be heavy with sleep, gave a quiet little sigh and slipped into his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was it, dear?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing," he answered, his voice still shaken; "I thought there was somebody at the window, so I looked out, but I couldn't see any one and the noise kept up, so I phoned down-stairs. Sorry if I disturbed you, but I'm awfully darn nervous to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Catching the lie, she gave an interior start—he had not gone to the window, nor near the window. He had stood by the bed and then sent in his call of fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said—and then: "I'm so sleepy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an hour they lay awake side by side, Gloria with her eyes shut so tight that blue moons formed and revolved against backgrounds of deepest mauve, Anthony staring blindly into the darkness overhead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After many weeks it came gradually out into the light, to be laughed and joked at. They made a tradition to fit over it—whenever that overpowering terror of the night attacked Anthony, she would put her arms about him and croon, soft as a song:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll protect my Anthony. Oh, nobody's ever going to harm my Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would laugh as though it were a jest they played for their mutual amusement, but to Gloria it was never quite a jest. It was, at first, a keen disappointment; later, it was one of the times when she controlled her temper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The management of Gloria's temper, whether it was aroused by a lack of hot water for her bath or by a skirmish with her husband, became almost the primary duty of Anthony's day. It must be done just so—by this much silence, by that much pressure, by this much yielding, by that much force. It was in her angers with their attendant cruelties that her inordinate egotism chiefly displayed itself. Because she was brave, because she was "spoiled," because of her outrageous and commendable independence of judgment, and finally because of her arrogant consciousness that she had never seen a girl as beautiful as herself, Gloria had developed into a consistent, practising Nietzschean. This, of course, with overtones of profound sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, for example, her stomach. She was used to certain dishes, and she had a strong conviction that she could not possibly eat anything else. There must be a lemonade and a tomato sandwich late in the morning, then a light lunch with a stuffed tomato. Not only did she require food from a selection of a dozen dishes, but in addition this food must be prepared in just a certain way. One of the most annoying half hours of the first fortnight occurred in Los Angeles, when an unhappy waiter brought her a tomato stuffed with chicken salad instead of celery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We always serve it that way, madame," he quavered to the gray eyes that regarded him wrathfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria made no answer, but when the waiter had turned discreetly away she banged both fists upon the table until the china and silver rattled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor Gloria!" laughed Anthony unwittingly, "you can't get what you want ever, can you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't eat <i>stuff</i>!" she flared up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll call back the waiter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want you to! He doesn't know anything, the darn <i>fool</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it isn't the hotel's fault. Either send it back, forget it, or be a sport and eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shut up!" she said succinctly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why take it out on me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I'm <i>not</i>," she wailed, "but I simply <i>can't</i> eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony subsided helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go somewhere else," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't <i>want</i> to go anywhere else. I'm tired of being trotted around to a dozen cafés and not getting <i>one thing</i> fit to eat."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When did we go around to a dozen cafés?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd <i>have</i> to in <i>this</i> town," insisted Gloria with ready sophistry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, bewildered, tried another tack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you try to eat it? It can't be as bad as you think."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just—because—I—don't—like—chicken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She picked up her fork and began poking contemptuously at the tomato, and Anthony expected her to begin flinging the stuffings in all directions. He was sure that she was approximately as angry as she had ever been—for an instant he had detected a spark of hate directed as much toward him as toward any one else—and Gloria angry was, for the present, unapproachable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, surprisingly, he saw that she had tentatively raised the fork to her lips and tasted the chicken salad. Her frown had not abated and he stared at her anxiously, making no comment and daring scarcely to breathe. She tasted another forkful—in another moment she was eating. With difficulty Anthony restrained a chuckle; when at length he spoke his words had no possible connection with chicken salad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This incident, with variations, ran like a lugubrious fugue through the first year of marriage; always it left Anthony baffled, irritated, and depressed. But another rough brushing of temperaments, a question of laundry-bags, he found even more annoying as it ended inevitably in a decisive defeat for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon in Coronado, where they made the longest stay of their trip, more than three weeks, Gloria was arraying herself brilliantly for tea. Anthony, who had been down-stairs listening to the latest rumor bulletins of war in Europe, entered the room, kissed the back of her powdered neck, and went to his dresser. After a great pulling out and pushing in of drawers, evidently unsatisfactory, he turned around to the Unfinished Masterpiece.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got any handkerchiefs, Gloria?" he asked. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her golden head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a one. I'm using one of yours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The last one, I deduce." He laughed dryly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She applied an emphatic though very delicate contour to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't the laundry back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated—then, with sudden discernment, opened the closet door. His suspicions were verified. On the hook provided hung the blue bag furnished by the hotel. This was full of his clothes—he had put them there himself. The floor beneath it was littered with an astonishing mass of finery—lingerie, stockings, dresses, nightgowns, and pajamas—most of it scarcely worn but all of it coming indubitably under the general heading of Gloria's laundry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He stood holding the closet door open.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lip line was being erased and corrected according to some mysterious perspective; not a finger trembled as she manipulated the lip-stick, not a glance wavered in his direction. It was a triumph of concentration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever sent out the laundry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It most certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess I haven't, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," began Anthony, sitting down on the bed and trying to catch her mirrored eyes, "you're a nice fellow, you are! I've sent it out every time it's been sent since we left New York, and over a week ago you promised you'd do it for a change. All you'd have to do would be to cram your own junk into that bag and ring for the chambermaid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, why fuss about the laundry?" exclaimed Gloria petulantly, "I'll take care of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I haven't fussed about it. I'd just as soon divide the bother with you, but when we run out of handkerchiefs it's darn near time something's done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered that he was being extraordinarily logical. But Gloria, unimpressed, put away her cosmetics and casually offered him her back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hook me up," she suggested; "Anthony, dearest, I forgot all about it. I meant to, honestly, and I will to-day. Don't be cross with your sweetheart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What could Anthony do then but draw her down upon his knee and kiss a shade of color from her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't mind," she murmured with a smile, radiant and magnanimous. "You can kiss all the paint off my lips any time you want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They went down to tea. They bought some handkerchiefs in a notion store near by. All was forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But two days later Anthony looked in the closet and saw the bag still hung limp upon its hook and that the gay and vivid pile on the floor had increased surprisingly in height.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—" Her voice was full of real distress. Despairingly Anthony went to the phone and called the chambermaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," he said impatiently, "that you expect me to be some sort of French valet to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed, so infectiously that Anthony was unwise enough to smile. Unfortunate man! In some intangible manner his smile made her mistress of the situation—with an air of injured righteousness she went emphatically to the closet and began pushing her laundry violently into the bag. Anthony watched her—ashamed of himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There!" she said, implying that her fingers had been worked to the bone by a brutal taskmaster.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He considered, nevertheless, that he had given her an object-lesson and that the matter was closed, but on the contrary it was merely beginning. Laundry pile followed laundry pile—at long intervals; dearth of handkerchief followed dearth of handkerchief—at short ones; not to mention dearth of sock, of shirt, of everything. And Anthony found at length that either he must send it out himself or go through the increasingly unpleasant ordeal of a verbal battle with Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA AND GENERAL LEE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On their way East they stopped two days in Washington, strolling about with some hostility in its atmosphere of harsh repellent light, of distance without freedom, of pomp without splendor—it seemed a pasty-pale and self-conscious city. The second day they made an ill-advised trip to General Lee's old home at Arlington.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect, temperature, smell, passengers"><br /> <poem><br /> The bus which bore them was crowded with hot, unprosperous people, and Anthony, intimate to Gloria, felt a storm brewing. It broke at the Zoo, where the party stopped for ten minutes. The Zoo, it seemed, smelt of monkeys. Anthony laughed; Gloria called down the curse of Heaven upon monkeys, including in her malevolence all the passengers of the bus and their perspiring offspring who had hied themselves monkey-ward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus"><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually the bus moved on to Arlington. There it met other busses and immediately a swarm of women and children were leaving a trail of peanut-shells through the halls of General Lee and crowding at length into the room where he was married. On the wall of this room a pleasing sign announced in large red letters "Ladies' Toilet." At this final blow Gloria broke down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think it's perfectly terrible!" she said furiously, "the idea of letting these people come here! And of encouraging them by making these houses show-places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," objected Anthony, "if they weren't kept up they'd go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if they did!" she exclaimed as they sought the wide pillared porch. "Do you think they've left a breath of 1860 here? This has become a thing of 1914."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you want to preserve old things?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you <i>can't</i>, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year—then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you think that just as a time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these—these <i>animals</i>"—she waved her hand around—"get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses—bound for dust—mortal——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small boy appeared beside them and, swinging a handful of banana-peels, flung them valiantly in the direction of the Potomac.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SENTIMENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously with the fall of Liège, Anthony and Gloria arrived in New York. In retrospect the six weeks seemed miraculously happy. They had found to a great extent, as most young couples find in some measure, that they possessed in common many fixed ideas and curiosities and odd quirks of mind; they were essentially companionable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it had been a struggle to keep many of their conversations on the level of discussions. Arguments were fatal to Gloria's disposition. She had all her life been associated either with her mental inferiors or with men who, under the almost hostile intimidation of her beauty, had not dared to contradict her; naturally, then, it irritated her when Anthony emerged from the state in which her pronouncements were an infallible and ultimate decision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He failed to realize, at first, that this was the result partly of her "female" education and partly of her beauty, and he was inclined to include her with her entire sex as curiously and definitely limited. It maddened him to find she had no sense of justice. But he discovered that, when a subject did interest her, her brain tired less quickly than his. What he chiefly missed in her mind was the pedantic teleology—the sense of order and accuracy, the sense of life as a mysteriously correlated piece of patchwork, but he understood after a while that such a quality in her would have been incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each other's hearts. The day they left the hotel in Coronado she sat down on one of the beds while they were packing, and began to weep bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest—" His arms were around her; he pulled her head down upon his shoulder. "What is it, my own Gloria? Tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going away," she sobbed. "Oh, Anthony, it's sort of the first place we've lived together. Our two little beds here—side by side—they'll be always waiting for us, and we're never coming back to 'em any more."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was tearing at his heart as she always could. Sentiment came over him, rushed into his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, why, we're going on to another room. And two other little beds. We're going to be together all our lives."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Words flooded from her in a low husky voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it won't be—like our two beds—ever again. Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost—something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He held her passionately near, discerning far beyond any criticism of her sentiment, a wise grasping of the minute, if only an indulgence of her desire to cry—Gloria the idler, caresser of her own dreams, extracting poignancy from the memorable things of life and youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon when he returned from the station with the tickets he found her asleep on one of the beds, her arm curled about a black object which he could not at first identify. Coming closer he found it was one of his shoes, not a particularly new one, nor clean one, but her face, tear-stained, was pressed against it, and he understood her ancient and most honorable message. There was almost ecstasy in waking her and seeing her smile at him, shy but well aware of her own nicety of imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With no appraisal of the worth or dross of these two things, it seemed to Anthony that they lay somewhere near the heart of love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE GRAY HOUSE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing—oh, that eternal hand!—a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And this time with Gloria and Anthony, this first year of marriage, and the gray house caught them in that stage when the organ-grinder was slowly undergoing his inevitable metamorphosis. She was twenty-three; he was twenty-six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gray house was, at first, of sheerly pastoral intent. They lived impatiently in Anthony's apartment for the first fortnight after the return from California, in a stifled atmosphere of open trunks, too many callers, and the eternal laundry-bags. They discussed with their friends the stupendous problem of their future. Dick and Maury would sit with them agreeing solemnly, almost thoughtfully, as Anthony ran through his list of what they "ought" to do, and where they "ought" to live.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to take Gloria abroad," he complained, "except for this damn war—and next to that I'd sort of like to have a place in the country, somewhere near New York, of course, where I could write—or whatever I decide to do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't he cute?" she required of Maury. "'Whatever he decides to do!' But what am <i>I</i> going to do if he works? Maury, will you take me around if Anthony works?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anyway, I'm not going to work yet," said Anthony quickly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was vaguely understood between them that on some misty day he would enter a sort of glorified diplomatic service and be envied by princes and prime ministers for his beautiful wife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria helplessly, "I'm sure I don't know. We talk and talk and never get anywhere, and we ask all our friends and they just answer the way we want 'em to. I wish somebody'd take care of us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you go out to—out to Greenwich or something?" suggested Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like that," said Gloria, brightening. "Do you think we could get a house there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick shrugged his shoulders and Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You two amuse me," he said. "Of all the unpractical people! As soon as a place is mentioned you expect us to pull great piles of photographs out of our pockets showing the different styles of architecture available in bungalows."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's just what I don't want," wailed Gloria, "a hot stuffy bungalow, with a lot of babies next door and their father cutting the grass in his shirt sleeves——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For Heaven's sake, Gloria," interrupted Maury, "nobody wants to lock you up in a bungalow. Who in God's name brought bungalows into the conversation? But you'll never get a place anywhere unless you go out and hunt for it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go where? You say 'go out and hunt for it,' but where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With dignity Maury waved his hand paw-like about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Out anywhere. Out in the country. There're lots of places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look here!" Richard Caramel brought his yellow eye rakishly into play. "The trouble with you two is that you're all disorganized. Do you know anything about New York State? Shut up, Anthony, I'm talking to Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," she admitted finally, "I've been to two or three house parties in Portchester and around in Connecticut—but, of course, that isn't in New York State, is it? And neither is Morristown," she finished with drowsy irrelevance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a shout of laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Lord!" cried Dick, "neither is Morristown!' No, and neither is Santa Barbara, Gloria. Now listen. To begin with, unless you have a fortune there's no use considering any place like Newport or Southhampton or Tuxedo. They're out of the question."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed to this solemnly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And personally I hate New Jersey. Then, of course, there's upper New York, above Tuxedo."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> "Too cold," said Gloria briefly. "I was there once in an automobile."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it seems to me there're a lot of towns like Rye between New York and Greenwich where you could buy a little gray house of some——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria leaped at the phrase triumphantly. For the first time since their return East she knew what she wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>yes!</i>" she cried. "Oh, <i>yes!</i> that's it: a little gray house with sort of white around and a whole lot of swamp maples just as brown and gold as an October picture in a gallery. Where can we find one?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Unfortunately, I've mislaid my list of little gray houses with swamp maples around them—but I'll try to find it. Meanwhile you take a piece of paper and write down the names of seven possible towns. And every day this week you take a trip to one of those towns."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" protested Gloria, collapsing mentally, "why won't you do it for us? I hate trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, hire a car, and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm tired of discussing it. Seems to me all we do is talk about where to live."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My exquisite wife wearies of thought," remarked Anthony ironically. "She must have a tomato sandwich to stimulate her jaded nerves. Let's go out to tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the unfortunate upshot of this conversation, they took Dick's advice literally, and two days later went out to Rye, where they wandered around with an irritated real estate agent, like bewildered babes in the wood. They were shown houses at a hundred a month which closely adjoined other houses at a hundred a month; they were shown isolated houses to which they invariably took violent dislikes, though they submitted weakly to the agent's desire that they "look at that stove—some stove!" and to a great shaking of doorposts and tapping of walls, intended evidently to show that the house would not immediately collapse, no matter how convincingly it gave that impression. They gazed through windows into interiors furnished either "commercially" with slab-like chairs and unyielding settees, or "home-like" with the melancholy bric-à-brac of other summers—crossed tennis rackets, fit-form couches, and depressing Gibson girls. With a feeling of guilt they looked at a few really nice houses, aloof, dignified, and cool—at three hundred a month. They went away from Rye thanking the real estate agent very much indeed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the crowded train back to New York the seat behind was occupied by a super-respirating Latin whose last few meals had obviously been composed entirely of garlic. They reached the apartment gratefully, almost hysterically, and Gloria rushed for a hot bath in the reproachless bathroom. So far as the question of a future abode was concerned both of them were incapacitated for a week.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The matter eventually worked itself out with unhoped-for romance. Anthony ran into the living room one afternoon fairly radiating "the idea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "I've got it," he was exclaiming as though he had just caught a mouse. "We'll get a car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gee whiz! Haven't we got troubles enough taking care of ourselves?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, rural, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me a second to explain, can't you? Just let's leave our stuff with Dick and just pile a couple of suitcases in our car, the one we're going to buy—we'll have to have one in the country anyway—and just start out in the direction of New Haven. You see, as we get out of commuting distance from New York, the rents'll get cheaper, and as soon as we find a house we want we'll just settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> By his frequent and soothing interpolation of the word "just" he aroused her lethargic enthusiasm. Strutting violently about the room, he simulated a dynamic and irresistible efficiency. "We'll buy a car to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, city, urban, navigation, affect, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> Life, limping after imagination's ten-league boots, saw them out of town a week later in a cheap but sparkling new roadster, saw them through the chaotic unintelligible Bronx, then over a wide murky district which alternated cheerless blue-green wastes with suburbs of tremendous and sordid activity. They left New York at eleven and it was well past a hot and beatific noon when they moved rakishly through Pelham.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "These aren't towns," said Gloria scornfully, "these are just city blocks plumped down coldly into waste acres. I imagine all the men here have their mustaches stained from drinking their coffee too quickly in the morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And play pinochle on the commuting trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's pinochle?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't be so literal. How should I know? But it sounds as though they ought to play it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I like it. It sounds as if it were something where you sort of cracked your knuckles or something. . . . Let me drive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony looked at her suspiciously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "You swear you're a good driver?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Since I was fourteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road side, safety, driver, sound, pleasure, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He stopped the car cautiously at the side of the road and they changed seats. Then with a horrible grinding noise the car was put in gear, Gloria adding an accompaniment of laughter which seemed to Anthony disquieting and in the worst possible taste.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" she yelled. "Whoo-oop!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, haptic, car, driving, traffic, risk, affect, driver, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> Their heads snapped back like marionettes on a single wire as the car leaped ahead and curved retchingly about a standing milk-wagon, whose driver stood up on his seat and bellowed after them. In the immemorial tradition of the road Anthony retorted with a few brief epigrams as to the grossness of the milk-delivering profession. He cut his remarks short, however, and turned to Gloria with the growing conviction that he had made a grave mistake in relinquishing control and that Gloria was a driver of many eccentricities and of infinite carelessness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Remember now!" he warned her nervously, "the man said we oughtn't to go over twenty miles an hour for the first five thousand miles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded briefly, but evidently intending to accomplish the prohibitive distance as quickly as possible, slightly increased her speed. A moment later he made another attempt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic sign, law, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "See that sign? Do you want to get us pinched?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, for Heaven's sake," cried Gloria in exasperation, "you <i>always</i> exaggerate things so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want to get arrested."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's arresting you? You're so persistent—just like you were about my cough medicine last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was for your own good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ha! I might as well be living with mama."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a thing to say to me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, visibility, speed, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> A standing policeman swerved into view, was hastily passed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See him?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you drive me crazy! He didn't arrest us, did he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When he does it'll be too late," countered Anthony brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her reply was scornful, almost injured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, this old thing won't <i>go</i> over thirty-five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It isn't old."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It is in spirit."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, train, risk, traffic, safety, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> That afternoon the car joined the laundry-bags and Gloria's appetite as one of the trinity of contention. He warned her of railroad tracks; he pointed out approaching automobiles; finally he insisted on taking the wheel and a furious, insulted Gloria sat silently beside him between the towns of Larchmont and Rye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="agency, driving, car part, affect, safety, traffic, navigation, road, macadam, gravel, road surface, tree, visibility, sunshine"><br /> <poem><br /> But it was due to this furious silence of hers that the gray house materialized from its abstraction, for just beyond Rye he surrendered gloomily to it and re-relinquished the wheel. Mutely he beseeched her and Gloria, instantly cheered, vowed to be more careful. But because a discourteous street-car persisted callously in remaining upon its track Gloria ducked down a side-street—and thereafter that afternoon was never able to find her way back to the Post Road. The street they finally mistook for it lost its Post-Road aspect when it had gone five miles from Cos Cob. Its macadam became gravel, then dirt—moreover, it narrowed and developed a border of maple trees, through which filtered the westering sun, making its endless experiments with shadow designs upon the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're lost now," complained Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Read that sign!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Marietta—Five Miles. What's Marietta?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "Never heard of it, but let's go on. We can't turn here and there's probably a detour back to the Post Road."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="road surface, road condition, road, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> The way became scarred with deepening ruts and insidious shoulders of stone. Three farmhouses faced them momentarily, slid by. A town sprang up in a cluster of dull roofs around a white tall steeple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, hesitating between two approaches, and making her choice too late, drove over a fire-hydrant and ripped the transmission violently from the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was dark when the real-estate agent of Marietta showed them the gray house. They came upon it just west of the village, where it rested against a sky that was a warm blue cloak buttoned with tiny stars. The gray house had been there when women who kept cats were probably witches, when Paul Revere made false teeth in Boston preparatory to arousing the great commercial people, when our ancestors were gloriously deserting Washington in droves. Since those days the house had been bolstered up in a feeble corner, considerably repartitioned and newly plastered inside, amplified by a kitchen and added to by a side-porch—but, save for where some jovial oaf had roofed the new kitchen with red tin, Colonial it defiantly remained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you happen to come to Marietta?" demanded the real-estate agent in a tone that was first cousin to suspicion. He was showing them through four spacious and airy bedrooms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, accident, driving, garage"><br /> <poem><br /> "We broke down," explained Gloria. "I drove over a fire-hydrant and we had ourselves towed to the garage and then we saw your sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man nodded, unable to follow such a sally of spontaneity. There was something subtly immoral in doing anything without several months' consideration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, pleasure, road, dust, summer, rain, sound, sunshine, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> They signed a lease that night and, in the agent's car, returned jubilantly to the somnolent and dilapidated Marietta Inn, which was too broken for even the chance immoralities and consequent gaieties of a country road-house. Half the night they lay awake planning the things they were to do there. Anthony was going to work at an astounding pace on his history and thus ingratiate himself with his cynical grandfather. . . . When the car was repaired they would explore the country and join the nearest "really nice" club, where Gloria would play golf "or something" while Anthony wrote. This, of course, was Anthony's idea—Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant still in a shadowy hinterland. Between paragraphs Anthony would come and kiss her as she lay indolently in the hammock. . . . The hammock! a host of new dreams in tune to its imagined rhythm, while the wind stirred it and waves of sun undulated over the shadows of blown wheat, or the dusty road freckled and darkened with quiet summer rain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And guests—here they had a long argument, both of them trying to be extraordinarily mature and far-sighted. Anthony claimed that they would need people at least every other week-end "as a sort of change." This provoked an involved and extremely sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him. . . . Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? Oh, what'll we do then?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll have a dog," suggested Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want one. I want a kitty." She went thoroughly and with great enthusiasm into the history, habits, and tastes of a cat she had once possessed. Anthony considered that it must have been a horrible character with neither personal magnetism nor a loyal heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later they slept, to wake an hour before dawn with the gray house dancing in phantom glory before their dazzled eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SOUL OF GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For that autumn the gray house welcomed them with a rush of sentiment that falsified its cynical old age. True, there were the laundry-bags, there was Gloria's appetite, there was Anthony's tendency to brood and his imaginative "nervousness," but there were intervals also of an unhoped-for serenity. Close together on the porch they would wait for the moon to stream across the silver acres of farmland, jump a thick wood and tumble waves of radiance at their feet. In such a moonlight Gloria's face was of a pervading, reminiscent white, and with a modicum of effort they would slip off the blinders of custom and each would find in the other almost the quintessential romance of the vanished June.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One night while her head lay upon his heart and their cigarettes glowed in swerving buttons of light through the dome of darkness over the bed, she spoke for the first time and fragmentarily of the men who had hung for brief moments on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you ever think of them?" he asked her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only occasionally—when something happens that recalls a particular man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you remember—their kisses?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All sorts of things. . . . Men are different with women."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Different in what way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, entirely—and quite inexpressibly. Men who had the most firmly rooted reputation for being this way or that would sometimes be surprisingly inconsistent with me. Brutal men were tender, negligible men were astonishingly loyal and lovable, and, often, honorable men took attitudes that were anything but honorable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For instance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there was a boy named Percy Wolcott from Cornell who was quite a hero in college, a great athlete, and saved a lot of people from a fire or something like that. But I soon found he was stupid in a rather dangerous way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems he had some naïve conception of a woman 'fit to be his wife,' a particular conception that I used to run into a lot and that always drove me wild. He demanded a girl who'd never been kissed and who liked to sew and sit home and pay tribute to his self-esteem. And I'll bet a hat if he's gotten an idiot to sit and be stupid with him he's tearing out on the side with some much speedier lady."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd be sorry for his wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wouldn't. Think what an ass she'd be not to realize it before she married him. He's the sort whose idea of honoring and respecting a woman would be never to give her any excitement. With the best intentions, he was deep in the dark ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was his attitude toward you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm coming to that. As I told you—or did I tell you?—he was mighty good-looking: big brown honest eyes and one of those smiles that guarantee the heart behind it is twenty-karat gold. Being young and credulous, I thought he had some discretion, so I kissed him fervently one night when we were riding around after a dance at the Homestead at Hot Springs. It had been a wonderful week, I remember—with the most luscious trees spread like green lather, sort of, all over the valley and a mist rising out of them on October mornings like bonfires lit to turn them brown——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about your friend with the ideals?" interrupted Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems that when he kissed me he began to think that perhaps he could get away with a little more, that I needn't be 'respected' like this Beatrice Fairfax glad-girl of his imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd he do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much. I pushed him off a sixteen-foot embankment before he was well started."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurt him?" inquired Anthony with a laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Broke his arm and sprained his ankle. He told the story all over Hot Springs, and when his arm healed a man named Barley who liked me fought him and broke it over again. Oh, it was all an awful mess. He threatened to sue Barley, and Barley—he was from Georgia—was seen buying a gun in town. But before that mama had dragged me North again, much against my will, so I never did find out all that happened—though I saw Barley once in the Vanderbilt lobby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed long and loud.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a career! I suppose I ought to be furious because you've kissed so many men. I'm not, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this she sat up in bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's funny, but I'm so sure that those kisses left no mark on me—no taint of promiscuity, I mean—even though a man once told me in all seriousness that he hated to think I'd been a public drinking glass."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He had his nerve."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just laughed and told him to think of me rather as a loving-cup that goes from hand to hand but should be valued none the less."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Somehow it doesn't bother me—on the other hand it would, of course, if you'd done any more than kiss them. But I believe <i>you're</i> absolutely incapable of jealousy except as hurt vanity. Why don't you care what I've done? Wouldn't you prefer it if I'd been absolutely innocent?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all in the impression it might have made on you. <i>My</i> kisses were because the man was good-looking, or because there was a slick moon, or even because I've felt vaguely sentimental and a little stirred. But that's all—it's had utterly no effect on me. But you'd remember and let memories haunt you and worry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever kissed any one like you've kissed me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," she answered simply. "As I've told you, men have tried—oh, lots of things. Any pretty girl has that experience. . . . You see," she resumed, "it doesn't matter to me how many women you've stayed with in the past, so long as it was merely a physical satisfaction, but I don't believe I could endure the idea of your ever having lived with another woman for a protracted period or even having wanted to marry some possible girl. It's different somehow. There'd be all the little intimacies remembered—and they'd dull that freshness that after all is the most precious part of love."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rapturously he pulled her down beside him on the pillow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my darling," he whispered, "as if I remembered anything but your dear kisses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, in a very mild voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, did I hear anybody say they were thirsty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed abruptly and with a sheepish and amused grin got out of bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "With just a <i>little</i> piece of ice in the water," she added. "Do you suppose I could have that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria used the adjective "little" whenever she asked a favor—it made the favor sound less arduous. But Anthony laughed again—whether she wanted a cake of ice or a marble of it, he must go down-stairs to the kitchen. . . . Her voice followed him through the hall: "And just a <i>little</i> cracker with just a <i>little</i> marmalade on it. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" sighed Anthony in rapturous slang, "she's wonderful, that girl! She <i>has</i> it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When we have a baby," she began one day—this, it had already been decided, was to be after three years—"I want it to look like you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except its legs," he insinuated slyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, except his legs. He's got to have my legs. But the rest of him can be you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My nose?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, perhaps my nose. But certainly your eyes—and my mouth, and I guess my shape of the face. I wonder; I think he'd be sort of cute if he had my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Gloria, you've appropriated the whole baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I didn't mean to," she apologized cheerfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let him have my neck at least," he urged, regarding himself gravely in the glass. "You've often said you liked my neck because the Adam's apple doesn't show, and, besides, your neck's too short."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, it is <i>not</i>!" she cried indignantly, turning to the mirror, "it's just right. I don't believe I've ever seen a better neck."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's too short," he repeated teasingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Short?" Her tone expressed exasperated wonder. "Short? You're crazy!" She elongated and contracted it to convince herself of its reptilian sinuousness. "Do you call <i>that</i> a short neck?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of the shortest I've ever seen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For the first time in weeks tears started from Gloria's eyes and the look she gave him had a quality of real pain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My Lord, Gloria!" He approached her in bewilderment and took her elbows in his hands. "Don't cry, <i>please!</i> Didn't you know I was only kidding? Gloria, look at me! Why, dearest, you've got the longest neck I've ever seen. Honestly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her tears dissolved in a twisted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—you shouldn't have said that, then. Let's talk about the b-baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony paced the floor and spoke as though rehearsing for a debate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To put it briefly, there are two babies we could have, two distinct and logical babies, utterly differentiated. There's the baby that's the combination of the best of both of us. Your body, my eyes, my mind, your intelligence—and then there is the baby which is our worst—my body, your disposition, and my irresolution."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like that second baby," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What I'd really like," continued Anthony, "would be to have two sets of triplets one year apart and then experiment with the six boys——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor me," she interjected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—I'd educate them each in a different country and by a different system and when they were twenty-three I'd call them together and see what they were like."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's have 'em all with my neck," suggested Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE END OF A CHAPTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, personification, agency, driving, driver, speed, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The car was at length repaired and with a deliberate vengeance took up where it left off the business of causing infinite dissension. Who should drive? How fast should Gloria go? These two questions and the eternal recriminations involved ran through the days. They motored to the Post-Road towns, Rye, Portchester, and Greenwich, and called on a dozen friends, mostly Gloria's, who all seemed to be in different stages of having babies and in this respect as well as in others bored her to a point of nervous distraction. For an hour after each visit she would bite her fingers furiously and be inclined to take out her rancor on Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I loathe women," she cried in a mild temper. "What on earth can you say to them—except talk 'lady-lady'? I've enthused over a dozen babies that I've wanted only to choke. And every one of those girls is either incipiently jealous and suspicious of her husband if he's charming or beginning to be bored with him if he isn't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever intend to see any women?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. They never seem clean to me—never—never. Except just a few. Constance Shaw—you know, the Mrs. Merriam who came over to see us last Tuesday—is almost the only one. She's so tall and fresh-looking and stately."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like them so tall."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though they went to several dinner dances at various country clubs, they decided that the autumn was too nearly over for them to "go out" on any scale, even had they been so inclined. He hated golf; Gloria liked it only mildly, and though she enjoyed a violent rush that some undergraduates gave her one night and was glad that Anthony should be proud of her beauty, she also perceived that their hostess for the evening, a Mrs. Granby, was somewhat disquieted by the fact that Anthony's classmate, Alec Granby, joined with enthusiasm in the rush. The Granbys never phoned again, and though Gloria laughed, it piqued her not a little.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see," she explained to Anthony, "if I wasn't married it wouldn't worry her—but she's been to the movies in her day and she thinks I may be a vampire. But the point is that placating such people requires an effort that I'm simply unwilling to make. . . . And those cute little freshmen making eyes at me and paying me idiotic compliments! I've grown up, Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Marietta itself offered little social life. Half a dozen farm-estates formed a hectagon around it, but these belonged to ancient men who displayed themselves only as inert, gray-thatched lumps in the back of limousines on their way to the station, whither they were sometimes accompanied by equally ancient and doubly massive wives. The townspeople were a particularly uninteresting type—unmarried females were predominant for the most part—with school-festival horizons and souls bleak as the forbidding white architecture of the three churches. The only native with whom they came into close contact was the broad-hipped, broad-shouldered Swedish girl who came every day to do their work. She was silent and efficient, and Gloria, after finding her weeping violently into her bowed arms upon the kitchen table, developed an uncanny fear of her and stopped complaining about the food. Because of her untold and esoteric grief the girl stayed on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's penchant for premonitions and her bursts of vague supernaturalism were a surprise to Anthony. Either some complex, properly and scientifically inhibited in the early years with her Bilphistic mother, or some inherited hypersensitiveness, made her susceptible to any suggestion of the psychic, and, far from gullible about the motives of people, she was inclined to credit any extraordinary happening attributed to the whimsical perambulations of the buried. The desperate squeakings about the old house on windy nights that to Anthony were burglars with revolvers ready in hand represented to Gloria the auras, evil and restive, of dead generations, expiating the inexpiable upon the ancient and romantic hearth. One night, because of two swift bangs down-stairs, which Anthony fearfully but unavailingly investigated, they lay awake nearly until dawn asking each other examination-paper questions about the history of the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In October Muriel came out for a two weeks' visit. Gloria had called her on long-distance, and Miss Kane ended the conversation characteristically by saying "All-ll-ll righty. I'll be there with bells!" She arrived with a dozen popular songs under her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to have a phonograph out here in the country," she said, "just a little Vic—they don't cost much. Then whenever you're lonesome you can have Caruso or Al Jolson right at your door."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She worried Anthony to distraction by telling him that "he was the first clever man she had ever known and she got so tired of shallow people." He wondered that people fell in love with such women. Yet he supposed that under a certain impassioned glance even she might take on a softness and promise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Gloria, violently showing off her love for Anthony, was diverted into a state of purring content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally Richard Caramel arrived for a garrulous and to Gloria painfully literary week-end, during which he discussed himself with Anthony long after she lay in childlike sleep up-stairs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been mighty funny, this success and all," said Dick. "Just before the novel appeared I'd been trying, without success, to sell some short stories. Then, after my book came out, I polished up three and had them accepted by one of the magazines that had rejected them before. I've done a lot of them since; publishers don't pay me for my book till this winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You mean write trash?" He considered. "If you mean deliberately injecting a slushy fade-out into each one, I'm not. But I don't suppose I'm being so careful. I'm certainly writing faster and I don't seem to be thinking as much as I used to. Perhaps it's because I don't get any conversation, now that you're married and Maury's gone to Philadelphia. Haven't the old urge and ambition. Early success and all that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Doesn't it worry you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Frantically. I get a thing I call sentence-fever that must be like buck-fever—it's a sort of intense literary self-consciousness that comes when I try to force myself. But the really awful days aren't when I think I can't write. They're when I wonder whether any writing is worth while at all—I mean whether I'm not a sort of glorified buffoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like to hear you talk that way," said Anthony with a touch of his old patronizing insolence. "I was afraid you'd gotten a bit idiotic over your work. Read the damnedest interview you gave out——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick interrupted with an agonized expression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good Lord! Don't mention it. Young lady wrote it—most admiring young lady. Kept telling me my work was 'strong,' and I sort of lost my head and made a lot of strange pronouncements. Some of it was good, though, don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; that part about the wise writer writing for the youth of his generation, the critic of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterward."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I believe a lot of it," admitted Richard Caramel with a faint beam. "It simply was a mistake to give it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In November they moved into Anthony's apartment, from which they sallied triumphantly to the Yale-Harvard and Harvard-Princeton football games, to the St. Nicholas ice-skating rink, to a thorough round of the theatres and to a miscellany of entertainments—from small, staid dances to the great affairs that Gloria loved, held in those few houses where lackeys with powdered wigs scurried around in magnificent Anglomania under the direction of gigantic majordomos. Their intention was to go abroad the first of the year or, at any rate, when the war was over. Anthony had actually completed a Chestertonian essay on the twelfth century by way of introduction to his proposed book and Gloria had done some extensive research work on the question of Russian sable coats—in fact the winter was approaching quite comfortably, when the Bilphistic demiurge decided suddenly in mid-December that Mrs. Gilbert's soul had aged sufficiently in its present incarnation. In consequence Anthony took a miserable and hysterical Gloria out to Kansas City, where, in the fashion of mankind, they paid the terrible and mind-shaking deference to the dead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert became, for the first and last time in his life, a truly pathetic figure. That woman he had broken to wait upon his body and play congregation to his mind had ironically deserted him—just when he could not much longer have supported her. Never again would he be able so satisfactorily to bore and bully a human soul.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (191-260)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SYMPOSIUM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA had lulled Anthony's mind to sleep. She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun. In those first years what he believed bore invariably the stamp of Gloria; he saw the sun always through the pattern of the curtain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a sort of lassitude that brought them back to Marietta for another summer. Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to Coronado, from Coronado to Santa Barbara, with no purpose more apparent than Gloria's desire to dance by different music or catch some infinitesimal variant among the changing colors of the sea. Out of the Pacific there rose to greet them savage rocklands and equally barbaric hostelries built that at tea-time one might drowse into a languid wicker bazaar glorified by the polo costumes of Southhampton and Lake Forest and Newport and Palm Beach. And, as the waves met and splashed and glittered in the most placid of the bays, so they joined this group and that, and with them shifted stations, murmuring ever of those strange unsubstantial gaieties in wait just over the next green and fruitful valley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A simple healthy leisure class it was—the best of the men not unpleasantly undergraduate—they seemed to be on a perpetual candidates list for some etherealized "Porcellian" or "Skull and Bones" extended out indefinitely into the world; the women, of more than average beauty, fragilely athletic, somewhat idiotic as hostesses but charming and infinitely decorative as guests. Sedately and gracefully they danced the steps of their selection in the balmy tea hours, accomplishing with a certain dignity the movements so horribly burlesqued by clerk and chorus girl the country over. It seemed ironic that in this lone and discredited offspring of the arts Americans should excel, unquestionably.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having danced and splashed through a lavish spring, Anthony and Gloria found that they had spent too much money and for this must go into retirement for a certain period. There was Anthony's "work," they said. Almost before they knew it they were back in the gray house, more aware now that other lovers had slept there, other names had been called over the banisters, other couples had sat upon the porch steps watching the gray-green fields and the black bulk of woods beyond.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the same Anthony, more restless, inclined to quicken only under the stimulus of several high-balls, faintly, almost imperceptibly, apathetic toward Gloria. But Gloria—she would be twenty-four in August and was in an attractive but sincere panic about it. Six years to thirty! Had she been less in love with Anthony her sense of the flight of time would have expressed itself in a reawakened interest in other men, in a deliberate intention of extracting a transient gleam of romance from every potential lover who glanced at her with lowered brows over a shining dinner table. She said to Anthony one day:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They were bound eastward through a parched and lifeless Indiana, and she had looked up from one of her beloved moving picture magazines to find a casual conversation suddenly turned grave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part, visibility, road, rural, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony frowned out the car window. As the track crossed a country road a farmer appeared momentarily in his wagon; he was chewing on a straw and was apparently the same farmer they had passed a dozen times before, sitting in silent and malignant symbolism. As Anthony turned to Gloria his frown intensified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You worry me," he objected; "I can imagine <i>wanting</i> another woman under certain transitory circumstances, but I can't imagine taking her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't feel that way, Anthony. I can't be bothered resisting things I want. My way is not to want them—to want nobody but you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet when I think that if you just happened to take a fancy to some one——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't be an idiot!" she exclaimed. "There'd be nothing casual about it. And I can't even imagine the possibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This emphatically closed the conversation. Anthony's unfailing appreciation made her happier in his company than in any one's else. She definitely enjoyed him—she loved him. So the summer began very much as had the one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, however, one radical change in ménage. The icy-hearted Scandinavian, whose austere cooking and sardonic manner of waiting on table had so depressed Gloria, gave way to an exceedingly efficient Japanese whose name was Tanalahaka, but who confessed that he heeded any summons which included the dissyllable "Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana was unusually small even for a Japanese, and displayed a somewhat naïve conception of himself as a man of the world. On the day of his arrival from "R. Gugimoniki, Japanese Reliable Employment Agency," he called Anthony into his room to see the treasures of his trunk. These included a large collection of Japanese post cards, which he was all for explaining to his employer at once, individually and at great length. Among them were half a dozen of pornographic intent and plainly of American origin, though the makers had modestly omitted both their names and the form for mailing. He next brought out some of his own handiwork—a pair of American pants, which he had made himself, and two suits of solid silk underwear. He informed Anthony confidentially as to the purpose for which these latter were reserved. The next exhibit was a rather good copy of an etching of Abraham Lincoln, to whose face he had given an unmistakable Japanese cast. Last came a flute; he had made it himself but it was broken: he was going to fix it soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After these polite formalities, which Anthony conjectured must be native to Japan, Tana delivered a long harangue in splintered English on the relation of master and servant from which Anthony gathered that he had worked on large estates but had always quarrelled with the other servants because they were not honest. They had a great time over the word "honest," and in fact became rather irritated with each other, because Anthony persisted stubbornly that Tana was trying to say "hornets," and even went to the extent of buzzing in the manner of a bee and flapping his arms to imitate wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After three-quarters of an hour Anthony was released with the warm assurance that they would have other nice chats in which Tana would tell "how we do in my countree."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such was Tana's garrulous première in the gray house—and he fulfilled its promise. Though he was conscientious and honorable, he was unquestionably a terrific bore. He seemed unable to control his tongue, sometimes continuing from paragraph to paragraph with a look akin to pain in his small brown eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sunday and Monday afternoons he read the comic sections of the newspapers. One cartoon which contained a facetious Japanese butler diverted him enormously, though he claimed that the protagonist, who to Anthony appeared clearly Oriental, had really an American face. The difficulty with the funny paper was that when, aided by Anthony, he had spelled out the last three pictures and assimilated their context with a concentration surely adequate for Kant's "Critique," he had entirely forgotten what the first pictures were about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the middle of June Anthony and Gloria celebrated their first anniversary by having a "date." Anthony knocked at the door and she ran to let him in. Then they sat together on the couch calling over those names they had made for each other, new combinations of endearments ages old. Yet to this "date" was appended no attenuated good-night with its ecstasy of regret.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in June horror leered out at Gloria, struck at her and frightened her bright soul back half a generation. Then slowly it faded out, faded back into that impenetrable darkness whence it had come—taking relentlessly its modicum of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With an infallible sense of the dramatic it chose a little railroad station in a wretched village near Portchester. The station platform lay all day bare as a prairie, exposed to the dusty yellow sun and to the glance of that most obnoxious type of countryman who lives near a metropolis and has attained its cheap smartness without its urbanity. A dozen of these yokels, red-eyed, cheerless as scarecrows, saw the incident. Dimly it passed across their confused and uncomprehending minds, taken at its broadest for a coarse joke, at its subtlest for a "shame." Meanwhile there upon the platform a measure of brightness faded from the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With Eric Merriam, Anthony had been sitting over a decanter of Scotch all the hot summer afternoon, while Gloria and Constance Merriam swam and sunned themselves at the Beach Club, the latter under a striped parasol-awning, Gloria stretched sensuously upon the soft hot sand, tanning her inevitable legs. Later they had all four played with inconsequential sandwiches; then Gloria had risen, tapping Anthony's knee with her parasol to get his attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to go, dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now?" He looked at her unwillingly. At that moment nothing seemed of more importance than to idle on that shady porch drinking mellowed Scotch, while his host reminisced interminably on the byplay of some forgotten political campaign.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've really got to go," repeated Gloria. "We can get a taxi to the station. . . . Come on, Anthony!" she commanded a bit more imperiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now see here—" Merriam, his yarn cut off, made conventional objections, meanwhile provocatively filling his guest's glass with a high-ball that should have been sipped through ten minutes. But at Gloria's annoyed "We really <i>must!</i>" Anthony drank it off, got to his feet and made an elaborate bow to his hostess.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems we 'must,'" he said, with little grace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> In a minute he was following Gloria down a garden-walk between tall rose-bushes, her parasol brushing gently the June-blooming leaves. Most inconsiderate, he thought, as they reached the road. He felt with injured naïvete that Gloria should not have interrupted such innocent and harmless enjoyment. The whiskey had both soothed and clarified the restless things in his mind. It occurred to him that she had taken this same attitude several times before. Was he always to retreat from pleasant episodes at a touch of her parasol or a flicker of her eye? His unwillingness blurred to ill will, which rose within him like a resistless bubble. He kept silent, perversely inhibiting a desire to reproach her. They found a taxi in front of the Inn; rode silently to the little station. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Anthony knew what he wanted—to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go over to see the Barneses," he said without looking at her. "I don't feel like going home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Mrs. Barnes, née Rachael Jerryl, had a summer place several miles from Redgate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We went there day before yesterday," she answered shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure they'd be glad to see us." He felt that that was not a strong enough note, braced himself stubbornly, and added: "I want to see the Barneses. I haven't any desire to go home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I haven't any desire to go to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly they stared at each other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony," she said with annoyance, "this is Sunday night and they probably have guests for supper. Why we should go in at this hour——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why couldn't we have stayed at the Merriams'?" he burst out. "Why go home when we were having a perfectly decent time? They asked us to supper."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They had to. Give me the money and I'll get the railroad tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly will not! I'm in no humor for a ride in that damn hot train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria stamped her foot on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, you act as if you're tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary, I'm perfectly sober."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But his voice had slipped into a husky key and she knew with certainty that this was untrue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're sober you'll give me the money for the tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was too late to talk to him that way. In his mind was but one idea—that Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily a dull and sullen hate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go in the train," he said, his voice trembling a little with anger. "We're going to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not!" she cried. "If you go I'm going home alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word she turned toward the ticket office; simultaneously he remembered that she had some money with her and that this was not the sort of victory he wanted, the sort he must have. He took a step after her and seized her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here!" he muttered, "you're <i>not</i> going alone!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly am—why, Anthony!" This exclamation as she tried to pull away from him and he only tightened his grasp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked at her with narrowed and malicious eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go!" Her cry had a quality of fierceness. "If you have <i>any</i> decency you'll let go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?" He knew why. But he took a confused and not quite confident pride in holding her there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going home, do you understand? And you're going to let me go!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes were burning now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to make a scene here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say you're not going! I'm tired of your eternal selfishness!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I only want to go home." Two wrathful tears started from her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This time you're going to do what <i>I</i> say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly her body straightened: her head went back in a gesture of infinite scorn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hate you!" Her low words were expelled like venom through her clenched teeth. "Oh, <i>let</i> me go! Oh, I <i>hate</i> you!" She tried to jerk herself away but he only grasped the other arm. "I hate you! I hate you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At Gloria's fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you brute!" she sobbed. "Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, if there was one <i>man</i> here you couldn't do this! You couldn't do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct—until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta," he said with fine reserve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For answer Gloria seized his hand with both of hers and raising it to her mouth bit deeply into his thumb. He scarcely noticed the pain; seeing the blood spurt he absent-mindedly drew out his handkerchief and wrapped the wound. That too was part of the triumph he supposed—it was inevitable that defeat should thus be resented—and as such was beneath notice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was sobbing, almost without tears, profoundly and bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go! I won't go! You—can't—make—me—go! You've—you've killed any love I ever had for you, and any respect. But all that's left in me would die before I'd move from this place. Oh, if I'd thought <i>you'd</i> lay your hands on me——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're going with me," he said brutally, "if I have to carry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, car part, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He turned, beckoned to a taxicab, told the driver to go to Marietta. The man dismounted and swung the door open. Anthony faced his wife and said between his clenched teeth:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will you get in?—or will I <i>put</i> you in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> With a subdued cry of infinite pain and despair she yielded herself up and got into the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, affect, twilight, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> All the long ride, through the increasing dark of twilight, she sat huddled in her side of the car, her silence broken by an occasional dry and solitary sob. Anthony stared out the window, his mind working dully on the slowly changing significance of what had occurred. Something was wrong—that last cry of Gloria's had struck a chord which echoed posthumously and with incongruous disquiet in his heart. He must be right—yet, she seemed such a pathetic little thing now, broken and dispirited, humiliated beyond the measure of her lot to bear. The sleeves of her dress were torn; her parasol was gone, forgotten on the platform. It was a new costume, he remembered, and she had been so proud of it that very morning when they had left the house. . . . He began wondering if any one they knew had seen the incident. And persistently there recurred to him her cry:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All that's left in me would die——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This gave him a confused and increasing worry. It fitted so well with the Gloria who lay in the corner—no longer a proud Gloria, nor any Gloria he had known. He asked himself if it were possible. While he did not believe she would cease to love him—this, of course, was unthinkable—it was yet problematical whether Gloria without her arrogance, her independence, her virginal confidence and courage, would be the girl of his glory, the radiant woman who was precious and charming because she was ineffably, triumphantly herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was very drunk even then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on his bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after one o'clock and the hall seemed extraordinarily quiet when Gloria, wide-eyed and sleepless, traversed it and pushed open the door of his room. He had been too befuddled to open the windows and the air was stale and thick with whiskey. She stood for a moment by his bed, a slender, exquisitely graceful figure in her boyish silk pajamas—then with abandon she flung herself upon him, half waking him in the frantic emotion of her embrace, dropping her warm tears upon his throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony!" she cried passionately, "oh, my darling, you don't know what you did!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seemed, last night," she said gravely, her fingers playing in his hair, "that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you, but never in quite the same way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, she was aware even then that she would forget in time and that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. After that morning the incident was never mentioned and its deep wound healed with Anthony's hand—and if there was triumph some darker force than theirs possessed it, possessed the knowledge and the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIETZSCHEAN INCIDENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony's fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle "Never give a damn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not for anything or anybody," she said, "except myself and, by implication, for Anthony. That's the rule of all life and if it weren't I'd be that way anyhow. Nobody'd do anything for me if it didn't gratify them to, and I'd do as little for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was on the front porch of the nicest lady in Marietta when she said this, and as she finished she gave a curious little cry and sank in a dead faint to the porch floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> The lady brought her to and drove her home in her car. It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably with child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay upon the long lounge down-stairs. Day was slipping warmly out the window, touching the late roses on the porch pillars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All I think of ever is that I love you," she wailed. "I value my body because you think it's beautiful. And this body of mine—of yours—to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable. Oh, Anthony, I'm not afraid of the pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He consoled her desperately—but in vain. She continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then afterward I might have wide hips and be pale, with all my freshness gone and no radiance in my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, asking:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it certain?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>I</i> don't know anything. I've always hated obstrics, or whatever you call them. I thought I'd have a child some time. But not now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for God's sake don't lie there and go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her sobs lapsed. She drew down a merciful silence from the twilight which filled the room. "Turn on the lights," she pleaded. "These days seem so short—June seemed—to—have—longer days when I was a little girl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lights snapped on and it was as though blue drapes of softest silk had been dropped behind the windows and the door. Her pallor, her immobility, without grief now, or joy, awoke his sympathy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want me to have it?" she asked listlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm indifferent. That is, I'm neutral. If you have it I'll probably be glad. If you don't—well, that's all right too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd make up your mind one way or the other!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Suppose you make up <i>your</i> mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She looked at him contemptuously, scorning to answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd think you'd been singled out of all the women in the world for this crowning indignity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if I do!" she cried angrily. "It isn't an indignity for them. It's their one excuse for living. It's the one thing they're good for. It <i>is</i> an indignity for <i>me.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here, Gloria, I'm with you whatever you do, but for God's sake be a sport about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't <i>fuss</i> at me!" she wailed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book from the shelf and dropped into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense on the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll drive over and see Constance Merriam to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. And I'll go to Tarrytown and see Grampa."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—You see," she added, "it isn't that I'm afraid—of this or anything else. I'm being true to me, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," he agreed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE PRACTICAL MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls; atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his hand together with "Photographic Histories of the World War," official Explain-alls, and the "Personal Impressions" of war correspondents and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during Anthony's visit his grandfather's secretary, Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time "Accomplished Gin-physician" of "Pat's Place" in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would appear with an extra. The old man attacked each paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for preservation and thrusting them into one of his already bulging files.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what have you been doing?" he asked Anthony blandly. "Nothing? Well, I thought so. I've been intending to drive over and see you, all summer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been writing. Don't you remember the essay I sent you—the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Essay? You never sent <i>me</i> any essay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch shook his head mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no. You never sent <i>me</i> any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you read it, Grampa," insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, "you read it and disagreed with it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth, displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing his error and covering it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you're writing," he said quickly. "Well, why don't you go over and write about these Germans? Write something real, something about what's going on, something people can read."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anybody can't be a war correspondent," objected Anthony. "You have to have some newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can't spare the money to go over as a free-lance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll send you over," suggested his grandfather surprisingly. "I'll get you over as an authorized correspondent of any newspaper you pick out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony recoiled from the idea—almost simultaneously he bounded toward it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—don't—know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have to leave Gloria, whose whole life yearned toward him and enfolded him. Gloria was in trouble. Oh, the thing wasn't feasible—yet—he saw himself in khaki, leaning, as all war correspondents lean, upon a heavy stick, portfolio at shoulder—trying to look like an Englishman. "I'd like to think it over," he confessed. "It's certainly very kind of you. I'll think it over and I'll let you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thinking it over absorbed him on the journey to New York. He had had one of those sudden flashes of illumination vouchsafed to all men who are dominated by a strong and beloved woman, which show them a world of harder men, more fiercely trained and grappling with the abstractions of thought and war. In that world the arms of Gloria would exist only as the hot embrace of a chance mistress, coolly sought and quickly forgotten. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These unfamiliar phantoms were crowding closely about him when he boarded his train for Marietta, in the Grand Central Station. The car was crowded; he secured the last vacant seat and it was only after several minutes that he gave even a casual glance to the man beside him. When he did he saw a heavy lay of jaw and nose, a curved chin and small, puffed-under eyes. In a moment he recognized Joseph Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously they both half rose, were half embarrassed, and exchanged what amounted to a half handshake. Then, as though to complete the matter, they both half laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Anthony without inspiration, "I haven't seen you for a long time." Immediately he regretted his words and started to add: "I didn't know you lived out this way." But Bloeckman anticipated him by asking pleasantly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How's your wife? . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's very well. How've you been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Excellent." His tone amplified the grandeur of the word.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It seemed to Anthony that during the last year Bloeckman had grown tremendously in dignity. The boiled look was gone, he seemed "done" at last. In addition he was no longer overdressed. The inappropriate facetiousness he had affected in ties had given way to a sturdy dark pattern, and his right hand, which had formerly displayed two heavy rings, was now innocent of ornament and even without the raw glow of a manicure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This dignity appeared also in his personality. The last aura of the successful travelling-man had faded from him, that deliberate ingratiation of which the lowest form is the bawdy joke in the Pullman smoker. One imagined that, having been fawned upon financially, he had attained aloofness; having been snubbed socially, he had acquired reticence. But whatever had given him weight instead of bulk, Anthony no longer felt a correct superiority in his presence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you remember Caramel, Richard Caramel? I believe you met him one night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember. He was writing a book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he sold it to the movies. Then they had some scenario man named Jordan work on it. Well, Dick subscribes to a clipping bureau and he's furious because about half the movie reviewers speak of the 'power and strength of William Jordan's "Demon Lover."' Didn't mention old Dick at all. You'd think this fellow Jordan had actually conceived and developed the thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman nodded comprehensively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Most of the contracts state that the original writer's name goes into all the paid publicity. Is Caramel still writing?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes. Writing hard. Short stories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, that's fine, that's fine. . . . You on this train often?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About once a week. We live in Marietta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is that so? Well, well! I live near Cos Cob myself. Bought a place there only recently. We're only five miles apart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll have to come and see us." Anthony was surprised at his own courtesy. "I'm sure Gloria'd be delighted to see an old friend. Anybody'll tell you where the house is—it's our second season there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you." Then, as though returning a complementary politeness: "How is your grandfather?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's been well. I had lunch with him to-day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A great character," said Bloeckman severely. "A fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE TRIUMPH OF LETHARGY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony found his wife deep in the porch hammock voluptuously engaged with a lemonade and a tomato sandwich and carrying on an apparently cheery conversation with Tana upon one of Tana's complicated themes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In my countree," Anthony recognized his invariable preface, "all time—peoples—eat rice—because haven't got. Cannot eat what no have got." Had his nationality not been desperately apparent one would have thought he had acquired his knowledge of his native land from American primary-school geographies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When the Oriental had been squelched and dismissed to the kitchen, Anthony turned questioningly to Gloria:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all right," she announced, smiling broadly. "And it surprised me more than it does you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's no doubt?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None! Couldn't be!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They rejoiced happily, gay again with reborn irresponsibility. Then he told her of his opportunity to go abroad, and that he was almost ashamed to reject it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do <i>you</i> think? Just tell me frankly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony!" Her eyes were startled. "Do you want to go? Without me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His face fell—yet he knew, with his wife's question, that it was too late. Her arms, sweet and strangling, were around him, for he had made all such choices back in that room in the Plaza the year before. This was an anachronism from an age of such dreams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he lied, in a great burst of comprehension, "of course I don't. I was thinking you might go as a nurse or something." He wondered dully if his grandfather would consider this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As she smiled he realized again how beautiful she was, a gorgeous girl of miraculous freshness and sheerly honorable eyes. She embraced his suggestion with luxurious intensity, holding it aloft like a sun of her own making and basking in its beams. She strung together an amazing synopsis for an extravaganza of martial adventure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After supper, surfeited with the subject, she yawned. She wanted not to talk but only to read "Penrod," stretched upon the lounge until at midnight she fell asleep. But Anthony, after he had carried her romantically up the stairs, stayed awake to brood upon the day, vaguely angry with her, vaguely dissatisfied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I going to do?" he began at breakfast. "Here we've been married a year and we've just worried around without even being efficient people of leisure."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you ought to do something," she admitted, being in an agreeable and loquacious humor. This was not the first of these discussions, but as they usually developed Anthony in the rôle of protagonist, she had come to avoid them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work," he continued, "but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How you've changed!" remarked Gloria. "Once you told me you didn't see why an American couldn't loaf gracefully."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, damn it, I wasn't married. And the old mind was working at top speed and now it's going round and round like a cog-wheel with nothing to catch it. As a matter of fact I think that if I hadn't met you I <i>would</i> have done something. But you make leisure so subtly attractive——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it's all my fault——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I didn't mean that, and you know I didn't. But here I'm almost twenty-seven and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she interrupted in vexation, "you make me tired! Talking as though I were objecting or hindering you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was just discussing it, Gloria. Can't I discuss——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd be strong enough to settle——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—something with you without——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—your own problems without coming to me. You <i>talk</i> a lot about going to work. I could use more money very easily, but <i>I'm</i> not complaining. Whether you work or not I love you." Her last words were gentle as fine snow upon hard ground. But for the moment neither was attending to the other—they were each engaged in polishing and perfecting his own attitude.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have worked—some." This by Anthony was an imprudent bringing up of raw reserves. Gloria laughed, torn between delight and derision; she resented his sophistry as at the same time she admired his nonchalance. She would never blame him for being the ineffectual idler so long as he did it sincerely, from the attitude that nothing much was worth doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Work!" she scoffed. "Oh, you sad bird! You bluffer! Work—that means a great arranging of the desk and the lights, a great sharpening of pencils, and 'Gloria, don't sing!' and 'Please keep that damn Tana away from me,' and 'Let me read you my opening sentence,' and 'I won't be through for a long time, Gloria, so don't stay up for me,' and a tremendous consumption of tea or coffee. And that's all. In just about an hour I hear the old pencil stop scratching and look over. You've got out a book and you're 'looking up' something. Then you're reading. Then yawns—then bed and a great tossing about because you're all full of caffeine and can't sleep. Two weeks later the whole performance over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With much difficulty Anthony retained a scanty breech-clout of dignity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that's a <i>slight</i> exaggeration. You know <i>darn well</i> I sold an essay to The Florentine—and it attracted a lot of attention considering the circulation of The Florentine. And what's more, Gloria, you know I sat up till five o'clock in the morning finishing it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lapsed into silence, giving him rope. And if he had not hanged himself he had certainly come to the end of it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At least," he concluded feebly, "I'm perfectly willing to be a war correspondent."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But so was Gloria. They were both willing—anxious; they assured each other of it. The evening ended on a note of tremendous sentiment, the majesty of leisure, the ill health of Adam Patch, love at any cost.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony!" she called over the banister one afternoon a week later, "there's some one at the door." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, who had been lolling in the hammock on the sun-speckled south porch, strolled around to the front of the house. A foreign car, large and impressive, crouched like an immense and saturnine bug at the foot of the path. A man in a soft pongee suit, with cap to match, hailed him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there, Patch. Ran over to call on you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Bloeckman; as always, infinitesimally improved, of subtler intonation, of more convincing ease.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm awfully glad you did." Anthony raised his voice to a vine-covered window: "Glor-i-<i>a</i>! We've got a visitor!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm in the tub," wailed Gloria politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a smile the two men acknowledged the triumph of her alibi.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She'll be down. Come round here on the side-porch. Like a drink? Gloria's always in the tub—good third of every day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Pity she doesn't live on the Sound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can't afford it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As coming from Adam Patch's grandson, Bloeckman took this as a form of pleasantry. After fifteen minutes filled with estimable brilliancies, Gloria appeared, fresh in starched yellow, bringing atmosphere and an increase of vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to be a successful sensation in the movies," she announced. "I hear that Mary Pickford makes a million dollars annually."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You could, you know," said Bloeckman. "I think you'd film very well."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Would you let me, Anthony? If I only play unsophisticated rôles?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the conversation continued in stilted commas, Anthony wondered that to him and Bloeckman both this girl had once been the most stimulating, the most tonic personality they had ever known—and now the three sat like overoiled machines, without conflict, without fear, without elation, heavily enamelled little figures secure beyond enjoyment in a world where death and war, dull emotion and noble savagery were covering a continent with the smoke of terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose. . . . Life was no more than this summer afternoon; a faint wind stirring the lace collar of Gloria's dress; the slow baking drowsiness of the veranda. . . . Intolerably unmoved they all seemed, removed from any romantic imminency of action. Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Any day next week," Bloeckman was saying to Gloria. "Here—take this card. What they do is to give you a test of about three hundred feet of film, and they can tell pretty accurately from that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about Wednesday?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wednesday's fine. Just phone me and I'll go around with you——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, dust, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He was on his feet, shaking hands briskly—then his car was a wraith of dust down the road. Anthony turned to his wife in bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't mind if I have a trial, Anthony. Just a trial? I've got to go to town Wednesday, <i>any</i>how."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it's so silly! You don't want to go into the movies—moon around a studio all day with a lot of cheap chorus people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lot of mooning around Mary Pickford does!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody isn't a Mary Pickford."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't see how you'd object to my <i>try</i>ing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do, though. I hate actors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you make me tired. Do you imagine I have a very thrilling time dozing on this damn porch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wouldn't mind if you loved me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course I love you," she said impatiently, making out a quick case for herself. "It's just because I do that I hate to see you go to pieces by just lying around and saying you ought to work. Perhaps if I <i>did</i> go into this for a while it'd stir you up so you'd do something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's just your craving for excitement, that's all it is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe it is! It's a perfectly natural craving, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you go to the movies I'm going to Europe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, go on then! <i>I'm</i> not stopping you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To show she was not stopping him she melted into melancholy tears. Together they marshalled the armies of sentiment—words, kisses, endearments, self-reproaches. They attained nothing. Inevitably they attained nothing. Finally, in a burst of gargantuan emotion each of them sat down and wrote a letter. Anthony's was to his grandfather; Gloria's was to Joseph Bloeckman. It was a triumph of lethargy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One day early in July Anthony, returned from an afternoon in New York, called up-stairs to Gloria. Receiving no answer he guessed she was asleep and so went into the pantry for one of the little sandwiches that were always prepared for them. He found Tana seated at the kitchen table before a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends—cigar-boxes, knives, pencils, the tops of cans, and some scraps of paper covered with elaborate figures and diagrams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil you doing?" demanded Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana politely grinned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I show you," he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I tell——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You making a dog-house?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, sa." Tana grinned again. "Make typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Typewriter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sa. I think, oh all time I think, lie in bed think 'bout typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you thought you'd make one, eh?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, munching a sandwich, leaned leisurely against the sink. Tana opened and closed his mouth several times as though testing its capacity for action. Then with a rush he began:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I been think—typewutta—has, oh, many many many many <i>thing</i>. Oh many many many many." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Many keys. I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No-o? <i>Yes</i>—key! Many many many many lettah. Like so a-b-c."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you're right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell." He screwed his face up in a tremendous effort to express himself: "I been think—many words—end same. Like i-n-g."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. A whole raft of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So—I make—typewutta—quick. Not so many lettah——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a great idea, Tana. Save time. You'll make a fortune. Press one key and there's 'ing.' Hope you work it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana laughed disparagingly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell——" <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Mrs. Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out. Wait, I tell—" Again he screwed up his face for action. "<i>My</i> typewutta——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is she?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here—I make." He pointed to the miscellany of junk on the table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean Mrs. Patch."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out." Tana reassured him. "She be back five o'clock, she say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Down in the village?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Went off be-fore lunch. She go Mr. Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Went out with Mr. Bloeckman?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She be back five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word Anthony left the kitchen with Tana's disconsolate "I tell" trailing after him. So this was Gloria's idea of excitement, by God! His fists were clenched; within a moment he had worked himself up to a tremendous pitch of indignation. He went to the door and looked out; there was no car in sight and his watch stood at four minutes of five. With furious energy he dashed down to the end of the path—as far as the bend of the road a mile off he could see no car—except—but it was a farmer's flivver. Then, in an undignified pursuit of dignity, he rushed back to the shelter of the house as quickly as he had rushed out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Pacing up and down the living room he began an angry rehearsal of the speech he would make to her when she came in——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So this is love!" he would begin—or no, it sounded too much like the popular phrase "So this is Paris!" He must be dignified, hurt, grieved. Anyhow—"So this is what <i>you</i> do when I have to go up and trot all day around the hot city on business. No wonder I can't write! No wonder I don't dare let you out of my sight!" He was expanding now, warming to his subject. "I'll tell you," he continued, "I'll tell you—" He paused, catching a familiar ring in the words—then he realized—it was Tana's "I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet Anthony neither laughed nor seemed absurd to himself. To his frantic imagination it was already six—seven—eight, and she was never coming! Bloeckman finding her bored and unhappy had persuaded her to go to California with him. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —There was a great to-do out in front, a joyous "Yoho, Anthony!" and he rose trembling, weakly happy to see her fluttering up the path. Bloeckman was following, cap in hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest!" she cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been for the best jaunt—all over New York State."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll have to be starting home," said Bloeckman, almost immediately. "Wish you'd both been here when I came."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I wasn't," answered Anthony dryly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he had departed Anthony hesitated. The fear was gone from his heart, yet he felt that some protest was ethically apropos. Gloria resolved his uncertainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I knew you wouldn't mind. He came just before lunch and said he had to go to Garrison on business and wouldn't I go with him. He looked so lonesome, Anthony. And I drove his car all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired—tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure—that, and the sense of death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose I don't care," he answered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One must be broad about these things, and Gloria being young, being beautiful, must have reasonable privileges. Yet it wearied him that he failed to understand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WINTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She rolled over on her back and lay still for a moment in the great bed watching the February sun suffer one last attenuated refinement in its passage through the leaded panes into the room. For a time she had no accurate sense of her whereabouts or of the events of the day before, or the day before that; then, like a suspended pendulum, memory began to beat out its story, releasing with each swing a burdened quota of time until her life was given back to her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She could hear, now, Anthony's troubled breathing beside her; she could smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the resultant strain distributed easily over her body—it was a tremendous effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing herself into performing an impossible action. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth to get rid of that intolerable taste; then back by the bedside listening to the rattle of Bounds's key in the outer door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wake up, Anthony!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She climbed into bed beside him and closed her eyes. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> Almost the last thing she remembered was a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Lacy. Mrs. Lacy had said, "Sure you don't want us to get you a taxi?" and Anthony had replied that he guessed they could walk over to Fifth all right. Then they had both attempted, imprudently, to bow—and collapsed absurdly into a battalion of empty milk bottles just outside the door. There must have been two dozen milk bottles standing open-mouthed in the dark. She could conceive of no plausible explanation of those milk bottles. Perhaps they had been attracted by the singing in the Lacy house and had hurried over agape with wonder to see the fun. Well, they'd had the worst of it—though it seemed that she and Anthony never would get up, the perverse things rolled so. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Still, they had found a taxi. "My meter's broken and it'll cost you a dollar and a half to get home," said the taxi driver. "Well," said Anthony, "I'm young Packy McFarland and if you'll come down here I'll beat you till you can't stand up." . . . At that point the man had driven off without them. They must have found another taxi, for they were in the apartment. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What time is it?" Anthony was sitting up in bed, staring at her with owlish precision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was obviously a rhetorical question. Gloria could think of no reason why she should be expected to know the time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Golly, I feel like the devil!" muttered Anthony dispassionately. Relaxing, he tumbled back upon his pillow. "Bring on your grim reaper!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, how'd we finally get home last night?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Taxi."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" Then, after a pause: "Did you put me to bed?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Seems to me you put <i>me</i> to bed. What day is it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday? I hope so. If it's Wednesday, I've got to start work at that idiotic place. Supposed to be down at nine or some such ungodly hour."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ask Bounds," suggested Gloria feebly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds!" he called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sprightly, sober—a voice from a world that it seemed in the past two days they had left forever, Bounds sprang in short steps down the hall and appeared in the half darkness of the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What day, Bounds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "February the twenty-second, I think, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean day of the week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday, sir." "Thanks." After a pause: "Are you ready for breakfast, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, and Bounds, before you get it, will you make a pitcher of water, and set it here beside the bed? I'm a little thirsty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds retreated in sober dignity down the hallway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lincoln's birthday," affirmed Anthony without enthusiasm, "or St. Valentine's or somebody's. When did we start on this insane party?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sunday night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After prayers?" he suggested sardonically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> "We raced all over town in those hansoms and Maury sat up with his driver, don't you remember? Then we came home and he tried to cook some bacon—came out of the pantry with a few blackened remains, insisting it was 'fried to the proverbial crisp.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them laughed, spontaneously but with some difficulty, and lying there side by side reviewed the chain of events that had ended in this rusty and chaotic dawn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had been in New York for almost four months, since the country had grown too cool in late October. They had given up California this year, partly because of lack of funds, partly with the idea of going abroad should this interminable war, persisting now into its second year, end during the winter. Of late their income had lost elasticity; no longer did it stretch to cover gay whims and pleasant extravagances, and Anthony had spent many puzzled and unsatisfactory hours over a densely figured pad, making remarkable budgets that left huge margins for "amusements, trips, etc.," and trying to apportion, even approximately, their past expenditures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered a time when in going on a "party" with his two best friends, he and Maury had invariably paid more than their share of the expenses. They would buy the tickets for the theatre or squabble between themselves for the dinner check. It had seemed fitting; Dick, with his naïveté and his astonishing fund of information about himself, had been a diverting, almost juvenile, figure—court jester to their royalty. But this was no longer true. It was Dick who always had money; it was Anthony who entertained within limitations—always excepting occasional wild, wine-inspired, check-cashing parties—and it was Anthony who was solemn about it next morning and told the scornful and disgusted Gloria that they'd have to be "more careful next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the two years since the publication of "The Demon Lover," Dick had made over twenty-five thousand dollars, most of it lately, when the reward of the author of fiction had begun to swell unprecedentedly as a result of the voracious hunger of the motion pictures for plots. He received seven hundred dollars for every story, at that time a large emolument for such a young man—he was not quite thirty—and for every one that contained enough "action" (kissing, shooting, and sacrificing) for the movies, he obtained an additional thousand. His stories varied; there was a measure of vitality and a sort of instinctive technic in all of them, but none attained the personality of "The Demon Lover," and there were several that Anthony considered downright cheap. These, Dick explained severely, were to widen his audience. Wasn't it true that men who had attained real permanence from Shakespeare to Mark Twain had appealed to the many as well as to the elect?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though Anthony and Maury disagreed, Gloria told him to go ahead and make as much money as he could—that was the only thing that counted anyhow. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury, a little stouter, faintly mellower, and more complaisant, had gone to work in Philadelphia. He came to New York once or twice a month and on such occasions the four of them travelled the popular routes from dinner to the theatre, thence to the Frolic or, perhaps, at the urging of the ever-curious Gloria, to one of the cellars of Greenwich Village, notorious through the furious but short-lived vogue of the "new poetry movement."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, after many monologues directed at his reticent wife, Anthony determined to "get something to do," for the winter at any rate. He wanted to please his grandfather and even, in a measure, to see how he liked it himself. He discovered during several tentative semi-social calls that employers were not interested in a young man who was only going to "try it for a few months or so." As the grandson of Adam Patch he was received everywhere with marked courtesy, but the old man was a back number now—the heyday of his fame as first an "oppressor" and then an uplifter of the people had been during the twenty years preceding his retirement. Anthony even found several of the younger men who were under the impression that Adam Patch had been dead for some years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually Anthony went to his grandfather and asked his advice, which turned out to be that he should enter the bond business as a salesman, a tedious suggestion to Anthony, but one that in the end he determined to follow. Sheer money in deft manipulation had fascinations under all circumstances, while almost any side of manufacturing would be insufferably dull. He considered newspaper work but decided that the hours were not ordered for a married man. And he lingered over pleasant fancies of himself either as editor of a brilliant weekly of opinion, an American Mercure de France, or as scintillant producer of satiric comedy and Parisian musical revue. However, the approaches to these latter guilds seemed to be guarded by professional secrets. Men drifted into them by the devious highways of writing and acting. It was palpably impossible to get on a magazine unless you had been on one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So in the end he entered, by way of his grandfather's letter, that Sanctum Americanum where sat the president of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy at his "cleared desk," and issued therefrom employed. He was to begin work on the twenty-third of February.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, speed, road, city, urban"><br /> <poem><br /> In tribute to the momentous occasion this two-day revel had been planned, since, he said, after he began working he'd have to get to bed early during the week. Maury Noble had arrived from Philadelphia on a trip that had to do with seeing some man in Wall Street (whom, incidentally, he failed to see), and Richard Caramel had been half persuaded, half tricked into joining them. They had condescended to a wet and fashionable wedding on Monday afternoon, and in the evening had occurred the dénouement: Gloria, going beyond her accustomed limit of four precisely timed cocktails, led them on as gay and joyous a bacchanal as they had ever known, disclosing an astonishing knowledge of ballet steps, and singing songs which she confessed had been taught her by her cook when she was innocent and seventeen. She repeated these by request at intervals throughout the evening with such frank conviviality that Anthony, far from being annoyed, was gratified at this fresh source of entertainment. The occasion was memorable in other ways—a long conversation between Maury and a defunct crab, which he was dragging around on the end of a string, as to whether the crab was fully conversant with the applications of the binomial theorem, and the aforementioned race in two hansom cabs with the sedate and impressive shadows of Fifth Avenue for audience, ending in a labyrinthine escape into the darkness of Central Park. Finally Anthony and Gloria had paid a call on some wild young married people—the Lacys—and collapsed in the empty milk bottles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Morning now—theirs to add up the checks cashed here and there in clubs, stores, restaurants. Theirs to air the dank staleness of wine and cigarettes out of the tall blue front room, to pick up the broken glass and brush at the stained fabric of chairs and sofas; to give Bounds suits and dresses for the cleaners; finally, to take their smothery half-feverish bodies and faded depressed spirits out into the chill air of February, that life might go on and Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy obtain the services of a vigorous man at nine next morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, traffic, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember," called Anthony from the bathroom, "when Maury got out at the corner of One Hundred and Tenth Street and acted as a traffic cop, beckoning cars forward and motioning them back? They must have thought he was a private detective."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After each reminiscence they both laughed inordinately, their overwrought nerves responding as acutely and janglingly to mirth as to depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria at the mirror was wondering at the splendid color and freshness of her face—it seemed that she had never looked so well, though her stomach hurt her and her head was aching furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> The day passed slowly. Anthony, riding in a taxi to his broker's to borrow money on a bond, found that he had only two dollars in his pocket. The fare would cost all of that, but he felt that on this particular afternoon he could not have endured the subway. When the taximetre reached his limit he must get out and walk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> With this his mind drifted off into one of its characteristic day-dreams. . . . In this dream he discovered that the metre was going too fast—the driver had dishonestly adjusted it. Calmly he reached his destination and then nonchalantly handed the man what he justly owed him. The man showed fight, but almost before his hands were up Anthony had knocked him down with one terrific blow. And when he rose Anthony quickly sidestepped and floored him definitely with a crack in the temple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . He was in court now. The judge had fined him five dollars and he had no money. Would the court take his check? Ah, but the court did not know him. Well, he could identify himself by having them call his apartment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . They did so. Yes, it was Mrs. Anthony Patch speaking—but how did she know that this man was her husband? How could she know? Let the police sergeant ask her if she remembered the milk bottles . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He leaned forward hurriedly and tapped at the glass. The taxi was only at Brooklyn Bridge, but the metre showed a dollar and eighty cents, and Anthony would never have omitted the ten per cent tip.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon he returned to the apartment. Gloria had also been out—shopping—and was asleep, curled in a corner of the sofa with her purchase locked securely in her arms. Her face was as untroubled as a little girl's, and the bundle that she pressed tightly to her bosom was a child's doll, a profound and infinitely healing balm to her disturbed and childish heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DESTINY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was with this party, more especially with Gloria's part in it, that a decided change began to come over their way of living. The magnificent attitude of not giving a damn altered overnight; from being a mere tenet of Gloria's it became the entire solace and justification for what they chose to do and what consequence it brought. Not to be sorry, not to loose one cry of regret, to live according to a clear code of honor toward each other, and to seek the moment's happiness as fervently and persistently as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No one cares about us but ourselves, Anthony," she said one day. "It'd be ridiculous for me to go about pretending I felt any obligations toward the world, and as for worrying what people think about me, I simply <i>don't</i>, that's all. Since I was a little girl in dancing-school I've been criticised by the mothers of all the little girls who weren't as popular as I was, and I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was because of a party in the "Boul' Mich'" one night, where Constance Merriam had seen her as one of a highly stimulated party of four. Constance Merriam, "as an old school friend," had gone to the trouble of inviting her to lunch next day in order to inform her how terrible it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I told her I couldn't see it," Gloria told Anthony. "Eric Merriam is a sort of sublimated Percy Wolcott—you remember that man in Hot Springs I told you about—his idea of respecting Constance is to leave her at home with her sewing and her baby and her book, and such innocuous amusements, whenever he's going on a party that promises to be anything but deathly dull."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you tell her that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly did. And I told her that what she really objected to was that I was having a better time than she was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony applauded her. He was tremendously proud of Gloria, proud that she never failed to eclipse whatever other women might be in the party, proud that men were always glad to revel with her in great rowdy groups, without any attempt to do more than enjoy her beauty and the warmth of her vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These "parties" gradually became their chief source of entertainment. Still in love, still enormously interested in each other, they yet found as spring drew near that staying at home in the evening palled on them; books were unreal; the old magic of being alone had long since vanished—instead they preferred to be bored by a stupid musical comedy, or to go to dinner with the most uninteresting of their acquaintances, so long as there would be enough cocktails to keep the conversation from becoming utterly intolerable. A scattering of younger married people who had been their friends in school or college, as well as a varied assortment of single men, began to think instinctively of them whenever color and excitement were needed, so there was scarcely a day without its phone call, its "Wondered what you were doing this evening." Wives, as a rule, were afraid of Gloria—her facile attainment of the centre of the stage, her innocent but nevertheless disturbing way of becoming a favorite with husbands—these things drove them instinctively into an attitude of profound distrust, heightened by the fact that Gloria was largely unresponsive to any intimacy shown her by a woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the appointed Wednesday in February Anthony had gone to the imposing offices of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy and listened to many vague instructions delivered by an energetic young man of about his own age, named Kahler, who wore a defiant yellow pompadour, and in announcing himself as an assistant secretary gave the impression that it was a tribute to exceptional ability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's two kinds of men here, you'll find," he said. "There's the man who gets to be an assistant secretary or treasurer, gets his name on our folder here, before he's thirty, and there's the man who gets his name there at forty-five. The man who gets his name there at forty-five stays there the rest of his life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the man who gets it there at thirty?" inquired Anthony politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, he gets up here, you see." He pointed to a list of assistant vice-presidents upon the folder. "Or maybe he gets to be president or secretary or treasurer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And what about these over here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Those? Oh, those are the trustees—the men with capital."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now some people," continued Kahler, "think that whether a man gets started early or late depends on whether he's got a college education. But they're wrong."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had one; I was Buckleigh, class of nineteen-eleven, but when I came down to the Street I soon found that the things that would help me here weren't the fancy things I learned in college. In fact, I had to get a lot of fancy stuff out of my head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony could not help wondering what possible "fancy stuff" he had learned at Buckleigh in nineteen-eleven. An irrepressible idea that it was some sort of needlework recurred to him throughout the rest of the conversation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See that fellow over there?" Kahler pointed to a youngish-looking man with handsome gray hair, sitting at a desk inside a mahogany railing. "That's Mr. Ellinger, the first vice-president. Been everywhere, seen everything; got a fine education."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In vain did Anthony try to open his mind to the romance of finance; he could think of Mr. Ellinger only as one of the buyers of the handsome leather sets of Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo, and Gibbon that lined the wall of the big bookstores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the damp and uninspiring month of March he was prepared for salesmanship. Lacking enthusiasm he was capable of viewing the turmoil and bustle that surrounded him only as a fruitless circumambient striving toward an incomprehensible goal, tangibly evidenced only by the rival mansions of Mr. Frick and Mr. Carnegie on Fifth Avenue. That these portentous vice-presidents and trustees should be actually the fathers of the "best men" he had known at Harvard seemed to him incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate in an employees' lunch-room up-stairs with an uneasy suspicion that he was being uplifted, wondering through that first week if the dozens of young clerks, some of them alert and immaculate, and just out of college, lived in flamboyant hope of crowding onto that narrow slip of cardboard before the catastrophic thirties. The conversation that interwove with the pattern of the day's work was all much of a piece. One discussed how Mr. Wilson had made his money, what method Mr. Hiemer had employed, and the means resorted to by Mr. Hardy. One related age-old but eternally breathless anecdotes of the fortunes stumbled on precipitously in the Street by a "butcher" or a "bartender," or "a darn <i>mess</i>enger boy, by golly!" and then one talked of the current gambles, and whether it was best to go out for a hundred thousand a year or be content with twenty. During the preceding year one of the assistant secretaries had invested all his savings in Bethlehem Steel. The story of his spectacular magnificence, of his haughty resignation in January, and of the triumphal palace he was now building in California, was the favorite office subject. The man's very name had acquired a magic significance, symbolizing as he did the aspirations of all good Americans. Anecdotes were told about him—how one of the vice-presidents had advised him to sell, by golly, but he had hung on, even bought on margin, "and <i>now</i> look where he is!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such, obviously, was the stuff of life—a dizzy triumph dazzling the eyes of all of them, a gypsy siren to content them with meagre wage and with the arithmetical improbability of their eventual success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To Anthony the notion became appalling. He felt that to succeed here the idea of success must grasp and limit his mind. It seemed to him that the essential element in these men at the top was their faith that their affairs were the very core of life. All other things being equal, self-assurance and opportunism won out over technical knowledge; it was obvious that the more expert work went on near the bottom—so, with appropriate efficiency, the technical experts were kept there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His determination to stay in at night during the week did not survive, and a good half of the time he came to work with a splitting, sickish headache and the crowded horror of the morning subway ringing in his ears like an echo of hell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, abruptly, he quit. He had remained in bed all one Monday, and late in the evening, overcome by one of those attacks of moody despair to which he periodically succumbed, he wrote and mailed a letter to Mr. Wilson, confessing that he considered himself ill adapted to the work. Gloria, coming in from the theatre with Richard Caramel, found him on the lounge, silently staring at the high ceiling, more depressed and discouraged than he had been at any time since their marriage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She wanted him to whine. If he had she would have reproached him bitterly, for she was not a little annoyed, but he only lay there so utterly miserable that she felt sorry for him, and kneeling down she stroked his head, saying how little it mattered, how little anything mattered so long as they loved each other. It was like their first year, and Anthony, reacting to her cool hand, to her voice that was soft as breath itself upon his ear, became almost cheerful, and talked with her of his future plans. He even regretted, silently, before he went to bed that he had so hastily mailed his resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment," Gloria had said. "It's the sum of all your judgments that counts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> In mid-April came a letter from the real-estate agent in Marietta, encouraging them to take the gray house for another year at a slightly increased rental, and enclosing a lease made out for their signatures. For a week lease and letter lay carelessly neglected on Anthony's desk. They had no intention of returning to Marietta. They were weary of the place, and had been bored most of the preceding summer. Besides, their car had deteriorated to a rattling mass of hypochondriacal metal, and a new one was financially inadvisable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But because of another wild revel, enduring through four days and participated in, at one time or another, by more than a dozen people, they did sign the lease; to their utter horror they signed it and sent it, and immediately it seemed as though they heard the gray house, drably malevolent at last, licking its white chops and waiting to devour them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, where's that lease?" she called in high alarm one Sunday morning, sick and sober to reality. "Where did you leave it? It was here!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she knew where it was. She remembered the house party they had planned on the crest of their exuberance; she remembered a room full of men to whose less exhilarated moments she and Anthony were of no importance, and Anthony's boast of the transcendent merit and seclusion of the gray house, that it was so isolated that it didn't matter how much noise went on there. Then Dick, who had visited them, cried enthusiastically that it was the best little house imaginable, and that they were idiotic not to take it for another summer. It had been easy to work themselves up to a sense of how hot and deserted the city was getting, of how cool and ambrosial were the charms of Marietta. Anthony had picked up the lease and waved it wildly, found Gloria happily acquiescent, and with one last burst of garrulous decision during which all the men agreed with solemn handshakes that they would come out for a visit . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony," she cried, "we've signed and sent it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The lease!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>An</i>thony!" There was utter misery in her voice. For the summer, for eternity, they had built themselves a prison. It seemed to strike at the last roots of their stability. Anthony thought they might arrange it with the real-estate agent. They could no longer afford the double rent, and going to Marietta meant giving up his apartment, his reproachless apartment with the exquisite bath and the rooms for which he had bought his furniture and hangings—it was the closest to a home that he had ever had—familiar with memories of four colorful years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was not arranged with the real-estate agent, nor was it arranged at all. Dispiritedly, without even any talk of making the best of it, without even Gloria's all-sufficing "I don't care," they went back to the house that they now knew heeded neither youth nor love—only those austere and incommunicable memories that they could never share.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SINISTER SUMMER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a horror in the house that summer. It came with them and settled itself over the place like a sombre pall, pervasive through the lower rooms, gradually spreading and climbing up the narrow stairs until it oppressed their very sleep. Anthony and Gloria grew to hate being there alone. Her bedroom, which had seemed so pink and young and delicate, appropriate to her pastel-shaded lingerie tossed here and there on chair and bed, seemed now to whisper with its rustling curtains:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, my beautiful young lady, yours is not the first daintiness and delicacy that has faded here under the summer suns . . . generations of unloved women have adorned themselves by that glass for rustic lovers who paid no heed. . . . Youth has come into this room in palest blue and left it in the gray cerements of despair, and through long nights many girls have lain awake where that bed stands pouring out waves of misery into the darkness."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria finally tumbled all her clothes and unguents ingloriously out of it, declaring that she had come to live with Anthony, and making the excuse that one of her screens was rotten and admitted bugs. So her room was abandoned to insensitive guests, and they dressed and slept in her husband's chamber, which Gloria considered somehow "good," as though Anthony's presence there had acted as exterminator of any uneasy shadows of the past that might have hovered about its walls.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The distinction between "good" and "bad," ordered early and summarily out of both their lives, had been reinstated in another form. Gloria insisted that any one invited to the gray house must be "good," which, in the case of a girl, meant that she must be either simple and reproachless or, if otherwise, must possess a certain solidity and strength. Always intensely sceptical of her sex, her judgments were now concerned with the question of whether women were or were not clean. By uncleanliness she meant a variety of things, a lack of pride, a slackness in fibre and, most of all, the unmistakable aura of promiscuity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Women soil easily," she said, "far more easily than men. Unless a girl's very young and brave it's almost impossible for her to go down-hill without a certain hysterical animality, the cunning, dirty sort of animality. A man's different—and I suppose that's why one of the commonest characters of romance is a man going gallantly to the devil."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was disposed to like many men, preferably those who gave her frank homage and unfailing entertainment—but often with a flash of insight she told Anthony that some one of his friends was merely using him, and consequently had best be left alone. Anthony customarily demurred, insisting that the accused was a "good one," but he found that his judgment was more fallible than hers, memorably when, as it happened on several occasions, he was left with a succession of restaurant checks for which to render a solitary account.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> More from their fear of solitude than from any desire to go through the fuss and bother of entertaining, they filled the house with guests every week-end, and often on through the week. The week-end parties were much the same. When the three or four men invited had arrived, drinking was more or less in order, followed by a hilarious dinner and a ride to the Cradle Beach Country Club, which they had joined because it was inexpensive, lively if not fashionable, and almost a necessity for just such occasions as these. Moreover, it was of no great moment what one did there, and so long as the Patch party were reasonably inaudible, it mattered little whether or not the social dictators of Cradle Beach saw the gay Gloria imbibing cocktails in the supper room at frequent intervals during the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Saturday ended, generally, in a glamourous confusion—it proving often necessary to assist a muddled guest to bed. Sunday brought the New York papers and a quiet morning of recuperating on the porch—and Sunday afternoon meant good-by to the one or two guests who must return to the city, and a great revival of drinking among the one or two who remained until next day, concluding in a convivial if not hilarious evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The faithful Tana, pedagogue by nature and man of all work by profession, had returned with them. Among their more frequent guests a tradition had sprung up about him. Maury Noble remarked one afternoon that his real name was Tannenbaum, and that he was a German agent kept in this country to disseminate Teutonic propaganda through Westchester County, and, after that, mysterious letters began to arrive from Philadelphia addressed to the bewildered Oriental as "Lt. Emile Tannenbaum," containing a few cryptic messages signed "General Staff," and adorned with an atmospheric double column of facetious Japanese. Anthony always handed them to Tana without a smile; hours afterward the recipient could be found puzzling over them in the kitchen and declaring earnestly that the perpendicular symbols were not Japanese, nor anything resembling Japanese.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria had taken a strong dislike to the man ever since the day when, returning unexpectedly from the village, she had discovered him reclining on Anthony's bed, puzzling out a newspaper. It was the instinct of all servants to be fond of Anthony and to detest Gloria, and Tana was no exception to the rule. But he was thoroughly afraid of her and made plain his aversion only in his moodier moments by subtly addressing Anthony with remarks intended for her ear:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What Miz Pats want dinner?" he would say, looking at his master. Or else he would comment about the bitter selfishness of "'Merican peoples" in such manner that there was no doubt who were the "peoples" referred to.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But they dared not dismiss him. Such a step would have been abhorrent to their inertia. They endured Tana as they endured ill weather and sickness of the body and the estimable Will of God—as they endured all things, even themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>IN DARKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One sultry afternoon late in July Richard Caramel telephoned from New York that he and Maury were coming out, bringing a friend with them. They arrived about five, a little drunk, accompanied by a small, stocky man of thirty-five, whom they introduced as Mr. Joe Hull, one of the best fellows that Anthony and Gloria had ever met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Joe Hull had a yellow beard continually fighting through his skin and a low voice which varied between basso profundo and a husky whisper. Anthony, carrying Maury's suitcase up-stairs, followed into the room and carefully closed the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury chuckled enthusiastically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who, Hull? Oh, <i>he's</i> all right. He's a good one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, but who is he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hull? He's just a good fellow. He's a prince." His laughter redoubled, culminating in a succession of pleasant catlike grins. Anthony hesitated between a smile and a frown.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He looks sort of funny to me. Weird-looking clothes"—he paused—"I've got a sneaking suspicion you two picked him up somewhere last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ridiculous," declared Maury. "Why, I've known him all my life." However, as he capped this statement with another series of chuckles, Anthony was impelled to remark: "The devil you have!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, just before dinner, while Maury and Dick were conversing uproariously, with Joe Hull listening in silence as he sipped his drink, Gloria drew Anthony into the dining room:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like this man Hull," she said. "I wish he'd use Tana's bathtub."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't very well ask him to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want him in ours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He seems to be a simple soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got on white shoes that look like gloves. I can see his toes right through them. Uh! Who is he, anyway?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I think they've got their nerve to bring him out here. This isn't a Sailor's Rescue Home!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They were tight when they phoned. Maury said they've been on a party since yesterday afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her head angrily, and saying no more returned to the porch. Anthony saw that she was trying to forget her uncertainty and devote herself to enjoying the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="temperature, road"><br /> <poem><br /> It had been a tropical day, and even into late twilight the heat-waves emanating from the dry road were quivering faintly like undulating panes of isinglass. The sky was cloudless, but far beyond the woods in the direction of the Sound a faint and persistent rolling had commenced. When Tana announced dinner the men, at a word from Gloria, remained coatless and went inside.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury began a song, which they accomplished in harmony during the first course. It had two lines and was sung to a popular air called Daisy Dear. The lines were:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us, </div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—the moral de<i>cline</i>!"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Each rendition was greeted with bursts of enthusiasm and prolonged applause.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" suggested Maury. "You seem the least bit depressed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not," she lied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here, Tannenbaum!" he called over his shoulder. "I've filled you a drink. Come on!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria tried to stay his arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Please don't, Maury!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not? Maybe he'll play the flute for us after dinner. Here, Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana, grinning, bore the glass away to the kitchen. In a few moments Maury gave him another.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" he cried. "For Heaven's sakes everybody, cheer up Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest, have another drink," counselled Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria," said Joe Hull easily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria winced at this uncalled-for use of her first name, and glanced around to see if any one else had noticed it. The word coming so glibly from the lips of a man to whom she had taken an inordinate dislike repelled her. A moment later she noticed that Joe Hull had given Tana another drink, and her anger increased, heightened somewhat from the effects of the alcohol.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—and once," Maury was saying, "Peter Granby and I went into a Turkish bath in Boston, about two o'clock at night. There was no one there but the proprietor, and we jammed him into a closet and locked the door. Then a fella came in and wanted a Turkish bath. Thought we were the rubbers, by golly! Well, we just picked him up and tossed him into the pool with all his clothes on. Then we dragged him out and laid him on a slab and slapped him until he was black and blue. 'Not so rough, fellows!' he'd say in a little squeaky voice, 'please! . . .'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Was this Maury? thought Gloria. From any one else the story would have amused her, but from Maury, the infinitely appreciative, the apotheosis of tact and consideration. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A drum of thunder from outside drowned out the rest of the song; Gloria shivered and tried to empty her glass, but the first taste nauseated her, and she set it down. Dinner was over and they all marched into the big room, bearing several bottles and decanters. Some one had closed the porch door to keep out the wind, and in consequence circular tentacles of cigar smoke were twisting already upon the heavy air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paging Lieutenant Tannenbaum!" Again it was the changeling Maury. "Bring us the flute!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Maury rushed into the kitchen; Richard Caramel started the phonograph and approached Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance with your well-known cousin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to dance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'm going to carry you around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As though he were doing something of overpowering importance, he picked her up in his fat little arms and started trotting gravely about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Set me down, Dick! I'm dizzy!" she insisted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He dumped her in a bouncing bundle on the couch, and rushed off to the kitchen, shouting "Tana! Tana!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, without warning, she felt other arms around her, felt herself lifted from the lounge. Joe Hull had picked her up and was trying, drunkenly, to imitate Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Put me down!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His maudlin laugh, and the sight of that prickly yellow jaw close to her face stirred her to intolerable disgust.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At once!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The—pan-ic—" he began, but got no further, for Gloria's hand swung around swiftly and caught him in the cheek. At this he all at once let go of her, and she fell to the floor, her shoulder hitting the table a glancing blow in transit. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the room seemed full of men and smoke. There was Tana in his white coat reeling about supported by Maury. Into his flute he was blowing a weird blend of sound that was known, cried Anthony, as the Japanese train-song. Joe Hull had found a box of candles and was juggling them, yelling "One down!" every time he missed, and Dick was dancing by himself in a fascinated whirl around and about the room. It appeared to her that everything in the room was staggering in grotesque fourth-dimensional gyrations through intersecting planes of hazy blue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Outside, the storm had come up amazingly—the lulls within were filled with the scrape of the tall bushes against the house and the roaring of the rain on the tin roof of the kitchen. The lightning was interminable, letting down thick drips of thunder like pig iron from the heart of a white-hot furnace. Gloria could see that the rain was spitting in at three of the windows—but she could not move to shut them. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . She was in the hall. She had said good night but no one had heard or heeded her. It seemed for an instant as though something had looked down over the head of the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor. . . . Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side of the half-drenched bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her eyes. From down-stairs arose the babel of the drinkers, punctured suddenly by a tinkling shiver of broken glass, and then another, and by a soaring fragment of unsteady, irregular song. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay there for something over two hours—so she calculated afterward, sheerly by piecing together the bits of time. She was conscious, even aware, after a long while that the noise down-stairs had lessened, and that the storm was moving off westward, throwing back lingering showers of sound that fell, heavy and lifeless as her soul, into the soggy fields. This was succeeded by a slow, reluctant scattering of the rain and wind, until there was nothing outside her windows but a gentle dripping and the swishing play of a cluster of wet vine against the sill. She was in a state half-way between sleeping and waking, with neither condition predominant . . . and she was harassed by a desire to rid herself of a weight pressing down upon her breast. She felt that if she could cry the weight would be lifted, and forcing the lids of her eyes together she tried to raise a lump in her throat . . . to no avail. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Drip! Drip! Drip! The sound was not unpleasant—like spring, like a cool rain of her childhood, that made cheerful mud in her back yard and watered the tiny garden she had dug with miniature rake and spade and hoe. Drip—dri-ip! It was like days when the rain came out of yellow skies that melted just before twilight and shot one radiant shaft of sunlight diagonally down the heavens into the damp green trees. So cool, so clear and clean—and her mother there at the centre of the world, at the centre of the rain, safe and dry and strong. She wanted her mother now, and her mother was dead, beyond sight and touch forever. And this weight was pressing on her, pressing on her—oh, it pressed on her so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She became rigid. Some one had come to the door and was standing regarding her, very quiet except for a slight swaying motion. She could see the outline of his figure distinct against some indistinguishable light. There was no sound anywhere, only a great persuasive silence—even the dripping had ceased . . . only this figure, swaying, swaying in the doorway, an indiscernible and subtly menacing terror, a personality filthy under its varnish, like smallpox spots under a layer of powder. Yet her tired heart, beating until it shook her breasts, made her sure that there was still life in her, desperately shaken, threatened. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The minute or succession of minutes prolonged itself interminably, and a swimming blur began to form before her eyes, which tried with childish persistence to pierce the gloom in the direction of the door. In another instant it seemed that some unimaginable force would shatter her out of existence . . . and then the figure in the doorway—it was Hull, she saw, Hull—turned deliberately and, still slightly swaying, moved back and off, as if absorbed into that incomprehensible light that had given him dimension.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Blood rushed back into her limbs, blood and life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself into stray, swaying figures in the gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a panic she fumbled clumsily at her coat, found the sleeve just as she heard Anthony's footsteps on the lower stair. She dared not wait; he might not let her go, and even Anthony was part of this weight, part of this evil house and the sombre darkness that was growing up about it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the hall then . . . and down the back stairs, hearing Anthony's voice in the bedroom she had just left——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she had reached the kitchen now, passed out through the doorway into the night. A hundred drops, startled by a flare of wind from a dripping tree, scattered on her and she pressed them gladly to her face with hot hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The voice was infinitely remote, muffed and made plaintive by the walls she had just left. She rounded the house and started down the front path toward the road, almost exultant as she turned into it, and followed the carpet of short grass alongside, moving with caution in the intense darkness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She broke into a run, stumbled over the segment of a branch twisted off by the wind. The voice was outside the house now. Anthony, finding the bedroom deserted, had come onto the porch. But this thing was driving her forward; it was back there with Anthony, and she must go on in her flight under this dim and oppressive heaven, forcing herself through the silence ahead as though it were a tangible barrier before her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had gone some distance along the barely discernible road, probably half a mile, passed a single deserted barn that loomed up, black and foreboding, the only building of any sort between the gray house and Marietta; then she turned the fork, where the road entered the wood and ran between two high walls of leaves and branches that nearly touched overhead. She noticed suddenly a thin, longitudinal gleam of silver upon the road before her, like a bright sword half embedded in the mud. As she came closer she gave a little cry of satisfaction—it was a wagon-rut full of water, and glancing heavenward she saw a light rift of sky and knew that the moon was out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She started violently. Anthony was not two hundred feet behind her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, wait for me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her lips tightly to keep from screaming, and increased her gait. Before she had gone another hundred yards the woods disappeared, rolling back like a dark stocking from the leg of the road. Three minutes' walk ahead of her, suspended in the now high and limitless air, she saw a thin interlacing of attenuated gleams and glitters, centred in a regular undulation on some one invisible point. Abruptly she knew where she would go. That was the great cascade of wires that rose high over the river, like the legs of a gigantic spider whose eye was the little green light in the switch-house, and ran with the railroad bridge in the direction of the station. The station! There would be the train to take her away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, it's me! It's Anthony! Gloria, I won't try to stop you! For God's sake, where are you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer but began to run, keeping on the high side of the road and leaping the gleaming puddles—dimensionless pools of thin, unsubstantial gold. Turning sharply to the left, she followed a narrow wagon road, serving to avoid a dark body on the ground. She looked up as an owl hooted mournfully from a solitary tree. Just ahead of her she could see the trestle that led to the railroad bridge and the steps mounting up to it. The station lay across the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another sounds startled her, the melancholy siren of an approaching train, and almost simultaneously, a repeated call, thin now and far away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony must have followed the main road. She laughed with a sort of malicious cunning at having eluded him; she could spare the time to wait until the train went by.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamor, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clocklike tick of the rails, moved toward the bridge—it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid, the temperature of warm blood. . . . The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence crept down again over the wet country; the faint dripping resumed, and suddenly a great shower of drops tumbled upon Gloria stirring her out of the trance-like torpor which the passage of the train had wrought. She ran swiftly down a descending level to the bank and began climbing the iron stairway to the bridge, remembering that it was something she had always wanted to do, and that she would have the added excitement of traversing the yard-wide plank that ran beside the tracks over the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There! This was better. She was at the top now and could see the lands about her as successive sweeps of open country, cold under the moon, coarsely patched and seamed with thin rows and heavy clumps of trees. To her right, half a mile down the river, which trailed away behind the light like the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of freedom. This was what she had wanted, to stand alone where it was high and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Like a startled child she scurried along the plank, hopping, skipping, jumping, with an ecstatic sense of her own physical lightness. Let him come now—she no longer feared that, only she must first reach the station, because that was part of the game. She was happy. Her hat, snatched off, was clutched tightly in her hand, and her short curled hair bobbed up and down about her ears. She had thought she would never feel so young again, but this was her night, her world. Triumphantly she laughed as she left the plank, and reaching the wooden platform flung herself down happily beside an iron roof-post.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here I am!" she called, gay as the dawn in her elation. "Here I am, Anthony, dear—old, worried Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" He reached the platform, ran toward her. "Are you all right?" Coming up he knelt and took her in his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was the matter? Why did you leave?" he queried anxiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had to—there was something"—she paused and a flicker of uneasiness lashed at her mind—"there was something sitting on me—here." She put her hand on her breast. "I had to go out and get away from it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean by 'something'?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—that man Hull——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he bother you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He came to my door, drunk. I think I'd gotten sort of crazy by that time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, dearest——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Wearily she laid her head upon his shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go back," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shivered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Uh! No, I couldn't. It'd come and sit on me again." Her voice rose to a cry that hung plaintive on the darkness. "That thing——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There—there," he soothed her, pulling her close to him. "We won't do anything you don't want to do. What do you want to do? Just sit here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want—I want to go away."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—anywhere."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By golly, Gloria," he cried, "you're still tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I haven't been, all evening. I went up-stairs about, oh, I don't know, about half an hour after dinner . . . Ouch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had inadvertently touched her right shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It hurts me. I hurt it some way. I don't know—somebody picked me up and dropped me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, come home. It's late and damp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't," she wailed. "Oh, Anthony, don't ask me to! I will to-morrow. You go home and I'll wait here for a train. I'll go to a hotel——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll go with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't want you with me. I want to be alone. I want to sleep—oh, I want to sleep. And then to-morrow, when you've got all the smell of whiskey and cigarettes out of the house, and everything straight, and Hull is gone, then I'll come home. If I went now, that thing—oh—!" She covered her eyes with her hand; Anthony saw the futility of trying to persuade her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was all sober when you left," he said. "Dick was asleep on the lounge and Maury and I were having a discussion. That fellow Hull had wandered off somewhere. Then I began to realize I hadn't seen you for several hours, so I went up-stairs——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off as a salutatory "Hello, there!" boomed suddenly out of the darkness. Gloria sprang to her feet and he did likewise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's Maury's voice," she cried excitedly. "If it's Hull with him, keep them away, keep them away!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" Anthony called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just Dick and Maury," returned two voices reassuringly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Hull?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's in bed. Passed out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their figures appeared dimly on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil are you and Gloria doing here?" inquired Richard Caramel with sleepy bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are <i>you</i> two doing here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Damned if I know. We followed you, and had the deuce of a time doing it. I heard you out on the porch yelling for Gloria, so I woke up the Caramel here and got it through his head, with some difficulty, that if there was a search-party we'd better be on it. He slowed me up by sitting down in the road at intervals and asking me what it was all about. We tracked you by the pleasant scent of Canadian Club."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a rattle of nervous laughter under the low train-shed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you track us, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we followed along down the road and then we suddenly lost you. Seems you turned off at a wagon-trail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was waving around——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, the poor old man!" ejaculated Gloria, moved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I threw him another and we went on, though he asked us to stay and tell him what it was all about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor old man," repeated Gloria dismally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick sat down sleepily on a box.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And now what?" he inquired in the tone of stoic resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's upset," explained Anthony. "She and I are going to the city by the next train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury in the darkness had pulled a time-table from his pocket.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strike a match."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tiny flare leaped out of the opaque background illuminating the four faces, grotesque and unfamiliar here in the open night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see. Two, two-thirty—no, that's evening. By gad, you won't get a train till five-thirty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he muttered uncertainly, "we've decided to stay here and wait for it. You two might as well go back and sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You go, too, Anthony," urged Gloria; "I want you to have some sleep, dear. You've been as pale as a ghost all day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you little idiot!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very well. You stay, we stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He walked out from under the shed and surveyed the heavens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather a nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see." Gloria moved after him and the other two followed her. "Let's sit out here," she suggested. "I like it much better."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Dick converted a long box into a backrest and found a board dry enough for Gloria to sit on. Anthony dropped down beside her and with some effort Dick hoisted himself onto an apple-barrel near them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tana went to sleep in the porch hammock," he remarked. "We carried him in and left him next to the kitchen stove to dry. He was drenched to the skin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That awful little man!" sighed Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do!" The voice, sonorous and funereal, had come from above, and they looked up startled to find that in some manner Maury had climbed to the roof of the shed, where he sat dangling his feet over the edge, outlined as a shadowy and fantastic gargoyle against the now brilliant sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It must be for such occasions as this," he began softly, his words having the effect of floating down from an immense height and settling softly upon his auditors, "that the righteous of the land decorate the railroads with bill-boards asserting in red and yellow that 'Jesus Christ is God,' placing them, appropriately enough, next to announcements that 'Gunter's Whiskey is Good.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was gentle laughter and the three below kept their heads tilted upward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think I shall tell you the story of my education," continued Maury, "under these sardonic constellations."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do! Please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall I, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They waited expectantly while he directed a ruminative yawn toward the white smiling moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, "as an infant I prayed. I stored up prayers against future wickedness. One year I stored up nineteen hundred 'Now I lay me's.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Throw down a cigarette," murmured some one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small package reached the platform simultaneously with the stentorian command:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Silence! I am about to unburden myself of many memorable remarks reserved for the darkness of such earths and the brilliance of such skies."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Below, a lighted match was passed from cigarette to cigarette. The voice resumed:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me. I believed that because a man cried out 'My God!' when a safe fell on him, it proved that belief was rooted deep in the human breast. Then I went to school. For fourteen years half a hundred earnest men pointed to ancient flint-locks and cried to me: 'There's the real thing. These new rifles are only shallow, superficial imitations.' They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned things by calling them 'clever'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so I turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning. This, at least, did me no harm. I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth—and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me. The fibre of my mind coarsened and my eyes grew miserably keen. Life rose around my island like a sea, and presently I was swimming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The transition was subtle—the thing had lain in wait for me for some time. It has its insidious, seemingly innocuous trap for every one. With me? No—I didn't try to seduce the janitor's wife—nor did I run through the streets unclothed, proclaiming my virility. It is never quite passion that does the business—it is the dress that passion wears. I became bored—that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts. Beauty was behind me, do you understand?—I was grown." He paused. "End of school and college period. Opening of Part Two."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Three quietly active points of light showed the location of his listeners. Gloria was now half sitting, half lying, in Anthony's lap. His arm was around her so tightly that she could hear the beating of his heart. Richard Caramel, perched on the apple-barrel, from time to time stirred and gave off a faint grunt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I grew up then, into this land of jazz, and fell immediately into a state of almost audible confusion. Life stood over me like an immoral schoolmistress, editing my ordered thoughts. But, with a mistaken faith in intelligence, I plodded on. I read Smith, who laughed at charity and insisted that the sneer was the highest form of self-expression—but Smith himself replaced charity as an obscurer of the light. I read Jones, who neatly disposed of individualism—and behold! Jones was still in my way. I did not think—I was a battle-ground for the thoughts of many men; rather was I one of those desirable but impotent countries over which the great powers surge back and forth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life—and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But after a few tastes of this latter dish I had had enough. Here! I said, Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you—it's a wall that an active you runs up against. So I wrapped myself in what I thought was my invulnerable scepticism and decided that my education was complete. But it was too late. Protect myself as I might by making no new ties with tragic and predestined humanity, I was lost with the rest. I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off to give emphasis to his last observation—after a moment he yawned and resumed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose that the beginning of the second phase of my education was a ghastly dissatisfaction at being used in spite of myself for some inscrutable purpose of whose ultimate goal I was unaware—if, indeed, there <i>was</i> an ultimate goal. It was a difficult choice. The schoolmistress seemed to be saying, 'We're going to play football and nothing but football. If you don't want to play football you can't play at all——'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was I to do—the playtime was so short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see, I felt that we were even denied what consolation there might have been in being a figment of a corporate man rising from his knees. Do you think that I leaped at this pessimism, grasped it as a sweetly smug superior thing, no more depressing really than, say, a gray autumn day before a fire?—I don't think I did that. I was a great deal too warm for that, and too alive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature—nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly in her face. She had invented ways to rid the race of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher—or, let us say, her more amusing—though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circumvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white—in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might organize them for material prosperity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper—and presently the breed of the leper is the salt of the earth. If any one can find any lesson in that, let him stand forth."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's only one lesson to be learned from life, anyway," interrupted Gloria, not in contradiction but in a sort of melancholy agreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's that?" demanded Maury sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That there's no lesson to be learned from life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a short silence Maury said:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young Gloria, the beautiful and merciless lady, first looked at the world with the fundamental sophistication I have struggled to attain, that Anthony never will attain, that Dick will never fully understand."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a disgusted groan from the apple-barrel. Anthony, grown accustomed to the dark, could see plainly the flash of Richard Caramel's yellow eye and the look of resentment on his face as he cried:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're crazy! By your own statement I should have attained some experience by trying."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? Struggling in a laboratory through weary years for one iota of relative truth in a mass of wheels or a test tube——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury paused, and in his answer, when it came, there was a measure of weariness, a bitter overnote that lingered for a moment in those three minds before it floated up and off like a bubble bound for the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not I," he said softly. "I was born tired—but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria—to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the distance a deep sound that had been audible for some moments identified itself by a plaintive mooing like that of a gigantic cow and by the pearly spot of a headlight apparent half a mile away. It was a steam-driven train this time, rumbling and groaning, and as it tumbled by with a monstrous complaint it sent a shower of sparks and cinders over the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not one jot!" Again Maury's voice dropped down to them as from a great height. "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I could quote you the philosophy of the hour—but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France—" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know—the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself—these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know anything else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen—as the wisest men have done since—oh, since the failure of a certain matter—a strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over—and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So the men did, and they died.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my high-balls are dead and the night's almost over, and soon there'll be an awful jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two little stores over there behind the station, and there'll be a great running up and down upon the earth for a few hours— Well," he concluded with a laugh, "thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest knowing we've left the world a little better for having lived in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened against the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive," said Anthony sleepily. "You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her far-sighted detachment by falling asleep—I can tell that by the fact that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my broken body."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have I bored you?" inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, you have disappointed us. You've shot a lot of arrows but did you shoot any birds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I leave the birds to Dick," said Maury hurriedly. "I speak erratically, in disassociated fragments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can get no rise from me," muttered Dick. "My mind is full of any number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quarter to five," sighed Dick; "almost another hour to wait. Look! Two gone." He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes. "Sleep of the Patch family——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups, his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now—on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm—the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her—then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (261-309)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BROKEN LUTE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It is seven-thirty of an August evening. The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. But August is still proclaimed relentlessly by a thousand crickets around the side-porch, and by one who has broken into the house and concealed himself confidently behind a bookcase, from time to time shrieking of his cleverness and his indomitable will.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit, which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous assortment of decanters, glasses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air, the effect on the whole needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in every "den," which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>After a while the sprightly solo of the supercricket is interrupted rather than joined by a new sound—the melancholy wail of an erratically fingered flute. It is obvious that the musician is practising rather than performing, for from time to time the gnarled strain breaks off and, after an interval of indistinct mutterings, recommences.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Just prior to the seventh false start a third sound contributes to the subdued discord. It is a taxi outside. A minute's silence, then the taxi again, its boisterous retreat almost obliterating the scrape of footsteps on the cinder walk. The door-bell shrieks alarmingly through the house.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>From the kitchen enters a small, fatigued Japanese, hastily buttoning a servant's coat of white duck. He opens the front screen-door and admits a handsome young man of thirty, clad in the sort of well-intentioned clothes peculiar to those who serve mankind. To his whole personality clings a well-intentioned air: his glance about the room is compounded of curiosity and a determined optimism; when he looks at Tana the entire burden of uplifting the godless Oriental is in his eyes. His name is</i> FREDERICK E. PARAMORE. <i>He was at Harvard with</i> ANTHONY, <i>where because of the initials of their surnames they were constantly placed next to each other in classes. A fragmentary acquaintance developed—but since that time they have never met.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Nevertheless,</i> PARAMORE <i>enters the room with a certain air of arriving for the evening.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Tana is answering a question.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: (<i>Grinning with ingratiation</i>) Gone to Inn for dinnah. Be back half-hour. Gone since ha' past six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Regarding the glasses on the table</i>) Have they company?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: Yes. Company. Mistah Caramel, Mistah and Missays Barnes, Miss Kane, all stay here.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I see. (<i>Kindly</i>) They've been having a spree, I see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I no un'stan'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: They've been having a fling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: Yes, they have drink. Oh, many, many, many drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Receding delicately from the subject</i>) Didn't I hear the sounds of music as I approached the house?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA:(<i>With a spasmodic giggle</i>) Yes, I play.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: One of the Japanese instruments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>He is quite obviously a subscriber to the "National Geographic Magazine</i>.")<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I play flu-u-ute, Japanese flu-u-ute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: What song were you playing? One of your Japanese melodies?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA:(<i>His brow undergoing preposterous contraction</i>) I play train song. How you call?—<i>railroad</i> song. So call in my countree. Like train. It go so-o-o; that mean whistle; train start. Then go so-o-o; that mean train go. Go like that. Vera nice song in my countree. Children song.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It sounded very nice. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>It is apparent at this point that only a gigantic effort at control restrains</i> TANA <i> from rushing up-stairs for his post cards, including the six made in America</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I fix high-ball for gentleman?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: "No, thanks. I don't use it". (<i>He smiles</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (TANA <i>withdraws into the kitchen, leaving the intervening door slightly ajar. From the crevice there suddenly issues again the melody of the Japanese train song—this time not a practice, surely, but a performance, a lusty, spirited performance.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The phone rings.</i> TANA, <i>absorbed in his harmonics, gives no heed, so</i> PARAMORE <i>takes up the receiver</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Hello. . . . Yes. . . . No, he's not here now, but he'll be back any moment. . . . Butterworth? Hello, I didn't quite catch the name. . . . Hello, hello, hello. Hello! . . . Huh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The phone obstinately refuses to yield up any more sound.</i> PARAMORE <i>replaces the receiver.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> <i>At this point the taxi motif re-enters, wafting with it a second young man; he carries a suitcase and opens the front door without ringing the bell.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In the hall</i>) "Oh, Anthony! Yoho"! (<i>He comes into the large room and sees</i> PARAMORE) How do?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Gazing at him with gathering intensity</i>) Is this—is this Maury Noble?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That's it. (<i>He advances, smiling, and holding out his hand</i>) How are you, old boy? Haven't seen you for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>He has vaguely associated the face with Harvard, but is not even positive about that. The name, if he ever knew it, he has long since forgotten. However, with a fine sensitiveness and an equally commendable charity</i> PARAMORE <i>recognizes the fact and tactfully relieves the situation</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: You've forgotten Fred Paramore? We were both in old Unc Robert's history class.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't, Unc—I mean Fred. Fred was—I mean Unc was a great old fellow, wasn't he?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Nodding his head humorously several times</i>) Great old character. Great old character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>After a short pause</i>) Yes—he was. Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: The Japanese servant told me he was at some inn. Having dinner, I suppose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Looking at his watch</i>) Gone long?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I guess so. The Japanese told me they'd be back shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Suppose we have a drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, thanks. I don't use it. (<i>He smiles</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Mind if I do? (<i>Yawning as he helps himself from a bottle</i>) What have you been doing since you left college?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Oh, many things. I've led a very active life. Knocked about here and there. (<i>His tone implies anything front lion-stalking to organized crime.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, been over to Europe?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, I haven't—unfortunately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I guess we'll all go over before long.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Do you really think so?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Sure! Country's been fed on sensationalism for more than two years. Everybody getting restless. Want to have some fun.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Then you don't believe any ideals are at stake?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Nothing of much importance. People want excitement every so often.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Intently</i>) It's very interesting to hear you say that. Now I was talking to a man who'd been over there——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>During the ensuing testament, left to be filled in by the reader with such phrases as "Saw with his own eyes," "Splendid spirit of France," and "Salvation of civilization,"</i> MAURY <i>sits with lowered eyelids, dispassionately bored.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>At the first available opportunity</i>) By the way, do you happen to know that there's a German agent in this very house?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Smiling cautiously</i>) Are you serious?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Absolutely. Feel it my duty to warn you.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Convinced</i>) A governess?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In a whisper, indicating the kitchen with his thumb</i>) <i>Tana!</i> That's not his real name. I understand he constantly gets mail addressed to Lieutenant Emile Tannenbaum.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Laughing with hearty tolerance</i>) You were kidding me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I may be accusing him falsely. But, you haven't told me what you've been doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: For one thing—writing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fiction?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No. Non-fiction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What's that? A sort of literature that's half fiction and half fact?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Oh, I've confined myself to fact. I've been doing a good deal of social-service work.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>An immediate glow of suspicion leaps into his eyes. It is as though</i> PARAMORE <i>had announced himself as an amateur pickpocket.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: At present I'm doing service work in Stamford. Only last week some one told me that Anthony Patch lived so near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They are interrupted by a clamor outside, unmistakable as that of two sexes in conversation and laughter. Then there enter the room in a body</i> ANTHONY, GLORIA, RICHARD CARAMEL, MURIEL KANE, RACHAEL BARNES <i>and</i> RODMAN BARNES, <i>her husband. They surge about</i> MAURY, <i>illogically replying</i> "Fine!" <i>to his general</i> "Hello." . . . ANTHONY, <i>meanwhile, approaches his other guest.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Well, I'll be darned. How are you? Mighty glad to see you.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It's good to see you, Anthony. I'm stationed in Stamford, so I thought I'd run over. (<i>Roguishly</i>) We have to work to beat the devil most of the time, so we're entitled to a few hours' vacation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>In an agony of concentration</i> ANTHONY <i>tries to recall the name. After a struggle of parturition his memory gives up the fragment</i> "Fred," <i>around which he hastily builds the sentence</i> "Glad you did, Fred!" <i>Meanwhile the slight hush prefatory to an introduction has fallen upon the company.</i> MAURY, <i>who could help, prefers to look on in malicious enjoyment.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>In desperation</i>) Ladies and gentlemen, this is—this is Fred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>With obliging levity</i>) Hello, Fred!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (RICHARD CARAMEL <i>and</i> PARAMORE <i>greet each other intimately by their first names, the latter recollecting that</i> DICK <i>was one of the men in his class who had never before troubled to speak to him.</i> DICK <i>fatuously imagines that</i> PARAMORE <i>is some one he has previously met in</i> ANTHONY'S <i>house.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The three young women go up-stairs.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In an undertone to</i> DICK) Haven't seen Muriel since Anthony's wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: She's now in her prime. Her latest is "<i>I'll</i> say so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (ANTHONY <i>struggles for a while with</i> PARAMORE <i>and at length attempts to make the conversation general by asking every one to have a drink.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I've done pretty well on this bottle. I've gone from "Proof" down to "Distillery." (<i>He indicates the words on the label.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, night"><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>To</i> PARAMORE) Never can tell when these two will turn up. Said good-by to them one afternoon at five and darned if they didn't appear about two in the morning. A big hired touring-car from New York drove up to the door and out they stepped, drunk as lords, of course.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>In an ecstasy of consideration</i> PARAMORE <i>regards the cover of a book which he holds in his hand.</i> MAURY <i>and</i> DICK <i>exchange a glance.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Innocently, to</i> PARAMORE) You work here in town?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, I'm in the Laird Street Settlement in Stamford. (<i>To</i> ANTHONY) You have no idea of the amount of poverty in these small Connecticut towns. Italians and other immigrants. Catholics mostly, you know, so it's very hard to reach them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>Politely</i>) Lot of crime?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Not so much crime as ignorance and dirt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That's my theory: immediate electrocution of all ignorant and dirty people. I'm all for the criminals—give color to life. Trouble is if you started to punish ignorance you'd have to begin in the first families, then you could take up the moving picture people, and finally Congress and the clergy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Smiling uneasily</i>) I was speaking of the more fundamental ignorance—of even our language.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Thoughtfully</i>) I suppose it is rather hard. Can't even keep up with the new poetry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It's only when the settlement work has gone on for months that one realizes how bad things are. As our secretary said to me, your finger-nails never seem dirty until you wash your hands. Of course we're already attracting much attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Rudely</i>) As your secretary might say, if you stuff paper into a grate it'll burn brightly for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>At this point</i> GLORIA, <i>freshly tinted and lustful of admiration and entertainment, rejoins the party, followed by her two friends. For several moments the conversation becomes entirely fragmentary.</i> GLORIA <i>calls</i> ANTHONY <i>aside.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: Please don't drink much, Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: Because you're so simple when you're drunk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Good Lord! What's the matter now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>After a pause during which her eyes gaze coolly into his</i>) Several things. In the first place, why do you insist on paying for everything? Both those men have more money than you!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria! They're my guests!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: That's no reason why you should pay for a bottle of champagne Rachael Barnes smashed. Dick tried to fix that second taxi bill, and you wouldn't let him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: When we have to keep selling bonds to even pay our bills, it's time to cut down on excess generosities. Moreover, I wouldn't be quite so attentive to Rachael Barnes. Her husband doesn't like it any more than I do!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>Mimicking him sharply</i>) "Why, Gloria!" But that's happened a little too often this summer—with every pretty woman you meet. It's grown to be a sort of habit, and I'm <i>not</i> going to stand it! If you can play around, I can, too. (<i>Then, as an afterthought</i>) By the way, this Fred person isn't a second Joe Hull, is he?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Heavens, no! He probably came up to get me to wheedle some money out of grandfather for his flock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (GLORIA <i>turns away from a very depressed</i> ANTHONY <i>and returns to her guests.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>By nine o'clock these can be divided into two classes—those who have been drinking consistently and those who have taken little or nothing. In the second group are the</i> BARNESES, MURIEL, <i>and</i> FREDERICK E. PARAMORE.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: As Goliath said, he understood how David felt, but he couldn't express himself. The remark was immediately adopted for a motto by the Philistines.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't get you. I must be getting stupid in my old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>Weaving unsteadily among the company like an exhilarated angel</i>) If any one's hungry there's some French pastry on the dining room table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Can't tolerate those Victorian designs it comes in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Violently amused</i>) <i>I'll</i> say you're tight, Maury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness . . .</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Messrs.</i> BARNES <i>and</i> PARAMORE <i>have been engaged in conversation upon some wholesome subject, a subject so wholesome that</i> MR. BARNES <i>has been trying for several moments to creep into the more tainted air around the central lounge. Whether</i> PARAMORE <i>is lingering in the gray house out of politeness or curiosity, or in order at some future time to make a sociological report on the decadence of American life, is problematical.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fred, I imagined you were very broad-minded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I am.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Me, too. I believe one religion's as good as another and everything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: There's some good in all religions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I'm a Catholic but, as I always say, I'm not working at it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>With a tremendous burst of tolerance</i>) The Catholic religion is a very—a very powerful religion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Well, such a broad-minded man should consider the raised plane of sensation and the stimulated optimism contained in this cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Taking the drink, rather defiantly</i>) Thanks, I'll try—one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Beautiful_and_Damned&diff=795 The Beautiful and Damned 2026-02-27T07:30:14Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html"<br /> genre="Novel"<br /> journal=""<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1922"<br /> page_range="1-449"<br /> other_data="Other text data"<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (1-30)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> IN 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore. The year in which this story opens found him wearying; his campaign had grown desultory; 1861 was creeping up slowly on 1895; his thoughts ran a great deal on the Civil War, somewhat on his dead wife and son, almost infinitesimally on his grandson Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in his career Adam Patch had married an anæmic lady of thirty, Alicia Withers, who brought him one hundred thousand dollars and an impeccable entré into the banking circles of New York. Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never obtained even a private printing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This Fifth Avenue Chesterfield married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrune, the Boston "Society Contralto," and the single child of the union was, at the request of his grandfather, christened Anthony Comstock Patch. When he went to Harvard, the Comstock dropped out of his name to a nether hell of oblivion and was never heard of thereafter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together—so often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at five, the year of his mother's death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical. She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of the Southern negro.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid. After Henrietta Lebrune Patch had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, father and son lived up at grampa's in Tarrytown, and Ulysses came daily to Anthony's nursery and expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Anthony hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to Atlantic City, "oh, some time soon now"; but none of them ever materialized. One trip they did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PAST AND PERSON OF THE HERO</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly, until, for the first time since her marriage, her person held for one day an unquestioned supremacy over her own drawing room. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed—it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; enormous, as nearly exhaustive as a boy's could be—his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. So Anthony kept up a correspondence with a half dozen "Stamp and Coin" companies and it was rare that the mail failed to bring him new stamp-books or packages of glittering approval sheets—there was a mysterious fascination in transferring his acquisitions interminably from one book to another. His stamps were his greatest happiness and he bestowed impatient frowns on any one who interrupted him at play with them; they devoured his allowance every month, and he lay awake at night musing untiringly on their variety and many-colored splendor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At sixteen he had lived almost entirely within himself, an inarticulate boy, thoroughly un-American, and politely bewildered by his contemporaries. The two preceding years had been spent in Europe with a private tutor, who persuaded him that Harvard was the thing; it would "open doors," it would be a tremendous tonic, it would give him innumerable self-sacrificing and devoted friends. So he went to Harvard—there was no other logical thing to be done with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oblivious to the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never to have a part.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. He made the Pudding. He drank—quietly and in the proper tradition. It was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well." In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then abroad again—to Rome this time, where he dallied with architecture and painting in turn, took up the violin, and wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets, supposedly the ruminations of a thirteenth-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It became established among his Harvard intimates that he was in Rome, and those of them who were abroad that year looked him up and discovered with him, on many moonlight excursions, much in the city that was older than the Renaissance or indeed than the republic. Maury Noble, from Philadelphia, for instance, remained two months, and together they realized the peculiar charm of Latin women and had a delightful sense of being very young and free in a civilization that was very old and free. Not a few acquaintances of his grandfather's called on him, and had he so desired he might have been <i>persona grata</i> with the diplomatic set—indeed, he found that his inclinations tended more and more toward conviviality, but that long adolescent aloofness and consequent shyness still dictated to his conduct.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He returned to America in 1912 because of one of his grandfather's sudden illnesses, and after an excessively tiresome talk with the perpetually convalescent old man he decided to put off until his grandfather's death the idea of living permanently abroad. After a prolonged search he took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and to all appearances settled down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In 1913 Anthony Patch's adjustment of himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of melancholy humor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One of those men devoid of the symmetry of feature essential to the Aryan ideal, he was yet, here and there, considered handsome—moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE REPROACHLESS APARTMENT</div></poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, city, urban, road, affect, haptic, metaphor, driving, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it seemed to Anthony, were the uprights of a gigantic ladder stretching from Washington Square to Central Park. Coming up-town on top of a bus toward Fifty-second Street invariably gave him the sensation of hoisting himself hand by hand on a series of treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps to the sidewalk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block, pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses—and then in a jiffy he was under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was burned to a murky black.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment—Anthony's bedroom and bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them were immense. Under the ceilings of the former even the great canopied bed seemed of only average size. On the floor an exotic rug of crimson velvet was soft as fleece on his bare feet. His bathroom, in contrast to the rather portentous character of his bedroom, was gay, bright, extremely habitable and even faintly facetious. Framed around the walls were photographs of four celebrated thespian beauties of the day: Julia Sanderson as "The Sunshine Girl," Ina Claire as "The Quaker Girl," Billie Burke as "The Mind-the-Paint Girl," and Hazel Dawn as "The Pink Lady." Between Billie Burke and Hazel Dawn hung a print representing a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun—this, claimed Anthony, symbolized the cold shower.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The bathtub, equipped with an ingenious bookholder, was low and large. Beside it a wall wardrobe bulged with sufficient linen for three men and with a generation of neckties. There was no skimpy glorified towel of a carpet—instead, a rich rug, like the one in his bedroom a miracle of softness, that seemed almost to massage the wet foot emerging from the tub. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> All in all a room to conjure with—it was easy to see that Anthony dressed there, arranged his immaculate hair there, in fact did everything but sleep and eat there. It was his pride, this bathroom. He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NOR DOES HE SPIN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The apartment was kept clean by an English servant with the singularly, almost theatrically, appropriate name of Bounds, whose technic was marred only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. Had he been entirely Anthony's Bounds this defect would have been summarily remedied, but he was also the Bounds of two other gentlemen in the neighborhood. From eight until eleven in the morning he was entirely Anthony's. He arrived with the mail and cooked breakfast. At nine-thirty he pulled the edge of Anthony's blanket and spoke a few terse words—Anthony never remembered clearly what they were and rather suspected they were deprecative; then he served breakfast on a card-table in the front room, made the bed and, after asking with some hostility if there was anything else, withdrew.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the mornings, at least once a week, Anthony went to see his broker. His income was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who had never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance, judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in contemplating his grandfather's money—even more, for the latter appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and explicitly—money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a <i>raison d'être</i> in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well again—the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and wire fences guarding the estate—this, said the public, was because it was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth—who before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general reprobate—ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better," Anthony said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last week, pulled out his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Train late?" he asked mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot, but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of meek accusation in his voice—and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentions—and simultaneously a glimmer in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the room—he detested Shuttleworth—but the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that you're here you ought to <i>do</i> something," said his grandfather softly, "accomplish something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony waited for him to speak of "leaving something done when you pass on." Then he made a suggestion:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought—it seemed to me that perhaps I'm best qualified to write—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—history," finished Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "History? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, sir. A history of the Middle Ages." Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said "Middle Ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Middle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see I've lived so much abroad—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why you should write about the Middle Ages, I don't know. Dark Ages, we used to call 'em. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that they're over now." He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the "corruption of the monasteries." Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think you'll be able to do any work in New York—or do you really intend to work at all?" This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, yes, I do, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When'll you be done?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there'll be an outline, you see—and a lot of preliminary reading."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd have done enough of that already."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothing—and contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>AFTERNOON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of "Erewhon." It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he was singing as he turned on the tap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes;</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul la-a-dy</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>My . . . heart . . . cries—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatre—Caramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was glad <i>he</i> wasn't going to work on <i>his</i> book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he sang lightly,<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possible—and, if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are glad to see each other now—their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp, restless—he is at rest now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven o'clock. Where's the Caramel? (<i>Impatiently</i>.) I wish he'd finish that interminable novel. I've spent more time hungry——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: He's got a new name for it. "The Demon Lover "—not bad, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>interested</i>) "The Demon Lover"? Oh "woman wailing"—No—not a bit bad! Not bad at all—d'you think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>His eyes narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval</i>) Drove me crazy the other day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: How?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That habit of taking notes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems I'd said something night before that he considered material but he'd forgotten it—so he had at me. He'd say "Can't you try to concentrate?" And I'd say "You bore me to tears. How do I remember?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (MAURY <i>laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Dick doesn't necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: That rather impressive talent——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. (<i>Silence, and then:</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced</i>) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>With laughter</i>) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? Just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Still considering his own last observation</i>) I remember.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Let's order. He'll be—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Sure. Let's order. I told him—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (<i>He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw</i>.) Here y'are, Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A NEW VOICE: (<i>Fiercely</i>) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Débutantes still after you, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>In person</i> RICHARD CARAMEL <i>is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>When he reaches the table he shakes hands with</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> MAURY. <i>He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Fixing</i> ANTHONY <i>eagerly with the bright eye</i>) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Noble æsthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: We never pass out, my beardless boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: All in our parties are characterized by a certain haughty distinction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: The particularly silly sort who boast about being "tanks"! Trouble is you're both in the eighteenth century. School of the Old English Squire. Drink quietly until you roll under the table. Never have a good time. Oh, no, that isn't done at all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: This from Chapter Six, I'll bet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Going to the theatre?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening doing some deep thinking over of life's problems. The thing is tersely called "The Woman." I presume that she will "pay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: My God! Is that what it is? Let's go to the Follies again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I'm tired of it. I've seen it three times. (<i>To</i> DICK.) The first time, we went out after Act One and found a most amazing bar. When we came back we entered the wrong theatre.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Had a protracted dispute with a scared young couple we thought were in our seats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>As though talking to himself</i>) I think—that when I've done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I'll do a musical comedy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I know—with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to. And all the critics will groan and grunt about "Dear old Pinafore." And I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Pompously</i>) Art isn't meaningless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: In other words, Dick, you're playing before a grand stand peopled with ghosts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Give a good show anyhow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY:(<i>To</i> MAURY) On the contrary, I'd feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, even admitting all that, be a decent pragmatist and grant a poor man the instinct to live. Would you want every one to accept that sophistic rot?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Yeah, I suppose so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, sir! I believe that every one in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don't complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligences.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Here the soup arrives and what</i> MAURY <i>might have gone on to say is lost for all time</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward they visited a ticket speculator and, at a price, obtained seats for a new musical comedy called "High Jinks." In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see the first-night crowd come in. There were opera cloaks stitched of myriad, many-colored silks and furs; there were jewels dripping from arms and throats and ear-tips of white and rose; there were innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial lake of laughter. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the play they parted—Maury was going to a dance at Sherry's, Anthony homeward and to bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin—too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices and craning their necks here and there in fatuous supercilious glances. They were dressed in suits of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; their turn-over collars were notched at the Adam's apple; they wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passed a bewildered old lady borne along like a basket of eggs between two men who exclaimed to her of the wonders of Times Square—explained them so quickly that the old lady, trying to be impartially interested, waved her head here and there like a piece of wind-worried old orange-peel. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the Astor, mama!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! See the chariot race sign——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's where we were to-day. No, <i>there!</i>”"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good gracious! . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You should worry and grow thin like a dime." He recognized the current witticism of the year as it issued stridently from one of the pairs at his elbow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I says to him, I says——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, haptic, sound, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughter hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He turned thankfully down the hush that blew like a dark wind out of a cross-street, passed a bakery-restaurant in whose windows a dozen roast chickens turned over and over on an automatic spit. From the door came a smell that was hot, doughy, and pink. A drug-store next, exhaling medicines, spilt soda water and a pleasant undertone from the cosmetic counter; then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling, smelling folded and vaguely yellow. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store and emerged feeling better—the cigar store was cheerful, humanity in a navy blue mist, buying a luxury . . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, there was a loneliness here——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> His cigarette, its smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as it passed the illusion faded; it diminished to the faintest of drums—then to a far-away droning eagle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car, road, risk, safety, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> There were the bells and the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long conversation with a voice that was in the white wind, a conversation that took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself</i>) Whither shall I journey now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Petulantly</i>) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Fifteen years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: And what's the name of the place?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In astonishment</i>) What?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Very much depressed</i>) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Even so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What of me? What chance shall I have?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>After a dissatisfied pause</i>) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It's expected that they'll be very busy shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What will I be? Tell me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it's not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a "susciety gurl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What's that?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as</i> THE VOICE <i>scratching its head</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>At length</i>) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Placidly</i>) It all sounds so vulgar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In a whisper</i>) Will I be paid?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Yes, as usual—in love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips</i>) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Soberly</i>) You will love it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The dialogue ends here, with</i> BEAUTY <i>still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>All this took place seven years before</i> ANTHONY <i>sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (31-73)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PORTRAIT OF A SIREN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CRISPNESS folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony's mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, to bear children unto three dozen millionaires. Five dozen virtuous females of the second layer were proclaiming not only this fitness, but in addition a tremendous undaunted ambition toward the first three dozen young men, who were of course invited to each of the ninety-six parties—as were the young lady's group of family friends, acquaintances, college boys, and eager young outsiders. To continue, there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city's shoes: Jewesses were coming out into a society of Jewish men and women, from Riverside to the Bronx, and looking forward to a rising young broker or jeweller and a kosher wedding; Irish girls were casting their eyes, with license at last to do so, upon a society of young Tammany politicians, pious undertakers, and grown-up choirboys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> And, naturally, the city caught the contagious air of entré—the working girls, poor ugly souls, wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted male—as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subway's foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles came out with new dances. And the railroads came out with new schedules containing new mistakes instead of the old ones that the commuters had grown used to. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The City was coming out!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, ran unexpectedly into Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West, that were just coming into fashionable approval. His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable hand shake, exploded into sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cold as the devil— Good Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, and took notes while she talked—so she couldn't see me, you know, just as though I were writing casually—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had seized Anthony's arm and was walking him briskly up Madison Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where to?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nowhere in particular."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, then what's the use?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They stopped and stared at each other, and Anthony wondered if the cold made his own face as repellent as Dick Caramel's, whose nose was crimson, whose bulging brow was blue, whose yellow unmatched eyes were red and watery at the rims. After a moment they began walking again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Done some good work on my novel." Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. "But I have to get out once in a while." He glanced at Anthony apologetically, as though craving encouragement. "I have to talk. I guess very few people ever really <i>think</i>, I mean sit down and ponder and have ideas in sequence. I do my thinking in writing or conversation. You've got to have a start, sort of—something to defend or contradict—don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't mind carrying you, Dick, but with that coat—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "that on paper your first paragraph contains the idea you're going to damn or enlarge on. In conversation you've got your vis-à-vis's last statement—but when you simply <i>ponder</i>, why, your ideas just succeed each other like magic-lantern pictures and each one forces out the last."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They passed Forty-fifth Street and slowed down slightly. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke and frosted breath into the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's walk up to the Plaza and have an egg-nog," suggested Anthony. "Do you good. Air'll get the rotten nicotine out of your lungs. Come on—I'll let you talk about your book all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to if it bores you. I mean you needn't do it as a favor." The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: "Bore me? I should say not!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin—" began Dick, but Anthony interrupted by stretching out his arms and breathing forth a low cry of exultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good weather!" he exclaimed, "isn't it? Makes me feel about ten. I mean it makes me feel as I should have felt when I was ten. Murderous! Oh, God! one minute it's my world, and the next I'm the world's fool. To-day it's my world and everything's easy, easy. Even Nothing is easy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin up at the Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter—has lately anyway—with her mother and father."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Didn't know you had cousins in New York."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Her name's Gloria. She's from home—Kansas City. Her mother's a practising Bilphist, and her father's quite dull but a perfect gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are they? Literary material?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They try to be. All the old man does is tell me he just met the most wonderful character for a novel. Then he tells me about some idiotic friend of his and then he says: '<i>There's</i> a character for you! Why don't you write him up? Everybody'd be interested in <i>him</i>.' Or else he tells me about Japan or Paris, or some other very obvious place, and says: 'Why don't you write a story about that place? That'd be a wonderful setting for a story!'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the girl?" inquired Anthony casually, "Gloria—Gloria what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gilbert. Oh, you've heard of her—Gloria Gilbert. Goes to dances at colleges—all that sort of thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard her name."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-looking—in fact damned attractive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care for young girls as a rule," said Anthony, frowning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was not strictly true. While it seemed to him that the average débutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness interested him enormously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's darn nice—not a brain in her head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a one-syllabled snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By that you mean that she hasn't a line of literary patter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick, you know what passes as brains in a girl for you. Earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. The kind who when they were sixteen argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrong—and whether it was immoral for freshmen to drink beer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was offended. His scowl crinkled like crushed paper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No—" he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; kind who just at present sit in corners and confer on the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick turned to him, a curious falling in his whole countenance. His question was almost an appeal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I were a sort of inferior."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was confused, but he was also cold and a little uncomfortable, so he took refuge in attack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think your brains matter, Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course they matter!" exclaimed Dick angrily. "What do you mean? Why don't they matter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You might know too much for your pen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I couldn't possibly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can imagine," insisted Anthony, "a man knowing too much for his talent to express. Like me. Suppose, for instance, I have more wisdom than you, and less talent. It would tend to make me inarticulate. You, on the contrary, have enough water to fill the pail and a big enough pail to hold the water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't follow you at all," complained Dick in a crestfallen tone. Infinitely dismayed, he seemed to bulge in protest. He was staring intently at Anthony and caroming off a succession of passers-by, who reproached him with fierce, resentful glances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I simply mean that a talent like Wells's could carry the intelligence of a Spencer. But an inferior talent can only be graceful when it's carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick considered, unable to decide the exact degree of criticism intended by Anthony's remarks. But Anthony, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Say I am proud and sane and wise—an Athenian among Greeks. Well, I might fail where a lesser man would succeed. He could imitate, he could adorn, he could be enthusiastic, he could be hopefully constructive. But this hypothetical me would be too proud to imitate, too sane to be enthusiastic, too sophisticated to be Utopian, too Grecian to adorn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then you don't think the artist works from his intelligence?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. He goes on improving, if he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because it's his mode of living. Don't tell me you like this 'Divine Function of the Artist' business?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not accustomed even to refer to myself as an artist."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick," said Anthony, changing his tone, "I want to beg your pardon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For that outburst. I'm honestly sorry. I was talking for effect."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Dick rejoined:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've often said you were a Philistine at heart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a crackling dusk when they turned in under the white façade of the Plaza and tasted slowly the foam and yellow thickness of an egg-nog. Anthony looked at his companion. Richard Caramel's nose and brow were slowly approaching a like pigmentation; the red was leaving the one, the blue deserting the other. Glancing in a mirror, Anthony was glad to find that his own skin had not discolored. On the contrary, a faint glow had kindled in his cheeks—he fancied that he had never looked so well.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Enough for me," said Dick, his tone that of an athlete in training. "I want to go up and see the Gilberts. Won't you come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—yes. If you don't dedicate me to the parents and dash off in the corner with Dora."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not Dora—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A clerk announced them over the phone, and ascending to the tenth floor they followed a winding corridor and knocked at 1088. The door was answered by a middle-aged lady—Mrs. Gilbert herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" She spoke in the conventional American lady-lady language. "Well, I'm <i>aw</i>fully glad to see you—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hasty interjections by Dick, and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mr. Pats? Well, do come in, and leave your coat there." She pointed to a chair and changed her inflection to a deprecatory laugh full of minute gasps. "This is really lovely—lovely. Why, Richard, you haven't been here for <i>so</i> long—no!—no!" The latter monosyllables served half as responses, half as periods, to some vague starts from Dick. "Well, do sit down and tell me what you've been doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One crossed and recrossed; one stood and bowed ever so gently; one smiled again and again with helpless stupidity; one wondered if she would ever sit down—at length one slid thankfully into a chair and settled for a pleasant call.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it's because you've been busy—as much as anything else," smiled Mrs. Gilbert somewhat ambiguously. The "as much as anything else" she used to balance all her more rickety sentences. She had two other ones: "at least that's the way I look at it" and "pure and simple"—these three, alternated, gave each of her remarks an air of being a general reflection on life, as though she had calculated all causes and, at length, put her finger on the ultimate one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel's face, Anthony saw, was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who are of no further value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you a writer too, Mr. Pats? . . . Well, perhaps we can all bask in Richard's fame."—Gentle laughter led by Mrs. Gilbert.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's out," she said, with an air of laying down an axiom from which she would proceed to derive results. "She's dancing somewhere. Gloria goes, goes, goes. I tell her I don't see how she stands it. She dances all afternoon and all night, until I think she's going to wear herself to a shadow. Her father is very worried about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled from one to the other. They both smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was composed, Anthony perceived, of a succession of semicircles and parabolas, like those figures that gifted folk make on the typewriter: head, arms, bust, hips, thighs, and ankles were in a bewildering tier of roundnesses. Well ordered and clean she was, with hair of an artificially rich gray; her large face sheltered weather-beaten blue eyes and was adorned with just the faintest white mustache.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," she remarked to Anthony, "that Richard is an ancient soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the tense pause that followed, Anthony considered a pun—something about Dick having been much walked upon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We all have souls of different ages," continued Mrs. Gilbert radiantly; "at least that's what I say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps so," agreed Anthony with an air of quickening to a hopeful idea. The voice bubbled on:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has a very young soul—irresponsible, as much as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's sparkling, Aunt Catherine," said Richard pleasantly. "A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," confessed Mrs. Gilbert, "all I know is that she goes and goes and goes—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The number of goings to Gloria's discredit was lost in the rattle of the door-knob as it turned to admit Mr. Gilbert. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was a short man with a mustache resting like a small white cloud beneath his undistinguished nose. He had reached the stage where his value as a social creature was a black and imponderable negative. His ideas were the popular delusions of twenty years before; his mind steered a wabbly and anæmic course in the wake of the daily newspaper editorials. After graduating from a small but terrifying Western university, he had entered the celluloid business, and as this required only the minute measure of intelligence he brought to it, he did well for several years—in fact until about 1911, when he began exchanging contracts for vague agreements with the moving picture industry. The moving picture industry had decided about 1912 to gobble him up, and at this time he was, so to speak, delicately balanced on its tongue. Meanwhile he was supervising manager of the Associated Mid-western Film Materials Company, spending six months of each year in New York and the remainder in Kansas City and St. Louis. He felt credulously that there was a good thing coming to him—and his wife thought so, and his daughter thought so too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals, she was always in a mix-up—he had irritated her once and she had used toward him words that he had not thought were part of her vocabulary. His wife was easier. After fifteen years of incessant guerilla warfare he had conquered her—it was a war of muddled optimism against organized dulness, and something in the number of "yes's" with which he could poison a conversation had won him the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes-yes," he would say, "yes-yes-yes-yes. Let me see. That was the summer of—let me see—ninety-one or ninety-two—Yes-yes-yes-yes——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fifteen years of yes's had beaten Mrs. Gilbert. Fifteen further years of that incessant unaffirmative affirmative, accompanied by the perpetual flicking of ash-mushrooms from thirty-two thousand cigars, had broken her. To this husband of hers she made the last concession of married life, which is more complete, more irrevocable, than the first—she listened to him. She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance—actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She introduced him to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is Mr. Pats," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> The young man and the old touched flesh; Mr. Gilbert's hand was soft, worn away to the pulpy semblance of a squeezed grapefruit. Then husband and wife exchanged greetings—he told her it had grown colder out; he said he had walked down to a news-stand on Forty-fourth Street for a Kansas City paper. He had intended to ride back in the bus but he had found it too cold, yes, yes, yes, yes, too cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert added flavor to his adventure by being impressed with his courage in braving the harsh air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you <i>are</i> spunky!" she exclaimed admiringly. "You <i>are</i> spunky. I wouldn't have gone out for anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert with true masculine impassivity disregarded the awe he had excited in his wife. He turned to the two young men and triumphantly routed them on the subject of the weather. Richard Caramel was called on to remember the month of November in Kansas. No sooner had the theme been pushed toward him, however, than it was violently fished back to be lingered over, pawed over, elongated, and generally devitalized by its sponsor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> The immemorial thesis that the days somewhere were warm but the nights very pleasant was successfully propounded and they decided the exact distance on an obscure railroad between two points that Dick had inadvertently mentioned. Anthony fixed Mr. Gilbert with a steady stare and went into a trance through which, after a moment, Mrs. Gilbert's smiling voice penetrated:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems as though the cold were damper here—it seems to eat into my bones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the tip of Mr. Gilbert's tongue, he could not be blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She ought to be here any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you met my daughter, Mr.——?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't had the pleasure. I've heard Dick speak of her often."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She and Richard are cousins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes?" Anthony smiled with some effort. He was not used to the society of his seniors, and his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness. It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick being cousins. He managed within the next minute to throw an agonized glance at his friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was afraid they'd have to toddle off.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea—something about being glad they'd come, anyhow, even if they'd only seen an old lady 'way too old to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one bar in three-four time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Would they come again soon?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria would be <i>aw</i>fully sorry!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bang!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A LADY'S LEGS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure—and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker; but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious purpose and significant design—as though Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go along the earth and to see all the billions of humans who bred and wept and slew each other here and there upon it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in America, he was sallying into the search for amusement with the same consistent absorption. He who had never taken more than a few cocktails or a pint of wine at a sitting, taught himself to drink as he would have taught himself Greek—like Greek it would be the gateway to a wealth of new sensations, new psychic states, new reactions in joy or misery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His habits were a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth Street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home. Foremost on the latter list were Anthony Patch and Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury's mother lived with her married son in Philadelphia, and there Maury went usually for the week-ends, so one Saturday night when Anthony, prowling the chilly streets in a fit of utter boredom, dropped in at the Molton Arms he was overjoyed to find that Mr. Noble was at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His spirits soared faster than the flying elevator. This was so good, so extremely good, to be about to talk to Maury—who would be equally happy at seeing him. They would look at each other with a deep affection just behind their eyes which both would conceal beneath some attenuated raillery. Had it been summer they would have gone out together and indolently sipped two long Tom Collinses, as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill's, or a thimbleful of Maury's Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and catlike, in his favorite chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There he was! The room closed about Anthony, warmed him. The glow of that strong persuasive mind, that temperament almost Oriental in its outward impassivity, warmed Anthony's restless soul and brought him a peace that could be likened only to the peace a stupid woman gives. One must understand all—else one must take all for granted. Maury filled the room, tigerlike, godlike. The winds outside were stilled; the brass candlesticks on the mantel glowed like tapers before an altar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What keeps you here to-day?" Anthony spread himself over a yielding sofa and made an elbow-rest among the pillows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Just been here an hour. Tea dance—and I stayed so late I missed my train to Philadelphia."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange to stay so long," commented Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather. What'd you do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine. Little usher at Keith's. I told you about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paid me a call about three and stayed till five. Peculiar little soul—she gets me. She's so utterly stupid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was silent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange as it may seem," continued Anthony, "so far as I'm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> He had known her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the Park. She had a vague family—a shadowy aunt and uncle who shared with her an apartment in the labyrinthine hundreds. She was company, familiar and faintly intimate and restful. Further than that he did not care to experiment—not from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She has two stunts," he informed Maury; "one of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say 'You cra-a-azy!' when some one makes a remark that's over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in my imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury stirred in his chair and spoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Remarkable that a person can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that actually takes the whole universe in the most matter-of-fact way. From the influence of Rousseau to the bearing of the tariff rates on her dinner, the whole phenomenon is utterly strange to her. She's just been carried along from an age of spearheads and plunked down here with the equipment of an archer for going into a pistol duel. You could sweep away the entire crust of history and she'd never know the difference."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish our Richard would write about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, surely you don't think she's worth writing about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As much as anybody," he answered, yawning. "You know I was thinking to-day that I have a great confidence in Dick. So long as he sticks to people and not to ideas, and as long as his inspirations come from life and not from art, and always granting a normal growth, I believe he'll be a big man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think the appearance of the black note-book would prove that he's going to life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony raised himself on his elbow and answered eagerly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he accurately transcribe his own sister?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they were off for half an hour on literature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A classic," suggested Anthony, "is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a time the subject temporarily lost its tang. The interest of the two young men was not particularly technical. They were in love with generalities. Anthony had recently discovered Samuel Butler and the brisk aphorisms in the note-book seemed to him the quintessence of criticism. Maury, his whole mind so thoroughly mellowed by the very hardness of his scheme of life, seemed inevitably the wiser of the two, yet in the actual stuff of their intelligences they were not, it seemed, fundamentally different.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They drifted from letters to the curiosities of each other's day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Whose tea was it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "People named Abercrombie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why'd you stay late? Meet a luscious débutante?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you really?" Anthony's voice lifted in surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a débutante exactly. Said she came out two winters ago in Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of left-over?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," answered Maury with some amusement, "I think that's the last thing I'd say about her. She seemed—well, somehow the youngest person there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Not too young to make you miss a train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young enough. Beautiful child."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled in his one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Maury, you're in your second childhood. What do you mean by beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gazed helplessly into space.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't describe her exactly—except to say that she was beautiful. She was—tremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was a sort of attenuated vice. She's a nervous kind—said she always ate gum-drops at teas because she had to stand around so long in one place."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd you talk about—Bergson? Bilphism? Whether the one-step is immoral?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As a matter of fact we did talk on Bilphism. Seems her mother's a Bilphist. Mostly, though, we talked about legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony rocked in glee.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My God! Whose legs?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hers. She talked a lot about hers. As though they were a sort of choice bric-à-brac. She aroused a great desire to see them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is she—a dancer?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I found she was a cousin of Dick's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony sat upright so suddenly that the pillow he released stood on end like a live thing and dove to the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Name's Gloria Gilbert?" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes. Isn't she remarkable?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure I don't know—but for sheer dulness her father—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," interrupted Maury with implacable conviction, "her family may be as sad as professional mourners but I'm inclined to think that she's a quite authentic and original character. The outer signs of the cut-and-dried Yale prom girl and all that—but different, very emphatically different."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, go on!" urged Anthony. "Soon as Dick told me she didn't have a brain in her head I knew she must be pretty good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he say that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Swore to it," said Anthony with another snorting laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what he means by brains in a woman is—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," interrupted Anthony eagerly, "he means a smattering of literary misinformation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's it. The kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes it's a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin too—her own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely she usually approximated it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You sat enraptured by her low alto?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze, if I remember rightly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's got you going—oh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in his family!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Snowing hard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Another winter." Maury's voice from the window was almost a whisper.<br /> "We're growing old, Anthony. I'm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to thirty, and then I'm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was silent for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>are</i> old, Maury," he agreed at length. "The first signs of a very dissolute and wabbly senescence—you have spent the afternoon talking about tan and a lady's legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury pulled down the shade with a sudden harsh snap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come—oh, for a Caramel to take notes—and another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonys—yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After all, Anthony, it's you who are very romantic and young. It's you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. It's me who tries again and again to be moved—let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me. Nothing—quite—stirs me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet," he murmured after another long pause, "there was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old—like me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TURBULENCE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony turned over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the rug was beckoning and perishable to his perishable feet, and Bounds, horribly inappropriate in his soft collar, was of stuff as fading as the gauze of frozen breath he uttered. He was close to the bed, his hand still lowered where he had been jerking at the upper blanket, his dark-brown eyes fixed imperturbably upon his master.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bows!" muttered the drowsy god. "Thachew, Bows?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's I, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved his head, forced his eyes wide, and blinked triumphantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you get off—yeow-ow-oh-oh-oh God!—" Anthony yawned insufferably and the contents of his brain seemed to fall together in a dense hash. He made a fresh start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you come around about four and serve some tea and sandwiches or something?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered with chilling lack of inspiration. "Some sandwiches," he repeated helplessly, "oh, some cheese sandwiches and jelly ones and chicken and olive, I guess. Never mind breakfast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The strain of invention was too much. He shut his eyes wearily, let his head roll to rest inertly, and quickly relaxed what he had regained of muscular control. Out of a crevice of his mind crept the vague but inevitable spectre of the night before—but it proved in this case to be nothing but a seemingly interminable conversation with Richard Caramel, who had called on him at midnight; they had drunk four bottles of beer and munched dry crusts of bread while Anthony listened to a reading of the first part of "The Demon Lover."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Came a voice now after many hours. Anthony disregarded it, as sleep closed over him, folded down upon him, crept up into the byways of his mind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly he was awake, saying: "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For how many, sir?" It was still Bounds, standing patient and motionless at the foot of the bed—Bounds who divided his manner among three gentlemen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How many what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think, sir, I'd better know how many are coming. I'll have to plan for the sandwiches, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Two," muttered Anthony huskily; "lady and a gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds said, "Thank you, sir," and moved away, bearing with him his humiliating reproachful soft collar, reproachful to each of the three gentlemen, who only demanded of him a third.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a long time Anthony arose and drew an opalescent dressing grown of brown and blue over his slim pleasant figure. With a last yawn he went into the bathroom, and turning on the dresser light (the bathroom had no outside exposure) he contemplated himself in the mirror with some interest. A wretched apparition, he thought; he usually thought so in the morning—sleep made his face unnaturally pale. He lit a cigarette and glanced through several letters and the morning Tribune.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour later, shaven and dressed, he was sitting at his desk looking at a small piece of paper he had taken out of his wallet. It was scrawled with semi-legible memoranda: "See Mr. Howland at five. Get hair-cut. See about Rivers' bill. Go book-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And under the last: "Cash in bank, $690 (crossed out), $612 (crossed out), $607."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally, down at the bottom and in a hurried scrawl: "Dick and Gloria Gilbert for tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This last item brought him obvious satisfaction. His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the uneaten sandwiches.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a growing lack of color in Anthony's days. He felt it constantly and sometimes traced it to a talk he had had with Maury Noble a month before. That anything so ingenuous, so priggish, as a sense of waste should oppress him was absurd, but there was no denying the fact that some unwelcome survival of a fetish had drawn him three weeks before down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours of acute and startling panic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In justification of his manner of living there was first, of course, The Meaninglessness of Life. As aides and ministers, pages and squires, butlers and lackeys to this great Khan there were a thousand books glowing on his shelves, there was his apartment and all the money that was to be his when the old man up the river should choke on his last morality. From a world fraught with the menace of débutantes and the stupidity of many Geraldines he was thankfully delivered—rather should he emulate the feline immobility of Maury and wear proudly the culminative wisdom of the numbered generations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Over and against these things was something which his brain persistently analyzed and dealt with as a tiresome complex but which, though logically disposed of and bravely trampled under foot, had sent him out through the soft slush of late November to a library which had none of the books he most wanted. It is fair to analyze Anthony as far as he could analyze himself; further than that it is, of course, presumption. He found in himself a growing horror and loneliness. The idea of eating alone frightened him; in preference he dined often with men he detested. Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —If I am essentially weak, he thought, I need work to do, work to do. It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity, with neither the poise of Maury nor the enthusiasm of Dick. It seemed a tragedy to want nothing—and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was—some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After cocktails and luncheon at the University Club Anthony felt better. He had run into two men from his class at Harvard, and in contrast to the gray heaviness of their conversation his life assumed color. Both of them were married: one spent his coffee time in sketching an extra-nuptial adventure to the bland and appreciative smiles of the other. Both of them, he thought, were Mr. Gilberts in embryo; the number of their "yes's" would have to be quadrupled, their natures crabbed by twenty years—then they would be no more than obsolete and broken machines, pseudo-wise and valueless, nursed to an utter senility by the women they had broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ah, he was more than that, as he paced the long carpet in the lounge after dinner, pausing at the window to look into the harried street. He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a stray boyishness he saw himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam. The clarity of his mind, its sophistication, its versatile intelligence, all at their maturity and dominated by some purpose yet to be born would find him work to do. On this minor his dream faded—work to do: he tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lustreless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people—and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lord Verulam! Talleyrand!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment the grayness returned. His cocktails had died, making him sleepy, somewhat befogged and inclined to be surly. Lord Verulam—he? The very thought was bitter. Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to be satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The buzzer rang at the door. Anthony sprang up and lifted the tube to his ear. It was Richard Caramel's voice, stilted and facetious:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Announcing Miss Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BEAUTIFUL LADY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he said, smiling and holding the door ajar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick bowed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, this is Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" she cried, holding out a little gloved hand. Under her fur coat her dress was Alice-blue, with white lace crinkled stiffly about her throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let me take your things."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony stretched out his arms and the brown mass of fur tumbled into them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you think of her, Anthony?" Richard Caramel demanded barbarously. "Isn't she beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" cried the girl defiantly—withal unmoved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was dazzling—alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance. Her hair, full of a heavenly glamour, was gay against the winter color of the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved about, magician-like, turning the mushroom lamp into an orange glory. The stirred fire burnished the copper andirons on the hearth——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a solid block of ice," murmured Gloria casually, glancing around with eyes whose irises were of the most delicate and transparent bluish white. "What a slick fire! We found a place where you could stand on an iron-bar grating, sort of, and it blew warm air up at you—but Dick wouldn't wait there with me. I told him to go on alone and let me be happy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Conventional enough this. She seemed talking for her own pleasure, without effort. Anthony, sitting at one end of the sofa, examined her profile against the foreground of the lamp: the exquisite regularity of nose and upper lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold—but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Think you've got the best name I've heard," she was saying, still apparently to herself; her glance rested on him a moment and then flitted past him—to the Italian bracket-lamps clinging like luminous yellow turtles at intervals along the walls, to the books row upon row, then to her cousin on the other side. "Anthony Patch. Only you ought to look sort of like a horse, with a long narrow face—and you ought to be in tatters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all the Patch part, though. How should Anthony look?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You look like Anthony," she assured him seriously—he thought she had scarcely seen him—"rather majestic," she continued, "and solemn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony indulged in a disconcerted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only I like alliterative names," she went on, "all except mine. Mine's too flamboyant. I used to know two girls named Jinks, though, and just think if they'd been named anything except what they were named—Judy Jinks and Jerry Jinks. Cute, what? Don't you think?" Her childish mouth was parted, awaiting a rejoinder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody in the next generation," suggested Dick, "will be named Peter or Barbara—because at present all the piquant literary characters are named Peter or Barbara."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony continued the prophecy:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course Gladys and Eleanor, having graced the last generation of heroines and being at present in their social prime, will be passed on to the next generation of shop-girls——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Displacing Ella and Stella," interrupted Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Pearl and Jewel," Gloria added cordially, "and Earl and Elmer and Minnie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then I'll come along," remarked Dick, "and picking up the obsolete name, Jewel, I'll attach it to some quaint and attractive character and it'll start its career all over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice took up the thread of subject and wove along with faintly upturning, half-humorous intonations for sentence ends—as though defying interruption—and intervals of shadowy laughter. Dick had told her that Anthony's man was named Bounds—she thought that was wonderful! Dick had made some sad pun about Bounds doing patchwork, but if there was one thing worse than a pun, she said, it was a person who, as the inevitable come-back to a pun, gave the perpetrator a mock-reproachful look.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where are you from?" inquired Anthony. He knew, but beauty had rendered him thoughtless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Kansas City, Missouri."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They put her out the same time they barred cigarettes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did they bar cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a reformer or something, isn't he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I blush for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So do I," she confessed. "I detest reformers, especially the sort who try to reform me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there many of those?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens. It's 'Oh, Gloria, if you smoke so many cigarettes you'll lose your pretty complexion!' and 'Oh, Gloria, why don't you marry and settle down?'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony agreed emphatically while he wondered who had had the temerity to speak thus to such a personage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then," she continued, "there are all the subtle reformers who tell you the wild stories they've heard about you and how they've been sticking up for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw, at length, that her eyes were gray, very level and cool, and when they rested on him he understood what Maury had meant by saying she was very young and very old. She talked always about herself as a very charming child might talk, and her comments on her tastes and distastes were unaffected and spontaneous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must confess," said Anthony gravely, "that even <i>I</i>'ve heard one thing about you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Alert at once, she sat up straight. Those eyes, with the grayness and eternity of a cliff of soft granite, caught his.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe anything any one tells me about myself—don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Invariably!" agreed the two men in unison.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not sure that I ought to," teased Anthony, smiling unwillingly. She was so obviously interested, in a state of almost laughable self-absorption.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He means your nickname," said her cousin.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What name?" inquired Anthony, politely puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Instantly she was shy—then she laughed, rolled back against the cushions, and turned her eyes up as she spoke:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Coast-to-Coast Gloria." Her voice was full of laughter, laughter undefined as the varying shadows playing between fire and lamp upon her hair. "O Lord!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Still Anthony was puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>Me</i>”, I mean. That's what some silly boys coined for <i>me</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you see, Anthony," explained Dick, "traveller of a nation-wide notoriety and all that. Isn't that what you've heard? She's been called that for years—since she was seventeen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony's eyes became sad and humorous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this female Methuselah you've brought in here, Caramel?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She disregarded this, possibly rather resented it, for she switched back to the main topic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>have</i> you heard of me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Something about your physique."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said, coolly disappointed, "that all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your tan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My tan?" She was puzzled. Her hand rose to her throat, rested there an instant as though the fingers were feeling variants of color.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember Maury Noble? Man you met about a month ago. You made a great impression."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She thought a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember—but he didn't call me up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was afraid to, I don't doubt."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was black dark without now and Anthony wondered that his apartment had ever seemed gray—so warm and friendly were the books and pictures on the walls and the good Bounds offering tea from a respectful shadow and the three nice people giving out waves of interest and laughter back and forth across the happy fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DISSATISFACTION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill room at the Plaza. Her fur-trimmed suit was gray—"because with gray you <i>have</i> to wear a lot of paint," she explained—and a small toque sat rakishly on her head, allowing yellow ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a child's hands should be.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As they entered, the orchestra were sounding the preliminary whimpers to a maxixe, a tune full of castanets and facile faintly languorous violin harmonies, appropriate to the crowded winter grill teeming with an excited college crowd, high-spirited at the approach of the holidays. Carefully, Gloria considered several locations, and rather to Anthony's annoyance paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naïve was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abstractedly she watched the dancers for a few moments, commenting murmurously as a couple eddied near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a pretty girl in blue"—and as Anthony looked obediently—" there! No. behind you—there!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," he agreed helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You didn't see her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd rather look at you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know, but she was pretty. Except that she had big ankles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Was she?—I mean, did she?" he said indifferently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A girl's salutation came from a couple dancing close to them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Gloria! O Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's that?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Somebody." She caught sight of another face. "Hello, Muriel!" Then to Anthony: "There's Muriel Kane. Now I think she's attractive, 'cept not very." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled appreciatively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Attractive, 'cept not very," he repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled—was interested immediately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why is that funny?" Her tone was pathetically intent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It just was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want to dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. But let's sit," she decided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And talk about you? You love to talk about you, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes." Caught in a vanity, she laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I imagine your autobiography would be a classic."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick says I haven't got one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick!" he exclaimed. "What does he know about you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing. But he says the biography of every woman begins with the first kiss that counts, and ends when her last child is laid in her arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's talking from his book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He says unloved women have no biographies—they have histories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Surely you don't claim to be unloved!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I suppose not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why haven't you a biography? Haven't you ever had a kiss that counted?" As the words left his lips he drew in his breath sharply as though to suck them back. This <i>baby</i>!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know what you mean 'counts,'" she objected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd tell me how old you are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Twenty-two," she said, meeting his eyes gravely. "How old did you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About eighteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to start being that. I don't like being twenty-two. I hate it more than anything in the world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Being twenty-two?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Getting old and everything. Getting married."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever want to marry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to have responsibility and a lot of children to take care of."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Evidently she did not doubt that on her lips all things were good. He waited rather breathlessly for her next remark, expecting it to follow up her last. She was smiling, without amusement but pleasantly, and after an interval half a dozen words fell into the space between them:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I had some gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You shall!" He beckoned to a waiter and sent him to the cigar counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you mind? I love gum-drops. Everybody kids me about it because I'm always whacking away at one—whenever my daddy's not around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not at all.—Who are all these children?" he asked suddenly. "Do you know them all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, but they're from—oh, from everywhere, I suppose. Don't you ever come here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very seldom. I don't care particularly for 'nice girls.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Immediately he had her attention. She turned a definite shoulder to the dancers, relaxed in her chair, and demanded:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>do</i>” you do with yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thanks to a cocktail Anthony welcomed the question. In a mood to talk, he wanted, moreover, to impress this girl whose interest seemed so tantalizingly elusive—she stopped to browse in unexpected pastures, hurried quickly over the inobviously obvious. He wanted to pose. He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do nothing," he began, realizing simultaneously that his words were to lack the debonair grace he craved for them. "I do nothing, for there's nothing I can do that's worth doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?" He had neither surprised her nor even held her, yet she had certainly understood him, if indeed he had said aught worth understanding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you approve of lazy men?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose so, if they're gracefully lazy. Is that possible for an American?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not?" he demanded, discomfited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But her mind had left the subject and wandered up ten floors.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My daddy's mad at me," she observed dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle"—his words gathered conviction—"it astonishes me. It—it—I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off. She watched him inscrutably. He waited for her to agree or disagree, but she did neither.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever form judgments on things?" he asked with some exasperation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her head and her eyes wandered back to the dancers as she answered:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. I don't know anything about—what you should do, or what anybody should do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he admitted apologetically, "neither do I, of course, but——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just think of people," she continued, "whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't want to do anything?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a second he was startled, almost as though she had meant this literally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sleep?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe—and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me. But I never want to change people or get excited over them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a quaint little determinist," laughed Anthony. "It's your world, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—" she said with a quick upward glance, "isn't it? As long as I'm—young."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had paused slightly before the last word and Anthony suspected that she had started to say "beautiful." It was undeniably what she had intended.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes brightened and he waited for her to enlarge on the theme. He had drawn her out, at any rate—he bent forward slightly to catch the words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But "Let's dance!" was all she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ADMIRATION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That winter afternoon at the Plaza was the first of a succession of "dates" Anthony made with her in the blurred and stimulating days before Christmas. Invariably she was busy. What particular strata of the city's social life claimed her he was a long time finding out. It seemed to matter very little. She attended the semi-public charity dances at the big hotels; he saw her several times at dinner parties in Sherry's, and once as he waited for her to dress, Mrs. Gilbert, apropos of her daughter's habit of "going," rattled off an amazing holiday programme that included half a dozen dances to which Anthony had received cards.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He made engagements with her several times for lunch and tea—the former were hurried and, to him at least, rather unsatisfactory occasions, for she was sleepy-eyed and casual, incapable of concentrating upon anything or of giving consecutive attention to his remarks. When after two of these sallow meals he accused her of tendering him the skin and bones of the day she laughed and gave him a tea-time three days off. This was infinitely more satisfactory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One Sunday afternoon just before Christmas he called up and found her in the lull directly after some important but mysterious quarrel: she informed him in a tone of mingled wrath and amusement that she had sent a man out of her apartment—here Anthony speculated violently—and that the man had been giving a little dinner for her that very night and that of course she wasn't going. So Anthony took her to supper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go to something!" she proposed as they went down in the elevator. "I want to see a show, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Inquiry at the hotel ticket desk disclosed only two Sunday night "concerts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They're always the same," she complained unhappily, "same old Yiddish comedians. Oh, let's go somewhere!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To conceal a guilty suspicion that he should have arranged a performance of some kind for her approval Anthony affected a knowing cheerfulness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go to a good cabaret."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've seen every one in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll find a new one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in wretched humor; that was evident. Her gray eyes were granite now indeed. When she wasn't speaking she stared straight in front of her as if at some distasteful abstraction in the lobby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, come on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, passenger, navigation, city, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He followed her, a graceful girl even in her enveloping fur, out to a taxicab, and, with an air of having a definite place in mind, instructed the driver to go over to Broadway and then turn south. He made several casual attempts at conversation but as she adopted an impenetrable armor of silence and answered him in sentences as morose as the cold darkness of the taxicab he gave up, and assuming a like mood fell into a dim gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, urban, car"><br /> <poem><br /> A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony's eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign spelling "Marathon" in glorious yellow script, adorned with electrical leaves and flowers that alternately vanished and beamed upon the wet and glistening street. He leaned and rapped on the taxi-window and in a moment was receiving information from a colored doorman: Yes, this was a cabaret. Fine cabaret. Bes' showina city!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we try it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door and prepared to follow it; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this unsung palace of pleasure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gay habitats of the very rich and the very poor, the very dashing and the very criminal, not to mention the lately exploited very Bohemian, are made known to the awed high school girls of Augusta, Georgia, and Redwing, Minnesota, not only through the bepictured and entrancing spreads of the Sunday theatrical supplements but through the shocked and alarmful eyes of Mr. Rupert Hughes and other chroniclers of the mad pace of America. But the excursions of Harlem onto Broadway, the deviltries of the dull and the revelries of the respectable are a matter of esoteric knowledge only to the participants themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tip circulates—and in the place knowingly mentioned, gather the lower moral-classes on Saturday and Sunday nights—the little troubled men who are pictured in the comics as "the Consumer" or "the Public." They have made sure that the place has three qualifications: it is cheap; it imitates with a sort of shoddy and mechanical wistfulness the glittering antics of the great cafés in the theatre district; and—this, above all, important—it is a place where they can "take a nice girl," which means, of course, that every one has become equally harmless, timid, and uninteresting through lack of money and imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people with hyphenated occupations: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks—clerks of the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery and broken hopes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They name these brummagem cabarets after Pullman cars. The "Marathon"! Not for them the salacious similes borrowed from the cafés of Paris! This is where their docile patrons bring their "nice women," whose starved fancies are only too willing to believe that the scene is comparatively gay and joyous, and even faintly immoral. This is life! Who cares for the morrow?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abandoned people!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Gloria, seated, looked about them. At the next table a party of four were in process of being joined by a party of three, two men and a girl, who were evidently late—and the manner of the girl was a study in national sociology. She was meeting some new men—and she was pretending desperately. By gesture she was pretending and by words and by the scarcely perceptible motionings of her eyelids that she belonged to a class a little superior to the class with which she now had to do, that a while ago she had been, and presently would again be, in a higher, rarer air. She was almost painfully refined—she wore a last year's hat covered with violets no more yearningly pretentious and palpably artificial than herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fascinated, Anthony and Gloria watched the girl sit down and radiate the impression that she was only condescendingly present. For <i>me</i>, her eyes said, this is practically a slumming expedition, to be cloaked with belittling laughter and semi-apologetics.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And the other women passionately poured out the impression that though they were in the crowd they were not of it. This was not the sort of place to which they were accustomed; they had dropped in because it was near by and convenient—every party in the restaurant poured out that impression . . . who knew? They were forever changing class, all of them—the women often marrying above their opportunities, the men striking suddenly a magnificent opulence: a sufficiently preposterous advertising scheme, a celestialized ice cream cone. Meanwhile, they met here to eat, closing their eyes to the economy displayed in infrequent changings of table-cloths, in the casualness of the cabaret performers, most of all in the colloquial carelessness and familiarity of the waiters. One was sure that these waiters were not impressed by their patrons. One expected that presently they would sit at the tables . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you object to this?" inquired Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's face warmed and for the first time that evening she smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love it," she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-à-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor—and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the illusion snapped like a nest of threads; the room grouped itself around him, voices, faces, movement; the garish shimmer of the lights overhead became real, became portentous; breath began, the slow respiration that she and he took in time with this docile hundred, the rise and fall of bosoms, the eternal meaningless play and interplay and tossing and reiterating of word and phrase—all these wrenched his senses open to the suffocating pressure of life—and then her voice came at him, cool as the suspended dream he had left behind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I belong here," she murmured, "I'm like these people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an instant this seemed a sardonic and unnecessary paradox hurled at him across the impassable distances she created about herself. Her entrancement had increased—her eyes rested upon a Semitic violinist who swayed his shoulders to the rhythm of the year's mellowest fox-trot:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"Something—goes</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Ring-a-ting-a-ling-a-ling</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Right in-your ear——"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she spoke, from the centre of this pervasive illusion of her own. It amazed him. It was like blasphemy from the mouth of a child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm like they are—like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a young idiot!" he insisted wildly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her blond head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I <i>am</i> like them. . . . You ought to see. . . . You don't know me." She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. "I've got a streak of what you'd call cheapness. I don't know where I get it but it's—oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I'm this because of this or that because of that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down <i>now</i>, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What were you thinking?" she asked.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just that I'm not a realist," he said, and then: "No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance—that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it—then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (74-128)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FROM his undergraduate days as editor of The Harvard Crimson Richard Caramel had desired to write. But as a senior he had picked up the glorified illusion that certain men were set aside for "service" and, going into the world, were to accomplish a vague yearnful something which would react either in eternal reward or, at the least, in the personal satisfaction of having striven for the greatest good of the greatest number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This spirit has long rocked the colleges in America. It begins, as a rule, during the immaturities and facile impressions of freshman year—sometimes back in preparatory school. Prosperous apostles known for their emotional acting go the rounds of the universities and, by frightening the amiable sheep and dulling the quickening of interest and intellectual curiosity which is the purpose of all education, distil a mysterious conviction of sin, harking back to childhood crimes and to the ever-present menace of "women." To these lectures go the wicked youths to cheer and joke and the timid to swallow the tasty pills, which would be harmless if administered to farmers' wives and pious drug-clerks but are rather dangerous medicine for these "future leaders of men."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This octopus was strong enough to wind a sinuous tentacle about Richard Caramel. The year after his graduation it called him into the slums of New York to muck about with bewildered Italians as secretary to an "Alien Young Men's Rescue Association." He labored at it over a year before the monotony began to weary him. The aliens kept coming inexhaustibly—Italians, Poles, Scandinavians, Czechs, Armenians—with the same wrongs, the same exceptionally ugly faces and very much the same smells, though he fancied that these grew more profuse and diverse as the months passed. His eventual conclusions about the expediency of service were vague, but concerning his own relation to it they were abrupt and decisive. Any amiable young man, his head ringing with the latest crusade, could accomplish as much as he could with the débris of Europe—and it was time for him to write.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had been living in a down-town Y.M.C.A., but when he quit the task of making sow-ear purses out of sows' ears, he moved up-town and went to work immediately as a reporter for The Sun. He kept at this for a year, doing desultory writing on the side, with little success, and then one day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career. On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the horses' hoofs in the snow. . . This he handed in. Next morning a marked copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note: "Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen the snow threatening—and had postponed the parade until another day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover.". . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, the Monday of the months, Richard Caramel's nose was blue constantly, a sardonic blue, vaguely suggestive of the flames licking around a sinner. His book was nearly ready, and as it grew in completeness it seemed to grow also in its demands, sapping him, overpowering him, until he walked haggard and conquered in its shadow. Not only to Anthony and Maury did he pour out his hopes and boasts and indecisions, but to any one who could be prevailed upon to listen. He called on polite but bewildered publishers, he discussed it with his casual vis-à-vis at the Harvard Club; it was even claimed by Anthony that he had been discovered, one Sunday night, debating the transposition of Chapter Two with a literary ticket-collector in the chill and dismal recesses of a Harlem subway station. And latest among his confidantes was Mrs. Gilbert, who sat with him by the hour and alternated between Bilphism and literature in an intense cross-fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shakespeare was a Bilphist," she assured him through a fixed smile. "Oh, yes! He was a Bilphist. It's been proved."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this Dick would look a bit blank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you've read 'Hamlet' you can't help but see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he—he lived in a more credulous age—a more religious age."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she demanded the whole loaf:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, but you see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the <i>bon mot</i> of her belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula—which was perhaps not a formula; it was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of all formulas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm <i>sure</i> it will. I went to Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's <i>mad</i> about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be <i>extraordinary</i>. But she'd never seen you or known anything about you—not even your <i>name</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his own traffic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my friends are joshing me—oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care. I think a person ought to be able to take joshing. But I've got a sort of conviction," he concluded gloomily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're an ancient soul, I always say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe I am." Dick had reached the stage where he no longer fought, but submitted. He <i>must</i> be an ancient soul, he fancied grotesquely; so old as to be absolutely rotten. However, the reiteration of the phrase still somewhat embarrassed him and sent uncomfortable shivers up his back. He changed the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is my distinguished cousin Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's on the go somewhere, with some one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick paused, considered, and then, screwing up his face into what was evidently begun as a smile but ended as a terrifying frown, delivered a comment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert started, beamed half a second too late, and breathed her "Really?" in the tone of a detective play-whisper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I <i>think</i> so," corrected Dick gravely. "She's the first girl I've ever seen him with, so much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, of course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see her settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not claiming I'm right, mind you," he assured the infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back at him. "I'm saying nothing that I'd want Gloria to know. But I think Mad Anthony is interested—tremendously so. He talks about her constantly. In any one else that'd be a bad sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria is a very young soul—" began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria'd be a very young nut not to marry him." He stopped and faced her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and strained to its ultimate show of intensity—this as if to make up by his sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. "Gloria's a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She's uncontrollable. How she's done it I don't know, but lately she's picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn't seem to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were—" He paused for breath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes," interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anæmic attempt to hide the immense interest with which she listened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "there it is. I mean that the men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate. Now they aren't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast—her bosom trembled, inflated, remained so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in a torrent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? He knew Gloria. He'd seen enough of Gloria to know how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so spoiled—in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed sticks. Perhaps—one never knew—it was this that had given that health and <i>hardiness</i> to her whole personality. And then ever since she was twelve years old she'd had boys about her so thick—oh, so thick one couldn't <i>move</i>. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to single them out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college—they lasted on an average of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came—a new one—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his father. The others had been—wretched. They never seemed to know when she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind. They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her, making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they would never get over Gloria . . . at least two of them had since married, though. . . . But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill—to this day Mr. Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no longer bothered to refuse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as a private engagement—with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena. She was sure it had, because—this must go no further—she had come in unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed. She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a new man came.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers! Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in desperation! Young men threatening South America! . . . Young men writing the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick fancied that Mrs. Gilbert's eyes had seen some of these letters.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents, substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths and beginning again—with the next.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was absolutely going to no more college dances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This had begun the change—not so much in her actual habits, for she danced, and had as many "dates" as ever—but they were dates in a different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly—enjoying the crowds around her, the manner in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous, and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about her—for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night in a chiffon evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine—it had been in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career—she became suddenly anæsthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties, who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she insulted would return like a domestic animal—but indifferently, without contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more—she yawned at them. She seemed—and it was so strange—she seemed to her mother to be growing cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his aunt's discourse waxed in content—it stands here pruned by half, of all side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own mental distresses—he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired head, expressing—almost anything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a sense Gloria's past was an old story to him. He had followed it with the eyes of a journalist, for he was going to write a book about her some day. But his interests, just at present, were family interests. He wanted to know, in particular, who was this Joseph Bloeckman that he had seen her with several times; and those two girls she was with constantly, "this" Rachael Jerryl and "this" Miss Kane—surely Miss Kane wasn't exactly the sort one would associate with Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But the moment had passed. Mrs. Gilbert having climbed the hill of exposition was about to glide swiftly down the ski-jump of collapse. Her eyes were like a blue sky seen through two round, red window-casements. The flesh about her mouth was trembling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And at the moment the door opened, admitting into the room Gloria and the two young ladies lately mentioned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO YOUNG WOMEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do, Mrs. Gilbert!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Miss Kane and Miss Jerryl are presented to Mr. Richard Caramel. "This is Dick" (laughter).<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard so much about you," says Miss Kane between a giggle and a shout.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do," says Miss Jerryl shyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel tries to move about as if his figure were better. He is torn between his innate cordiality and the fact that he considers these girls rather common—not at all the Farmover type.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria has disappeared into the bedroom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do sit down," beams Mrs. Gilbert, who is by now quite herself. "Take off your things." Dick is afraid she will make some remark about the age of his soul, but he forgets his qualms in completing a conscientious, novelist's examination of the two young women. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel Kane had originated in a rising family of East Orange. She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between plumpness and width. Her hair was black and elaborately arranged. This, in conjunction with her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the prominent motion picture actress. People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she believed them. She suspected hopefully that they were afraid of her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the impression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag that she constantly carried, waving it wildly, beseechingly—and, alas, to little spectacular avail. She was also tremendously timely: she knew the latest songs, all the latest songs—when one of them was played on the phonograph she would rise to her feet and rock her shoulders back and forth and snap her fingers, and if there was no music she would accompany herself by humming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"—and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria—he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, passenger, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "We had the most <i>hectic</i> time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely <i>nutty</i>! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was <i>pet</i>rified, but Gloria simply <i>wouldn't</i> get off."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all <i>howled</i>, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "—your mother and I."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A pause—Muriel turned to Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a great writer, aren't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul—like Richard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Ancient Soul breathed a gasp of relief—it was out at last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then as if she had been considering it for five minutes, Gloria made a sudden announcement:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to give a party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, can I come?" cried Muriel with facetious daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A dinner. Seven people: Muriel and Rachael and I, and you, Dick, and Anthony, and that man named Noble—I liked him—and Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel and Rachael went into soft and purring ecstasies of enthusiasm. Mrs. Gilbert blinked and beamed. With an air of casualness Dick broke in with a question:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenting a faint hostility, Gloria turned to him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Joseph Bloeckman? He's the moving picture man. Vice-president of 'Films Par Excellence.' He and father do a lot of business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, will you all come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They would all come. A date was arranged within the week. Dick rose, adjusted hat, coat, and muffler, and gave out a general smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By-by," said Muriel, waving her hand gaily, "call me up some time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel blushed for her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DEPLORABLE END OF THE CHEVALIER O'KEEFE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon at the Beaux Arts—afterward they went up to his apartment and he wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine Burke, usher at Keith's, had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her, for since a lamentable affair with a débutante the preceding summer, when he had discovered that after half a dozen kisses a proposal was expected, he had been wary of girls of his own class. It was only too easy to turn a critical eye on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy—but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance on one's social level.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine, curled up at the foot of the lounge, considered him with narrow slanting eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You drink all the time, don't you?" she said suddenly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, I suppose so," replied Anthony in some surprise. "Don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nope. I go on parties sometimes—you know, about once a week, but I only take two or three drinks. You and your friends keep on drinking all the time. I should think you'd ruin your health."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was somewhat touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, aren't you sweet to worry about me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't drink so very much," he declared. "Last month I didn't touch a drop for three weeks. And I only get really tight about once a week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you have something to drink every day and you're only twenty-five. Haven't you any ambition? Think what you'll be at forty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sincerely trust that I won't live that long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She clicked her tongue with her teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!" she said as he mixed another cocktail—and then: "Are you any relation to Adam Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, he's my grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?" She was obviously thrilled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Absolutely."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's funny. My daddy used to work for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a queer old man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is he nice?" she demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, in private life he's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell us about him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why," Anthony considered "—he's all shrunken up and he's got the remains of some gray hair that always looks as though the wind were in it. He's very moral."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's done a lot of good," said Geraldine with intense gravity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rot!" scoffed Anthony. "He's a pious ass—a chickenbrain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her mind left the subject and flitted on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you live with him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't I board in a Methodist parsonage?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she made a little clicking sound to express disapproval. Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart—how completely moral she would still be after the inevitable wave came that would wash her off the sands of respectability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you hate him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder. I never liked him. You never like people who do things for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does he hate you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but I don't suppose it matters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine was persistently interested. She held her glass, untasted, between finger and thumb and regarded him with eyes in which there was a touch of awe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you mean a hypocrite?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Anthony impatiently, "maybe he's not. But he doesn't like the things that I like, and so, as far as I'm concerned, he's uninteresting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hm." Her curiosity seemed, at length, satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a funny one," she commented thoughtfully. "Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They don't—but I shouldn't blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She scorned this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll fall in love someday. Oh, you will—I know." She nodded wisely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It'd be idiotic to be overconfident. That's what ruined the Chevalier O'Keefe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who was he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A creature of my splendid mind. He's my one creation, the Chevalier."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cra-a-azy!" she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope-ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no!" objected Anthony, "oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn't play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won't bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess I can understand anything that's got any sense to it," answered Geraldine a bit testily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what about him? Did he die?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and 'reddish hair.' He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O'Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called—well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire's. It was the rule at St. Voltaire's that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier's farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then he rode out to St. Voltaire's, slew his horse at the door, and presented the carcass to the monastery cook.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At five o'clock that night he felt, for the first time, free—forever free from sex. No woman could enter the monastery; no monk could descend below the second story. So as he climbed the winding stair that led to his cell at the very top of the Tower of Chastity he paused for a moment by an open window which looked down fifty feet on to a road below. It was all so beautiful, he thought, this world that he was leaving, the golden shower of sun beating down upon the long fields, the spray of trees in the distance, the vineyards, quiet and green, freshening wide miles before him. He leaned his elbows on the window casement and gazed at the winding road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, as it happened, Thérèse, a peasant girl of sixteen from a neighboring village, was at that moment passing along this same road that ran in front of the monastery. Five minutes before, the little piece of ribbon which held up the stocking on her pretty left leg had worn through and broken. Being a girl of rare modesty she had thought to wait until she arrived home before repairing it, but it had bothered her to such an extent that she felt she could endure it no longer. So, as she passed the Tower of Chastity, she stopped and with a pretty gesture lifted her skirt—as little as possible, be it said to her credit—to adjust her garter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Up in the tower the newest arrival in the ancient monastery of St. Voltaire, as though pulled forward by a gigantic and irresistible hand, leaned from the window. Further he leaned and further until suddenly one of the stones loosened under his weight, broke from its cement with a soft powdery sound—and, first headlong, then head over heels, finally in a vast and impressive revolution tumbled the Chevalier O'Keefe, bound for the hard earth and eternal damnation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thérèse was so much upset by the occurrence that she ran all the way home and for ten years spent an hour a day in secret prayer for the soul of the monk whose neck and vows were simultaneously broken on that unfortunate Sunday afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And the Chevalier O'Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. What do you think, Geraldine?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine, lost long before, could only smile roguishly, wave her first finger at him, and repeat her bridge-all, her explain-all:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Crazy!" she said, "you cra-a-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His thin face was kindly, she thought, and his eyes quite gentle. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because, unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part about the stocking!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi she stood for a moment in the doorway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>will</i> get married," she was insisting, "you wait and see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was playing with an ancient tennis ball, and he bounced it carefully on the floor several times before he answered with a soupçon of acidity:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a little idiot, Geraldine."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled provokingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That'd be silly too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it would, would it? Well, I'll just bet you'll marry somebody inside of a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony bounced the tennis ball very hard. This was one of his handsome days, she thought; a sort of intensity had displaced the melancholy in his dark eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine," he said, at length, "in the first place I have no one I want to marry; in the second place I haven't enough money to support two people; in the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people of my type; in the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the abstract consideration of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine only narrowed her eyes knowingly, made her clicking sound, and said she must be going. It was late.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Call me up soon," she reminded him as he kissed her good-by, "you haven't for three weeks, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I will," he promised fervently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He shut the door and coming back into the room stood for a moment lost in thought with the tennis-ball still clasped in his hand. There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully—assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought with emotion—aloud, ejaculative, for he was hurt and confused.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No <i>idea</i> of getting married, by <i>God</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of a sudden he hurled the tennis ball violently across the room, where it barely missed the lamp, and, rebounding here and there for a moment, lay still upon the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SIGNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For her dinner Gloria had taken a table in the Cascades at the Biltmore, and when the men met in the hall outside a little after eight, "that person Bloeckman" was the target of six masculine eyes. He was a stoutening, ruddy Jew of about thirty-five, with an expressive face under smooth sandy hair—and, no doubt, in most business gatherings his personality would have been considered ingratiating. He sauntered up to the three younger men, who stood in a group smoking as they waited for their hostess, and introduced himself with a little too evident assurance—nevertheless it is to be doubted whether he received the intended impression of faint and ironic chill: there was no hint of understanding in his manner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You related to Adam J. Patch?" he inquired of Anthony, emitting two slender strings of smoke from nostrils overwide.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony admitted it with the ghost of a smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a fine man," pronounced Bloeckman profoundly. "He's a fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," agreed Anthony, "he certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman squinted at his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Time these girls were showing up . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony waited breathlessly; it came——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . but then," with a widening smile, "you know how women are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The three young men nodded; Bloeckman looked casually about him, his eyes resting critically on the ceiling and then passing lower. His expression combined that of a Middle Western farmer appraising his wheat crop and that of an actor wondering whether he is observed—the public manner of all good Americans. As he finished his survey he turned back quickly to the reticent trio, determined to strike to their very heart and core.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You college men? . . . Harvard, eh. I see the Princeton boys beat you fellows in hockey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Unfortunate man. He had drawn another blank. They had been three years out and heeded only the big football games. Whether, after the failure of this sally, Mr. Bloeckman would have perceived himself to be in a cynical atmosphere is problematical, for——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria arrived. Muriel arrived. Rachael arrived. After a hurried "Hello, people!" uttered by Gloria and echoed by the other two, the three swept by into the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A moment later Muriel appeared in a state of elaborate undress and <i>crept</i> toward them. She was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker up and thrower away of men, an unscrupulous and fundamentally unmoved toyer with affections. Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury at first sight—a woman with wide hips affecting a panther-like litheness! As they waited the extra three minutes for Gloria, and, by polite assumption, for Rachael, he was unable to take his eyes from her. She would turn her head away, lowering her eyelashes and biting her nether lip in an amazing exhibition of coyness. She would rest her hands on her hips and sway from side to side in tune to the music, saying:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you ever hear such perfect ragtime? I just can't make my shoulders behave when I hear that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman clapped his hands gallantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to be on the stage."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to be!" cried Muriel; "will you back me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sure will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With becoming modesty Muriel ceased her motions and turned to Maury, asking what he had "seen" this year. He interpreted this as referring to the dramatic world, and they had a gay and exhilarating exchange of titles, after this manner:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Have you seen "Peg o' My Heart"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Eagerly</i>) It's wonderful! You want to see it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Have you seen "Omar, the Tentmaker"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: No, but I hear it's wonderful. I'm very anxious to see it. Have you seen "Fair and Warmer"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Hopefully</i>) Yes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't think it's very good. It's trashy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Faintly</i>) Yes, that's true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: But I went to "Within the Law" last night and I thought it was fine. Have you seen "The Little Café"?. . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This continued until they ran out of plays. Dick, meanwhile, turned to Mr. Bloeckman, determined to extract what gold he could from this unpromising load.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hear all the new novels are sold to the moving pictures as soon as they come out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. Of course the main thing in a moving picture is a strong story."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, I suppose so."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So many novels are all full of talk and psychology. Of course those aren't as valuable to us. It's impossible to make much of that interesting on the screen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You want plots first," said Richard brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course. Plots first—" He paused, shifted his gaze. His pause spread, included the others with all the authority of a warning finger. Gloria followed by Rachael was coming out of the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Among other things it developed during dinner that Joseph Bloeckman never danced, but spent the music time watching the others with the bored tolerance of an elder among children. He was a dignified man and a proud one. Born in Munich he had begun his American career as a peanut vender with a travelling circus. At eighteen he was a side show ballyhoo; later, the manager of the side show, and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more financial ability, more imagination, and more practical ideas . . . and now he sat here and contemplated the immortal Gloria for whom young Stuart Holcome had gone from New York to Pasadena—watched her, and knew that presently she would cease dancing and come back to sit on his left hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hoped she would hurry. The oysters had been standing some minutes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile Anthony, who had been placed on Gloria's left hand, was dancing with her, always in a certain fourth of the floor. This, had there been stags, would have been a delicate tribute to the girl, meaning "Damn you, don't cut in!" It was very consciously intimate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, looking down at her, "you look mighty sweet to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She met his eyes over the horizontal half foot that separated them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you—Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In fact you're uncomfortably beautiful," he added. There was no smile this time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you're very charming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't this nice?" he laughed. "We actually approve of each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, usually?" She had caught quickly at his remark, as she always did at any unexplained allusion to herself, however faint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lowered his voice, and when he spoke there was in it no more than a wisp of badinage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does a priest approve the Pope?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—but that's probably the vaguest compliment I ever received."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I can muster a few bromides."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I wouldn't have you strain yourself. Look at Muriel! Right here next to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced over his shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a translation of the song into some foreign tongue but became eventually apparent as an attempt to fill out the metre of the song with the only words she knew—the words of the title—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"He's a rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-time picking man,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-picking, picking, pick, pick,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-pick, pick, pick."</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —and so on, into phrases still more strange and barbaric. When she caught the amused glances of Anthony and Gloria she acknowledged them only with a faint smile and a half-closing of her eyes, to indicate that the music entering into her soul had put her into an ecstatic and exceedingly seductive trance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The music ended and they returned to their table, whose solitary but dignified occupant arose and tendered each of them a smile so ingratiating that it was as if he were shaking their hands and congratulating them on a brilliant performance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blockhead never will dance! I think he has a wooden leg," remarked Gloria to the table at large. The three young men started and the gentleman referred to winced perceptibly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was the one rough spot in the course of Bloeckman's acquaintance with Gloria. She relentlessly punned on his name. First it had been "Block-house," lately, the more invidious "Blockhead." He had requested with a strong undertone of irony that she use his first name, and this she had done obediently several times—then slipping, helpless, repentant but dissolved in laughter, back into "Blockhead."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a very sad and thoughtless thing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid Mr. Bloeckman thinks we're a frivolous crowd," sighed Muriel, waving a balanced oyster in his direction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He has that air," murmured Rachael. Anthony tried to remember whether she had said anything before. He thought not. It was her initial remark. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman suddenly cleared his throat and said in a loud, distinct voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary. When a man speaks he's merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the stunned pause that followed this astounding remark, Anthony choked suddenly on an oyster and hurried his napkin to his face. Rachael and Muriel raised a mild if somewhat surprised laugh, in which Dick and Maury joined, both of them red in the face and restraining uproariousness with the most apparent difficulty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—My God!" thought Anthony. "It's a subtitle from one of his movies. The man's memorized it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria alone made no sound. She fixed Mr. Bloeckman with a glance of silent reproach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for the love of Heaven! Where on earth did you dig that up?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman looked at her uncertainly, not sure of her intention. But in a moment he recovered his poise and assumed the bland and consciously tolerant smile of an intellectual among spoiled and callow youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The soup came up from the kitchen—but simultaneously the orchestra leader came up from the bar, where he had absorbed the tone color inherent in a seidel of beer. So the soup was left to cool during the delivery of a ballad entitled "Everything's at Home Except Your Wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers. Several times Anthony wondered what Bloeckman was telling her. He was chewing a cigar back and forth in his mouth, and had expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ten o'clock found Gloria and Anthony beginning a dance. Just as they were out of ear-shot of the table she said in a low voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance over by the door. I want to go down to the drug-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Obediently Anthony guided her through the crowd in the designated direction; in the hall she left him for a moment, to reappear with a cloak over her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want some gum-drops," she said, humorously apologetic; "you can't guess what for this time. It's just that I want to bite my finger-nails, and I will if I don't get some gum-drops." She sighed, and resumed as they stepped into the empty elevator: "I've been biting 'em all day. A bit nervous, you see. Excuse the pun. It was unintentional—the words just arranged themselves. Gloria Gilbert, the female wag."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Reaching the ground floor they naïvely avoided the hotel candy counter, descended the wide front staircase, and walking through several corridors found a drug-store in the Grand Central Station. After an intense examination of the perfume counter she made her purchase. Then on some mutual unmentioned impulse they strolled, arm in arm, not in the direction from which they had come, but out into Forty-third Street.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, sound, urban, city, night, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The night was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left, and for a hushed moment the traffic sounds and the murmur of water flowing in the gutters seemed an illusive and rarefied prolongation of that music to which they had lately danced. When Anthony spoke it was with surety that his words came from something breathless and desirous that the night had conceived in their two hearts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's take a taxi and ride around a bit!" he suggested, without looking at her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, Gloria, Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, city, night, sound, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> A cab yawned at the curb. As it moved off like a boat on a labyrinthine ocean and lost itself among the inchoate night masses of the great buildings, among the now stilled, now strident, cries and clangings, Anthony put his arm around the girl, drew her over to him and kissed her damp, childish mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was silent. She turned her face up to him, pale under the wisps and patches of light that trailed in like moonshine through a foliage. Her eyes were gleaming ripples in the white lake of her face; the shadows of her hair bordered the brow with a persuasive unintimate dusk. No love was there, surely; nor the imprint of any love. Her beauty was cool as this damp breeze, as the moist softness of her own lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're such a swan in this light," he whispered after a moment. There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted in out of the dark. Anthony laughed, noiselessly and exultantly, turning his face up and away from her, half in an overpowering rush of triumph, half lest her sight of him should spoil the splendid immobility of her expression. Such a kiss—it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="urban, city, night, visibility, affect, pleasure, sound, car"><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The buildings fell away in melted shadows; this was the Park now, and after a long while the great white ghost of the Metropolitan Museum moved majestically past, echoing sonorously to the rush of the cab.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria! Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes appeared to regard him out of many thousand years: all emotion she might have felt, all words she might have uttered, would have seemed inadequate beside the adequacy of her silence, ineloquent against the eloquence of her beauty—and of her body, close to him, slender and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell him to turn around," she murmured, "and drive pretty fast going back. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Up in the supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane looked up with roguishness extraordinary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, where have <i>you</i> been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To call up mother," answered Gloria coolly. "I promised her I would. Did we miss a dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then followed an incident that though slight in itself Anthony had cause to reflect on many years afterward. Joseph Bloeckman, leaning well back in his chair, fixed him with a peculiar glance, in which several emotions were curiously and inextricably mingled. He did not greet Gloria except by rising, and he immediately resumed a conversation with Richard Caramel about the influence of literature on the moving pictures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The stark and unexpected miracle of a night fades out with the lingering death of the last stars and the premature birth of the first newsboys. The flame retreats to some remote and platonic fire; the white heat has gone from the iron and the glow from the coal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Along the shelves of Anthony's library, filling a wall amply, crept a chill and insolent pencil of sunlight touching with frigid disapproval Thérèse of France and Ann the Superwoman, Jenny of the Orient Ballet and Zuleika the Conjurer—and Hoosier Cora—then down a shelf and into the years, resting pityingly on the over-invoked shades of Helen, Thaïs, Salome, and Cleopatra.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, shaved and bathed, sat in his most deeply cushioned chair and watched it until at the steady rising of the sun it lay glinting for a moment on the silk ends of the rug—and went out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was ten o'clock. The Sunday Times, scattered about his feet, proclaimed by rotogravure and editorial, by social revelation and sporting sheet, that the world had been tremendously engrossed during the past week in the business of moving toward some splendid if somewhat indeterminate goal. For his part Anthony had been once to his grandfather's, twice to his broker's, and three times to his tailor's—and in the last hour of the week's last day he had kissed a very beautiful and charming girl.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he reached home his imagination had been teeming with high-pitched, unfamiliar dreams. There was suddenly no question on his mind, no eternal problem for a solution and re-solution. He had experienced an emotion that was neither mental nor physical, nor merely a mixture of the two, and the love of life absorbed him for the present to the exclusion of all else. He was content to let the experiment remain isolated and unique. Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere—of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and débutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many <i>females</i>, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So far as he could see, she had neither submitted to any will of his nor caressed his vanity—except as her pleasure in his company was a caress. Indeed he had no reason for thinking she had given him aught that she did not give to others. This was as it should be. The idea of an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed on would proclaim themselves unharmed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having decided this he went to the phone and called up the Plaza Hotel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was out. Her mother knew neither where she had gone nor when she would return.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was somehow at this point that the first wrongness in the case asserted itself. There was an element of callousness, almost of indecency, in Gloria's absence from home. He suspected that by going out she had intrigued him into a disadvantage. Returning she would find his name, and smile. Most discreetly! He should have waited a few hours in order to drive home the utter inconsequence with which he regarded the incident. What an asinine blunder! She would think he considered himself particularly favored. She would think he was reacting with the most inept intimacy to a quite trivial episode.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered that during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded that man. Him—Anthony Patch! Horror!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and <i>snap!</i>—the poor plate could but develop, confined like all things to its nature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Anthony, lying upon his couch and staring at the orange lamp, passed his thin fingers incessantly through his dark hair and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and Jewels and Jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her cheeks in faint pastel, milky lace to rest in pale disarray against her neck—damask was used but to cover priests and divans in these days, and cloth of Samarand was remembered only by the romantic poets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She would go elsewhere after a while, tilting her head a hundred ways under a hundred bonnets, seeking in vain for mock cherries to match her lips or plumes that were graceful as her own supple body.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Noon would come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and comic women.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, road, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter. . . . Then—then night would come drifting down and perhaps another damp. The signs would spill their light into the street. Who knew? No wiser than he, they haply sought to recapture that picture done in cream and shadow they had seen on the hushed Avenue the night before. And they might, ah, they might! A thousand taxis would yawn at a thousand corners, and only to him was that kiss forever lost and done. In a thousand guises Thaïs would hail a cab and turn up her face for loving. And her pallor would be virginal and lovely, and her kiss chaste as the moon. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He sprang excitedly to his feet. How inappropriate that she should be out! He had realized at last what he wanted—to kiss her again, to find rest in her great immobility. She was the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony dressed and went out, as he should have done long before, and down to Richard Caramel's room to hear the last revision of the last chapter of "The Demon Lover." He did not call Gloria again until six. He did not find her in until eight and—oh, climax of anticlimaxes!—she could give him no engagement until Tuesday afternoon. A broken piece of gutta-percha clattered to the floor as he banged up the phone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BLACK MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tuesday was freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if she remembered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I called you four times on Sunday," he told her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was surprise in her voice and interest in her expression. Silently he cursed himself for having told her. He might have known her pride did not deal in such petty triumphs. Even then he had not guessed at the truth—that never having had to worry about men she had seldom used the wary subterfuges, the playings out and haulings in, that were the stock in trade of her sisterhood. When she liked a man, that was trick enough. Did she think she loved him—there was an ultimate and fatal thrust. Her charm endlessly preserved itself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was anxious to see you," he said simply. "I want to talk to you—I mean really talk, somewhere where we can be alone. May I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He swallowed a sudden lump of panic. He felt that she knew what he wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean, not at a tea table," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, all right, but not to-day. I want to get some exercise. Let's walk!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was bitter and raw. All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue. It was almost impossible to talk, and discomfort made him distracted, so much so that he turned at Sixty-first Street to find that she was no longer beside him. He looked around. She was forty feet in the rear standing motionless, her face half hidden in her fur coat collar, moved either by anger or laughter—he could not determine which. He started back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let me interrupt your walk!" she called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm mighty sorry," he answered in confusion. "Did I go too fast?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm cold," she announced. "I want to go home. And you walk too fast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Side by side they started for the Plaza. He wished he could see her face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Men don't usually get so absorbed in themselves when they're with me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very interesting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It <i>is</i> rather too cold to walk," he said, briskly, to hide his annoyance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer and he wondered if she would dismiss him at the hotel entrance. She walked in without speaking, however, and to the elevator, throwing him a single remark as she entered it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd better come up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hesitated for the fraction of a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better call some other time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just as you say." Her words were murmured as an aside. The main concern of life was the adjusting of some stray wisps of hair in the elevator mirror. Her cheeks were brilliant, her eyes sparkled—she had never seemed so lovely, so exquisitely to be desired.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Despising himself, he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong—in his own eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet significant encounter he had been completely defeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> However, by the time she reappeared in the sitting-room he had explained himself to himself with sophistic satisfaction. After all he had done the strongest thing, he thought. He had wanted to come up, he had come. Yet what happened later on that afternoon must be traced to the indignity he had experienced in the elevator; the girl was worrying him intolerably, so much so that when she came out he involuntarily drifted into criticism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A business friend of father's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Odd sort of fellow!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He doesn't like you either," she said with a sudden smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm flattered at his notice. He evidently considers me a—" He broke off with "Is he in love with you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The deuce you don't," he insisted. "Of course he is. I remember the look he gave me when we got back to the table. He'd probably have had me quietly assaulted by a delegation of movie supes if you hadn't invented that phone call."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He didn't mind. I told him afterward what really happened."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You told him!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He asked me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like that very well," he remonstrated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you don't?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business is it of his?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None. That's why I told him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony in a turmoil bit savagely at his mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why should I lie?" she demanded directly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I do. It happened to interest him to know that I kissed you, and I happened to be in a good humor, so I satisfied his curiosity by a simple and precise 'yes.' Being rather a sensible man, after his fashion, he dropped the subject."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except to say that he hated me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it worries you? Well, if you must probe this stupendous matter to its depths he didn't say he hated you. I simply know he does."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It doesn't wor——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, let's drop it!" she cried spiritedly. "It's a most uninteresting matter to me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a tremendous effort Anthony made his acquiescence a twist of subject, and they drifted into an ancient question-and-answer game concerned with each other's pasts, gradually warming as they discovered the age-old, immemorial resemblances in tastes and ideas. They said things that were more revealing than they intended—but each pretended to accept the other at face, or rather word, value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third—before long the best lines cancel out—and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping that such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," Anthony was saying earnestly, "that the position of a man with neither necessity nor ambition is unfortunate. Heaven knows it'd be pathetic of me to be sorry for myself—yet, sometimes I envy Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her silence was encouragement. It was as near as she ever came to an intentional lure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—And there used to be dignified occupations for a gentleman who had leisure, things a little more constructive than filling up the landscape with smoke or juggling some one else's money. There's science, of course: sometimes I wish I'd taken a good foundation, say at Boston Tech. But now, by golly, I'd have to sit down for two years and struggle through the fundamentals of physics and chemistry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've told you I don't know what anybody ought to do," she said ungraciously, and at her indifference his rancor was born again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Aren't you interested in anything except yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glared; his growing enjoyment in the conversation was ripped to shreds. She had been irritable and vindictive all day, and it seemed to him that for this moment he hated her hard selfishness. He stared morosely at the fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him—as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He moved closer and taking her hand pulled her ever so gently toward him until she half lay against his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he kissed her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he whispered very softly. Again she had made a magic, subtle and pervading as a spilt perfume, irresistible and sweet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward, neither the next day nor after many years, could he remember the important things of that afternoon. Had she been moved? In his arms had she spoken a little—or at all? What measure of enjoyment had she taken in his kisses? And had she at any time lost herself ever so little?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, for him there was no doubt. He had risen and paced the floor in sheer ecstasy. That such a girl should be; should poise curled in a corner of the couch like a swallow newly landed from a clean swift flight, watching him with inscrutable eyes. He would stop his pacing and, half shy each time at first, drop his arm around her and find her kiss.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn't want to fall in love. He wasn't coming to see her any more—already she had haunted too many of his ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow—only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He <i>would</i> come back—eternally. He should have known!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn't do—and wouldn't last." As he spoke there was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in ourselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her. He remembered it in this form—perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and polished it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As always when he was with her she seemed to grow gradually older until at the end ruminations too deep for words would be wintering in her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour passed, and the fire leaped up in little ecstasies as though its fading life was sweet. It was five now, and the clock over the mantel became articulate in sound. Then as if a brutish sensibility in him was reminded by those thin, tinny beats that the petals were falling from the flowered afternoon, Anthony pulled her quickly to her feet and held her helpless, without breath, in a kiss that was neither a game nor a tribute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her arms fell to her side. In an instant she was free.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't!" she said quietly. "I don't want that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She sat down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her. A frown had gathered between her eyes. Anthony sank down beside her and closed his hand over hers. It was lifeless and unresponsive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!" He made a motion as if to put his arm about her but she drew away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want that," she repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry," he said, a little impatiently. "I—I didn't know you made such fine distinctions."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She did not answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't you kiss me, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to." It seemed to him she had not moved for hours.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A sudden change, isn't it?" Annoyance was growing in his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She appeared uninterested. It was almost as though she were looking at some one else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No reply. He rose and regarded her angrily, uncertainly. Again he sat down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, Gloria, won't you kiss me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No." Her lips, parting for the word, had just faintly stirred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again he got to his feet, this time with less decision, less confidence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right—I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was aware of a certain irremediable lack of originality in his remarks. Indeed he felt that the whole atmosphere had grown oppressive. He wished she would speak, rail at him, cry out upon him, anything but this pervasive and chilling silence. He cursed himself for a weak fool; his clearest desire was to move her, to hurt her, to see her wince. Helplessly, involuntarily, he erred again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're tired of kissing me I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw her lips curl slightly and his last dignity left him. She spoke, at length:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I believe you've made that remark several times before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked about him immediately, saw his hat and coat on a chair—blundered into them, during an intolerable moment. Looking again at the couch he perceived that she had not turned, not even moved. With a shaken, immediately regretted "good-by" he went quickly but without dignity from the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For over a moment Gloria made no sound. Her lips were still curled; her glance was straight, proud, remote. Then her eyes blurred a little, and she murmured three words half aloud to the death-bound fire:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by, you ass!" she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PANIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man had had the hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden of his despair. Instead of seizing the girl and holding her by sheer strength until she became passive to his desire, instead of beating down her will by the force of his own, he had walked, defeated and powerless, from her door, with the corners of his mouth drooping and what force there might have been in his grief and rage hidden behind the manner of a whipped schoolboy. At one minute she had liked him tremendously—ah, she had nearly loved him. In the next he had become a thing of indifference to her, an insolent and efficiently humiliated man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had no great self-reproach—some, of course, but there were other things dominant in him now, far more urgent. He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life. By her three minutes of utter unwavering indifference the girl had lifted herself from a high but somehow casual position in his mind, to be instead his complete preoccupation. However much his wild thoughts varied between a passionate desire for her kisses and an equally passionate craving to hurt and mar her, the residue of his mind craved in finer fashion to possess the triumphant soul that had shone through those three minutes. She was beautiful—but especially she was without mercy. He must own that strength that could send him away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At present no such analysis was possible to Anthony. His clarity of mind, all those endless resources which he thought his irony had brought him were swept aside. Not only for that night but for the days and weeks that followed his books were to be but furniture and his friends only people who lived and walked in a nebulous outer world from which he was trying to escape—that world was cold and full of bleak wind, and for a little while he had seen into a warm house where fires shone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> About midnight he began to realize that he was hungry. He went down into Fifty-second Street, where it was so cold that he could scarcely see; the moisture froze on his lashes and in the corners of his lips. Everywhere dreariness had come down from the north, settling upon the thin and cheerless street, where black bundled figures blacker still against the night, moved stumbling along the sidewalk through the shrieking wind, sliding their feet cautiously ahead as though they were on skis. Anthony turned over toward Sixth Avenue, so absorbed in his thoughts as not to notice that several passers-by had stared at him. His overcoat was wide open, and the wind was biting in, hard and full of merciless death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a while a waitress spoke to him, a fat waitress with black-rimmed eye-glasses from which dangled a long black cord.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Order, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up resentfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wanna order or doncha?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course," he protested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I ast you three times. This ain't no rest-room."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was after two. He was down around Thirtieth Street somewhere, and after a moment he found and translated the<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>S'DLIHC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> in a white semicircle of letters upon the glass front. The place was inhabited sparsely by three or four bleak and half-frozen night-hawks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me some bacon and eggs and coffee, please."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The waitress bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, hurried away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> God! Gloria's kisses had been such flowers. He remembered as though it had been years ago the low freshness of her voice, the beautiful lines of her body shining through her clothes, her face lily-colored under the lamps of the street—under the lamps.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Misery struck at him again, piling a sort of terror upon the ache and yearning. He had lost her. It was true—no denying it, no softening it. But a new idea had seared his sky—what of Bloeckman! What would happen now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be worn—a bright flower in his button-hole, safe and secure from the things she feared. He felt that she had been playing with the idea of marrying Bloeckman, and it was well possible that this disappointment in Anthony might throw her on sudden impulse into Bloeckman's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idea drove him childishly frantic. He wanted to kill Bloeckman and make him suffer for his hideous presumption. He was saying this over and over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate and fright in his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, behind this obscene jealousy, Anthony was in love at last, profoundly and truly in love, as the word goes between man and woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His coffee appeared at his elbow and gave off for a certain time a gradually diminishing wisp of steam. The night manager, seated at his desk, glanced at the motionless figure alone at the last table, and then with a sigh moved down upon him just as the hour hand crossed the figure three on the big clock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WISDOM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew to his self-respect.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own from out the effortless past.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Memory is short," he thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe." Oh, memory is very short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly be. Wasn't it possible, the more possible because she had never loved him, that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men. He winced. The implication struck out at him—other men. Two months—God! Better three weeks, two weeks——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought this the second evening after the catastrophe when he was undressing, and at this point he threw himself down on the bed and lay there, trembling very slightly and looking at the top of the canopy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two weeks—that was worse than no time at all. In two weeks he would approach her much as he would have to now, without personality or confidence—remaining still the man who had gone too far and then for a period that in time was but a moment but in fact an eternity, whined. No, two weeks was too short a time. Whatever poignancy there had been for her in that afternoon must have time to dull. He must give her a period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly, with a true perspective that would remember his pleasantness as well as his humiliation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off, finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then—silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give the desired impression when they met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE INTERVAL</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed completely, the six weeks held many abominable days. He dreaded the sight of Dick and Maury, imagining wildly that they knew all—but when the three met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre of attention; "The Demon Lover" had been accepted for immediate publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He no longer craved the warmth and security of Maury's society which had cheered him no further back than November. Only Gloria could give that now and no one else ever again. So Dick's success rejoiced him only casually and worried him not a little. It meant that the world was going ahead—writing and reading and publishing—and living. And he wanted the world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks—while Gloria forgot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO ENCOUNTERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine's company. He took her once to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him, not as Gloria had, but quieting those erotic sensibilities in him that worried over Gloria. It didn't matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss—to be enjoyed to the utmost for its short moment. To Geraldine things belonged in definite pigeonholes: a kiss was one thing, anything further was quite another; a kiss was all right; the other things were "bad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first was—he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding a single sentence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash—the effect being given of a tug bringing in an ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he muttered inanely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young—with a man he had never seen before!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that the barber's chair was vacated and he read down the newspaper column three times in succession.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink, so it was inevitable that they should converse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Mr. Patch," said Bloeckman amiably enough.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the fluctuations of the mercury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you come in here much?" inquired Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, very seldom." He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until lately, been his favorite.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nice bar. One of the best bars in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He was in evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll be hurrying on. I'm going to dinner with Miss Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced himself as his vis-à-vis's prospective murderer he could not have struck a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous effort he mustered a rigid—oh, so rigid—smile, and said a conventional good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with grief and fear and abominable imaginings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WEAKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in his apartment trying to read "L'Éducation Sentimental," and something in the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free, they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy's. The Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs. Gilbert's voice, soft as maple syrup running into a glass container, had for him a quality of horror in its single "Hello-o-ah?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Miss Gloria's not feeling well. She's lying down, asleep. Who shall I say called?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody!" he shouted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SERENADE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first thing he said to her was: "Why, you've bobbed your hair!" and she answered: "Yes, isn't it gorgeous?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all sunshine outdoors," he said gravely. "Don't you want to take a walk?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt so bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire's chaotic message to whosoever would listen: something about "I worked and I saved and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, road, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" she cried, "I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there's ever been any winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, though!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All women <i>are</i> birds," he ventured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What kind am I?"—quick and eager.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls—and robin girls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I—a buzzard?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed and shook her head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick's a fox terrier, a trick fox terrier," she continued.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Maury's a cat." Simultaneously it occurred to him how like Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a discreet silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever make long engagements?" he pleaded, "even if it's a week ahead, I think it'd be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and afternoon both."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It would be, wouldn't it?" She thought for a moment. "Let's do it next Sunday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. I'll map out a programme that'll take up every minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They would sit on the lounge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore—for he was young now as he would never be again, and more triumphant than death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Six o'clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won a hundred-yard dash!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, "I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that he loved her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He phoned next morning—no hesitation now, no uncertainty—instead a delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all I called you up to say—dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm glad you did."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I could see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You will, to-morrow night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a long time, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes—" Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Couldn't I come to-night?" He dared anything in the glory and revelation of that almost whispered "yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have a date."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I might—I might be able to break it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"—a sheer cry, a rhapsody. "Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another pause and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—I'm glad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony's face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night! His dark eyes were gleaming—around his mouth were lines it was a kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink, starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very still, and looking at him wide-eyed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one triumphant and enduring embrace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ==<i>BOOK TWO</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (129-190)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE RADIANT HOUR</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> AFTER a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in "practical discussions," as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not as much as I do you," the critic of belles-lettres would insist. "If you really loved me you'd want every one to know it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do," she protested; "I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're twins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ecstatic thought!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mother says"—she hesitated uncertainly—"mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and—and in love before they're born."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bilphism gained its easiest convert. . . . After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why did you laugh?" she cried, "you've done that twice before. There's nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don't mind playing the fool, and I don't mind having you do it, but I can't stand it when we're together."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't say you're sorry! If you can't think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a pause. Anthony was depressed. . . . At length Gloria murmured:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I was mean."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You weren't. I was the one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Peace was restored—the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression—yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known it—for three weeks Gloria had seen no one else—and she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughter's attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warm——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> —Yet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabs—quaint device—and the staid bill of fares on which they scribbled "you know I do," pushing it over for the other to see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, Gloria," he would cry, "please let me explain!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't explain. Kiss me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think that's right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I don't like this kiss-and-forget."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't want to argue. I think it's wonderful that we <i>can</i> kiss and forget, and when we can't it'll be time to argue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that Anthony arose and punched himself into his overcoat—for a moment it appeared that the scene of the preceding February was to be repeated, but knowing how deeply she was moved he retained his dignity with his pride, and in a moment Gloria was sobbing in his arms, her lovely face miserable as a frightened little girl's.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile they kept unfolding to each other, unwillingly, by curious reactions and evasions, by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to no avail. She possessed him now—nor did she desire the dead years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony," she would say, "always when I'm mean to you I'm sorry afterward. I'd give my right hand to save you one little moment's pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely—taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfort—of these she never complained until they were over—or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why do you like Muriel?" he demanded one day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't—very much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why do you go with her?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just for some one to go with. They're no exertion, those girls. They sort of believe everything I tell 'em—but I rather like Rachael. I think she's cute—and so clean and slick, don't you? I used to have other friends—in Kansas City and at school—casual, all of them, girls who just flitted into my range and out of it for no more reason than that boys took us places together. They didn't interest me after environment stopped throwing us together. Now they're mostly married. What does it matter—they were all just people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You like men better, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, much better. I've got a man's mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later she told him about the beginnings of her friendship with Bloeckman. One day in Delmonico's, Gloria and Rachael had come upon Bloeckman and Mr. Gilbert having luncheon and curiosity had impelled her to make it a party of four. She had liked him—rather. He was a relief from younger men, satisfied as he was with so little. He humored her and he laughed, whether he understood her or not. She met him several times, despite the open disapproval of her parents, and within a month he had asked her to marry him, tendering her everything from a villa in Italy to a brilliant career on the screen. She had laughed in his face—and he had laughed too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But he had not given up. To the time of Anthony's arrival in the arena he had been making steady progress. She treated him rather well—except that she had called him always by an invidious nickname—perceiving, meanwhile, that he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The night before the engagement was announced she told Bloeckman. It was a heavy blow. She did not enlighten Anthony as to the details, but she implied that he had not hesitated to argue with her. Anthony gathered that the interview had terminated on a stormy note, with Gloria very cool and unmoved lying in her corner of the sofa and Joseph Bloeckman of "Films Par Excellence" pacing the carpet with eyes narrowed and head bowed. Gloria had been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to show it. In a final burst of kindness she had tried to make him hate her, there at the last. But Anthony, understanding that Gloria's indifference was her strongest appeal, judged how futile this must have been. He wondered, often but quite casually, about Bloeckman—finally he forgot him entirely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>HEYDAY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, sunshine, navigation, river, road, metaphor, traffic, city, urban, sound, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon they found front seats on the sunny roof of a bus and rode for hours from the fading Square up along the sullied river, and then, as the stray beams fled the westward streets, sailed down the turgid Avenue, darkening with ominous bees from the department stores. The traffic was clotted and gripped in a patternless jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the crowd as they waited for the moan of the traffic whistle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't it good!" cried Gloria. "Look!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, driver, traffic"><br /> <poem><br /> A miller's wagon, stark white with flour, driven by a powdery clown, passed in front of them behind a white horse and his black team-mate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a pity!" she complained; "they'd look so beautiful in the dusk, if only both horses were white. I'm mighty happy just this minute, in this city."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony shook his head in disagreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think the city's a mountebank. Always struggling to approach the tremendous and impressive urbanity ascribed to it. Trying to be romantically metropolitan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't. I think it is impressive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Momentarily. But it's really a transparent, artificial sort of spectacle. It's got its press-agented stars and its flimsy, unenduring stage settings and, I'll admit, the greatest army of supers ever assembled—" He paused, laughed shortly, and added: "Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, traffic, law, pedestrian, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll bet policemen think people are fools," said Gloria thoughtfully, as she watched a large but cowardly lady being helped across the street. "He always sees them frightened and inefficient and old—they are," she added. And then: "We'd better get off. I told mother I'd have an early supper and go to bed. She says I look tired, damn it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish we were married," he muttered soberly; "there'll be no good night then and we can do just as we want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't it be good! I think we ought to travel a lot. I want to go to the Mediterranean and Italy. And I'd like to go on the stage some time—say for about a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. I'll write a play for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't that be good! And I'll act in it. And then some time when we have more money"—old Adam's death was always thus tactfully alluded to—"we'll build a magnificent estate, won't we?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, with private swimming pools."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens of them. And private rivers. Oh, I wish it were now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Odd coincidence—he had just been wishing that very thing. They plunged like divers into the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic to each other . . . both were walking alone in a dispassionate garden with a ghost found in a dream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them look back and see that the loves of other summers long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their years. Always the most poignant moments were when some artificial barrier kept them apart: in the theatre their hands would steal together, join, give and return gentle pressures through the long dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes—not knowing that they were but following in the footsteps of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment. And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen days now—fifteen—fourteen——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE DISGRESSIONS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Just before the engagement was announced Anthony had gone up to Tarrytown to see his grandfather, who, a little more wizened and grizzly as time played its ultimate chuckling tricks, greeted the news with profound cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you're going to get married, are you?" He said this with such a dubious mildness and shook his head up and down so many times that Anthony was not a little depressed. While he was unaware of his grandfather's intentions he presumed that a large part of the money would come to him. A good deal would go in charities, of course; a good deal to carry on the business of reform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to work?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—" temporized Anthony, somewhat disconcerted. "I <i>am</i> working. You know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, I mean work," said Adam Patch dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not quite sure yet what I'll do. I'm not exactly a beggar, grampa," he asserted with some spirit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man considered this with eyes half closed. Then almost apologetically he asked:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much do you save a year?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing so far——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so after just managing to get along on your money you've decided that by some miracle two of you can get along on it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has some money of her own. Enough to buy clothes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without considering this question impertinent, Anthony answered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About a hundred a month."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's altogether about seventy-five hundred a year." Then he added softly: "It ought to be plenty. If you have any sense it ought to be plenty. But the question is whether you have any or not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it is." It was shameful to be compelled to endure this pious browbeating from the old man, and his next words were stiffened with vanity. "I can manage very well. You seem convinced that I'm utterly worthless. At any rate I came up here simply to tell you that I'm getting married in June. Good-by, sir." With this he turned away and headed for the door, unaware that in that instant his grandfather, for the first time, rather liked him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait!" called Adam Patch, "I want to talk to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony faced about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sit down. Stay all night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Anthony resumed his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to see Gloria to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's her name?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "New York girl? Some one you know?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's from the Middle West."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business her father in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a celluloid corporation or trust or something. They're from Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You going to be married out there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, no, sir. We thought we'd be married in New York—rather quietly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Like to have the wedding out here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated. The suggestion made no appeal to him, but it was certainly the part of wisdom to give the old man, if possible, a proprietary interest in his married life. In addition Anthony was a little touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very kind of you, grampa, but wouldn't it be a lot of trouble?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everything's a lot of trouble. Your father was married here—but in the old house."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—I thought he was married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch considered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. He <i>was</i> married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony felt a moment's embarrassment at having made the correction, and he covered it up with words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll speak to Gloria about it. Personally I'd like to, but of course it's up to the Gilberts, you see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His grandfather drew a long sigh, half closed his eyes, and sank back in his chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a hurry?" he asked in a different tone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not especially."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder," began Adam Patch, looking out with a mild, kindly glance at the lilac bushes that rustled against the windows, "I wonder if you ever think about the after-life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—sometimes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think a great deal about the after-life." His eyes were dim but his voice was confident and clear. "I was sitting here to-day thinking about what's lying in wait for us, and somehow I began to remember an afternoon nearly sixty-five years ago, when I was playing with my little sister Annie, down where that summer-house is now." He pointed out into the long flower-garden, his eyes trembling of tears, his voice shaking.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I began thinking—and it seemed to me that <i>you</i> ought to think a little more about the after-life. You ought to be—steadier"—he paused and seemed to grope about for the right word—"more industrious—why——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then his expression altered, his entire personality seemed to snap together like a trap, and when he continued the softness had gone from his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—Why, when I was just two years older than you," he rasped with a cunning chuckle, "I sent three members of the firm of Wrenn and Hunt to the poorhouse."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started with embarrassment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, good-by," added his grandfather suddenly, "you'll miss your train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony left the house unusually elated, and strangely sorry for the old man; not because his wealth could buy him "neither youth nor digestion" but because he had asked Anthony to be married there, and because he had forgotten something about his son's wedding that he should have remembered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel, who was one of the ushers, caused Anthony and Gloria much distress in the last few weeks by continually stealing the rays of their spot-light. "The Demon Lover" had been published in April, and it interrupted the love affair as it may be said to have interrupted everything its author came in contact with. It was a highly original, rather overwritten piece of sustained description concerned with a Don Juan of the New York slums. As Maury and Anthony had said before, as the more hospitable critics were saying then, there was no writer in America with such power to describe the atavistic and unsubtle reactions of that section of society.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The book hesitated and then suddenly "went." Editions, small at first, then larger, crowded each other week by week. A spokesman of the Salvation Army denounced it as a cynical misrepresentation of all the uplift taking place in the underworld. Clever press-agenting spread the unfounded rumor that "Gypsy" Smith was beginning a libel suit because one of the principal characters was a burlesque of himself. It was barred from the public library of Burlington, Iowa, and a Mid-Western columnist announced by innuendo that Richard Caramel was in a sanitarium with delirium tremens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The author, indeed, spent his days in a state of pleasant madness. The book was in his conversation three-fourths of the time—he wanted to know if one had heard "the latest"; he would go into a store and in a loud voice order books to be charged to him, in order to catch a chance morsel of recognition from clerk or customer. He knew to a town in what sections of the country it was selling best; he knew exactly what he cleared on each edition, and when he met any one who had not read it, or, as it happened only too often, had not heard of it, he succumbed to moody depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was natural for Anthony and Gloria to decide, in their jealousy, that he was so swollen with conceit as to be a bore. To Dick's great annoyance Gloria publicly boasted that she had never read "The Demon Lover," and didn't intend to until every one stopped talking about it. As a matter of fact, she had no time to read now, for the presents were pouring in—first a scattering, then an avalanche, varying from the bric-à-brac of forgotten family friends to the photographs of forgotten poor relations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gave them an elaborate "drinking set," which included silver goblets, cocktail shaker, and bottle-openers. The extortion from Dick was more conventional—a tea set from Tiffany's. From Joseph Bloeckman came a simple and exquisite travelling clock, with his card. There was even a cigarette-holder from Bounds; this touched Anthony and made him want to weep—indeed, any emotion short of hysteria seemed natural in the half-dozen people who were swept up by this tremendous sacrifice to convention. The room set aside in the Plaza bulged with offerings sent by Harvard friends and by associates of his grandfather, with remembrances of Gloria's Farmover days, and with rather pathetic trophies from her former beaux, which last arrived with esoteric, melancholy messages, written on cards tucked carefully inside, beginning "I little thought when—" or "I'm sure I wish you all the happiness—" or even "When you get this I shall be on my way to——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The most munificent gift was simultaneously the most disappointing. It was a concession of Adam Patch's—a check for five thousand dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To most of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in her unsmiling face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Darn nice, isn't it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No answer until an hour later when she would give him a careful account of her precise reaction to the gift, whether it would have been improved by being smaller or larger, whether she was surprised at getting it, and, if so, just how much surprised.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert arranged and rearranged a hypothetical house, distributing the gifts among the different rooms, tabulating articles as "second-best clock" or "silver to use <i>every</i> day," and embarrassing Anthony and Gloria by semi-facetious references to a room she called the nursery. She was pleased by old Adam's gift and thereafter had it that he was a very ancient soul, "as much as anything else." As Adam Patch never quite decided whether she referred to the advancing senility of his mind or to some private and psychic schema of her own, it cannot be said to have pleased him. Indeed he always spoke of her to Anthony as "that old woman, the mother," as though she were a character in a comedy he had seen staged many times before. Concerning Gloria he was unable to make up his mind. She attracted him but, as she herself told Anthony, he had decided that she was frivolous and was afraid to approve of her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Five days!—A dancing platform was being erected on the lawn at Tarrytown. Four days!—A special train was chartered to convey the guests to and from New York. Three days!——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE DIARY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> She was dressed in blue silk pajamas and standing by her bed with her hand on the light to put the room in darkness, when she changed her mind and opening a table drawer brought out a little black book—a "Line-a-day" diary. This she had kept for seven years. Many of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial "I am going to keep a diary for my children." Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time—in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fashionable at Yale—she had been flattered because "Touch down" Michaud had "rushed" her all evening. She sighed, remembering the grown-up satin dress she had been so proud of and the orchestra playing "Yama-yama, My Yama Man" and "Jungle-Town." So long ago!—the names: Eltynge Reardon, Jim Parsons, "Curly" McGregor, Kenneth Cowan, "Fish-eye" Fry (whom she had liked for being so ugly), Carter Kirby—he had sent her a present; so had Tudor Baird;—Marty Reffer, the first man she had been in love with for more than a day, and Stuart Holcome, who had run away with her in his automobile and tried to make her marry him by force. And Larry Fenwick, whom she had always admired because he had told her one night that if she wouldn't kiss him she could get out of his car and walk home. What a list!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And, after all, an obsolete list. She was in love now, set for the eternal romance that was to be the synthesis of all romance, yet sad for these men and these moonlights and for the "thrills" she had had—and the kisses. The past—her past, oh, what a joy! She had been exuberantly happy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Turning over the pages her eyes rested idly on the scattered entries of the past four months. She read the last few carefully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, tree, moonlight"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 1st</i>.—I know Bill Carstairs hates me because I was so disagreeable, but I hate to be sentimentalized over sometimes. We drove out to the Rockyear Country Club and the most wonderful moon kept shining through the trees. My silver dress is getting tarnished. Funny how one forgets the other nights at Rockyear—with Kenneth Cowan when I loved him so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 3rd</i>.—After two hours of Schroeder who, they inform me, has millions, I've decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men. There's nothing so often overdone and from to-day I swear to be amused. We talked about 'love'—how banal! With how many men have I talked about love?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 11th</i>.—Patch actually called up to-day! and when he forswore me about a month ago he fairly raged out the door. I'm gradually losing faith in any man being susceptible to fatal injuries.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 20th</i>.—Spent the day with Anthony. Maybe I'll marry him some time. I kind of like his ideas—he stimulates all the originality in me. Blockhead came around about ten in his new car and took me out Riverside Drive. I liked him to-night: he's so considerate. He knew I didn't want to talk so he was quiet all during the ride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 21st</i>.—Woke up thinking of Anthony and sure enough he called and sounded sweet on the phone—so I broke a date for him. To-day I feel I'd break anything for him, including the ten commandments and my neck. He's coming at eight and I shall wear pink and look very fresh and starched——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She paused here, remembering that after he had gone that night she had undressed with the shivering April air streaming in the windows. Yet it seemed she had not felt the cold, warmed by the profound banalities burning in her heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next entry occurred a few days later:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 24th</i>.—I want to marry Anthony, because husbands are so often 'husbands' and I must marry a lover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are four general types of husbands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (1) The husband who always wants to stay in in the evening, has no vices and works for a salary. Totally undesirable!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (2) The atavistic master whose mistress one is, to wait on his pleasure. This sort always considers every pretty woman 'shallow,' a sort of peacock with arrested development.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (3) Next comes the worshipper, the idolater of his wife and all that is his, to the utter oblivion of everything else. This sort demands an emotional actress for a wife. God! it must be an exertion to be thought righteous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (4) And Anthony—a temporarily passionate lover with wisdom enough to realize when it has flown and that it must fly. And I want to get married to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What grubworms women are to crawl on their bellies through colorless marriages! Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting—it's going to be the performance, the live, lovely, glamourous performance, and the world shall be the scenery. I refuse to dedicate my life to posterity. Surely one owes as much to the current generation as to one's unwanted children. What a fate—to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers. . . . Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Such children, however, poor dear babies, have little in common with the wedded state.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 7th</i>.—Moral question: Was it wrong to make Bloeckman love me? Because I did really make him. He was almost sweetly sad to-night. How opportune it was that my throat is swollen plunk together and tears were easy to muster. But he's just the past—buried already in my plentiful lavender.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 8th</i>.—And to-day I've promised not to chew my mouth. Well, I won't, I suppose—but if he'd only asked me not to eat!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blowing bubbles—that's what we're doing, Anthony and me. And we blew such beautiful ones to-day, and they'll explode and then we'll blow more and more, I guess—bubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water is used up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the June 8th's of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girl—it was the name, Bob Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it was—and, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember. Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a moment she found a pencil and holding it unsteadily drew three parallel lines beneath the last entry. Then she printed FINIS in large capitals, put the book back in the drawer, and crept into bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BREATH OF THE CAVE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment after the bridal dinner, Anthony snapped out his lights and, feeling impersonal and fragile as a piece of china waiting on a serving table, got into bed. It was a warm night—a sheet was enough for comfort—and through his wide-open windows came sound, evanescent and summery, alive with remote anticipation. He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colorful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust. And there was something beyond that; he knew now. There was the union of his soul with Gloria's, whose radiant fire and freshness was the living material of which the dead beauty of books was made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving sound—something the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness—and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that a new note separated itself jarringly from the soft crying of the night. It was a noise from an areaway within a hundred feet from his rear window, the noise of a woman's laughter. It began low, incessant and whining—some servant-maid with her fellow, he thought—and then it grew in volume and became hysterical, until it reminded him of a girl he had seen overcome with nervous laughter at a vaudeville performance. Then it sank, receded, only to rise again and include words—a coarse joke, some bit of obscure horseplay he could not distinguish. It would break off for a moment and he would just catch the low rumble of a man's voice, then begin again—interminably; at first annoying, then strangely terrible. He shivered, and getting up out of bed went to the window. It had reached a high point, tensed and stifled, almost the quality of a scream—then it ceased and left behind it a silence empty and menacing as the greater silence overhead. Anthony stood by the window a moment longer before he returned to his bed. He found himself upset and shaken. Try as he might to strangle his reaction, some animal quality in that unrestrained laughter had grasped at his imagination, and for the first time in four months aroused his old aversion and horror toward all the business of life. The room had grown smothery. He wanted to be out in some cool and bitter breeze, miles above the cities, and to live serene and detached back in the corners of his mind. Life was that sound out there, that ghastly reiterated female sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my <i>God</i>!" he cried, drawing in his breath sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Burying his face in the pillows he tried in vain to concentrate upon the details of the next day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MORNING</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the gray light he found that it was only five o'clock. He regretted nervously that he had awakened so early—he would appear fagged at the wedding. He envied Gloria who could hide her fatigue with careful pigmentation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In his bathroom he contemplated himself in the mirror and saw that he was unusually white—half a dozen small imperfections stood out against the morning pallor of his complexion, and overnight he had grown the faint stubble of a beard—the general effect, he fancied, was unprepossessing, haggard, half unwell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On his dressing table were spread a number of articles which he told over carefully with suddenly fumbling fingers—their tickets to California, the book of traveller's checks, his watch, set to the half minute, the key to his apartment, which he must not forget to give to Maury, and, most important of all, the ring. It was of platinum set around with small emeralds; Gloria had insisted on this; she had always wanted an emerald wedding ring, she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the third present he had given her; first had come the engagement ring, and then a little gold cigarette-case. He would be giving her many things now—clothes and jewels and friends and excitement. It seemed absurd that from now on he would pay for all her meals. It was going to cost: he wondered if he had not underestimated for this trip, and if he had not better cash a larger check. The question worried him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was the day—unsought, unsuspected six months before, but now breaking in yellow light through his east window, dancing along the carpet as though the sun were smiling at some ancient and reiterated gag of his own.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a nervous one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By God!" he muttered to himself, "I'm as good as married!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE USHERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Six young men in</i> CROSS PATCH'S <i>library growing more and more cheery under the influence of Mumm's Extra Dry, set surreptitiously in cold pails by the bookcases.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FIRST YOUNG MAN: By golly! Believe me, in my next book I'm going to do a wedding scene that'll knock 'em cold!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE SECOND YOUNG MAN: Met a débutante th'other day said she thought your book was powerful. As a rule young girls cry for this primitive business.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE THIRD YOUNG MAN: Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Walking up and down outside talking to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: Lord! Did you see the minister? Most peculiar looking teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Think they're natural. Funny thing people having gold teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: They say they love 'em. My dentist told me once a woman came to him and insisted on having two of her teeth covered with gold. No reason at all. All right the way they were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Hear you got out a book, Dicky. 'Gratulations!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Stiffly</i>) Thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Innocently</i>) What is it? College stories?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>More stiffly</i>) No. Not college stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Pity! Hasn't been a good book about Harvard for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Touchily</i>) Why don't you supply the lack?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model"><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: I think I saw a squad of guests turn the drive in a Packard just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Might open a couple more bottles on the strength of that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: It was the shock of my life when I heard the old man was going to have a wet wedding. Rabid prohibitionist, you know.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Snapping his fingers excitedly</i>) By gad! I knew I'd forgotten something. Kept thinking it was my vest.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What was it?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Maliciously</i>) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Facetiously</i>) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN <i>looks nervously at his watch. Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an ass I am!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding. Name's Haines or Hampton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Hurriedly spurring his imagination</i>) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my glass, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Who? Old Adam?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: He's my uncle, Otis.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Yes, Cable, she is.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, Dicky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why are all grooms given the title of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Maury, the professional cynic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Faker yourself! What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: You don't know yourself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Don't hedge!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, natural selection?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Wrong.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I give it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There <i>is</i> a connection.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What is it then?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion</i>) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Frowning</i>) Let me just think a minute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Sitting up suddenly</i>) Listen!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Weightily</i>) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to God I'd sent that present.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCH'S organ</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There were five hundred eyes boring through the back of his cutaway and the sun glinting on the clergyman's inappropriately bourgeois teeth. With difficulty he restrained a laugh. Gloria was saying something in a clear proud voice and he tried to think that the affair was irrevocable, that every second was significant, that his life was being slashed into two periods and that the face of the world was changing before him. He tried to recapture that ecstatic sensation of ten weeks before. All these emotions eluded him, he did not even feel the physical nervousness of that very morning—it was all one gigantic aftermath. And those gold teeth! He wondered if the clergyman were married; he wondered perversely if a clergyman could perform his own marriage service. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But as he took Gloria into his arms he was conscious of a strong reaction. The blood was moving in his veins now. A languorous and pleasant content settled like a weight upon him, bringing responsibility and possession. He was married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening—and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Late one night they arrived in Santa Barbara, where the night clerk at the Hotel Lafcadio refused to admit them, on the grounds that they were not married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The clerk thought that Gloria was beautiful. He did not think that anything so beautiful as Gloria could be moral.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"CON AMORE"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That first half-year—the trip West, the long months' loiter along the California coast, and the gray house near Greenwich where they lived until late autumn made the country dreary—those days, those places, saw the enraptured hours. The breathless idyl of their engagement gave way, first, to the intense romance of the more passionate relationship. The breathless idyl left them, fled on to other lovers; they looked around one day and it was gone, how they scarcely knew. Had either of them lost the other in the days of the idyl, the love lost would have been ever to the loser that dim desire without fulfilment which stands back of all life. But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idyl passed, bearing with it its extortion of youth. Came a day when Gloria found that other men no longer bored her; came a day when Anthony discovered that he could sit again late into the evening, talking with Dick of those tremendous abstractions that had once occupied his world. But, knowing they had had the best of love, they clung to what remained. Love lingered—by way of long conversations at night into those stark hours when the mind thins and sharpens and the borrowings from dreams become the stuff of all life, by way of deep and intimate kindnesses they developed toward each other, by way of their laughing at the same absurdities and thinking the same things noble and the same things sad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was, first of all, a time of discovery. The things they found in each other were so diverse, so intermixed and, moreover, so sugared with love as to seem at the time not so much discoveries as isolated phenomena—to be allowed for, and to be forgotten. Anthony found that he was living with a girl of tremendous nervous tension and of the most high-handed selfishness. Gloria knew within a month that her husband was an utter coward toward any one of a million phantasms created by his imagination. Her perception was intermittent, for this cowardice sprang out, became almost obscenely evident, then faded and vanished as though it had been only a creation of her own mind. Her reactions to it were not those attributed to her sex—it roused her neither to disgust nor to a premature feeling of motherhood. Herself almost completely without physical fear, she was unable to understand, and so she made the most of what she felt to be his fear's redeeming feature, which was that though he was a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain—when his imagination was given play—he had yet a sort of dashing recklessness that moved her on its brief occasions almost to admiration, and a pride that usually steadied him when he thought he was observed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed, risk, affect, safety, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The trait first showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough café she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred in a San Francisco hotel, when they had been married a week, gave the matter certainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after midnight and pitch dark in their room. Gloria was dozing off and Anthony's even breathing beside her made her suppose that he was asleep, when suddenly she saw him raise himself on his elbow and stare at the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it, dearest?" she murmured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing"—he had relaxed to his pillow and turned toward her—"nothing, my darling wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable. . . . Come into my arms," she added in a rush of tenderness; "I can sleep so well, so well with you in my arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Coming into Gloria's arms had a quite definite meaning. It required that he should slide one arm under her shoulder, lock both arms about her, and arrange himself as nearly as possible as a sort of three-sided crib for her luxurious ease. Anthony, who tossed, whose arms went tinglingly to sleep after half an hour of that position, would wait until she was asleep and roll her gently over to her side of the bed—then, left to his own devices, he would curl himself into his usual knots.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, having attained sentimental comfort, retired into her doze. Five minutes ticked away on Bloeckman's travelling clock; silence lay all about the room, over the unfamiliar, impersonal furniture and the half-oppressive ceiling that melted imperceptibly into invisible walls on both sides. Then there was suddenly a rattling flutter at the window, staccato and loud upon the hushed, pent air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a leap Anthony was out of the bed and standing tense beside it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" he cried in an awful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria lay very still, wide awake now and engrossed not so much in the rattling as in the rigid breathless figure whose voice had reached from the bedside into that ominous dark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sound stopped; the room was quiet as before—then Anthony pouring words in at the telephone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Some one just tried to get into the room! . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's some one at the window!" His voice was emphatic now, faintly terrified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right! Hurry!" He hung up the receiver; stood motionless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . There was a rush and commotion at the door, a knocking—Anthony went to open it upon an excited night clerk with three bell-boys grouped staring behind him. Between thumb and finger the night clerk held a wet pen with the threat of a weapon; one of the bell-boys had seized a telephone directory and was looking at it sheepishly. Simultaneously the group was joined by the hastily summoned house-detective, and as one man they surged into the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lights sprang on with a click. Gathering a piece of sheet about her Gloria dove away from sight, shutting her eyes to keep out the horror of this unpremeditated visitation. There was no vestige of an idea in her stricken sensibilities save that her Anthony was at grievous fault.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The night clerk was speaking from the window, his tone half of the servant, half of the teacher reproving a schoolboy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody out there," he declared conclusively; "my golly, nobody <i>could</i> be out there. This here's a sheer fall to the street of fifty feet. It was the wind you heard, tugging at the blind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she was sorry for him. She wanted only to comfort him and draw him back tenderly into her arms, to tell them to go away because the thing their presence connotated was odious. Yet she could not raise her head for shame. She heard a broken sentence, apologies, conventions of the employee and one unrestrained snicker from a bell-boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been nervous as the devil all evening," Anthony was saying; "somehow that noise just shook me—I was only about half awake."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sure, I understand," said the night clerk with comfortable tact; "been that way myself."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door closed; the lights snapped out; Anthony crossed the floor quietly and crept into bed. Gloria, feigning to be heavy with sleep, gave a quiet little sigh and slipped into his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was it, dear?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing," he answered, his voice still shaken; "I thought there was somebody at the window, so I looked out, but I couldn't see any one and the noise kept up, so I phoned down-stairs. Sorry if I disturbed you, but I'm awfully darn nervous to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Catching the lie, she gave an interior start—he had not gone to the window, nor near the window. He had stood by the bed and then sent in his call of fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said—and then: "I'm so sleepy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an hour they lay awake side by side, Gloria with her eyes shut so tight that blue moons formed and revolved against backgrounds of deepest mauve, Anthony staring blindly into the darkness overhead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After many weeks it came gradually out into the light, to be laughed and joked at. They made a tradition to fit over it—whenever that overpowering terror of the night attacked Anthony, she would put her arms about him and croon, soft as a song:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll protect my Anthony. Oh, nobody's ever going to harm my Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would laugh as though it were a jest they played for their mutual amusement, but to Gloria it was never quite a jest. It was, at first, a keen disappointment; later, it was one of the times when she controlled her temper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The management of Gloria's temper, whether it was aroused by a lack of hot water for her bath or by a skirmish with her husband, became almost the primary duty of Anthony's day. It must be done just so—by this much silence, by that much pressure, by this much yielding, by that much force. It was in her angers with their attendant cruelties that her inordinate egotism chiefly displayed itself. Because she was brave, because she was "spoiled," because of her outrageous and commendable independence of judgment, and finally because of her arrogant consciousness that she had never seen a girl as beautiful as herself, Gloria had developed into a consistent, practising Nietzschean. This, of course, with overtones of profound sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, for example, her stomach. She was used to certain dishes, and she had a strong conviction that she could not possibly eat anything else. There must be a lemonade and a tomato sandwich late in the morning, then a light lunch with a stuffed tomato. Not only did she require food from a selection of a dozen dishes, but in addition this food must be prepared in just a certain way. One of the most annoying half hours of the first fortnight occurred in Los Angeles, when an unhappy waiter brought her a tomato stuffed with chicken salad instead of celery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We always serve it that way, madame," he quavered to the gray eyes that regarded him wrathfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria made no answer, but when the waiter had turned discreetly away she banged both fists upon the table until the china and silver rattled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor Gloria!" laughed Anthony unwittingly, "you can't get what you want ever, can you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't eat <i>stuff</i>!" she flared up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll call back the waiter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want you to! He doesn't know anything, the darn <i>fool</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it isn't the hotel's fault. Either send it back, forget it, or be a sport and eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shut up!" she said succinctly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why take it out on me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I'm <i>not</i>," she wailed, "but I simply <i>can't</i> eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony subsided helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go somewhere else," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't <i>want</i> to go anywhere else. I'm tired of being trotted around to a dozen cafés and not getting <i>one thing</i> fit to eat."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When did we go around to a dozen cafés?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd <i>have</i> to in <i>this</i> town," insisted Gloria with ready sophistry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, bewildered, tried another tack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you try to eat it? It can't be as bad as you think."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just—because—I—don't—like—chicken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She picked up her fork and began poking contemptuously at the tomato, and Anthony expected her to begin flinging the stuffings in all directions. He was sure that she was approximately as angry as she had ever been—for an instant he had detected a spark of hate directed as much toward him as toward any one else—and Gloria angry was, for the present, unapproachable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, surprisingly, he saw that she had tentatively raised the fork to her lips and tasted the chicken salad. Her frown had not abated and he stared at her anxiously, making no comment and daring scarcely to breathe. She tasted another forkful—in another moment she was eating. With difficulty Anthony restrained a chuckle; when at length he spoke his words had no possible connection with chicken salad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This incident, with variations, ran like a lugubrious fugue through the first year of marriage; always it left Anthony baffled, irritated, and depressed. But another rough brushing of temperaments, a question of laundry-bags, he found even more annoying as it ended inevitably in a decisive defeat for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon in Coronado, where they made the longest stay of their trip, more than three weeks, Gloria was arraying herself brilliantly for tea. Anthony, who had been down-stairs listening to the latest rumor bulletins of war in Europe, entered the room, kissed the back of her powdered neck, and went to his dresser. After a great pulling out and pushing in of drawers, evidently unsatisfactory, he turned around to the Unfinished Masterpiece.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got any handkerchiefs, Gloria?" he asked. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her golden head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a one. I'm using one of yours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The last one, I deduce." He laughed dryly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She applied an emphatic though very delicate contour to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't the laundry back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated—then, with sudden discernment, opened the closet door. His suspicions were verified. On the hook provided hung the blue bag furnished by the hotel. This was full of his clothes—he had put them there himself. The floor beneath it was littered with an astonishing mass of finery—lingerie, stockings, dresses, nightgowns, and pajamas—most of it scarcely worn but all of it coming indubitably under the general heading of Gloria's laundry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He stood holding the closet door open.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lip line was being erased and corrected according to some mysterious perspective; not a finger trembled as she manipulated the lip-stick, not a glance wavered in his direction. It was a triumph of concentration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever sent out the laundry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It most certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess I haven't, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," began Anthony, sitting down on the bed and trying to catch her mirrored eyes, "you're a nice fellow, you are! I've sent it out every time it's been sent since we left New York, and over a week ago you promised you'd do it for a change. All you'd have to do would be to cram your own junk into that bag and ring for the chambermaid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, why fuss about the laundry?" exclaimed Gloria petulantly, "I'll take care of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I haven't fussed about it. I'd just as soon divide the bother with you, but when we run out of handkerchiefs it's darn near time something's done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered that he was being extraordinarily logical. But Gloria, unimpressed, put away her cosmetics and casually offered him her back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hook me up," she suggested; "Anthony, dearest, I forgot all about it. I meant to, honestly, and I will to-day. Don't be cross with your sweetheart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What could Anthony do then but draw her down upon his knee and kiss a shade of color from her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't mind," she murmured with a smile, radiant and magnanimous. "You can kiss all the paint off my lips any time you want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They went down to tea. They bought some handkerchiefs in a notion store near by. All was forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But two days later Anthony looked in the closet and saw the bag still hung limp upon its hook and that the gay and vivid pile on the floor had increased surprisingly in height.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—" Her voice was full of real distress. Despairingly Anthony went to the phone and called the chambermaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," he said impatiently, "that you expect me to be some sort of French valet to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed, so infectiously that Anthony was unwise enough to smile. Unfortunate man! In some intangible manner his smile made her mistress of the situation—with an air of injured righteousness she went emphatically to the closet and began pushing her laundry violently into the bag. Anthony watched her—ashamed of himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There!" she said, implying that her fingers had been worked to the bone by a brutal taskmaster.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He considered, nevertheless, that he had given her an object-lesson and that the matter was closed, but on the contrary it was merely beginning. Laundry pile followed laundry pile—at long intervals; dearth of handkerchief followed dearth of handkerchief—at short ones; not to mention dearth of sock, of shirt, of everything. And Anthony found at length that either he must send it out himself or go through the increasingly unpleasant ordeal of a verbal battle with Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA AND GENERAL LEE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On their way East they stopped two days in Washington, strolling about with some hostility in its atmosphere of harsh repellent light, of distance without freedom, of pomp without splendor—it seemed a pasty-pale and self-conscious city. The second day they made an ill-advised trip to General Lee's old home at Arlington.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect, temperature, smell, passengers"><br /> <poem><br /> The bus which bore them was crowded with hot, unprosperous people, and Anthony, intimate to Gloria, felt a storm brewing. It broke at the Zoo, where the party stopped for ten minutes. The Zoo, it seemed, smelt of monkeys. Anthony laughed; Gloria called down the curse of Heaven upon monkeys, including in her malevolence all the passengers of the bus and their perspiring offspring who had hied themselves monkey-ward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus"><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually the bus moved on to Arlington. There it met other busses and immediately a swarm of women and children were leaving a trail of peanut-shells through the halls of General Lee and crowding at length into the room where he was married. On the wall of this room a pleasing sign announced in large red letters "Ladies' Toilet." At this final blow Gloria broke down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think it's perfectly terrible!" she said furiously, "the idea of letting these people come here! And of encouraging them by making these houses show-places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," objected Anthony, "if they weren't kept up they'd go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if they did!" she exclaimed as they sought the wide pillared porch. "Do you think they've left a breath of 1860 here? This has become a thing of 1914."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you want to preserve old things?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you <i>can't</i>, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year—then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you think that just as a time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these—these <i>animals</i>"—she waved her hand around—"get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses—bound for dust—mortal——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small boy appeared beside them and, swinging a handful of banana-peels, flung them valiantly in the direction of the Potomac.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SENTIMENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously with the fall of Liège, Anthony and Gloria arrived in New York. In retrospect the six weeks seemed miraculously happy. They had found to a great extent, as most young couples find in some measure, that they possessed in common many fixed ideas and curiosities and odd quirks of mind; they were essentially companionable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it had been a struggle to keep many of their conversations on the level of discussions. Arguments were fatal to Gloria's disposition. She had all her life been associated either with her mental inferiors or with men who, under the almost hostile intimidation of her beauty, had not dared to contradict her; naturally, then, it irritated her when Anthony emerged from the state in which her pronouncements were an infallible and ultimate decision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He failed to realize, at first, that this was the result partly of her "female" education and partly of her beauty, and he was inclined to include her with her entire sex as curiously and definitely limited. It maddened him to find she had no sense of justice. But he discovered that, when a subject did interest her, her brain tired less quickly than his. What he chiefly missed in her mind was the pedantic teleology—the sense of order and accuracy, the sense of life as a mysteriously correlated piece of patchwork, but he understood after a while that such a quality in her would have been incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each other's hearts. The day they left the hotel in Coronado she sat down on one of the beds while they were packing, and began to weep bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest—" His arms were around her; he pulled her head down upon his shoulder. "What is it, my own Gloria? Tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going away," she sobbed. "Oh, Anthony, it's sort of the first place we've lived together. Our two little beds here—side by side—they'll be always waiting for us, and we're never coming back to 'em any more."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was tearing at his heart as she always could. Sentiment came over him, rushed into his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, why, we're going on to another room. And two other little beds. We're going to be together all our lives."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Words flooded from her in a low husky voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it won't be—like our two beds—ever again. Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost—something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He held her passionately near, discerning far beyond any criticism of her sentiment, a wise grasping of the minute, if only an indulgence of her desire to cry—Gloria the idler, caresser of her own dreams, extracting poignancy from the memorable things of life and youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon when he returned from the station with the tickets he found her asleep on one of the beds, her arm curled about a black object which he could not at first identify. Coming closer he found it was one of his shoes, not a particularly new one, nor clean one, but her face, tear-stained, was pressed against it, and he understood her ancient and most honorable message. There was almost ecstasy in waking her and seeing her smile at him, shy but well aware of her own nicety of imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With no appraisal of the worth or dross of these two things, it seemed to Anthony that they lay somewhere near the heart of love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE GRAY HOUSE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing—oh, that eternal hand!—a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And this time with Gloria and Anthony, this first year of marriage, and the gray house caught them in that stage when the organ-grinder was slowly undergoing his inevitable metamorphosis. She was twenty-three; he was twenty-six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gray house was, at first, of sheerly pastoral intent. They lived impatiently in Anthony's apartment for the first fortnight after the return from California, in a stifled atmosphere of open trunks, too many callers, and the eternal laundry-bags. They discussed with their friends the stupendous problem of their future. Dick and Maury would sit with them agreeing solemnly, almost thoughtfully, as Anthony ran through his list of what they "ought" to do, and where they "ought" to live.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to take Gloria abroad," he complained, "except for this damn war—and next to that I'd sort of like to have a place in the country, somewhere near New York, of course, where I could write—or whatever I decide to do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't he cute?" she required of Maury. "'Whatever he decides to do!' But what am <i>I</i> going to do if he works? Maury, will you take me around if Anthony works?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anyway, I'm not going to work yet," said Anthony quickly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was vaguely understood between them that on some misty day he would enter a sort of glorified diplomatic service and be envied by princes and prime ministers for his beautiful wife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria helplessly, "I'm sure I don't know. We talk and talk and never get anywhere, and we ask all our friends and they just answer the way we want 'em to. I wish somebody'd take care of us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you go out to—out to Greenwich or something?" suggested Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like that," said Gloria, brightening. "Do you think we could get a house there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick shrugged his shoulders and Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You two amuse me," he said. "Of all the unpractical people! As soon as a place is mentioned you expect us to pull great piles of photographs out of our pockets showing the different styles of architecture available in bungalows."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's just what I don't want," wailed Gloria, "a hot stuffy bungalow, with a lot of babies next door and their father cutting the grass in his shirt sleeves——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For Heaven's sake, Gloria," interrupted Maury, "nobody wants to lock you up in a bungalow. Who in God's name brought bungalows into the conversation? But you'll never get a place anywhere unless you go out and hunt for it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go where? You say 'go out and hunt for it,' but where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With dignity Maury waved his hand paw-like about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Out anywhere. Out in the country. There're lots of places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look here!" Richard Caramel brought his yellow eye rakishly into play. "The trouble with you two is that you're all disorganized. Do you know anything about New York State? Shut up, Anthony, I'm talking to Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," she admitted finally, "I've been to two or three house parties in Portchester and around in Connecticut—but, of course, that isn't in New York State, is it? And neither is Morristown," she finished with drowsy irrelevance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a shout of laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Lord!" cried Dick, "neither is Morristown!' No, and neither is Santa Barbara, Gloria. Now listen. To begin with, unless you have a fortune there's no use considering any place like Newport or Southhampton or Tuxedo. They're out of the question."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed to this solemnly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And personally I hate New Jersey. Then, of course, there's upper New York, above Tuxedo."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> "Too cold," said Gloria briefly. "I was there once in an automobile."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it seems to me there're a lot of towns like Rye between New York and Greenwich where you could buy a little gray house of some——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria leaped at the phrase triumphantly. For the first time since their return East she knew what she wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>yes!</i>" she cried. "Oh, <i>yes!</i> that's it: a little gray house with sort of white around and a whole lot of swamp maples just as brown and gold as an October picture in a gallery. Where can we find one?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Unfortunately, I've mislaid my list of little gray houses with swamp maples around them—but I'll try to find it. Meanwhile you take a piece of paper and write down the names of seven possible towns. And every day this week you take a trip to one of those towns."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" protested Gloria, collapsing mentally, "why won't you do it for us? I hate trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, hire a car, and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm tired of discussing it. Seems to me all we do is talk about where to live."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My exquisite wife wearies of thought," remarked Anthony ironically. "She must have a tomato sandwich to stimulate her jaded nerves. Let's go out to tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the unfortunate upshot of this conversation, they took Dick's advice literally, and two days later went out to Rye, where they wandered around with an irritated real estate agent, like bewildered babes in the wood. They were shown houses at a hundred a month which closely adjoined other houses at a hundred a month; they were shown isolated houses to which they invariably took violent dislikes, though they submitted weakly to the agent's desire that they "look at that stove—some stove!" and to a great shaking of doorposts and tapping of walls, intended evidently to show that the house would not immediately collapse, no matter how convincingly it gave that impression. They gazed through windows into interiors furnished either "commercially" with slab-like chairs and unyielding settees, or "home-like" with the melancholy bric-à-brac of other summers—crossed tennis rackets, fit-form couches, and depressing Gibson girls. With a feeling of guilt they looked at a few really nice houses, aloof, dignified, and cool—at three hundred a month. They went away from Rye thanking the real estate agent very much indeed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the crowded train back to New York the seat behind was occupied by a super-respirating Latin whose last few meals had obviously been composed entirely of garlic. They reached the apartment gratefully, almost hysterically, and Gloria rushed for a hot bath in the reproachless bathroom. So far as the question of a future abode was concerned both of them were incapacitated for a week.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The matter eventually worked itself out with unhoped-for romance. Anthony ran into the living room one afternoon fairly radiating "the idea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "I've got it," he was exclaiming as though he had just caught a mouse. "We'll get a car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gee whiz! Haven't we got troubles enough taking care of ourselves?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, rural, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me a second to explain, can't you? Just let's leave our stuff with Dick and just pile a couple of suitcases in our car, the one we're going to buy—we'll have to have one in the country anyway—and just start out in the direction of New Haven. You see, as we get out of commuting distance from New York, the rents'll get cheaper, and as soon as we find a house we want we'll just settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> By his frequent and soothing interpolation of the word "just" he aroused her lethargic enthusiasm. Strutting violently about the room, he simulated a dynamic and irresistible efficiency. "We'll buy a car to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, city, urban, navigation, affect, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> Life, limping after imagination's ten-league boots, saw them out of town a week later in a cheap but sparkling new roadster, saw them through the chaotic unintelligible Bronx, then over a wide murky district which alternated cheerless blue-green wastes with suburbs of tremendous and sordid activity. They left New York at eleven and it was well past a hot and beatific noon when they moved rakishly through Pelham.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "These aren't towns," said Gloria scornfully, "these are just city blocks plumped down coldly into waste acres. I imagine all the men here have their mustaches stained from drinking their coffee too quickly in the morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And play pinochle on the commuting trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's pinochle?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't be so literal. How should I know? But it sounds as though they ought to play it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I like it. It sounds as if it were something where you sort of cracked your knuckles or something. . . . Let me drive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony looked at her suspiciously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "You swear you're a good driver?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Since I was fourteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road side, safety, driver, sound, pleasure, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He stopped the car cautiously at the side of the road and they changed seats. Then with a horrible grinding noise the car was put in gear, Gloria adding an accompaniment of laughter which seemed to Anthony disquieting and in the worst possible taste.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" she yelled. "Whoo-oop!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, haptic, car, driving, traffic, risk, affect, driver, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> Their heads snapped back like marionettes on a single wire as the car leaped ahead and curved retchingly about a standing milk-wagon, whose driver stood up on his seat and bellowed after them. In the immemorial tradition of the road Anthony retorted with a few brief epigrams as to the grossness of the milk-delivering profession. He cut his remarks short, however, and turned to Gloria with the growing conviction that he had made a grave mistake in relinquishing control and that Gloria was a driver of many eccentricities and of infinite carelessness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Remember now!" he warned her nervously, "the man said we oughtn't to go over twenty miles an hour for the first five thousand miles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded briefly, but evidently intending to accomplish the prohibitive distance as quickly as possible, slightly increased her speed. A moment later he made another attempt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic sign, law, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "See that sign? Do you want to get us pinched?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, for Heaven's sake," cried Gloria in exasperation, "you <i>always</i> exaggerate things so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want to get arrested."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's arresting you? You're so persistent—just like you were about my cough medicine last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was for your own good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ha! I might as well be living with mama."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a thing to say to me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, visibility, speed, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> A standing policeman swerved into view, was hastily passed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See him?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you drive me crazy! He didn't arrest us, did he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When he does it'll be too late," countered Anthony brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her reply was scornful, almost injured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, this old thing won't <i>go</i> over thirty-five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It isn't old."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It is in spirit."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, train, risk, traffic, safety, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> That afternoon the car joined the laundry-bags and Gloria's appetite as one of the trinity of contention. He warned her of railroad tracks; he pointed out approaching automobiles; finally he insisted on taking the wheel and a furious, insulted Gloria sat silently beside him between the towns of Larchmont and Rye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="agency, driving, car part, affect, safety, traffic, navigation, road, macadam, gravel, road surface, tree, visibility, sunshine"><br /> <poem><br /> But it was due to this furious silence of hers that the gray house materialized from its abstraction, for just beyond Rye he surrendered gloomily to it and re-relinquished the wheel. Mutely he beseeched her and Gloria, instantly cheered, vowed to be more careful. But because a discourteous street-car persisted callously in remaining upon its track Gloria ducked down a side-street—and thereafter that afternoon was never able to find her way back to the Post Road. The street they finally mistook for it lost its Post-Road aspect when it had gone five miles from Cos Cob. Its macadam became gravel, then dirt—moreover, it narrowed and developed a border of maple trees, through which filtered the westering sun, making its endless experiments with shadow designs upon the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're lost now," complained Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Read that sign!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Marietta—Five Miles. What's Marietta?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "Never heard of it, but let's go on. We can't turn here and there's probably a detour back to the Post Road."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="road surface, road condition, road, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> The way became scarred with deepening ruts and insidious shoulders of stone. Three farmhouses faced them momentarily, slid by. A town sprang up in a cluster of dull roofs around a white tall steeple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, hesitating between two approaches, and making her choice too late, drove over a fire-hydrant and ripped the transmission violently from the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was dark when the real-estate agent of Marietta showed them the gray house. They came upon it just west of the village, where it rested against a sky that was a warm blue cloak buttoned with tiny stars. The gray house had been there when women who kept cats were probably witches, when Paul Revere made false teeth in Boston preparatory to arousing the great commercial people, when our ancestors were gloriously deserting Washington in droves. Since those days the house had been bolstered up in a feeble corner, considerably repartitioned and newly plastered inside, amplified by a kitchen and added to by a side-porch—but, save for where some jovial oaf had roofed the new kitchen with red tin, Colonial it defiantly remained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you happen to come to Marietta?" demanded the real-estate agent in a tone that was first cousin to suspicion. He was showing them through four spacious and airy bedrooms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, accident, driving, garage"><br /> <poem><br /> "We broke down," explained Gloria. "I drove over a fire-hydrant and we had ourselves towed to the garage and then we saw your sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man nodded, unable to follow such a sally of spontaneity. There was something subtly immoral in doing anything without several months' consideration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, pleasure, road, dust, summer, rain, sound, sunshine, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> They signed a lease that night and, in the agent's car, returned jubilantly to the somnolent and dilapidated Marietta Inn, which was too broken for even the chance immoralities and consequent gaieties of a country road-house. Half the night they lay awake planning the things they were to do there. Anthony was going to work at an astounding pace on his history and thus ingratiate himself with his cynical grandfather. . . . When the car was repaired they would explore the country and join the nearest "really nice" club, where Gloria would play golf "or something" while Anthony wrote. This, of course, was Anthony's idea—Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant still in a shadowy hinterland. Between paragraphs Anthony would come and kiss her as she lay indolently in the hammock. . . . The hammock! a host of new dreams in tune to its imagined rhythm, while the wind stirred it and waves of sun undulated over the shadows of blown wheat, or the dusty road freckled and darkened with quiet summer rain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And guests—here they had a long argument, both of them trying to be extraordinarily mature and far-sighted. Anthony claimed that they would need people at least every other week-end "as a sort of change." This provoked an involved and extremely sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him. . . . Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? Oh, what'll we do then?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll have a dog," suggested Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want one. I want a kitty." She went thoroughly and with great enthusiasm into the history, habits, and tastes of a cat she had once possessed. Anthony considered that it must have been a horrible character with neither personal magnetism nor a loyal heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later they slept, to wake an hour before dawn with the gray house dancing in phantom glory before their dazzled eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SOUL OF GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For that autumn the gray house welcomed them with a rush of sentiment that falsified its cynical old age. True, there were the laundry-bags, there was Gloria's appetite, there was Anthony's tendency to brood and his imaginative "nervousness," but there were intervals also of an unhoped-for serenity. Close together on the porch they would wait for the moon to stream across the silver acres of farmland, jump a thick wood and tumble waves of radiance at their feet. In such a moonlight Gloria's face was of a pervading, reminiscent white, and with a modicum of effort they would slip off the blinders of custom and each would find in the other almost the quintessential romance of the vanished June.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One night while her head lay upon his heart and their cigarettes glowed in swerving buttons of light through the dome of darkness over the bed, she spoke for the first time and fragmentarily of the men who had hung for brief moments on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you ever think of them?" he asked her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only occasionally—when something happens that recalls a particular man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you remember—their kisses?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All sorts of things. . . . Men are different with women."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Different in what way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, entirely—and quite inexpressibly. Men who had the most firmly rooted reputation for being this way or that would sometimes be surprisingly inconsistent with me. Brutal men were tender, negligible men were astonishingly loyal and lovable, and, often, honorable men took attitudes that were anything but honorable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For instance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there was a boy named Percy Wolcott from Cornell who was quite a hero in college, a great athlete, and saved a lot of people from a fire or something like that. But I soon found he was stupid in a rather dangerous way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems he had some naïve conception of a woman 'fit to be his wife,' a particular conception that I used to run into a lot and that always drove me wild. He demanded a girl who'd never been kissed and who liked to sew and sit home and pay tribute to his self-esteem. And I'll bet a hat if he's gotten an idiot to sit and be stupid with him he's tearing out on the side with some much speedier lady."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd be sorry for his wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wouldn't. Think what an ass she'd be not to realize it before she married him. He's the sort whose idea of honoring and respecting a woman would be never to give her any excitement. With the best intentions, he was deep in the dark ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was his attitude toward you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm coming to that. As I told you—or did I tell you?—he was mighty good-looking: big brown honest eyes and one of those smiles that guarantee the heart behind it is twenty-karat gold. Being young and credulous, I thought he had some discretion, so I kissed him fervently one night when we were riding around after a dance at the Homestead at Hot Springs. It had been a wonderful week, I remember—with the most luscious trees spread like green lather, sort of, all over the valley and a mist rising out of them on October mornings like bonfires lit to turn them brown——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about your friend with the ideals?" interrupted Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems that when he kissed me he began to think that perhaps he could get away with a little more, that I needn't be 'respected' like this Beatrice Fairfax glad-girl of his imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd he do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much. I pushed him off a sixteen-foot embankment before he was well started."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurt him?" inquired Anthony with a laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Broke his arm and sprained his ankle. He told the story all over Hot Springs, and when his arm healed a man named Barley who liked me fought him and broke it over again. Oh, it was all an awful mess. He threatened to sue Barley, and Barley—he was from Georgia—was seen buying a gun in town. But before that mama had dragged me North again, much against my will, so I never did find out all that happened—though I saw Barley once in the Vanderbilt lobby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed long and loud.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a career! I suppose I ought to be furious because you've kissed so many men. I'm not, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this she sat up in bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's funny, but I'm so sure that those kisses left no mark on me—no taint of promiscuity, I mean—even though a man once told me in all seriousness that he hated to think I'd been a public drinking glass."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He had his nerve."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just laughed and told him to think of me rather as a loving-cup that goes from hand to hand but should be valued none the less."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Somehow it doesn't bother me—on the other hand it would, of course, if you'd done any more than kiss them. But I believe <i>you're</i> absolutely incapable of jealousy except as hurt vanity. Why don't you care what I've done? Wouldn't you prefer it if I'd been absolutely innocent?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all in the impression it might have made on you. <i>My</i> kisses were because the man was good-looking, or because there was a slick moon, or even because I've felt vaguely sentimental and a little stirred. But that's all—it's had utterly no effect on me. But you'd remember and let memories haunt you and worry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever kissed any one like you've kissed me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," she answered simply. "As I've told you, men have tried—oh, lots of things. Any pretty girl has that experience. . . . You see," she resumed, "it doesn't matter to me how many women you've stayed with in the past, so long as it was merely a physical satisfaction, but I don't believe I could endure the idea of your ever having lived with another woman for a protracted period or even having wanted to marry some possible girl. It's different somehow. There'd be all the little intimacies remembered—and they'd dull that freshness that after all is the most precious part of love."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rapturously he pulled her down beside him on the pillow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my darling," he whispered, "as if I remembered anything but your dear kisses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, in a very mild voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, did I hear anybody say they were thirsty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed abruptly and with a sheepish and amused grin got out of bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "With just a <i>little</i> piece of ice in the water," she added. "Do you suppose I could have that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria used the adjective "little" whenever she asked a favor—it made the favor sound less arduous. But Anthony laughed again—whether she wanted a cake of ice or a marble of it, he must go down-stairs to the kitchen. . . . Her voice followed him through the hall: "And just a <i>little</i> cracker with just a <i>little</i> marmalade on it. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" sighed Anthony in rapturous slang, "she's wonderful, that girl! She <i>has</i> it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When we have a baby," she began one day—this, it had already been decided, was to be after three years—"I want it to look like you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except its legs," he insinuated slyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, except his legs. He's got to have my legs. But the rest of him can be you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My nose?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, perhaps my nose. But certainly your eyes—and my mouth, and I guess my shape of the face. I wonder; I think he'd be sort of cute if he had my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Gloria, you've appropriated the whole baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I didn't mean to," she apologized cheerfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let him have my neck at least," he urged, regarding himself gravely in the glass. "You've often said you liked my neck because the Adam's apple doesn't show, and, besides, your neck's too short."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, it is <i>not</i>!" she cried indignantly, turning to the mirror, "it's just right. I don't believe I've ever seen a better neck."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's too short," he repeated teasingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Short?" Her tone expressed exasperated wonder. "Short? You're crazy!" She elongated and contracted it to convince herself of its reptilian sinuousness. "Do you call <i>that</i> a short neck?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of the shortest I've ever seen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For the first time in weeks tears started from Gloria's eyes and the look she gave him had a quality of real pain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My Lord, Gloria!" He approached her in bewilderment and took her elbows in his hands. "Don't cry, <i>please!</i> Didn't you know I was only kidding? Gloria, look at me! Why, dearest, you've got the longest neck I've ever seen. Honestly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her tears dissolved in a twisted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—you shouldn't have said that, then. Let's talk about the b-baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony paced the floor and spoke as though rehearsing for a debate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To put it briefly, there are two babies we could have, two distinct and logical babies, utterly differentiated. There's the baby that's the combination of the best of both of us. Your body, my eyes, my mind, your intelligence—and then there is the baby which is our worst—my body, your disposition, and my irresolution."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like that second baby," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What I'd really like," continued Anthony, "would be to have two sets of triplets one year apart and then experiment with the six boys——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor me," she interjected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—I'd educate them each in a different country and by a different system and when they were twenty-three I'd call them together and see what they were like."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's have 'em all with my neck," suggested Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE END OF A CHAPTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, personification, agency, driving, driver, speed, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The car was at length repaired and with a deliberate vengeance took up where it left off the business of causing infinite dissension. Who should drive? How fast should Gloria go? These two questions and the eternal recriminations involved ran through the days. They motored to the Post-Road towns, Rye, Portchester, and Greenwich, and called on a dozen friends, mostly Gloria's, who all seemed to be in different stages of having babies and in this respect as well as in others bored her to a point of nervous distraction. For an hour after each visit she would bite her fingers furiously and be inclined to take out her rancor on Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I loathe women," she cried in a mild temper. "What on earth can you say to them—except talk 'lady-lady'? I've enthused over a dozen babies that I've wanted only to choke. And every one of those girls is either incipiently jealous and suspicious of her husband if he's charming or beginning to be bored with him if he isn't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever intend to see any women?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. They never seem clean to me—never—never. Except just a few. Constance Shaw—you know, the Mrs. Merriam who came over to see us last Tuesday—is almost the only one. She's so tall and fresh-looking and stately."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like them so tall."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though they went to several dinner dances at various country clubs, they decided that the autumn was too nearly over for them to "go out" on any scale, even had they been so inclined. He hated golf; Gloria liked it only mildly, and though she enjoyed a violent rush that some undergraduates gave her one night and was glad that Anthony should be proud of her beauty, she also perceived that their hostess for the evening, a Mrs. Granby, was somewhat disquieted by the fact that Anthony's classmate, Alec Granby, joined with enthusiasm in the rush. The Granbys never phoned again, and though Gloria laughed, it piqued her not a little.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see," she explained to Anthony, "if I wasn't married it wouldn't worry her—but she's been to the movies in her day and she thinks I may be a vampire. But the point is that placating such people requires an effort that I'm simply unwilling to make. . . . And those cute little freshmen making eyes at me and paying me idiotic compliments! I've grown up, Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Marietta itself offered little social life. Half a dozen farm-estates formed a hectagon around it, but these belonged to ancient men who displayed themselves only as inert, gray-thatched lumps in the back of limousines on their way to the station, whither they were sometimes accompanied by equally ancient and doubly massive wives. The townspeople were a particularly uninteresting type—unmarried females were predominant for the most part—with school-festival horizons and souls bleak as the forbidding white architecture of the three churches. The only native with whom they came into close contact was the broad-hipped, broad-shouldered Swedish girl who came every day to do their work. She was silent and efficient, and Gloria, after finding her weeping violently into her bowed arms upon the kitchen table, developed an uncanny fear of her and stopped complaining about the food. Because of her untold and esoteric grief the girl stayed on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's penchant for premonitions and her bursts of vague supernaturalism were a surprise to Anthony. Either some complex, properly and scientifically inhibited in the early years with her Bilphistic mother, or some inherited hypersensitiveness, made her susceptible to any suggestion of the psychic, and, far from gullible about the motives of people, she was inclined to credit any extraordinary happening attributed to the whimsical perambulations of the buried. The desperate squeakings about the old house on windy nights that to Anthony were burglars with revolvers ready in hand represented to Gloria the auras, evil and restive, of dead generations, expiating the inexpiable upon the ancient and romantic hearth. One night, because of two swift bangs down-stairs, which Anthony fearfully but unavailingly investigated, they lay awake nearly until dawn asking each other examination-paper questions about the history of the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In October Muriel came out for a two weeks' visit. Gloria had called her on long-distance, and Miss Kane ended the conversation characteristically by saying "All-ll-ll righty. I'll be there with bells!" She arrived with a dozen popular songs under her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to have a phonograph out here in the country," she said, "just a little Vic—they don't cost much. Then whenever you're lonesome you can have Caruso or Al Jolson right at your door."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She worried Anthony to distraction by telling him that "he was the first clever man she had ever known and she got so tired of shallow people." He wondered that people fell in love with such women. Yet he supposed that under a certain impassioned glance even she might take on a softness and promise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Gloria, violently showing off her love for Anthony, was diverted into a state of purring content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally Richard Caramel arrived for a garrulous and to Gloria painfully literary week-end, during which he discussed himself with Anthony long after she lay in childlike sleep up-stairs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been mighty funny, this success and all," said Dick. "Just before the novel appeared I'd been trying, without success, to sell some short stories. Then, after my book came out, I polished up three and had them accepted by one of the magazines that had rejected them before. I've done a lot of them since; publishers don't pay me for my book till this winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You mean write trash?" He considered. "If you mean deliberately injecting a slushy fade-out into each one, I'm not. But I don't suppose I'm being so careful. I'm certainly writing faster and I don't seem to be thinking as much as I used to. Perhaps it's because I don't get any conversation, now that you're married and Maury's gone to Philadelphia. Haven't the old urge and ambition. Early success and all that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Doesn't it worry you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Frantically. I get a thing I call sentence-fever that must be like buck-fever—it's a sort of intense literary self-consciousness that comes when I try to force myself. But the really awful days aren't when I think I can't write. They're when I wonder whether any writing is worth while at all—I mean whether I'm not a sort of glorified buffoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like to hear you talk that way," said Anthony with a touch of his old patronizing insolence. "I was afraid you'd gotten a bit idiotic over your work. Read the damnedest interview you gave out——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick interrupted with an agonized expression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good Lord! Don't mention it. Young lady wrote it—most admiring young lady. Kept telling me my work was 'strong,' and I sort of lost my head and made a lot of strange pronouncements. Some of it was good, though, don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; that part about the wise writer writing for the youth of his generation, the critic of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterward."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I believe a lot of it," admitted Richard Caramel with a faint beam. "It simply was a mistake to give it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In November they moved into Anthony's apartment, from which they sallied triumphantly to the Yale-Harvard and Harvard-Princeton football games, to the St. Nicholas ice-skating rink, to a thorough round of the theatres and to a miscellany of entertainments—from small, staid dances to the great affairs that Gloria loved, held in those few houses where lackeys with powdered wigs scurried around in magnificent Anglomania under the direction of gigantic majordomos. Their intention was to go abroad the first of the year or, at any rate, when the war was over. Anthony had actually completed a Chestertonian essay on the twelfth century by way of introduction to his proposed book and Gloria had done some extensive research work on the question of Russian sable coats—in fact the winter was approaching quite comfortably, when the Bilphistic demiurge decided suddenly in mid-December that Mrs. Gilbert's soul had aged sufficiently in its present incarnation. In consequence Anthony took a miserable and hysterical Gloria out to Kansas City, where, in the fashion of mankind, they paid the terrible and mind-shaking deference to the dead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert became, for the first and last time in his life, a truly pathetic figure. That woman he had broken to wait upon his body and play congregation to his mind had ironically deserted him—just when he could not much longer have supported her. Never again would he be able so satisfactorily to bore and bully a human soul.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (191-260)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SYMPOSIUM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA had lulled Anthony's mind to sleep. She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun. In those first years what he believed bore invariably the stamp of Gloria; he saw the sun always through the pattern of the curtain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a sort of lassitude that brought them back to Marietta for another summer. Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to Coronado, from Coronado to Santa Barbara, with no purpose more apparent than Gloria's desire to dance by different music or catch some infinitesimal variant among the changing colors of the sea. Out of the Pacific there rose to greet them savage rocklands and equally barbaric hostelries built that at tea-time one might drowse into a languid wicker bazaar glorified by the polo costumes of Southhampton and Lake Forest and Newport and Palm Beach. And, as the waves met and splashed and glittered in the most placid of the bays, so they joined this group and that, and with them shifted stations, murmuring ever of those strange unsubstantial gaieties in wait just over the next green and fruitful valley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A simple healthy leisure class it was—the best of the men not unpleasantly undergraduate—they seemed to be on a perpetual candidates list for some etherealized "Porcellian" or "Skull and Bones" extended out indefinitely into the world; the women, of more than average beauty, fragilely athletic, somewhat idiotic as hostesses but charming and infinitely decorative as guests. Sedately and gracefully they danced the steps of their selection in the balmy tea hours, accomplishing with a certain dignity the movements so horribly burlesqued by clerk and chorus girl the country over. It seemed ironic that in this lone and discredited offspring of the arts Americans should excel, unquestionably.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having danced and splashed through a lavish spring, Anthony and Gloria found that they had spent too much money and for this must go into retirement for a certain period. There was Anthony's "work," they said. Almost before they knew it they were back in the gray house, more aware now that other lovers had slept there, other names had been called over the banisters, other couples had sat upon the porch steps watching the gray-green fields and the black bulk of woods beyond.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the same Anthony, more restless, inclined to quicken only under the stimulus of several high-balls, faintly, almost imperceptibly, apathetic toward Gloria. But Gloria—she would be twenty-four in August and was in an attractive but sincere panic about it. Six years to thirty! Had she been less in love with Anthony her sense of the flight of time would have expressed itself in a reawakened interest in other men, in a deliberate intention of extracting a transient gleam of romance from every potential lover who glanced at her with lowered brows over a shining dinner table. She said to Anthony one day:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They were bound eastward through a parched and lifeless Indiana, and she had looked up from one of her beloved moving picture magazines to find a casual conversation suddenly turned grave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part, visibility, road, rural, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony frowned out the car window. As the track crossed a country road a farmer appeared momentarily in his wagon; he was chewing on a straw and was apparently the same farmer they had passed a dozen times before, sitting in silent and malignant symbolism. As Anthony turned to Gloria his frown intensified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You worry me," he objected; "I can imagine <i>wanting</i> another woman under certain transitory circumstances, but I can't imagine taking her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't feel that way, Anthony. I can't be bothered resisting things I want. My way is not to want them—to want nobody but you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet when I think that if you just happened to take a fancy to some one——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't be an idiot!" she exclaimed. "There'd be nothing casual about it. And I can't even imagine the possibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This emphatically closed the conversation. Anthony's unfailing appreciation made her happier in his company than in any one's else. She definitely enjoyed him—she loved him. So the summer began very much as had the one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, however, one radical change in ménage. The icy-hearted Scandinavian, whose austere cooking and sardonic manner of waiting on table had so depressed Gloria, gave way to an exceedingly efficient Japanese whose name was Tanalahaka, but who confessed that he heeded any summons which included the dissyllable "Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana was unusually small even for a Japanese, and displayed a somewhat naïve conception of himself as a man of the world. On the day of his arrival from "R. Gugimoniki, Japanese Reliable Employment Agency," he called Anthony into his room to see the treasures of his trunk. These included a large collection of Japanese post cards, which he was all for explaining to his employer at once, individually and at great length. Among them were half a dozen of pornographic intent and plainly of American origin, though the makers had modestly omitted both their names and the form for mailing. He next brought out some of his own handiwork—a pair of American pants, which he had made himself, and two suits of solid silk underwear. He informed Anthony confidentially as to the purpose for which these latter were reserved. The next exhibit was a rather good copy of an etching of Abraham Lincoln, to whose face he had given an unmistakable Japanese cast. Last came a flute; he had made it himself but it was broken: he was going to fix it soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After these polite formalities, which Anthony conjectured must be native to Japan, Tana delivered a long harangue in splintered English on the relation of master and servant from which Anthony gathered that he had worked on large estates but had always quarrelled with the other servants because they were not honest. They had a great time over the word "honest," and in fact became rather irritated with each other, because Anthony persisted stubbornly that Tana was trying to say "hornets," and even went to the extent of buzzing in the manner of a bee and flapping his arms to imitate wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After three-quarters of an hour Anthony was released with the warm assurance that they would have other nice chats in which Tana would tell "how we do in my countree."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such was Tana's garrulous première in the gray house—and he fulfilled its promise. Though he was conscientious and honorable, he was unquestionably a terrific bore. He seemed unable to control his tongue, sometimes continuing from paragraph to paragraph with a look akin to pain in his small brown eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sunday and Monday afternoons he read the comic sections of the newspapers. One cartoon which contained a facetious Japanese butler diverted him enormously, though he claimed that the protagonist, who to Anthony appeared clearly Oriental, had really an American face. The difficulty with the funny paper was that when, aided by Anthony, he had spelled out the last three pictures and assimilated their context with a concentration surely adequate for Kant's "Critique," he had entirely forgotten what the first pictures were about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the middle of June Anthony and Gloria celebrated their first anniversary by having a "date." Anthony knocked at the door and she ran to let him in. Then they sat together on the couch calling over those names they had made for each other, new combinations of endearments ages old. Yet to this "date" was appended no attenuated good-night with its ecstasy of regret.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in June horror leered out at Gloria, struck at her and frightened her bright soul back half a generation. Then slowly it faded out, faded back into that impenetrable darkness whence it had come—taking relentlessly its modicum of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With an infallible sense of the dramatic it chose a little railroad station in a wretched village near Portchester. The station platform lay all day bare as a prairie, exposed to the dusty yellow sun and to the glance of that most obnoxious type of countryman who lives near a metropolis and has attained its cheap smartness without its urbanity. A dozen of these yokels, red-eyed, cheerless as scarecrows, saw the incident. Dimly it passed across their confused and uncomprehending minds, taken at its broadest for a coarse joke, at its subtlest for a "shame." Meanwhile there upon the platform a measure of brightness faded from the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With Eric Merriam, Anthony had been sitting over a decanter of Scotch all the hot summer afternoon, while Gloria and Constance Merriam swam and sunned themselves at the Beach Club, the latter under a striped parasol-awning, Gloria stretched sensuously upon the soft hot sand, tanning her inevitable legs. Later they had all four played with inconsequential sandwiches; then Gloria had risen, tapping Anthony's knee with her parasol to get his attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to go, dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now?" He looked at her unwillingly. At that moment nothing seemed of more importance than to idle on that shady porch drinking mellowed Scotch, while his host reminisced interminably on the byplay of some forgotten political campaign.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've really got to go," repeated Gloria. "We can get a taxi to the station. . . . Come on, Anthony!" she commanded a bit more imperiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now see here—" Merriam, his yarn cut off, made conventional objections, meanwhile provocatively filling his guest's glass with a high-ball that should have been sipped through ten minutes. But at Gloria's annoyed "We really <i>must!</i>" Anthony drank it off, got to his feet and made an elaborate bow to his hostess.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems we 'must,'" he said, with little grace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> In a minute he was following Gloria down a garden-walk between tall rose-bushes, her parasol brushing gently the June-blooming leaves. Most inconsiderate, he thought, as they reached the road. He felt with injured naïvete that Gloria should not have interrupted such innocent and harmless enjoyment. The whiskey had both soothed and clarified the restless things in his mind. It occurred to him that she had taken this same attitude several times before. Was he always to retreat from pleasant episodes at a touch of her parasol or a flicker of her eye? His unwillingness blurred to ill will, which rose within him like a resistless bubble. He kept silent, perversely inhibiting a desire to reproach her. They found a taxi in front of the Inn; rode silently to the little station. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Anthony knew what he wanted—to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go over to see the Barneses," he said without looking at her. "I don't feel like going home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Mrs. Barnes, née Rachael Jerryl, had a summer place several miles from Redgate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We went there day before yesterday," she answered shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure they'd be glad to see us." He felt that that was not a strong enough note, braced himself stubbornly, and added: "I want to see the Barneses. I haven't any desire to go home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I haven't any desire to go to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly they stared at each other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony," she said with annoyance, "this is Sunday night and they probably have guests for supper. Why we should go in at this hour——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why couldn't we have stayed at the Merriams'?" he burst out. "Why go home when we were having a perfectly decent time? They asked us to supper."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They had to. Give me the money and I'll get the railroad tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly will not! I'm in no humor for a ride in that damn hot train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria stamped her foot on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, you act as if you're tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary, I'm perfectly sober."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But his voice had slipped into a husky key and she knew with certainty that this was untrue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're sober you'll give me the money for the tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was too late to talk to him that way. In his mind was but one idea—that Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily a dull and sullen hate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go in the train," he said, his voice trembling a little with anger. "We're going to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not!" she cried. "If you go I'm going home alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word she turned toward the ticket office; simultaneously he remembered that she had some money with her and that this was not the sort of victory he wanted, the sort he must have. He took a step after her and seized her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here!" he muttered, "you're <i>not</i> going alone!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly am—why, Anthony!" This exclamation as she tried to pull away from him and he only tightened his grasp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked at her with narrowed and malicious eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go!" Her cry had a quality of fierceness. "If you have <i>any</i> decency you'll let go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?" He knew why. But he took a confused and not quite confident pride in holding her there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going home, do you understand? And you're going to let me go!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes were burning now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to make a scene here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say you're not going! I'm tired of your eternal selfishness!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I only want to go home." Two wrathful tears started from her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This time you're going to do what <i>I</i> say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly her body straightened: her head went back in a gesture of infinite scorn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hate you!" Her low words were expelled like venom through her clenched teeth. "Oh, <i>let</i> me go! Oh, I <i>hate</i> you!" She tried to jerk herself away but he only grasped the other arm. "I hate you! I hate you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At Gloria's fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you brute!" she sobbed. "Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, if there was one <i>man</i> here you couldn't do this! You couldn't do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct—until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta," he said with fine reserve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For answer Gloria seized his hand with both of hers and raising it to her mouth bit deeply into his thumb. He scarcely noticed the pain; seeing the blood spurt he absent-mindedly drew out his handkerchief and wrapped the wound. That too was part of the triumph he supposed—it was inevitable that defeat should thus be resented—and as such was beneath notice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was sobbing, almost without tears, profoundly and bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go! I won't go! You—can't—make—me—go! You've—you've killed any love I ever had for you, and any respect. But all that's left in me would die before I'd move from this place. Oh, if I'd thought <i>you'd</i> lay your hands on me——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're going with me," he said brutally, "if I have to carry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, car part, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He turned, beckoned to a taxicab, told the driver to go to Marietta. The man dismounted and swung the door open. Anthony faced his wife and said between his clenched teeth:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will you get in?—or will I <i>put</i> you in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> With a subdued cry of infinite pain and despair she yielded herself up and got into the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, affect, twilight, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> All the long ride, through the increasing dark of twilight, she sat huddled in her side of the car, her silence broken by an occasional dry and solitary sob. Anthony stared out the window, his mind working dully on the slowly changing significance of what had occurred. Something was wrong—that last cry of Gloria's had struck a chord which echoed posthumously and with incongruous disquiet in his heart. He must be right—yet, she seemed such a pathetic little thing now, broken and dispirited, humiliated beyond the measure of her lot to bear. The sleeves of her dress were torn; her parasol was gone, forgotten on the platform. It was a new costume, he remembered, and she had been so proud of it that very morning when they had left the house. . . . He began wondering if any one they knew had seen the incident. And persistently there recurred to him her cry:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All that's left in me would die——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This gave him a confused and increasing worry. It fitted so well with the Gloria who lay in the corner—no longer a proud Gloria, nor any Gloria he had known. He asked himself if it were possible. While he did not believe she would cease to love him—this, of course, was unthinkable—it was yet problematical whether Gloria without her arrogance, her independence, her virginal confidence and courage, would be the girl of his glory, the radiant woman who was precious and charming because she was ineffably, triumphantly herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was very drunk even then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on his bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after one o'clock and the hall seemed extraordinarily quiet when Gloria, wide-eyed and sleepless, traversed it and pushed open the door of his room. He had been too befuddled to open the windows and the air was stale and thick with whiskey. She stood for a moment by his bed, a slender, exquisitely graceful figure in her boyish silk pajamas—then with abandon she flung herself upon him, half waking him in the frantic emotion of her embrace, dropping her warm tears upon his throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony!" she cried passionately, "oh, my darling, you don't know what you did!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seemed, last night," she said gravely, her fingers playing in his hair, "that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you, but never in quite the same way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, she was aware even then that she would forget in time and that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. After that morning the incident was never mentioned and its deep wound healed with Anthony's hand—and if there was triumph some darker force than theirs possessed it, possessed the knowledge and the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIETZSCHEAN INCIDENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony's fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle "Never give a damn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not for anything or anybody," she said, "except myself and, by implication, for Anthony. That's the rule of all life and if it weren't I'd be that way anyhow. Nobody'd do anything for me if it didn't gratify them to, and I'd do as little for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was on the front porch of the nicest lady in Marietta when she said this, and as she finished she gave a curious little cry and sank in a dead faint to the porch floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> The lady brought her to and drove her home in her car. It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably with child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay upon the long lounge down-stairs. Day was slipping warmly out the window, touching the late roses on the porch pillars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All I think of ever is that I love you," she wailed. "I value my body because you think it's beautiful. And this body of mine—of yours—to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable. Oh, Anthony, I'm not afraid of the pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He consoled her desperately—but in vain. She continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then afterward I might have wide hips and be pale, with all my freshness gone and no radiance in my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, asking:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it certain?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>I</i> don't know anything. I've always hated obstrics, or whatever you call them. I thought I'd have a child some time. But not now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for God's sake don't lie there and go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her sobs lapsed. She drew down a merciful silence from the twilight which filled the room. "Turn on the lights," she pleaded. "These days seem so short—June seemed—to—have—longer days when I was a little girl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lights snapped on and it was as though blue drapes of softest silk had been dropped behind the windows and the door. Her pallor, her immobility, without grief now, or joy, awoke his sympathy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want me to have it?" she asked listlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm indifferent. That is, I'm neutral. If you have it I'll probably be glad. If you don't—well, that's all right too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd make up your mind one way or the other!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Suppose you make up <i>your</i> mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She looked at him contemptuously, scorning to answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd think you'd been singled out of all the women in the world for this crowning indignity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if I do!" she cried angrily. "It isn't an indignity for them. It's their one excuse for living. It's the one thing they're good for. It <i>is</i> an indignity for <i>me.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here, Gloria, I'm with you whatever you do, but for God's sake be a sport about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't <i>fuss</i> at me!" she wailed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book from the shelf and dropped into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense on the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll drive over and see Constance Merriam to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. And I'll go to Tarrytown and see Grampa."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—You see," she added, "it isn't that I'm afraid—of this or anything else. I'm being true to me, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," he agreed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE PRACTICAL MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls; atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his hand together with "Photographic Histories of the World War," official Explain-alls, and the "Personal Impressions" of war correspondents and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during Anthony's visit his grandfather's secretary, Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time "Accomplished Gin-physician" of "Pat's Place" in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would appear with an extra. The old man attacked each paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for preservation and thrusting them into one of his already bulging files.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what have you been doing?" he asked Anthony blandly. "Nothing? Well, I thought so. I've been intending to drive over and see you, all summer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been writing. Don't you remember the essay I sent you—the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Essay? You never sent <i>me</i> any essay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch shook his head mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no. You never sent <i>me</i> any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you read it, Grampa," insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, "you read it and disagreed with it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth, displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing his error and covering it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you're writing," he said quickly. "Well, why don't you go over and write about these Germans? Write something real, something about what's going on, something people can read."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anybody can't be a war correspondent," objected Anthony. "You have to have some newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can't spare the money to go over as a free-lance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll send you over," suggested his grandfather surprisingly. "I'll get you over as an authorized correspondent of any newspaper you pick out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony recoiled from the idea—almost simultaneously he bounded toward it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—don't—know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have to leave Gloria, whose whole life yearned toward him and enfolded him. Gloria was in trouble. Oh, the thing wasn't feasible—yet—he saw himself in khaki, leaning, as all war correspondents lean, upon a heavy stick, portfolio at shoulder—trying to look like an Englishman. "I'd like to think it over," he confessed. "It's certainly very kind of you. I'll think it over and I'll let you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thinking it over absorbed him on the journey to New York. He had had one of those sudden flashes of illumination vouchsafed to all men who are dominated by a strong and beloved woman, which show them a world of harder men, more fiercely trained and grappling with the abstractions of thought and war. In that world the arms of Gloria would exist only as the hot embrace of a chance mistress, coolly sought and quickly forgotten. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These unfamiliar phantoms were crowding closely about him when he boarded his train for Marietta, in the Grand Central Station. The car was crowded; he secured the last vacant seat and it was only after several minutes that he gave even a casual glance to the man beside him. When he did he saw a heavy lay of jaw and nose, a curved chin and small, puffed-under eyes. In a moment he recognized Joseph Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously they both half rose, were half embarrassed, and exchanged what amounted to a half handshake. Then, as though to complete the matter, they both half laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Anthony without inspiration, "I haven't seen you for a long time." Immediately he regretted his words and started to add: "I didn't know you lived out this way." But Bloeckman anticipated him by asking pleasantly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How's your wife? . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's very well. How've you been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Excellent." His tone amplified the grandeur of the word.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It seemed to Anthony that during the last year Bloeckman had grown tremendously in dignity. The boiled look was gone, he seemed "done" at last. In addition he was no longer overdressed. The inappropriate facetiousness he had affected in ties had given way to a sturdy dark pattern, and his right hand, which had formerly displayed two heavy rings, was now innocent of ornament and even without the raw glow of a manicure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This dignity appeared also in his personality. The last aura of the successful travelling-man had faded from him, that deliberate ingratiation of which the lowest form is the bawdy joke in the Pullman smoker. One imagined that, having been fawned upon financially, he had attained aloofness; having been snubbed socially, he had acquired reticence. But whatever had given him weight instead of bulk, Anthony no longer felt a correct superiority in his presence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you remember Caramel, Richard Caramel? I believe you met him one night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember. He was writing a book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he sold it to the movies. Then they had some scenario man named Jordan work on it. Well, Dick subscribes to a clipping bureau and he's furious because about half the movie reviewers speak of the 'power and strength of William Jordan's "Demon Lover."' Didn't mention old Dick at all. You'd think this fellow Jordan had actually conceived and developed the thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman nodded comprehensively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Most of the contracts state that the original writer's name goes into all the paid publicity. Is Caramel still writing?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes. Writing hard. Short stories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, that's fine, that's fine. . . . You on this train often?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About once a week. We live in Marietta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is that so? Well, well! I live near Cos Cob myself. Bought a place there only recently. We're only five miles apart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll have to come and see us." Anthony was surprised at his own courtesy. "I'm sure Gloria'd be delighted to see an old friend. Anybody'll tell you where the house is—it's our second season there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you." Then, as though returning a complementary politeness: "How is your grandfather?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's been well. I had lunch with him to-day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A great character," said Bloeckman severely. "A fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE TRIUMPH OF LETHARGY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony found his wife deep in the porch hammock voluptuously engaged with a lemonade and a tomato sandwich and carrying on an apparently cheery conversation with Tana upon one of Tana's complicated themes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In my countree," Anthony recognized his invariable preface, "all time—peoples—eat rice—because haven't got. Cannot eat what no have got." Had his nationality not been desperately apparent one would have thought he had acquired his knowledge of his native land from American primary-school geographies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When the Oriental had been squelched and dismissed to the kitchen, Anthony turned questioningly to Gloria:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all right," she announced, smiling broadly. "And it surprised me more than it does you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's no doubt?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None! Couldn't be!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They rejoiced happily, gay again with reborn irresponsibility. Then he told her of his opportunity to go abroad, and that he was almost ashamed to reject it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do <i>you</i> think? Just tell me frankly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony!" Her eyes were startled. "Do you want to go? Without me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His face fell—yet he knew, with his wife's question, that it was too late. Her arms, sweet and strangling, were around him, for he had made all such choices back in that room in the Plaza the year before. This was an anachronism from an age of such dreams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he lied, in a great burst of comprehension, "of course I don't. I was thinking you might go as a nurse or something." He wondered dully if his grandfather would consider this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As she smiled he realized again how beautiful she was, a gorgeous girl of miraculous freshness and sheerly honorable eyes. She embraced his suggestion with luxurious intensity, holding it aloft like a sun of her own making and basking in its beams. She strung together an amazing synopsis for an extravaganza of martial adventure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After supper, surfeited with the subject, she yawned. She wanted not to talk but only to read "Penrod," stretched upon the lounge until at midnight she fell asleep. But Anthony, after he had carried her romantically up the stairs, stayed awake to brood upon the day, vaguely angry with her, vaguely dissatisfied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I going to do?" he began at breakfast. "Here we've been married a year and we've just worried around without even being efficient people of leisure."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you ought to do something," she admitted, being in an agreeable and loquacious humor. This was not the first of these discussions, but as they usually developed Anthony in the rôle of protagonist, she had come to avoid them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work," he continued, "but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How you've changed!" remarked Gloria. "Once you told me you didn't see why an American couldn't loaf gracefully."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, damn it, I wasn't married. And the old mind was working at top speed and now it's going round and round like a cog-wheel with nothing to catch it. As a matter of fact I think that if I hadn't met you I <i>would</i> have done something. But you make leisure so subtly attractive——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it's all my fault——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I didn't mean that, and you know I didn't. But here I'm almost twenty-seven and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she interrupted in vexation, "you make me tired! Talking as though I were objecting or hindering you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was just discussing it, Gloria. Can't I discuss——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd be strong enough to settle——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—something with you without——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—your own problems without coming to me. You <i>talk</i> a lot about going to work. I could use more money very easily, but <i>I'm</i> not complaining. Whether you work or not I love you." Her last words were gentle as fine snow upon hard ground. But for the moment neither was attending to the other—they were each engaged in polishing and perfecting his own attitude.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have worked—some." This by Anthony was an imprudent bringing up of raw reserves. Gloria laughed, torn between delight and derision; she resented his sophistry as at the same time she admired his nonchalance. She would never blame him for being the ineffectual idler so long as he did it sincerely, from the attitude that nothing much was worth doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Work!" she scoffed. "Oh, you sad bird! You bluffer! Work—that means a great arranging of the desk and the lights, a great sharpening of pencils, and 'Gloria, don't sing!' and 'Please keep that damn Tana away from me,' and 'Let me read you my opening sentence,' and 'I won't be through for a long time, Gloria, so don't stay up for me,' and a tremendous consumption of tea or coffee. And that's all. In just about an hour I hear the old pencil stop scratching and look over. You've got out a book and you're 'looking up' something. Then you're reading. Then yawns—then bed and a great tossing about because you're all full of caffeine and can't sleep. Two weeks later the whole performance over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With much difficulty Anthony retained a scanty breech-clout of dignity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that's a <i>slight</i> exaggeration. You know <i>darn well</i> I sold an essay to The Florentine—and it attracted a lot of attention considering the circulation of The Florentine. And what's more, Gloria, you know I sat up till five o'clock in the morning finishing it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lapsed into silence, giving him rope. And if he had not hanged himself he had certainly come to the end of it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At least," he concluded feebly, "I'm perfectly willing to be a war correspondent."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But so was Gloria. They were both willing—anxious; they assured each other of it. The evening ended on a note of tremendous sentiment, the majesty of leisure, the ill health of Adam Patch, love at any cost.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony!" she called over the banister one afternoon a week later, "there's some one at the door." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, who had been lolling in the hammock on the sun-speckled south porch, strolled around to the front of the house. A foreign car, large and impressive, crouched like an immense and saturnine bug at the foot of the path. A man in a soft pongee suit, with cap to match, hailed him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there, Patch. Ran over to call on you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Bloeckman; as always, infinitesimally improved, of subtler intonation, of more convincing ease.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm awfully glad you did." Anthony raised his voice to a vine-covered window: "Glor-i-<i>a</i>! We've got a visitor!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm in the tub," wailed Gloria politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a smile the two men acknowledged the triumph of her alibi.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She'll be down. Come round here on the side-porch. Like a drink? Gloria's always in the tub—good third of every day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Pity she doesn't live on the Sound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can't afford it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As coming from Adam Patch's grandson, Bloeckman took this as a form of pleasantry. After fifteen minutes filled with estimable brilliancies, Gloria appeared, fresh in starched yellow, bringing atmosphere and an increase of vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to be a successful sensation in the movies," she announced. "I hear that Mary Pickford makes a million dollars annually."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You could, you know," said Bloeckman. "I think you'd film very well."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Would you let me, Anthony? If I only play unsophisticated rôles?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the conversation continued in stilted commas, Anthony wondered that to him and Bloeckman both this girl had once been the most stimulating, the most tonic personality they had ever known—and now the three sat like overoiled machines, without conflict, without fear, without elation, heavily enamelled little figures secure beyond enjoyment in a world where death and war, dull emotion and noble savagery were covering a continent with the smoke of terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose. . . . Life was no more than this summer afternoon; a faint wind stirring the lace collar of Gloria's dress; the slow baking drowsiness of the veranda. . . . Intolerably unmoved they all seemed, removed from any romantic imminency of action. Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Any day next week," Bloeckman was saying to Gloria. "Here—take this card. What they do is to give you a test of about three hundred feet of film, and they can tell pretty accurately from that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about Wednesday?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wednesday's fine. Just phone me and I'll go around with you——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, dust, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He was on his feet, shaking hands briskly—then his car was a wraith of dust down the road. Anthony turned to his wife in bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't mind if I have a trial, Anthony. Just a trial? I've got to go to town Wednesday, <i>any</i>how."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it's so silly! You don't want to go into the movies—moon around a studio all day with a lot of cheap chorus people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lot of mooning around Mary Pickford does!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody isn't a Mary Pickford."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't see how you'd object to my <i>try</i>ing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do, though. I hate actors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you make me tired. Do you imagine I have a very thrilling time dozing on this damn porch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wouldn't mind if you loved me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course I love you," she said impatiently, making out a quick case for herself. "It's just because I do that I hate to see you go to pieces by just lying around and saying you ought to work. Perhaps if I <i>did</i> go into this for a while it'd stir you up so you'd do something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's just your craving for excitement, that's all it is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe it is! It's a perfectly natural craving, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you go to the movies I'm going to Europe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, go on then! <i>I'm</i> not stopping you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To show she was not stopping him she melted into melancholy tears. Together they marshalled the armies of sentiment—words, kisses, endearments, self-reproaches. They attained nothing. Inevitably they attained nothing. Finally, in a burst of gargantuan emotion each of them sat down and wrote a letter. Anthony's was to his grandfather; Gloria's was to Joseph Bloeckman. It was a triumph of lethargy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One day early in July Anthony, returned from an afternoon in New York, called up-stairs to Gloria. Receiving no answer he guessed she was asleep and so went into the pantry for one of the little sandwiches that were always prepared for them. He found Tana seated at the kitchen table before a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends—cigar-boxes, knives, pencils, the tops of cans, and some scraps of paper covered with elaborate figures and diagrams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil you doing?" demanded Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana politely grinned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I show you," he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I tell——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You making a dog-house?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, sa." Tana grinned again. "Make typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Typewriter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sa. I think, oh all time I think, lie in bed think 'bout typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you thought you'd make one, eh?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, munching a sandwich, leaned leisurely against the sink. Tana opened and closed his mouth several times as though testing its capacity for action. Then with a rush he began:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I been think—typewutta—has, oh, many many many many <i>thing</i>. Oh many many many many." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Many keys. I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No-o? <i>Yes</i>—key! Many many many many lettah. Like so a-b-c."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you're right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell." He screwed his face up in a tremendous effort to express himself: "I been think—many words—end same. Like i-n-g."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. A whole raft of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So—I make—typewutta—quick. Not so many lettah——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a great idea, Tana. Save time. You'll make a fortune. Press one key and there's 'ing.' Hope you work it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana laughed disparagingly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell——" <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Mrs. Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out. Wait, I tell—" Again he screwed up his face for action. "<i>My</i> typewutta——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is she?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here—I make." He pointed to the miscellany of junk on the table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean Mrs. Patch."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out." Tana reassured him. "She be back five o'clock, she say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Down in the village?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Went off be-fore lunch. She go Mr. Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Went out with Mr. Bloeckman?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She be back five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word Anthony left the kitchen with Tana's disconsolate "I tell" trailing after him. So this was Gloria's idea of excitement, by God! His fists were clenched; within a moment he had worked himself up to a tremendous pitch of indignation. He went to the door and looked out; there was no car in sight and his watch stood at four minutes of five. With furious energy he dashed down to the end of the path—as far as the bend of the road a mile off he could see no car—except—but it was a farmer's flivver. Then, in an undignified pursuit of dignity, he rushed back to the shelter of the house as quickly as he had rushed out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Pacing up and down the living room he began an angry rehearsal of the speech he would make to her when she came in——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So this is love!" he would begin—or no, it sounded too much like the popular phrase "So this is Paris!" He must be dignified, hurt, grieved. Anyhow—"So this is what <i>you</i> do when I have to go up and trot all day around the hot city on business. No wonder I can't write! No wonder I don't dare let you out of my sight!" He was expanding now, warming to his subject. "I'll tell you," he continued, "I'll tell you—" He paused, catching a familiar ring in the words—then he realized—it was Tana's "I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet Anthony neither laughed nor seemed absurd to himself. To his frantic imagination it was already six—seven—eight, and she was never coming! Bloeckman finding her bored and unhappy had persuaded her to go to California with him. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —There was a great to-do out in front, a joyous "Yoho, Anthony!" and he rose trembling, weakly happy to see her fluttering up the path. Bloeckman was following, cap in hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest!" she cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been for the best jaunt—all over New York State."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll have to be starting home," said Bloeckman, almost immediately. "Wish you'd both been here when I came."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I wasn't," answered Anthony dryly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he had departed Anthony hesitated. The fear was gone from his heart, yet he felt that some protest was ethically apropos. Gloria resolved his uncertainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I knew you wouldn't mind. He came just before lunch and said he had to go to Garrison on business and wouldn't I go with him. He looked so lonesome, Anthony. And I drove his car all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired—tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure—that, and the sense of death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose I don't care," he answered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One must be broad about these things, and Gloria being young, being beautiful, must have reasonable privileges. Yet it wearied him that he failed to understand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WINTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She rolled over on her back and lay still for a moment in the great bed watching the February sun suffer one last attenuated refinement in its passage through the leaded panes into the room. For a time she had no accurate sense of her whereabouts or of the events of the day before, or the day before that; then, like a suspended pendulum, memory began to beat out its story, releasing with each swing a burdened quota of time until her life was given back to her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She could hear, now, Anthony's troubled breathing beside her; she could smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the resultant strain distributed easily over her body—it was a tremendous effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing herself into performing an impossible action. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth to get rid of that intolerable taste; then back by the bedside listening to the rattle of Bounds's key in the outer door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wake up, Anthony!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She climbed into bed beside him and closed her eyes. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> Almost the last thing she remembered was a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Lacy. Mrs. Lacy had said, "Sure you don't want us to get you a taxi?" and Anthony had replied that he guessed they could walk over to Fifth all right. Then they had both attempted, imprudently, to bow—and collapsed absurdly into a battalion of empty milk bottles just outside the door. There must have been two dozen milk bottles standing open-mouthed in the dark. She could conceive of no plausible explanation of those milk bottles. Perhaps they had been attracted by the singing in the Lacy house and had hurried over agape with wonder to see the fun. Well, they'd had the worst of it—though it seemed that she and Anthony never would get up, the perverse things rolled so. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Still, they had found a taxi. "My meter's broken and it'll cost you a dollar and a half to get home," said the taxi driver. "Well," said Anthony, "I'm young Packy McFarland and if you'll come down here I'll beat you till you can't stand up." . . . At that point the man had driven off without them. They must have found another taxi, for they were in the apartment. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What time is it?" Anthony was sitting up in bed, staring at her with owlish precision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was obviously a rhetorical question. Gloria could think of no reason why she should be expected to know the time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Golly, I feel like the devil!" muttered Anthony dispassionately. Relaxing, he tumbled back upon his pillow. "Bring on your grim reaper!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, how'd we finally get home last night?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Taxi."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" Then, after a pause: "Did you put me to bed?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Seems to me you put <i>me</i> to bed. What day is it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday? I hope so. If it's Wednesday, I've got to start work at that idiotic place. Supposed to be down at nine or some such ungodly hour."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ask Bounds," suggested Gloria feebly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds!" he called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sprightly, sober—a voice from a world that it seemed in the past two days they had left forever, Bounds sprang in short steps down the hall and appeared in the half darkness of the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What day, Bounds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "February the twenty-second, I think, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean day of the week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday, sir." "Thanks." After a pause: "Are you ready for breakfast, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, and Bounds, before you get it, will you make a pitcher of water, and set it here beside the bed? I'm a little thirsty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds retreated in sober dignity down the hallway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lincoln's birthday," affirmed Anthony without enthusiasm, "or St. Valentine's or somebody's. When did we start on this insane party?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sunday night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After prayers?" he suggested sardonically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> "We raced all over town in those hansoms and Maury sat up with his driver, don't you remember? Then we came home and he tried to cook some bacon—came out of the pantry with a few blackened remains, insisting it was 'fried to the proverbial crisp.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them laughed, spontaneously but with some difficulty, and lying there side by side reviewed the chain of events that had ended in this rusty and chaotic dawn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had been in New York for almost four months, since the country had grown too cool in late October. They had given up California this year, partly because of lack of funds, partly with the idea of going abroad should this interminable war, persisting now into its second year, end during the winter. Of late their income had lost elasticity; no longer did it stretch to cover gay whims and pleasant extravagances, and Anthony had spent many puzzled and unsatisfactory hours over a densely figured pad, making remarkable budgets that left huge margins for "amusements, trips, etc.," and trying to apportion, even approximately, their past expenditures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered a time when in going on a "party" with his two best friends, he and Maury had invariably paid more than their share of the expenses. They would buy the tickets for the theatre or squabble between themselves for the dinner check. It had seemed fitting; Dick, with his naïveté and his astonishing fund of information about himself, had been a diverting, almost juvenile, figure—court jester to their royalty. But this was no longer true. It was Dick who always had money; it was Anthony who entertained within limitations—always excepting occasional wild, wine-inspired, check-cashing parties—and it was Anthony who was solemn about it next morning and told the scornful and disgusted Gloria that they'd have to be "more careful next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the two years since the publication of "The Demon Lover," Dick had made over twenty-five thousand dollars, most of it lately, when the reward of the author of fiction had begun to swell unprecedentedly as a result of the voracious hunger of the motion pictures for plots. He received seven hundred dollars for every story, at that time a large emolument for such a young man—he was not quite thirty—and for every one that contained enough "action" (kissing, shooting, and sacrificing) for the movies, he obtained an additional thousand. His stories varied; there was a measure of vitality and a sort of instinctive technic in all of them, but none attained the personality of "The Demon Lover," and there were several that Anthony considered downright cheap. These, Dick explained severely, were to widen his audience. Wasn't it true that men who had attained real permanence from Shakespeare to Mark Twain had appealed to the many as well as to the elect?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though Anthony and Maury disagreed, Gloria told him to go ahead and make as much money as he could—that was the only thing that counted anyhow. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury, a little stouter, faintly mellower, and more complaisant, had gone to work in Philadelphia. He came to New York once or twice a month and on such occasions the four of them travelled the popular routes from dinner to the theatre, thence to the Frolic or, perhaps, at the urging of the ever-curious Gloria, to one of the cellars of Greenwich Village, notorious through the furious but short-lived vogue of the "new poetry movement."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, after many monologues directed at his reticent wife, Anthony determined to "get something to do," for the winter at any rate. He wanted to please his grandfather and even, in a measure, to see how he liked it himself. He discovered during several tentative semi-social calls that employers were not interested in a young man who was only going to "try it for a few months or so." As the grandson of Adam Patch he was received everywhere with marked courtesy, but the old man was a back number now—the heyday of his fame as first an "oppressor" and then an uplifter of the people had been during the twenty years preceding his retirement. Anthony even found several of the younger men who were under the impression that Adam Patch had been dead for some years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually Anthony went to his grandfather and asked his advice, which turned out to be that he should enter the bond business as a salesman, a tedious suggestion to Anthony, but one that in the end he determined to follow. Sheer money in deft manipulation had fascinations under all circumstances, while almost any side of manufacturing would be insufferably dull. He considered newspaper work but decided that the hours were not ordered for a married man. And he lingered over pleasant fancies of himself either as editor of a brilliant weekly of opinion, an American Mercure de France, or as scintillant producer of satiric comedy and Parisian musical revue. However, the approaches to these latter guilds seemed to be guarded by professional secrets. Men drifted into them by the devious highways of writing and acting. It was palpably impossible to get on a magazine unless you had been on one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So in the end he entered, by way of his grandfather's letter, that Sanctum Americanum where sat the president of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy at his "cleared desk," and issued therefrom employed. He was to begin work on the twenty-third of February.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, speed, road, city, urban"><br /> <poem><br /> In tribute to the momentous occasion this two-day revel had been planned, since, he said, after he began working he'd have to get to bed early during the week. Maury Noble had arrived from Philadelphia on a trip that had to do with seeing some man in Wall Street (whom, incidentally, he failed to see), and Richard Caramel had been half persuaded, half tricked into joining them. They had condescended to a wet and fashionable wedding on Monday afternoon, and in the evening had occurred the dénouement: Gloria, going beyond her accustomed limit of four precisely timed cocktails, led them on as gay and joyous a bacchanal as they had ever known, disclosing an astonishing knowledge of ballet steps, and singing songs which she confessed had been taught her by her cook when she was innocent and seventeen. She repeated these by request at intervals throughout the evening with such frank conviviality that Anthony, far from being annoyed, was gratified at this fresh source of entertainment. The occasion was memorable in other ways—a long conversation between Maury and a defunct crab, which he was dragging around on the end of a string, as to whether the crab was fully conversant with the applications of the binomial theorem, and the aforementioned race in two hansom cabs with the sedate and impressive shadows of Fifth Avenue for audience, ending in a labyrinthine escape into the darkness of Central Park. Finally Anthony and Gloria had paid a call on some wild young married people—the Lacys—and collapsed in the empty milk bottles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Morning now—theirs to add up the checks cashed here and there in clubs, stores, restaurants. Theirs to air the dank staleness of wine and cigarettes out of the tall blue front room, to pick up the broken glass and brush at the stained fabric of chairs and sofas; to give Bounds suits and dresses for the cleaners; finally, to take their smothery half-feverish bodies and faded depressed spirits out into the chill air of February, that life might go on and Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy obtain the services of a vigorous man at nine next morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, traffic, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember," called Anthony from the bathroom, "when Maury got out at the corner of One Hundred and Tenth Street and acted as a traffic cop, beckoning cars forward and motioning them back? They must have thought he was a private detective."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After each reminiscence they both laughed inordinately, their overwrought nerves responding as acutely and janglingly to mirth as to depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria at the mirror was wondering at the splendid color and freshness of her face—it seemed that she had never looked so well, though her stomach hurt her and her head was aching furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> The day passed slowly. Anthony, riding in a taxi to his broker's to borrow money on a bond, found that he had only two dollars in his pocket. The fare would cost all of that, but he felt that on this particular afternoon he could not have endured the subway. When the taximetre reached his limit he must get out and walk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> With this his mind drifted off into one of its characteristic day-dreams. . . . In this dream he discovered that the metre was going too fast—the driver had dishonestly adjusted it. Calmly he reached his destination and then nonchalantly handed the man what he justly owed him. The man showed fight, but almost before his hands were up Anthony had knocked him down with one terrific blow. And when he rose Anthony quickly sidestepped and floored him definitely with a crack in the temple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . He was in court now. The judge had fined him five dollars and he had no money. Would the court take his check? Ah, but the court did not know him. Well, he could identify himself by having them call his apartment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . They did so. Yes, it was Mrs. Anthony Patch speaking—but how did she know that this man was her husband? How could she know? Let the police sergeant ask her if she remembered the milk bottles . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He leaned forward hurriedly and tapped at the glass. The taxi was only at Brooklyn Bridge, but the metre showed a dollar and eighty cents, and Anthony would never have omitted the ten per cent tip.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon he returned to the apartment. Gloria had also been out—shopping—and was asleep, curled in a corner of the sofa with her purchase locked securely in her arms. Her face was as untroubled as a little girl's, and the bundle that she pressed tightly to her bosom was a child's doll, a profound and infinitely healing balm to her disturbed and childish heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DESTINY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was with this party, more especially with Gloria's part in it, that a decided change began to come over their way of living. The magnificent attitude of not giving a damn altered overnight; from being a mere tenet of Gloria's it became the entire solace and justification for what they chose to do and what consequence it brought. Not to be sorry, not to loose one cry of regret, to live according to a clear code of honor toward each other, and to seek the moment's happiness as fervently and persistently as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No one cares about us but ourselves, Anthony," she said one day. "It'd be ridiculous for me to go about pretending I felt any obligations toward the world, and as for worrying what people think about me, I simply <i>don't</i>, that's all. Since I was a little girl in dancing-school I've been criticised by the mothers of all the little girls who weren't as popular as I was, and I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was because of a party in the "Boul' Mich'" one night, where Constance Merriam had seen her as one of a highly stimulated party of four. Constance Merriam, "as an old school friend," had gone to the trouble of inviting her to lunch next day in order to inform her how terrible it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I told her I couldn't see it," Gloria told Anthony. "Eric Merriam is a sort of sublimated Percy Wolcott—you remember that man in Hot Springs I told you about—his idea of respecting Constance is to leave her at home with her sewing and her baby and her book, and such innocuous amusements, whenever he's going on a party that promises to be anything but deathly dull."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you tell her that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly did. And I told her that what she really objected to was that I was having a better time than she was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony applauded her. He was tremendously proud of Gloria, proud that she never failed to eclipse whatever other women might be in the party, proud that men were always glad to revel with her in great rowdy groups, without any attempt to do more than enjoy her beauty and the warmth of her vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These "parties" gradually became their chief source of entertainment. Still in love, still enormously interested in each other, they yet found as spring drew near that staying at home in the evening palled on them; books were unreal; the old magic of being alone had long since vanished—instead they preferred to be bored by a stupid musical comedy, or to go to dinner with the most uninteresting of their acquaintances, so long as there would be enough cocktails to keep the conversation from becoming utterly intolerable. A scattering of younger married people who had been their friends in school or college, as well as a varied assortment of single men, began to think instinctively of them whenever color and excitement were needed, so there was scarcely a day without its phone call, its "Wondered what you were doing this evening." Wives, as a rule, were afraid of Gloria—her facile attainment of the centre of the stage, her innocent but nevertheless disturbing way of becoming a favorite with husbands—these things drove them instinctively into an attitude of profound distrust, heightened by the fact that Gloria was largely unresponsive to any intimacy shown her by a woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the appointed Wednesday in February Anthony had gone to the imposing offices of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy and listened to many vague instructions delivered by an energetic young man of about his own age, named Kahler, who wore a defiant yellow pompadour, and in announcing himself as an assistant secretary gave the impression that it was a tribute to exceptional ability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's two kinds of men here, you'll find," he said. "There's the man who gets to be an assistant secretary or treasurer, gets his name on our folder here, before he's thirty, and there's the man who gets his name there at forty-five. The man who gets his name there at forty-five stays there the rest of his life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the man who gets it there at thirty?" inquired Anthony politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, he gets up here, you see." He pointed to a list of assistant vice-presidents upon the folder. "Or maybe he gets to be president or secretary or treasurer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And what about these over here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Those? Oh, those are the trustees—the men with capital."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now some people," continued Kahler, "think that whether a man gets started early or late depends on whether he's got a college education. But they're wrong."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had one; I was Buckleigh, class of nineteen-eleven, but when I came down to the Street I soon found that the things that would help me here weren't the fancy things I learned in college. In fact, I had to get a lot of fancy stuff out of my head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony could not help wondering what possible "fancy stuff" he had learned at Buckleigh in nineteen-eleven. An irrepressible idea that it was some sort of needlework recurred to him throughout the rest of the conversation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See that fellow over there?" Kahler pointed to a youngish-looking man with handsome gray hair, sitting at a desk inside a mahogany railing. "That's Mr. Ellinger, the first vice-president. Been everywhere, seen everything; got a fine education."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In vain did Anthony try to open his mind to the romance of finance; he could think of Mr. Ellinger only as one of the buyers of the handsome leather sets of Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo, and Gibbon that lined the wall of the big bookstores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the damp and uninspiring month of March he was prepared for salesmanship. Lacking enthusiasm he was capable of viewing the turmoil and bustle that surrounded him only as a fruitless circumambient striving toward an incomprehensible goal, tangibly evidenced only by the rival mansions of Mr. Frick and Mr. Carnegie on Fifth Avenue. That these portentous vice-presidents and trustees should be actually the fathers of the "best men" he had known at Harvard seemed to him incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate in an employees' lunch-room up-stairs with an uneasy suspicion that he was being uplifted, wondering through that first week if the dozens of young clerks, some of them alert and immaculate, and just out of college, lived in flamboyant hope of crowding onto that narrow slip of cardboard before the catastrophic thirties. The conversation that interwove with the pattern of the day's work was all much of a piece. One discussed how Mr. Wilson had made his money, what method Mr. Hiemer had employed, and the means resorted to by Mr. Hardy. One related age-old but eternally breathless anecdotes of the fortunes stumbled on precipitously in the Street by a "butcher" or a "bartender," or "a darn <i>mess</i>enger boy, by golly!" and then one talked of the current gambles, and whether it was best to go out for a hundred thousand a year or be content with twenty. During the preceding year one of the assistant secretaries had invested all his savings in Bethlehem Steel. The story of his spectacular magnificence, of his haughty resignation in January, and of the triumphal palace he was now building in California, was the favorite office subject. The man's very name had acquired a magic significance, symbolizing as he did the aspirations of all good Americans. Anecdotes were told about him—how one of the vice-presidents had advised him to sell, by golly, but he had hung on, even bought on margin, "and <i>now</i> look where he is!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such, obviously, was the stuff of life—a dizzy triumph dazzling the eyes of all of them, a gypsy siren to content them with meagre wage and with the arithmetical improbability of their eventual success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To Anthony the notion became appalling. He felt that to succeed here the idea of success must grasp and limit his mind. It seemed to him that the essential element in these men at the top was their faith that their affairs were the very core of life. All other things being equal, self-assurance and opportunism won out over technical knowledge; it was obvious that the more expert work went on near the bottom—so, with appropriate efficiency, the technical experts were kept there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His determination to stay in at night during the week did not survive, and a good half of the time he came to work with a splitting, sickish headache and the crowded horror of the morning subway ringing in his ears like an echo of hell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, abruptly, he quit. He had remained in bed all one Monday, and late in the evening, overcome by one of those attacks of moody despair to which he periodically succumbed, he wrote and mailed a letter to Mr. Wilson, confessing that he considered himself ill adapted to the work. Gloria, coming in from the theatre with Richard Caramel, found him on the lounge, silently staring at the high ceiling, more depressed and discouraged than he had been at any time since their marriage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She wanted him to whine. If he had she would have reproached him bitterly, for she was not a little annoyed, but he only lay there so utterly miserable that she felt sorry for him, and kneeling down she stroked his head, saying how little it mattered, how little anything mattered so long as they loved each other. It was like their first year, and Anthony, reacting to her cool hand, to her voice that was soft as breath itself upon his ear, became almost cheerful, and talked with her of his future plans. He even regretted, silently, before he went to bed that he had so hastily mailed his resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment," Gloria had said. "It's the sum of all your judgments that counts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> In mid-April came a letter from the real-estate agent in Marietta, encouraging them to take the gray house for another year at a slightly increased rental, and enclosing a lease made out for their signatures. For a week lease and letter lay carelessly neglected on Anthony's desk. They had no intention of returning to Marietta. They were weary of the place, and had been bored most of the preceding summer. Besides, their car had deteriorated to a rattling mass of hypochondriacal metal, and a new one was financially inadvisable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But because of another wild revel, enduring through four days and participated in, at one time or another, by more than a dozen people, they did sign the lease; to their utter horror they signed it and sent it, and immediately it seemed as though they heard the gray house, drably malevolent at last, licking its white chops and waiting to devour them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, where's that lease?" she called in high alarm one Sunday morning, sick and sober to reality. "Where did you leave it? It was here!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she knew where it was. She remembered the house party they had planned on the crest of their exuberance; she remembered a room full of men to whose less exhilarated moments she and Anthony were of no importance, and Anthony's boast of the transcendent merit and seclusion of the gray house, that it was so isolated that it didn't matter how much noise went on there. Then Dick, who had visited them, cried enthusiastically that it was the best little house imaginable, and that they were idiotic not to take it for another summer. It had been easy to work themselves up to a sense of how hot and deserted the city was getting, of how cool and ambrosial were the charms of Marietta. Anthony had picked up the lease and waved it wildly, found Gloria happily acquiescent, and with one last burst of garrulous decision during which all the men agreed with solemn handshakes that they would come out for a visit . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony," she cried, "we've signed and sent it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The lease!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>An</i>thony!" There was utter misery in her voice. For the summer, for eternity, they had built themselves a prison. It seemed to strike at the last roots of their stability. Anthony thought they might arrange it with the real-estate agent. They could no longer afford the double rent, and going to Marietta meant giving up his apartment, his reproachless apartment with the exquisite bath and the rooms for which he had bought his furniture and hangings—it was the closest to a home that he had ever had—familiar with memories of four colorful years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was not arranged with the real-estate agent, nor was it arranged at all. Dispiritedly, without even any talk of making the best of it, without even Gloria's all-sufficing "I don't care," they went back to the house that they now knew heeded neither youth nor love—only those austere and incommunicable memories that they could never share.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SINISTER SUMMER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a horror in the house that summer. It came with them and settled itself over the place like a sombre pall, pervasive through the lower rooms, gradually spreading and climbing up the narrow stairs until it oppressed their very sleep. Anthony and Gloria grew to hate being there alone. Her bedroom, which had seemed so pink and young and delicate, appropriate to her pastel-shaded lingerie tossed here and there on chair and bed, seemed now to whisper with its rustling curtains:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, my beautiful young lady, yours is not the first daintiness and delicacy that has faded here under the summer suns . . . generations of unloved women have adorned themselves by that glass for rustic lovers who paid no heed. . . . Youth has come into this room in palest blue and left it in the gray cerements of despair, and through long nights many girls have lain awake where that bed stands pouring out waves of misery into the darkness."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria finally tumbled all her clothes and unguents ingloriously out of it, declaring that she had come to live with Anthony, and making the excuse that one of her screens was rotten and admitted bugs. So her room was abandoned to insensitive guests, and they dressed and slept in her husband's chamber, which Gloria considered somehow "good," as though Anthony's presence there had acted as exterminator of any uneasy shadows of the past that might have hovered about its walls.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The distinction between "good" and "bad," ordered early and summarily out of both their lives, had been reinstated in another form. Gloria insisted that any one invited to the gray house must be "good," which, in the case of a girl, meant that she must be either simple and reproachless or, if otherwise, must possess a certain solidity and strength. Always intensely sceptical of her sex, her judgments were now concerned with the question of whether women were or were not clean. By uncleanliness she meant a variety of things, a lack of pride, a slackness in fibre and, most of all, the unmistakable aura of promiscuity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Women soil easily," she said, "far more easily than men. Unless a girl's very young and brave it's almost impossible for her to go down-hill without a certain hysterical animality, the cunning, dirty sort of animality. A man's different—and I suppose that's why one of the commonest characters of romance is a man going gallantly to the devil."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was disposed to like many men, preferably those who gave her frank homage and unfailing entertainment—but often with a flash of insight she told Anthony that some one of his friends was merely using him, and consequently had best be left alone. Anthony customarily demurred, insisting that the accused was a "good one," but he found that his judgment was more fallible than hers, memorably when, as it happened on several occasions, he was left with a succession of restaurant checks for which to render a solitary account.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> More from their fear of solitude than from any desire to go through the fuss and bother of entertaining, they filled the house with guests every week-end, and often on through the week. The week-end parties were much the same. When the three or four men invited had arrived, drinking was more or less in order, followed by a hilarious dinner and a ride to the Cradle Beach Country Club, which they had joined because it was inexpensive, lively if not fashionable, and almost a necessity for just such occasions as these. Moreover, it was of no great moment what one did there, and so long as the Patch party were reasonably inaudible, it mattered little whether or not the social dictators of Cradle Beach saw the gay Gloria imbibing cocktails in the supper room at frequent intervals during the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Saturday ended, generally, in a glamourous confusion—it proving often necessary to assist a muddled guest to bed. Sunday brought the New York papers and a quiet morning of recuperating on the porch—and Sunday afternoon meant good-by to the one or two guests who must return to the city, and a great revival of drinking among the one or two who remained until next day, concluding in a convivial if not hilarious evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The faithful Tana, pedagogue by nature and man of all work by profession, had returned with them. Among their more frequent guests a tradition had sprung up about him. Maury Noble remarked one afternoon that his real name was Tannenbaum, and that he was a German agent kept in this country to disseminate Teutonic propaganda through Westchester County, and, after that, mysterious letters began to arrive from Philadelphia addressed to the bewildered Oriental as "Lt. Emile Tannenbaum," containing a few cryptic messages signed "General Staff," and adorned with an atmospheric double column of facetious Japanese. Anthony always handed them to Tana without a smile; hours afterward the recipient could be found puzzling over them in the kitchen and declaring earnestly that the perpendicular symbols were not Japanese, nor anything resembling Japanese.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria had taken a strong dislike to the man ever since the day when, returning unexpectedly from the village, she had discovered him reclining on Anthony's bed, puzzling out a newspaper. It was the instinct of all servants to be fond of Anthony and to detest Gloria, and Tana was no exception to the rule. But he was thoroughly afraid of her and made plain his aversion only in his moodier moments by subtly addressing Anthony with remarks intended for her ear:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What Miz Pats want dinner?" he would say, looking at his master. Or else he would comment about the bitter selfishness of "'Merican peoples" in such manner that there was no doubt who were the "peoples" referred to.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But they dared not dismiss him. Such a step would have been abhorrent to their inertia. They endured Tana as they endured ill weather and sickness of the body and the estimable Will of God—as they endured all things, even themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>IN DARKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One sultry afternoon late in July Richard Caramel telephoned from New York that he and Maury were coming out, bringing a friend with them. They arrived about five, a little drunk, accompanied by a small, stocky man of thirty-five, whom they introduced as Mr. Joe Hull, one of the best fellows that Anthony and Gloria had ever met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Joe Hull had a yellow beard continually fighting through his skin and a low voice which varied between basso profundo and a husky whisper. Anthony, carrying Maury's suitcase up-stairs, followed into the room and carefully closed the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury chuckled enthusiastically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who, Hull? Oh, <i>he's</i> all right. He's a good one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, but who is he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hull? He's just a good fellow. He's a prince." His laughter redoubled, culminating in a succession of pleasant catlike grins. Anthony hesitated between a smile and a frown.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He looks sort of funny to me. Weird-looking clothes"—he paused—"I've got a sneaking suspicion you two picked him up somewhere last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ridiculous," declared Maury. "Why, I've known him all my life." However, as he capped this statement with another series of chuckles, Anthony was impelled to remark: "The devil you have!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, just before dinner, while Maury and Dick were conversing uproariously, with Joe Hull listening in silence as he sipped his drink, Gloria drew Anthony into the dining room:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like this man Hull," she said. "I wish he'd use Tana's bathtub."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't very well ask him to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want him in ours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He seems to be a simple soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got on white shoes that look like gloves. I can see his toes right through them. Uh! Who is he, anyway?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I think they've got their nerve to bring him out here. This isn't a Sailor's Rescue Home!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They were tight when they phoned. Maury said they've been on a party since yesterday afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her head angrily, and saying no more returned to the porch. Anthony saw that she was trying to forget her uncertainty and devote herself to enjoying the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="temperature, road"><br /> <poem><br /> It had been a tropical day, and even into late twilight the heat-waves emanating from the dry road were quivering faintly like undulating panes of isinglass. The sky was cloudless, but far beyond the woods in the direction of the Sound a faint and persistent rolling had commenced. When Tana announced dinner the men, at a word from Gloria, remained coatless and went inside.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury began a song, which they accomplished in harmony during the first course. It had two lines and was sung to a popular air called Daisy Dear. The lines were:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us, </div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—the moral de<i>cline</i>!"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Each rendition was greeted with bursts of enthusiasm and prolonged applause.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" suggested Maury. "You seem the least bit depressed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not," she lied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here, Tannenbaum!" he called over his shoulder. "I've filled you a drink. Come on!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria tried to stay his arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Please don't, Maury!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not? Maybe he'll play the flute for us after dinner. Here, Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana, grinning, bore the glass away to the kitchen. In a few moments Maury gave him another.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" he cried. "For Heaven's sakes everybody, cheer up Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest, have another drink," counselled Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria," said Joe Hull easily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria winced at this uncalled-for use of her first name, and glanced around to see if any one else had noticed it. The word coming so glibly from the lips of a man to whom she had taken an inordinate dislike repelled her. A moment later she noticed that Joe Hull had given Tana another drink, and her anger increased, heightened somewhat from the effects of the alcohol.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—and once," Maury was saying, "Peter Granby and I went into a Turkish bath in Boston, about two o'clock at night. There was no one there but the proprietor, and we jammed him into a closet and locked the door. Then a fella came in and wanted a Turkish bath. Thought we were the rubbers, by golly! Well, we just picked him up and tossed him into the pool with all his clothes on. Then we dragged him out and laid him on a slab and slapped him until he was black and blue. 'Not so rough, fellows!' he'd say in a little squeaky voice, 'please! . . .'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Was this Maury? thought Gloria. From any one else the story would have amused her, but from Maury, the infinitely appreciative, the apotheosis of tact and consideration. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A drum of thunder from outside drowned out the rest of the song; Gloria shivered and tried to empty her glass, but the first taste nauseated her, and she set it down. Dinner was over and they all marched into the big room, bearing several bottles and decanters. Some one had closed the porch door to keep out the wind, and in consequence circular tentacles of cigar smoke were twisting already upon the heavy air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paging Lieutenant Tannenbaum!" Again it was the changeling Maury. "Bring us the flute!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Maury rushed into the kitchen; Richard Caramel started the phonograph and approached Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance with your well-known cousin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to dance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'm going to carry you around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As though he were doing something of overpowering importance, he picked her up in his fat little arms and started trotting gravely about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Set me down, Dick! I'm dizzy!" she insisted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He dumped her in a bouncing bundle on the couch, and rushed off to the kitchen, shouting "Tana! Tana!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, without warning, she felt other arms around her, felt herself lifted from the lounge. Joe Hull had picked her up and was trying, drunkenly, to imitate Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Put me down!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His maudlin laugh, and the sight of that prickly yellow jaw close to her face stirred her to intolerable disgust.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At once!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The—pan-ic—" he began, but got no further, for Gloria's hand swung around swiftly and caught him in the cheek. At this he all at once let go of her, and she fell to the floor, her shoulder hitting the table a glancing blow in transit. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the room seemed full of men and smoke. There was Tana in his white coat reeling about supported by Maury. Into his flute he was blowing a weird blend of sound that was known, cried Anthony, as the Japanese train-song. Joe Hull had found a box of candles and was juggling them, yelling "One down!" every time he missed, and Dick was dancing by himself in a fascinated whirl around and about the room. It appeared to her that everything in the room was staggering in grotesque fourth-dimensional gyrations through intersecting planes of hazy blue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Outside, the storm had come up amazingly—the lulls within were filled with the scrape of the tall bushes against the house and the roaring of the rain on the tin roof of the kitchen. The lightning was interminable, letting down thick drips of thunder like pig iron from the heart of a white-hot furnace. Gloria could see that the rain was spitting in at three of the windows—but she could not move to shut them. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . She was in the hall. She had said good night but no one had heard or heeded her. It seemed for an instant as though something had looked down over the head of the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor. . . . Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side of the half-drenched bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her eyes. From down-stairs arose the babel of the drinkers, punctured suddenly by a tinkling shiver of broken glass, and then another, and by a soaring fragment of unsteady, irregular song. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay there for something over two hours—so she calculated afterward, sheerly by piecing together the bits of time. She was conscious, even aware, after a long while that the noise down-stairs had lessened, and that the storm was moving off westward, throwing back lingering showers of sound that fell, heavy and lifeless as her soul, into the soggy fields. This was succeeded by a slow, reluctant scattering of the rain and wind, until there was nothing outside her windows but a gentle dripping and the swishing play of a cluster of wet vine against the sill. She was in a state half-way between sleeping and waking, with neither condition predominant . . . and she was harassed by a desire to rid herself of a weight pressing down upon her breast. She felt that if she could cry the weight would be lifted, and forcing the lids of her eyes together she tried to raise a lump in her throat . . . to no avail. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Drip! Drip! Drip! The sound was not unpleasant—like spring, like a cool rain of her childhood, that made cheerful mud in her back yard and watered the tiny garden she had dug with miniature rake and spade and hoe. Drip—dri-ip! It was like days when the rain came out of yellow skies that melted just before twilight and shot one radiant shaft of sunlight diagonally down the heavens into the damp green trees. So cool, so clear and clean—and her mother there at the centre of the world, at the centre of the rain, safe and dry and strong. She wanted her mother now, and her mother was dead, beyond sight and touch forever. And this weight was pressing on her, pressing on her—oh, it pressed on her so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She became rigid. Some one had come to the door and was standing regarding her, very quiet except for a slight swaying motion. She could see the outline of his figure distinct against some indistinguishable light. There was no sound anywhere, only a great persuasive silence—even the dripping had ceased . . . only this figure, swaying, swaying in the doorway, an indiscernible and subtly menacing terror, a personality filthy under its varnish, like smallpox spots under a layer of powder. Yet her tired heart, beating until it shook her breasts, made her sure that there was still life in her, desperately shaken, threatened. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The minute or succession of minutes prolonged itself interminably, and a swimming blur began to form before her eyes, which tried with childish persistence to pierce the gloom in the direction of the door. In another instant it seemed that some unimaginable force would shatter her out of existence . . . and then the figure in the doorway—it was Hull, she saw, Hull—turned deliberately and, still slightly swaying, moved back and off, as if absorbed into that incomprehensible light that had given him dimension.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Blood rushed back into her limbs, blood and life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself into stray, swaying figures in the gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a panic she fumbled clumsily at her coat, found the sleeve just as she heard Anthony's footsteps on the lower stair. She dared not wait; he might not let her go, and even Anthony was part of this weight, part of this evil house and the sombre darkness that was growing up about it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the hall then . . . and down the back stairs, hearing Anthony's voice in the bedroom she had just left——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she had reached the kitchen now, passed out through the doorway into the night. A hundred drops, startled by a flare of wind from a dripping tree, scattered on her and she pressed them gladly to her face with hot hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The voice was infinitely remote, muffed and made plaintive by the walls she had just left. She rounded the house and started down the front path toward the road, almost exultant as she turned into it, and followed the carpet of short grass alongside, moving with caution in the intense darkness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She broke into a run, stumbled over the segment of a branch twisted off by the wind. The voice was outside the house now. Anthony, finding the bedroom deserted, had come onto the porch. But this thing was driving her forward; it was back there with Anthony, and she must go on in her flight under this dim and oppressive heaven, forcing herself through the silence ahead as though it were a tangible barrier before her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had gone some distance along the barely discernible road, probably half a mile, passed a single deserted barn that loomed up, black and foreboding, the only building of any sort between the gray house and Marietta; then she turned the fork, where the road entered the wood and ran between two high walls of leaves and branches that nearly touched overhead. She noticed suddenly a thin, longitudinal gleam of silver upon the road before her, like a bright sword half embedded in the mud. As she came closer she gave a little cry of satisfaction—it was a wagon-rut full of water, and glancing heavenward she saw a light rift of sky and knew that the moon was out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She started violently. Anthony was not two hundred feet behind her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, wait for me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her lips tightly to keep from screaming, and increased her gait. Before she had gone another hundred yards the woods disappeared, rolling back like a dark stocking from the leg of the road. Three minutes' walk ahead of her, suspended in the now high and limitless air, she saw a thin interlacing of attenuated gleams and glitters, centred in a regular undulation on some one invisible point. Abruptly she knew where she would go. That was the great cascade of wires that rose high over the river, like the legs of a gigantic spider whose eye was the little green light in the switch-house, and ran with the railroad bridge in the direction of the station. The station! There would be the train to take her away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, it's me! It's Anthony! Gloria, I won't try to stop you! For God's sake, where are you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer but began to run, keeping on the high side of the road and leaping the gleaming puddles—dimensionless pools of thin, unsubstantial gold. Turning sharply to the left, she followed a narrow wagon road, serving to avoid a dark body on the ground. She looked up as an owl hooted mournfully from a solitary tree. Just ahead of her she could see the trestle that led to the railroad bridge and the steps mounting up to it. The station lay across the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another sounds startled her, the melancholy siren of an approaching train, and almost simultaneously, a repeated call, thin now and far away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony must have followed the main road. She laughed with a sort of malicious cunning at having eluded him; she could spare the time to wait until the train went by.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamor, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clocklike tick of the rails, moved toward the bridge—it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid, the temperature of warm blood. . . . The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence crept down again over the wet country; the faint dripping resumed, and suddenly a great shower of drops tumbled upon Gloria stirring her out of the trance-like torpor which the passage of the train had wrought. She ran swiftly down a descending level to the bank and began climbing the iron stairway to the bridge, remembering that it was something she had always wanted to do, and that she would have the added excitement of traversing the yard-wide plank that ran beside the tracks over the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There! This was better. She was at the top now and could see the lands about her as successive sweeps of open country, cold under the moon, coarsely patched and seamed with thin rows and heavy clumps of trees. To her right, half a mile down the river, which trailed away behind the light like the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of freedom. This was what she had wanted, to stand alone where it was high and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Like a startled child she scurried along the plank, hopping, skipping, jumping, with an ecstatic sense of her own physical lightness. Let him come now—she no longer feared that, only she must first reach the station, because that was part of the game. She was happy. Her hat, snatched off, was clutched tightly in her hand, and her short curled hair bobbed up and down about her ears. She had thought she would never feel so young again, but this was her night, her world. Triumphantly she laughed as she left the plank, and reaching the wooden platform flung herself down happily beside an iron roof-post.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here I am!" she called, gay as the dawn in her elation. "Here I am, Anthony, dear—old, worried Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" He reached the platform, ran toward her. "Are you all right?" Coming up he knelt and took her in his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was the matter? Why did you leave?" he queried anxiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had to—there was something"—she paused and a flicker of uneasiness lashed at her mind—"there was something sitting on me—here." She put her hand on her breast. "I had to go out and get away from it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean by 'something'?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—that man Hull——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he bother you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He came to my door, drunk. I think I'd gotten sort of crazy by that time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, dearest——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Wearily she laid her head upon his shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go back," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shivered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Uh! No, I couldn't. It'd come and sit on me again." Her voice rose to a cry that hung plaintive on the darkness. "That thing——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There—there," he soothed her, pulling her close to him. "We won't do anything you don't want to do. What do you want to do? Just sit here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want—I want to go away."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—anywhere."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By golly, Gloria," he cried, "you're still tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I haven't been, all evening. I went up-stairs about, oh, I don't know, about half an hour after dinner . . . Ouch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had inadvertently touched her right shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It hurts me. I hurt it some way. I don't know—somebody picked me up and dropped me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, come home. It's late and damp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't," she wailed. "Oh, Anthony, don't ask me to! I will to-morrow. You go home and I'll wait here for a train. I'll go to a hotel——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll go with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't want you with me. I want to be alone. I want to sleep—oh, I want to sleep. And then to-morrow, when you've got all the smell of whiskey and cigarettes out of the house, and everything straight, and Hull is gone, then I'll come home. If I went now, that thing—oh—!" She covered her eyes with her hand; Anthony saw the futility of trying to persuade her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was all sober when you left," he said. "Dick was asleep on the lounge and Maury and I were having a discussion. That fellow Hull had wandered off somewhere. Then I began to realize I hadn't seen you for several hours, so I went up-stairs——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off as a salutatory "Hello, there!" boomed suddenly out of the darkness. Gloria sprang to her feet and he did likewise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's Maury's voice," she cried excitedly. "If it's Hull with him, keep them away, keep them away!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" Anthony called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just Dick and Maury," returned two voices reassuringly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Hull?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's in bed. Passed out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their figures appeared dimly on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil are you and Gloria doing here?" inquired Richard Caramel with sleepy bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are <i>you</i> two doing here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Damned if I know. We followed you, and had the deuce of a time doing it. I heard you out on the porch yelling for Gloria, so I woke up the Caramel here and got it through his head, with some difficulty, that if there was a search-party we'd better be on it. He slowed me up by sitting down in the road at intervals and asking me what it was all about. We tracked you by the pleasant scent of Canadian Club."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a rattle of nervous laughter under the low train-shed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you track us, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we followed along down the road and then we suddenly lost you. Seems you turned off at a wagon-trail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was waving around——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, the poor old man!" ejaculated Gloria, moved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I threw him another and we went on, though he asked us to stay and tell him what it was all about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor old man," repeated Gloria dismally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick sat down sleepily on a box.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And now what?" he inquired in the tone of stoic resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's upset," explained Anthony. "She and I are going to the city by the next train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury in the darkness had pulled a time-table from his pocket.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strike a match."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tiny flare leaped out of the opaque background illuminating the four faces, grotesque and unfamiliar here in the open night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see. Two, two-thirty—no, that's evening. By gad, you won't get a train till five-thirty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he muttered uncertainly, "we've decided to stay here and wait for it. You two might as well go back and sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You go, too, Anthony," urged Gloria; "I want you to have some sleep, dear. You've been as pale as a ghost all day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you little idiot!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very well. You stay, we stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He walked out from under the shed and surveyed the heavens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather a nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see." Gloria moved after him and the other two followed her. "Let's sit out here," she suggested. "I like it much better."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Dick converted a long box into a backrest and found a board dry enough for Gloria to sit on. Anthony dropped down beside her and with some effort Dick hoisted himself onto an apple-barrel near them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tana went to sleep in the porch hammock," he remarked. "We carried him in and left him next to the kitchen stove to dry. He was drenched to the skin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That awful little man!" sighed Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do!" The voice, sonorous and funereal, had come from above, and they looked up startled to find that in some manner Maury had climbed to the roof of the shed, where he sat dangling his feet over the edge, outlined as a shadowy and fantastic gargoyle against the now brilliant sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It must be for such occasions as this," he began softly, his words having the effect of floating down from an immense height and settling softly upon his auditors, "that the righteous of the land decorate the railroads with bill-boards asserting in red and yellow that 'Jesus Christ is God,' placing them, appropriately enough, next to announcements that 'Gunter's Whiskey is Good.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was gentle laughter and the three below kept their heads tilted upward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think I shall tell you the story of my education," continued Maury, "under these sardonic constellations."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do! Please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall I, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They waited expectantly while he directed a ruminative yawn toward the white smiling moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, "as an infant I prayed. I stored up prayers against future wickedness. One year I stored up nineteen hundred 'Now I lay me's.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Throw down a cigarette," murmured some one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small package reached the platform simultaneously with the stentorian command:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Silence! I am about to unburden myself of many memorable remarks reserved for the darkness of such earths and the brilliance of such skies."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Below, a lighted match was passed from cigarette to cigarette. The voice resumed:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me. I believed that because a man cried out 'My God!' when a safe fell on him, it proved that belief was rooted deep in the human breast. Then I went to school. For fourteen years half a hundred earnest men pointed to ancient flint-locks and cried to me: 'There's the real thing. These new rifles are only shallow, superficial imitations.' They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned things by calling them 'clever'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so I turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning. This, at least, did me no harm. I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth—and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me. The fibre of my mind coarsened and my eyes grew miserably keen. Life rose around my island like a sea, and presently I was swimming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The transition was subtle—the thing had lain in wait for me for some time. It has its insidious, seemingly innocuous trap for every one. With me? No—I didn't try to seduce the janitor's wife—nor did I run through the streets unclothed, proclaiming my virility. It is never quite passion that does the business—it is the dress that passion wears. I became bored—that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts. Beauty was behind me, do you understand?—I was grown." He paused. "End of school and college period. Opening of Part Two."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Three quietly active points of light showed the location of his listeners. Gloria was now half sitting, half lying, in Anthony's lap. His arm was around her so tightly that she could hear the beating of his heart. Richard Caramel, perched on the apple-barrel, from time to time stirred and gave off a faint grunt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I grew up then, into this land of jazz, and fell immediately into a state of almost audible confusion. Life stood over me like an immoral schoolmistress, editing my ordered thoughts. But, with a mistaken faith in intelligence, I plodded on. I read Smith, who laughed at charity and insisted that the sneer was the highest form of self-expression—but Smith himself replaced charity as an obscurer of the light. I read Jones, who neatly disposed of individualism—and behold! Jones was still in my way. I did not think—I was a battle-ground for the thoughts of many men; rather was I one of those desirable but impotent countries over which the great powers surge back and forth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life—and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But after a few tastes of this latter dish I had had enough. Here! I said, Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you—it's a wall that an active you runs up against. So I wrapped myself in what I thought was my invulnerable scepticism and decided that my education was complete. But it was too late. Protect myself as I might by making no new ties with tragic and predestined humanity, I was lost with the rest. I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off to give emphasis to his last observation—after a moment he yawned and resumed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose that the beginning of the second phase of my education was a ghastly dissatisfaction at being used in spite of myself for some inscrutable purpose of whose ultimate goal I was unaware—if, indeed, there <i>was</i> an ultimate goal. It was a difficult choice. The schoolmistress seemed to be saying, 'We're going to play football and nothing but football. If you don't want to play football you can't play at all——'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was I to do—the playtime was so short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see, I felt that we were even denied what consolation there might have been in being a figment of a corporate man rising from his knees. Do you think that I leaped at this pessimism, grasped it as a sweetly smug superior thing, no more depressing really than, say, a gray autumn day before a fire?—I don't think I did that. I was a great deal too warm for that, and too alive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature—nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly in her face. She had invented ways to rid the race of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher—or, let us say, her more amusing—though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circumvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white—in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might organize them for material prosperity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper—and presently the breed of the leper is the salt of the earth. If any one can find any lesson in that, let him stand forth."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's only one lesson to be learned from life, anyway," interrupted Gloria, not in contradiction but in a sort of melancholy agreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's that?" demanded Maury sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That there's no lesson to be learned from life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a short silence Maury said:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young Gloria, the beautiful and merciless lady, first looked at the world with the fundamental sophistication I have struggled to attain, that Anthony never will attain, that Dick will never fully understand."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a disgusted groan from the apple-barrel. Anthony, grown accustomed to the dark, could see plainly the flash of Richard Caramel's yellow eye and the look of resentment on his face as he cried:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're crazy! By your own statement I should have attained some experience by trying."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? Struggling in a laboratory through weary years for one iota of relative truth in a mass of wheels or a test tube——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury paused, and in his answer, when it came, there was a measure of weariness, a bitter overnote that lingered for a moment in those three minds before it floated up and off like a bubble bound for the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not I," he said softly. "I was born tired—but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria—to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the distance a deep sound that had been audible for some moments identified itself by a plaintive mooing like that of a gigantic cow and by the pearly spot of a headlight apparent half a mile away. It was a steam-driven train this time, rumbling and groaning, and as it tumbled by with a monstrous complaint it sent a shower of sparks and cinders over the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not one jot!" Again Maury's voice dropped down to them as from a great height. "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I could quote you the philosophy of the hour—but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France—" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know—the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself—these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know anything else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen—as the wisest men have done since—oh, since the failure of a certain matter—a strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over—and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So the men did, and they died.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my high-balls are dead and the night's almost over, and soon there'll be an awful jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two little stores over there behind the station, and there'll be a great running up and down upon the earth for a few hours— Well," he concluded with a laugh, "thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest knowing we've left the world a little better for having lived in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened against the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive," said Anthony sleepily. "You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her far-sighted detachment by falling asleep—I can tell that by the fact that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my broken body."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have I bored you?" inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, you have disappointed us. You've shot a lot of arrows but did you shoot any birds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I leave the birds to Dick," said Maury hurriedly. "I speak erratically, in disassociated fragments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can get no rise from me," muttered Dick. "My mind is full of any number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quarter to five," sighed Dick; "almost another hour to wait. Look! Two gone." He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes. "Sleep of the Patch family——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups, his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now—on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm—the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her—then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (261-309)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BROKEN LUTE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It is seven-thirty of an August evening. The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. But August is still proclaimed relentlessly by a thousand crickets around the side-porch, and by one who has broken into the house and concealed himself confidently behind a bookcase, from time to time shrieking of his cleverness and his indomitable will.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit, which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous assortment of decanters, glasses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air, the effect on the whole needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in every "den," which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>After a while the sprightly solo of the supercricket is interrupted rather than joined by a new sound—the melancholy wail of an erratically fingered flute. It is obvious that the musician is practising rather than performing, for from time to time the gnarled strain breaks off and, after an interval of indistinct mutterings, recommences.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Just prior to the seventh false start a third sound contributes to the subdued discord. It is a taxi outside. A minute's silence, then the taxi again, its boisterous retreat almost obliterating the scrape of footsteps on the cinder walk. The door-bell shrieks alarmingly through the house.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>From the kitchen enters a small, fatigued Japanese, hastily buttoning a servant's coat of white duck. He opens the front screen-door and admits a handsome young man of thirty, clad in the sort of well-intentioned clothes peculiar to those who serve mankind. To his whole personality clings a well-intentioned air: his glance about the room is compounded of curiosity and a determined optimism; when he looks at Tana the entire burden of uplifting the godless Oriental is in his eyes. His name is</i> FREDERICK E. PARAMORE. <i>He was at Harvard with</i> ANTHONY, <i>where because of the initials of their surnames they were constantly placed next to each other in classes. A fragmentary acquaintance developed—but since that time they have never met.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Nevertheless,</i> PARAMORE <i>enters the room with a certain air of arriving for the evening.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Tana is answering a question.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: (<i>Grinning with ingratiation</i>) Gone to Inn for dinnah. Be back half-hour. Gone since ha' past six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Regarding the glasses on the table</i>) Have they company?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: Yes. Company. Mistah Caramel, Mistah and Missays Barnes, Miss Kane, all stay here.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I see. (<i>Kindly</i>) They've been having a spree, I see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I no un'stan'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: They've been having a fling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: Yes, they have drink. Oh, many, many, many drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Receding delicately from the subject</i>) Didn't I hear the sounds of music as I approached the house?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA:(<i>With a spasmodic giggle</i>) Yes, I play.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: One of the Japanese instruments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>He is quite obviously a subscriber to the "National Geographic Magazine</i>.")<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I play flu-u-ute, Japanese flu-u-ute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: What song were you playing? One of your Japanese melodies?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA:(<i>His brow undergoing preposterous contraction</i>) I play train song. How you call?—<i>railroad</i> song. So call in my countree. Like train. It go so-o-o; that mean whistle; train start. Then go so-o-o; that mean train go. Go like that. Vera nice song in my countree. Children song.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It sounded very nice. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>It is apparent at this point that only a gigantic effort at control restrains</i> TANA <i> from rushing up-stairs for his post cards, including the six made in America</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I fix high-ball for gentleman?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: "No, thanks. I don't use it". (<i>He smiles</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (TANA <i>withdraws into the kitchen, leaving the intervening door slightly ajar. From the crevice there suddenly issues again the melody of the Japanese train song—this time not a practice, surely, but a performance, a lusty, spirited performance.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The phone rings.</i> TANA, <i>absorbed in his harmonics, gives no heed, so</i> PARAMORE <i>takes up the receiver</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Hello. . . . Yes. . . . No, he's not here now, but he'll be back any moment. . . . Butterworth? Hello, I didn't quite catch the name. . . . Hello, hello, hello. Hello! . . . Huh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The phone obstinately refuses to yield up any more sound.</i> PARAMORE <i>replaces the receiver.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> <i>At this point the taxi motif re-enters, wafting with it a second young man; he carries a suitcase and opens the front door without ringing the bell.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In the hall</i>) "Oh, Anthony! Yoho"! (<i>He comes into the large room and sees</i> PARAMORE) How do?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Gazing at him with gathering intensity</i>) Is this—is this Maury Noble?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That's it. (<i>He advances, smiling, and holding out his hand</i>) How are you, old boy? Haven't seen you for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>He has vaguely associated the face with Harvard, but is not even positive about that. The name, if he ever knew it, he has long since forgotten. However, with a fine sensitiveness and an equally commendable charity</i> PARAMORE <i>recognizes the fact and tactfully relieves the situation</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: You've forgotten Fred Paramore? We were both in old Unc Robert's history class.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't, Unc—I mean Fred. Fred was—I mean Unc was a great old fellow, wasn't he?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Nodding his head humorously several times</i>) Great old character. Great old character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>After a short pause</i>) Yes—he was. Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: The Japanese servant told me he was at some inn. Having dinner, I suppose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Looking at his watch</i>) Gone long?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I guess so. The Japanese told me they'd be back shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Suppose we have a drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, thanks. I don't use it. (<i>He smiles</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Mind if I do? (<i>Yawning as he helps himself from a bottle</i>) What have you been doing since you left college?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Oh, many things. I've led a very active life. Knocked about here and there. (<i>His tone implies anything front lion-stalking to organized crime.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, been over to Europe?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, I haven't—unfortunately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I guess we'll all go over before long.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Do you really think so?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Sure! Country's been fed on sensationalism for more than two years. Everybody getting restless. Want to have some fun.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Then you don't believe any ideals are at stake?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Nothing of much importance. People want excitement every so often.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Intently</i>) It's very interesting to hear you say that. Now I was talking to a man who'd been over there——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>During the ensuing testament, left to be filled in by the reader with such phrases as "Saw with his own eyes," "Splendid spirit of France," and "Salvation of civilization,"</i> MAURY <i>sits with lowered eyelids, dispassionately bored.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>At the first available opportunity</i>) By the way, do you happen to know that there's a German agent in this very house?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Smiling cautiously</i>) Are you serious?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Absolutely. Feel it my duty to warn you.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Convinced</i>) A governess?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In a whisper, indicating the kitchen with his thumb</i>) <i>Tana!</i> That's not his real name. I understand he constantly gets mail addressed to Lieutenant Emile Tannenbaum.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Laughing with hearty tolerance</i>) You were kidding me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I may be accusing him falsely. But, you haven't told me what you've been doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: For one thing—writing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fiction?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No. Non-fiction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What's that? A sort of literature that's half fiction and half fact?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Oh, I've confined myself to fact. I've been doing a good deal of social-service work.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>An immediate glow of suspicion leaps into his eyes. It is as though</i> PARAMORE <i>had announced himself as an amateur pickpocket.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: At present I'm doing service work in Stamford. Only last week some one told me that Anthony Patch lived so near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They are interrupted by a clamor outside, unmistakable as that of two sexes in conversation and laughter. Then there enter the room in a body</i> ANTHONY, GLORIA, RICHARD CARAMEL, MURIEL KANE, RACHAEL BARNES <i>and</i> RODMAN BARNES, <i>her husband. They surge about</i> MAURY, <i>illogically replying</i> "Fine!" <i>to his general</i> "Hello." . . . ANTHONY, <i>meanwhile, approaches his other guest.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Well, I'll be darned. How are you? Mighty glad to see you.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It's good to see you, Anthony. I'm stationed in Stamford, so I thought I'd run over. (<i>Roguishly</i>) We have to work to beat the devil most of the time, so we're entitled to a few hours' vacation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>In an agony of concentration</i> ANTHONY <i>tries to recall the name. After a struggle of parturition his memory gives up the fragment</i> "Fred," <i>around which he hastily builds the sentence</i> "Glad you did, Fred!" <i>Meanwhile the slight hush prefatory to an introduction has fallen upon the company.</i> MAURY, <i>who could help, prefers to look on in malicious enjoyment.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>In desperation</i>) Ladies and gentlemen, this is—this is Fred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>With obliging levity</i>) Hello, Fred!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (RICHARD CARAMEL <i>and</i> PARAMORE <i>greet each other intimately by their first names, the latter recollecting that</i> DICK <i>was one of the men in his class who had never before troubled to speak to him.</i> DICK <i>fatuously imagines that</i> PARAMORE <i>is some one he has previously met in</i> ANTHONY'S <i>house.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The three young women go up-stairs.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In an undertone to</i> DICK) Haven't seen Muriel since Anthony's wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: She's now in her prime. Her latest is "<i>I'll</i> say so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (ANTHONY <i>struggles for a while with</i> PARAMORE <i>and at length attempts to make the conversation general by asking every one to have a drink.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I've done pretty well on this bottle. I've gone from "Proof" down to "Distillery." (<i>He indicates the words on the label.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, night"><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>To</i> PARAMORE) Never can tell when these two will turn up. Said good-by to them one afternoon at five and darned if they didn't appear about two in the morning. A big hired touring-car from New York drove up to the door and out they stepped, drunk as lords, of course.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>In an ecstasy of consideration</i> PARAMORE <i>regards the cover of a book which he holds in his hand.</i> MAURY <i>and</i> DICK <i>exchange a glance.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Innocently, to</i> PARAMORE) You work here in town?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, I'm in the Laird Street Settlement in Stamford. (<i>To</i> ANTHONY) You have no idea of the amount of poverty in these small Connecticut towns. Italians and other immigrants. Catholics mostly, you know, so it's very hard to reach them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>Politely</i>) Lot of crime?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Not so much crime as ignorance and dirt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That's my theory: immediate electrocution of all ignorant and dirty people. I'm all for the criminals—give color to life. Trouble is if you started to punish ignorance you'd have to begin in the first families, then you could take up the moving picture people, and finally Congress and the clergy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Smiling uneasily</i>) I was speaking of the more fundamental ignorance—of even our language.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Thoughtfully</i>) I suppose it is rather hard. Can't even keep up with the new poetry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It's only when the settlement work has gone on for months that one realizes how bad things are. As our secretary said to me, your finger-nails never seem dirty until you wash your hands. Of course we're already attracting much attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Rudely</i>) As your secretary might say, if you stuff paper into a grate it'll burn brightly for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>At this point</i> GLORIA, <i>freshly tinted and lustful of admiration and entertainment, rejoins the party, followed by her two friends. For several moments the conversation becomes entirely fragmentary.</i> GLORIA <i>calls</i> ANTHONY <i>aside.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: Please don't drink much, Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: Because you're so simple when you're drunk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Good Lord! What's the matter now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>After a pause during which her eyes gaze coolly into his</i>) Several things. In the first place, why do you insist on paying for everything? Both those men have more money than you!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria! They're my guests!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: That's no reason why you should pay for a bottle of champagne Rachael Barnes smashed. Dick tried to fix that second taxi bill, and you wouldn't let him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: When we have to keep selling bonds to even pay our bills, it's time to cut down on excess generosities. Moreover, I wouldn't be quite so attentive to Rachael Barnes. Her husband doesn't like it any more than I do!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>Mimicking him sharply</i>) "Why, Gloria!" But that's happened a little too often this summer—with every pretty woman you meet. It's grown to be a sort of habit, and I'm <i>not</i> going to stand it! If you can play around, I can, too. (<i>Then, as an afterthought</i>) By the way, this Fred person isn't a second Joe Hull, is he?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Heavens, no! He probably came up to get me to wheedle some money out of grandfather for his flock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (GLORIA <i>turns away from a very depressed</i> ANTHONY <i>and returns to her guests.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>By nine o'clock these can be divided into two classes—those who have been drinking consistently and those who have taken little or nothing. In the second group are the</i> BARNESES, MURIEL, <i>and</i> FREDERICK E. PARAMORE.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: As Goliath said, he understood how David felt, but he couldn't express himself. The remark was immediately adopted for a motto by the Philistines.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't get you. I must be getting stupid in my old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>Weaving unsteadily among the company like an exhilarated angel</i>) If any one's hungry there's some French pastry on the dining room table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Can't tolerate those Victorian designs it comes in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Violently amused</i>) <i>I'll</i> say you're tight, Maury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness . . .</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Messrs.</i> BARNES <i>and</i> PARAMORE <i>have been engaged in conversation upon some wholesome subject, a subject so wholesome that</i> MR. BARNES <i>has been trying for several moments to creep into the more tainted air around the central lounge. Whether</i> PARAMORE <i>is lingering in the gray house out of politeness or curiosity, or in order at some future time to make a sociological report on the decadence of American life, is problematical.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fred, I imagined you were very broad-minded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I am.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Me, too. I believe one religion's as good as another and everything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: There's some good in all religions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I'm a Catholic but, as I always say, I'm not working at it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>With a tremendous burst of tolerance</i>) The Catholic religion is a very—a very powerful religion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Beautiful_and_Damned&diff=794 The Beautiful and Damned 2026-02-26T12:23:50Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html"<br /> genre="Novel"<br /> journal=""<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1922"<br /> page_range="1-449"<br /> other_data="Other text data"<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (1-30)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> IN 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore. The year in which this story opens found him wearying; his campaign had grown desultory; 1861 was creeping up slowly on 1895; his thoughts ran a great deal on the Civil War, somewhat on his dead wife and son, almost infinitesimally on his grandson Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in his career Adam Patch had married an anæmic lady of thirty, Alicia Withers, who brought him one hundred thousand dollars and an impeccable entré into the banking circles of New York. Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never obtained even a private printing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This Fifth Avenue Chesterfield married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrune, the Boston "Society Contralto," and the single child of the union was, at the request of his grandfather, christened Anthony Comstock Patch. When he went to Harvard, the Comstock dropped out of his name to a nether hell of oblivion and was never heard of thereafter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together—so often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at five, the year of his mother's death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical. She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of the Southern negro.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid. After Henrietta Lebrune Patch had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, father and son lived up at grampa's in Tarrytown, and Ulysses came daily to Anthony's nursery and expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Anthony hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to Atlantic City, "oh, some time soon now"; but none of them ever materialized. One trip they did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PAST AND PERSON OF THE HERO</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly, until, for the first time since her marriage, her person held for one day an unquestioned supremacy over her own drawing room. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed—it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; enormous, as nearly exhaustive as a boy's could be—his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. So Anthony kept up a correspondence with a half dozen "Stamp and Coin" companies and it was rare that the mail failed to bring him new stamp-books or packages of glittering approval sheets—there was a mysterious fascination in transferring his acquisitions interminably from one book to another. His stamps were his greatest happiness and he bestowed impatient frowns on any one who interrupted him at play with them; they devoured his allowance every month, and he lay awake at night musing untiringly on their variety and many-colored splendor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At sixteen he had lived almost entirely within himself, an inarticulate boy, thoroughly un-American, and politely bewildered by his contemporaries. The two preceding years had been spent in Europe with a private tutor, who persuaded him that Harvard was the thing; it would "open doors," it would be a tremendous tonic, it would give him innumerable self-sacrificing and devoted friends. So he went to Harvard—there was no other logical thing to be done with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oblivious to the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never to have a part.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. He made the Pudding. He drank—quietly and in the proper tradition. It was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well." In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then abroad again—to Rome this time, where he dallied with architecture and painting in turn, took up the violin, and wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets, supposedly the ruminations of a thirteenth-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It became established among his Harvard intimates that he was in Rome, and those of them who were abroad that year looked him up and discovered with him, on many moonlight excursions, much in the city that was older than the Renaissance or indeed than the republic. Maury Noble, from Philadelphia, for instance, remained two months, and together they realized the peculiar charm of Latin women and had a delightful sense of being very young and free in a civilization that was very old and free. Not a few acquaintances of his grandfather's called on him, and had he so desired he might have been <i>persona grata</i> with the diplomatic set—indeed, he found that his inclinations tended more and more toward conviviality, but that long adolescent aloofness and consequent shyness still dictated to his conduct.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He returned to America in 1912 because of one of his grandfather's sudden illnesses, and after an excessively tiresome talk with the perpetually convalescent old man he decided to put off until his grandfather's death the idea of living permanently abroad. After a prolonged search he took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and to all appearances settled down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In 1913 Anthony Patch's adjustment of himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of melancholy humor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One of those men devoid of the symmetry of feature essential to the Aryan ideal, he was yet, here and there, considered handsome—moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE REPROACHLESS APARTMENT</div></poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, city, urban, road, affect, haptic, metaphor, driving, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it seemed to Anthony, were the uprights of a gigantic ladder stretching from Washington Square to Central Park. Coming up-town on top of a bus toward Fifty-second Street invariably gave him the sensation of hoisting himself hand by hand on a series of treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps to the sidewalk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block, pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses—and then in a jiffy he was under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was burned to a murky black.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment—Anthony's bedroom and bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them were immense. Under the ceilings of the former even the great canopied bed seemed of only average size. On the floor an exotic rug of crimson velvet was soft as fleece on his bare feet. His bathroom, in contrast to the rather portentous character of his bedroom, was gay, bright, extremely habitable and even faintly facetious. Framed around the walls were photographs of four celebrated thespian beauties of the day: Julia Sanderson as "The Sunshine Girl," Ina Claire as "The Quaker Girl," Billie Burke as "The Mind-the-Paint Girl," and Hazel Dawn as "The Pink Lady." Between Billie Burke and Hazel Dawn hung a print representing a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun—this, claimed Anthony, symbolized the cold shower.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The bathtub, equipped with an ingenious bookholder, was low and large. Beside it a wall wardrobe bulged with sufficient linen for three men and with a generation of neckties. There was no skimpy glorified towel of a carpet—instead, a rich rug, like the one in his bedroom a miracle of softness, that seemed almost to massage the wet foot emerging from the tub. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> All in all a room to conjure with—it was easy to see that Anthony dressed there, arranged his immaculate hair there, in fact did everything but sleep and eat there. It was his pride, this bathroom. He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NOR DOES HE SPIN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The apartment was kept clean by an English servant with the singularly, almost theatrically, appropriate name of Bounds, whose technic was marred only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. Had he been entirely Anthony's Bounds this defect would have been summarily remedied, but he was also the Bounds of two other gentlemen in the neighborhood. From eight until eleven in the morning he was entirely Anthony's. He arrived with the mail and cooked breakfast. At nine-thirty he pulled the edge of Anthony's blanket and spoke a few terse words—Anthony never remembered clearly what they were and rather suspected they were deprecative; then he served breakfast on a card-table in the front room, made the bed and, after asking with some hostility if there was anything else, withdrew.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the mornings, at least once a week, Anthony went to see his broker. His income was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who had never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance, judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in contemplating his grandfather's money—even more, for the latter appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and explicitly—money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a <i>raison d'être</i> in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well again—the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and wire fences guarding the estate—this, said the public, was because it was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth—who before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general reprobate—ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better," Anthony said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last week, pulled out his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Train late?" he asked mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot, but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of meek accusation in his voice—and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentions—and simultaneously a glimmer in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the room—he detested Shuttleworth—but the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that you're here you ought to <i>do</i> something," said his grandfather softly, "accomplish something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony waited for him to speak of "leaving something done when you pass on." Then he made a suggestion:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought—it seemed to me that perhaps I'm best qualified to write—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—history," finished Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "History? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, sir. A history of the Middle Ages." Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said "Middle Ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Middle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see I've lived so much abroad—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why you should write about the Middle Ages, I don't know. Dark Ages, we used to call 'em. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that they're over now." He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the "corruption of the monasteries." Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think you'll be able to do any work in New York—or do you really intend to work at all?" This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, yes, I do, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When'll you be done?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there'll be an outline, you see—and a lot of preliminary reading."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd have done enough of that already."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothing—and contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>AFTERNOON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of "Erewhon." It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he was singing as he turned on the tap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes;</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul la-a-dy</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>My . . . heart . . . cries—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatre—Caramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was glad <i>he</i> wasn't going to work on <i>his</i> book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he sang lightly,<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possible—and, if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are glad to see each other now—their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp, restless—he is at rest now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven o'clock. Where's the Caramel? (<i>Impatiently</i>.) I wish he'd finish that interminable novel. I've spent more time hungry——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: He's got a new name for it. "The Demon Lover "—not bad, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>interested</i>) "The Demon Lover"? Oh "woman wailing"—No—not a bit bad! Not bad at all—d'you think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>His eyes narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval</i>) Drove me crazy the other day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: How?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That habit of taking notes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems I'd said something night before that he considered material but he'd forgotten it—so he had at me. He'd say "Can't you try to concentrate?" And I'd say "You bore me to tears. How do I remember?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (MAURY <i>laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Dick doesn't necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: That rather impressive talent——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. (<i>Silence, and then:</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced</i>) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>With laughter</i>) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? Just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Still considering his own last observation</i>) I remember.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Let's order. He'll be—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Sure. Let's order. I told him—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (<i>He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw</i>.) Here y'are, Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A NEW VOICE: (<i>Fiercely</i>) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Débutantes still after you, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>In person</i> RICHARD CARAMEL <i>is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>When he reaches the table he shakes hands with</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> MAURY. <i>He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Fixing</i> ANTHONY <i>eagerly with the bright eye</i>) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Noble æsthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: We never pass out, my beardless boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: All in our parties are characterized by a certain haughty distinction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: The particularly silly sort who boast about being "tanks"! Trouble is you're both in the eighteenth century. School of the Old English Squire. Drink quietly until you roll under the table. Never have a good time. Oh, no, that isn't done at all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: This from Chapter Six, I'll bet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Going to the theatre?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening doing some deep thinking over of life's problems. The thing is tersely called "The Woman." I presume that she will "pay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: My God! Is that what it is? Let's go to the Follies again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I'm tired of it. I've seen it three times. (<i>To</i> DICK.) The first time, we went out after Act One and found a most amazing bar. When we came back we entered the wrong theatre.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Had a protracted dispute with a scared young couple we thought were in our seats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>As though talking to himself</i>) I think—that when I've done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I'll do a musical comedy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I know—with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to. And all the critics will groan and grunt about "Dear old Pinafore." And I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Pompously</i>) Art isn't meaningless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: In other words, Dick, you're playing before a grand stand peopled with ghosts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Give a good show anyhow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY:(<i>To</i> MAURY) On the contrary, I'd feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, even admitting all that, be a decent pragmatist and grant a poor man the instinct to live. Would you want every one to accept that sophistic rot?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Yeah, I suppose so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, sir! I believe that every one in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don't complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligences.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Here the soup arrives and what</i> MAURY <i>might have gone on to say is lost for all time</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward they visited a ticket speculator and, at a price, obtained seats for a new musical comedy called "High Jinks." In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see the first-night crowd come in. There were opera cloaks stitched of myriad, many-colored silks and furs; there were jewels dripping from arms and throats and ear-tips of white and rose; there were innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial lake of laughter. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the play they parted—Maury was going to a dance at Sherry's, Anthony homeward and to bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin—too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices and craning their necks here and there in fatuous supercilious glances. They were dressed in suits of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; their turn-over collars were notched at the Adam's apple; they wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passed a bewildered old lady borne along like a basket of eggs between two men who exclaimed to her of the wonders of Times Square—explained them so quickly that the old lady, trying to be impartially interested, waved her head here and there like a piece of wind-worried old orange-peel. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the Astor, mama!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! See the chariot race sign——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's where we were to-day. No, <i>there!</i>”"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good gracious! . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You should worry and grow thin like a dime." He recognized the current witticism of the year as it issued stridently from one of the pairs at his elbow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I says to him, I says——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, haptic, sound, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughter hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He turned thankfully down the hush that blew like a dark wind out of a cross-street, passed a bakery-restaurant in whose windows a dozen roast chickens turned over and over on an automatic spit. From the door came a smell that was hot, doughy, and pink. A drug-store next, exhaling medicines, spilt soda water and a pleasant undertone from the cosmetic counter; then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling, smelling folded and vaguely yellow. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store and emerged feeling better—the cigar store was cheerful, humanity in a navy blue mist, buying a luxury . . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, there was a loneliness here——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> His cigarette, its smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as it passed the illusion faded; it diminished to the faintest of drums—then to a far-away droning eagle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car, road, risk, safety, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> There were the bells and the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long conversation with a voice that was in the white wind, a conversation that took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself</i>) Whither shall I journey now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Petulantly</i>) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Fifteen years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: And what's the name of the place?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In astonishment</i>) What?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Very much depressed</i>) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Even so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What of me? What chance shall I have?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>After a dissatisfied pause</i>) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It's expected that they'll be very busy shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What will I be? Tell me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it's not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a "susciety gurl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What's that?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as</i> THE VOICE <i>scratching its head</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>At length</i>) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Placidly</i>) It all sounds so vulgar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In a whisper</i>) Will I be paid?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Yes, as usual—in love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips</i>) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Soberly</i>) You will love it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The dialogue ends here, with</i> BEAUTY <i>still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>All this took place seven years before</i> ANTHONY <i>sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (31-73)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PORTRAIT OF A SIREN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CRISPNESS folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony's mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, to bear children unto three dozen millionaires. Five dozen virtuous females of the second layer were proclaiming not only this fitness, but in addition a tremendous undaunted ambition toward the first three dozen young men, who were of course invited to each of the ninety-six parties—as were the young lady's group of family friends, acquaintances, college boys, and eager young outsiders. To continue, there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city's shoes: Jewesses were coming out into a society of Jewish men and women, from Riverside to the Bronx, and looking forward to a rising young broker or jeweller and a kosher wedding; Irish girls were casting their eyes, with license at last to do so, upon a society of young Tammany politicians, pious undertakers, and grown-up choirboys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> And, naturally, the city caught the contagious air of entré—the working girls, poor ugly souls, wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted male—as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subway's foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles came out with new dances. And the railroads came out with new schedules containing new mistakes instead of the old ones that the commuters had grown used to. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The City was coming out!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, ran unexpectedly into Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West, that were just coming into fashionable approval. His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable hand shake, exploded into sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cold as the devil— Good Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, and took notes while she talked—so she couldn't see me, you know, just as though I were writing casually—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had seized Anthony's arm and was walking him briskly up Madison Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where to?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nowhere in particular."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, then what's the use?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They stopped and stared at each other, and Anthony wondered if the cold made his own face as repellent as Dick Caramel's, whose nose was crimson, whose bulging brow was blue, whose yellow unmatched eyes were red and watery at the rims. After a moment they began walking again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Done some good work on my novel." Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. "But I have to get out once in a while." He glanced at Anthony apologetically, as though craving encouragement. "I have to talk. I guess very few people ever really <i>think</i>, I mean sit down and ponder and have ideas in sequence. I do my thinking in writing or conversation. You've got to have a start, sort of—something to defend or contradict—don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't mind carrying you, Dick, but with that coat—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "that on paper your first paragraph contains the idea you're going to damn or enlarge on. In conversation you've got your vis-à-vis's last statement—but when you simply <i>ponder</i>, why, your ideas just succeed each other like magic-lantern pictures and each one forces out the last."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They passed Forty-fifth Street and slowed down slightly. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke and frosted breath into the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's walk up to the Plaza and have an egg-nog," suggested Anthony. "Do you good. Air'll get the rotten nicotine out of your lungs. Come on—I'll let you talk about your book all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to if it bores you. I mean you needn't do it as a favor." The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: "Bore me? I should say not!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin—" began Dick, but Anthony interrupted by stretching out his arms and breathing forth a low cry of exultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good weather!" he exclaimed, "isn't it? Makes me feel about ten. I mean it makes me feel as I should have felt when I was ten. Murderous! Oh, God! one minute it's my world, and the next I'm the world's fool. To-day it's my world and everything's easy, easy. Even Nothing is easy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin up at the Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter—has lately anyway—with her mother and father."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Didn't know you had cousins in New York."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Her name's Gloria. She's from home—Kansas City. Her mother's a practising Bilphist, and her father's quite dull but a perfect gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are they? Literary material?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They try to be. All the old man does is tell me he just met the most wonderful character for a novel. Then he tells me about some idiotic friend of his and then he says: '<i>There's</i> a character for you! Why don't you write him up? Everybody'd be interested in <i>him</i>.' Or else he tells me about Japan or Paris, or some other very obvious place, and says: 'Why don't you write a story about that place? That'd be a wonderful setting for a story!'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the girl?" inquired Anthony casually, "Gloria—Gloria what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gilbert. Oh, you've heard of her—Gloria Gilbert. Goes to dances at colleges—all that sort of thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard her name."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-looking—in fact damned attractive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care for young girls as a rule," said Anthony, frowning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was not strictly true. While it seemed to him that the average débutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness interested him enormously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's darn nice—not a brain in her head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a one-syllabled snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By that you mean that she hasn't a line of literary patter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick, you know what passes as brains in a girl for you. Earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. The kind who when they were sixteen argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrong—and whether it was immoral for freshmen to drink beer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was offended. His scowl crinkled like crushed paper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No—" he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; kind who just at present sit in corners and confer on the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick turned to him, a curious falling in his whole countenance. His question was almost an appeal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I were a sort of inferior."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was confused, but he was also cold and a little uncomfortable, so he took refuge in attack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think your brains matter, Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course they matter!" exclaimed Dick angrily. "What do you mean? Why don't they matter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You might know too much for your pen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I couldn't possibly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can imagine," insisted Anthony, "a man knowing too much for his talent to express. Like me. Suppose, for instance, I have more wisdom than you, and less talent. It would tend to make me inarticulate. You, on the contrary, have enough water to fill the pail and a big enough pail to hold the water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't follow you at all," complained Dick in a crestfallen tone. Infinitely dismayed, he seemed to bulge in protest. He was staring intently at Anthony and caroming off a succession of passers-by, who reproached him with fierce, resentful glances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I simply mean that a talent like Wells's could carry the intelligence of a Spencer. But an inferior talent can only be graceful when it's carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick considered, unable to decide the exact degree of criticism intended by Anthony's remarks. But Anthony, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Say I am proud and sane and wise—an Athenian among Greeks. Well, I might fail where a lesser man would succeed. He could imitate, he could adorn, he could be enthusiastic, he could be hopefully constructive. But this hypothetical me would be too proud to imitate, too sane to be enthusiastic, too sophisticated to be Utopian, too Grecian to adorn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then you don't think the artist works from his intelligence?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. He goes on improving, if he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because it's his mode of living. Don't tell me you like this 'Divine Function of the Artist' business?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not accustomed even to refer to myself as an artist."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick," said Anthony, changing his tone, "I want to beg your pardon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For that outburst. I'm honestly sorry. I was talking for effect."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Dick rejoined:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've often said you were a Philistine at heart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a crackling dusk when they turned in under the white façade of the Plaza and tasted slowly the foam and yellow thickness of an egg-nog. Anthony looked at his companion. Richard Caramel's nose and brow were slowly approaching a like pigmentation; the red was leaving the one, the blue deserting the other. Glancing in a mirror, Anthony was glad to find that his own skin had not discolored. On the contrary, a faint glow had kindled in his cheeks—he fancied that he had never looked so well.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Enough for me," said Dick, his tone that of an athlete in training. "I want to go up and see the Gilberts. Won't you come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—yes. If you don't dedicate me to the parents and dash off in the corner with Dora."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not Dora—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A clerk announced them over the phone, and ascending to the tenth floor they followed a winding corridor and knocked at 1088. The door was answered by a middle-aged lady—Mrs. Gilbert herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" She spoke in the conventional American lady-lady language. "Well, I'm <i>aw</i>fully glad to see you—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hasty interjections by Dick, and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mr. Pats? Well, do come in, and leave your coat there." She pointed to a chair and changed her inflection to a deprecatory laugh full of minute gasps. "This is really lovely—lovely. Why, Richard, you haven't been here for <i>so</i> long—no!—no!" The latter monosyllables served half as responses, half as periods, to some vague starts from Dick. "Well, do sit down and tell me what you've been doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One crossed and recrossed; one stood and bowed ever so gently; one smiled again and again with helpless stupidity; one wondered if she would ever sit down—at length one slid thankfully into a chair and settled for a pleasant call.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it's because you've been busy—as much as anything else," smiled Mrs. Gilbert somewhat ambiguously. The "as much as anything else" she used to balance all her more rickety sentences. She had two other ones: "at least that's the way I look at it" and "pure and simple"—these three, alternated, gave each of her remarks an air of being a general reflection on life, as though she had calculated all causes and, at length, put her finger on the ultimate one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel's face, Anthony saw, was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who are of no further value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you a writer too, Mr. Pats? . . . Well, perhaps we can all bask in Richard's fame."—Gentle laughter led by Mrs. Gilbert.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's out," she said, with an air of laying down an axiom from which she would proceed to derive results. "She's dancing somewhere. Gloria goes, goes, goes. I tell her I don't see how she stands it. She dances all afternoon and all night, until I think she's going to wear herself to a shadow. Her father is very worried about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled from one to the other. They both smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was composed, Anthony perceived, of a succession of semicircles and parabolas, like those figures that gifted folk make on the typewriter: head, arms, bust, hips, thighs, and ankles were in a bewildering tier of roundnesses. Well ordered and clean she was, with hair of an artificially rich gray; her large face sheltered weather-beaten blue eyes and was adorned with just the faintest white mustache.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," she remarked to Anthony, "that Richard is an ancient soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the tense pause that followed, Anthony considered a pun—something about Dick having been much walked upon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We all have souls of different ages," continued Mrs. Gilbert radiantly; "at least that's what I say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps so," agreed Anthony with an air of quickening to a hopeful idea. The voice bubbled on:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has a very young soul—irresponsible, as much as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's sparkling, Aunt Catherine," said Richard pleasantly. "A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," confessed Mrs. Gilbert, "all I know is that she goes and goes and goes—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The number of goings to Gloria's discredit was lost in the rattle of the door-knob as it turned to admit Mr. Gilbert. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was a short man with a mustache resting like a small white cloud beneath his undistinguished nose. He had reached the stage where his value as a social creature was a black and imponderable negative. His ideas were the popular delusions of twenty years before; his mind steered a wabbly and anæmic course in the wake of the daily newspaper editorials. After graduating from a small but terrifying Western university, he had entered the celluloid business, and as this required only the minute measure of intelligence he brought to it, he did well for several years—in fact until about 1911, when he began exchanging contracts for vague agreements with the moving picture industry. The moving picture industry had decided about 1912 to gobble him up, and at this time he was, so to speak, delicately balanced on its tongue. Meanwhile he was supervising manager of the Associated Mid-western Film Materials Company, spending six months of each year in New York and the remainder in Kansas City and St. Louis. He felt credulously that there was a good thing coming to him—and his wife thought so, and his daughter thought so too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals, she was always in a mix-up—he had irritated her once and she had used toward him words that he had not thought were part of her vocabulary. His wife was easier. After fifteen years of incessant guerilla warfare he had conquered her—it was a war of muddled optimism against organized dulness, and something in the number of "yes's" with which he could poison a conversation had won him the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes-yes," he would say, "yes-yes-yes-yes. Let me see. That was the summer of—let me see—ninety-one or ninety-two—Yes-yes-yes-yes——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fifteen years of yes's had beaten Mrs. Gilbert. Fifteen further years of that incessant unaffirmative affirmative, accompanied by the perpetual flicking of ash-mushrooms from thirty-two thousand cigars, had broken her. To this husband of hers she made the last concession of married life, which is more complete, more irrevocable, than the first—she listened to him. She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance—actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She introduced him to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is Mr. Pats," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> The young man and the old touched flesh; Mr. Gilbert's hand was soft, worn away to the pulpy semblance of a squeezed grapefruit. Then husband and wife exchanged greetings—he told her it had grown colder out; he said he had walked down to a news-stand on Forty-fourth Street for a Kansas City paper. He had intended to ride back in the bus but he had found it too cold, yes, yes, yes, yes, too cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert added flavor to his adventure by being impressed with his courage in braving the harsh air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you <i>are</i> spunky!" she exclaimed admiringly. "You <i>are</i> spunky. I wouldn't have gone out for anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert with true masculine impassivity disregarded the awe he had excited in his wife. He turned to the two young men and triumphantly routed them on the subject of the weather. Richard Caramel was called on to remember the month of November in Kansas. No sooner had the theme been pushed toward him, however, than it was violently fished back to be lingered over, pawed over, elongated, and generally devitalized by its sponsor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> The immemorial thesis that the days somewhere were warm but the nights very pleasant was successfully propounded and they decided the exact distance on an obscure railroad between two points that Dick had inadvertently mentioned. Anthony fixed Mr. Gilbert with a steady stare and went into a trance through which, after a moment, Mrs. Gilbert's smiling voice penetrated:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems as though the cold were damper here—it seems to eat into my bones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the tip of Mr. Gilbert's tongue, he could not be blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She ought to be here any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you met my daughter, Mr.——?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't had the pleasure. I've heard Dick speak of her often."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She and Richard are cousins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes?" Anthony smiled with some effort. He was not used to the society of his seniors, and his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness. It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick being cousins. He managed within the next minute to throw an agonized glance at his friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was afraid they'd have to toddle off.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea—something about being glad they'd come, anyhow, even if they'd only seen an old lady 'way too old to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one bar in three-four time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Would they come again soon?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria would be <i>aw</i>fully sorry!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bang!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A LADY'S LEGS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure—and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker; but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious purpose and significant design—as though Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go along the earth and to see all the billions of humans who bred and wept and slew each other here and there upon it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in America, he was sallying into the search for amusement with the same consistent absorption. He who had never taken more than a few cocktails or a pint of wine at a sitting, taught himself to drink as he would have taught himself Greek—like Greek it would be the gateway to a wealth of new sensations, new psychic states, new reactions in joy or misery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His habits were a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth Street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home. Foremost on the latter list were Anthony Patch and Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury's mother lived with her married son in Philadelphia, and there Maury went usually for the week-ends, so one Saturday night when Anthony, prowling the chilly streets in a fit of utter boredom, dropped in at the Molton Arms he was overjoyed to find that Mr. Noble was at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His spirits soared faster than the flying elevator. This was so good, so extremely good, to be about to talk to Maury—who would be equally happy at seeing him. They would look at each other with a deep affection just behind their eyes which both would conceal beneath some attenuated raillery. Had it been summer they would have gone out together and indolently sipped two long Tom Collinses, as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill's, or a thimbleful of Maury's Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and catlike, in his favorite chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There he was! The room closed about Anthony, warmed him. The glow of that strong persuasive mind, that temperament almost Oriental in its outward impassivity, warmed Anthony's restless soul and brought him a peace that could be likened only to the peace a stupid woman gives. One must understand all—else one must take all for granted. Maury filled the room, tigerlike, godlike. The winds outside were stilled; the brass candlesticks on the mantel glowed like tapers before an altar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What keeps you here to-day?" Anthony spread himself over a yielding sofa and made an elbow-rest among the pillows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Just been here an hour. Tea dance—and I stayed so late I missed my train to Philadelphia."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange to stay so long," commented Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather. What'd you do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine. Little usher at Keith's. I told you about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paid me a call about three and stayed till five. Peculiar little soul—she gets me. She's so utterly stupid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was silent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange as it may seem," continued Anthony, "so far as I'm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> He had known her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the Park. She had a vague family—a shadowy aunt and uncle who shared with her an apartment in the labyrinthine hundreds. She was company, familiar and faintly intimate and restful. Further than that he did not care to experiment—not from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She has two stunts," he informed Maury; "one of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say 'You cra-a-azy!' when some one makes a remark that's over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in my imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury stirred in his chair and spoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Remarkable that a person can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that actually takes the whole universe in the most matter-of-fact way. From the influence of Rousseau to the bearing of the tariff rates on her dinner, the whole phenomenon is utterly strange to her. She's just been carried along from an age of spearheads and plunked down here with the equipment of an archer for going into a pistol duel. You could sweep away the entire crust of history and she'd never know the difference."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish our Richard would write about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, surely you don't think she's worth writing about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As much as anybody," he answered, yawning. "You know I was thinking to-day that I have a great confidence in Dick. So long as he sticks to people and not to ideas, and as long as his inspirations come from life and not from art, and always granting a normal growth, I believe he'll be a big man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think the appearance of the black note-book would prove that he's going to life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony raised himself on his elbow and answered eagerly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he accurately transcribe his own sister?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they were off for half an hour on literature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A classic," suggested Anthony, "is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a time the subject temporarily lost its tang. The interest of the two young men was not particularly technical. They were in love with generalities. Anthony had recently discovered Samuel Butler and the brisk aphorisms in the note-book seemed to him the quintessence of criticism. Maury, his whole mind so thoroughly mellowed by the very hardness of his scheme of life, seemed inevitably the wiser of the two, yet in the actual stuff of their intelligences they were not, it seemed, fundamentally different.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They drifted from letters to the curiosities of each other's day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Whose tea was it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "People named Abercrombie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why'd you stay late? Meet a luscious débutante?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you really?" Anthony's voice lifted in surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a débutante exactly. Said she came out two winters ago in Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of left-over?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," answered Maury with some amusement, "I think that's the last thing I'd say about her. She seemed—well, somehow the youngest person there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Not too young to make you miss a train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young enough. Beautiful child."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled in his one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Maury, you're in your second childhood. What do you mean by beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gazed helplessly into space.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't describe her exactly—except to say that she was beautiful. She was—tremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was a sort of attenuated vice. She's a nervous kind—said she always ate gum-drops at teas because she had to stand around so long in one place."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd you talk about—Bergson? Bilphism? Whether the one-step is immoral?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As a matter of fact we did talk on Bilphism. Seems her mother's a Bilphist. Mostly, though, we talked about legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony rocked in glee.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My God! Whose legs?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hers. She talked a lot about hers. As though they were a sort of choice bric-à-brac. She aroused a great desire to see them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is she—a dancer?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I found she was a cousin of Dick's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony sat upright so suddenly that the pillow he released stood on end like a live thing and dove to the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Name's Gloria Gilbert?" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes. Isn't she remarkable?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure I don't know—but for sheer dulness her father—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," interrupted Maury with implacable conviction, "her family may be as sad as professional mourners but I'm inclined to think that she's a quite authentic and original character. The outer signs of the cut-and-dried Yale prom girl and all that—but different, very emphatically different."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, go on!" urged Anthony. "Soon as Dick told me she didn't have a brain in her head I knew she must be pretty good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he say that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Swore to it," said Anthony with another snorting laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what he means by brains in a woman is—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," interrupted Anthony eagerly, "he means a smattering of literary misinformation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's it. The kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes it's a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin too—her own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely she usually approximated it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You sat enraptured by her low alto?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze, if I remember rightly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's got you going—oh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in his family!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Snowing hard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Another winter." Maury's voice from the window was almost a whisper.<br /> "We're growing old, Anthony. I'm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to thirty, and then I'm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was silent for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>are</i> old, Maury," he agreed at length. "The first signs of a very dissolute and wabbly senescence—you have spent the afternoon talking about tan and a lady's legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury pulled down the shade with a sudden harsh snap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come—oh, for a Caramel to take notes—and another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonys—yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After all, Anthony, it's you who are very romantic and young. It's you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. It's me who tries again and again to be moved—let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me. Nothing—quite—stirs me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet," he murmured after another long pause, "there was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old—like me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TURBULENCE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony turned over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the rug was beckoning and perishable to his perishable feet, and Bounds, horribly inappropriate in his soft collar, was of stuff as fading as the gauze of frozen breath he uttered. He was close to the bed, his hand still lowered where he had been jerking at the upper blanket, his dark-brown eyes fixed imperturbably upon his master.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bows!" muttered the drowsy god. "Thachew, Bows?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's I, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved his head, forced his eyes wide, and blinked triumphantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you get off—yeow-ow-oh-oh-oh God!—" Anthony yawned insufferably and the contents of his brain seemed to fall together in a dense hash. He made a fresh start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you come around about four and serve some tea and sandwiches or something?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered with chilling lack of inspiration. "Some sandwiches," he repeated helplessly, "oh, some cheese sandwiches and jelly ones and chicken and olive, I guess. Never mind breakfast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The strain of invention was too much. He shut his eyes wearily, let his head roll to rest inertly, and quickly relaxed what he had regained of muscular control. Out of a crevice of his mind crept the vague but inevitable spectre of the night before—but it proved in this case to be nothing but a seemingly interminable conversation with Richard Caramel, who had called on him at midnight; they had drunk four bottles of beer and munched dry crusts of bread while Anthony listened to a reading of the first part of "The Demon Lover."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Came a voice now after many hours. Anthony disregarded it, as sleep closed over him, folded down upon him, crept up into the byways of his mind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly he was awake, saying: "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For how many, sir?" It was still Bounds, standing patient and motionless at the foot of the bed—Bounds who divided his manner among three gentlemen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How many what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think, sir, I'd better know how many are coming. I'll have to plan for the sandwiches, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Two," muttered Anthony huskily; "lady and a gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds said, "Thank you, sir," and moved away, bearing with him his humiliating reproachful soft collar, reproachful to each of the three gentlemen, who only demanded of him a third.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a long time Anthony arose and drew an opalescent dressing grown of brown and blue over his slim pleasant figure. With a last yawn he went into the bathroom, and turning on the dresser light (the bathroom had no outside exposure) he contemplated himself in the mirror with some interest. A wretched apparition, he thought; he usually thought so in the morning—sleep made his face unnaturally pale. He lit a cigarette and glanced through several letters and the morning Tribune.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour later, shaven and dressed, he was sitting at his desk looking at a small piece of paper he had taken out of his wallet. It was scrawled with semi-legible memoranda: "See Mr. Howland at five. Get hair-cut. See about Rivers' bill. Go book-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And under the last: "Cash in bank, $690 (crossed out), $612 (crossed out), $607."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally, down at the bottom and in a hurried scrawl: "Dick and Gloria Gilbert for tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This last item brought him obvious satisfaction. His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the uneaten sandwiches.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a growing lack of color in Anthony's days. He felt it constantly and sometimes traced it to a talk he had had with Maury Noble a month before. That anything so ingenuous, so priggish, as a sense of waste should oppress him was absurd, but there was no denying the fact that some unwelcome survival of a fetish had drawn him three weeks before down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours of acute and startling panic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In justification of his manner of living there was first, of course, The Meaninglessness of Life. As aides and ministers, pages and squires, butlers and lackeys to this great Khan there were a thousand books glowing on his shelves, there was his apartment and all the money that was to be his when the old man up the river should choke on his last morality. From a world fraught with the menace of débutantes and the stupidity of many Geraldines he was thankfully delivered—rather should he emulate the feline immobility of Maury and wear proudly the culminative wisdom of the numbered generations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Over and against these things was something which his brain persistently analyzed and dealt with as a tiresome complex but which, though logically disposed of and bravely trampled under foot, had sent him out through the soft slush of late November to a library which had none of the books he most wanted. It is fair to analyze Anthony as far as he could analyze himself; further than that it is, of course, presumption. He found in himself a growing horror and loneliness. The idea of eating alone frightened him; in preference he dined often with men he detested. Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —If I am essentially weak, he thought, I need work to do, work to do. It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity, with neither the poise of Maury nor the enthusiasm of Dick. It seemed a tragedy to want nothing—and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was—some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After cocktails and luncheon at the University Club Anthony felt better. He had run into two men from his class at Harvard, and in contrast to the gray heaviness of their conversation his life assumed color. Both of them were married: one spent his coffee time in sketching an extra-nuptial adventure to the bland and appreciative smiles of the other. Both of them, he thought, were Mr. Gilberts in embryo; the number of their "yes's" would have to be quadrupled, their natures crabbed by twenty years—then they would be no more than obsolete and broken machines, pseudo-wise and valueless, nursed to an utter senility by the women they had broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ah, he was more than that, as he paced the long carpet in the lounge after dinner, pausing at the window to look into the harried street. He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a stray boyishness he saw himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam. The clarity of his mind, its sophistication, its versatile intelligence, all at their maturity and dominated by some purpose yet to be born would find him work to do. On this minor his dream faded—work to do: he tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lustreless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people—and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lord Verulam! Talleyrand!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment the grayness returned. His cocktails had died, making him sleepy, somewhat befogged and inclined to be surly. Lord Verulam—he? The very thought was bitter. Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to be satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The buzzer rang at the door. Anthony sprang up and lifted the tube to his ear. It was Richard Caramel's voice, stilted and facetious:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Announcing Miss Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BEAUTIFUL LADY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he said, smiling and holding the door ajar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick bowed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, this is Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" she cried, holding out a little gloved hand. Under her fur coat her dress was Alice-blue, with white lace crinkled stiffly about her throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let me take your things."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony stretched out his arms and the brown mass of fur tumbled into them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you think of her, Anthony?" Richard Caramel demanded barbarously. "Isn't she beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" cried the girl defiantly—withal unmoved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was dazzling—alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance. Her hair, full of a heavenly glamour, was gay against the winter color of the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved about, magician-like, turning the mushroom lamp into an orange glory. The stirred fire burnished the copper andirons on the hearth——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a solid block of ice," murmured Gloria casually, glancing around with eyes whose irises were of the most delicate and transparent bluish white. "What a slick fire! We found a place where you could stand on an iron-bar grating, sort of, and it blew warm air up at you—but Dick wouldn't wait there with me. I told him to go on alone and let me be happy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Conventional enough this. She seemed talking for her own pleasure, without effort. Anthony, sitting at one end of the sofa, examined her profile against the foreground of the lamp: the exquisite regularity of nose and upper lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold—but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Think you've got the best name I've heard," she was saying, still apparently to herself; her glance rested on him a moment and then flitted past him—to the Italian bracket-lamps clinging like luminous yellow turtles at intervals along the walls, to the books row upon row, then to her cousin on the other side. "Anthony Patch. Only you ought to look sort of like a horse, with a long narrow face—and you ought to be in tatters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all the Patch part, though. How should Anthony look?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You look like Anthony," she assured him seriously—he thought she had scarcely seen him—"rather majestic," she continued, "and solemn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony indulged in a disconcerted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only I like alliterative names," she went on, "all except mine. Mine's too flamboyant. I used to know two girls named Jinks, though, and just think if they'd been named anything except what they were named—Judy Jinks and Jerry Jinks. Cute, what? Don't you think?" Her childish mouth was parted, awaiting a rejoinder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody in the next generation," suggested Dick, "will be named Peter or Barbara—because at present all the piquant literary characters are named Peter or Barbara."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony continued the prophecy:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course Gladys and Eleanor, having graced the last generation of heroines and being at present in their social prime, will be passed on to the next generation of shop-girls——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Displacing Ella and Stella," interrupted Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Pearl and Jewel," Gloria added cordially, "and Earl and Elmer and Minnie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then I'll come along," remarked Dick, "and picking up the obsolete name, Jewel, I'll attach it to some quaint and attractive character and it'll start its career all over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice took up the thread of subject and wove along with faintly upturning, half-humorous intonations for sentence ends—as though defying interruption—and intervals of shadowy laughter. Dick had told her that Anthony's man was named Bounds—she thought that was wonderful! Dick had made some sad pun about Bounds doing patchwork, but if there was one thing worse than a pun, she said, it was a person who, as the inevitable come-back to a pun, gave the perpetrator a mock-reproachful look.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where are you from?" inquired Anthony. He knew, but beauty had rendered him thoughtless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Kansas City, Missouri."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They put her out the same time they barred cigarettes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did they bar cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a reformer or something, isn't he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I blush for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So do I," she confessed. "I detest reformers, especially the sort who try to reform me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there many of those?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens. It's 'Oh, Gloria, if you smoke so many cigarettes you'll lose your pretty complexion!' and 'Oh, Gloria, why don't you marry and settle down?'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony agreed emphatically while he wondered who had had the temerity to speak thus to such a personage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then," she continued, "there are all the subtle reformers who tell you the wild stories they've heard about you and how they've been sticking up for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw, at length, that her eyes were gray, very level and cool, and when they rested on him he understood what Maury had meant by saying she was very young and very old. She talked always about herself as a very charming child might talk, and her comments on her tastes and distastes were unaffected and spontaneous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must confess," said Anthony gravely, "that even <i>I</i>'ve heard one thing about you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Alert at once, she sat up straight. Those eyes, with the grayness and eternity of a cliff of soft granite, caught his.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe anything any one tells me about myself—don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Invariably!" agreed the two men in unison.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not sure that I ought to," teased Anthony, smiling unwillingly. She was so obviously interested, in a state of almost laughable self-absorption.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He means your nickname," said her cousin.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What name?" inquired Anthony, politely puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Instantly she was shy—then she laughed, rolled back against the cushions, and turned her eyes up as she spoke:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Coast-to-Coast Gloria." Her voice was full of laughter, laughter undefined as the varying shadows playing between fire and lamp upon her hair. "O Lord!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Still Anthony was puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>Me</i>”, I mean. That's what some silly boys coined for <i>me</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you see, Anthony," explained Dick, "traveller of a nation-wide notoriety and all that. Isn't that what you've heard? She's been called that for years—since she was seventeen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony's eyes became sad and humorous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this female Methuselah you've brought in here, Caramel?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She disregarded this, possibly rather resented it, for she switched back to the main topic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>have</i> you heard of me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Something about your physique."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said, coolly disappointed, "that all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your tan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My tan?" She was puzzled. Her hand rose to her throat, rested there an instant as though the fingers were feeling variants of color.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember Maury Noble? Man you met about a month ago. You made a great impression."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She thought a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember—but he didn't call me up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was afraid to, I don't doubt."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was black dark without now and Anthony wondered that his apartment had ever seemed gray—so warm and friendly were the books and pictures on the walls and the good Bounds offering tea from a respectful shadow and the three nice people giving out waves of interest and laughter back and forth across the happy fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DISSATISFACTION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill room at the Plaza. Her fur-trimmed suit was gray—"because with gray you <i>have</i> to wear a lot of paint," she explained—and a small toque sat rakishly on her head, allowing yellow ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a child's hands should be.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As they entered, the orchestra were sounding the preliminary whimpers to a maxixe, a tune full of castanets and facile faintly languorous violin harmonies, appropriate to the crowded winter grill teeming with an excited college crowd, high-spirited at the approach of the holidays. Carefully, Gloria considered several locations, and rather to Anthony's annoyance paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naïve was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abstractedly she watched the dancers for a few moments, commenting murmurously as a couple eddied near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a pretty girl in blue"—and as Anthony looked obediently—" there! No. behind you—there!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," he agreed helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You didn't see her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd rather look at you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know, but she was pretty. Except that she had big ankles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Was she?—I mean, did she?" he said indifferently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A girl's salutation came from a couple dancing close to them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Gloria! O Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's that?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Somebody." She caught sight of another face. "Hello, Muriel!" Then to Anthony: "There's Muriel Kane. Now I think she's attractive, 'cept not very." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled appreciatively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Attractive, 'cept not very," he repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled—was interested immediately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why is that funny?" Her tone was pathetically intent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It just was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want to dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. But let's sit," she decided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And talk about you? You love to talk about you, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes." Caught in a vanity, she laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I imagine your autobiography would be a classic."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick says I haven't got one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick!" he exclaimed. "What does he know about you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing. But he says the biography of every woman begins with the first kiss that counts, and ends when her last child is laid in her arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's talking from his book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He says unloved women have no biographies—they have histories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Surely you don't claim to be unloved!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I suppose not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why haven't you a biography? Haven't you ever had a kiss that counted?" As the words left his lips he drew in his breath sharply as though to suck them back. This <i>baby</i>!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know what you mean 'counts,'" she objected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd tell me how old you are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Twenty-two," she said, meeting his eyes gravely. "How old did you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About eighteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to start being that. I don't like being twenty-two. I hate it more than anything in the world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Being twenty-two?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Getting old and everything. Getting married."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever want to marry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to have responsibility and a lot of children to take care of."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Evidently she did not doubt that on her lips all things were good. He waited rather breathlessly for her next remark, expecting it to follow up her last. She was smiling, without amusement but pleasantly, and after an interval half a dozen words fell into the space between them:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I had some gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You shall!" He beckoned to a waiter and sent him to the cigar counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you mind? I love gum-drops. Everybody kids me about it because I'm always whacking away at one—whenever my daddy's not around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not at all.—Who are all these children?" he asked suddenly. "Do you know them all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, but they're from—oh, from everywhere, I suppose. Don't you ever come here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very seldom. I don't care particularly for 'nice girls.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Immediately he had her attention. She turned a definite shoulder to the dancers, relaxed in her chair, and demanded:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>do</i>” you do with yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thanks to a cocktail Anthony welcomed the question. In a mood to talk, he wanted, moreover, to impress this girl whose interest seemed so tantalizingly elusive—she stopped to browse in unexpected pastures, hurried quickly over the inobviously obvious. He wanted to pose. He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do nothing," he began, realizing simultaneously that his words were to lack the debonair grace he craved for them. "I do nothing, for there's nothing I can do that's worth doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?" He had neither surprised her nor even held her, yet she had certainly understood him, if indeed he had said aught worth understanding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you approve of lazy men?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose so, if they're gracefully lazy. Is that possible for an American?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not?" he demanded, discomfited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But her mind had left the subject and wandered up ten floors.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My daddy's mad at me," she observed dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle"—his words gathered conviction—"it astonishes me. It—it—I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off. She watched him inscrutably. He waited for her to agree or disagree, but she did neither.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever form judgments on things?" he asked with some exasperation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her head and her eyes wandered back to the dancers as she answered:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. I don't know anything about—what you should do, or what anybody should do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he admitted apologetically, "neither do I, of course, but——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just think of people," she continued, "whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't want to do anything?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a second he was startled, almost as though she had meant this literally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sleep?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe—and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me. But I never want to change people or get excited over them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a quaint little determinist," laughed Anthony. "It's your world, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—" she said with a quick upward glance, "isn't it? As long as I'm—young."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had paused slightly before the last word and Anthony suspected that she had started to say "beautiful." It was undeniably what she had intended.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes brightened and he waited for her to enlarge on the theme. He had drawn her out, at any rate—he bent forward slightly to catch the words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But "Let's dance!" was all she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ADMIRATION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That winter afternoon at the Plaza was the first of a succession of "dates" Anthony made with her in the blurred and stimulating days before Christmas. Invariably she was busy. What particular strata of the city's social life claimed her he was a long time finding out. It seemed to matter very little. She attended the semi-public charity dances at the big hotels; he saw her several times at dinner parties in Sherry's, and once as he waited for her to dress, Mrs. Gilbert, apropos of her daughter's habit of "going," rattled off an amazing holiday programme that included half a dozen dances to which Anthony had received cards.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He made engagements with her several times for lunch and tea—the former were hurried and, to him at least, rather unsatisfactory occasions, for she was sleepy-eyed and casual, incapable of concentrating upon anything or of giving consecutive attention to his remarks. When after two of these sallow meals he accused her of tendering him the skin and bones of the day she laughed and gave him a tea-time three days off. This was infinitely more satisfactory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One Sunday afternoon just before Christmas he called up and found her in the lull directly after some important but mysterious quarrel: she informed him in a tone of mingled wrath and amusement that she had sent a man out of her apartment—here Anthony speculated violently—and that the man had been giving a little dinner for her that very night and that of course she wasn't going. So Anthony took her to supper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go to something!" she proposed as they went down in the elevator. "I want to see a show, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Inquiry at the hotel ticket desk disclosed only two Sunday night "concerts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They're always the same," she complained unhappily, "same old Yiddish comedians. Oh, let's go somewhere!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To conceal a guilty suspicion that he should have arranged a performance of some kind for her approval Anthony affected a knowing cheerfulness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go to a good cabaret."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've seen every one in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll find a new one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in wretched humor; that was evident. Her gray eyes were granite now indeed. When she wasn't speaking she stared straight in front of her as if at some distasteful abstraction in the lobby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, come on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, passenger, navigation, city, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He followed her, a graceful girl even in her enveloping fur, out to a taxicab, and, with an air of having a definite place in mind, instructed the driver to go over to Broadway and then turn south. He made several casual attempts at conversation but as she adopted an impenetrable armor of silence and answered him in sentences as morose as the cold darkness of the taxicab he gave up, and assuming a like mood fell into a dim gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, urban, car"><br /> <poem><br /> A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony's eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign spelling "Marathon" in glorious yellow script, adorned with electrical leaves and flowers that alternately vanished and beamed upon the wet and glistening street. He leaned and rapped on the taxi-window and in a moment was receiving information from a colored doorman: Yes, this was a cabaret. Fine cabaret. Bes' showina city!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we try it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door and prepared to follow it; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this unsung palace of pleasure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gay habitats of the very rich and the very poor, the very dashing and the very criminal, not to mention the lately exploited very Bohemian, are made known to the awed high school girls of Augusta, Georgia, and Redwing, Minnesota, not only through the bepictured and entrancing spreads of the Sunday theatrical supplements but through the shocked and alarmful eyes of Mr. Rupert Hughes and other chroniclers of the mad pace of America. But the excursions of Harlem onto Broadway, the deviltries of the dull and the revelries of the respectable are a matter of esoteric knowledge only to the participants themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tip circulates—and in the place knowingly mentioned, gather the lower moral-classes on Saturday and Sunday nights—the little troubled men who are pictured in the comics as "the Consumer" or "the Public." They have made sure that the place has three qualifications: it is cheap; it imitates with a sort of shoddy and mechanical wistfulness the glittering antics of the great cafés in the theatre district; and—this, above all, important—it is a place where they can "take a nice girl," which means, of course, that every one has become equally harmless, timid, and uninteresting through lack of money and imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people with hyphenated occupations: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks—clerks of the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery and broken hopes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They name these brummagem cabarets after Pullman cars. The "Marathon"! Not for them the salacious similes borrowed from the cafés of Paris! This is where their docile patrons bring their "nice women," whose starved fancies are only too willing to believe that the scene is comparatively gay and joyous, and even faintly immoral. This is life! Who cares for the morrow?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abandoned people!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Gloria, seated, looked about them. At the next table a party of four were in process of being joined by a party of three, two men and a girl, who were evidently late—and the manner of the girl was a study in national sociology. She was meeting some new men—and she was pretending desperately. By gesture she was pretending and by words and by the scarcely perceptible motionings of her eyelids that she belonged to a class a little superior to the class with which she now had to do, that a while ago she had been, and presently would again be, in a higher, rarer air. She was almost painfully refined—she wore a last year's hat covered with violets no more yearningly pretentious and palpably artificial than herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fascinated, Anthony and Gloria watched the girl sit down and radiate the impression that she was only condescendingly present. For <i>me</i>, her eyes said, this is practically a slumming expedition, to be cloaked with belittling laughter and semi-apologetics.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And the other women passionately poured out the impression that though they were in the crowd they were not of it. This was not the sort of place to which they were accustomed; they had dropped in because it was near by and convenient—every party in the restaurant poured out that impression . . . who knew? They were forever changing class, all of them—the women often marrying above their opportunities, the men striking suddenly a magnificent opulence: a sufficiently preposterous advertising scheme, a celestialized ice cream cone. Meanwhile, they met here to eat, closing their eyes to the economy displayed in infrequent changings of table-cloths, in the casualness of the cabaret performers, most of all in the colloquial carelessness and familiarity of the waiters. One was sure that these waiters were not impressed by their patrons. One expected that presently they would sit at the tables . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you object to this?" inquired Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's face warmed and for the first time that evening she smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love it," she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-à-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor—and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the illusion snapped like a nest of threads; the room grouped itself around him, voices, faces, movement; the garish shimmer of the lights overhead became real, became portentous; breath began, the slow respiration that she and he took in time with this docile hundred, the rise and fall of bosoms, the eternal meaningless play and interplay and tossing and reiterating of word and phrase—all these wrenched his senses open to the suffocating pressure of life—and then her voice came at him, cool as the suspended dream he had left behind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I belong here," she murmured, "I'm like these people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an instant this seemed a sardonic and unnecessary paradox hurled at him across the impassable distances she created about herself. Her entrancement had increased—her eyes rested upon a Semitic violinist who swayed his shoulders to the rhythm of the year's mellowest fox-trot:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"Something—goes</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Ring-a-ting-a-ling-a-ling</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Right in-your ear——"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she spoke, from the centre of this pervasive illusion of her own. It amazed him. It was like blasphemy from the mouth of a child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm like they are—like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a young idiot!" he insisted wildly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her blond head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I <i>am</i> like them. . . . You ought to see. . . . You don't know me." She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. "I've got a streak of what you'd call cheapness. I don't know where I get it but it's—oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I'm this because of this or that because of that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down <i>now</i>, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What were you thinking?" she asked.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just that I'm not a realist," he said, and then: "No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance—that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it—then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (74-128)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FROM his undergraduate days as editor of The Harvard Crimson Richard Caramel had desired to write. But as a senior he had picked up the glorified illusion that certain men were set aside for "service" and, going into the world, were to accomplish a vague yearnful something which would react either in eternal reward or, at the least, in the personal satisfaction of having striven for the greatest good of the greatest number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This spirit has long rocked the colleges in America. It begins, as a rule, during the immaturities and facile impressions of freshman year—sometimes back in preparatory school. Prosperous apostles known for their emotional acting go the rounds of the universities and, by frightening the amiable sheep and dulling the quickening of interest and intellectual curiosity which is the purpose of all education, distil a mysterious conviction of sin, harking back to childhood crimes and to the ever-present menace of "women." To these lectures go the wicked youths to cheer and joke and the timid to swallow the tasty pills, which would be harmless if administered to farmers' wives and pious drug-clerks but are rather dangerous medicine for these "future leaders of men."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This octopus was strong enough to wind a sinuous tentacle about Richard Caramel. The year after his graduation it called him into the slums of New York to muck about with bewildered Italians as secretary to an "Alien Young Men's Rescue Association." He labored at it over a year before the monotony began to weary him. The aliens kept coming inexhaustibly—Italians, Poles, Scandinavians, Czechs, Armenians—with the same wrongs, the same exceptionally ugly faces and very much the same smells, though he fancied that these grew more profuse and diverse as the months passed. His eventual conclusions about the expediency of service were vague, but concerning his own relation to it they were abrupt and decisive. Any amiable young man, his head ringing with the latest crusade, could accomplish as much as he could with the débris of Europe—and it was time for him to write.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had been living in a down-town Y.M.C.A., but when he quit the task of making sow-ear purses out of sows' ears, he moved up-town and went to work immediately as a reporter for The Sun. He kept at this for a year, doing desultory writing on the side, with little success, and then one day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career. On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the horses' hoofs in the snow. . . This he handed in. Next morning a marked copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note: "Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen the snow threatening—and had postponed the parade until another day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover.". . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, the Monday of the months, Richard Caramel's nose was blue constantly, a sardonic blue, vaguely suggestive of the flames licking around a sinner. His book was nearly ready, and as it grew in completeness it seemed to grow also in its demands, sapping him, overpowering him, until he walked haggard and conquered in its shadow. Not only to Anthony and Maury did he pour out his hopes and boasts and indecisions, but to any one who could be prevailed upon to listen. He called on polite but bewildered publishers, he discussed it with his casual vis-à-vis at the Harvard Club; it was even claimed by Anthony that he had been discovered, one Sunday night, debating the transposition of Chapter Two with a literary ticket-collector in the chill and dismal recesses of a Harlem subway station. And latest among his confidantes was Mrs. Gilbert, who sat with him by the hour and alternated between Bilphism and literature in an intense cross-fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shakespeare was a Bilphist," she assured him through a fixed smile. "Oh, yes! He was a Bilphist. It's been proved."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this Dick would look a bit blank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you've read 'Hamlet' you can't help but see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he—he lived in a more credulous age—a more religious age."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she demanded the whole loaf:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, but you see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the <i>bon mot</i> of her belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula—which was perhaps not a formula; it was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of all formulas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm <i>sure</i> it will. I went to Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's <i>mad</i> about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be <i>extraordinary</i>. But she'd never seen you or known anything about you—not even your <i>name</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his own traffic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my friends are joshing me—oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care. I think a person ought to be able to take joshing. But I've got a sort of conviction," he concluded gloomily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're an ancient soul, I always say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe I am." Dick had reached the stage where he no longer fought, but submitted. He <i>must</i> be an ancient soul, he fancied grotesquely; so old as to be absolutely rotten. However, the reiteration of the phrase still somewhat embarrassed him and sent uncomfortable shivers up his back. He changed the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is my distinguished cousin Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's on the go somewhere, with some one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick paused, considered, and then, screwing up his face into what was evidently begun as a smile but ended as a terrifying frown, delivered a comment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert started, beamed half a second too late, and breathed her "Really?" in the tone of a detective play-whisper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I <i>think</i> so," corrected Dick gravely. "She's the first girl I've ever seen him with, so much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, of course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see her settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not claiming I'm right, mind you," he assured the infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back at him. "I'm saying nothing that I'd want Gloria to know. But I think Mad Anthony is interested—tremendously so. He talks about her constantly. In any one else that'd be a bad sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria is a very young soul—" began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria'd be a very young nut not to marry him." He stopped and faced her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and strained to its ultimate show of intensity—this as if to make up by his sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. "Gloria's a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She's uncontrollable. How she's done it I don't know, but lately she's picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn't seem to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were—" He paused for breath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes," interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anæmic attempt to hide the immense interest with which she listened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "there it is. I mean that the men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate. Now they aren't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast—her bosom trembled, inflated, remained so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in a torrent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? He knew Gloria. He'd seen enough of Gloria to know how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so spoiled—in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed sticks. Perhaps—one never knew—it was this that had given that health and <i>hardiness</i> to her whole personality. And then ever since she was twelve years old she'd had boys about her so thick—oh, so thick one couldn't <i>move</i>. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to single them out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college—they lasted on an average of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came—a new one—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his father. The others had been—wretched. They never seemed to know when she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind. They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her, making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they would never get over Gloria . . . at least two of them had since married, though. . . . But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill—to this day Mr. Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no longer bothered to refuse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as a private engagement—with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena. She was sure it had, because—this must go no further—she had come in unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed. She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a new man came.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers! Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in desperation! Young men threatening South America! . . . Young men writing the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick fancied that Mrs. Gilbert's eyes had seen some of these letters.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents, substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths and beginning again—with the next.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was absolutely going to no more college dances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This had begun the change—not so much in her actual habits, for she danced, and had as many "dates" as ever—but they were dates in a different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly—enjoying the crowds around her, the manner in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous, and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about her—for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night in a chiffon evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine—it had been in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career—she became suddenly anæsthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties, who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she insulted would return like a domestic animal—but indifferently, without contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more—she yawned at them. She seemed—and it was so strange—she seemed to her mother to be growing cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his aunt's discourse waxed in content—it stands here pruned by half, of all side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own mental distresses—he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired head, expressing—almost anything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a sense Gloria's past was an old story to him. He had followed it with the eyes of a journalist, for he was going to write a book about her some day. But his interests, just at present, were family interests. He wanted to know, in particular, who was this Joseph Bloeckman that he had seen her with several times; and those two girls she was with constantly, "this" Rachael Jerryl and "this" Miss Kane—surely Miss Kane wasn't exactly the sort one would associate with Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But the moment had passed. Mrs. Gilbert having climbed the hill of exposition was about to glide swiftly down the ski-jump of collapse. Her eyes were like a blue sky seen through two round, red window-casements. The flesh about her mouth was trembling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And at the moment the door opened, admitting into the room Gloria and the two young ladies lately mentioned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO YOUNG WOMEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do, Mrs. Gilbert!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Miss Kane and Miss Jerryl are presented to Mr. Richard Caramel. "This is Dick" (laughter).<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard so much about you," says Miss Kane between a giggle and a shout.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do," says Miss Jerryl shyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel tries to move about as if his figure were better. He is torn between his innate cordiality and the fact that he considers these girls rather common—not at all the Farmover type.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria has disappeared into the bedroom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do sit down," beams Mrs. Gilbert, who is by now quite herself. "Take off your things." Dick is afraid she will make some remark about the age of his soul, but he forgets his qualms in completing a conscientious, novelist's examination of the two young women. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel Kane had originated in a rising family of East Orange. She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between plumpness and width. Her hair was black and elaborately arranged. This, in conjunction with her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the prominent motion picture actress. People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she believed them. She suspected hopefully that they were afraid of her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the impression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag that she constantly carried, waving it wildly, beseechingly—and, alas, to little spectacular avail. She was also tremendously timely: she knew the latest songs, all the latest songs—when one of them was played on the phonograph she would rise to her feet and rock her shoulders back and forth and snap her fingers, and if there was no music she would accompany herself by humming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"—and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria—he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, passenger, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "We had the most <i>hectic</i> time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely <i>nutty</i>! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was <i>pet</i>rified, but Gloria simply <i>wouldn't</i> get off."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all <i>howled</i>, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "—your mother and I."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A pause—Muriel turned to Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a great writer, aren't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul—like Richard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Ancient Soul breathed a gasp of relief—it was out at last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then as if she had been considering it for five minutes, Gloria made a sudden announcement:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to give a party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, can I come?" cried Muriel with facetious daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A dinner. Seven people: Muriel and Rachael and I, and you, Dick, and Anthony, and that man named Noble—I liked him—and Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel and Rachael went into soft and purring ecstasies of enthusiasm. Mrs. Gilbert blinked and beamed. With an air of casualness Dick broke in with a question:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenting a faint hostility, Gloria turned to him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Joseph Bloeckman? He's the moving picture man. Vice-president of 'Films Par Excellence.' He and father do a lot of business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, will you all come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They would all come. A date was arranged within the week. Dick rose, adjusted hat, coat, and muffler, and gave out a general smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By-by," said Muriel, waving her hand gaily, "call me up some time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel blushed for her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DEPLORABLE END OF THE CHEVALIER O'KEEFE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon at the Beaux Arts—afterward they went up to his apartment and he wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine Burke, usher at Keith's, had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her, for since a lamentable affair with a débutante the preceding summer, when he had discovered that after half a dozen kisses a proposal was expected, he had been wary of girls of his own class. It was only too easy to turn a critical eye on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy—but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance on one's social level.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine, curled up at the foot of the lounge, considered him with narrow slanting eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You drink all the time, don't you?" she said suddenly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, I suppose so," replied Anthony in some surprise. "Don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nope. I go on parties sometimes—you know, about once a week, but I only take two or three drinks. You and your friends keep on drinking all the time. I should think you'd ruin your health."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was somewhat touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, aren't you sweet to worry about me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't drink so very much," he declared. "Last month I didn't touch a drop for three weeks. And I only get really tight about once a week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you have something to drink every day and you're only twenty-five. Haven't you any ambition? Think what you'll be at forty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sincerely trust that I won't live that long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She clicked her tongue with her teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!" she said as he mixed another cocktail—and then: "Are you any relation to Adam Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, he's my grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?" She was obviously thrilled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Absolutely."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's funny. My daddy used to work for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a queer old man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is he nice?" she demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, in private life he's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell us about him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why," Anthony considered "—he's all shrunken up and he's got the remains of some gray hair that always looks as though the wind were in it. He's very moral."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's done a lot of good," said Geraldine with intense gravity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rot!" scoffed Anthony. "He's a pious ass—a chickenbrain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her mind left the subject and flitted on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you live with him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't I board in a Methodist parsonage?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she made a little clicking sound to express disapproval. Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart—how completely moral she would still be after the inevitable wave came that would wash her off the sands of respectability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you hate him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder. I never liked him. You never like people who do things for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does he hate you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but I don't suppose it matters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine was persistently interested. She held her glass, untasted, between finger and thumb and regarded him with eyes in which there was a touch of awe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you mean a hypocrite?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Anthony impatiently, "maybe he's not. But he doesn't like the things that I like, and so, as far as I'm concerned, he's uninteresting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hm." Her curiosity seemed, at length, satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a funny one," she commented thoughtfully. "Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They don't—but I shouldn't blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She scorned this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll fall in love someday. Oh, you will—I know." She nodded wisely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It'd be idiotic to be overconfident. That's what ruined the Chevalier O'Keefe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who was he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A creature of my splendid mind. He's my one creation, the Chevalier."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cra-a-azy!" she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope-ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no!" objected Anthony, "oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn't play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won't bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess I can understand anything that's got any sense to it," answered Geraldine a bit testily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what about him? Did he die?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and 'reddish hair.' He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O'Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called—well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire's. It was the rule at St. Voltaire's that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier's farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then he rode out to St. Voltaire's, slew his horse at the door, and presented the carcass to the monastery cook.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At five o'clock that night he felt, for the first time, free—forever free from sex. No woman could enter the monastery; no monk could descend below the second story. So as he climbed the winding stair that led to his cell at the very top of the Tower of Chastity he paused for a moment by an open window which looked down fifty feet on to a road below. It was all so beautiful, he thought, this world that he was leaving, the golden shower of sun beating down upon the long fields, the spray of trees in the distance, the vineyards, quiet and green, freshening wide miles before him. He leaned his elbows on the window casement and gazed at the winding road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, as it happened, Thérèse, a peasant girl of sixteen from a neighboring village, was at that moment passing along this same road that ran in front of the monastery. Five minutes before, the little piece of ribbon which held up the stocking on her pretty left leg had worn through and broken. Being a girl of rare modesty she had thought to wait until she arrived home before repairing it, but it had bothered her to such an extent that she felt she could endure it no longer. So, as she passed the Tower of Chastity, she stopped and with a pretty gesture lifted her skirt—as little as possible, be it said to her credit—to adjust her garter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Up in the tower the newest arrival in the ancient monastery of St. Voltaire, as though pulled forward by a gigantic and irresistible hand, leaned from the window. Further he leaned and further until suddenly one of the stones loosened under his weight, broke from its cement with a soft powdery sound—and, first headlong, then head over heels, finally in a vast and impressive revolution tumbled the Chevalier O'Keefe, bound for the hard earth and eternal damnation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thérèse was so much upset by the occurrence that she ran all the way home and for ten years spent an hour a day in secret prayer for the soul of the monk whose neck and vows were simultaneously broken on that unfortunate Sunday afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And the Chevalier O'Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. What do you think, Geraldine?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine, lost long before, could only smile roguishly, wave her first finger at him, and repeat her bridge-all, her explain-all:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Crazy!" she said, "you cra-a-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His thin face was kindly, she thought, and his eyes quite gentle. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because, unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part about the stocking!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi she stood for a moment in the doorway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>will</i> get married," she was insisting, "you wait and see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was playing with an ancient tennis ball, and he bounced it carefully on the floor several times before he answered with a soupçon of acidity:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a little idiot, Geraldine."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled provokingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That'd be silly too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it would, would it? Well, I'll just bet you'll marry somebody inside of a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony bounced the tennis ball very hard. This was one of his handsome days, she thought; a sort of intensity had displaced the melancholy in his dark eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine," he said, at length, "in the first place I have no one I want to marry; in the second place I haven't enough money to support two people; in the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people of my type; in the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the abstract consideration of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine only narrowed her eyes knowingly, made her clicking sound, and said she must be going. It was late.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Call me up soon," she reminded him as he kissed her good-by, "you haven't for three weeks, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I will," he promised fervently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He shut the door and coming back into the room stood for a moment lost in thought with the tennis-ball still clasped in his hand. There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully—assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought with emotion—aloud, ejaculative, for he was hurt and confused.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No <i>idea</i> of getting married, by <i>God</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of a sudden he hurled the tennis ball violently across the room, where it barely missed the lamp, and, rebounding here and there for a moment, lay still upon the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SIGNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For her dinner Gloria had taken a table in the Cascades at the Biltmore, and when the men met in the hall outside a little after eight, "that person Bloeckman" was the target of six masculine eyes. He was a stoutening, ruddy Jew of about thirty-five, with an expressive face under smooth sandy hair—and, no doubt, in most business gatherings his personality would have been considered ingratiating. He sauntered up to the three younger men, who stood in a group smoking as they waited for their hostess, and introduced himself with a little too evident assurance—nevertheless it is to be doubted whether he received the intended impression of faint and ironic chill: there was no hint of understanding in his manner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You related to Adam J. Patch?" he inquired of Anthony, emitting two slender strings of smoke from nostrils overwide.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony admitted it with the ghost of a smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a fine man," pronounced Bloeckman profoundly. "He's a fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," agreed Anthony, "he certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman squinted at his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Time these girls were showing up . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony waited breathlessly; it came——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . but then," with a widening smile, "you know how women are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The three young men nodded; Bloeckman looked casually about him, his eyes resting critically on the ceiling and then passing lower. His expression combined that of a Middle Western farmer appraising his wheat crop and that of an actor wondering whether he is observed—the public manner of all good Americans. As he finished his survey he turned back quickly to the reticent trio, determined to strike to their very heart and core.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You college men? . . . Harvard, eh. I see the Princeton boys beat you fellows in hockey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Unfortunate man. He had drawn another blank. They had been three years out and heeded only the big football games. Whether, after the failure of this sally, Mr. Bloeckman would have perceived himself to be in a cynical atmosphere is problematical, for——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria arrived. Muriel arrived. Rachael arrived. After a hurried "Hello, people!" uttered by Gloria and echoed by the other two, the three swept by into the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A moment later Muriel appeared in a state of elaborate undress and <i>crept</i> toward them. She was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker up and thrower away of men, an unscrupulous and fundamentally unmoved toyer with affections. Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury at first sight—a woman with wide hips affecting a panther-like litheness! As they waited the extra three minutes for Gloria, and, by polite assumption, for Rachael, he was unable to take his eyes from her. She would turn her head away, lowering her eyelashes and biting her nether lip in an amazing exhibition of coyness. She would rest her hands on her hips and sway from side to side in tune to the music, saying:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you ever hear such perfect ragtime? I just can't make my shoulders behave when I hear that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman clapped his hands gallantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to be on the stage."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to be!" cried Muriel; "will you back me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sure will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With becoming modesty Muriel ceased her motions and turned to Maury, asking what he had "seen" this year. He interpreted this as referring to the dramatic world, and they had a gay and exhilarating exchange of titles, after this manner:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Have you seen "Peg o' My Heart"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Eagerly</i>) It's wonderful! You want to see it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Have you seen "Omar, the Tentmaker"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: No, but I hear it's wonderful. I'm very anxious to see it. Have you seen "Fair and Warmer"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Hopefully</i>) Yes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't think it's very good. It's trashy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Faintly</i>) Yes, that's true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: But I went to "Within the Law" last night and I thought it was fine. Have you seen "The Little Café"?. . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This continued until they ran out of plays. Dick, meanwhile, turned to Mr. Bloeckman, determined to extract what gold he could from this unpromising load.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hear all the new novels are sold to the moving pictures as soon as they come out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. Of course the main thing in a moving picture is a strong story."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, I suppose so."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So many novels are all full of talk and psychology. Of course those aren't as valuable to us. It's impossible to make much of that interesting on the screen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You want plots first," said Richard brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course. Plots first—" He paused, shifted his gaze. His pause spread, included the others with all the authority of a warning finger. Gloria followed by Rachael was coming out of the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Among other things it developed during dinner that Joseph Bloeckman never danced, but spent the music time watching the others with the bored tolerance of an elder among children. He was a dignified man and a proud one. Born in Munich he had begun his American career as a peanut vender with a travelling circus. At eighteen he was a side show ballyhoo; later, the manager of the side show, and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more financial ability, more imagination, and more practical ideas . . . and now he sat here and contemplated the immortal Gloria for whom young Stuart Holcome had gone from New York to Pasadena—watched her, and knew that presently she would cease dancing and come back to sit on his left hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hoped she would hurry. The oysters had been standing some minutes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile Anthony, who had been placed on Gloria's left hand, was dancing with her, always in a certain fourth of the floor. This, had there been stags, would have been a delicate tribute to the girl, meaning "Damn you, don't cut in!" It was very consciously intimate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, looking down at her, "you look mighty sweet to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She met his eyes over the horizontal half foot that separated them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you—Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In fact you're uncomfortably beautiful," he added. There was no smile this time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you're very charming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't this nice?" he laughed. "We actually approve of each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, usually?" She had caught quickly at his remark, as she always did at any unexplained allusion to herself, however faint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lowered his voice, and when he spoke there was in it no more than a wisp of badinage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does a priest approve the Pope?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—but that's probably the vaguest compliment I ever received."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I can muster a few bromides."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I wouldn't have you strain yourself. Look at Muriel! Right here next to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced over his shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a translation of the song into some foreign tongue but became eventually apparent as an attempt to fill out the metre of the song with the only words she knew—the words of the title—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"He's a rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-time picking man,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-picking, picking, pick, pick,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-pick, pick, pick."</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —and so on, into phrases still more strange and barbaric. When she caught the amused glances of Anthony and Gloria she acknowledged them only with a faint smile and a half-closing of her eyes, to indicate that the music entering into her soul had put her into an ecstatic and exceedingly seductive trance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The music ended and they returned to their table, whose solitary but dignified occupant arose and tendered each of them a smile so ingratiating that it was as if he were shaking their hands and congratulating them on a brilliant performance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blockhead never will dance! I think he has a wooden leg," remarked Gloria to the table at large. The three young men started and the gentleman referred to winced perceptibly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was the one rough spot in the course of Bloeckman's acquaintance with Gloria. She relentlessly punned on his name. First it had been "Block-house," lately, the more invidious "Blockhead." He had requested with a strong undertone of irony that she use his first name, and this she had done obediently several times—then slipping, helpless, repentant but dissolved in laughter, back into "Blockhead."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a very sad and thoughtless thing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid Mr. Bloeckman thinks we're a frivolous crowd," sighed Muriel, waving a balanced oyster in his direction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He has that air," murmured Rachael. Anthony tried to remember whether she had said anything before. He thought not. It was her initial remark. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman suddenly cleared his throat and said in a loud, distinct voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary. When a man speaks he's merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the stunned pause that followed this astounding remark, Anthony choked suddenly on an oyster and hurried his napkin to his face. Rachael and Muriel raised a mild if somewhat surprised laugh, in which Dick and Maury joined, both of them red in the face and restraining uproariousness with the most apparent difficulty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—My God!" thought Anthony. "It's a subtitle from one of his movies. The man's memorized it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria alone made no sound. She fixed Mr. Bloeckman with a glance of silent reproach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for the love of Heaven! Where on earth did you dig that up?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman looked at her uncertainly, not sure of her intention. But in a moment he recovered his poise and assumed the bland and consciously tolerant smile of an intellectual among spoiled and callow youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The soup came up from the kitchen—but simultaneously the orchestra leader came up from the bar, where he had absorbed the tone color inherent in a seidel of beer. So the soup was left to cool during the delivery of a ballad entitled "Everything's at Home Except Your Wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers. Several times Anthony wondered what Bloeckman was telling her. He was chewing a cigar back and forth in his mouth, and had expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ten o'clock found Gloria and Anthony beginning a dance. Just as they were out of ear-shot of the table she said in a low voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance over by the door. I want to go down to the drug-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Obediently Anthony guided her through the crowd in the designated direction; in the hall she left him for a moment, to reappear with a cloak over her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want some gum-drops," she said, humorously apologetic; "you can't guess what for this time. It's just that I want to bite my finger-nails, and I will if I don't get some gum-drops." She sighed, and resumed as they stepped into the empty elevator: "I've been biting 'em all day. A bit nervous, you see. Excuse the pun. It was unintentional—the words just arranged themselves. Gloria Gilbert, the female wag."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Reaching the ground floor they naïvely avoided the hotel candy counter, descended the wide front staircase, and walking through several corridors found a drug-store in the Grand Central Station. After an intense examination of the perfume counter she made her purchase. Then on some mutual unmentioned impulse they strolled, arm in arm, not in the direction from which they had come, but out into Forty-third Street.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, sound, urban, city, night, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The night was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left, and for a hushed moment the traffic sounds and the murmur of water flowing in the gutters seemed an illusive and rarefied prolongation of that music to which they had lately danced. When Anthony spoke it was with surety that his words came from something breathless and desirous that the night had conceived in their two hearts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's take a taxi and ride around a bit!" he suggested, without looking at her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, Gloria, Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, city, night, sound, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> A cab yawned at the curb. As it moved off like a boat on a labyrinthine ocean and lost itself among the inchoate night masses of the great buildings, among the now stilled, now strident, cries and clangings, Anthony put his arm around the girl, drew her over to him and kissed her damp, childish mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was silent. She turned her face up to him, pale under the wisps and patches of light that trailed in like moonshine through a foliage. Her eyes were gleaming ripples in the white lake of her face; the shadows of her hair bordered the brow with a persuasive unintimate dusk. No love was there, surely; nor the imprint of any love. Her beauty was cool as this damp breeze, as the moist softness of her own lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're such a swan in this light," he whispered after a moment. There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted in out of the dark. Anthony laughed, noiselessly and exultantly, turning his face up and away from her, half in an overpowering rush of triumph, half lest her sight of him should spoil the splendid immobility of her expression. Such a kiss—it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="urban, city, night, visibility, affect, pleasure, sound, car"><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The buildings fell away in melted shadows; this was the Park now, and after a long while the great white ghost of the Metropolitan Museum moved majestically past, echoing sonorously to the rush of the cab.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria! Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes appeared to regard him out of many thousand years: all emotion she might have felt, all words she might have uttered, would have seemed inadequate beside the adequacy of her silence, ineloquent against the eloquence of her beauty—and of her body, close to him, slender and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell him to turn around," she murmured, "and drive pretty fast going back. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Up in the supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane looked up with roguishness extraordinary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, where have <i>you</i> been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To call up mother," answered Gloria coolly. "I promised her I would. Did we miss a dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then followed an incident that though slight in itself Anthony had cause to reflect on many years afterward. Joseph Bloeckman, leaning well back in his chair, fixed him with a peculiar glance, in which several emotions were curiously and inextricably mingled. He did not greet Gloria except by rising, and he immediately resumed a conversation with Richard Caramel about the influence of literature on the moving pictures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The stark and unexpected miracle of a night fades out with the lingering death of the last stars and the premature birth of the first newsboys. The flame retreats to some remote and platonic fire; the white heat has gone from the iron and the glow from the coal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Along the shelves of Anthony's library, filling a wall amply, crept a chill and insolent pencil of sunlight touching with frigid disapproval Thérèse of France and Ann the Superwoman, Jenny of the Orient Ballet and Zuleika the Conjurer—and Hoosier Cora—then down a shelf and into the years, resting pityingly on the over-invoked shades of Helen, Thaïs, Salome, and Cleopatra.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, shaved and bathed, sat in his most deeply cushioned chair and watched it until at the steady rising of the sun it lay glinting for a moment on the silk ends of the rug—and went out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was ten o'clock. The Sunday Times, scattered about his feet, proclaimed by rotogravure and editorial, by social revelation and sporting sheet, that the world had been tremendously engrossed during the past week in the business of moving toward some splendid if somewhat indeterminate goal. For his part Anthony had been once to his grandfather's, twice to his broker's, and three times to his tailor's—and in the last hour of the week's last day he had kissed a very beautiful and charming girl.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he reached home his imagination had been teeming with high-pitched, unfamiliar dreams. There was suddenly no question on his mind, no eternal problem for a solution and re-solution. He had experienced an emotion that was neither mental nor physical, nor merely a mixture of the two, and the love of life absorbed him for the present to the exclusion of all else. He was content to let the experiment remain isolated and unique. Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere—of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and débutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many <i>females</i>, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So far as he could see, she had neither submitted to any will of his nor caressed his vanity—except as her pleasure in his company was a caress. Indeed he had no reason for thinking she had given him aught that she did not give to others. This was as it should be. The idea of an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed on would proclaim themselves unharmed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having decided this he went to the phone and called up the Plaza Hotel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was out. Her mother knew neither where she had gone nor when she would return.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was somehow at this point that the first wrongness in the case asserted itself. There was an element of callousness, almost of indecency, in Gloria's absence from home. He suspected that by going out she had intrigued him into a disadvantage. Returning she would find his name, and smile. Most discreetly! He should have waited a few hours in order to drive home the utter inconsequence with which he regarded the incident. What an asinine blunder! She would think he considered himself particularly favored. She would think he was reacting with the most inept intimacy to a quite trivial episode.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered that during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded that man. Him—Anthony Patch! Horror!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and <i>snap!</i>—the poor plate could but develop, confined like all things to its nature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Anthony, lying upon his couch and staring at the orange lamp, passed his thin fingers incessantly through his dark hair and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and Jewels and Jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her cheeks in faint pastel, milky lace to rest in pale disarray against her neck—damask was used but to cover priests and divans in these days, and cloth of Samarand was remembered only by the romantic poets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She would go elsewhere after a while, tilting her head a hundred ways under a hundred bonnets, seeking in vain for mock cherries to match her lips or plumes that were graceful as her own supple body.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Noon would come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and comic women.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, road, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter. . . . Then—then night would come drifting down and perhaps another damp. The signs would spill their light into the street. Who knew? No wiser than he, they haply sought to recapture that picture done in cream and shadow they had seen on the hushed Avenue the night before. And they might, ah, they might! A thousand taxis would yawn at a thousand corners, and only to him was that kiss forever lost and done. In a thousand guises Thaïs would hail a cab and turn up her face for loving. And her pallor would be virginal and lovely, and her kiss chaste as the moon. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He sprang excitedly to his feet. How inappropriate that she should be out! He had realized at last what he wanted—to kiss her again, to find rest in her great immobility. She was the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony dressed and went out, as he should have done long before, and down to Richard Caramel's room to hear the last revision of the last chapter of "The Demon Lover." He did not call Gloria again until six. He did not find her in until eight and—oh, climax of anticlimaxes!—she could give him no engagement until Tuesday afternoon. A broken piece of gutta-percha clattered to the floor as he banged up the phone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BLACK MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tuesday was freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if she remembered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I called you four times on Sunday," he told her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was surprise in her voice and interest in her expression. Silently he cursed himself for having told her. He might have known her pride did not deal in such petty triumphs. Even then he had not guessed at the truth—that never having had to worry about men she had seldom used the wary subterfuges, the playings out and haulings in, that were the stock in trade of her sisterhood. When she liked a man, that was trick enough. Did she think she loved him—there was an ultimate and fatal thrust. Her charm endlessly preserved itself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was anxious to see you," he said simply. "I want to talk to you—I mean really talk, somewhere where we can be alone. May I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He swallowed a sudden lump of panic. He felt that she knew what he wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean, not at a tea table," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, all right, but not to-day. I want to get some exercise. Let's walk!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was bitter and raw. All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue. It was almost impossible to talk, and discomfort made him distracted, so much so that he turned at Sixty-first Street to find that she was no longer beside him. He looked around. She was forty feet in the rear standing motionless, her face half hidden in her fur coat collar, moved either by anger or laughter—he could not determine which. He started back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let me interrupt your walk!" she called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm mighty sorry," he answered in confusion. "Did I go too fast?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm cold," she announced. "I want to go home. And you walk too fast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Side by side they started for the Plaza. He wished he could see her face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Men don't usually get so absorbed in themselves when they're with me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very interesting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It <i>is</i> rather too cold to walk," he said, briskly, to hide his annoyance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer and he wondered if she would dismiss him at the hotel entrance. She walked in without speaking, however, and to the elevator, throwing him a single remark as she entered it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd better come up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hesitated for the fraction of a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better call some other time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just as you say." Her words were murmured as an aside. The main concern of life was the adjusting of some stray wisps of hair in the elevator mirror. Her cheeks were brilliant, her eyes sparkled—she had never seemed so lovely, so exquisitely to be desired.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Despising himself, he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong—in his own eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet significant encounter he had been completely defeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> However, by the time she reappeared in the sitting-room he had explained himself to himself with sophistic satisfaction. After all he had done the strongest thing, he thought. He had wanted to come up, he had come. Yet what happened later on that afternoon must be traced to the indignity he had experienced in the elevator; the girl was worrying him intolerably, so much so that when she came out he involuntarily drifted into criticism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A business friend of father's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Odd sort of fellow!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He doesn't like you either," she said with a sudden smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm flattered at his notice. He evidently considers me a—" He broke off with "Is he in love with you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The deuce you don't," he insisted. "Of course he is. I remember the look he gave me when we got back to the table. He'd probably have had me quietly assaulted by a delegation of movie supes if you hadn't invented that phone call."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He didn't mind. I told him afterward what really happened."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You told him!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He asked me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like that very well," he remonstrated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you don't?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business is it of his?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None. That's why I told him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony in a turmoil bit savagely at his mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why should I lie?" she demanded directly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I do. It happened to interest him to know that I kissed you, and I happened to be in a good humor, so I satisfied his curiosity by a simple and precise 'yes.' Being rather a sensible man, after his fashion, he dropped the subject."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except to say that he hated me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it worries you? Well, if you must probe this stupendous matter to its depths he didn't say he hated you. I simply know he does."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It doesn't wor——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, let's drop it!" she cried spiritedly. "It's a most uninteresting matter to me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a tremendous effort Anthony made his acquiescence a twist of subject, and they drifted into an ancient question-and-answer game concerned with each other's pasts, gradually warming as they discovered the age-old, immemorial resemblances in tastes and ideas. They said things that were more revealing than they intended—but each pretended to accept the other at face, or rather word, value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third—before long the best lines cancel out—and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping that such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," Anthony was saying earnestly, "that the position of a man with neither necessity nor ambition is unfortunate. Heaven knows it'd be pathetic of me to be sorry for myself—yet, sometimes I envy Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her silence was encouragement. It was as near as she ever came to an intentional lure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—And there used to be dignified occupations for a gentleman who had leisure, things a little more constructive than filling up the landscape with smoke or juggling some one else's money. There's science, of course: sometimes I wish I'd taken a good foundation, say at Boston Tech. But now, by golly, I'd have to sit down for two years and struggle through the fundamentals of physics and chemistry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've told you I don't know what anybody ought to do," she said ungraciously, and at her indifference his rancor was born again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Aren't you interested in anything except yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glared; his growing enjoyment in the conversation was ripped to shreds. She had been irritable and vindictive all day, and it seemed to him that for this moment he hated her hard selfishness. He stared morosely at the fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him—as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He moved closer and taking her hand pulled her ever so gently toward him until she half lay against his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he kissed her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he whispered very softly. Again she had made a magic, subtle and pervading as a spilt perfume, irresistible and sweet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward, neither the next day nor after many years, could he remember the important things of that afternoon. Had she been moved? In his arms had she spoken a little—or at all? What measure of enjoyment had she taken in his kisses? And had she at any time lost herself ever so little?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, for him there was no doubt. He had risen and paced the floor in sheer ecstasy. That such a girl should be; should poise curled in a corner of the couch like a swallow newly landed from a clean swift flight, watching him with inscrutable eyes. He would stop his pacing and, half shy each time at first, drop his arm around her and find her kiss.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn't want to fall in love. He wasn't coming to see her any more—already she had haunted too many of his ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow—only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He <i>would</i> come back—eternally. He should have known!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn't do—and wouldn't last." As he spoke there was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in ourselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her. He remembered it in this form—perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and polished it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As always when he was with her she seemed to grow gradually older until at the end ruminations too deep for words would be wintering in her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour passed, and the fire leaped up in little ecstasies as though its fading life was sweet. It was five now, and the clock over the mantel became articulate in sound. Then as if a brutish sensibility in him was reminded by those thin, tinny beats that the petals were falling from the flowered afternoon, Anthony pulled her quickly to her feet and held her helpless, without breath, in a kiss that was neither a game nor a tribute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her arms fell to her side. In an instant she was free.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't!" she said quietly. "I don't want that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She sat down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her. A frown had gathered between her eyes. Anthony sank down beside her and closed his hand over hers. It was lifeless and unresponsive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!" He made a motion as if to put his arm about her but she drew away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want that," she repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry," he said, a little impatiently. "I—I didn't know you made such fine distinctions."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She did not answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't you kiss me, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to." It seemed to him she had not moved for hours.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A sudden change, isn't it?" Annoyance was growing in his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She appeared uninterested. It was almost as though she were looking at some one else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No reply. He rose and regarded her angrily, uncertainly. Again he sat down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, Gloria, won't you kiss me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No." Her lips, parting for the word, had just faintly stirred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again he got to his feet, this time with less decision, less confidence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right—I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was aware of a certain irremediable lack of originality in his remarks. Indeed he felt that the whole atmosphere had grown oppressive. He wished she would speak, rail at him, cry out upon him, anything but this pervasive and chilling silence. He cursed himself for a weak fool; his clearest desire was to move her, to hurt her, to see her wince. Helplessly, involuntarily, he erred again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're tired of kissing me I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw her lips curl slightly and his last dignity left him. She spoke, at length:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I believe you've made that remark several times before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked about him immediately, saw his hat and coat on a chair—blundered into them, during an intolerable moment. Looking again at the couch he perceived that she had not turned, not even moved. With a shaken, immediately regretted "good-by" he went quickly but without dignity from the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For over a moment Gloria made no sound. Her lips were still curled; her glance was straight, proud, remote. Then her eyes blurred a little, and she murmured three words half aloud to the death-bound fire:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by, you ass!" she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PANIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man had had the hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden of his despair. Instead of seizing the girl and holding her by sheer strength until she became passive to his desire, instead of beating down her will by the force of his own, he had walked, defeated and powerless, from her door, with the corners of his mouth drooping and what force there might have been in his grief and rage hidden behind the manner of a whipped schoolboy. At one minute she had liked him tremendously—ah, she had nearly loved him. In the next he had become a thing of indifference to her, an insolent and efficiently humiliated man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had no great self-reproach—some, of course, but there were other things dominant in him now, far more urgent. He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life. By her three minutes of utter unwavering indifference the girl had lifted herself from a high but somehow casual position in his mind, to be instead his complete preoccupation. However much his wild thoughts varied between a passionate desire for her kisses and an equally passionate craving to hurt and mar her, the residue of his mind craved in finer fashion to possess the triumphant soul that had shone through those three minutes. She was beautiful—but especially she was without mercy. He must own that strength that could send him away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At present no such analysis was possible to Anthony. His clarity of mind, all those endless resources which he thought his irony had brought him were swept aside. Not only for that night but for the days and weeks that followed his books were to be but furniture and his friends only people who lived and walked in a nebulous outer world from which he was trying to escape—that world was cold and full of bleak wind, and for a little while he had seen into a warm house where fires shone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> About midnight he began to realize that he was hungry. He went down into Fifty-second Street, where it was so cold that he could scarcely see; the moisture froze on his lashes and in the corners of his lips. Everywhere dreariness had come down from the north, settling upon the thin and cheerless street, where black bundled figures blacker still against the night, moved stumbling along the sidewalk through the shrieking wind, sliding their feet cautiously ahead as though they were on skis. Anthony turned over toward Sixth Avenue, so absorbed in his thoughts as not to notice that several passers-by had stared at him. His overcoat was wide open, and the wind was biting in, hard and full of merciless death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a while a waitress spoke to him, a fat waitress with black-rimmed eye-glasses from which dangled a long black cord.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Order, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up resentfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wanna order or doncha?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course," he protested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I ast you three times. This ain't no rest-room."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was after two. He was down around Thirtieth Street somewhere, and after a moment he found and translated the<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>S'DLIHC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> in a white semicircle of letters upon the glass front. The place was inhabited sparsely by three or four bleak and half-frozen night-hawks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me some bacon and eggs and coffee, please."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The waitress bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, hurried away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> God! Gloria's kisses had been such flowers. He remembered as though it had been years ago the low freshness of her voice, the beautiful lines of her body shining through her clothes, her face lily-colored under the lamps of the street—under the lamps.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Misery struck at him again, piling a sort of terror upon the ache and yearning. He had lost her. It was true—no denying it, no softening it. But a new idea had seared his sky—what of Bloeckman! What would happen now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be worn—a bright flower in his button-hole, safe and secure from the things she feared. He felt that she had been playing with the idea of marrying Bloeckman, and it was well possible that this disappointment in Anthony might throw her on sudden impulse into Bloeckman's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idea drove him childishly frantic. He wanted to kill Bloeckman and make him suffer for his hideous presumption. He was saying this over and over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate and fright in his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, behind this obscene jealousy, Anthony was in love at last, profoundly and truly in love, as the word goes between man and woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His coffee appeared at his elbow and gave off for a certain time a gradually diminishing wisp of steam. The night manager, seated at his desk, glanced at the motionless figure alone at the last table, and then with a sigh moved down upon him just as the hour hand crossed the figure three on the big clock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WISDOM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew to his self-respect.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own from out the effortless past.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Memory is short," he thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe." Oh, memory is very short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly be. Wasn't it possible, the more possible because she had never loved him, that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men. He winced. The implication struck out at him—other men. Two months—God! Better three weeks, two weeks——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought this the second evening after the catastrophe when he was undressing, and at this point he threw himself down on the bed and lay there, trembling very slightly and looking at the top of the canopy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two weeks—that was worse than no time at all. In two weeks he would approach her much as he would have to now, without personality or confidence—remaining still the man who had gone too far and then for a period that in time was but a moment but in fact an eternity, whined. No, two weeks was too short a time. Whatever poignancy there had been for her in that afternoon must have time to dull. He must give her a period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly, with a true perspective that would remember his pleasantness as well as his humiliation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off, finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then—silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give the desired impression when they met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE INTERVAL</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed completely, the six weeks held many abominable days. He dreaded the sight of Dick and Maury, imagining wildly that they knew all—but when the three met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre of attention; "The Demon Lover" had been accepted for immediate publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He no longer craved the warmth and security of Maury's society which had cheered him no further back than November. Only Gloria could give that now and no one else ever again. So Dick's success rejoiced him only casually and worried him not a little. It meant that the world was going ahead—writing and reading and publishing—and living. And he wanted the world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks—while Gloria forgot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO ENCOUNTERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine's company. He took her once to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him, not as Gloria had, but quieting those erotic sensibilities in him that worried over Gloria. It didn't matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss—to be enjoyed to the utmost for its short moment. To Geraldine things belonged in definite pigeonholes: a kiss was one thing, anything further was quite another; a kiss was all right; the other things were "bad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first was—he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding a single sentence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash—the effect being given of a tug bringing in an ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he muttered inanely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young—with a man he had never seen before!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that the barber's chair was vacated and he read down the newspaper column three times in succession.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink, so it was inevitable that they should converse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Mr. Patch," said Bloeckman amiably enough.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the fluctuations of the mercury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you come in here much?" inquired Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, very seldom." He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until lately, been his favorite.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nice bar. One of the best bars in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He was in evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll be hurrying on. I'm going to dinner with Miss Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced himself as his vis-à-vis's prospective murderer he could not have struck a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous effort he mustered a rigid—oh, so rigid—smile, and said a conventional good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with grief and fear and abominable imaginings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WEAKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in his apartment trying to read "L'Éducation Sentimental," and something in the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free, they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy's. The Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs. Gilbert's voice, soft as maple syrup running into a glass container, had for him a quality of horror in its single "Hello-o-ah?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Miss Gloria's not feeling well. She's lying down, asleep. Who shall I say called?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody!" he shouted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SERENADE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first thing he said to her was: "Why, you've bobbed your hair!" and she answered: "Yes, isn't it gorgeous?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all sunshine outdoors," he said gravely. "Don't you want to take a walk?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt so bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire's chaotic message to whosoever would listen: something about "I worked and I saved and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, road, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" she cried, "I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there's ever been any winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, though!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All women <i>are</i> birds," he ventured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What kind am I?"—quick and eager.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls—and robin girls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I—a buzzard?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed and shook her head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick's a fox terrier, a trick fox terrier," she continued.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Maury's a cat." Simultaneously it occurred to him how like Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a discreet silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever make long engagements?" he pleaded, "even if it's a week ahead, I think it'd be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and afternoon both."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It would be, wouldn't it?" She thought for a moment. "Let's do it next Sunday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. I'll map out a programme that'll take up every minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They would sit on the lounge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore—for he was young now as he would never be again, and more triumphant than death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Six o'clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won a hundred-yard dash!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, "I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that he loved her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He phoned next morning—no hesitation now, no uncertainty—instead a delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all I called you up to say—dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm glad you did."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I could see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You will, to-morrow night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a long time, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes—" Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Couldn't I come to-night?" He dared anything in the glory and revelation of that almost whispered "yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have a date."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I might—I might be able to break it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"—a sheer cry, a rhapsody. "Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another pause and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—I'm glad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony's face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night! His dark eyes were gleaming—around his mouth were lines it was a kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink, starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very still, and looking at him wide-eyed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one triumphant and enduring embrace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ==<i>BOOK TWO</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (129-190)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE RADIANT HOUR</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> AFTER a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in "practical discussions," as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not as much as I do you," the critic of belles-lettres would insist. "If you really loved me you'd want every one to know it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do," she protested; "I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're twins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ecstatic thought!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mother says"—she hesitated uncertainly—"mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and—and in love before they're born."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bilphism gained its easiest convert. . . . After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why did you laugh?" she cried, "you've done that twice before. There's nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don't mind playing the fool, and I don't mind having you do it, but I can't stand it when we're together."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't say you're sorry! If you can't think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a pause. Anthony was depressed. . . . At length Gloria murmured:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I was mean."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You weren't. I was the one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Peace was restored—the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression—yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known it—for three weeks Gloria had seen no one else—and she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughter's attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warm——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> —Yet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabs—quaint device—and the staid bill of fares on which they scribbled "you know I do," pushing it over for the other to see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, Gloria," he would cry, "please let me explain!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't explain. Kiss me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think that's right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I don't like this kiss-and-forget."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't want to argue. I think it's wonderful that we <i>can</i> kiss and forget, and when we can't it'll be time to argue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that Anthony arose and punched himself into his overcoat—for a moment it appeared that the scene of the preceding February was to be repeated, but knowing how deeply she was moved he retained his dignity with his pride, and in a moment Gloria was sobbing in his arms, her lovely face miserable as a frightened little girl's.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile they kept unfolding to each other, unwillingly, by curious reactions and evasions, by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to no avail. She possessed him now—nor did she desire the dead years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony," she would say, "always when I'm mean to you I'm sorry afterward. I'd give my right hand to save you one little moment's pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely—taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfort—of these she never complained until they were over—or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why do you like Muriel?" he demanded one day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't—very much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why do you go with her?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just for some one to go with. They're no exertion, those girls. They sort of believe everything I tell 'em—but I rather like Rachael. I think she's cute—and so clean and slick, don't you? I used to have other friends—in Kansas City and at school—casual, all of them, girls who just flitted into my range and out of it for no more reason than that boys took us places together. They didn't interest me after environment stopped throwing us together. Now they're mostly married. What does it matter—they were all just people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You like men better, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, much better. I've got a man's mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later she told him about the beginnings of her friendship with Bloeckman. One day in Delmonico's, Gloria and Rachael had come upon Bloeckman and Mr. Gilbert having luncheon and curiosity had impelled her to make it a party of four. She had liked him—rather. He was a relief from younger men, satisfied as he was with so little. He humored her and he laughed, whether he understood her or not. She met him several times, despite the open disapproval of her parents, and within a month he had asked her to marry him, tendering her everything from a villa in Italy to a brilliant career on the screen. She had laughed in his face—and he had laughed too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But he had not given up. To the time of Anthony's arrival in the arena he had been making steady progress. She treated him rather well—except that she had called him always by an invidious nickname—perceiving, meanwhile, that he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The night before the engagement was announced she told Bloeckman. It was a heavy blow. She did not enlighten Anthony as to the details, but she implied that he had not hesitated to argue with her. Anthony gathered that the interview had terminated on a stormy note, with Gloria very cool and unmoved lying in her corner of the sofa and Joseph Bloeckman of "Films Par Excellence" pacing the carpet with eyes narrowed and head bowed. Gloria had been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to show it. In a final burst of kindness she had tried to make him hate her, there at the last. But Anthony, understanding that Gloria's indifference was her strongest appeal, judged how futile this must have been. He wondered, often but quite casually, about Bloeckman—finally he forgot him entirely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>HEYDAY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, sunshine, navigation, river, road, metaphor, traffic, city, urban, sound, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon they found front seats on the sunny roof of a bus and rode for hours from the fading Square up along the sullied river, and then, as the stray beams fled the westward streets, sailed down the turgid Avenue, darkening with ominous bees from the department stores. The traffic was clotted and gripped in a patternless jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the crowd as they waited for the moan of the traffic whistle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't it good!" cried Gloria. "Look!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, driver, traffic"><br /> <poem><br /> A miller's wagon, stark white with flour, driven by a powdery clown, passed in front of them behind a white horse and his black team-mate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a pity!" she complained; "they'd look so beautiful in the dusk, if only both horses were white. I'm mighty happy just this minute, in this city."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony shook his head in disagreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think the city's a mountebank. Always struggling to approach the tremendous and impressive urbanity ascribed to it. Trying to be romantically metropolitan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't. I think it is impressive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Momentarily. But it's really a transparent, artificial sort of spectacle. It's got its press-agented stars and its flimsy, unenduring stage settings and, I'll admit, the greatest army of supers ever assembled—" He paused, laughed shortly, and added: "Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, traffic, law, pedestrian, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll bet policemen think people are fools," said Gloria thoughtfully, as she watched a large but cowardly lady being helped across the street. "He always sees them frightened and inefficient and old—they are," she added. And then: "We'd better get off. I told mother I'd have an early supper and go to bed. She says I look tired, damn it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish we were married," he muttered soberly; "there'll be no good night then and we can do just as we want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't it be good! I think we ought to travel a lot. I want to go to the Mediterranean and Italy. And I'd like to go on the stage some time—say for about a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. I'll write a play for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't that be good! And I'll act in it. And then some time when we have more money"—old Adam's death was always thus tactfully alluded to—"we'll build a magnificent estate, won't we?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, with private swimming pools."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens of them. And private rivers. Oh, I wish it were now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Odd coincidence—he had just been wishing that very thing. They plunged like divers into the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic to each other . . . both were walking alone in a dispassionate garden with a ghost found in a dream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them look back and see that the loves of other summers long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their years. Always the most poignant moments were when some artificial barrier kept them apart: in the theatre their hands would steal together, join, give and return gentle pressures through the long dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes—not knowing that they were but following in the footsteps of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment. And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen days now—fifteen—fourteen——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE DISGRESSIONS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Just before the engagement was announced Anthony had gone up to Tarrytown to see his grandfather, who, a little more wizened and grizzly as time played its ultimate chuckling tricks, greeted the news with profound cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you're going to get married, are you?" He said this with such a dubious mildness and shook his head up and down so many times that Anthony was not a little depressed. While he was unaware of his grandfather's intentions he presumed that a large part of the money would come to him. A good deal would go in charities, of course; a good deal to carry on the business of reform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to work?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—" temporized Anthony, somewhat disconcerted. "I <i>am</i> working. You know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, I mean work," said Adam Patch dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not quite sure yet what I'll do. I'm not exactly a beggar, grampa," he asserted with some spirit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man considered this with eyes half closed. Then almost apologetically he asked:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much do you save a year?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing so far——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so after just managing to get along on your money you've decided that by some miracle two of you can get along on it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has some money of her own. Enough to buy clothes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without considering this question impertinent, Anthony answered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About a hundred a month."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's altogether about seventy-five hundred a year." Then he added softly: "It ought to be plenty. If you have any sense it ought to be plenty. But the question is whether you have any or not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it is." It was shameful to be compelled to endure this pious browbeating from the old man, and his next words were stiffened with vanity. "I can manage very well. You seem convinced that I'm utterly worthless. At any rate I came up here simply to tell you that I'm getting married in June. Good-by, sir." With this he turned away and headed for the door, unaware that in that instant his grandfather, for the first time, rather liked him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait!" called Adam Patch, "I want to talk to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony faced about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sit down. Stay all night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Anthony resumed his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to see Gloria to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's her name?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "New York girl? Some one you know?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's from the Middle West."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business her father in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a celluloid corporation or trust or something. They're from Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You going to be married out there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, no, sir. We thought we'd be married in New York—rather quietly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Like to have the wedding out here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated. The suggestion made no appeal to him, but it was certainly the part of wisdom to give the old man, if possible, a proprietary interest in his married life. In addition Anthony was a little touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very kind of you, grampa, but wouldn't it be a lot of trouble?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everything's a lot of trouble. Your father was married here—but in the old house."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—I thought he was married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch considered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. He <i>was</i> married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony felt a moment's embarrassment at having made the correction, and he covered it up with words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll speak to Gloria about it. Personally I'd like to, but of course it's up to the Gilberts, you see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His grandfather drew a long sigh, half closed his eyes, and sank back in his chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a hurry?" he asked in a different tone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not especially."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder," began Adam Patch, looking out with a mild, kindly glance at the lilac bushes that rustled against the windows, "I wonder if you ever think about the after-life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—sometimes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think a great deal about the after-life." His eyes were dim but his voice was confident and clear. "I was sitting here to-day thinking about what's lying in wait for us, and somehow I began to remember an afternoon nearly sixty-five years ago, when I was playing with my little sister Annie, down where that summer-house is now." He pointed out into the long flower-garden, his eyes trembling of tears, his voice shaking.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I began thinking—and it seemed to me that <i>you</i> ought to think a little more about the after-life. You ought to be—steadier"—he paused and seemed to grope about for the right word—"more industrious—why——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then his expression altered, his entire personality seemed to snap together like a trap, and when he continued the softness had gone from his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—Why, when I was just two years older than you," he rasped with a cunning chuckle, "I sent three members of the firm of Wrenn and Hunt to the poorhouse."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started with embarrassment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, good-by," added his grandfather suddenly, "you'll miss your train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony left the house unusually elated, and strangely sorry for the old man; not because his wealth could buy him "neither youth nor digestion" but because he had asked Anthony to be married there, and because he had forgotten something about his son's wedding that he should have remembered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel, who was one of the ushers, caused Anthony and Gloria much distress in the last few weeks by continually stealing the rays of their spot-light. "The Demon Lover" had been published in April, and it interrupted the love affair as it may be said to have interrupted everything its author came in contact with. It was a highly original, rather overwritten piece of sustained description concerned with a Don Juan of the New York slums. As Maury and Anthony had said before, as the more hospitable critics were saying then, there was no writer in America with such power to describe the atavistic and unsubtle reactions of that section of society.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The book hesitated and then suddenly "went." Editions, small at first, then larger, crowded each other week by week. A spokesman of the Salvation Army denounced it as a cynical misrepresentation of all the uplift taking place in the underworld. Clever press-agenting spread the unfounded rumor that "Gypsy" Smith was beginning a libel suit because one of the principal characters was a burlesque of himself. It was barred from the public library of Burlington, Iowa, and a Mid-Western columnist announced by innuendo that Richard Caramel was in a sanitarium with delirium tremens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The author, indeed, spent his days in a state of pleasant madness. The book was in his conversation three-fourths of the time—he wanted to know if one had heard "the latest"; he would go into a store and in a loud voice order books to be charged to him, in order to catch a chance morsel of recognition from clerk or customer. He knew to a town in what sections of the country it was selling best; he knew exactly what he cleared on each edition, and when he met any one who had not read it, or, as it happened only too often, had not heard of it, he succumbed to moody depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was natural for Anthony and Gloria to decide, in their jealousy, that he was so swollen with conceit as to be a bore. To Dick's great annoyance Gloria publicly boasted that she had never read "The Demon Lover," and didn't intend to until every one stopped talking about it. As a matter of fact, she had no time to read now, for the presents were pouring in—first a scattering, then an avalanche, varying from the bric-à-brac of forgotten family friends to the photographs of forgotten poor relations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gave them an elaborate "drinking set," which included silver goblets, cocktail shaker, and bottle-openers. The extortion from Dick was more conventional—a tea set from Tiffany's. From Joseph Bloeckman came a simple and exquisite travelling clock, with his card. There was even a cigarette-holder from Bounds; this touched Anthony and made him want to weep—indeed, any emotion short of hysteria seemed natural in the half-dozen people who were swept up by this tremendous sacrifice to convention. The room set aside in the Plaza bulged with offerings sent by Harvard friends and by associates of his grandfather, with remembrances of Gloria's Farmover days, and with rather pathetic trophies from her former beaux, which last arrived with esoteric, melancholy messages, written on cards tucked carefully inside, beginning "I little thought when—" or "I'm sure I wish you all the happiness—" or even "When you get this I shall be on my way to——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The most munificent gift was simultaneously the most disappointing. It was a concession of Adam Patch's—a check for five thousand dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To most of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in her unsmiling face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Darn nice, isn't it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No answer until an hour later when she would give him a careful account of her precise reaction to the gift, whether it would have been improved by being smaller or larger, whether she was surprised at getting it, and, if so, just how much surprised.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert arranged and rearranged a hypothetical house, distributing the gifts among the different rooms, tabulating articles as "second-best clock" or "silver to use <i>every</i> day," and embarrassing Anthony and Gloria by semi-facetious references to a room she called the nursery. She was pleased by old Adam's gift and thereafter had it that he was a very ancient soul, "as much as anything else." As Adam Patch never quite decided whether she referred to the advancing senility of his mind or to some private and psychic schema of her own, it cannot be said to have pleased him. Indeed he always spoke of her to Anthony as "that old woman, the mother," as though she were a character in a comedy he had seen staged many times before. Concerning Gloria he was unable to make up his mind. She attracted him but, as she herself told Anthony, he had decided that she was frivolous and was afraid to approve of her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Five days!—A dancing platform was being erected on the lawn at Tarrytown. Four days!—A special train was chartered to convey the guests to and from New York. Three days!——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE DIARY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> She was dressed in blue silk pajamas and standing by her bed with her hand on the light to put the room in darkness, when she changed her mind and opening a table drawer brought out a little black book—a "Line-a-day" diary. This she had kept for seven years. Many of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial "I am going to keep a diary for my children." Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time—in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fashionable at Yale—she had been flattered because "Touch down" Michaud had "rushed" her all evening. She sighed, remembering the grown-up satin dress she had been so proud of and the orchestra playing "Yama-yama, My Yama Man" and "Jungle-Town." So long ago!—the names: Eltynge Reardon, Jim Parsons, "Curly" McGregor, Kenneth Cowan, "Fish-eye" Fry (whom she had liked for being so ugly), Carter Kirby—he had sent her a present; so had Tudor Baird;—Marty Reffer, the first man she had been in love with for more than a day, and Stuart Holcome, who had run away with her in his automobile and tried to make her marry him by force. And Larry Fenwick, whom she had always admired because he had told her one night that if she wouldn't kiss him she could get out of his car and walk home. What a list!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And, after all, an obsolete list. She was in love now, set for the eternal romance that was to be the synthesis of all romance, yet sad for these men and these moonlights and for the "thrills" she had had—and the kisses. The past—her past, oh, what a joy! She had been exuberantly happy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Turning over the pages her eyes rested idly on the scattered entries of the past four months. She read the last few carefully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, tree, moonlight"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 1st</i>.—I know Bill Carstairs hates me because I was so disagreeable, but I hate to be sentimentalized over sometimes. We drove out to the Rockyear Country Club and the most wonderful moon kept shining through the trees. My silver dress is getting tarnished. Funny how one forgets the other nights at Rockyear—with Kenneth Cowan when I loved him so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 3rd</i>.—After two hours of Schroeder who, they inform me, has millions, I've decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men. There's nothing so often overdone and from to-day I swear to be amused. We talked about 'love'—how banal! With how many men have I talked about love?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 11th</i>.—Patch actually called up to-day! and when he forswore me about a month ago he fairly raged out the door. I'm gradually losing faith in any man being susceptible to fatal injuries.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 20th</i>.—Spent the day with Anthony. Maybe I'll marry him some time. I kind of like his ideas—he stimulates all the originality in me. Blockhead came around about ten in his new car and took me out Riverside Drive. I liked him to-night: he's so considerate. He knew I didn't want to talk so he was quiet all during the ride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 21st</i>.—Woke up thinking of Anthony and sure enough he called and sounded sweet on the phone—so I broke a date for him. To-day I feel I'd break anything for him, including the ten commandments and my neck. He's coming at eight and I shall wear pink and look very fresh and starched——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She paused here, remembering that after he had gone that night she had undressed with the shivering April air streaming in the windows. Yet it seemed she had not felt the cold, warmed by the profound banalities burning in her heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next entry occurred a few days later:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 24th</i>.—I want to marry Anthony, because husbands are so often 'husbands' and I must marry a lover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are four general types of husbands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (1) The husband who always wants to stay in in the evening, has no vices and works for a salary. Totally undesirable!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (2) The atavistic master whose mistress one is, to wait on his pleasure. This sort always considers every pretty woman 'shallow,' a sort of peacock with arrested development.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (3) Next comes the worshipper, the idolater of his wife and all that is his, to the utter oblivion of everything else. This sort demands an emotional actress for a wife. God! it must be an exertion to be thought righteous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (4) And Anthony—a temporarily passionate lover with wisdom enough to realize when it has flown and that it must fly. And I want to get married to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What grubworms women are to crawl on their bellies through colorless marriages! Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting—it's going to be the performance, the live, lovely, glamourous performance, and the world shall be the scenery. I refuse to dedicate my life to posterity. Surely one owes as much to the current generation as to one's unwanted children. What a fate—to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers. . . . Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Such children, however, poor dear babies, have little in common with the wedded state.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 7th</i>.—Moral question: Was it wrong to make Bloeckman love me? Because I did really make him. He was almost sweetly sad to-night. How opportune it was that my throat is swollen plunk together and tears were easy to muster. But he's just the past—buried already in my plentiful lavender.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 8th</i>.—And to-day I've promised not to chew my mouth. Well, I won't, I suppose—but if he'd only asked me not to eat!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blowing bubbles—that's what we're doing, Anthony and me. And we blew such beautiful ones to-day, and they'll explode and then we'll blow more and more, I guess—bubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water is used up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the June 8th's of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girl—it was the name, Bob Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it was—and, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember. Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a moment she found a pencil and holding it unsteadily drew three parallel lines beneath the last entry. Then she printed FINIS in large capitals, put the book back in the drawer, and crept into bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BREATH OF THE CAVE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment after the bridal dinner, Anthony snapped out his lights and, feeling impersonal and fragile as a piece of china waiting on a serving table, got into bed. It was a warm night—a sheet was enough for comfort—and through his wide-open windows came sound, evanescent and summery, alive with remote anticipation. He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colorful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust. And there was something beyond that; he knew now. There was the union of his soul with Gloria's, whose radiant fire and freshness was the living material of which the dead beauty of books was made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving sound—something the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness—and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that a new note separated itself jarringly from the soft crying of the night. It was a noise from an areaway within a hundred feet from his rear window, the noise of a woman's laughter. It began low, incessant and whining—some servant-maid with her fellow, he thought—and then it grew in volume and became hysterical, until it reminded him of a girl he had seen overcome with nervous laughter at a vaudeville performance. Then it sank, receded, only to rise again and include words—a coarse joke, some bit of obscure horseplay he could not distinguish. It would break off for a moment and he would just catch the low rumble of a man's voice, then begin again—interminably; at first annoying, then strangely terrible. He shivered, and getting up out of bed went to the window. It had reached a high point, tensed and stifled, almost the quality of a scream—then it ceased and left behind it a silence empty and menacing as the greater silence overhead. Anthony stood by the window a moment longer before he returned to his bed. He found himself upset and shaken. Try as he might to strangle his reaction, some animal quality in that unrestrained laughter had grasped at his imagination, and for the first time in four months aroused his old aversion and horror toward all the business of life. The room had grown smothery. He wanted to be out in some cool and bitter breeze, miles above the cities, and to live serene and detached back in the corners of his mind. Life was that sound out there, that ghastly reiterated female sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my <i>God</i>!" he cried, drawing in his breath sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Burying his face in the pillows he tried in vain to concentrate upon the details of the next day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MORNING</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the gray light he found that it was only five o'clock. He regretted nervously that he had awakened so early—he would appear fagged at the wedding. He envied Gloria who could hide her fatigue with careful pigmentation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In his bathroom he contemplated himself in the mirror and saw that he was unusually white—half a dozen small imperfections stood out against the morning pallor of his complexion, and overnight he had grown the faint stubble of a beard—the general effect, he fancied, was unprepossessing, haggard, half unwell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On his dressing table were spread a number of articles which he told over carefully with suddenly fumbling fingers—their tickets to California, the book of traveller's checks, his watch, set to the half minute, the key to his apartment, which he must not forget to give to Maury, and, most important of all, the ring. It was of platinum set around with small emeralds; Gloria had insisted on this; she had always wanted an emerald wedding ring, she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the third present he had given her; first had come the engagement ring, and then a little gold cigarette-case. He would be giving her many things now—clothes and jewels and friends and excitement. It seemed absurd that from now on he would pay for all her meals. It was going to cost: he wondered if he had not underestimated for this trip, and if he had not better cash a larger check. The question worried him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was the day—unsought, unsuspected six months before, but now breaking in yellow light through his east window, dancing along the carpet as though the sun were smiling at some ancient and reiterated gag of his own.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a nervous one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By God!" he muttered to himself, "I'm as good as married!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE USHERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Six young men in</i> CROSS PATCH'S <i>library growing more and more cheery under the influence of Mumm's Extra Dry, set surreptitiously in cold pails by the bookcases.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FIRST YOUNG MAN: By golly! Believe me, in my next book I'm going to do a wedding scene that'll knock 'em cold!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE SECOND YOUNG MAN: Met a débutante th'other day said she thought your book was powerful. As a rule young girls cry for this primitive business.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE THIRD YOUNG MAN: Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Walking up and down outside talking to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: Lord! Did you see the minister? Most peculiar looking teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Think they're natural. Funny thing people having gold teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: They say they love 'em. My dentist told me once a woman came to him and insisted on having two of her teeth covered with gold. No reason at all. All right the way they were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Hear you got out a book, Dicky. 'Gratulations!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Stiffly</i>) Thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Innocently</i>) What is it? College stories?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>More stiffly</i>) No. Not college stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Pity! Hasn't been a good book about Harvard for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Touchily</i>) Why don't you supply the lack?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model"><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: I think I saw a squad of guests turn the drive in a Packard just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Might open a couple more bottles on the strength of that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: It was the shock of my life when I heard the old man was going to have a wet wedding. Rabid prohibitionist, you know.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Snapping his fingers excitedly</i>) By gad! I knew I'd forgotten something. Kept thinking it was my vest.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What was it?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Maliciously</i>) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Facetiously</i>) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN <i>looks nervously at his watch. Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an ass I am!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding. Name's Haines or Hampton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Hurriedly spurring his imagination</i>) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my glass, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Who? Old Adam?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: He's my uncle, Otis.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Yes, Cable, she is.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, Dicky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why are all grooms given the title of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Maury, the professional cynic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Faker yourself! What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: You don't know yourself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Don't hedge!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, natural selection?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Wrong.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I give it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There <i>is</i> a connection.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What is it then?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion</i>) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Frowning</i>) Let me just think a minute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Sitting up suddenly</i>) Listen!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Weightily</i>) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to God I'd sent that present.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCH'S organ</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There were five hundred eyes boring through the back of his cutaway and the sun glinting on the clergyman's inappropriately bourgeois teeth. With difficulty he restrained a laugh. Gloria was saying something in a clear proud voice and he tried to think that the affair was irrevocable, that every second was significant, that his life was being slashed into two periods and that the face of the world was changing before him. He tried to recapture that ecstatic sensation of ten weeks before. All these emotions eluded him, he did not even feel the physical nervousness of that very morning—it was all one gigantic aftermath. And those gold teeth! He wondered if the clergyman were married; he wondered perversely if a clergyman could perform his own marriage service. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But as he took Gloria into his arms he was conscious of a strong reaction. The blood was moving in his veins now. A languorous and pleasant content settled like a weight upon him, bringing responsibility and possession. He was married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening—and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Late one night they arrived in Santa Barbara, where the night clerk at the Hotel Lafcadio refused to admit them, on the grounds that they were not married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The clerk thought that Gloria was beautiful. He did not think that anything so beautiful as Gloria could be moral.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"CON AMORE"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That first half-year—the trip West, the long months' loiter along the California coast, and the gray house near Greenwich where they lived until late autumn made the country dreary—those days, those places, saw the enraptured hours. The breathless idyl of their engagement gave way, first, to the intense romance of the more passionate relationship. The breathless idyl left them, fled on to other lovers; they looked around one day and it was gone, how they scarcely knew. Had either of them lost the other in the days of the idyl, the love lost would have been ever to the loser that dim desire without fulfilment which stands back of all life. But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idyl passed, bearing with it its extortion of youth. Came a day when Gloria found that other men no longer bored her; came a day when Anthony discovered that he could sit again late into the evening, talking with Dick of those tremendous abstractions that had once occupied his world. But, knowing they had had the best of love, they clung to what remained. Love lingered—by way of long conversations at night into those stark hours when the mind thins and sharpens and the borrowings from dreams become the stuff of all life, by way of deep and intimate kindnesses they developed toward each other, by way of their laughing at the same absurdities and thinking the same things noble and the same things sad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was, first of all, a time of discovery. The things they found in each other were so diverse, so intermixed and, moreover, so sugared with love as to seem at the time not so much discoveries as isolated phenomena—to be allowed for, and to be forgotten. Anthony found that he was living with a girl of tremendous nervous tension and of the most high-handed selfishness. Gloria knew within a month that her husband was an utter coward toward any one of a million phantasms created by his imagination. Her perception was intermittent, for this cowardice sprang out, became almost obscenely evident, then faded and vanished as though it had been only a creation of her own mind. Her reactions to it were not those attributed to her sex—it roused her neither to disgust nor to a premature feeling of motherhood. Herself almost completely without physical fear, she was unable to understand, and so she made the most of what she felt to be his fear's redeeming feature, which was that though he was a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain—when his imagination was given play—he had yet a sort of dashing recklessness that moved her on its brief occasions almost to admiration, and a pride that usually steadied him when he thought he was observed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed, risk, affect, safety, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The trait first showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough café she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred in a San Francisco hotel, when they had been married a week, gave the matter certainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after midnight and pitch dark in their room. Gloria was dozing off and Anthony's even breathing beside her made her suppose that he was asleep, when suddenly she saw him raise himself on his elbow and stare at the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it, dearest?" she murmured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing"—he had relaxed to his pillow and turned toward her—"nothing, my darling wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable. . . . Come into my arms," she added in a rush of tenderness; "I can sleep so well, so well with you in my arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Coming into Gloria's arms had a quite definite meaning. It required that he should slide one arm under her shoulder, lock both arms about her, and arrange himself as nearly as possible as a sort of three-sided crib for her luxurious ease. Anthony, who tossed, whose arms went tinglingly to sleep after half an hour of that position, would wait until she was asleep and roll her gently over to her side of the bed—then, left to his own devices, he would curl himself into his usual knots.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, having attained sentimental comfort, retired into her doze. Five minutes ticked away on Bloeckman's travelling clock; silence lay all about the room, over the unfamiliar, impersonal furniture and the half-oppressive ceiling that melted imperceptibly into invisible walls on both sides. Then there was suddenly a rattling flutter at the window, staccato and loud upon the hushed, pent air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a leap Anthony was out of the bed and standing tense beside it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" he cried in an awful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria lay very still, wide awake now and engrossed not so much in the rattling as in the rigid breathless figure whose voice had reached from the bedside into that ominous dark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sound stopped; the room was quiet as before—then Anthony pouring words in at the telephone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Some one just tried to get into the room! . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's some one at the window!" His voice was emphatic now, faintly terrified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right! Hurry!" He hung up the receiver; stood motionless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . There was a rush and commotion at the door, a knocking—Anthony went to open it upon an excited night clerk with three bell-boys grouped staring behind him. Between thumb and finger the night clerk held a wet pen with the threat of a weapon; one of the bell-boys had seized a telephone directory and was looking at it sheepishly. Simultaneously the group was joined by the hastily summoned house-detective, and as one man they surged into the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lights sprang on with a click. Gathering a piece of sheet about her Gloria dove away from sight, shutting her eyes to keep out the horror of this unpremeditated visitation. There was no vestige of an idea in her stricken sensibilities save that her Anthony was at grievous fault.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The night clerk was speaking from the window, his tone half of the servant, half of the teacher reproving a schoolboy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody out there," he declared conclusively; "my golly, nobody <i>could</i> be out there. This here's a sheer fall to the street of fifty feet. It was the wind you heard, tugging at the blind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she was sorry for him. She wanted only to comfort him and draw him back tenderly into her arms, to tell them to go away because the thing their presence connotated was odious. Yet she could not raise her head for shame. She heard a broken sentence, apologies, conventions of the employee and one unrestrained snicker from a bell-boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been nervous as the devil all evening," Anthony was saying; "somehow that noise just shook me—I was only about half awake."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sure, I understand," said the night clerk with comfortable tact; "been that way myself."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door closed; the lights snapped out; Anthony crossed the floor quietly and crept into bed. Gloria, feigning to be heavy with sleep, gave a quiet little sigh and slipped into his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was it, dear?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing," he answered, his voice still shaken; "I thought there was somebody at the window, so I looked out, but I couldn't see any one and the noise kept up, so I phoned down-stairs. Sorry if I disturbed you, but I'm awfully darn nervous to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Catching the lie, she gave an interior start—he had not gone to the window, nor near the window. He had stood by the bed and then sent in his call of fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said—and then: "I'm so sleepy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an hour they lay awake side by side, Gloria with her eyes shut so tight that blue moons formed and revolved against backgrounds of deepest mauve, Anthony staring blindly into the darkness overhead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After many weeks it came gradually out into the light, to be laughed and joked at. They made a tradition to fit over it—whenever that overpowering terror of the night attacked Anthony, she would put her arms about him and croon, soft as a song:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll protect my Anthony. Oh, nobody's ever going to harm my Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would laugh as though it were a jest they played for their mutual amusement, but to Gloria it was never quite a jest. It was, at first, a keen disappointment; later, it was one of the times when she controlled her temper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The management of Gloria's temper, whether it was aroused by a lack of hot water for her bath or by a skirmish with her husband, became almost the primary duty of Anthony's day. It must be done just so—by this much silence, by that much pressure, by this much yielding, by that much force. It was in her angers with their attendant cruelties that her inordinate egotism chiefly displayed itself. Because she was brave, because she was "spoiled," because of her outrageous and commendable independence of judgment, and finally because of her arrogant consciousness that she had never seen a girl as beautiful as herself, Gloria had developed into a consistent, practising Nietzschean. This, of course, with overtones of profound sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, for example, her stomach. She was used to certain dishes, and she had a strong conviction that she could not possibly eat anything else. There must be a lemonade and a tomato sandwich late in the morning, then a light lunch with a stuffed tomato. Not only did she require food from a selection of a dozen dishes, but in addition this food must be prepared in just a certain way. One of the most annoying half hours of the first fortnight occurred in Los Angeles, when an unhappy waiter brought her a tomato stuffed with chicken salad instead of celery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We always serve it that way, madame," he quavered to the gray eyes that regarded him wrathfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria made no answer, but when the waiter had turned discreetly away she banged both fists upon the table until the china and silver rattled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor Gloria!" laughed Anthony unwittingly, "you can't get what you want ever, can you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't eat <i>stuff</i>!" she flared up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll call back the waiter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want you to! He doesn't know anything, the darn <i>fool</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it isn't the hotel's fault. Either send it back, forget it, or be a sport and eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shut up!" she said succinctly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why take it out on me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I'm <i>not</i>," she wailed, "but I simply <i>can't</i> eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony subsided helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go somewhere else," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't <i>want</i> to go anywhere else. I'm tired of being trotted around to a dozen cafés and not getting <i>one thing</i> fit to eat."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When did we go around to a dozen cafés?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd <i>have</i> to in <i>this</i> town," insisted Gloria with ready sophistry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, bewildered, tried another tack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you try to eat it? It can't be as bad as you think."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just—because—I—don't—like—chicken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She picked up her fork and began poking contemptuously at the tomato, and Anthony expected her to begin flinging the stuffings in all directions. He was sure that she was approximately as angry as she had ever been—for an instant he had detected a spark of hate directed as much toward him as toward any one else—and Gloria angry was, for the present, unapproachable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, surprisingly, he saw that she had tentatively raised the fork to her lips and tasted the chicken salad. Her frown had not abated and he stared at her anxiously, making no comment and daring scarcely to breathe. She tasted another forkful—in another moment she was eating. With difficulty Anthony restrained a chuckle; when at length he spoke his words had no possible connection with chicken salad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This incident, with variations, ran like a lugubrious fugue through the first year of marriage; always it left Anthony baffled, irritated, and depressed. But another rough brushing of temperaments, a question of laundry-bags, he found even more annoying as it ended inevitably in a decisive defeat for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon in Coronado, where they made the longest stay of their trip, more than three weeks, Gloria was arraying herself brilliantly for tea. Anthony, who had been down-stairs listening to the latest rumor bulletins of war in Europe, entered the room, kissed the back of her powdered neck, and went to his dresser. After a great pulling out and pushing in of drawers, evidently unsatisfactory, he turned around to the Unfinished Masterpiece.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got any handkerchiefs, Gloria?" he asked. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her golden head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a one. I'm using one of yours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The last one, I deduce." He laughed dryly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She applied an emphatic though very delicate contour to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't the laundry back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated—then, with sudden discernment, opened the closet door. His suspicions were verified. On the hook provided hung the blue bag furnished by the hotel. This was full of his clothes—he had put them there himself. The floor beneath it was littered with an astonishing mass of finery—lingerie, stockings, dresses, nightgowns, and pajamas—most of it scarcely worn but all of it coming indubitably under the general heading of Gloria's laundry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He stood holding the closet door open.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lip line was being erased and corrected according to some mysterious perspective; not a finger trembled as she manipulated the lip-stick, not a glance wavered in his direction. It was a triumph of concentration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever sent out the laundry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It most certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess I haven't, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," began Anthony, sitting down on the bed and trying to catch her mirrored eyes, "you're a nice fellow, you are! I've sent it out every time it's been sent since we left New York, and over a week ago you promised you'd do it for a change. All you'd have to do would be to cram your own junk into that bag and ring for the chambermaid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, why fuss about the laundry?" exclaimed Gloria petulantly, "I'll take care of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I haven't fussed about it. I'd just as soon divide the bother with you, but when we run out of handkerchiefs it's darn near time something's done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered that he was being extraordinarily logical. But Gloria, unimpressed, put away her cosmetics and casually offered him her back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hook me up," she suggested; "Anthony, dearest, I forgot all about it. I meant to, honestly, and I will to-day. Don't be cross with your sweetheart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What could Anthony do then but draw her down upon his knee and kiss a shade of color from her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't mind," she murmured with a smile, radiant and magnanimous. "You can kiss all the paint off my lips any time you want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They went down to tea. They bought some handkerchiefs in a notion store near by. All was forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But two days later Anthony looked in the closet and saw the bag still hung limp upon its hook and that the gay and vivid pile on the floor had increased surprisingly in height.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—" Her voice was full of real distress. Despairingly Anthony went to the phone and called the chambermaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," he said impatiently, "that you expect me to be some sort of French valet to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed, so infectiously that Anthony was unwise enough to smile. Unfortunate man! In some intangible manner his smile made her mistress of the situation—with an air of injured righteousness she went emphatically to the closet and began pushing her laundry violently into the bag. Anthony watched her—ashamed of himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There!" she said, implying that her fingers had been worked to the bone by a brutal taskmaster.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He considered, nevertheless, that he had given her an object-lesson and that the matter was closed, but on the contrary it was merely beginning. Laundry pile followed laundry pile—at long intervals; dearth of handkerchief followed dearth of handkerchief—at short ones; not to mention dearth of sock, of shirt, of everything. And Anthony found at length that either he must send it out himself or go through the increasingly unpleasant ordeal of a verbal battle with Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA AND GENERAL LEE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On their way East they stopped two days in Washington, strolling about with some hostility in its atmosphere of harsh repellent light, of distance without freedom, of pomp without splendor—it seemed a pasty-pale and self-conscious city. The second day they made an ill-advised trip to General Lee's old home at Arlington.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect, temperature, smell, passengers"><br /> <poem><br /> The bus which bore them was crowded with hot, unprosperous people, and Anthony, intimate to Gloria, felt a storm brewing. It broke at the Zoo, where the party stopped for ten minutes. The Zoo, it seemed, smelt of monkeys. Anthony laughed; Gloria called down the curse of Heaven upon monkeys, including in her malevolence all the passengers of the bus and their perspiring offspring who had hied themselves monkey-ward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus"><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually the bus moved on to Arlington. There it met other busses and immediately a swarm of women and children were leaving a trail of peanut-shells through the halls of General Lee and crowding at length into the room where he was married. On the wall of this room a pleasing sign announced in large red letters "Ladies' Toilet." At this final blow Gloria broke down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think it's perfectly terrible!" she said furiously, "the idea of letting these people come here! And of encouraging them by making these houses show-places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," objected Anthony, "if they weren't kept up they'd go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if they did!" she exclaimed as they sought the wide pillared porch. "Do you think they've left a breath of 1860 here? This has become a thing of 1914."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you want to preserve old things?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you <i>can't</i>, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year—then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you think that just as a time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these—these <i>animals</i>"—she waved her hand around—"get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses—bound for dust—mortal——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small boy appeared beside them and, swinging a handful of banana-peels, flung them valiantly in the direction of the Potomac.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SENTIMENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously with the fall of Liège, Anthony and Gloria arrived in New York. In retrospect the six weeks seemed miraculously happy. They had found to a great extent, as most young couples find in some measure, that they possessed in common many fixed ideas and curiosities and odd quirks of mind; they were essentially companionable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it had been a struggle to keep many of their conversations on the level of discussions. Arguments were fatal to Gloria's disposition. She had all her life been associated either with her mental inferiors or with men who, under the almost hostile intimidation of her beauty, had not dared to contradict her; naturally, then, it irritated her when Anthony emerged from the state in which her pronouncements were an infallible and ultimate decision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He failed to realize, at first, that this was the result partly of her "female" education and partly of her beauty, and he was inclined to include her with her entire sex as curiously and definitely limited. It maddened him to find she had no sense of justice. But he discovered that, when a subject did interest her, her brain tired less quickly than his. What he chiefly missed in her mind was the pedantic teleology—the sense of order and accuracy, the sense of life as a mysteriously correlated piece of patchwork, but he understood after a while that such a quality in her would have been incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each other's hearts. The day they left the hotel in Coronado she sat down on one of the beds while they were packing, and began to weep bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest—" His arms were around her; he pulled her head down upon his shoulder. "What is it, my own Gloria? Tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going away," she sobbed. "Oh, Anthony, it's sort of the first place we've lived together. Our two little beds here—side by side—they'll be always waiting for us, and we're never coming back to 'em any more."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was tearing at his heart as she always could. Sentiment came over him, rushed into his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, why, we're going on to another room. And two other little beds. We're going to be together all our lives."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Words flooded from her in a low husky voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it won't be—like our two beds—ever again. Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost—something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He held her passionately near, discerning far beyond any criticism of her sentiment, a wise grasping of the minute, if only an indulgence of her desire to cry—Gloria the idler, caresser of her own dreams, extracting poignancy from the memorable things of life and youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon when he returned from the station with the tickets he found her asleep on one of the beds, her arm curled about a black object which he could not at first identify. Coming closer he found it was one of his shoes, not a particularly new one, nor clean one, but her face, tear-stained, was pressed against it, and he understood her ancient and most honorable message. There was almost ecstasy in waking her and seeing her smile at him, shy but well aware of her own nicety of imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With no appraisal of the worth or dross of these two things, it seemed to Anthony that they lay somewhere near the heart of love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE GRAY HOUSE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing—oh, that eternal hand!—a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And this time with Gloria and Anthony, this first year of marriage, and the gray house caught them in that stage when the organ-grinder was slowly undergoing his inevitable metamorphosis. She was twenty-three; he was twenty-six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gray house was, at first, of sheerly pastoral intent. They lived impatiently in Anthony's apartment for the first fortnight after the return from California, in a stifled atmosphere of open trunks, too many callers, and the eternal laundry-bags. They discussed with their friends the stupendous problem of their future. Dick and Maury would sit with them agreeing solemnly, almost thoughtfully, as Anthony ran through his list of what they "ought" to do, and where they "ought" to live.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to take Gloria abroad," he complained, "except for this damn war—and next to that I'd sort of like to have a place in the country, somewhere near New York, of course, where I could write—or whatever I decide to do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't he cute?" she required of Maury. "'Whatever he decides to do!' But what am <i>I</i> going to do if he works? Maury, will you take me around if Anthony works?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anyway, I'm not going to work yet," said Anthony quickly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was vaguely understood between them that on some misty day he would enter a sort of glorified diplomatic service and be envied by princes and prime ministers for his beautiful wife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria helplessly, "I'm sure I don't know. We talk and talk and never get anywhere, and we ask all our friends and they just answer the way we want 'em to. I wish somebody'd take care of us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you go out to—out to Greenwich or something?" suggested Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like that," said Gloria, brightening. "Do you think we could get a house there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick shrugged his shoulders and Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You two amuse me," he said. "Of all the unpractical people! As soon as a place is mentioned you expect us to pull great piles of photographs out of our pockets showing the different styles of architecture available in bungalows."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's just what I don't want," wailed Gloria, "a hot stuffy bungalow, with a lot of babies next door and their father cutting the grass in his shirt sleeves——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For Heaven's sake, Gloria," interrupted Maury, "nobody wants to lock you up in a bungalow. Who in God's name brought bungalows into the conversation? But you'll never get a place anywhere unless you go out and hunt for it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go where? You say 'go out and hunt for it,' but where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With dignity Maury waved his hand paw-like about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Out anywhere. Out in the country. There're lots of places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look here!" Richard Caramel brought his yellow eye rakishly into play. "The trouble with you two is that you're all disorganized. Do you know anything about New York State? Shut up, Anthony, I'm talking to Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," she admitted finally, "I've been to two or three house parties in Portchester and around in Connecticut—but, of course, that isn't in New York State, is it? And neither is Morristown," she finished with drowsy irrelevance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a shout of laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Lord!" cried Dick, "neither is Morristown!' No, and neither is Santa Barbara, Gloria. Now listen. To begin with, unless you have a fortune there's no use considering any place like Newport or Southhampton or Tuxedo. They're out of the question."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed to this solemnly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And personally I hate New Jersey. Then, of course, there's upper New York, above Tuxedo."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> "Too cold," said Gloria briefly. "I was there once in an automobile."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it seems to me there're a lot of towns like Rye between New York and Greenwich where you could buy a little gray house of some——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria leaped at the phrase triumphantly. For the first time since their return East she knew what she wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>yes!</i>" she cried. "Oh, <i>yes!</i> that's it: a little gray house with sort of white around and a whole lot of swamp maples just as brown and gold as an October picture in a gallery. Where can we find one?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Unfortunately, I've mislaid my list of little gray houses with swamp maples around them—but I'll try to find it. Meanwhile you take a piece of paper and write down the names of seven possible towns. And every day this week you take a trip to one of those towns."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" protested Gloria, collapsing mentally, "why won't you do it for us? I hate trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, hire a car, and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm tired of discussing it. Seems to me all we do is talk about where to live."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My exquisite wife wearies of thought," remarked Anthony ironically. "She must have a tomato sandwich to stimulate her jaded nerves. Let's go out to tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the unfortunate upshot of this conversation, they took Dick's advice literally, and two days later went out to Rye, where they wandered around with an irritated real estate agent, like bewildered babes in the wood. They were shown houses at a hundred a month which closely adjoined other houses at a hundred a month; they were shown isolated houses to which they invariably took violent dislikes, though they submitted weakly to the agent's desire that they "look at that stove—some stove!" and to a great shaking of doorposts and tapping of walls, intended evidently to show that the house would not immediately collapse, no matter how convincingly it gave that impression. They gazed through windows into interiors furnished either "commercially" with slab-like chairs and unyielding settees, or "home-like" with the melancholy bric-à-brac of other summers—crossed tennis rackets, fit-form couches, and depressing Gibson girls. With a feeling of guilt they looked at a few really nice houses, aloof, dignified, and cool—at three hundred a month. They went away from Rye thanking the real estate agent very much indeed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the crowded train back to New York the seat behind was occupied by a super-respirating Latin whose last few meals had obviously been composed entirely of garlic. They reached the apartment gratefully, almost hysterically, and Gloria rushed for a hot bath in the reproachless bathroom. So far as the question of a future abode was concerned both of them were incapacitated for a week.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The matter eventually worked itself out with unhoped-for romance. Anthony ran into the living room one afternoon fairly radiating "the idea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "I've got it," he was exclaiming as though he had just caught a mouse. "We'll get a car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gee whiz! Haven't we got troubles enough taking care of ourselves?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, rural, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me a second to explain, can't you? Just let's leave our stuff with Dick and just pile a couple of suitcases in our car, the one we're going to buy—we'll have to have one in the country anyway—and just start out in the direction of New Haven. You see, as we get out of commuting distance from New York, the rents'll get cheaper, and as soon as we find a house we want we'll just settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> By his frequent and soothing interpolation of the word "just" he aroused her lethargic enthusiasm. Strutting violently about the room, he simulated a dynamic and irresistible efficiency. "We'll buy a car to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, city, urban, navigation, affect, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> Life, limping after imagination's ten-league boots, saw them out of town a week later in a cheap but sparkling new roadster, saw them through the chaotic unintelligible Bronx, then over a wide murky district which alternated cheerless blue-green wastes with suburbs of tremendous and sordid activity. They left New York at eleven and it was well past a hot and beatific noon when they moved rakishly through Pelham.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "These aren't towns," said Gloria scornfully, "these are just city blocks plumped down coldly into waste acres. I imagine all the men here have their mustaches stained from drinking their coffee too quickly in the morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And play pinochle on the commuting trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's pinochle?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't be so literal. How should I know? But it sounds as though they ought to play it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I like it. It sounds as if it were something where you sort of cracked your knuckles or something. . . . Let me drive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony looked at her suspiciously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "You swear you're a good driver?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Since I was fourteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road side, safety, driver, sound, pleasure, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He stopped the car cautiously at the side of the road and they changed seats. Then with a horrible grinding noise the car was put in gear, Gloria adding an accompaniment of laughter which seemed to Anthony disquieting and in the worst possible taste.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" she yelled. "Whoo-oop!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, haptic, car, driving, traffic, risk, affect, driver, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> Their heads snapped back like marionettes on a single wire as the car leaped ahead and curved retchingly about a standing milk-wagon, whose driver stood up on his seat and bellowed after them. In the immemorial tradition of the road Anthony retorted with a few brief epigrams as to the grossness of the milk-delivering profession. He cut his remarks short, however, and turned to Gloria with the growing conviction that he had made a grave mistake in relinquishing control and that Gloria was a driver of many eccentricities and of infinite carelessness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Remember now!" he warned her nervously, "the man said we oughtn't to go over twenty miles an hour for the first five thousand miles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded briefly, but evidently intending to accomplish the prohibitive distance as quickly as possible, slightly increased her speed. A moment later he made another attempt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic sign, law, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "See that sign? Do you want to get us pinched?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, for Heaven's sake," cried Gloria in exasperation, "you <i>always</i> exaggerate things so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want to get arrested."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's arresting you? You're so persistent—just like you were about my cough medicine last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was for your own good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ha! I might as well be living with mama."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a thing to say to me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, visibility, speed, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> A standing policeman swerved into view, was hastily passed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See him?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you drive me crazy! He didn't arrest us, did he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When he does it'll be too late," countered Anthony brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her reply was scornful, almost injured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, this old thing won't <i>go</i> over thirty-five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It isn't old."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It is in spirit."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, train, risk, traffic, safety, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> That afternoon the car joined the laundry-bags and Gloria's appetite as one of the trinity of contention. He warned her of railroad tracks; he pointed out approaching automobiles; finally he insisted on taking the wheel and a furious, insulted Gloria sat silently beside him between the towns of Larchmont and Rye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="agency, driving, car part, affect, safety, traffic, navigation, road, macadam, gravel, road surface, tree, visibility, sunshine"><br /> <poem><br /> But it was due to this furious silence of hers that the gray house materialized from its abstraction, for just beyond Rye he surrendered gloomily to it and re-relinquished the wheel. Mutely he beseeched her and Gloria, instantly cheered, vowed to be more careful. But because a discourteous street-car persisted callously in remaining upon its track Gloria ducked down a side-street—and thereafter that afternoon was never able to find her way back to the Post Road. The street they finally mistook for it lost its Post-Road aspect when it had gone five miles from Cos Cob. Its macadam became gravel, then dirt—moreover, it narrowed and developed a border of maple trees, through which filtered the westering sun, making its endless experiments with shadow designs upon the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're lost now," complained Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Read that sign!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Marietta—Five Miles. What's Marietta?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "Never heard of it, but let's go on. We can't turn here and there's probably a detour back to the Post Road."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="road surface, road condition, road, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> The way became scarred with deepening ruts and insidious shoulders of stone. Three farmhouses faced them momentarily, slid by. A town sprang up in a cluster of dull roofs around a white tall steeple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, hesitating between two approaches, and making her choice too late, drove over a fire-hydrant and ripped the transmission violently from the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was dark when the real-estate agent of Marietta showed them the gray house. They came upon it just west of the village, where it rested against a sky that was a warm blue cloak buttoned with tiny stars. The gray house had been there when women who kept cats were probably witches, when Paul Revere made false teeth in Boston preparatory to arousing the great commercial people, when our ancestors were gloriously deserting Washington in droves. Since those days the house had been bolstered up in a feeble corner, considerably repartitioned and newly plastered inside, amplified by a kitchen and added to by a side-porch—but, save for where some jovial oaf had roofed the new kitchen with red tin, Colonial it defiantly remained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you happen to come to Marietta?" demanded the real-estate agent in a tone that was first cousin to suspicion. He was showing them through four spacious and airy bedrooms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, accident, driving, garage"><br /> <poem><br /> "We broke down," explained Gloria. "I drove over a fire-hydrant and we had ourselves towed to the garage and then we saw your sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man nodded, unable to follow such a sally of spontaneity. There was something subtly immoral in doing anything without several months' consideration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, pleasure, road, dust, summer, rain, sound, sunshine, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> They signed a lease that night and, in the agent's car, returned jubilantly to the somnolent and dilapidated Marietta Inn, which was too broken for even the chance immoralities and consequent gaieties of a country road-house. Half the night they lay awake planning the things they were to do there. Anthony was going to work at an astounding pace on his history and thus ingratiate himself with his cynical grandfather. . . . When the car was repaired they would explore the country and join the nearest "really nice" club, where Gloria would play golf "or something" while Anthony wrote. This, of course, was Anthony's idea—Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant still in a shadowy hinterland. Between paragraphs Anthony would come and kiss her as she lay indolently in the hammock. . . . The hammock! a host of new dreams in tune to its imagined rhythm, while the wind stirred it and waves of sun undulated over the shadows of blown wheat, or the dusty road freckled and darkened with quiet summer rain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And guests—here they had a long argument, both of them trying to be extraordinarily mature and far-sighted. Anthony claimed that they would need people at least every other week-end "as a sort of change." This provoked an involved and extremely sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him. . . . Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? Oh, what'll we do then?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll have a dog," suggested Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want one. I want a kitty." She went thoroughly and with great enthusiasm into the history, habits, and tastes of a cat she had once possessed. Anthony considered that it must have been a horrible character with neither personal magnetism nor a loyal heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later they slept, to wake an hour before dawn with the gray house dancing in phantom glory before their dazzled eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SOUL OF GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For that autumn the gray house welcomed them with a rush of sentiment that falsified its cynical old age. True, there were the laundry-bags, there was Gloria's appetite, there was Anthony's tendency to brood and his imaginative "nervousness," but there were intervals also of an unhoped-for serenity. Close together on the porch they would wait for the moon to stream across the silver acres of farmland, jump a thick wood and tumble waves of radiance at their feet. In such a moonlight Gloria's face was of a pervading, reminiscent white, and with a modicum of effort they would slip off the blinders of custom and each would find in the other almost the quintessential romance of the vanished June.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One night while her head lay upon his heart and their cigarettes glowed in swerving buttons of light through the dome of darkness over the bed, she spoke for the first time and fragmentarily of the men who had hung for brief moments on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you ever think of them?" he asked her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only occasionally—when something happens that recalls a particular man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you remember—their kisses?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All sorts of things. . . . Men are different with women."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Different in what way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, entirely—and quite inexpressibly. Men who had the most firmly rooted reputation for being this way or that would sometimes be surprisingly inconsistent with me. Brutal men were tender, negligible men were astonishingly loyal and lovable, and, often, honorable men took attitudes that were anything but honorable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For instance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there was a boy named Percy Wolcott from Cornell who was quite a hero in college, a great athlete, and saved a lot of people from a fire or something like that. But I soon found he was stupid in a rather dangerous way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems he had some naïve conception of a woman 'fit to be his wife,' a particular conception that I used to run into a lot and that always drove me wild. He demanded a girl who'd never been kissed and who liked to sew and sit home and pay tribute to his self-esteem. And I'll bet a hat if he's gotten an idiot to sit and be stupid with him he's tearing out on the side with some much speedier lady."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd be sorry for his wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wouldn't. Think what an ass she'd be not to realize it before she married him. He's the sort whose idea of honoring and respecting a woman would be never to give her any excitement. With the best intentions, he was deep in the dark ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was his attitude toward you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm coming to that. As I told you—or did I tell you?—he was mighty good-looking: big brown honest eyes and one of those smiles that guarantee the heart behind it is twenty-karat gold. Being young and credulous, I thought he had some discretion, so I kissed him fervently one night when we were riding around after a dance at the Homestead at Hot Springs. It had been a wonderful week, I remember—with the most luscious trees spread like green lather, sort of, all over the valley and a mist rising out of them on October mornings like bonfires lit to turn them brown——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about your friend with the ideals?" interrupted Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems that when he kissed me he began to think that perhaps he could get away with a little more, that I needn't be 'respected' like this Beatrice Fairfax glad-girl of his imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd he do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much. I pushed him off a sixteen-foot embankment before he was well started."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurt him?" inquired Anthony with a laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Broke his arm and sprained his ankle. He told the story all over Hot Springs, and when his arm healed a man named Barley who liked me fought him and broke it over again. Oh, it was all an awful mess. He threatened to sue Barley, and Barley—he was from Georgia—was seen buying a gun in town. But before that mama had dragged me North again, much against my will, so I never did find out all that happened—though I saw Barley once in the Vanderbilt lobby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed long and loud.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a career! I suppose I ought to be furious because you've kissed so many men. I'm not, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this she sat up in bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's funny, but I'm so sure that those kisses left no mark on me—no taint of promiscuity, I mean—even though a man once told me in all seriousness that he hated to think I'd been a public drinking glass."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He had his nerve."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just laughed and told him to think of me rather as a loving-cup that goes from hand to hand but should be valued none the less."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Somehow it doesn't bother me—on the other hand it would, of course, if you'd done any more than kiss them. But I believe <i>you're</i> absolutely incapable of jealousy except as hurt vanity. Why don't you care what I've done? Wouldn't you prefer it if I'd been absolutely innocent?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all in the impression it might have made on you. <i>My</i> kisses were because the man was good-looking, or because there was a slick moon, or even because I've felt vaguely sentimental and a little stirred. But that's all—it's had utterly no effect on me. But you'd remember and let memories haunt you and worry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever kissed any one like you've kissed me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," she answered simply. "As I've told you, men have tried—oh, lots of things. Any pretty girl has that experience. . . . You see," she resumed, "it doesn't matter to me how many women you've stayed with in the past, so long as it was merely a physical satisfaction, but I don't believe I could endure the idea of your ever having lived with another woman for a protracted period or even having wanted to marry some possible girl. It's different somehow. There'd be all the little intimacies remembered—and they'd dull that freshness that after all is the most precious part of love."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rapturously he pulled her down beside him on the pillow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my darling," he whispered, "as if I remembered anything but your dear kisses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, in a very mild voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, did I hear anybody say they were thirsty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed abruptly and with a sheepish and amused grin got out of bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "With just a <i>little</i> piece of ice in the water," she added. "Do you suppose I could have that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria used the adjective "little" whenever she asked a favor—it made the favor sound less arduous. But Anthony laughed again—whether she wanted a cake of ice or a marble of it, he must go down-stairs to the kitchen. . . . Her voice followed him through the hall: "And just a <i>little</i> cracker with just a <i>little</i> marmalade on it. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" sighed Anthony in rapturous slang, "she's wonderful, that girl! She <i>has</i> it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When we have a baby," she began one day—this, it had already been decided, was to be after three years—"I want it to look like you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except its legs," he insinuated slyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, except his legs. He's got to have my legs. But the rest of him can be you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My nose?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, perhaps my nose. But certainly your eyes—and my mouth, and I guess my shape of the face. I wonder; I think he'd be sort of cute if he had my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Gloria, you've appropriated the whole baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I didn't mean to," she apologized cheerfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let him have my neck at least," he urged, regarding himself gravely in the glass. "You've often said you liked my neck because the Adam's apple doesn't show, and, besides, your neck's too short."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, it is <i>not</i>!" she cried indignantly, turning to the mirror, "it's just right. I don't believe I've ever seen a better neck."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's too short," he repeated teasingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Short?" Her tone expressed exasperated wonder. "Short? You're crazy!" She elongated and contracted it to convince herself of its reptilian sinuousness. "Do you call <i>that</i> a short neck?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of the shortest I've ever seen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For the first time in weeks tears started from Gloria's eyes and the look she gave him had a quality of real pain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My Lord, Gloria!" He approached her in bewilderment and took her elbows in his hands. "Don't cry, <i>please!</i> Didn't you know I was only kidding? Gloria, look at me! Why, dearest, you've got the longest neck I've ever seen. Honestly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her tears dissolved in a twisted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—you shouldn't have said that, then. Let's talk about the b-baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony paced the floor and spoke as though rehearsing for a debate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To put it briefly, there are two babies we could have, two distinct and logical babies, utterly differentiated. There's the baby that's the combination of the best of both of us. Your body, my eyes, my mind, your intelligence—and then there is the baby which is our worst—my body, your disposition, and my irresolution."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like that second baby," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What I'd really like," continued Anthony, "would be to have two sets of triplets one year apart and then experiment with the six boys——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor me," she interjected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—I'd educate them each in a different country and by a different system and when they were twenty-three I'd call them together and see what they were like."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's have 'em all with my neck," suggested Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE END OF A CHAPTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, personification, agency, driving, driver, speed, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The car was at length repaired and with a deliberate vengeance took up where it left off the business of causing infinite dissension. Who should drive? How fast should Gloria go? These two questions and the eternal recriminations involved ran through the days. They motored to the Post-Road towns, Rye, Portchester, and Greenwich, and called on a dozen friends, mostly Gloria's, who all seemed to be in different stages of having babies and in this respect as well as in others bored her to a point of nervous distraction. For an hour after each visit she would bite her fingers furiously and be inclined to take out her rancor on Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I loathe women," she cried in a mild temper. "What on earth can you say to them—except talk 'lady-lady'? I've enthused over a dozen babies that I've wanted only to choke. And every one of those girls is either incipiently jealous and suspicious of her husband if he's charming or beginning to be bored with him if he isn't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever intend to see any women?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. They never seem clean to me—never—never. Except just a few. Constance Shaw—you know, the Mrs. Merriam who came over to see us last Tuesday—is almost the only one. She's so tall and fresh-looking and stately."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like them so tall."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though they went to several dinner dances at various country clubs, they decided that the autumn was too nearly over for them to "go out" on any scale, even had they been so inclined. He hated golf; Gloria liked it only mildly, and though she enjoyed a violent rush that some undergraduates gave her one night and was glad that Anthony should be proud of her beauty, she also perceived that their hostess for the evening, a Mrs. Granby, was somewhat disquieted by the fact that Anthony's classmate, Alec Granby, joined with enthusiasm in the rush. The Granbys never phoned again, and though Gloria laughed, it piqued her not a little.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see," she explained to Anthony, "if I wasn't married it wouldn't worry her—but she's been to the movies in her day and she thinks I may be a vampire. But the point is that placating such people requires an effort that I'm simply unwilling to make. . . . And those cute little freshmen making eyes at me and paying me idiotic compliments! I've grown up, Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Marietta itself offered little social life. Half a dozen farm-estates formed a hectagon around it, but these belonged to ancient men who displayed themselves only as inert, gray-thatched lumps in the back of limousines on their way to the station, whither they were sometimes accompanied by equally ancient and doubly massive wives. The townspeople were a particularly uninteresting type—unmarried females were predominant for the most part—with school-festival horizons and souls bleak as the forbidding white architecture of the three churches. The only native with whom they came into close contact was the broad-hipped, broad-shouldered Swedish girl who came every day to do their work. She was silent and efficient, and Gloria, after finding her weeping violently into her bowed arms upon the kitchen table, developed an uncanny fear of her and stopped complaining about the food. Because of her untold and esoteric grief the girl stayed on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's penchant for premonitions and her bursts of vague supernaturalism were a surprise to Anthony. Either some complex, properly and scientifically inhibited in the early years with her Bilphistic mother, or some inherited hypersensitiveness, made her susceptible to any suggestion of the psychic, and, far from gullible about the motives of people, she was inclined to credit any extraordinary happening attributed to the whimsical perambulations of the buried. The desperate squeakings about the old house on windy nights that to Anthony were burglars with revolvers ready in hand represented to Gloria the auras, evil and restive, of dead generations, expiating the inexpiable upon the ancient and romantic hearth. One night, because of two swift bangs down-stairs, which Anthony fearfully but unavailingly investigated, they lay awake nearly until dawn asking each other examination-paper questions about the history of the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In October Muriel came out for a two weeks' visit. Gloria had called her on long-distance, and Miss Kane ended the conversation characteristically by saying "All-ll-ll righty. I'll be there with bells!" She arrived with a dozen popular songs under her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to have a phonograph out here in the country," she said, "just a little Vic—they don't cost much. Then whenever you're lonesome you can have Caruso or Al Jolson right at your door."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She worried Anthony to distraction by telling him that "he was the first clever man she had ever known and she got so tired of shallow people." He wondered that people fell in love with such women. Yet he supposed that under a certain impassioned glance even she might take on a softness and promise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Gloria, violently showing off her love for Anthony, was diverted into a state of purring content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally Richard Caramel arrived for a garrulous and to Gloria painfully literary week-end, during which he discussed himself with Anthony long after she lay in childlike sleep up-stairs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been mighty funny, this success and all," said Dick. "Just before the novel appeared I'd been trying, without success, to sell some short stories. Then, after my book came out, I polished up three and had them accepted by one of the magazines that had rejected them before. I've done a lot of them since; publishers don't pay me for my book till this winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You mean write trash?" He considered. "If you mean deliberately injecting a slushy fade-out into each one, I'm not. But I don't suppose I'm being so careful. I'm certainly writing faster and I don't seem to be thinking as much as I used to. Perhaps it's because I don't get any conversation, now that you're married and Maury's gone to Philadelphia. Haven't the old urge and ambition. Early success and all that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Doesn't it worry you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Frantically. I get a thing I call sentence-fever that must be like buck-fever—it's a sort of intense literary self-consciousness that comes when I try to force myself. But the really awful days aren't when I think I can't write. They're when I wonder whether any writing is worth while at all—I mean whether I'm not a sort of glorified buffoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like to hear you talk that way," said Anthony with a touch of his old patronizing insolence. "I was afraid you'd gotten a bit idiotic over your work. Read the damnedest interview you gave out——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick interrupted with an agonized expression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good Lord! Don't mention it. Young lady wrote it—most admiring young lady. Kept telling me my work was 'strong,' and I sort of lost my head and made a lot of strange pronouncements. Some of it was good, though, don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; that part about the wise writer writing for the youth of his generation, the critic of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterward."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I believe a lot of it," admitted Richard Caramel with a faint beam. "It simply was a mistake to give it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In November they moved into Anthony's apartment, from which they sallied triumphantly to the Yale-Harvard and Harvard-Princeton football games, to the St. Nicholas ice-skating rink, to a thorough round of the theatres and to a miscellany of entertainments—from small, staid dances to the great affairs that Gloria loved, held in those few houses where lackeys with powdered wigs scurried around in magnificent Anglomania under the direction of gigantic majordomos. Their intention was to go abroad the first of the year or, at any rate, when the war was over. Anthony had actually completed a Chestertonian essay on the twelfth century by way of introduction to his proposed book and Gloria had done some extensive research work on the question of Russian sable coats—in fact the winter was approaching quite comfortably, when the Bilphistic demiurge decided suddenly in mid-December that Mrs. Gilbert's soul had aged sufficiently in its present incarnation. In consequence Anthony took a miserable and hysterical Gloria out to Kansas City, where, in the fashion of mankind, they paid the terrible and mind-shaking deference to the dead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert became, for the first and last time in his life, a truly pathetic figure. That woman he had broken to wait upon his body and play congregation to his mind had ironically deserted him—just when he could not much longer have supported her. Never again would he be able so satisfactorily to bore and bully a human soul.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (191-260)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SYMPOSIUM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA had lulled Anthony's mind to sleep. She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun. In those first years what he believed bore invariably the stamp of Gloria; he saw the sun always through the pattern of the curtain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a sort of lassitude that brought them back to Marietta for another summer. Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to Coronado, from Coronado to Santa Barbara, with no purpose more apparent than Gloria's desire to dance by different music or catch some infinitesimal variant among the changing colors of the sea. Out of the Pacific there rose to greet them savage rocklands and equally barbaric hostelries built that at tea-time one might drowse into a languid wicker bazaar glorified by the polo costumes of Southhampton and Lake Forest and Newport and Palm Beach. And, as the waves met and splashed and glittered in the most placid of the bays, so they joined this group and that, and with them shifted stations, murmuring ever of those strange unsubstantial gaieties in wait just over the next green and fruitful valley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A simple healthy leisure class it was—the best of the men not unpleasantly undergraduate—they seemed to be on a perpetual candidates list for some etherealized "Porcellian" or "Skull and Bones" extended out indefinitely into the world; the women, of more than average beauty, fragilely athletic, somewhat idiotic as hostesses but charming and infinitely decorative as guests. Sedately and gracefully they danced the steps of their selection in the balmy tea hours, accomplishing with a certain dignity the movements so horribly burlesqued by clerk and chorus girl the country over. It seemed ironic that in this lone and discredited offspring of the arts Americans should excel, unquestionably.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having danced and splashed through a lavish spring, Anthony and Gloria found that they had spent too much money and for this must go into retirement for a certain period. There was Anthony's "work," they said. Almost before they knew it they were back in the gray house, more aware now that other lovers had slept there, other names had been called over the banisters, other couples had sat upon the porch steps watching the gray-green fields and the black bulk of woods beyond.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the same Anthony, more restless, inclined to quicken only under the stimulus of several high-balls, faintly, almost imperceptibly, apathetic toward Gloria. But Gloria—she would be twenty-four in August and was in an attractive but sincere panic about it. Six years to thirty! Had she been less in love with Anthony her sense of the flight of time would have expressed itself in a reawakened interest in other men, in a deliberate intention of extracting a transient gleam of romance from every potential lover who glanced at her with lowered brows over a shining dinner table. She said to Anthony one day:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They were bound eastward through a parched and lifeless Indiana, and she had looked up from one of her beloved moving picture magazines to find a casual conversation suddenly turned grave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part, visibility, road, rural, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony frowned out the car window. As the track crossed a country road a farmer appeared momentarily in his wagon; he was chewing on a straw and was apparently the same farmer they had passed a dozen times before, sitting in silent and malignant symbolism. As Anthony turned to Gloria his frown intensified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You worry me," he objected; "I can imagine <i>wanting</i> another woman under certain transitory circumstances, but I can't imagine taking her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't feel that way, Anthony. I can't be bothered resisting things I want. My way is not to want them—to want nobody but you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet when I think that if you just happened to take a fancy to some one——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't be an idiot!" she exclaimed. "There'd be nothing casual about it. And I can't even imagine the possibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This emphatically closed the conversation. Anthony's unfailing appreciation made her happier in his company than in any one's else. She definitely enjoyed him—she loved him. So the summer began very much as had the one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, however, one radical change in ménage. The icy-hearted Scandinavian, whose austere cooking and sardonic manner of waiting on table had so depressed Gloria, gave way to an exceedingly efficient Japanese whose name was Tanalahaka, but who confessed that he heeded any summons which included the dissyllable "Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana was unusually small even for a Japanese, and displayed a somewhat naïve conception of himself as a man of the world. On the day of his arrival from "R. Gugimoniki, Japanese Reliable Employment Agency," he called Anthony into his room to see the treasures of his trunk. These included a large collection of Japanese post cards, which he was all for explaining to his employer at once, individually and at great length. Among them were half a dozen of pornographic intent and plainly of American origin, though the makers had modestly omitted both their names and the form for mailing. He next brought out some of his own handiwork—a pair of American pants, which he had made himself, and two suits of solid silk underwear. He informed Anthony confidentially as to the purpose for which these latter were reserved. The next exhibit was a rather good copy of an etching of Abraham Lincoln, to whose face he had given an unmistakable Japanese cast. Last came a flute; he had made it himself but it was broken: he was going to fix it soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After these polite formalities, which Anthony conjectured must be native to Japan, Tana delivered a long harangue in splintered English on the relation of master and servant from which Anthony gathered that he had worked on large estates but had always quarrelled with the other servants because they were not honest. They had a great time over the word "honest," and in fact became rather irritated with each other, because Anthony persisted stubbornly that Tana was trying to say "hornets," and even went to the extent of buzzing in the manner of a bee and flapping his arms to imitate wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After three-quarters of an hour Anthony was released with the warm assurance that they would have other nice chats in which Tana would tell "how we do in my countree."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such was Tana's garrulous première in the gray house—and he fulfilled its promise. Though he was conscientious and honorable, he was unquestionably a terrific bore. He seemed unable to control his tongue, sometimes continuing from paragraph to paragraph with a look akin to pain in his small brown eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sunday and Monday afternoons he read the comic sections of the newspapers. One cartoon which contained a facetious Japanese butler diverted him enormously, though he claimed that the protagonist, who to Anthony appeared clearly Oriental, had really an American face. The difficulty with the funny paper was that when, aided by Anthony, he had spelled out the last three pictures and assimilated their context with a concentration surely adequate for Kant's "Critique," he had entirely forgotten what the first pictures were about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the middle of June Anthony and Gloria celebrated their first anniversary by having a "date." Anthony knocked at the door and she ran to let him in. Then they sat together on the couch calling over those names they had made for each other, new combinations of endearments ages old. Yet to this "date" was appended no attenuated good-night with its ecstasy of regret.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in June horror leered out at Gloria, struck at her and frightened her bright soul back half a generation. Then slowly it faded out, faded back into that impenetrable darkness whence it had come—taking relentlessly its modicum of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With an infallible sense of the dramatic it chose a little railroad station in a wretched village near Portchester. The station platform lay all day bare as a prairie, exposed to the dusty yellow sun and to the glance of that most obnoxious type of countryman who lives near a metropolis and has attained its cheap smartness without its urbanity. A dozen of these yokels, red-eyed, cheerless as scarecrows, saw the incident. Dimly it passed across their confused and uncomprehending minds, taken at its broadest for a coarse joke, at its subtlest for a "shame." Meanwhile there upon the platform a measure of brightness faded from the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With Eric Merriam, Anthony had been sitting over a decanter of Scotch all the hot summer afternoon, while Gloria and Constance Merriam swam and sunned themselves at the Beach Club, the latter under a striped parasol-awning, Gloria stretched sensuously upon the soft hot sand, tanning her inevitable legs. Later they had all four played with inconsequential sandwiches; then Gloria had risen, tapping Anthony's knee with her parasol to get his attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to go, dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now?" He looked at her unwillingly. At that moment nothing seemed of more importance than to idle on that shady porch drinking mellowed Scotch, while his host reminisced interminably on the byplay of some forgotten political campaign.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've really got to go," repeated Gloria. "We can get a taxi to the station. . . . Come on, Anthony!" she commanded a bit more imperiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now see here—" Merriam, his yarn cut off, made conventional objections, meanwhile provocatively filling his guest's glass with a high-ball that should have been sipped through ten minutes. But at Gloria's annoyed "We really <i>must!</i>" Anthony drank it off, got to his feet and made an elaborate bow to his hostess.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems we 'must,'" he said, with little grace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> In a minute he was following Gloria down a garden-walk between tall rose-bushes, her parasol brushing gently the June-blooming leaves. Most inconsiderate, he thought, as they reached the road. He felt with injured naïvete that Gloria should not have interrupted such innocent and harmless enjoyment. The whiskey had both soothed and clarified the restless things in his mind. It occurred to him that she had taken this same attitude several times before. Was he always to retreat from pleasant episodes at a touch of her parasol or a flicker of her eye? His unwillingness blurred to ill will, which rose within him like a resistless bubble. He kept silent, perversely inhibiting a desire to reproach her. They found a taxi in front of the Inn; rode silently to the little station. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Anthony knew what he wanted—to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go over to see the Barneses," he said without looking at her. "I don't feel like going home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Mrs. Barnes, née Rachael Jerryl, had a summer place several miles from Redgate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We went there day before yesterday," she answered shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure they'd be glad to see us." He felt that that was not a strong enough note, braced himself stubbornly, and added: "I want to see the Barneses. I haven't any desire to go home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I haven't any desire to go to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly they stared at each other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony," she said with annoyance, "this is Sunday night and they probably have guests for supper. Why we should go in at this hour——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why couldn't we have stayed at the Merriams'?" he burst out. "Why go home when we were having a perfectly decent time? They asked us to supper."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They had to. Give me the money and I'll get the railroad tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly will not! I'm in no humor for a ride in that damn hot train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria stamped her foot on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, you act as if you're tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary, I'm perfectly sober."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But his voice had slipped into a husky key and she knew with certainty that this was untrue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're sober you'll give me the money for the tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was too late to talk to him that way. In his mind was but one idea—that Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily a dull and sullen hate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go in the train," he said, his voice trembling a little with anger. "We're going to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not!" she cried. "If you go I'm going home alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word she turned toward the ticket office; simultaneously he remembered that she had some money with her and that this was not the sort of victory he wanted, the sort he must have. He took a step after her and seized her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here!" he muttered, "you're <i>not</i> going alone!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly am—why, Anthony!" This exclamation as she tried to pull away from him and he only tightened his grasp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked at her with narrowed and malicious eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go!" Her cry had a quality of fierceness. "If you have <i>any</i> decency you'll let go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?" He knew why. But he took a confused and not quite confident pride in holding her there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going home, do you understand? And you're going to let me go!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes were burning now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to make a scene here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say you're not going! I'm tired of your eternal selfishness!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I only want to go home." Two wrathful tears started from her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This time you're going to do what <i>I</i> say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly her body straightened: her head went back in a gesture of infinite scorn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hate you!" Her low words were expelled like venom through her clenched teeth. "Oh, <i>let</i> me go! Oh, I <i>hate</i> you!" She tried to jerk herself away but he only grasped the other arm. "I hate you! I hate you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At Gloria's fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you brute!" she sobbed. "Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, if there was one <i>man</i> here you couldn't do this! You couldn't do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct—until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta," he said with fine reserve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For answer Gloria seized his hand with both of hers and raising it to her mouth bit deeply into his thumb. He scarcely noticed the pain; seeing the blood spurt he absent-mindedly drew out his handkerchief and wrapped the wound. That too was part of the triumph he supposed—it was inevitable that defeat should thus be resented—and as such was beneath notice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was sobbing, almost without tears, profoundly and bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go! I won't go! You—can't—make—me—go! You've—you've killed any love I ever had for you, and any respect. But all that's left in me would die before I'd move from this place. Oh, if I'd thought <i>you'd</i> lay your hands on me——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're going with me," he said brutally, "if I have to carry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, car part, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He turned, beckoned to a taxicab, told the driver to go to Marietta. The man dismounted and swung the door open. Anthony faced his wife and said between his clenched teeth:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will you get in?—or will I <i>put</i> you in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> With a subdued cry of infinite pain and despair she yielded herself up and got into the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, affect, twilight, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> All the long ride, through the increasing dark of twilight, she sat huddled in her side of the car, her silence broken by an occasional dry and solitary sob. Anthony stared out the window, his mind working dully on the slowly changing significance of what had occurred. Something was wrong—that last cry of Gloria's had struck a chord which echoed posthumously and with incongruous disquiet in his heart. He must be right—yet, she seemed such a pathetic little thing now, broken and dispirited, humiliated beyond the measure of her lot to bear. The sleeves of her dress were torn; her parasol was gone, forgotten on the platform. It was a new costume, he remembered, and she had been so proud of it that very morning when they had left the house. . . . He began wondering if any one they knew had seen the incident. And persistently there recurred to him her cry:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All that's left in me would die——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This gave him a confused and increasing worry. It fitted so well with the Gloria who lay in the corner—no longer a proud Gloria, nor any Gloria he had known. He asked himself if it were possible. While he did not believe she would cease to love him—this, of course, was unthinkable—it was yet problematical whether Gloria without her arrogance, her independence, her virginal confidence and courage, would be the girl of his glory, the radiant woman who was precious and charming because she was ineffably, triumphantly herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was very drunk even then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on his bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after one o'clock and the hall seemed extraordinarily quiet when Gloria, wide-eyed and sleepless, traversed it and pushed open the door of his room. He had been too befuddled to open the windows and the air was stale and thick with whiskey. She stood for a moment by his bed, a slender, exquisitely graceful figure in her boyish silk pajamas—then with abandon she flung herself upon him, half waking him in the frantic emotion of her embrace, dropping her warm tears upon his throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony!" she cried passionately, "oh, my darling, you don't know what you did!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seemed, last night," she said gravely, her fingers playing in his hair, "that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you, but never in quite the same way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, she was aware even then that she would forget in time and that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. After that morning the incident was never mentioned and its deep wound healed with Anthony's hand—and if there was triumph some darker force than theirs possessed it, possessed the knowledge and the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIETZSCHEAN INCIDENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony's fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle "Never give a damn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not for anything or anybody," she said, "except myself and, by implication, for Anthony. That's the rule of all life and if it weren't I'd be that way anyhow. Nobody'd do anything for me if it didn't gratify them to, and I'd do as little for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was on the front porch of the nicest lady in Marietta when she said this, and as she finished she gave a curious little cry and sank in a dead faint to the porch floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> The lady brought her to and drove her home in her car. It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably with child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay upon the long lounge down-stairs. Day was slipping warmly out the window, touching the late roses on the porch pillars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All I think of ever is that I love you," she wailed. "I value my body because you think it's beautiful. And this body of mine—of yours—to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable. Oh, Anthony, I'm not afraid of the pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He consoled her desperately—but in vain. She continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then afterward I might have wide hips and be pale, with all my freshness gone and no radiance in my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, asking:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it certain?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>I</i> don't know anything. I've always hated obstrics, or whatever you call them. I thought I'd have a child some time. But not now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for God's sake don't lie there and go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her sobs lapsed. She drew down a merciful silence from the twilight which filled the room. "Turn on the lights," she pleaded. "These days seem so short—June seemed—to—have—longer days when I was a little girl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lights snapped on and it was as though blue drapes of softest silk had been dropped behind the windows and the door. Her pallor, her immobility, without grief now, or joy, awoke his sympathy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want me to have it?" she asked listlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm indifferent. That is, I'm neutral. If you have it I'll probably be glad. If you don't—well, that's all right too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd make up your mind one way or the other!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Suppose you make up <i>your</i> mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She looked at him contemptuously, scorning to answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd think you'd been singled out of all the women in the world for this crowning indignity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if I do!" she cried angrily. "It isn't an indignity for them. It's their one excuse for living. It's the one thing they're good for. It <i>is</i> an indignity for <i>me.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here, Gloria, I'm with you whatever you do, but for God's sake be a sport about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't <i>fuss</i> at me!" she wailed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book from the shelf and dropped into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense on the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll drive over and see Constance Merriam to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. And I'll go to Tarrytown and see Grampa."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—You see," she added, "it isn't that I'm afraid—of this or anything else. I'm being true to me, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," he agreed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE PRACTICAL MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls; atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his hand together with "Photographic Histories of the World War," official Explain-alls, and the "Personal Impressions" of war correspondents and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during Anthony's visit his grandfather's secretary, Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time "Accomplished Gin-physician" of "Pat's Place" in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would appear with an extra. The old man attacked each paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for preservation and thrusting them into one of his already bulging files.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what have you been doing?" he asked Anthony blandly. "Nothing? Well, I thought so. I've been intending to drive over and see you, all summer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been writing. Don't you remember the essay I sent you—the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Essay? You never sent <i>me</i> any essay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch shook his head mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no. You never sent <i>me</i> any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you read it, Grampa," insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, "you read it and disagreed with it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth, displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing his error and covering it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you're writing," he said quickly. "Well, why don't you go over and write about these Germans? Write something real, something about what's going on, something people can read."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anybody can't be a war correspondent," objected Anthony. "You have to have some newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can't spare the money to go over as a free-lance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll send you over," suggested his grandfather surprisingly. "I'll get you over as an authorized correspondent of any newspaper you pick out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony recoiled from the idea—almost simultaneously he bounded toward it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—don't—know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have to leave Gloria, whose whole life yearned toward him and enfolded him. Gloria was in trouble. Oh, the thing wasn't feasible—yet—he saw himself in khaki, leaning, as all war correspondents lean, upon a heavy stick, portfolio at shoulder—trying to look like an Englishman. "I'd like to think it over," he confessed. "It's certainly very kind of you. I'll think it over and I'll let you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thinking it over absorbed him on the journey to New York. He had had one of those sudden flashes of illumination vouchsafed to all men who are dominated by a strong and beloved woman, which show them a world of harder men, more fiercely trained and grappling with the abstractions of thought and war. In that world the arms of Gloria would exist only as the hot embrace of a chance mistress, coolly sought and quickly forgotten. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These unfamiliar phantoms were crowding closely about him when he boarded his train for Marietta, in the Grand Central Station. The car was crowded; he secured the last vacant seat and it was only after several minutes that he gave even a casual glance to the man beside him. When he did he saw a heavy lay of jaw and nose, a curved chin and small, puffed-under eyes. In a moment he recognized Joseph Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously they both half rose, were half embarrassed, and exchanged what amounted to a half handshake. Then, as though to complete the matter, they both half laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Anthony without inspiration, "I haven't seen you for a long time." Immediately he regretted his words and started to add: "I didn't know you lived out this way." But Bloeckman anticipated him by asking pleasantly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How's your wife? . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's very well. How've you been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Excellent." His tone amplified the grandeur of the word.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It seemed to Anthony that during the last year Bloeckman had grown tremendously in dignity. The boiled look was gone, he seemed "done" at last. In addition he was no longer overdressed. The inappropriate facetiousness he had affected in ties had given way to a sturdy dark pattern, and his right hand, which had formerly displayed two heavy rings, was now innocent of ornament and even without the raw glow of a manicure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This dignity appeared also in his personality. The last aura of the successful travelling-man had faded from him, that deliberate ingratiation of which the lowest form is the bawdy joke in the Pullman smoker. One imagined that, having been fawned upon financially, he had attained aloofness; having been snubbed socially, he had acquired reticence. But whatever had given him weight instead of bulk, Anthony no longer felt a correct superiority in his presence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you remember Caramel, Richard Caramel? I believe you met him one night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember. He was writing a book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he sold it to the movies. Then they had some scenario man named Jordan work on it. Well, Dick subscribes to a clipping bureau and he's furious because about half the movie reviewers speak of the 'power and strength of William Jordan's "Demon Lover."' Didn't mention old Dick at all. You'd think this fellow Jordan had actually conceived and developed the thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman nodded comprehensively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Most of the contracts state that the original writer's name goes into all the paid publicity. Is Caramel still writing?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes. Writing hard. Short stories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, that's fine, that's fine. . . . You on this train often?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About once a week. We live in Marietta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is that so? Well, well! I live near Cos Cob myself. Bought a place there only recently. We're only five miles apart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll have to come and see us." Anthony was surprised at his own courtesy. "I'm sure Gloria'd be delighted to see an old friend. Anybody'll tell you where the house is—it's our second season there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you." Then, as though returning a complementary politeness: "How is your grandfather?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's been well. I had lunch with him to-day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A great character," said Bloeckman severely. "A fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE TRIUMPH OF LETHARGY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony found his wife deep in the porch hammock voluptuously engaged with a lemonade and a tomato sandwich and carrying on an apparently cheery conversation with Tana upon one of Tana's complicated themes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In my countree," Anthony recognized his invariable preface, "all time—peoples—eat rice—because haven't got. Cannot eat what no have got." Had his nationality not been desperately apparent one would have thought he had acquired his knowledge of his native land from American primary-school geographies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When the Oriental had been squelched and dismissed to the kitchen, Anthony turned questioningly to Gloria:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all right," she announced, smiling broadly. "And it surprised me more than it does you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's no doubt?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None! Couldn't be!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They rejoiced happily, gay again with reborn irresponsibility. Then he told her of his opportunity to go abroad, and that he was almost ashamed to reject it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do <i>you</i> think? Just tell me frankly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony!" Her eyes were startled. "Do you want to go? Without me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His face fell—yet he knew, with his wife's question, that it was too late. Her arms, sweet and strangling, were around him, for he had made all such choices back in that room in the Plaza the year before. This was an anachronism from an age of such dreams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he lied, in a great burst of comprehension, "of course I don't. I was thinking you might go as a nurse or something." He wondered dully if his grandfather would consider this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As she smiled he realized again how beautiful she was, a gorgeous girl of miraculous freshness and sheerly honorable eyes. She embraced his suggestion with luxurious intensity, holding it aloft like a sun of her own making and basking in its beams. She strung together an amazing synopsis for an extravaganza of martial adventure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After supper, surfeited with the subject, she yawned. She wanted not to talk but only to read "Penrod," stretched upon the lounge until at midnight she fell asleep. But Anthony, after he had carried her romantically up the stairs, stayed awake to brood upon the day, vaguely angry with her, vaguely dissatisfied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I going to do?" he began at breakfast. "Here we've been married a year and we've just worried around without even being efficient people of leisure."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you ought to do something," she admitted, being in an agreeable and loquacious humor. This was not the first of these discussions, but as they usually developed Anthony in the rôle of protagonist, she had come to avoid them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work," he continued, "but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How you've changed!" remarked Gloria. "Once you told me you didn't see why an American couldn't loaf gracefully."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, damn it, I wasn't married. And the old mind was working at top speed and now it's going round and round like a cog-wheel with nothing to catch it. As a matter of fact I think that if I hadn't met you I <i>would</i> have done something. But you make leisure so subtly attractive——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it's all my fault——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I didn't mean that, and you know I didn't. But here I'm almost twenty-seven and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she interrupted in vexation, "you make me tired! Talking as though I were objecting or hindering you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was just discussing it, Gloria. Can't I discuss——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd be strong enough to settle——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—something with you without——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—your own problems without coming to me. You <i>talk</i> a lot about going to work. I could use more money very easily, but <i>I'm</i> not complaining. Whether you work or not I love you." Her last words were gentle as fine snow upon hard ground. But for the moment neither was attending to the other—they were each engaged in polishing and perfecting his own attitude.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have worked—some." This by Anthony was an imprudent bringing up of raw reserves. Gloria laughed, torn between delight and derision; she resented his sophistry as at the same time she admired his nonchalance. She would never blame him for being the ineffectual idler so long as he did it sincerely, from the attitude that nothing much was worth doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Work!" she scoffed. "Oh, you sad bird! You bluffer! Work—that means a great arranging of the desk and the lights, a great sharpening of pencils, and 'Gloria, don't sing!' and 'Please keep that damn Tana away from me,' and 'Let me read you my opening sentence,' and 'I won't be through for a long time, Gloria, so don't stay up for me,' and a tremendous consumption of tea or coffee. And that's all. In just about an hour I hear the old pencil stop scratching and look over. You've got out a book and you're 'looking up' something. Then you're reading. Then yawns—then bed and a great tossing about because you're all full of caffeine and can't sleep. Two weeks later the whole performance over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With much difficulty Anthony retained a scanty breech-clout of dignity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that's a <i>slight</i> exaggeration. You know <i>darn well</i> I sold an essay to The Florentine—and it attracted a lot of attention considering the circulation of The Florentine. And what's more, Gloria, you know I sat up till five o'clock in the morning finishing it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lapsed into silence, giving him rope. And if he had not hanged himself he had certainly come to the end of it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At least," he concluded feebly, "I'm perfectly willing to be a war correspondent."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But so was Gloria. They were both willing—anxious; they assured each other of it. The evening ended on a note of tremendous sentiment, the majesty of leisure, the ill health of Adam Patch, love at any cost.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony!" she called over the banister one afternoon a week later, "there's some one at the door." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, who had been lolling in the hammock on the sun-speckled south porch, strolled around to the front of the house. A foreign car, large and impressive, crouched like an immense and saturnine bug at the foot of the path. A man in a soft pongee suit, with cap to match, hailed him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there, Patch. Ran over to call on you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Bloeckman; as always, infinitesimally improved, of subtler intonation, of more convincing ease.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm awfully glad you did." Anthony raised his voice to a vine-covered window: "Glor-i-<i>a</i>! We've got a visitor!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm in the tub," wailed Gloria politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a smile the two men acknowledged the triumph of her alibi.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She'll be down. Come round here on the side-porch. Like a drink? Gloria's always in the tub—good third of every day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Pity she doesn't live on the Sound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can't afford it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As coming from Adam Patch's grandson, Bloeckman took this as a form of pleasantry. After fifteen minutes filled with estimable brilliancies, Gloria appeared, fresh in starched yellow, bringing atmosphere and an increase of vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to be a successful sensation in the movies," she announced. "I hear that Mary Pickford makes a million dollars annually."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You could, you know," said Bloeckman. "I think you'd film very well."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Would you let me, Anthony? If I only play unsophisticated rôles?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the conversation continued in stilted commas, Anthony wondered that to him and Bloeckman both this girl had once been the most stimulating, the most tonic personality they had ever known—and now the three sat like overoiled machines, without conflict, without fear, without elation, heavily enamelled little figures secure beyond enjoyment in a world where death and war, dull emotion and noble savagery were covering a continent with the smoke of terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose. . . . Life was no more than this summer afternoon; a faint wind stirring the lace collar of Gloria's dress; the slow baking drowsiness of the veranda. . . . Intolerably unmoved they all seemed, removed from any romantic imminency of action. Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Any day next week," Bloeckman was saying to Gloria. "Here—take this card. What they do is to give you a test of about three hundred feet of film, and they can tell pretty accurately from that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about Wednesday?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wednesday's fine. Just phone me and I'll go around with you——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, dust, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He was on his feet, shaking hands briskly—then his car was a wraith of dust down the road. Anthony turned to his wife in bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't mind if I have a trial, Anthony. Just a trial? I've got to go to town Wednesday, <i>any</i>how."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it's so silly! You don't want to go into the movies—moon around a studio all day with a lot of cheap chorus people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lot of mooning around Mary Pickford does!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody isn't a Mary Pickford."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't see how you'd object to my <i>try</i>ing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do, though. I hate actors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you make me tired. Do you imagine I have a very thrilling time dozing on this damn porch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wouldn't mind if you loved me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course I love you," she said impatiently, making out a quick case for herself. "It's just because I do that I hate to see you go to pieces by just lying around and saying you ought to work. Perhaps if I <i>did</i> go into this for a while it'd stir you up so you'd do something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's just your craving for excitement, that's all it is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe it is! It's a perfectly natural craving, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you go to the movies I'm going to Europe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, go on then! <i>I'm</i> not stopping you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To show she was not stopping him she melted into melancholy tears. Together they marshalled the armies of sentiment—words, kisses, endearments, self-reproaches. They attained nothing. Inevitably they attained nothing. Finally, in a burst of gargantuan emotion each of them sat down and wrote a letter. Anthony's was to his grandfather; Gloria's was to Joseph Bloeckman. It was a triumph of lethargy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One day early in July Anthony, returned from an afternoon in New York, called up-stairs to Gloria. Receiving no answer he guessed she was asleep and so went into the pantry for one of the little sandwiches that were always prepared for them. He found Tana seated at the kitchen table before a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends—cigar-boxes, knives, pencils, the tops of cans, and some scraps of paper covered with elaborate figures and diagrams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil you doing?" demanded Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana politely grinned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I show you," he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I tell——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You making a dog-house?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, sa." Tana grinned again. "Make typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Typewriter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sa. I think, oh all time I think, lie in bed think 'bout typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you thought you'd make one, eh?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, munching a sandwich, leaned leisurely against the sink. Tana opened and closed his mouth several times as though testing its capacity for action. Then with a rush he began:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I been think—typewutta—has, oh, many many many many <i>thing</i>. Oh many many many many." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Many keys. I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No-o? <i>Yes</i>—key! Many many many many lettah. Like so a-b-c."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you're right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell." He screwed his face up in a tremendous effort to express himself: "I been think—many words—end same. Like i-n-g."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. A whole raft of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So—I make—typewutta—quick. Not so many lettah——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a great idea, Tana. Save time. You'll make a fortune. Press one key and there's 'ing.' Hope you work it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana laughed disparagingly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell——" <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Mrs. Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out. Wait, I tell—" Again he screwed up his face for action. "<i>My</i> typewutta——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is she?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here—I make." He pointed to the miscellany of junk on the table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean Mrs. Patch."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out." Tana reassured him. "She be back five o'clock, she say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Down in the village?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Went off be-fore lunch. She go Mr. Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Went out with Mr. Bloeckman?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She be back five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word Anthony left the kitchen with Tana's disconsolate "I tell" trailing after him. So this was Gloria's idea of excitement, by God! His fists were clenched; within a moment he had worked himself up to a tremendous pitch of indignation. He went to the door and looked out; there was no car in sight and his watch stood at four minutes of five. With furious energy he dashed down to the end of the path—as far as the bend of the road a mile off he could see no car—except—but it was a farmer's flivver. Then, in an undignified pursuit of dignity, he rushed back to the shelter of the house as quickly as he had rushed out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Pacing up and down the living room he began an angry rehearsal of the speech he would make to her when she came in——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So this is love!" he would begin—or no, it sounded too much like the popular phrase "So this is Paris!" He must be dignified, hurt, grieved. Anyhow—"So this is what <i>you</i> do when I have to go up and trot all day around the hot city on business. No wonder I can't write! No wonder I don't dare let you out of my sight!" He was expanding now, warming to his subject. "I'll tell you," he continued, "I'll tell you—" He paused, catching a familiar ring in the words—then he realized—it was Tana's "I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet Anthony neither laughed nor seemed absurd to himself. To his frantic imagination it was already six—seven—eight, and she was never coming! Bloeckman finding her bored and unhappy had persuaded her to go to California with him. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —There was a great to-do out in front, a joyous "Yoho, Anthony!" and he rose trembling, weakly happy to see her fluttering up the path. Bloeckman was following, cap in hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest!" she cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been for the best jaunt—all over New York State."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll have to be starting home," said Bloeckman, almost immediately. "Wish you'd both been here when I came."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I wasn't," answered Anthony dryly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he had departed Anthony hesitated. The fear was gone from his heart, yet he felt that some protest was ethically apropos. Gloria resolved his uncertainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I knew you wouldn't mind. He came just before lunch and said he had to go to Garrison on business and wouldn't I go with him. He looked so lonesome, Anthony. And I drove his car all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired—tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure—that, and the sense of death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose I don't care," he answered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One must be broad about these things, and Gloria being young, being beautiful, must have reasonable privileges. Yet it wearied him that he failed to understand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WINTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She rolled over on her back and lay still for a moment in the great bed watching the February sun suffer one last attenuated refinement in its passage through the leaded panes into the room. For a time she had no accurate sense of her whereabouts or of the events of the day before, or the day before that; then, like a suspended pendulum, memory began to beat out its story, releasing with each swing a burdened quota of time until her life was given back to her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She could hear, now, Anthony's troubled breathing beside her; she could smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the resultant strain distributed easily over her body—it was a tremendous effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing herself into performing an impossible action. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth to get rid of that intolerable taste; then back by the bedside listening to the rattle of Bounds's key in the outer door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wake up, Anthony!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She climbed into bed beside him and closed her eyes. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> Almost the last thing she remembered was a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Lacy. Mrs. Lacy had said, "Sure you don't want us to get you a taxi?" and Anthony had replied that he guessed they could walk over to Fifth all right. Then they had both attempted, imprudently, to bow—and collapsed absurdly into a battalion of empty milk bottles just outside the door. There must have been two dozen milk bottles standing open-mouthed in the dark. She could conceive of no plausible explanation of those milk bottles. Perhaps they had been attracted by the singing in the Lacy house and had hurried over agape with wonder to see the fun. Well, they'd had the worst of it—though it seemed that she and Anthony never would get up, the perverse things rolled so. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Still, they had found a taxi. "My meter's broken and it'll cost you a dollar and a half to get home," said the taxi driver. "Well," said Anthony, "I'm young Packy McFarland and if you'll come down here I'll beat you till you can't stand up." . . . At that point the man had driven off without them. They must have found another taxi, for they were in the apartment. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What time is it?" Anthony was sitting up in bed, staring at her with owlish precision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was obviously a rhetorical question. Gloria could think of no reason why she should be expected to know the time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Golly, I feel like the devil!" muttered Anthony dispassionately. Relaxing, he tumbled back upon his pillow. "Bring on your grim reaper!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, how'd we finally get home last night?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Taxi."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" Then, after a pause: "Did you put me to bed?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Seems to me you put <i>me</i> to bed. What day is it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday? I hope so. If it's Wednesday, I've got to start work at that idiotic place. Supposed to be down at nine or some such ungodly hour."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ask Bounds," suggested Gloria feebly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds!" he called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sprightly, sober—a voice from a world that it seemed in the past two days they had left forever, Bounds sprang in short steps down the hall and appeared in the half darkness of the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What day, Bounds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "February the twenty-second, I think, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean day of the week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday, sir." "Thanks." After a pause: "Are you ready for breakfast, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, and Bounds, before you get it, will you make a pitcher of water, and set it here beside the bed? I'm a little thirsty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds retreated in sober dignity down the hallway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lincoln's birthday," affirmed Anthony without enthusiasm, "or St. Valentine's or somebody's. When did we start on this insane party?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sunday night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After prayers?" he suggested sardonically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> "We raced all over town in those hansoms and Maury sat up with his driver, don't you remember? Then we came home and he tried to cook some bacon—came out of the pantry with a few blackened remains, insisting it was 'fried to the proverbial crisp.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them laughed, spontaneously but with some difficulty, and lying there side by side reviewed the chain of events that had ended in this rusty and chaotic dawn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had been in New York for almost four months, since the country had grown too cool in late October. They had given up California this year, partly because of lack of funds, partly with the idea of going abroad should this interminable war, persisting now into its second year, end during the winter. Of late their income had lost elasticity; no longer did it stretch to cover gay whims and pleasant extravagances, and Anthony had spent many puzzled and unsatisfactory hours over a densely figured pad, making remarkable budgets that left huge margins for "amusements, trips, etc.," and trying to apportion, even approximately, their past expenditures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered a time when in going on a "party" with his two best friends, he and Maury had invariably paid more than their share of the expenses. They would buy the tickets for the theatre or squabble between themselves for the dinner check. It had seemed fitting; Dick, with his naïveté and his astonishing fund of information about himself, had been a diverting, almost juvenile, figure—court jester to their royalty. But this was no longer true. It was Dick who always had money; it was Anthony who entertained within limitations—always excepting occasional wild, wine-inspired, check-cashing parties—and it was Anthony who was solemn about it next morning and told the scornful and disgusted Gloria that they'd have to be "more careful next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the two years since the publication of "The Demon Lover," Dick had made over twenty-five thousand dollars, most of it lately, when the reward of the author of fiction had begun to swell unprecedentedly as a result of the voracious hunger of the motion pictures for plots. He received seven hundred dollars for every story, at that time a large emolument for such a young man—he was not quite thirty—and for every one that contained enough "action" (kissing, shooting, and sacrificing) for the movies, he obtained an additional thousand. His stories varied; there was a measure of vitality and a sort of instinctive technic in all of them, but none attained the personality of "The Demon Lover," and there were several that Anthony considered downright cheap. These, Dick explained severely, were to widen his audience. Wasn't it true that men who had attained real permanence from Shakespeare to Mark Twain had appealed to the many as well as to the elect?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though Anthony and Maury disagreed, Gloria told him to go ahead and make as much money as he could—that was the only thing that counted anyhow. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury, a little stouter, faintly mellower, and more complaisant, had gone to work in Philadelphia. He came to New York once or twice a month and on such occasions the four of them travelled the popular routes from dinner to the theatre, thence to the Frolic or, perhaps, at the urging of the ever-curious Gloria, to one of the cellars of Greenwich Village, notorious through the furious but short-lived vogue of the "new poetry movement."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, after many monologues directed at his reticent wife, Anthony determined to "get something to do," for the winter at any rate. He wanted to please his grandfather and even, in a measure, to see how he liked it himself. He discovered during several tentative semi-social calls that employers were not interested in a young man who was only going to "try it for a few months or so." As the grandson of Adam Patch he was received everywhere with marked courtesy, but the old man was a back number now—the heyday of his fame as first an "oppressor" and then an uplifter of the people had been during the twenty years preceding his retirement. Anthony even found several of the younger men who were under the impression that Adam Patch had been dead for some years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually Anthony went to his grandfather and asked his advice, which turned out to be that he should enter the bond business as a salesman, a tedious suggestion to Anthony, but one that in the end he determined to follow. Sheer money in deft manipulation had fascinations under all circumstances, while almost any side of manufacturing would be insufferably dull. He considered newspaper work but decided that the hours were not ordered for a married man. And he lingered over pleasant fancies of himself either as editor of a brilliant weekly of opinion, an American Mercure de France, or as scintillant producer of satiric comedy and Parisian musical revue. However, the approaches to these latter guilds seemed to be guarded by professional secrets. Men drifted into them by the devious highways of writing and acting. It was palpably impossible to get on a magazine unless you had been on one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So in the end he entered, by way of his grandfather's letter, that Sanctum Americanum where sat the president of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy at his "cleared desk," and issued therefrom employed. He was to begin work on the twenty-third of February.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, speed, road, city, urban"><br /> <poem><br /> In tribute to the momentous occasion this two-day revel had been planned, since, he said, after he began working he'd have to get to bed early during the week. Maury Noble had arrived from Philadelphia on a trip that had to do with seeing some man in Wall Street (whom, incidentally, he failed to see), and Richard Caramel had been half persuaded, half tricked into joining them. They had condescended to a wet and fashionable wedding on Monday afternoon, and in the evening had occurred the dénouement: Gloria, going beyond her accustomed limit of four precisely timed cocktails, led them on as gay and joyous a bacchanal as they had ever known, disclosing an astonishing knowledge of ballet steps, and singing songs which she confessed had been taught her by her cook when she was innocent and seventeen. She repeated these by request at intervals throughout the evening with such frank conviviality that Anthony, far from being annoyed, was gratified at this fresh source of entertainment. The occasion was memorable in other ways—a long conversation between Maury and a defunct crab, which he was dragging around on the end of a string, as to whether the crab was fully conversant with the applications of the binomial theorem, and the aforementioned race in two hansom cabs with the sedate and impressive shadows of Fifth Avenue for audience, ending in a labyrinthine escape into the darkness of Central Park. Finally Anthony and Gloria had paid a call on some wild young married people—the Lacys—and collapsed in the empty milk bottles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Morning now—theirs to add up the checks cashed here and there in clubs, stores, restaurants. Theirs to air the dank staleness of wine and cigarettes out of the tall blue front room, to pick up the broken glass and brush at the stained fabric of chairs and sofas; to give Bounds suits and dresses for the cleaners; finally, to take their smothery half-feverish bodies and faded depressed spirits out into the chill air of February, that life might go on and Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy obtain the services of a vigorous man at nine next morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, traffic, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember," called Anthony from the bathroom, "when Maury got out at the corner of One Hundred and Tenth Street and acted as a traffic cop, beckoning cars forward and motioning them back? They must have thought he was a private detective."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After each reminiscence they both laughed inordinately, their overwrought nerves responding as acutely and janglingly to mirth as to depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria at the mirror was wondering at the splendid color and freshness of her face—it seemed that she had never looked so well, though her stomach hurt her and her head was aching furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> The day passed slowly. Anthony, riding in a taxi to his broker's to borrow money on a bond, found that he had only two dollars in his pocket. The fare would cost all of that, but he felt that on this particular afternoon he could not have endured the subway. When the taximetre reached his limit he must get out and walk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> With this his mind drifted off into one of its characteristic day-dreams. . . . In this dream he discovered that the metre was going too fast—the driver had dishonestly adjusted it. Calmly he reached his destination and then nonchalantly handed the man what he justly owed him. The man showed fight, but almost before his hands were up Anthony had knocked him down with one terrific blow. And when he rose Anthony quickly sidestepped and floored him definitely with a crack in the temple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . He was in court now. The judge had fined him five dollars and he had no money. Would the court take his check? Ah, but the court did not know him. Well, he could identify himself by having them call his apartment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . They did so. Yes, it was Mrs. Anthony Patch speaking—but how did she know that this man was her husband? How could she know? Let the police sergeant ask her if she remembered the milk bottles . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He leaned forward hurriedly and tapped at the glass. The taxi was only at Brooklyn Bridge, but the metre showed a dollar and eighty cents, and Anthony would never have omitted the ten per cent tip.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon he returned to the apartment. Gloria had also been out—shopping—and was asleep, curled in a corner of the sofa with her purchase locked securely in her arms. Her face was as untroubled as a little girl's, and the bundle that she pressed tightly to her bosom was a child's doll, a profound and infinitely healing balm to her disturbed and childish heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DESTINY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was with this party, more especially with Gloria's part in it, that a decided change began to come over their way of living. The magnificent attitude of not giving a damn altered overnight; from being a mere tenet of Gloria's it became the entire solace and justification for what they chose to do and what consequence it brought. Not to be sorry, not to loose one cry of regret, to live according to a clear code of honor toward each other, and to seek the moment's happiness as fervently and persistently as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No one cares about us but ourselves, Anthony," she said one day. "It'd be ridiculous for me to go about pretending I felt any obligations toward the world, and as for worrying what people think about me, I simply <i>don't</i>, that's all. Since I was a little girl in dancing-school I've been criticised by the mothers of all the little girls who weren't as popular as I was, and I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was because of a party in the "Boul' Mich'" one night, where Constance Merriam had seen her as one of a highly stimulated party of four. Constance Merriam, "as an old school friend," had gone to the trouble of inviting her to lunch next day in order to inform her how terrible it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I told her I couldn't see it," Gloria told Anthony. "Eric Merriam is a sort of sublimated Percy Wolcott—you remember that man in Hot Springs I told you about—his idea of respecting Constance is to leave her at home with her sewing and her baby and her book, and such innocuous amusements, whenever he's going on a party that promises to be anything but deathly dull."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you tell her that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly did. And I told her that what she really objected to was that I was having a better time than she was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony applauded her. He was tremendously proud of Gloria, proud that she never failed to eclipse whatever other women might be in the party, proud that men were always glad to revel with her in great rowdy groups, without any attempt to do more than enjoy her beauty and the warmth of her vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These "parties" gradually became their chief source of entertainment. Still in love, still enormously interested in each other, they yet found as spring drew near that staying at home in the evening palled on them; books were unreal; the old magic of being alone had long since vanished—instead they preferred to be bored by a stupid musical comedy, or to go to dinner with the most uninteresting of their acquaintances, so long as there would be enough cocktails to keep the conversation from becoming utterly intolerable. A scattering of younger married people who had been their friends in school or college, as well as a varied assortment of single men, began to think instinctively of them whenever color and excitement were needed, so there was scarcely a day without its phone call, its "Wondered what you were doing this evening." Wives, as a rule, were afraid of Gloria—her facile attainment of the centre of the stage, her innocent but nevertheless disturbing way of becoming a favorite with husbands—these things drove them instinctively into an attitude of profound distrust, heightened by the fact that Gloria was largely unresponsive to any intimacy shown her by a woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the appointed Wednesday in February Anthony had gone to the imposing offices of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy and listened to many vague instructions delivered by an energetic young man of about his own age, named Kahler, who wore a defiant yellow pompadour, and in announcing himself as an assistant secretary gave the impression that it was a tribute to exceptional ability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's two kinds of men here, you'll find," he said. "There's the man who gets to be an assistant secretary or treasurer, gets his name on our folder here, before he's thirty, and there's the man who gets his name there at forty-five. The man who gets his name there at forty-five stays there the rest of his life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the man who gets it there at thirty?" inquired Anthony politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, he gets up here, you see." He pointed to a list of assistant vice-presidents upon the folder. "Or maybe he gets to be president or secretary or treasurer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And what about these over here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Those? Oh, those are the trustees—the men with capital."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now some people," continued Kahler, "think that whether a man gets started early or late depends on whether he's got a college education. But they're wrong."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had one; I was Buckleigh, class of nineteen-eleven, but when I came down to the Street I soon found that the things that would help me here weren't the fancy things I learned in college. In fact, I had to get a lot of fancy stuff out of my head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony could not help wondering what possible "fancy stuff" he had learned at Buckleigh in nineteen-eleven. An irrepressible idea that it was some sort of needlework recurred to him throughout the rest of the conversation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See that fellow over there?" Kahler pointed to a youngish-looking man with handsome gray hair, sitting at a desk inside a mahogany railing. "That's Mr. Ellinger, the first vice-president. Been everywhere, seen everything; got a fine education."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In vain did Anthony try to open his mind to the romance of finance; he could think of Mr. Ellinger only as one of the buyers of the handsome leather sets of Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo, and Gibbon that lined the wall of the big bookstores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the damp and uninspiring month of March he was prepared for salesmanship. Lacking enthusiasm he was capable of viewing the turmoil and bustle that surrounded him only as a fruitless circumambient striving toward an incomprehensible goal, tangibly evidenced only by the rival mansions of Mr. Frick and Mr. Carnegie on Fifth Avenue. That these portentous vice-presidents and trustees should be actually the fathers of the "best men" he had known at Harvard seemed to him incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate in an employees' lunch-room up-stairs with an uneasy suspicion that he was being uplifted, wondering through that first week if the dozens of young clerks, some of them alert and immaculate, and just out of college, lived in flamboyant hope of crowding onto that narrow slip of cardboard before the catastrophic thirties. The conversation that interwove with the pattern of the day's work was all much of a piece. One discussed how Mr. Wilson had made his money, what method Mr. Hiemer had employed, and the means resorted to by Mr. Hardy. One related age-old but eternally breathless anecdotes of the fortunes stumbled on precipitously in the Street by a "butcher" or a "bartender," or "a darn <i>mess</i>enger boy, by golly!" and then one talked of the current gambles, and whether it was best to go out for a hundred thousand a year or be content with twenty. During the preceding year one of the assistant secretaries had invested all his savings in Bethlehem Steel. The story of his spectacular magnificence, of his haughty resignation in January, and of the triumphal palace he was now building in California, was the favorite office subject. The man's very name had acquired a magic significance, symbolizing as he did the aspirations of all good Americans. Anecdotes were told about him—how one of the vice-presidents had advised him to sell, by golly, but he had hung on, even bought on margin, "and <i>now</i> look where he is!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such, obviously, was the stuff of life—a dizzy triumph dazzling the eyes of all of them, a gypsy siren to content them with meagre wage and with the arithmetical improbability of their eventual success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To Anthony the notion became appalling. He felt that to succeed here the idea of success must grasp and limit his mind. It seemed to him that the essential element in these men at the top was their faith that their affairs were the very core of life. All other things being equal, self-assurance and opportunism won out over technical knowledge; it was obvious that the more expert work went on near the bottom—so, with appropriate efficiency, the technical experts were kept there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His determination to stay in at night during the week did not survive, and a good half of the time he came to work with a splitting, sickish headache and the crowded horror of the morning subway ringing in his ears like an echo of hell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, abruptly, he quit. He had remained in bed all one Monday, and late in the evening, overcome by one of those attacks of moody despair to which he periodically succumbed, he wrote and mailed a letter to Mr. Wilson, confessing that he considered himself ill adapted to the work. Gloria, coming in from the theatre with Richard Caramel, found him on the lounge, silently staring at the high ceiling, more depressed and discouraged than he had been at any time since their marriage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She wanted him to whine. If he had she would have reproached him bitterly, for she was not a little annoyed, but he only lay there so utterly miserable that she felt sorry for him, and kneeling down she stroked his head, saying how little it mattered, how little anything mattered so long as they loved each other. It was like their first year, and Anthony, reacting to her cool hand, to her voice that was soft as breath itself upon his ear, became almost cheerful, and talked with her of his future plans. He even regretted, silently, before he went to bed that he had so hastily mailed his resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment," Gloria had said. "It's the sum of all your judgments that counts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> In mid-April came a letter from the real-estate agent in Marietta, encouraging them to take the gray house for another year at a slightly increased rental, and enclosing a lease made out for their signatures. For a week lease and letter lay carelessly neglected on Anthony's desk. They had no intention of returning to Marietta. They were weary of the place, and had been bored most of the preceding summer. Besides, their car had deteriorated to a rattling mass of hypochondriacal metal, and a new one was financially inadvisable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But because of another wild revel, enduring through four days and participated in, at one time or another, by more than a dozen people, they did sign the lease; to their utter horror they signed it and sent it, and immediately it seemed as though they heard the gray house, drably malevolent at last, licking its white chops and waiting to devour them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, where's that lease?" she called in high alarm one Sunday morning, sick and sober to reality. "Where did you leave it? It was here!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she knew where it was. She remembered the house party they had planned on the crest of their exuberance; she remembered a room full of men to whose less exhilarated moments she and Anthony were of no importance, and Anthony's boast of the transcendent merit and seclusion of the gray house, that it was so isolated that it didn't matter how much noise went on there. Then Dick, who had visited them, cried enthusiastically that it was the best little house imaginable, and that they were idiotic not to take it for another summer. It had been easy to work themselves up to a sense of how hot and deserted the city was getting, of how cool and ambrosial were the charms of Marietta. Anthony had picked up the lease and waved it wildly, found Gloria happily acquiescent, and with one last burst of garrulous decision during which all the men agreed with solemn handshakes that they would come out for a visit . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony," she cried, "we've signed and sent it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The lease!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>An</i>thony!" There was utter misery in her voice. For the summer, for eternity, they had built themselves a prison. It seemed to strike at the last roots of their stability. Anthony thought they might arrange it with the real-estate agent. They could no longer afford the double rent, and going to Marietta meant giving up his apartment, his reproachless apartment with the exquisite bath and the rooms for which he had bought his furniture and hangings—it was the closest to a home that he had ever had—familiar with memories of four colorful years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was not arranged with the real-estate agent, nor was it arranged at all. Dispiritedly, without even any talk of making the best of it, without even Gloria's all-sufficing "I don't care," they went back to the house that they now knew heeded neither youth nor love—only those austere and incommunicable memories that they could never share.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SINISTER SUMMER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a horror in the house that summer. It came with them and settled itself over the place like a sombre pall, pervasive through the lower rooms, gradually spreading and climbing up the narrow stairs until it oppressed their very sleep. Anthony and Gloria grew to hate being there alone. Her bedroom, which had seemed so pink and young and delicate, appropriate to her pastel-shaded lingerie tossed here and there on chair and bed, seemed now to whisper with its rustling curtains:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, my beautiful young lady, yours is not the first daintiness and delicacy that has faded here under the summer suns . . . generations of unloved women have adorned themselves by that glass for rustic lovers who paid no heed. . . . Youth has come into this room in palest blue and left it in the gray cerements of despair, and through long nights many girls have lain awake where that bed stands pouring out waves of misery into the darkness."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria finally tumbled all her clothes and unguents ingloriously out of it, declaring that she had come to live with Anthony, and making the excuse that one of her screens was rotten and admitted bugs. So her room was abandoned to insensitive guests, and they dressed and slept in her husband's chamber, which Gloria considered somehow "good," as though Anthony's presence there had acted as exterminator of any uneasy shadows of the past that might have hovered about its walls.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The distinction between "good" and "bad," ordered early and summarily out of both their lives, had been reinstated in another form. Gloria insisted that any one invited to the gray house must be "good," which, in the case of a girl, meant that she must be either simple and reproachless or, if otherwise, must possess a certain solidity and strength. Always intensely sceptical of her sex, her judgments were now concerned with the question of whether women were or were not clean. By uncleanliness she meant a variety of things, a lack of pride, a slackness in fibre and, most of all, the unmistakable aura of promiscuity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Women soil easily," she said, "far more easily than men. Unless a girl's very young and brave it's almost impossible for her to go down-hill without a certain hysterical animality, the cunning, dirty sort of animality. A man's different—and I suppose that's why one of the commonest characters of romance is a man going gallantly to the devil."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was disposed to like many men, preferably those who gave her frank homage and unfailing entertainment—but often with a flash of insight she told Anthony that some one of his friends was merely using him, and consequently had best be left alone. Anthony customarily demurred, insisting that the accused was a "good one," but he found that his judgment was more fallible than hers, memorably when, as it happened on several occasions, he was left with a succession of restaurant checks for which to render a solitary account.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> More from their fear of solitude than from any desire to go through the fuss and bother of entertaining, they filled the house with guests every week-end, and often on through the week. The week-end parties were much the same. When the three or four men invited had arrived, drinking was more or less in order, followed by a hilarious dinner and a ride to the Cradle Beach Country Club, which they had joined because it was inexpensive, lively if not fashionable, and almost a necessity for just such occasions as these. Moreover, it was of no great moment what one did there, and so long as the Patch party were reasonably inaudible, it mattered little whether or not the social dictators of Cradle Beach saw the gay Gloria imbibing cocktails in the supper room at frequent intervals during the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Saturday ended, generally, in a glamourous confusion—it proving often necessary to assist a muddled guest to bed. Sunday brought the New York papers and a quiet morning of recuperating on the porch—and Sunday afternoon meant good-by to the one or two guests who must return to the city, and a great revival of drinking among the one or two who remained until next day, concluding in a convivial if not hilarious evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The faithful Tana, pedagogue by nature and man of all work by profession, had returned with them. Among their more frequent guests a tradition had sprung up about him. Maury Noble remarked one afternoon that his real name was Tannenbaum, and that he was a German agent kept in this country to disseminate Teutonic propaganda through Westchester County, and, after that, mysterious letters began to arrive from Philadelphia addressed to the bewildered Oriental as "Lt. Emile Tannenbaum," containing a few cryptic messages signed "General Staff," and adorned with an atmospheric double column of facetious Japanese. Anthony always handed them to Tana without a smile; hours afterward the recipient could be found puzzling over them in the kitchen and declaring earnestly that the perpendicular symbols were not Japanese, nor anything resembling Japanese.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria had taken a strong dislike to the man ever since the day when, returning unexpectedly from the village, she had discovered him reclining on Anthony's bed, puzzling out a newspaper. It was the instinct of all servants to be fond of Anthony and to detest Gloria, and Tana was no exception to the rule. But he was thoroughly afraid of her and made plain his aversion only in his moodier moments by subtly addressing Anthony with remarks intended for her ear:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What Miz Pats want dinner?" he would say, looking at his master. Or else he would comment about the bitter selfishness of "'Merican peoples" in such manner that there was no doubt who were the "peoples" referred to.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But they dared not dismiss him. Such a step would have been abhorrent to their inertia. They endured Tana as they endured ill weather and sickness of the body and the estimable Will of God—as they endured all things, even themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>IN DARKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One sultry afternoon late in July Richard Caramel telephoned from New York that he and Maury were coming out, bringing a friend with them. They arrived about five, a little drunk, accompanied by a small, stocky man of thirty-five, whom they introduced as Mr. Joe Hull, one of the best fellows that Anthony and Gloria had ever met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Joe Hull had a yellow beard continually fighting through his skin and a low voice which varied between basso profundo and a husky whisper. Anthony, carrying Maury's suitcase up-stairs, followed into the room and carefully closed the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury chuckled enthusiastically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who, Hull? Oh, <i>he's</i> all right. He's a good one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, but who is he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hull? He's just a good fellow. He's a prince." His laughter redoubled, culminating in a succession of pleasant catlike grins. Anthony hesitated between a smile and a frown.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He looks sort of funny to me. Weird-looking clothes"—he paused—"I've got a sneaking suspicion you two picked him up somewhere last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ridiculous," declared Maury. "Why, I've known him all my life." However, as he capped this statement with another series of chuckles, Anthony was impelled to remark: "The devil you have!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, just before dinner, while Maury and Dick were conversing uproariously, with Joe Hull listening in silence as he sipped his drink, Gloria drew Anthony into the dining room:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like this man Hull," she said. "I wish he'd use Tana's bathtub."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't very well ask him to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want him in ours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He seems to be a simple soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got on white shoes that look like gloves. I can see his toes right through them. Uh! Who is he, anyway?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I think they've got their nerve to bring him out here. This isn't a Sailor's Rescue Home!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They were tight when they phoned. Maury said they've been on a party since yesterday afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her head angrily, and saying no more returned to the porch. Anthony saw that she was trying to forget her uncertainty and devote herself to enjoying the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="temperature, road"><br /> <poem><br /> It had been a tropical day, and even into late twilight the heat-waves emanating from the dry road were quivering faintly like undulating panes of isinglass. The sky was cloudless, but far beyond the woods in the direction of the Sound a faint and persistent rolling had commenced. When Tana announced dinner the men, at a word from Gloria, remained coatless and went inside.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury began a song, which they accomplished in harmony during the first course. It had two lines and was sung to a popular air called Daisy Dear. The lines were:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us, </div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—the moral de<i>cline</i>!"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Each rendition was greeted with bursts of enthusiasm and prolonged applause.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" suggested Maury. "You seem the least bit depressed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not," she lied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here, Tannenbaum!" he called over his shoulder. "I've filled you a drink. Come on!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria tried to stay his arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Please don't, Maury!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not? Maybe he'll play the flute for us after dinner. Here, Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana, grinning, bore the glass away to the kitchen. In a few moments Maury gave him another.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" he cried. "For Heaven's sakes everybody, cheer up Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest, have another drink," counselled Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria," said Joe Hull easily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria winced at this uncalled-for use of her first name, and glanced around to see if any one else had noticed it. The word coming so glibly from the lips of a man to whom she had taken an inordinate dislike repelled her. A moment later she noticed that Joe Hull had given Tana another drink, and her anger increased, heightened somewhat from the effects of the alcohol.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—and once," Maury was saying, "Peter Granby and I went into a Turkish bath in Boston, about two o'clock at night. There was no one there but the proprietor, and we jammed him into a closet and locked the door. Then a fella came in and wanted a Turkish bath. Thought we were the rubbers, by golly! Well, we just picked him up and tossed him into the pool with all his clothes on. Then we dragged him out and laid him on a slab and slapped him until he was black and blue. 'Not so rough, fellows!' he'd say in a little squeaky voice, 'please! . . .'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Was this Maury? thought Gloria. From any one else the story would have amused her, but from Maury, the infinitely appreciative, the apotheosis of tact and consideration. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A drum of thunder from outside drowned out the rest of the song; Gloria shivered and tried to empty her glass, but the first taste nauseated her, and she set it down. Dinner was over and they all marched into the big room, bearing several bottles and decanters. Some one had closed the porch door to keep out the wind, and in consequence circular tentacles of cigar smoke were twisting already upon the heavy air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paging Lieutenant Tannenbaum!" Again it was the changeling Maury. "Bring us the flute!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Maury rushed into the kitchen; Richard Caramel started the phonograph and approached Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance with your well-known cousin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to dance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'm going to carry you around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As though he were doing something of overpowering importance, he picked her up in his fat little arms and started trotting gravely about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Set me down, Dick! I'm dizzy!" she insisted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He dumped her in a bouncing bundle on the couch, and rushed off to the kitchen, shouting "Tana! Tana!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, without warning, she felt other arms around her, felt herself lifted from the lounge. Joe Hull had picked her up and was trying, drunkenly, to imitate Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Put me down!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His maudlin laugh, and the sight of that prickly yellow jaw close to her face stirred her to intolerable disgust.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At once!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The—pan-ic—" he began, but got no further, for Gloria's hand swung around swiftly and caught him in the cheek. At this he all at once let go of her, and she fell to the floor, her shoulder hitting the table a glancing blow in transit. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the room seemed full of men and smoke. There was Tana in his white coat reeling about supported by Maury. Into his flute he was blowing a weird blend of sound that was known, cried Anthony, as the Japanese train-song. Joe Hull had found a box of candles and was juggling them, yelling "One down!" every time he missed, and Dick was dancing by himself in a fascinated whirl around and about the room. It appeared to her that everything in the room was staggering in grotesque fourth-dimensional gyrations through intersecting planes of hazy blue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Outside, the storm had come up amazingly—the lulls within were filled with the scrape of the tall bushes against the house and the roaring of the rain on the tin roof of the kitchen. The lightning was interminable, letting down thick drips of thunder like pig iron from the heart of a white-hot furnace. Gloria could see that the rain was spitting in at three of the windows—but she could not move to shut them. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . She was in the hall. She had said good night but no one had heard or heeded her. It seemed for an instant as though something had looked down over the head of the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor. . . . Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side of the half-drenched bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her eyes. From down-stairs arose the babel of the drinkers, punctured suddenly by a tinkling shiver of broken glass, and then another, and by a soaring fragment of unsteady, irregular song. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay there for something over two hours—so she calculated afterward, sheerly by piecing together the bits of time. She was conscious, even aware, after a long while that the noise down-stairs had lessened, and that the storm was moving off westward, throwing back lingering showers of sound that fell, heavy and lifeless as her soul, into the soggy fields. This was succeeded by a slow, reluctant scattering of the rain and wind, until there was nothing outside her windows but a gentle dripping and the swishing play of a cluster of wet vine against the sill. She was in a state half-way between sleeping and waking, with neither condition predominant . . . and she was harassed by a desire to rid herself of a weight pressing down upon her breast. She felt that if she could cry the weight would be lifted, and forcing the lids of her eyes together she tried to raise a lump in her throat . . . to no avail. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Drip! Drip! Drip! The sound was not unpleasant—like spring, like a cool rain of her childhood, that made cheerful mud in her back yard and watered the tiny garden she had dug with miniature rake and spade and hoe. Drip—dri-ip! It was like days when the rain came out of yellow skies that melted just before twilight and shot one radiant shaft of sunlight diagonally down the heavens into the damp green trees. So cool, so clear and clean—and her mother there at the centre of the world, at the centre of the rain, safe and dry and strong. She wanted her mother now, and her mother was dead, beyond sight and touch forever. And this weight was pressing on her, pressing on her—oh, it pressed on her so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She became rigid. Some one had come to the door and was standing regarding her, very quiet except for a slight swaying motion. She could see the outline of his figure distinct against some indistinguishable light. There was no sound anywhere, only a great persuasive silence—even the dripping had ceased . . . only this figure, swaying, swaying in the doorway, an indiscernible and subtly menacing terror, a personality filthy under its varnish, like smallpox spots under a layer of powder. Yet her tired heart, beating until it shook her breasts, made her sure that there was still life in her, desperately shaken, threatened. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The minute or succession of minutes prolonged itself interminably, and a swimming blur began to form before her eyes, which tried with childish persistence to pierce the gloom in the direction of the door. In another instant it seemed that some unimaginable force would shatter her out of existence . . . and then the figure in the doorway—it was Hull, she saw, Hull—turned deliberately and, still slightly swaying, moved back and off, as if absorbed into that incomprehensible light that had given him dimension.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Blood rushed back into her limbs, blood and life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself into stray, swaying figures in the gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a panic she fumbled clumsily at her coat, found the sleeve just as she heard Anthony's footsteps on the lower stair. She dared not wait; he might not let her go, and even Anthony was part of this weight, part of this evil house and the sombre darkness that was growing up about it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the hall then . . . and down the back stairs, hearing Anthony's voice in the bedroom she had just left——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she had reached the kitchen now, passed out through the doorway into the night. A hundred drops, startled by a flare of wind from a dripping tree, scattered on her and she pressed them gladly to her face with hot hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The voice was infinitely remote, muffed and made plaintive by the walls she had just left. She rounded the house and started down the front path toward the road, almost exultant as she turned into it, and followed the carpet of short grass alongside, moving with caution in the intense darkness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She broke into a run, stumbled over the segment of a branch twisted off by the wind. The voice was outside the house now. Anthony, finding the bedroom deserted, had come onto the porch. But this thing was driving her forward; it was back there with Anthony, and she must go on in her flight under this dim and oppressive heaven, forcing herself through the silence ahead as though it were a tangible barrier before her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had gone some distance along the barely discernible road, probably half a mile, passed a single deserted barn that loomed up, black and foreboding, the only building of any sort between the gray house and Marietta; then she turned the fork, where the road entered the wood and ran between two high walls of leaves and branches that nearly touched overhead. She noticed suddenly a thin, longitudinal gleam of silver upon the road before her, like a bright sword half embedded in the mud. As she came closer she gave a little cry of satisfaction—it was a wagon-rut full of water, and glancing heavenward she saw a light rift of sky and knew that the moon was out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She started violently. Anthony was not two hundred feet behind her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, wait for me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her lips tightly to keep from screaming, and increased her gait. Before she had gone another hundred yards the woods disappeared, rolling back like a dark stocking from the leg of the road. Three minutes' walk ahead of her, suspended in the now high and limitless air, she saw a thin interlacing of attenuated gleams and glitters, centred in a regular undulation on some one invisible point. Abruptly she knew where she would go. That was the great cascade of wires that rose high over the river, like the legs of a gigantic spider whose eye was the little green light in the switch-house, and ran with the railroad bridge in the direction of the station. The station! There would be the train to take her away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, it's me! It's Anthony! Gloria, I won't try to stop you! For God's sake, where are you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer but began to run, keeping on the high side of the road and leaping the gleaming puddles—dimensionless pools of thin, unsubstantial gold. Turning sharply to the left, she followed a narrow wagon road, serving to avoid a dark body on the ground. She looked up as an owl hooted mournfully from a solitary tree. Just ahead of her she could see the trestle that led to the railroad bridge and the steps mounting up to it. The station lay across the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another sounds startled her, the melancholy siren of an approaching train, and almost simultaneously, a repeated call, thin now and far away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony must have followed the main road. She laughed with a sort of malicious cunning at having eluded him; she could spare the time to wait until the train went by.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamor, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clocklike tick of the rails, moved toward the bridge—it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid, the temperature of warm blood. . . . The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence crept down again over the wet country; the faint dripping resumed, and suddenly a great shower of drops tumbled upon Gloria stirring her out of the trance-like torpor which the passage of the train had wrought. She ran swiftly down a descending level to the bank and began climbing the iron stairway to the bridge, remembering that it was something she had always wanted to do, and that she would have the added excitement of traversing the yard-wide plank that ran beside the tracks over the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There! This was better. She was at the top now and could see the lands about her as successive sweeps of open country, cold under the moon, coarsely patched and seamed with thin rows and heavy clumps of trees. To her right, half a mile down the river, which trailed away behind the light like the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of freedom. This was what she had wanted, to stand alone where it was high and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Like a startled child she scurried along the plank, hopping, skipping, jumping, with an ecstatic sense of her own physical lightness. Let him come now—she no longer feared that, only she must first reach the station, because that was part of the game. She was happy. Her hat, snatched off, was clutched tightly in her hand, and her short curled hair bobbed up and down about her ears. She had thought she would never feel so young again, but this was her night, her world. Triumphantly she laughed as she left the plank, and reaching the wooden platform flung herself down happily beside an iron roof-post.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here I am!" she called, gay as the dawn in her elation. "Here I am, Anthony, dear—old, worried Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" He reached the platform, ran toward her. "Are you all right?" Coming up he knelt and took her in his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was the matter? Why did you leave?" he queried anxiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had to—there was something"—she paused and a flicker of uneasiness lashed at her mind—"there was something sitting on me—here." She put her hand on her breast. "I had to go out and get away from it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean by 'something'?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—that man Hull——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he bother you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He came to my door, drunk. I think I'd gotten sort of crazy by that time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, dearest——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Wearily she laid her head upon his shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go back," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shivered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Uh! No, I couldn't. It'd come and sit on me again." Her voice rose to a cry that hung plaintive on the darkness. "That thing——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There—there," he soothed her, pulling her close to him. "We won't do anything you don't want to do. What do you want to do? Just sit here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want—I want to go away."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—anywhere."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By golly, Gloria," he cried, "you're still tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I haven't been, all evening. I went up-stairs about, oh, I don't know, about half an hour after dinner . . . Ouch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had inadvertently touched her right shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It hurts me. I hurt it some way. I don't know—somebody picked me up and dropped me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, come home. It's late and damp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't," she wailed. "Oh, Anthony, don't ask me to! I will to-morrow. You go home and I'll wait here for a train. I'll go to a hotel——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll go with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't want you with me. I want to be alone. I want to sleep—oh, I want to sleep. And then to-morrow, when you've got all the smell of whiskey and cigarettes out of the house, and everything straight, and Hull is gone, then I'll come home. If I went now, that thing—oh—!" She covered her eyes with her hand; Anthony saw the futility of trying to persuade her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was all sober when you left," he said. "Dick was asleep on the lounge and Maury and I were having a discussion. That fellow Hull had wandered off somewhere. Then I began to realize I hadn't seen you for several hours, so I went up-stairs——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off as a salutatory "Hello, there!" boomed suddenly out of the darkness. Gloria sprang to her feet and he did likewise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's Maury's voice," she cried excitedly. "If it's Hull with him, keep them away, keep them away!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" Anthony called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just Dick and Maury," returned two voices reassuringly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Hull?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's in bed. Passed out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their figures appeared dimly on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil are you and Gloria doing here?" inquired Richard Caramel with sleepy bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are <i>you</i> two doing here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Damned if I know. We followed you, and had the deuce of a time doing it. I heard you out on the porch yelling for Gloria, so I woke up the Caramel here and got it through his head, with some difficulty, that if there was a search-party we'd better be on it. He slowed me up by sitting down in the road at intervals and asking me what it was all about. We tracked you by the pleasant scent of Canadian Club."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a rattle of nervous laughter under the low train-shed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you track us, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we followed along down the road and then we suddenly lost you. Seems you turned off at a wagon-trail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was waving around——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, the poor old man!" ejaculated Gloria, moved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I threw him another and we went on, though he asked us to stay and tell him what it was all about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor old man," repeated Gloria dismally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick sat down sleepily on a box.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And now what?" he inquired in the tone of stoic resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's upset," explained Anthony. "She and I are going to the city by the next train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury in the darkness had pulled a time-table from his pocket.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strike a match."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tiny flare leaped out of the opaque background illuminating the four faces, grotesque and unfamiliar here in the open night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see. Two, two-thirty—no, that's evening. By gad, you won't get a train till five-thirty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he muttered uncertainly, "we've decided to stay here and wait for it. You two might as well go back and sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You go, too, Anthony," urged Gloria; "I want you to have some sleep, dear. You've been as pale as a ghost all day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you little idiot!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very well. You stay, we stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He walked out from under the shed and surveyed the heavens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather a nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see." Gloria moved after him and the other two followed her. "Let's sit out here," she suggested. "I like it much better."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Dick converted a long box into a backrest and found a board dry enough for Gloria to sit on. Anthony dropped down beside her and with some effort Dick hoisted himself onto an apple-barrel near them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tana went to sleep in the porch hammock," he remarked. "We carried him in and left him next to the kitchen stove to dry. He was drenched to the skin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That awful little man!" sighed Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do!" The voice, sonorous and funereal, had come from above, and they looked up startled to find that in some manner Maury had climbed to the roof of the shed, where he sat dangling his feet over the edge, outlined as a shadowy and fantastic gargoyle against the now brilliant sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It must be for such occasions as this," he began softly, his words having the effect of floating down from an immense height and settling softly upon his auditors, "that the righteous of the land decorate the railroads with bill-boards asserting in red and yellow that 'Jesus Christ is God,' placing them, appropriately enough, next to announcements that 'Gunter's Whiskey is Good.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was gentle laughter and the three below kept their heads tilted upward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think I shall tell you the story of my education," continued Maury, "under these sardonic constellations."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do! Please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall I, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They waited expectantly while he directed a ruminative yawn toward the white smiling moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, "as an infant I prayed. I stored up prayers against future wickedness. One year I stored up nineteen hundred 'Now I lay me's.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Throw down a cigarette," murmured some one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small package reached the platform simultaneously with the stentorian command:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Silence! I am about to unburden myself of many memorable remarks reserved for the darkness of such earths and the brilliance of such skies."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Below, a lighted match was passed from cigarette to cigarette. The voice resumed:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me. I believed that because a man cried out 'My God!' when a safe fell on him, it proved that belief was rooted deep in the human breast. Then I went to school. For fourteen years half a hundred earnest men pointed to ancient flint-locks and cried to me: 'There's the real thing. These new rifles are only shallow, superficial imitations.' They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned things by calling them 'clever'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so I turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning. This, at least, did me no harm. I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth—and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me. The fibre of my mind coarsened and my eyes grew miserably keen. Life rose around my island like a sea, and presently I was swimming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The transition was subtle—the thing had lain in wait for me for some time. It has its insidious, seemingly innocuous trap for every one. With me? No—I didn't try to seduce the janitor's wife—nor did I run through the streets unclothed, proclaiming my virility. It is never quite passion that does the business—it is the dress that passion wears. I became bored—that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts. Beauty was behind me, do you understand?—I was grown." He paused. "End of school and college period. Opening of Part Two."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Three quietly active points of light showed the location of his listeners. Gloria was now half sitting, half lying, in Anthony's lap. His arm was around her so tightly that she could hear the beating of his heart. Richard Caramel, perched on the apple-barrel, from time to time stirred and gave off a faint grunt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I grew up then, into this land of jazz, and fell immediately into a state of almost audible confusion. Life stood over me like an immoral schoolmistress, editing my ordered thoughts. But, with a mistaken faith in intelligence, I plodded on. I read Smith, who laughed at charity and insisted that the sneer was the highest form of self-expression—but Smith himself replaced charity as an obscurer of the light. I read Jones, who neatly disposed of individualism—and behold! Jones was still in my way. I did not think—I was a battle-ground for the thoughts of many men; rather was I one of those desirable but impotent countries over which the great powers surge back and forth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life—and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But after a few tastes of this latter dish I had had enough. Here! I said, Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you—it's a wall that an active you runs up against. So I wrapped myself in what I thought was my invulnerable scepticism and decided that my education was complete. But it was too late. Protect myself as I might by making no new ties with tragic and predestined humanity, I was lost with the rest. I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off to give emphasis to his last observation—after a moment he yawned and resumed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose that the beginning of the second phase of my education was a ghastly dissatisfaction at being used in spite of myself for some inscrutable purpose of whose ultimate goal I was unaware—if, indeed, there <i>was</i> an ultimate goal. It was a difficult choice. The schoolmistress seemed to be saying, 'We're going to play football and nothing but football. If you don't want to play football you can't play at all——'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was I to do—the playtime was so short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see, I felt that we were even denied what consolation there might have been in being a figment of a corporate man rising from his knees. Do you think that I leaped at this pessimism, grasped it as a sweetly smug superior thing, no more depressing really than, say, a gray autumn day before a fire?—I don't think I did that. I was a great deal too warm for that, and too alive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature—nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly in her face. She had invented ways to rid the race of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher—or, let us say, her more amusing—though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circumvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white—in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might organize them for material prosperity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper—and presently the breed of the leper is the salt of the earth. If any one can find any lesson in that, let him stand forth."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's only one lesson to be learned from life, anyway," interrupted Gloria, not in contradiction but in a sort of melancholy agreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's that?" demanded Maury sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That there's no lesson to be learned from life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a short silence Maury said:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young Gloria, the beautiful and merciless lady, first looked at the world with the fundamental sophistication I have struggled to attain, that Anthony never will attain, that Dick will never fully understand."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a disgusted groan from the apple-barrel. Anthony, grown accustomed to the dark, could see plainly the flash of Richard Caramel's yellow eye and the look of resentment on his face as he cried:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're crazy! By your own statement I should have attained some experience by trying."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? Struggling in a laboratory through weary years for one iota of relative truth in a mass of wheels or a test tube——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury paused, and in his answer, when it came, there was a measure of weariness, a bitter overnote that lingered for a moment in those three minds before it floated up and off like a bubble bound for the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not I," he said softly. "I was born tired—but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria—to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the distance a deep sound that had been audible for some moments identified itself by a plaintive mooing like that of a gigantic cow and by the pearly spot of a headlight apparent half a mile away. It was a steam-driven train this time, rumbling and groaning, and as it tumbled by with a monstrous complaint it sent a shower of sparks and cinders over the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not one jot!" Again Maury's voice dropped down to them as from a great height. "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I could quote you the philosophy of the hour—but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France—" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know—the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself—these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know anything else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen—as the wisest men have done since—oh, since the failure of a certain matter—a strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over—and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So the men did, and they died.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my high-balls are dead and the night's almost over, and soon there'll be an awful jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two little stores over there behind the station, and there'll be a great running up and down upon the earth for a few hours— Well," he concluded with a laugh, "thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest knowing we've left the world a little better for having lived in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened against the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive," said Anthony sleepily. "You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her far-sighted detachment by falling asleep—I can tell that by the fact that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my broken body."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have I bored you?" inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, you have disappointed us. You've shot a lot of arrows but did you shoot any birds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I leave the birds to Dick," said Maury hurriedly. "I speak erratically, in disassociated fragments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can get no rise from me," muttered Dick. "My mind is full of any number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quarter to five," sighed Dick; "almost another hour to wait. Look! Two gone." He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes. "Sleep of the Patch family——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups, his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now—on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm—the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her—then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (261-309)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BROKEN LUTE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It is seven-thirty of an August evening. The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. But August is still proclaimed relentlessly by a thousand crickets around the side-porch, and by one who has broken into the house and concealed himself confidently behind a bookcase, from time to time shrieking of his cleverness and his indomitable will.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit, which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous assortment of decanters, glasses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air, the effect on the whole needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in every "den," which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>After a while the sprightly solo of the supercricket is interrupted rather than joined by a new sound—the melancholy wail of an erratically fingered flute. It is obvious that the musician is practising rather than performing, for from time to time the gnarled strain breaks off and, after an interval of indistinct mutterings, recommences.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Just prior to the seventh false start a third sound contributes to the subdued discord. It is a taxi outside. A minute's silence, then the taxi again, its boisterous retreat almost obliterating the scrape of footsteps on the cinder walk. The door-bell shrieks alarmingly through the house.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>From the kitchen enters a small, fatigued Japanese, hastily buttoning a servant's coat of white duck. He opens the front screen-door and admits a handsome young man of thirty, clad in the sort of well-intentioned clothes peculiar to those who serve mankind. To his whole personality clings a well-intentioned air: his glance about the room is compounded of curiosity and a determined optimism; when he looks at Tana the entire burden of uplifting the godless Oriental is in his eyes. His name is</i> FREDERICK E. PARAMORE. <i>He was at Harvard with</i> ANTHONY, <i>where because of the initials of their surnames they were constantly placed next to each other in classes. A fragmentary acquaintance developed—but since that time they have never met.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Nevertheless,</i> PARAMORE <i>enters the room with a certain air of arriving for the evening.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Tana is answering a question.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: (<i>Grinning with ingratiation</i>) Gone to Inn for dinnah. Be back half-hour. Gone since ha' past six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Regarding the glasses on the table</i>) Have they company?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: Yes. Company. Mistah Caramel, Mistah and Missays Barnes, Miss Kane, all stay here.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I see. (<i>Kindly</i>) They've been having a spree, I see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I no un'stan'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: They've been having a fling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: Yes, they have drink. Oh, many, many, many drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Receding delicately from the subject</i>) Didn't I hear the sounds of music as I approached the house?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA:(<i>With a spasmodic giggle</i>) Yes, I play.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: One of the Japanese instruments.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>He is quite obviously a subscriber to the "National Geographic Magazine</i>.")<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I play flu-u-ute, Japanese flu-u-ute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: What song were you playing? One of your Japanese melodies?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA:(<i>His brow undergoing preposterous contraction</i>) I play train song. How you call?—<i>railroad</i> song. So call in my countree. Like train. It go so-o-o; that mean whistle; train start. Then go so-o-o; that mean train go. Go like that. Vera nice song in my countree. Children song.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It sounded very nice. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>It is apparent at this point that only a gigantic effort at control restrains</i> TANA <i> from rushing up-stairs for his post cards, including the six made in America</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> TANA: I fix high-ball for gentleman?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: "No, thanks. I don't use it". (<i>He smiles</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (TANA <i>withdraws into the kitchen, leaving the intervening door slightly ajar. From the crevice there suddenly issues again the melody of the Japanese train song—this time not a practice, surely, but a performance, a lusty, spirited performance.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The phone rings.</i> TANA, <i>absorbed in his harmonics, gives no heed, so</i> PARAMORE <i>takes up the receiver</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Hello. . . . Yes. . . . No, he's not here now, but he'll be back any moment. . . . Butterworth? Hello, I didn't quite catch the name. . . . Hello, hello, hello. Hello! . . . Huh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The phone obstinately refuses to yield up any more sound.</i> PARAMORE <i>replaces the receiver.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> <i>At this point the taxi motif re-enters, wafting with it a second young man; he carries a suitcase and opens the front door without ringing the bell.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In the hall</i>) "Oh, Anthony! Yoho"! (<i>He comes into the large room and sees</i> PARAMORE) How do?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Gazing at him with gathering intensity</i>) Is this—is this Maury Noble?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That's it. (<i>He advances, smiling, and holding out his hand</i>) How are you, old boy? Haven't seen you for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>He has vaguely associated the face with Harvard, but is not even positive about that. The name, if he ever knew it, he has long since forgotten. However, with a fine sensitiveness and an equally commendable charity</i> PARAMORE <i>recognizes the fact and tactfully relieves the situation</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: You've forgotten Fred Paramore? We were both in old Unc Robert's history class.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't, Unc—I mean Fred. Fred was—I mean Unc was a great old fellow, wasn't he?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Nodding his head humorously several times</i>) Great old character. Great old character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>After a short pause</i>) Yes—he was. Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: The Japanese servant told me he was at some inn. Having dinner, I suppose.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Looking at his watch</i>) Gone long?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I guess so. The Japanese told me they'd be back shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Suppose we have a drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, thanks. I don't use it. (<i>He smiles</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Mind if I do? (<i>Yawning as he helps himself from a bottle</i>) What have you been doing since you left college?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Oh, many things. I've led a very active life. Knocked about here and there. (<i>His tone implies anything front lion-stalking to organized crime.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, been over to Europe?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, I haven't—unfortunately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I guess we'll all go over before long.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Do you really think so?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Sure! Country's been fed on sensationalism for more than two years. Everybody getting restless. Want to have some fun.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Then you don't believe any ideals are at stake?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Nothing of much importance. People want excitement every so often.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Intently</i>) It's very interesting to hear you say that. Now I was talking to a man who'd been over there——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>During the ensuing testament, left to be filled in by the reader with such phrases as "Saw with his own eyes," "Splendid spirit of France," and "Salvation of civilization,"</i> MAURY <i>sits with lowered eyelids, dispassionately bored.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>At the first available opportunity</i>) By the way, do you happen to know that there's a German agent in this very house?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Smiling cautiously</i>) Are you serious?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Absolutely. Feel it my duty to warn you.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Convinced</i>) A governess?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In a whisper, indicating the kitchen with his thumb</i>) <i>Tana!</i> That's not his real name. I understand he constantly gets mail addressed to Lieutenant Emile Tannenbaum.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Laughing with hearty tolerance</i>) You were kidding me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I may be accusing him falsely. But, you haven't told me what you've been doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: For one thing—writing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fiction?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No. Non-fiction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What's that? A sort of literature that's half fiction and half fact?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Oh, I've confined myself to fact. I've been doing a good deal of social-service work.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>An immediate glow of suspicion leaps into his eyes. It is as though</i> PARAMORE <i>had announced himself as an amateur pickpocket.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: At present I'm doing service work in Stamford. Only last week some one told me that Anthony Patch lived so near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They are interrupted by a clamor outside, unmistakable as that of two sexes in conversation and laughter. Then there enter the room in a body</i> ANTHONY, GLORIA, RICHARD CARAMEL, MURIEL KANE, RACHAEL BARNES <i>and</i> RODMAN BARNES, <i>her husband. They surge about</i> MAURY, <i>illogically replying</i> "Fine!" <i>to his general</i> "Hello." . . . ANTHONY, <i>meanwhile, approaches his other guest.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Well, I'll be darned. How are you? Mighty glad to see you.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It's good to see you, Anthony. I'm stationed in Stamford, so I thought I'd run over. (<i>Roguishly</i>) We have to work to beat the devil most of the time, so we're entitled to a few hours' vacation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>In an agony of concentration</i> ANTHONY <i>tries to recall the name. After a struggle of parturition his memory gives up the fragment</i> "Fred," <i>around which he hastily builds the sentence</i> "Glad you did, Fred!" <i>Meanwhile the slight hush prefatory to an introduction has fallen upon the company.</i> MAURY, <i>who could help, prefers to look on in malicious enjoyment.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>In desperation</i>) Ladies and gentlemen, this is—this is Fred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>With obliging levity</i>) Hello, Fred!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (RICHARD CARAMEL <i>and</i> PARAMORE <i>greet each other intimately by their first names, the latter recollecting that</i> DICK <i>was one of the men in his class who had never before troubled to speak to him.</i> DICK <i>fatuously imagines that</i> PARAMORE <i>is some one he has previously met in</i> ANTHONY'S <i>house.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The three young women go up-stairs.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>In an undertone to</i> DICK) Haven't seen Muriel since Anthony's wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: She's now in her prime. Her latest is "<i>I'll</i> say so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (ANTHONY <i>struggles for a while with</i> PARAMORE <i>and at length attempts to make the conversation general by asking every one to have a drink.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I've done pretty well on this bottle. I've gone from "Proof" down to "Distillery." (<i>He indicates the words on the label.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, night"><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>To</i> PARAMORE) Never can tell when these two will turn up. Said good-by to them one afternoon at five and darned if they didn't appear about two in the morning. A big hired touring-car from New York drove up to the door and out they stepped, drunk as lords, of course.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>In an ecstasy of consideration</i> PARAMORE <i>regards the cover of a book which he holds in his hand.</i> MAURY <i>and</i> DICK <i>exchange a glance.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Innocently, to</i> PARAMORE) You work here in town?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: No, I'm in the Laird Street Settlement in Stamford. (<i>To</i> ANTHONY) You have no idea of the amount of poverty in these small Connecticut towns. Italians and other immigrants. Catholics mostly, you know, so it's very hard to reach them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>Politely</i>) Lot of crime?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Not so much crime as ignorance and dirt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That's my theory: immediate electrocution of all ignorant and dirty people. I'm all for the criminals—give color to life. Trouble is if you started to punish ignorance you'd have to begin in the first families, then you could take up the moving picture people, and finally Congress and the clergy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Smiling uneasily</i>) I was speaking of the more fundamental ignorance—of even our language.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Thoughtfully</i>) I suppose it is rather hard. Can't even keep up with the new poetry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: It's only when the settlement work has gone on for months that one realizes how bad things are. As our secretary said to me, your finger-nails never seem dirty until you wash your hands. Of course we're already attracting much attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Rudely</i>) As your secretary might say, if you stuff paper into a grate it'll burn brightly for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>At this point</i> GLORIA, <i>freshly tinted and lustful of admiration and entertainment, rejoins the party, followed by her two friends. For several moments the conversation becomes entirely fragmentary.</i> GLORIA <i>calls</i> ANTHONY <i>aside.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: Please don't drink much, Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: Because you're so simple when you're drunk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Good Lord! What's the matter now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>After a pause during which her eyes gaze coolly into his</i>) Several things. In the first place, why do you insist on paying for everything? Both those men have more money than you!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria! They're my guests!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: That's no reason why you should pay for a bottle of champagne Rachael Barnes smashed. Dick tried to fix that second taxi bill, and you wouldn't let him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: When we have to keep selling bonds to even pay our bills, it's time to cut down on excess generosities. Moreover, I wouldn't be quite so attentive to Rachael Barnes. Her husband doesn't like it any more than I do!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Why, Gloria——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>Mimicking him sharply</i>) "Why, Gloria!" But that's happened a little too often this summer—with every pretty woman you meet. It's grown to be a sort of habit, and I'm <i>not</i> going to stand it! If you can play around, I can, too. (<i>Then, as an afterthought</i>) By the way, this Fred person isn't a second Joe Hull, is he?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Heavens, no! He probably came up to get me to wheedle some money out of grandfather for his flock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (GLORIA <i>turns away from a very depressed</i> ANTHONY <i>and returns to her guests.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>By nine o'clock these can be divided into two classes—those who have been drinking consistently and those who have taken little or nothing. In the second group are the</i> BARNESES, MURIEL, <i>and</i> FREDERICK E. PARAMORE.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: As Goliath said, he understood how David felt, but he couldn't express himself. The remark was immediately adopted for a motto by the Philistines.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't get you. I must be getting stupid in my old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: (<i>Weaving unsteadily among the company like an exhilarated angel</i>) If any one's hungry there's some French pastry on the dining room table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Can't tolerate those Victorian designs it comes in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Violently amused</i>) <i>I'll</i> say you're tight, Maury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness . . .</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Messrs.</i> BARNES <i>and</i> PARAMORE <i>have been engaged in conversation upon some wholesome subject, a subject so wholesome that</i> MR. BARNES <i>has been trying for several moments to creep into the more tainted air around the central lounge. Whether</i> PARAMORE <i>is lingering in the gray house out of politeness or curiosity, or in order at some future time to make a sociological report on the decadence of American life, is problematical.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fred, I imagined you were very broad-minded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I am.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Me, too. I believe one religion's as good as another and everything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: There's some good in all religions.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I'm a Catholic but, as I always say, I'm not working at it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>With a tremendous burst of tolerance</i>) The Catholic religion is a very—a very powerful religion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Well, such a broad-minded man should consider the raised plane of sensation and the stimulated optimism contained in this cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Taking the drink, rather defiantly</i>) Thanks, I'll try—one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: One? Outrageous! Here we have a class of 'nineteen ten reunion, and you refuse to be even a little pickled. Come on!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"<i>Here's a health to King Charles,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Here's a health to King Charles,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Bring the bowl that you boast</i>——"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (PARAMORE <i>joins in with a hearty voice</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Fill the cup, Frederick. You know everything's subordinated to nature's purposes with us, and her purpose with you is to make you a rip-roaring tippler.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: If a fellow can drink like a gentleman——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What is a gentleman, anyway?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: A man who never has pins under his coat lapel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Nonsense! A man's social rank is determined by the amount of bread he eats in a sandwich.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: He's a man who prefers the first edition of a book to the last edition of a newspaper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> RACHAEL: A man who never gives an impersonation of a dope-fiend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: An American who can fool an English butler into thinking he's one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: A man who comes from a good family and went to Yale or Harvard or Princeton, and has money and dances well, and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: At last—the perfect definition! Cardinal Newman's is now a back number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I think we ought to look on the question more broad-mindedly. Was it Abraham Lincoln who said that a gentleman is one who never inflicts pain?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It's attributed, I believe, to General Ludendorff.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Surely you're joking.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Have another drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: I oughtn't to. (<i>Lowering his voice for</i> MAURY'S <i>ear alone</i>) What if I were to tell you this is the third drink I've ever taken in my life?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (DICK <i>starts the phonograph, which provokes</i> MURIEL <i>to rise and sway from side to side, her elbows against her ribs, her forearms perpendicular to her body and out like fins.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Oh, let's take up the rugs and dance!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>This suggestion is received by</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> GLORIA <i>with interior groans and sickly smiles of acquiescence.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Come on, you lazy-bones. Get up and move the furniture back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Wait till I finish my drink.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Intent on his purpose toward</i> PARAMORE) I'll tell you what. Let's each fill one glass, drink it off and then we'll dance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>A wave of protest which breaks against the rock of</i> MAURY'S <i>insistence.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: My head is simply going <i>round</i> now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> RACHAEL: (<i>In an undertone to</i> ANTHONY) Did Gloria tell you to stay away from me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>Confused</i>) Why, certainly not. Of course not.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (RACHAEL <i>smiles at him inscrutably. Two years have given her a sort of hard, well-groomed beauty.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Holding up his glass</i>) Here's to the defeat of democracy and the fall of Christianity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Now really!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>She flashes a mock-reproachful glance at</i> MAURY <i>and then drinks.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>They all drink, with varying degrees of difficulty.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Clear the floor!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>It seems inevitable that this process is to be gone through, so</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> GLORIA <i>join in the great moving of tables, piling of chairs, rolling of carpets, and breaking of lamps. When the furniture has been stacked in ugly masses at the sides, there appears a space about eight feet square.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Oh, let's have music!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Tana will render the love song of an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Amid some confusion due to the fact that</i> TANA <i>has retired for the night, preparations are made for the performance. The pajamaed Japanese, flute in hand, is wrapped in a comforter and placed in a chair atop one of the tables, where he makes a ludicrous and grotesque spectacle.</i> PARAMORE <i>is perceptibly drunk and so enraptured with the notion that he increases the effect by simulating funny-paper staggers and even venturing on an occasional hiccough.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>To</i> GLORIA) Want to dance with me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: No, sir! Want to do the swan dance. Can you do it?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: Sure. Do them all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA: All right. You start from that side of the room and I'll start from this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Let's go!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Then Bedlam creeps screaming out of the bottles:</i> TANA <i>plunges into the recondite mazes of the train song, the plaintive "tootle toot-toot" blending its melancholy cadences with the</i> "Poor Butter-fly (tink-atink), by the blossoms wait-ing" <i>of the phonograph.</i> MURIEL <i>is too weak with laughter to do more than cling desperately to</i> BARNES, <i>who, dancing with the ominous rigidity of an army officer, tramps without humor around the small space.</i> ANTHONY <i>is trying to hear</i> RACHAEL'S <i>whisper—without attracting</i> GLORIA's <i>attention. . . .</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>But the grotesque, the unbelievable, the histrionic incident is about to occur, one of those incidents in which life seems set upon the passionate imitation of the lowest forms of literature.</i> PARAMORE <i>has been trying to emulate</i> GLORIA, <i>and as the commotion reaches its height he begins to spin round and round, more and more dizzily—he staggers, recovers, staggers again and then falls in the direction of the hall . . . almost into the arms of old</i> ADAM PATCH, <i>whose approach has been rendered inaudible by the pandemonium in the room.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ADAM PATCH <i>is very white. He leans upon a stick. The man with him is</i> EDWARD SHUTTLEWORTH, <i>and it is he who seizes</i> PARAMORE <i>by the shoulder and deflects the course of his fall away from the venerable philanthropist.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>The time required for quiet to descend upon the room like a monstrous pall may be estimated at two minutes, though for a short period after that the phonograph gags and the notes of the Japanese train song dribble from the end of</i> TANA'S <i>flute. Of the nine people only</i> BARNES, PARAMORE, <i>and</i> TANA <i>are unaware of the late-comer's identity. Of the nine not one is aware that</i> ADAM PATCH <i>has that morning made a contribution of fifty thousand dollars to the cause of national prohibition.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It is given to</i> PARAMORE <i>to break the gathering silence; the high tide of his life's depravity is reached in his incredible remark.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> PARAMORE: (<i>Crawling rapidly toward the kitchen on his hands and knees</i>) I'm not a guest here—I work here.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Again silence falls—so deep now, so weighted with intolerably contagious apprehension, that</i> RACHAEL <i>gives a nervous little giggle, and</i> DICK <i>finds himself telling over and over a line from Swinburne, grotesquely appropriate to the scene:</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . <i>Out of the hush the voice of</i> ANTHONY, <i>sober and strained, saying something to</i> ADAM PATCH; <i>then this, too, dies away.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving"><br /> <poem><br /> SHUTTLEWORTH: (<i>Passionately</i>) Your grandfather thought he would motor over to see your house. I phoned from Rye and left a message.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>A series of little gasps, emanating, apparently, from nowhere, from no one, fall into the next pause.</i> ANTHONY <i>is the color of chalk.</i> GLORIA'S <i>lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man is tense and frightened. There is not one smile in the room. Not one? Or does</i> CROSS PATCH'S <i>drawn mouth tremble slightly open, to expose the even rows of his thin teeth? He speaks—five mild and simple words.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ADAM PATCH: We'll go back now, Shuttleworth——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>And that is all. He turns, and assisted by his cane goes out through the hall, through the front door, and with hellish portentousness his uncertain footsteps crunch on the gravel path under the August moon.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>RETROSPECT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In this extremity they were like two goldfish in a bowl from which all the water had been drawn; they could not even swim across to each other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love. She wanted what most women want, but she wanted it much more fiercely and passionately. She had been married over two years. At first there had been days of serene understanding, rising to ecstasies of proprietorship and pride. Alternating with these periods had occurred sporadic hates, enduring a short hour, and forgetfulnesses lasting no longer than an afternoon. That had been for half a year.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the serenity, the content, had become less jubilant, had become, gray—very rarely, with the spur of jealousy or forced separation, the ancient ecstasies returned, the apparent communion of soul and soul, the emotional excitement. It was possible for her to hate Anthony for as much as a full day, to be carelessly incensed at him for as long as a week. Recrimination had displaced affection as an indulgence, almost as an entertainment, and there were nights when they would go to sleep trying to remember who was angry and who should be reserved next morning. And as the second year waned there had entered two new elements. Gloria realized that Anthony had become capable of utter indifference toward her, a temporary indifference, more than half lethargic, but one from which she could no longer stir him by a whispered word, or a certain intimate smile. There were days when her caresses affected him as a sort of suffocation. She was conscious of these things; she never entirely admitted them to herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was only recently that she perceived that in spite of her adoration of him, her jealousy, her servitude, her pride, she fundamentally despised him—and her contempt blended indistinguishably with her other emotions. . . . All this was her love—the vital and feminine illusion that had directed itself toward him one April night, many months before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On Anthony's part she was, in spite of these qualifications, his sole preoccupation. Had he lost her he would have been a broken man, wretchedly and sentimentally absorbed in her memory for the remainder of life. He seldom took pleasure in an entire day spent alone with her—except on occasions he preferred to have a third person with them. There were times when he felt that if he were not left absolutely alone he would go mad—there were a few times when he definitely hated her. In his cups he was capable of short attractions toward other women, the hitherto-suppressed outcroppings of an experimental temperament.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That spring, that summer, they had speculated upon future happiness—how they were to travel from summer land to summer land, returning eventually to a gorgeous estate and possible idyllic children, then entering diplomacy or politics, to accomplish, for a while, beautiful and important things, until finally as a white-haired (beautifully, silkily, white-haired) couple they were to loll about in serene glory, worshipped by the bourgeoisie of the land. . . . These times were to begin "when we get our money"; it was on such dreams rather than on any satisfaction with their increasingly irregular, increasingly dissipated life that their hope rested. On gray mornings when the jests of the night before had shrunk to ribaldries without wit or dignity, they could, after a fashion, bring out this batch of common hopes and count them over, then smile at each other and repeat, by way of clinching the matter, the terse yet sincere Nietzscheanism of Gloria's defiant "I don't care!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Things had been slipping perceptibly. There was the money question, increasingly annoying, increasingly ominous; there was the realization that liquor had become a practical necessity to their amusement—not an uncommon phenomenon in the British aristocracy of a hundred years ago, but a somewhat alarming one in a civilization steadily becoming more temperate and more circumspect. Moreover, both of them seemed vaguely weaker in fibre, not so much in what they did as in their subtle reactions to the civilization about them. In Gloria had been born something that she had hitherto never needed—the skeleton, incomplete but nevertheless unmistakable, of her ancient abhorrence, a conscience. This admission to herself was coincidental with the slow decline of her physical courage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PANIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?" Anthony sat up in bed and looked down at her. The corners of his lips were drooping with depression, his voice was strained and hollow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her reply was to raise her hand to her mouth and begin a slow, precise nibbling at her finger.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've done it," he said after a pause; then, as she was still silent, he became exasperated. "Why don't you say something?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What on earth do you want me to say?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are you thinking?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then stop biting your finger!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ensued a short confused discussion of whether or not she had been thinking. It seemed essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech—the moment required that she should gnaw at her finger like a nervous child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've got to fix up this damn mess with my grandfather," he said with uneasy conviction. A faint newborn respect was indicated by his use of "my grandfather" instead of "grampa."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can't," she affirmed abruptly. "You can't—<i>ever</i>. He'll never forgive you as long as he lives."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps not," agreed Anthony miserably. "Still—I might possibly square myself by some sort of reformation and all that sort of thing——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He looked sick," she interrupted, "pale as flour."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He <i>is</i> sick. I told you that three months ago."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish he'd died last week!" she said petulantly. "Inconsiderate old fool!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Neither of them laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But just let me say," she added quietly, "the next time I see you acting with any woman like you did with Rachael Barnes last night, I'll leave you—<i>just—like—that!</i> I'm simply <i>not</i> going to stand it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony quailed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't be absurd," he protested. "You know there's no woman in the world for me except you—none, dearest."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His attempt at a tender note failed miserably—the more imminent danger stalked back into the foreground.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If I went to him," suggested Anthony, "and said with appropriate biblical quotations that I'd walked too long in the way of unrighteousness and at last seen the light—" He broke off and glanced with a whimsical expression at his wife. "I wonder what he'd do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was speculating as to whether or not their guests would have the acumen to leave directly after breakfast.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Not for a week did Anthony muster the courage to go to Tarrytown. The prospect was revolting and left alone he would have been incapable of making the trip—but if his will had deteriorated in these past three years, so had his power to resist urging. Gloria compelled him to go. It was all very well to wait a week, she said, for that would give his grandfather's violent animosity time to cool—but to wait longer would be an error—it would give it a chance to harden.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He went, in trepidation . . . and vainly. Adam Patch was not well, said Shuttleworth indignantly. Positive instructions had been given that no one was to see him. Before the ex-"gin-physician's" vindictive eye Anthony's front wilted. He walked out to his taxicab with what was almost a slink—recovering only a little of his self-respect as he boarded the train; glad to escape, boylike, to the wonder palaces of consolation that still rose and glittered in his own mind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was scornful when he returned to Marietta. Why had he not forced his way in? That was what she would have done!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Between them they drafted a letter to the old man, and after considerable revision sent it off. It was half an apology, half a manufactured explanation. The letter was not answered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="truck"><br /> <poem><br /> Came a day in September, a day slashed with alternate sun and rain, sun without warmth, rain without freshness. On that day they left the gray house, which had seen the flower of their love. Four trunks and three monstrous crates were piled in the dismantled room where, two years before, they had sprawled lazily, thinking in terms of dreams, remote, languorous, content. The room echoed with emptiness. Gloria, in a new brown dress edged with fur, sat upon a trunk in silence, and Anthony walked nervously to and fro smoking, as they waited for the truck that would take their things to the city.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are those?" she demanded, pointing to some books piled upon one of the crates.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's my old stamp collection," he confessed sheepishly. "I forgot to pack it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, it's so silly to carry it around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I was looking through it the day we left the apartment last spring, and I decided not to store it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can't you sell it? Haven't we enough junk?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry," he said humbly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="truck, driving, sound"><br /> <poem><br /> With a thunderous rattling the truck rolled up to the door. Gloria shook her fist defiantly at the four walls.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm so glad to go!" she cried, "so glad. Oh, my God, how I hate this house!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So the brilliant and beautiful lady went up with her husband to New York. On the very train that bore them away they quarrelled—her bitter words had the frequency, the regularity, the inevitability of the stations they passed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't be cross," begged Anthony piteously. "We've got nothing but each other, after all."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We haven't even that, most of the time," cried Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When haven't we?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A lot of times—beginning with one occasion on the station platform at Redgate."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't mean to say that——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," she interrupted coolly, "I don't brood over it. It came and went—and when it went it took something with it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She finished abruptly. Anthony sat in silence, confused, depressed. The drab visions of train-side Mamaroneck, Larchmont, Rye, Pelham Manor, succeeded each other with intervals of bleak and shoddy wastes posing ineffectually as country. He found himself remembering how on one summer morning they two had started from New York in search of happiness. They had never expected to find it, perhaps, yet in itself that quest had been happier than anything he expected forevermore. Life, it seemed, must be a setting up of props around one—otherwise it was disaster. There was no rest, no quiet. He had been futile in longing to drift and dream; no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed, without his dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver, car part, speed, agency, affect, haptic"><br /> <poem><br /> Pelham! They had quarrelled in Pelham because Gloria must drive. And when she set her little foot on the accelerator the car had jumped off spunkily, and their two heads had jerked back like marionettes worked by a single string.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Bronx—the houses gathering and gleaming in the sun, which was falling now through wide refulgent skies and tumbling caravans of light down into the streets. New York, he supposed, was home—the city of luxury and mystery, of preposterous hopes and exotic dreams. Here on the outskirts absurd stucco palaces reared themselves in the cool sunset, poised for an instant in cool unreality, glided off far away, succeeded by the mazed confusion of the Harlem River. The train moved in through the deepening twilight, above and past half a hundred cheerful sweating streets of the upper East Side, each one passing the car window like the space between the spokes of a gigantic wheel, each one with its vigorous colorful revelation of poor children swarming in feverish activity like vivid ants in alleys of red sand. From the tenement windows leaned rotund, moon-shaped mothers, as constellations of this sordid heaven; women like dark imperfect jewels, women like vegetables, women like great bags of abominably dirty laundry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like these streets," observed Anthony aloud. "I always feel as though it's a performance being staged for me; as though the second I've passed they'll all stop leaping and laughing and, instead, grow very sad, remembering how poor they are, and retreat with bowed heads into their houses. You often get that effect abroad, but seldom in this country."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Down in a tall busy street he read a dozen Jewish names on a line of stores; in the door of each stood a dark little man watching the passers from intent eyes—eyes gleaming with suspicion, with pride, with clarity, with cupidity, with comprehension. New York—he could not dissociate it now from the slow, upward creep of this people—the little stores, growing, expanding, consolidating, moving, watched over with hawk's eyes and a bee's attention to detail—they slathered out on all sides. It was impressive—in perspective it was tremendous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's voice broke in with strange appropriateness upon his thoughts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder where Bloeckman's been this summer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE APARTMENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the sureties of youth there sets in a period of intense and intolerable complexity. With the soda-jerker this period is so short as to be almost negligible. Men higher in the scale hold out longer in the attempt to preserve the ultimate niceties of relationship, to retain "impractical" ideas of integrity. But by the late twenties the business has grown too intricate, and what has hitherto been imminent and confusing has become gradually remote and dim. Routine comes down like twilight on a harsh landscape, softening it until it is tolerable. The complexity is too subtle, too varied; the values are changing utterly with each lesion of vitality; it has begun to appear that we can learn nothing from the past with which to face the future—so we cease to be impulsive, convincible men, interested in what is ethically true by fine margins, we substitute rules of conduct for ideas of integrity, we value safety above romance, we become, quite unconsciously, pragmatic. It is left to the few to be persistently concerned with the nuances of relationships—and even this few only in certain hours especially set aside for the task.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony Patch had ceased to be an individual of mental adventure, of curiosity, and had become an individual of bias and prejudice, with a longing to be emotionally undisturbed. This gradual change had taken place through the past several years, accelerated by a succession of anxieties preying on his mind. There was, first of all, the sense of waste, always dormant in his heart, now awakened by the circumstances of his position. In his moments of insecurity he was haunted by the suggestion that life might be, after all, significant. In his early twenties the conviction of the futility of effort, of the wisdom of abnegation, had been confirmed by the philosophies he had admired as well as by his association with Maury Noble, and later with his wife. Yet there had been occasions—just before his first meeting with Gloria, for example, and when his grandfather had suggested that he should go abroad as a war correspondent—upon which his dissatisfaction had driven him almost to a positive step.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One day just before they left Marietta for the last time, in carelessly turning over the pages of a Harvard Alumni Bulletin, he had found a column which told him what his contemporaries had been about in this six years since graduation. Most of them were in business, it was true, and several were converting the heathen of China or America to a nebulous protestantism; but a few, he found, were working constructively at jobs that were neither sinecures nor routines. There was Calvin Boyd, for instance, who, though barely out of medical school, had discovered a new treatment for typhus, had shipped abroad and was mitigating some of the civilization that the Great Powers had brought to Servia; there was Eugene Bronson, whose articles in The New Democracy were stamping him as a man with ideas transcending both vulgar timeliness and popular hysteria; there was a man named Daly who had been suspended from the faculty of a righteous university for preaching Marxian doctrines in the classroom: in art, science, politics, he saw the authentic personalities of his time emerging—there was even Severance, the quarter-back, who had given up his life rather neatly and gracefully with the Foreign Legion on the Aisne.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He laid down the magazine and thought for a while about these diverse men. In the days of his integrity he would have defended his attitude to the last—an Epicurus in Nirvana, he would have cried that to struggle was to believe, to believe was to limit. He would as soon have become a churchgoer because the prospect of immortality gratified him as he would have considered entering the leather business because the intensity of the competition would have kept him from unhappiness. But at present he had no such delicate scruples. This autumn, as his twenty-ninth year began, he was inclined to close his mind to many things, to avoid prying deeply into motives and first causes, and mostly to long passionately for security from the world and from himself. He hated to be alone, as has been said he often dreaded being alone with Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Because of the chasm which his grandfather's visit had opened before him, and the consequent revulsion from his late mode of life, it was inevitable that he should look around in this suddenly hostile city for the friends and environments that had once seemed the warmest and most secure. His first step was a desperate attempt to get back his old apartment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the spring of 1912 he had signed a four-year lease at seventeen hundred a year, with an option of renewal. This lease had expired the previous May. When he had first rented the rooms they had been mere potentialities, scarcely to be discerned as that, but Anthony had seen into these potentialities and arranged in the lease that he and the landlord should each spend a certain amount in improvements. Rents had gone up in the past four years, and last spring when Anthony had waived his option the landlord, a Mr. Sohenberg, had realized that he could get a much bigger price for what was now a prepossessing apartment. Accordingly, when Anthony approached him on the subject in September he was met with Sohenberg's offer of a three-year lease at twenty-five hundred a year. This, it seemed to Anthony, was outrageous. It meant that well over a third of their income would be consumed in rent. In vain he argued that his own money, his own ideas on the repartitioning, had made the rooms attractive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In vain he offered two thousand dollars—twenty-two hundred, though they could ill afford it: Mr. Sohenberg was obdurate. It seemed that two other gentlemen were considering it; just that sort of an apartment was in demand for the moment, and it would scarcely be business to <i>give</i> it to Mr. Patch. Besides, though he had never mentioned it before, several of the other tenants had complained of noise during the previous winter—singing and dancing late at night, that sort of thing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Internally raging Anthony hurried back to the Ritz to report his discomfiture to Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can just see you," she stormed, "letting him back you down!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What could I say?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You could have told him what he <i>was</i>. I wouldn't have <i>stood</i> it. No other man in the world would have stood it! You just let people order you around and cheat you and bully you and take advantage of you as if you were a silly little boy. It's absurd!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't lose your temper."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know, Anthony, but you <i>are</i> such an ass!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, possibly. Anyway, we can't afford that apartment. But we can afford it better than living here at the Ritz."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You were the one who insisted on coming here."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, because I knew you'd be miserable in a cheap hotel."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course I would!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At any rate we've got to find a place to live."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much can we pay?" she demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we can pay even his price if we sell more bonds, but we agreed last night that until I had gotten something definite to do we——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I know all that. I asked you how much we can pay out of just our income."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They say you ought not to pay more than a fourth."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much is a fourth?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One hundred and fifty a month."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you mean to say we've got only six hundred dollars coming in every month?" A subdued note crept into her voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course!" he answered angrily. "Do you think we've gone on spending more than twelve thousand a year without cutting way into our capital?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I knew we'd sold bonds, but—have we spent that much a year? How did we?" Her awe increased.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I'll look in those careful account-books we kept," he remarked ironically, and then added: "Two rents a good part of the time, clothes, travel—why, each of those springs in California cost about four thousand dollars. That darn car was an expense from start to finish. And parties and amusements and—oh, one thing or another."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They were both excited now and inordinately depressed. The situation seemed worse in the actual telling Gloria than it had when he had first made the discovery himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got to make some money," she said suddenly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you've got to make another attempt to see your grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When we get settled."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This eventuality occurred a week later. They rented a small apartment on Fifty-seventh Street at one hundred and fifty a month. It included bedroom, living-room, kitchenette, and bath, in a thin, white-stone apartment house, and though the rooms were too small to display Anthony's best furniture, they were clean, new, and, in a blonde and sanitary way, not unattractive. Bounds had gone abroad to enlist in the British army, and in his place they tolerated rather than enjoyed the services of a gaunt, big-boned Irishwoman, whom Gloria loathed because she discussed the glories of Sinn Fein as she served breakfast. But they vowed they would have no more Japanese, and English servants were for the present hard to obtain. Like Bounds, the woman prepared only breakfast. Their other meals they took at restaurants and hotels.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What finally drove Anthony post-haste up to Tarrytown was an announcement in several New York papers that Adam Patch, the multimillionaire, the philanthropist, the venerable uplifter, was seriously ill and not expected to recover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE KITTEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony could not see him. The doctors' instructions were that he was to talk to no one, said Mr. Shuttleworth—who offered kindly to take any message that Anthony might care to intrust with him, and deliver it to Adam Patch when his condition permitted. But by obvious innuendo he confirmed Anthony's melancholy inference that the prodigal grandson would be particularly unwelcome at the bedside. At one point in the conversation Anthony, with Gloria's positive instructions in mind, made a move as though to brush by the secretary, but Shuttleworth with a smile squared his brawny shoulders, and Anthony saw how futile such an attempt would be.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Miserably intimidated, he returned to New York, where husband and wife passed a restless week. A little incident that occurred one evening indicated to what tension their nerves were drawn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Walking home along a cross-street after dinner, Anthony noticed a night-bound cat prowling near a railing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always have an instinct to kick a cat," he said idly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I yielded to it once."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, years ago; before I met you. One night between the acts of a show. Cold night, like this, and I was a little tight—one of the first times I was ever tight," he added. "The poor little beggar was looking for a place to sleep, I guess, and I was in a mean mood, so it took my fancy to kick it——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, the poor kitty!" cried Gloria, sincerely moved. Inspired with the narrative instinct, Anthony enlarged on the theme.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was pretty bad," he admitted. "The poor little beast turned around and looked at me rather plaintively as though hoping I'd pick him up and be kind to him—he was really just a kitten—and before he knew it a big foot launched out at him and caught his little back——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" Gloria's cry was full of anguish.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was such a cold night," he continued, perversely, keeping his voice upon a melancholy note. "I guess it expected kindness from somebody, and it got only pain——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off suddenly—Gloria was sobbing. They had reached home, and when they entered the apartment she threw herself upon the lounge, crying as though he had struck at her very soul.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, the poor little kitty!" she repeated piteously, "the poor little kitty. So cold——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't come near me! Please, don't come near me. You killed the soft little kitty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Touched, Anthony knelt beside her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dear," he said. "Oh, Gloria, darling. It isn't true. I invented it—every word of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she would not believe him. There had been something in the details he had chosen to describe that made her cry herself asleep that night, for the kitten, for Anthony, for herself, for the pain and bitterness and cruelty of all the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MORALIST</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Old Adam died on a midnight of late November with a pious compliment to his God on his thin lips. He, who had been flattered so much, faded out flattering the Omnipotent Abstraction which he fancied he might have angered in the more lascivious moments of his youth. It was announced that he had arranged some sort of an armistice with the deity, the terms of which were not made public, though they were thought to have included a large cash payment. All the newspapers printed his biography, and two of them ran short editorials on his sterling worth, and his part in the drama of industrialism, with which he had grown up. They referred guardedly to the reforms he had sponsored and financed. The memories of Comstock and Cato the Censor were resuscitated and paraded like gaunt ghosts through the columns.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Every newspaper remarked that he was survived by a single grandson, Anthony Comstock Patch, of New York.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The burial took place in the family plot at Tarrytown. Anthony and Gloria rode in the first carriage, too worried to feel grotesque, both trying desperately to glean presage of fortune from the faces of retainers who had been with him at the end.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They waited a frantic week for decency, and then, having received no notification of any kind, Anthony called up his grandfather's lawyer. Mr. Brett was not in—he was expected back in an hour. Anthony left his telephone number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the last day of November, cool and crackling outside, with a lustreless sun peering bleakly in at the windows. While they waited for the call, ostensibly engaged in reading, the atmosphere, within and without, seemed pervaded with a deliberate rendition of the pathetic fallacy. After an interminable while, the bell jingled, and Anthony, starting violently, took up the receiver.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello . . ." His voice was strained and hollow. "Yes—I did leave word. Who is this, please? . . . Yes. . . . Why, it was about the estate. Naturally I'm interested, and I've received no word about the reading of the will—I thought you might not have my address. . . . What? . . . Yes . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria fell on her knees. The intervals between Anthony's speeches were like tourniquets winding on her heart. She found herself helplessly twisting the large buttons from a velvet cushion. Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's—that's very, very odd—that's very odd—that's very odd. Not even any—ah—mention or any—ah—reason?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His voice sounded faint and far away. She uttered a little sound, half gasp, half cry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, I'll see. . . . All right, thanks . . . thanks. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The phone clicked. Her eyes looking along the floor saw his feet cut the pattern of a patch of sunlight on the carpet. She arose and faced him with a gray, level glance just as his arms folded about her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dearest," he whispered huskily. "He did it, God damn him!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NEXT DAY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who are the heirs?" asked Mr. Haight. "You see when you can tell me so little about it——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Haight was tall and bent and beetle-browed. He had been recommended to Anthony as an astute and tenacious lawyer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I only know vaguely," answered Anthony. "A man named Shuttleworth, who was a sort of pet of his, has the whole thing in charge as administrator or trustee or something—all except the direct bequests to charity and the provisions for servants and for those two cousins in Idaho."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How distant are the cousins?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, third or fourth, anyway. I never even heard of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Haight nodded comprehensively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you want to contest a provision of the will?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess so," admitted Anthony helplessly. "I want to do what sounds most hopeful—that's what I want you to tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You want them to refuse probate to the will?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony shook his head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got me. I haven't any idea what 'probate' is. I want a share of the estate."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Suppose you tell me some more details. For instance, do you know why the testator disinherited you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—yes," began Anthony. "You see he was always a sucker for moral reform, and all that——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," interjected Mr. Haight humorlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—and I don't suppose he ever thought I was much good. I didn't go into business, you see. But I feel certain that up to last summer I was one of the beneficiaries. We had a house out in Marietta, and one night grandfather got the notion he'd come over and see us. It just happened that there was a rather gay party going on and he arrived without any warning. Well, he took one look, he and this fellow Shuttleworth, and then turned around and tore right back to Tarrytown. After that he never answered my letters or even let me see him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was a prohibitionist, wasn't he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was everything—regular religious maniac."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How long before his death was the will made that disinherited you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Recently—I mean since August."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you think that the direct reason for his not leaving you the majority of the estate was his displeasure with your recent actions?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Haight considered. Upon what grounds was Anthony thinking of contesting the will?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, isn't there something about evil influence?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Undue influence is one ground—but it's the most difficult. You would have to show that such pressure was brought to bear so that the deceased was in a condition where he disposed of his property contrary to his intentions——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, suppose this fellow Shuttleworth dragged him over to Marietta just when he thought some sort of a celebration was probably going on?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That wouldn't have any bearing on the case. There's a strong division between advice and influence. You'd have to prove that the secretary had a sinister intention. I'd suggest some other grounds. A will is automatically refused probate in case of insanity, drunkenness"—here Anthony smiled—"or feeble-mindedness through premature old age."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But," objected Anthony, "his private physician, being one of the beneficiaries, would testify that he wasn't feeble-minded. And he wasn't. As a matter of fact he probably did just what he intended to with his money—it was perfectly consistent with everything he'd ever done in his life——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see, feeble-mindedness is a great deal like undue influence—it implies that the property wasn't disposed of as originally intended. The most common ground is duress—physical pressure."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony shook his head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much chance on that, I'm afraid. Undue influence sounds best to me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After more discussion, so technical as to be largely unintelligible to Anthony, he retained Mr. Haight as counsel. The lawyer proposed an interview with Shuttleworth, who, jointly with Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy, was executor of the will. Anthony was to come back later in the week.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It transpired that the estate consisted of approximately forty million dollars. The largest bequest to an individual was of one million, to Edward Shuttleworth, who received in addition thirty thousand a year salary as administrator of the thirty-million-dollar trust fund, left to be doled out to various charities and reform societies practically at his own discretion. The remaining nine millions were proportioned among the two cousins in Idaho and about twenty-five other beneficiaries: friends, secretaries, servants, and employees, who had, at one time or another, earned the seal of Adam Patch's approval.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At the end of another fortnight Mr. Haight, on a retainer's fee of fifteen thousand dollars, had begun preparations for contesting the will.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Before they had been two months in the little apartment on Fifty-seventh Street, it had assumed for both of them the same indefinable but almost material taint that had impregnated the gray house in Marietta. There was the odor of tobacco always—both of them smoked incessantly; it was in their clothes, their blankets, the curtains, and the ash-littered carpets. Added to this was the wretched aura of stale wine, with its inevitable suggestion of beauty gone foul and revelry remembered in disgust. About a particular set of glass goblets on the sideboard the odor was particularly noticeable, and in the main room the mahogany table was ringed with white circles where glasses had been set down upon it. There had been many parties—people broke things; people became sick in Gloria's bathroom; people spilled wine; people made unbelievable messes of the kitchenette.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These things were a regular part of their existence. Despite the resolutions of many Mondays it was tacitly understood as the week-end approached that it should be observed with some sort of unholy excitement. When Saturday came they would not discuss the matter, but would call up this person or that from among their circle of sufficiently irresponsible friends, and suggest a rendezvous. Only after the friends had gathered and Anthony had set out decanters, would he murmur casually: "I guess I'll have just one high-ball myself——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they were off for two days—realizing on a wintry dawn that they had been the noisiest and most conspicuous members of the noisiest and most conspicuous party at the Boul' Mich', or the Club Ramée, or at other resorts much less particular about the hilarity of their clientèle. They would find that they had, somehow, squandered eighty or ninety dollars, how, they never knew; they customarily attributed it to the general penury of the "friends" who had accompanied them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It began to be not unusual for the more sincere of their friends to remonstrate with them, in the very course of a party, and to predict a sombre end for them in the loss of Gloria's "looks" and Anthony's "constitution."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The story of the summarily interrupted revel in Marietta had, of course, leaked out in detail—"Muriel doesn't mean to tell every one she knows," said Gloria to Anthony, "but she thinks every one she tells is the only one she's going to tell"—and, diaphanously veiled, the tale had been given a conspicuous place in Town Tattle. When the terms of Adam Patch's will were made public and the newspapers printed items concerning Anthony's suit, the story was beautifully rounded out—to Anthony's infinite disparagement. They began to hear rumors about themselves from all quarters, rumors founded usually on a soupçon of truth, but overlaid with preposterous and sinister detail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Outwardly they showed no signs of deterioration. Gloria at twenty-six was still the Gloria of twenty; her complexion a fresh damp setting for her candid eyes; her hair still a childish glory, darkening slowly from corn color to a deep russet gold; her slender body suggesting ever a nymph running and dancing through Orphic groves. Masculine eyes, dozens of them, followed her with a fascinated stare when she walked through a hotel lobby or down the aisle of a theatre. Men asked to be introduced to her, fell into prolonged states of sincere admiration, made definite love to her—for she was still a thing of exquisite and unbelievable beauty. And for his part Anthony had rather gained than lost in appearance; his face had taken on a certain intangible air of tragedy, romantically contrasted with his trim and immaculate person.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in the winter, when all conversation turned on the probability of America's going into the war, when Anthony was making a desperate and sincere attempt to write, Muriel Kane arrived in New York and came immediately to see them. Like Gloria, she seemed never to change. She knew the latest slang, danced the latest dances, and talked of the latest songs and plays with all the fervor of her first season as a New York drifter. Her coyness was eternally new, eternally ineffectual; her clothes were extreme; her black hair was bobbed, now, like Gloria's.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've come up for the midwinter prom at New Haven," she announced, imparting her delightful secret. Though she must have been older then than any of the boys in college, she managed always to secure some sort of invitation, imagining vaguely that at the next party would occur the flirtation which was to end at the romantic altar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where've you been?" inquired Anthony, unfailingly amused.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been at Hot Springs. It's been slick and peppy this fall—more <i>men!</i>"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you in love, Muriel?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean 'love'?" This was the rhetorical question of the year. "I'm going to tell you something," she said, switching the subject abruptly. "I suppose it's none of my business, but I think it's time for you two to settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, we are settled down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you are!" she scoffed archly. "Everywhere I go I hear stories of your escapades. Let me tell you, I have an awful time sticking up for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You needn't bother," said Gloria coldly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, Gloria," she protested, "you know I'm one of your best friends."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was silent. Muriel continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's not so much the idea of a woman drinking, but Gloria's so pretty, and so many people know her by sight all around, that it's naturally conspicuous——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What have you heard recently?" demanded Gloria, her dignity going down before her curiosity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for instance, that that party in Marietta <i>killed</i> Anthony's grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Instantly husband and wife were tense with annoyance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, I think that's outrageous."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's what they say," persisted Muriel stubbornly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony paced the room. "It's preposterous!" he declared. "The very people we take on parties shout the story around as a great joke—and eventually it gets back to us in some such form as this."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria began running her finger through a stray reddish curl. Muriel licked her veil as she considered her next remark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to have a baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria looked up wearily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We can't afford it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All the people in the slums have them," said Muriel triumphantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Gloria exchanged a smile. They had reached the stage of violent quarrels that were never made up, quarrels that smouldered and broke out again at intervals or died away from sheer indifference—but this visit of Muriel's drew them temporarily together. When the discomfort under which they were living was remarked upon by a third party, it gave them the impetus to face this hostile world together. It was very seldom, now, that the impulse toward reunion sprang from within.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony found himself associating his own existence with that of the apartment's night elevator man, a pale, scraggly bearded person of about sixty, with an air of being somewhat above his station. It was probably because of this quality that he had secured the position; it made him a pathetic and memorable figure of failure. Anthony recollected, without humor, a hoary jest about the elevator man's career being a matter of ups and downs—it was, at any rate, an enclosed life of infinite dreariness. Each time Anthony stepped into the car he waited breathlessly for the old man's "Well, I guess we're going to have some sunshine to-day." Anthony thought how little rain or sunshine he would enjoy shut into that close little cage in the smoke-colored, windowless hall.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A darkling figure, he attained tragedy in leaving the life that had used him so shabbily. Three young gunmen came in one night, tied him up and left him on a pile of coal in the cellar while they went through the trunk room. When the janitor found him next morning he had collapsed from chill. He died of pneumonia four days later.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was replaced by a glib Martinique negro, with an incongruous British accent and a tendency to be surly, whom Anthony detested. The passing of the old man had approximately the same effect on him that the kitten story had had on Gloria. He was reminded of the cruelty of all life and, in consequence, of the increasing bitterness of his own.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was writing—and in earnest at last. He had gone to Dick and listened for a tense hour to an elucidation of those minutiæ of procedure which hitherto he had rather scornfully looked down upon. He needed money immediately—he was selling bonds every month to pay their bills. Dick was frank and explicit:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So far as articles on literary subjects in these obscure magazines go, you couldn't make enough to pay your rent. Of course if a man has the gift of humor, or a chance at a big biography, or some specialized knowledge, he may strike it rich. But for you, fiction's the only thing. You say you need money right away?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it'd be a year and a half before you'd make any money out of a novel. Try some popular short stories. And, by the way, unless they're exceptionally brilliant they have to be cheerful and on the side of the heaviest artillery to make you any money."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony thought of Dick's recent output, which had been appearing in a well-known monthly. It was concerned chiefly with the preposterous actions of a class of sawdust effigies who, one was assured, were New York society people, and it turned, as a rule, upon questions of the heroine's technical purity, with mock-sociological overtones about the "mad antics of the four hundred."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But your stories—" exclaimed Anthony aloud, almost involuntarily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, that's different," Dick asserted astoundingly. "I have a reputation, you see, so I'm expected to deal with strong themes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony gave an interior start, realizing with this remark how much Richard Caramel had fallen off. Did he actually think that these amazing latter productions were as good as his first novel?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony went back to the apartment and set to work. He found that the business of optimism was no mean task. After half a dozen futile starts he went to the public library and for a week investigated the files of a popular magazine. Then, better equipped, he accomplished his first story, "The Dictaphone of Fate." It was founded upon one of his few remaining impressions of that six weeks in Wall Street the year before. It purported to be the sunny tale of an office boy who, quite by accident, hummed a wonderful melody into the dictaphone. The cylinder was discovered by the boss's brother, a well-known producer of musical comedy—and then immediately lost. The body of the story was concerned with the pursuit of the missing cylinder and the eventual marriage of the noble office boy (now a successful composer) to Miss Rooney, the virtuous stenographer, who was half Joan of Arc and half Florence Nightingale.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had gathered that this was what the magazines wanted. He offered, in his protagonists, the customary denizens of the pink-and-blue literary world, immersing them in a saccharine plot that would offend not a single stomach in Marietta. He had it typed in double space—this last as advised by a booklet, "Success as a Writer Made Easy," by R. Meggs Widdlestien, which assured the ambitious plumber of the futility of perspiration, since after a six-lesson course he could make at least a thousand dollars a month.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After reading it to a bored Gloria and coaxing from her the immemorial remark that it was "better than a lot of stuff that gets published," he satirically affixed the nom de plume of "Gilles de Sade," enclosed the proper return envelope, and sent it off.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Following the gigantic labor of conception he decided to wait until he heard from the first story before beginning another. Dick had told him that he might get as much as two hundred dollars. If by any chance it did happen to be unsuited, the editor's letter would, no doubt, give him an idea of what changes should be made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It is, without question, the most abominable piece of writing in existence," said Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The editor quite conceivably agreed with him. He returned the manuscript with a rejection slip. Anthony sent it off elsewhere and began another story. The second one was called "The Little Open Doors"; it was written in three days. It concerned the occult: an estranged couple were brought together by a medium in a vaudeville show.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There were six altogether, six wretched and pitiable efforts to "write down" by a man who had never before made a consistent effort to write at all. Not one of them contained a spark of vitality, and their total yield of grace and felicity was less than that of an average newspaper column. During their circulation they collected, all told, thirty-one rejection slips, headstones for the packages that he would find lying like dead bodies at his door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In mid-January Gloria's father died, and they went again to Kansas City—a miserable trip, for Gloria brooded interminably, not upon her father's death, but on her mother's. Russel Gilbert's affairs having been cleared up they came into possession of about three thousand dollars, and a great amount of furniture. This was in storage, for he had spent his last days in a small hotel. It was due to his death that Anthony made a new discovery concerning Gloria. On the journey East she disclosed herself, astonishingly, as a Bilphist.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria," he cried, "you don't mean to tell me you believe that stuff."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," she said defiantly, "why not?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Because it's—it's fantastic. You know that in every sense of the word you're an agnostic. You'd laugh at any orthodox form of Christianity—and then you come out with the statement that you believe in some silly rule of reincarnation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if I do? I've heard you and Maury, and every one else for whose intellect I have the slightest respect, agree that life as it appears is utterly meaningless. But it's always seemed to me that if I were unconsciously learning something here it might not be so meaningless."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're not learning anything—you're just getting tired. And if you must have a faith to soften things, take up one that appeals to the reason of some one beside a lot of hysterical women. A person like you oughtn't to accept anything unless it's decently demonstrable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care about truth. I want some happiness."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, if you've got a decent mind the second has got to be qualified by the first. Any simple soul can delude himself with mental garbage."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care," she held out stoutly, "and, what's more, I'm not propounding any doctrine."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The argument faded off, but reoccurred to Anthony several times thereafter. It was disturbing to find this old belief, evidently assimilated from her mother, inserting itself again under its immemorial disguise as an innate idea.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They reached New York in March after an expensive and ill-advised week spent in Hot Springs, and Anthony resumed his abortive attempts at fiction. As it became plainer to both of them that escape did not lie in the way of popular literature, there was a further slipping of their mutual confidence and courage. A complicated struggle went on incessantly between them. All efforts to keep down expenses died away from sheer inertia, and by March they were again using any pretext as an excuse for a "party." With an assumption of recklessness Gloria tossed out the suggestion that they should take all their money and go on a real spree while it lasted—anything seemed better than to see it go in unsatisfactory driblets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, you want parties as much as I do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It doesn't matter about me. Everything I do is in accordance with my ideas: to use every minute of these years, when I'm young, in having the best time I possibly can."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about after that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After that I won't care."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I may—but I won't be able to do anything about it. And I'll have had my good time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll be the same then. After a fashion, we <i>have</i> had our good time, raised the devil, and we're in the state of paying for it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, the money kept going. There would be two days of gaiety, two days of moroseness—an endless, almost invariable round. The sharp pull-ups, when they occurred, resulted usually in a spurt of work for Anthony, while Gloria, nervous and bored, remained in bed or else chewed abstractedly at her fingers. After a day or so of this, they would make an engagement, and then—Oh, what did it matter? This night, this glow, the cessation of anxiety and the sense that if living was not purposeful it was, at any rate, essentially romantic! Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile the suit progressed slowly, with interminable examinations of witnesses and marshallings of evidence. The preliminary proceedings of settling the estate were finished. Mr. Haight saw no reason why the case should not come up for trial before summer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman appeared in New York late in March; he had been in England for nearly a year on matters concerned with "Films Par Excellence." The process of general refinement was still in progress—always he dressed a little better, his intonation was mellower, and in his manner there was perceptibly more assurance that the fine things of the world were his by a natural and inalienable right. He called at the apartment, remained only an hour, during which he talked chiefly of the war, and left telling them he was coming again. On his second visit Anthony was not at home, but an absorbed and excited Gloria greeted her husband later in the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony," she began, "would you still object if I went in the movies?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His whole heart hardened against the idea. As she seemed to recede from him, if only in threat, her presence became again not so much precious as desperately necessary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Gloria——!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blockhead said he'd put me in—only if I'm ever going to do anything I'll have to start now. They only want young women. Think of the money, Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For you—yes. But how about me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you know that anything I have is yours too?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's such a hell of a career!" he burst out, the moral, the infinitely circumspect Anthony, "and such a hell of a bunch. And I'm so utterly tired of that fellow Bloeckman coming here and interfering. I hate theatrical things."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It isn't theatrical! It's utterly different."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I supposed to do? Chase you all over the country? Live on your money?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then make some yourself."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation developed into one of the most violent quarrels they had ever had. After the ensuing reconciliation and the inevitable period of moral inertia, she realized that he had taken the life out of the project. Neither of them ever mentioned the probability that Bloeckman was by no means disinterested, but they both knew that it lay back of Anthony's objection.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In April war was declared with Germany. Wilson and his cabinet—a cabinet that in its lack of distinction was strangely reminiscent of the twelve apostles—let loose the carefully starved dogs of war, and the press began to whoop hysterically against the sinister morals, sinister philosophy, and sinister music produced by the Teutonic temperament. Those who fancied themselves particularly broad-minded made the exquisite distinction that it was only the German Government which aroused them to hysteria; the rest were worked up to a condition of retching indecency. Any song which contained the word "mother" and the word "kaiser" was assured of a tremendous success. At last every one had something to talk about—and almost every one fully enjoyed it, as though they had been cast for parts in a sombre and romantic play.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, Maury, and Dick sent in their applications for officers' training-camps and the two latter went about feeling strangely exalted and reproachless; they chattered to each other, like college boys, of war's being the one excuse for, and justification of, the aristocrat, and conjured up an impossible caste of officers, to be composed, it appeared, chiefly of the more attractive alumni of three or four Eastern colleges. It seemed to Gloria that in this huge red light streaming across the nation even Anthony took on a new glamour.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Tenth Infantry, arriving in New York from Panama, were escorted from saloon to saloon by patriotic citizens, to their great bewilderment. West Pointers began to be noticed for the first time in years, and the general impression was that everything was glorious, but not half so glorious as it was going to be pretty soon, and that everybody was a fine fellow, and every race a great race—always excepting the Germans—and in every strata of society outcasts and scapegoats had but to appear in uniform to be forgiven, cheered, and wept over by relatives, ex-friends, and utter strangers.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Unfortunately, a small and precise doctor decided that there was something the matter with Anthony's blood-pressure. He could not conscientiously pass him for an officers' training-camp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BROKEN LUTE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their third anniversary passed, uncelebrated, unnoticed. The season warmed in thaw, melted into hotter summer, simmered and boiled away. In July the will was offered for probate, and upon the contestation was assigned by the surrogate to trial term for trial. The matter was prolonged into September—there was difficulty in empanelling an unbiassed jury because of the moral sentiments involved. To Anthony's disappointment a verdict was finally returned in favor of the testator, whereupon Mr. Haight caused a notice of appeal to be served upon Edward Shuttleworth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the summer waned Anthony and Gloria talked of the things they were to do when the money was theirs, and of the places they were to go to after the war, when they would "agree on things again," for both of them looked forward to a time when love, springing like the phœnix from its own ashes, should be born again in its mysterious and unfathomable haunts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was drafted early in the fall, and the examining doctor made no mention of low blood-pressure. It was all very purposeless and sad when Anthony told Gloria one night that he wanted, above all things, to be killed. But, as always, they were sorry for each other for the wrong things at the wrong times. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They decided that for the present she was not to go with him to the Southern camp where his contingent was ordered. She would remain in New York to "use the apartment," to save money, and to watch the progress of the case—which was pending now in the Appellate Division, of which the calendar, Mr. Haight told them, was far behind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Almost their last conversation was a senseless quarrel about the proper division of the income—at a word either would have given it all to the other. It was typical of the muddle and confusion of their lives that on the October night when Anthony reported at the Grand Central Station for the journey to camp, she arrived only in time to catch his eye over the anxious heads of a gathered crowd. Through the dark light of the enclosed train-sheds their glances stretched across a hysterical area, foul with yellow sobbing and the smells of poor women. They must have pondered upon what they had done to one another, and each must have accused himself of drawing this sombre pattern through which they were tracing tragically and obscurely. At the last they were too far away for either to see the other's tears.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Beautiful_and_Damned&diff=791 The Beautiful and Damned 2026-02-26T12:08:35Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html"<br /> genre="Novel"<br /> journal=""<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1922"<br /> page_range="1-449"<br /> other_data="Other text data"<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (1-30)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> IN 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore. The year in which this story opens found him wearying; his campaign had grown desultory; 1861 was creeping up slowly on 1895; his thoughts ran a great deal on the Civil War, somewhat on his dead wife and son, almost infinitesimally on his grandson Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in his career Adam Patch had married an anæmic lady of thirty, Alicia Withers, who brought him one hundred thousand dollars and an impeccable entré into the banking circles of New York. Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never obtained even a private printing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This Fifth Avenue Chesterfield married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrune, the Boston "Society Contralto," and the single child of the union was, at the request of his grandfather, christened Anthony Comstock Patch. When he went to Harvard, the Comstock dropped out of his name to a nether hell of oblivion and was never heard of thereafter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together—so often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at five, the year of his mother's death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical. She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of the Southern negro.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid. After Henrietta Lebrune Patch had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, father and son lived up at grampa's in Tarrytown, and Ulysses came daily to Anthony's nursery and expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Anthony hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to Atlantic City, "oh, some time soon now"; but none of them ever materialized. One trip they did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PAST AND PERSON OF THE HERO</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly, until, for the first time since her marriage, her person held for one day an unquestioned supremacy over her own drawing room. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed—it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; enormous, as nearly exhaustive as a boy's could be—his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. So Anthony kept up a correspondence with a half dozen "Stamp and Coin" companies and it was rare that the mail failed to bring him new stamp-books or packages of glittering approval sheets—there was a mysterious fascination in transferring his acquisitions interminably from one book to another. His stamps were his greatest happiness and he bestowed impatient frowns on any one who interrupted him at play with them; they devoured his allowance every month, and he lay awake at night musing untiringly on their variety and many-colored splendor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At sixteen he had lived almost entirely within himself, an inarticulate boy, thoroughly un-American, and politely bewildered by his contemporaries. The two preceding years had been spent in Europe with a private tutor, who persuaded him that Harvard was the thing; it would "open doors," it would be a tremendous tonic, it would give him innumerable self-sacrificing and devoted friends. So he went to Harvard—there was no other logical thing to be done with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oblivious to the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never to have a part.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. He made the Pudding. He drank—quietly and in the proper tradition. It was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well." In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then abroad again—to Rome this time, where he dallied with architecture and painting in turn, took up the violin, and wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets, supposedly the ruminations of a thirteenth-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It became established among his Harvard intimates that he was in Rome, and those of them who were abroad that year looked him up and discovered with him, on many moonlight excursions, much in the city that was older than the Renaissance or indeed than the republic. Maury Noble, from Philadelphia, for instance, remained two months, and together they realized the peculiar charm of Latin women and had a delightful sense of being very young and free in a civilization that was very old and free. Not a few acquaintances of his grandfather's called on him, and had he so desired he might have been <i>persona grata</i> with the diplomatic set—indeed, he found that his inclinations tended more and more toward conviviality, but that long adolescent aloofness and consequent shyness still dictated to his conduct.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He returned to America in 1912 because of one of his grandfather's sudden illnesses, and after an excessively tiresome talk with the perpetually convalescent old man he decided to put off until his grandfather's death the idea of living permanently abroad. After a prolonged search he took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and to all appearances settled down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In 1913 Anthony Patch's adjustment of himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of melancholy humor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One of those men devoid of the symmetry of feature essential to the Aryan ideal, he was yet, here and there, considered handsome—moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE REPROACHLESS APARTMENT</div></poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, city, urban, road, affect, haptic, metaphor, driving, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it seemed to Anthony, were the uprights of a gigantic ladder stretching from Washington Square to Central Park. Coming up-town on top of a bus toward Fifty-second Street invariably gave him the sensation of hoisting himself hand by hand on a series of treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps to the sidewalk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block, pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses—and then in a jiffy he was under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was burned to a murky black.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment—Anthony's bedroom and bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them were immense. Under the ceilings of the former even the great canopied bed seemed of only average size. On the floor an exotic rug of crimson velvet was soft as fleece on his bare feet. His bathroom, in contrast to the rather portentous character of his bedroom, was gay, bright, extremely habitable and even faintly facetious. Framed around the walls were photographs of four celebrated thespian beauties of the day: Julia Sanderson as "The Sunshine Girl," Ina Claire as "The Quaker Girl," Billie Burke as "The Mind-the-Paint Girl," and Hazel Dawn as "The Pink Lady." Between Billie Burke and Hazel Dawn hung a print representing a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun—this, claimed Anthony, symbolized the cold shower.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The bathtub, equipped with an ingenious bookholder, was low and large. Beside it a wall wardrobe bulged with sufficient linen for three men and with a generation of neckties. There was no skimpy glorified towel of a carpet—instead, a rich rug, like the one in his bedroom a miracle of softness, that seemed almost to massage the wet foot emerging from the tub. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> All in all a room to conjure with—it was easy to see that Anthony dressed there, arranged his immaculate hair there, in fact did everything but sleep and eat there. It was his pride, this bathroom. He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NOR DOES HE SPIN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The apartment was kept clean by an English servant with the singularly, almost theatrically, appropriate name of Bounds, whose technic was marred only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. Had he been entirely Anthony's Bounds this defect would have been summarily remedied, but he was also the Bounds of two other gentlemen in the neighborhood. From eight until eleven in the morning he was entirely Anthony's. He arrived with the mail and cooked breakfast. At nine-thirty he pulled the edge of Anthony's blanket and spoke a few terse words—Anthony never remembered clearly what they were and rather suspected they were deprecative; then he served breakfast on a card-table in the front room, made the bed and, after asking with some hostility if there was anything else, withdrew.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the mornings, at least once a week, Anthony went to see his broker. His income was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who had never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance, judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in contemplating his grandfather's money—even more, for the latter appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and explicitly—money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a <i>raison d'être</i> in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well again—the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and wire fences guarding the estate—this, said the public, was because it was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth—who before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general reprobate—ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better," Anthony said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last week, pulled out his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Train late?" he asked mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot, but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of meek accusation in his voice—and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentions—and simultaneously a glimmer in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the room—he detested Shuttleworth—but the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that you're here you ought to <i>do</i> something," said his grandfather softly, "accomplish something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony waited for him to speak of "leaving something done when you pass on." Then he made a suggestion:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought—it seemed to me that perhaps I'm best qualified to write—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—history," finished Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "History? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, sir. A history of the Middle Ages." Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said "Middle Ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Middle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see I've lived so much abroad—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why you should write about the Middle Ages, I don't know. Dark Ages, we used to call 'em. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that they're over now." He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the "corruption of the monasteries." Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think you'll be able to do any work in New York—or do you really intend to work at all?" This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, yes, I do, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When'll you be done?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there'll be an outline, you see—and a lot of preliminary reading."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd have done enough of that already."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothing—and contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>AFTERNOON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of "Erewhon." It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he was singing as he turned on the tap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes;</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul la-a-dy</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>My . . . heart . . . cries—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatre—Caramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was glad <i>he</i> wasn't going to work on <i>his</i> book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he sang lightly,<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possible—and, if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are glad to see each other now—their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp, restless—he is at rest now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven o'clock. Where's the Caramel? (<i>Impatiently</i>.) I wish he'd finish that interminable novel. I've spent more time hungry——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: He's got a new name for it. "The Demon Lover "—not bad, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>interested</i>) "The Demon Lover"? Oh "woman wailing"—No—not a bit bad! Not bad at all—d'you think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>His eyes narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval</i>) Drove me crazy the other day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: How?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That habit of taking notes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems I'd said something night before that he considered material but he'd forgotten it—so he had at me. He'd say "Can't you try to concentrate?" And I'd say "You bore me to tears. How do I remember?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (MAURY <i>laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Dick doesn't necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: That rather impressive talent——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. (<i>Silence, and then:</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced</i>) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>With laughter</i>) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? Just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Still considering his own last observation</i>) I remember.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Let's order. He'll be—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Sure. Let's order. I told him—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (<i>He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw</i>.) Here y'are, Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A NEW VOICE: (<i>Fiercely</i>) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Débutantes still after you, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>In person</i> RICHARD CARAMEL <i>is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>When he reaches the table he shakes hands with</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> MAURY. <i>He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Fixing</i> ANTHONY <i>eagerly with the bright eye</i>) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Noble æsthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: We never pass out, my beardless boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: All in our parties are characterized by a certain haughty distinction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: The particularly silly sort who boast about being "tanks"! Trouble is you're both in the eighteenth century. School of the Old English Squire. Drink quietly until you roll under the table. Never have a good time. Oh, no, that isn't done at all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: This from Chapter Six, I'll bet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Going to the theatre?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening doing some deep thinking over of life's problems. The thing is tersely called "The Woman." I presume that she will "pay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: My God! Is that what it is? Let's go to the Follies again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I'm tired of it. I've seen it three times. (<i>To</i> DICK.) The first time, we went out after Act One and found a most amazing bar. When we came back we entered the wrong theatre.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Had a protracted dispute with a scared young couple we thought were in our seats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>As though talking to himself</i>) I think—that when I've done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I'll do a musical comedy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I know—with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to. And all the critics will groan and grunt about "Dear old Pinafore." And I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Pompously</i>) Art isn't meaningless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: In other words, Dick, you're playing before a grand stand peopled with ghosts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Give a good show anyhow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY:(<i>To</i> MAURY) On the contrary, I'd feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, even admitting all that, be a decent pragmatist and grant a poor man the instinct to live. Would you want every one to accept that sophistic rot?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Yeah, I suppose so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, sir! I believe that every one in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don't complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligences.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Here the soup arrives and what</i> MAURY <i>might have gone on to say is lost for all time</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward they visited a ticket speculator and, at a price, obtained seats for a new musical comedy called "High Jinks." In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see the first-night crowd come in. There were opera cloaks stitched of myriad, many-colored silks and furs; there were jewels dripping from arms and throats and ear-tips of white and rose; there were innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial lake of laughter. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the play they parted—Maury was going to a dance at Sherry's, Anthony homeward and to bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin—too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices and craning their necks here and there in fatuous supercilious glances. They were dressed in suits of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; their turn-over collars were notched at the Adam's apple; they wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passed a bewildered old lady borne along like a basket of eggs between two men who exclaimed to her of the wonders of Times Square—explained them so quickly that the old lady, trying to be impartially interested, waved her head here and there like a piece of wind-worried old orange-peel. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the Astor, mama!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! See the chariot race sign——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's where we were to-day. No, <i>there!</i>”"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good gracious! . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You should worry and grow thin like a dime." He recognized the current witticism of the year as it issued stridently from one of the pairs at his elbow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I says to him, I says——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, haptic, sound, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughter hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He turned thankfully down the hush that blew like a dark wind out of a cross-street, passed a bakery-restaurant in whose windows a dozen roast chickens turned over and over on an automatic spit. From the door came a smell that was hot, doughy, and pink. A drug-store next, exhaling medicines, spilt soda water and a pleasant undertone from the cosmetic counter; then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling, smelling folded and vaguely yellow. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store and emerged feeling better—the cigar store was cheerful, humanity in a navy blue mist, buying a luxury . . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, there was a loneliness here——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> His cigarette, its smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as it passed the illusion faded; it diminished to the faintest of drums—then to a far-away droning eagle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car, road, risk, safety, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> There were the bells and the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long conversation with a voice that was in the white wind, a conversation that took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself</i>) Whither shall I journey now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Petulantly</i>) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Fifteen years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: And what's the name of the place?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In astonishment</i>) What?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Very much depressed</i>) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Even so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What of me? What chance shall I have?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>After a dissatisfied pause</i>) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It's expected that they'll be very busy shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What will I be? Tell me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it's not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a "susciety gurl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What's that?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as</i> THE VOICE <i>scratching its head</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>At length</i>) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Placidly</i>) It all sounds so vulgar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In a whisper</i>) Will I be paid?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Yes, as usual—in love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips</i>) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Soberly</i>) You will love it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The dialogue ends here, with</i> BEAUTY <i>still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>All this took place seven years before</i> ANTHONY <i>sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (31-73)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PORTRAIT OF A SIREN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CRISPNESS folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony's mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, to bear children unto three dozen millionaires. Five dozen virtuous females of the second layer were proclaiming not only this fitness, but in addition a tremendous undaunted ambition toward the first three dozen young men, who were of course invited to each of the ninety-six parties—as were the young lady's group of family friends, acquaintances, college boys, and eager young outsiders. To continue, there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city's shoes: Jewesses were coming out into a society of Jewish men and women, from Riverside to the Bronx, and looking forward to a rising young broker or jeweller and a kosher wedding; Irish girls were casting their eyes, with license at last to do so, upon a society of young Tammany politicians, pious undertakers, and grown-up choirboys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> And, naturally, the city caught the contagious air of entré—the working girls, poor ugly souls, wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted male—as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subway's foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles came out with new dances. And the railroads came out with new schedules containing new mistakes instead of the old ones that the commuters had grown used to. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The City was coming out!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, ran unexpectedly into Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West, that were just coming into fashionable approval. His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable hand shake, exploded into sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cold as the devil— Good Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, and took notes while she talked—so she couldn't see me, you know, just as though I were writing casually—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had seized Anthony's arm and was walking him briskly up Madison Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where to?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nowhere in particular."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, then what's the use?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They stopped and stared at each other, and Anthony wondered if the cold made his own face as repellent as Dick Caramel's, whose nose was crimson, whose bulging brow was blue, whose yellow unmatched eyes were red and watery at the rims. After a moment they began walking again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Done some good work on my novel." Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. "But I have to get out once in a while." He glanced at Anthony apologetically, as though craving encouragement. "I have to talk. I guess very few people ever really <i>think</i>, I mean sit down and ponder and have ideas in sequence. I do my thinking in writing or conversation. You've got to have a start, sort of—something to defend or contradict—don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't mind carrying you, Dick, but with that coat—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "that on paper your first paragraph contains the idea you're going to damn or enlarge on. In conversation you've got your vis-à-vis's last statement—but when you simply <i>ponder</i>, why, your ideas just succeed each other like magic-lantern pictures and each one forces out the last."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They passed Forty-fifth Street and slowed down slightly. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke and frosted breath into the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's walk up to the Plaza and have an egg-nog," suggested Anthony. "Do you good. Air'll get the rotten nicotine out of your lungs. Come on—I'll let you talk about your book all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to if it bores you. I mean you needn't do it as a favor." The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: "Bore me? I should say not!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin—" began Dick, but Anthony interrupted by stretching out his arms and breathing forth a low cry of exultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good weather!" he exclaimed, "isn't it? Makes me feel about ten. I mean it makes me feel as I should have felt when I was ten. Murderous! Oh, God! one minute it's my world, and the next I'm the world's fool. To-day it's my world and everything's easy, easy. Even Nothing is easy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin up at the Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter—has lately anyway—with her mother and father."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Didn't know you had cousins in New York."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Her name's Gloria. She's from home—Kansas City. Her mother's a practising Bilphist, and her father's quite dull but a perfect gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are they? Literary material?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They try to be. All the old man does is tell me he just met the most wonderful character for a novel. Then he tells me about some idiotic friend of his and then he says: '<i>There's</i> a character for you! Why don't you write him up? Everybody'd be interested in <i>him</i>.' Or else he tells me about Japan or Paris, or some other very obvious place, and says: 'Why don't you write a story about that place? That'd be a wonderful setting for a story!'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the girl?" inquired Anthony casually, "Gloria—Gloria what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gilbert. Oh, you've heard of her—Gloria Gilbert. Goes to dances at colleges—all that sort of thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard her name."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-looking—in fact damned attractive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care for young girls as a rule," said Anthony, frowning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was not strictly true. While it seemed to him that the average débutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness interested him enormously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's darn nice—not a brain in her head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a one-syllabled snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By that you mean that she hasn't a line of literary patter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick, you know what passes as brains in a girl for you. Earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. The kind who when they were sixteen argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrong—and whether it was immoral for freshmen to drink beer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was offended. His scowl crinkled like crushed paper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No—" he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; kind who just at present sit in corners and confer on the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick turned to him, a curious falling in his whole countenance. His question was almost an appeal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I were a sort of inferior."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was confused, but he was also cold and a little uncomfortable, so he took refuge in attack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think your brains matter, Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course they matter!" exclaimed Dick angrily. "What do you mean? Why don't they matter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You might know too much for your pen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I couldn't possibly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can imagine," insisted Anthony, "a man knowing too much for his talent to express. Like me. Suppose, for instance, I have more wisdom than you, and less talent. It would tend to make me inarticulate. You, on the contrary, have enough water to fill the pail and a big enough pail to hold the water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't follow you at all," complained Dick in a crestfallen tone. Infinitely dismayed, he seemed to bulge in protest. He was staring intently at Anthony and caroming off a succession of passers-by, who reproached him with fierce, resentful glances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I simply mean that a talent like Wells's could carry the intelligence of a Spencer. But an inferior talent can only be graceful when it's carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick considered, unable to decide the exact degree of criticism intended by Anthony's remarks. But Anthony, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Say I am proud and sane and wise—an Athenian among Greeks. Well, I might fail where a lesser man would succeed. He could imitate, he could adorn, he could be enthusiastic, he could be hopefully constructive. But this hypothetical me would be too proud to imitate, too sane to be enthusiastic, too sophisticated to be Utopian, too Grecian to adorn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then you don't think the artist works from his intelligence?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. He goes on improving, if he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because it's his mode of living. Don't tell me you like this 'Divine Function of the Artist' business?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not accustomed even to refer to myself as an artist."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick," said Anthony, changing his tone, "I want to beg your pardon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For that outburst. I'm honestly sorry. I was talking for effect."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Dick rejoined:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've often said you were a Philistine at heart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a crackling dusk when they turned in under the white façade of the Plaza and tasted slowly the foam and yellow thickness of an egg-nog. Anthony looked at his companion. Richard Caramel's nose and brow were slowly approaching a like pigmentation; the red was leaving the one, the blue deserting the other. Glancing in a mirror, Anthony was glad to find that his own skin had not discolored. On the contrary, a faint glow had kindled in his cheeks—he fancied that he had never looked so well.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Enough for me," said Dick, his tone that of an athlete in training. "I want to go up and see the Gilberts. Won't you come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—yes. If you don't dedicate me to the parents and dash off in the corner with Dora."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not Dora—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A clerk announced them over the phone, and ascending to the tenth floor they followed a winding corridor and knocked at 1088. The door was answered by a middle-aged lady—Mrs. Gilbert herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" She spoke in the conventional American lady-lady language. "Well, I'm <i>aw</i>fully glad to see you—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hasty interjections by Dick, and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mr. Pats? Well, do come in, and leave your coat there." She pointed to a chair and changed her inflection to a deprecatory laugh full of minute gasps. "This is really lovely—lovely. Why, Richard, you haven't been here for <i>so</i> long—no!—no!" The latter monosyllables served half as responses, half as periods, to some vague starts from Dick. "Well, do sit down and tell me what you've been doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One crossed and recrossed; one stood and bowed ever so gently; one smiled again and again with helpless stupidity; one wondered if she would ever sit down—at length one slid thankfully into a chair and settled for a pleasant call.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it's because you've been busy—as much as anything else," smiled Mrs. Gilbert somewhat ambiguously. The "as much as anything else" she used to balance all her more rickety sentences. She had two other ones: "at least that's the way I look at it" and "pure and simple"—these three, alternated, gave each of her remarks an air of being a general reflection on life, as though she had calculated all causes and, at length, put her finger on the ultimate one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel's face, Anthony saw, was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who are of no further value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you a writer too, Mr. Pats? . . . Well, perhaps we can all bask in Richard's fame."—Gentle laughter led by Mrs. Gilbert.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's out," she said, with an air of laying down an axiom from which she would proceed to derive results. "She's dancing somewhere. Gloria goes, goes, goes. I tell her I don't see how she stands it. She dances all afternoon and all night, until I think she's going to wear herself to a shadow. Her father is very worried about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled from one to the other. They both smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was composed, Anthony perceived, of a succession of semicircles and parabolas, like those figures that gifted folk make on the typewriter: head, arms, bust, hips, thighs, and ankles were in a bewildering tier of roundnesses. Well ordered and clean she was, with hair of an artificially rich gray; her large face sheltered weather-beaten blue eyes and was adorned with just the faintest white mustache.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," she remarked to Anthony, "that Richard is an ancient soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the tense pause that followed, Anthony considered a pun—something about Dick having been much walked upon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We all have souls of different ages," continued Mrs. Gilbert radiantly; "at least that's what I say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps so," agreed Anthony with an air of quickening to a hopeful idea. The voice bubbled on:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has a very young soul—irresponsible, as much as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's sparkling, Aunt Catherine," said Richard pleasantly. "A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," confessed Mrs. Gilbert, "all I know is that she goes and goes and goes—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The number of goings to Gloria's discredit was lost in the rattle of the door-knob as it turned to admit Mr. Gilbert. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was a short man with a mustache resting like a small white cloud beneath his undistinguished nose. He had reached the stage where his value as a social creature was a black and imponderable negative. His ideas were the popular delusions of twenty years before; his mind steered a wabbly and anæmic course in the wake of the daily newspaper editorials. After graduating from a small but terrifying Western university, he had entered the celluloid business, and as this required only the minute measure of intelligence he brought to it, he did well for several years—in fact until about 1911, when he began exchanging contracts for vague agreements with the moving picture industry. The moving picture industry had decided about 1912 to gobble him up, and at this time he was, so to speak, delicately balanced on its tongue. Meanwhile he was supervising manager of the Associated Mid-western Film Materials Company, spending six months of each year in New York and the remainder in Kansas City and St. Louis. He felt credulously that there was a good thing coming to him—and his wife thought so, and his daughter thought so too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals, she was always in a mix-up—he had irritated her once and she had used toward him words that he had not thought were part of her vocabulary. His wife was easier. After fifteen years of incessant guerilla warfare he had conquered her—it was a war of muddled optimism against organized dulness, and something in the number of "yes's" with which he could poison a conversation had won him the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes-yes," he would say, "yes-yes-yes-yes. Let me see. That was the summer of—let me see—ninety-one or ninety-two—Yes-yes-yes-yes——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fifteen years of yes's had beaten Mrs. Gilbert. Fifteen further years of that incessant unaffirmative affirmative, accompanied by the perpetual flicking of ash-mushrooms from thirty-two thousand cigars, had broken her. To this husband of hers she made the last concession of married life, which is more complete, more irrevocable, than the first—she listened to him. She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance—actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She introduced him to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is Mr. Pats," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> The young man and the old touched flesh; Mr. Gilbert's hand was soft, worn away to the pulpy semblance of a squeezed grapefruit. Then husband and wife exchanged greetings—he told her it had grown colder out; he said he had walked down to a news-stand on Forty-fourth Street for a Kansas City paper. He had intended to ride back in the bus but he had found it too cold, yes, yes, yes, yes, too cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert added flavor to his adventure by being impressed with his courage in braving the harsh air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you <i>are</i> spunky!" she exclaimed admiringly. "You <i>are</i> spunky. I wouldn't have gone out for anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert with true masculine impassivity disregarded the awe he had excited in his wife. He turned to the two young men and triumphantly routed them on the subject of the weather. Richard Caramel was called on to remember the month of November in Kansas. No sooner had the theme been pushed toward him, however, than it was violently fished back to be lingered over, pawed over, elongated, and generally devitalized by its sponsor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> The immemorial thesis that the days somewhere were warm but the nights very pleasant was successfully propounded and they decided the exact distance on an obscure railroad between two points that Dick had inadvertently mentioned. Anthony fixed Mr. Gilbert with a steady stare and went into a trance through which, after a moment, Mrs. Gilbert's smiling voice penetrated:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems as though the cold were damper here—it seems to eat into my bones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the tip of Mr. Gilbert's tongue, he could not be blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She ought to be here any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you met my daughter, Mr.——?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't had the pleasure. I've heard Dick speak of her often."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She and Richard are cousins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes?" Anthony smiled with some effort. He was not used to the society of his seniors, and his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness. It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick being cousins. He managed within the next minute to throw an agonized glance at his friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was afraid they'd have to toddle off.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea—something about being glad they'd come, anyhow, even if they'd only seen an old lady 'way too old to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one bar in three-four time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Would they come again soon?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria would be <i>aw</i>fully sorry!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bang!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A LADY'S LEGS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure—and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker; but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious purpose and significant design—as though Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go along the earth and to see all the billions of humans who bred and wept and slew each other here and there upon it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in America, he was sallying into the search for amusement with the same consistent absorption. He who had never taken more than a few cocktails or a pint of wine at a sitting, taught himself to drink as he would have taught himself Greek—like Greek it would be the gateway to a wealth of new sensations, new psychic states, new reactions in joy or misery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His habits were a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth Street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home. Foremost on the latter list were Anthony Patch and Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury's mother lived with her married son in Philadelphia, and there Maury went usually for the week-ends, so one Saturday night when Anthony, prowling the chilly streets in a fit of utter boredom, dropped in at the Molton Arms he was overjoyed to find that Mr. Noble was at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His spirits soared faster than the flying elevator. This was so good, so extremely good, to be about to talk to Maury—who would be equally happy at seeing him. They would look at each other with a deep affection just behind their eyes which both would conceal beneath some attenuated raillery. Had it been summer they would have gone out together and indolently sipped two long Tom Collinses, as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill's, or a thimbleful of Maury's Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and catlike, in his favorite chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There he was! The room closed about Anthony, warmed him. The glow of that strong persuasive mind, that temperament almost Oriental in its outward impassivity, warmed Anthony's restless soul and brought him a peace that could be likened only to the peace a stupid woman gives. One must understand all—else one must take all for granted. Maury filled the room, tigerlike, godlike. The winds outside were stilled; the brass candlesticks on the mantel glowed like tapers before an altar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What keeps you here to-day?" Anthony spread himself over a yielding sofa and made an elbow-rest among the pillows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Just been here an hour. Tea dance—and I stayed so late I missed my train to Philadelphia."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange to stay so long," commented Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather. What'd you do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine. Little usher at Keith's. I told you about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paid me a call about three and stayed till five. Peculiar little soul—she gets me. She's so utterly stupid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was silent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange as it may seem," continued Anthony, "so far as I'm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> He had known her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the Park. She had a vague family—a shadowy aunt and uncle who shared with her an apartment in the labyrinthine hundreds. She was company, familiar and faintly intimate and restful. Further than that he did not care to experiment—not from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She has two stunts," he informed Maury; "one of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say 'You cra-a-azy!' when some one makes a remark that's over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in my imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury stirred in his chair and spoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Remarkable that a person can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that actually takes the whole universe in the most matter-of-fact way. From the influence of Rousseau to the bearing of the tariff rates on her dinner, the whole phenomenon is utterly strange to her. She's just been carried along from an age of spearheads and plunked down here with the equipment of an archer for going into a pistol duel. You could sweep away the entire crust of history and she'd never know the difference."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish our Richard would write about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, surely you don't think she's worth writing about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As much as anybody," he answered, yawning. "You know I was thinking to-day that I have a great confidence in Dick. So long as he sticks to people and not to ideas, and as long as his inspirations come from life and not from art, and always granting a normal growth, I believe he'll be a big man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think the appearance of the black note-book would prove that he's going to life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony raised himself on his elbow and answered eagerly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he accurately transcribe his own sister?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they were off for half an hour on literature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A classic," suggested Anthony, "is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a time the subject temporarily lost its tang. The interest of the two young men was not particularly technical. They were in love with generalities. Anthony had recently discovered Samuel Butler and the brisk aphorisms in the note-book seemed to him the quintessence of criticism. Maury, his whole mind so thoroughly mellowed by the very hardness of his scheme of life, seemed inevitably the wiser of the two, yet in the actual stuff of their intelligences they were not, it seemed, fundamentally different.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They drifted from letters to the curiosities of each other's day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Whose tea was it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "People named Abercrombie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why'd you stay late? Meet a luscious débutante?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you really?" Anthony's voice lifted in surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a débutante exactly. Said she came out two winters ago in Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of left-over?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," answered Maury with some amusement, "I think that's the last thing I'd say about her. She seemed—well, somehow the youngest person there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Not too young to make you miss a train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young enough. Beautiful child."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled in his one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Maury, you're in your second childhood. What do you mean by beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gazed helplessly into space.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't describe her exactly—except to say that she was beautiful. She was—tremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was a sort of attenuated vice. She's a nervous kind—said she always ate gum-drops at teas because she had to stand around so long in one place."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd you talk about—Bergson? Bilphism? Whether the one-step is immoral?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As a matter of fact we did talk on Bilphism. Seems her mother's a Bilphist. Mostly, though, we talked about legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony rocked in glee.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My God! Whose legs?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hers. She talked a lot about hers. As though they were a sort of choice bric-à-brac. She aroused a great desire to see them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is she—a dancer?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I found she was a cousin of Dick's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony sat upright so suddenly that the pillow he released stood on end like a live thing and dove to the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Name's Gloria Gilbert?" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes. Isn't she remarkable?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure I don't know—but for sheer dulness her father—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," interrupted Maury with implacable conviction, "her family may be as sad as professional mourners but I'm inclined to think that she's a quite authentic and original character. The outer signs of the cut-and-dried Yale prom girl and all that—but different, very emphatically different."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, go on!" urged Anthony. "Soon as Dick told me she didn't have a brain in her head I knew she must be pretty good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he say that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Swore to it," said Anthony with another snorting laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what he means by brains in a woman is—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," interrupted Anthony eagerly, "he means a smattering of literary misinformation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's it. The kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes it's a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin too—her own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely she usually approximated it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You sat enraptured by her low alto?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze, if I remember rightly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's got you going—oh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in his family!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Snowing hard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Another winter." Maury's voice from the window was almost a whisper.<br /> "We're growing old, Anthony. I'm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to thirty, and then I'm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was silent for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>are</i> old, Maury," he agreed at length. "The first signs of a very dissolute and wabbly senescence—you have spent the afternoon talking about tan and a lady's legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury pulled down the shade with a sudden harsh snap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come—oh, for a Caramel to take notes—and another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonys—yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After all, Anthony, it's you who are very romantic and young. It's you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. It's me who tries again and again to be moved—let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me. Nothing—quite—stirs me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet," he murmured after another long pause, "there was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old—like me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TURBULENCE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony turned over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the rug was beckoning and perishable to his perishable feet, and Bounds, horribly inappropriate in his soft collar, was of stuff as fading as the gauze of frozen breath he uttered. He was close to the bed, his hand still lowered where he had been jerking at the upper blanket, his dark-brown eyes fixed imperturbably upon his master.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bows!" muttered the drowsy god. "Thachew, Bows?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's I, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved his head, forced his eyes wide, and blinked triumphantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you get off—yeow-ow-oh-oh-oh God!—" Anthony yawned insufferably and the contents of his brain seemed to fall together in a dense hash. He made a fresh start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you come around about four and serve some tea and sandwiches or something?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered with chilling lack of inspiration. "Some sandwiches," he repeated helplessly, "oh, some cheese sandwiches and jelly ones and chicken and olive, I guess. Never mind breakfast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The strain of invention was too much. He shut his eyes wearily, let his head roll to rest inertly, and quickly relaxed what he had regained of muscular control. Out of a crevice of his mind crept the vague but inevitable spectre of the night before—but it proved in this case to be nothing but a seemingly interminable conversation with Richard Caramel, who had called on him at midnight; they had drunk four bottles of beer and munched dry crusts of bread while Anthony listened to a reading of the first part of "The Demon Lover."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Came a voice now after many hours. Anthony disregarded it, as sleep closed over him, folded down upon him, crept up into the byways of his mind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly he was awake, saying: "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For how many, sir?" It was still Bounds, standing patient and motionless at the foot of the bed—Bounds who divided his manner among three gentlemen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How many what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think, sir, I'd better know how many are coming. I'll have to plan for the sandwiches, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Two," muttered Anthony huskily; "lady and a gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds said, "Thank you, sir," and moved away, bearing with him his humiliating reproachful soft collar, reproachful to each of the three gentlemen, who only demanded of him a third.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a long time Anthony arose and drew an opalescent dressing grown of brown and blue over his slim pleasant figure. With a last yawn he went into the bathroom, and turning on the dresser light (the bathroom had no outside exposure) he contemplated himself in the mirror with some interest. A wretched apparition, he thought; he usually thought so in the morning—sleep made his face unnaturally pale. He lit a cigarette and glanced through several letters and the morning Tribune.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour later, shaven and dressed, he was sitting at his desk looking at a small piece of paper he had taken out of his wallet. It was scrawled with semi-legible memoranda: "See Mr. Howland at five. Get hair-cut. See about Rivers' bill. Go book-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And under the last: "Cash in bank, $690 (crossed out), $612 (crossed out), $607."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally, down at the bottom and in a hurried scrawl: "Dick and Gloria Gilbert for tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This last item brought him obvious satisfaction. His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the uneaten sandwiches.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a growing lack of color in Anthony's days. He felt it constantly and sometimes traced it to a talk he had had with Maury Noble a month before. That anything so ingenuous, so priggish, as a sense of waste should oppress him was absurd, but there was no denying the fact that some unwelcome survival of a fetish had drawn him three weeks before down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours of acute and startling panic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In justification of his manner of living there was first, of course, The Meaninglessness of Life. As aides and ministers, pages and squires, butlers and lackeys to this great Khan there were a thousand books glowing on his shelves, there was his apartment and all the money that was to be his when the old man up the river should choke on his last morality. From a world fraught with the menace of débutantes and the stupidity of many Geraldines he was thankfully delivered—rather should he emulate the feline immobility of Maury and wear proudly the culminative wisdom of the numbered generations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Over and against these things was something which his brain persistently analyzed and dealt with as a tiresome complex but which, though logically disposed of and bravely trampled under foot, had sent him out through the soft slush of late November to a library which had none of the books he most wanted. It is fair to analyze Anthony as far as he could analyze himself; further than that it is, of course, presumption. He found in himself a growing horror and loneliness. The idea of eating alone frightened him; in preference he dined often with men he detested. Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —If I am essentially weak, he thought, I need work to do, work to do. It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity, with neither the poise of Maury nor the enthusiasm of Dick. It seemed a tragedy to want nothing—and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was—some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After cocktails and luncheon at the University Club Anthony felt better. He had run into two men from his class at Harvard, and in contrast to the gray heaviness of their conversation his life assumed color. Both of them were married: one spent his coffee time in sketching an extra-nuptial adventure to the bland and appreciative smiles of the other. Both of them, he thought, were Mr. Gilberts in embryo; the number of their "yes's" would have to be quadrupled, their natures crabbed by twenty years—then they would be no more than obsolete and broken machines, pseudo-wise and valueless, nursed to an utter senility by the women they had broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ah, he was more than that, as he paced the long carpet in the lounge after dinner, pausing at the window to look into the harried street. He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a stray boyishness he saw himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam. The clarity of his mind, its sophistication, its versatile intelligence, all at their maturity and dominated by some purpose yet to be born would find him work to do. On this minor his dream faded—work to do: he tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lustreless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people—and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lord Verulam! Talleyrand!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment the grayness returned. His cocktails had died, making him sleepy, somewhat befogged and inclined to be surly. Lord Verulam—he? The very thought was bitter. Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to be satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The buzzer rang at the door. Anthony sprang up and lifted the tube to his ear. It was Richard Caramel's voice, stilted and facetious:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Announcing Miss Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BEAUTIFUL LADY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he said, smiling and holding the door ajar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick bowed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, this is Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" she cried, holding out a little gloved hand. Under her fur coat her dress was Alice-blue, with white lace crinkled stiffly about her throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let me take your things."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony stretched out his arms and the brown mass of fur tumbled into them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you think of her, Anthony?" Richard Caramel demanded barbarously. "Isn't she beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" cried the girl defiantly—withal unmoved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was dazzling—alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance. Her hair, full of a heavenly glamour, was gay against the winter color of the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved about, magician-like, turning the mushroom lamp into an orange glory. The stirred fire burnished the copper andirons on the hearth——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a solid block of ice," murmured Gloria casually, glancing around with eyes whose irises were of the most delicate and transparent bluish white. "What a slick fire! We found a place where you could stand on an iron-bar grating, sort of, and it blew warm air up at you—but Dick wouldn't wait there with me. I told him to go on alone and let me be happy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Conventional enough this. She seemed talking for her own pleasure, without effort. Anthony, sitting at one end of the sofa, examined her profile against the foreground of the lamp: the exquisite regularity of nose and upper lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold—but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Think you've got the best name I've heard," she was saying, still apparently to herself; her glance rested on him a moment and then flitted past him—to the Italian bracket-lamps clinging like luminous yellow turtles at intervals along the walls, to the books row upon row, then to her cousin on the other side. "Anthony Patch. Only you ought to look sort of like a horse, with a long narrow face—and you ought to be in tatters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all the Patch part, though. How should Anthony look?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You look like Anthony," she assured him seriously—he thought she had scarcely seen him—"rather majestic," she continued, "and solemn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony indulged in a disconcerted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only I like alliterative names," she went on, "all except mine. Mine's too flamboyant. I used to know two girls named Jinks, though, and just think if they'd been named anything except what they were named—Judy Jinks and Jerry Jinks. Cute, what? Don't you think?" Her childish mouth was parted, awaiting a rejoinder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody in the next generation," suggested Dick, "will be named Peter or Barbara—because at present all the piquant literary characters are named Peter or Barbara."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony continued the prophecy:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course Gladys and Eleanor, having graced the last generation of heroines and being at present in their social prime, will be passed on to the next generation of shop-girls——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Displacing Ella and Stella," interrupted Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Pearl and Jewel," Gloria added cordially, "and Earl and Elmer and Minnie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then I'll come along," remarked Dick, "and picking up the obsolete name, Jewel, I'll attach it to some quaint and attractive character and it'll start its career all over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice took up the thread of subject and wove along with faintly upturning, half-humorous intonations for sentence ends—as though defying interruption—and intervals of shadowy laughter. Dick had told her that Anthony's man was named Bounds—she thought that was wonderful! Dick had made some sad pun about Bounds doing patchwork, but if there was one thing worse than a pun, she said, it was a person who, as the inevitable come-back to a pun, gave the perpetrator a mock-reproachful look.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where are you from?" inquired Anthony. He knew, but beauty had rendered him thoughtless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Kansas City, Missouri."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They put her out the same time they barred cigarettes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did they bar cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a reformer or something, isn't he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I blush for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So do I," she confessed. "I detest reformers, especially the sort who try to reform me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there many of those?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens. It's 'Oh, Gloria, if you smoke so many cigarettes you'll lose your pretty complexion!' and 'Oh, Gloria, why don't you marry and settle down?'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony agreed emphatically while he wondered who had had the temerity to speak thus to such a personage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then," she continued, "there are all the subtle reformers who tell you the wild stories they've heard about you and how they've been sticking up for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw, at length, that her eyes were gray, very level and cool, and when they rested on him he understood what Maury had meant by saying she was very young and very old. She talked always about herself as a very charming child might talk, and her comments on her tastes and distastes were unaffected and spontaneous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must confess," said Anthony gravely, "that even <i>I</i>'ve heard one thing about you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Alert at once, she sat up straight. Those eyes, with the grayness and eternity of a cliff of soft granite, caught his.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe anything any one tells me about myself—don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Invariably!" agreed the two men in unison.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not sure that I ought to," teased Anthony, smiling unwillingly. She was so obviously interested, in a state of almost laughable self-absorption.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He means your nickname," said her cousin.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What name?" inquired Anthony, politely puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Instantly she was shy—then she laughed, rolled back against the cushions, and turned her eyes up as she spoke:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Coast-to-Coast Gloria." Her voice was full of laughter, laughter undefined as the varying shadows playing between fire and lamp upon her hair. "O Lord!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Still Anthony was puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>Me</i>”, I mean. That's what some silly boys coined for <i>me</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you see, Anthony," explained Dick, "traveller of a nation-wide notoriety and all that. Isn't that what you've heard? She's been called that for years—since she was seventeen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony's eyes became sad and humorous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this female Methuselah you've brought in here, Caramel?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She disregarded this, possibly rather resented it, for she switched back to the main topic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>have</i> you heard of me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Something about your physique."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said, coolly disappointed, "that all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your tan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My tan?" She was puzzled. Her hand rose to her throat, rested there an instant as though the fingers were feeling variants of color.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember Maury Noble? Man you met about a month ago. You made a great impression."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She thought a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember—but he didn't call me up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was afraid to, I don't doubt."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was black dark without now and Anthony wondered that his apartment had ever seemed gray—so warm and friendly were the books and pictures on the walls and the good Bounds offering tea from a respectful shadow and the three nice people giving out waves of interest and laughter back and forth across the happy fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DISSATISFACTION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill room at the Plaza. Her fur-trimmed suit was gray—"because with gray you <i>have</i> to wear a lot of paint," she explained—and a small toque sat rakishly on her head, allowing yellow ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a child's hands should be.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As they entered, the orchestra were sounding the preliminary whimpers to a maxixe, a tune full of castanets and facile faintly languorous violin harmonies, appropriate to the crowded winter grill teeming with an excited college crowd, high-spirited at the approach of the holidays. Carefully, Gloria considered several locations, and rather to Anthony's annoyance paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naïve was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abstractedly she watched the dancers for a few moments, commenting murmurously as a couple eddied near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a pretty girl in blue"—and as Anthony looked obediently—" there! No. behind you—there!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," he agreed helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You didn't see her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd rather look at you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know, but she was pretty. Except that she had big ankles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Was she?—I mean, did she?" he said indifferently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A girl's salutation came from a couple dancing close to them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Gloria! O Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's that?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Somebody." She caught sight of another face. "Hello, Muriel!" Then to Anthony: "There's Muriel Kane. Now I think she's attractive, 'cept not very." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled appreciatively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Attractive, 'cept not very," he repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled—was interested immediately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why is that funny?" Her tone was pathetically intent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It just was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want to dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. But let's sit," she decided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And talk about you? You love to talk about you, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes." Caught in a vanity, she laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I imagine your autobiography would be a classic."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick says I haven't got one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick!" he exclaimed. "What does he know about you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing. But he says the biography of every woman begins with the first kiss that counts, and ends when her last child is laid in her arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's talking from his book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He says unloved women have no biographies—they have histories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Surely you don't claim to be unloved!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I suppose not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why haven't you a biography? Haven't you ever had a kiss that counted?" As the words left his lips he drew in his breath sharply as though to suck them back. This <i>baby</i>!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know what you mean 'counts,'" she objected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd tell me how old you are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Twenty-two," she said, meeting his eyes gravely. "How old did you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About eighteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to start being that. I don't like being twenty-two. I hate it more than anything in the world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Being twenty-two?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Getting old and everything. Getting married."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever want to marry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to have responsibility and a lot of children to take care of."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Evidently she did not doubt that on her lips all things were good. He waited rather breathlessly for her next remark, expecting it to follow up her last. She was smiling, without amusement but pleasantly, and after an interval half a dozen words fell into the space between them:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I had some gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You shall!" He beckoned to a waiter and sent him to the cigar counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you mind? I love gum-drops. Everybody kids me about it because I'm always whacking away at one—whenever my daddy's not around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not at all.—Who are all these children?" he asked suddenly. "Do you know them all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, but they're from—oh, from everywhere, I suppose. Don't you ever come here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very seldom. I don't care particularly for 'nice girls.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Immediately he had her attention. She turned a definite shoulder to the dancers, relaxed in her chair, and demanded:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>do</i>” you do with yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thanks to a cocktail Anthony welcomed the question. In a mood to talk, he wanted, moreover, to impress this girl whose interest seemed so tantalizingly elusive—she stopped to browse in unexpected pastures, hurried quickly over the inobviously obvious. He wanted to pose. He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do nothing," he began, realizing simultaneously that his words were to lack the debonair grace he craved for them. "I do nothing, for there's nothing I can do that's worth doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?" He had neither surprised her nor even held her, yet she had certainly understood him, if indeed he had said aught worth understanding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you approve of lazy men?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose so, if they're gracefully lazy. Is that possible for an American?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not?" he demanded, discomfited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But her mind had left the subject and wandered up ten floors.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My daddy's mad at me," she observed dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle"—his words gathered conviction—"it astonishes me. It—it—I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off. She watched him inscrutably. He waited for her to agree or disagree, but she did neither.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever form judgments on things?" he asked with some exasperation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her head and her eyes wandered back to the dancers as she answered:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. I don't know anything about—what you should do, or what anybody should do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he admitted apologetically, "neither do I, of course, but——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just think of people," she continued, "whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't want to do anything?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a second he was startled, almost as though she had meant this literally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sleep?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe—and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me. But I never want to change people or get excited over them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a quaint little determinist," laughed Anthony. "It's your world, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—" she said with a quick upward glance, "isn't it? As long as I'm—young."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had paused slightly before the last word and Anthony suspected that she had started to say "beautiful." It was undeniably what she had intended.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes brightened and he waited for her to enlarge on the theme. He had drawn her out, at any rate—he bent forward slightly to catch the words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But "Let's dance!" was all she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ADMIRATION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That winter afternoon at the Plaza was the first of a succession of "dates" Anthony made with her in the blurred and stimulating days before Christmas. Invariably she was busy. What particular strata of the city's social life claimed her he was a long time finding out. It seemed to matter very little. She attended the semi-public charity dances at the big hotels; he saw her several times at dinner parties in Sherry's, and once as he waited for her to dress, Mrs. Gilbert, apropos of her daughter's habit of "going," rattled off an amazing holiday programme that included half a dozen dances to which Anthony had received cards.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He made engagements with her several times for lunch and tea—the former were hurried and, to him at least, rather unsatisfactory occasions, for she was sleepy-eyed and casual, incapable of concentrating upon anything or of giving consecutive attention to his remarks. When after two of these sallow meals he accused her of tendering him the skin and bones of the day she laughed and gave him a tea-time three days off. This was infinitely more satisfactory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One Sunday afternoon just before Christmas he called up and found her in the lull directly after some important but mysterious quarrel: she informed him in a tone of mingled wrath and amusement that she had sent a man out of her apartment—here Anthony speculated violently—and that the man had been giving a little dinner for her that very night and that of course she wasn't going. So Anthony took her to supper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go to something!" she proposed as they went down in the elevator. "I want to see a show, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Inquiry at the hotel ticket desk disclosed only two Sunday night "concerts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They're always the same," she complained unhappily, "same old Yiddish comedians. Oh, let's go somewhere!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To conceal a guilty suspicion that he should have arranged a performance of some kind for her approval Anthony affected a knowing cheerfulness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go to a good cabaret."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've seen every one in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll find a new one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in wretched humor; that was evident. Her gray eyes were granite now indeed. When she wasn't speaking she stared straight in front of her as if at some distasteful abstraction in the lobby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, come on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, passenger, navigation, city, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He followed her, a graceful girl even in her enveloping fur, out to a taxicab, and, with an air of having a definite place in mind, instructed the driver to go over to Broadway and then turn south. He made several casual attempts at conversation but as she adopted an impenetrable armor of silence and answered him in sentences as morose as the cold darkness of the taxicab he gave up, and assuming a like mood fell into a dim gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, urban, car"><br /> <poem><br /> A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony's eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign spelling "Marathon" in glorious yellow script, adorned with electrical leaves and flowers that alternately vanished and beamed upon the wet and glistening street. He leaned and rapped on the taxi-window and in a moment was receiving information from a colored doorman: Yes, this was a cabaret. Fine cabaret. Bes' showina city!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we try it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door and prepared to follow it; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this unsung palace of pleasure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gay habitats of the very rich and the very poor, the very dashing and the very criminal, not to mention the lately exploited very Bohemian, are made known to the awed high school girls of Augusta, Georgia, and Redwing, Minnesota, not only through the bepictured and entrancing spreads of the Sunday theatrical supplements but through the shocked and alarmful eyes of Mr. Rupert Hughes and other chroniclers of the mad pace of America. But the excursions of Harlem onto Broadway, the deviltries of the dull and the revelries of the respectable are a matter of esoteric knowledge only to the participants themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tip circulates—and in the place knowingly mentioned, gather the lower moral-classes on Saturday and Sunday nights—the little troubled men who are pictured in the comics as "the Consumer" or "the Public." They have made sure that the place has three qualifications: it is cheap; it imitates with a sort of shoddy and mechanical wistfulness the glittering antics of the great cafés in the theatre district; and—this, above all, important—it is a place where they can "take a nice girl," which means, of course, that every one has become equally harmless, timid, and uninteresting through lack of money and imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people with hyphenated occupations: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks—clerks of the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery and broken hopes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They name these brummagem cabarets after Pullman cars. The "Marathon"! Not for them the salacious similes borrowed from the cafés of Paris! This is where their docile patrons bring their "nice women," whose starved fancies are only too willing to believe that the scene is comparatively gay and joyous, and even faintly immoral. This is life! Who cares for the morrow?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abandoned people!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Gloria, seated, looked about them. At the next table a party of four were in process of being joined by a party of three, two men and a girl, who were evidently late—and the manner of the girl was a study in national sociology. She was meeting some new men—and she was pretending desperately. By gesture she was pretending and by words and by the scarcely perceptible motionings of her eyelids that she belonged to a class a little superior to the class with which she now had to do, that a while ago she had been, and presently would again be, in a higher, rarer air. She was almost painfully refined—she wore a last year's hat covered with violets no more yearningly pretentious and palpably artificial than herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fascinated, Anthony and Gloria watched the girl sit down and radiate the impression that she was only condescendingly present. For <i>me</i>, her eyes said, this is practically a slumming expedition, to be cloaked with belittling laughter and semi-apologetics.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And the other women passionately poured out the impression that though they were in the crowd they were not of it. This was not the sort of place to which they were accustomed; they had dropped in because it was near by and convenient—every party in the restaurant poured out that impression . . . who knew? They were forever changing class, all of them—the women often marrying above their opportunities, the men striking suddenly a magnificent opulence: a sufficiently preposterous advertising scheme, a celestialized ice cream cone. Meanwhile, they met here to eat, closing their eyes to the economy displayed in infrequent changings of table-cloths, in the casualness of the cabaret performers, most of all in the colloquial carelessness and familiarity of the waiters. One was sure that these waiters were not impressed by their patrons. One expected that presently they would sit at the tables . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you object to this?" inquired Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's face warmed and for the first time that evening she smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love it," she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-à-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor—and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the illusion snapped like a nest of threads; the room grouped itself around him, voices, faces, movement; the garish shimmer of the lights overhead became real, became portentous; breath began, the slow respiration that she and he took in time with this docile hundred, the rise and fall of bosoms, the eternal meaningless play and interplay and tossing and reiterating of word and phrase—all these wrenched his senses open to the suffocating pressure of life—and then her voice came at him, cool as the suspended dream he had left behind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I belong here," she murmured, "I'm like these people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an instant this seemed a sardonic and unnecessary paradox hurled at him across the impassable distances she created about herself. Her entrancement had increased—her eyes rested upon a Semitic violinist who swayed his shoulders to the rhythm of the year's mellowest fox-trot:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"Something—goes</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Ring-a-ting-a-ling-a-ling</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Right in-your ear——"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she spoke, from the centre of this pervasive illusion of her own. It amazed him. It was like blasphemy from the mouth of a child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm like they are—like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a young idiot!" he insisted wildly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her blond head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I <i>am</i> like them. . . . You ought to see. . . . You don't know me." She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. "I've got a streak of what you'd call cheapness. I don't know where I get it but it's—oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I'm this because of this or that because of that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down <i>now</i>, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What were you thinking?" she asked.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just that I'm not a realist," he said, and then: "No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance—that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it—then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (74-128)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FROM his undergraduate days as editor of The Harvard Crimson Richard Caramel had desired to write. But as a senior he had picked up the glorified illusion that certain men were set aside for "service" and, going into the world, were to accomplish a vague yearnful something which would react either in eternal reward or, at the least, in the personal satisfaction of having striven for the greatest good of the greatest number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This spirit has long rocked the colleges in America. It begins, as a rule, during the immaturities and facile impressions of freshman year—sometimes back in preparatory school. Prosperous apostles known for their emotional acting go the rounds of the universities and, by frightening the amiable sheep and dulling the quickening of interest and intellectual curiosity which is the purpose of all education, distil a mysterious conviction of sin, harking back to childhood crimes and to the ever-present menace of "women." To these lectures go the wicked youths to cheer and joke and the timid to swallow the tasty pills, which would be harmless if administered to farmers' wives and pious drug-clerks but are rather dangerous medicine for these "future leaders of men."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This octopus was strong enough to wind a sinuous tentacle about Richard Caramel. The year after his graduation it called him into the slums of New York to muck about with bewildered Italians as secretary to an "Alien Young Men's Rescue Association." He labored at it over a year before the monotony began to weary him. The aliens kept coming inexhaustibly—Italians, Poles, Scandinavians, Czechs, Armenians—with the same wrongs, the same exceptionally ugly faces and very much the same smells, though he fancied that these grew more profuse and diverse as the months passed. His eventual conclusions about the expediency of service were vague, but concerning his own relation to it they were abrupt and decisive. Any amiable young man, his head ringing with the latest crusade, could accomplish as much as he could with the débris of Europe—and it was time for him to write.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had been living in a down-town Y.M.C.A., but when he quit the task of making sow-ear purses out of sows' ears, he moved up-town and went to work immediately as a reporter for The Sun. He kept at this for a year, doing desultory writing on the side, with little success, and then one day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career. On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the horses' hoofs in the snow. . . This he handed in. Next morning a marked copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note: "Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen the snow threatening—and had postponed the parade until another day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover.". . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, the Monday of the months, Richard Caramel's nose was blue constantly, a sardonic blue, vaguely suggestive of the flames licking around a sinner. His book was nearly ready, and as it grew in completeness it seemed to grow also in its demands, sapping him, overpowering him, until he walked haggard and conquered in its shadow. Not only to Anthony and Maury did he pour out his hopes and boasts and indecisions, but to any one who could be prevailed upon to listen. He called on polite but bewildered publishers, he discussed it with his casual vis-à-vis at the Harvard Club; it was even claimed by Anthony that he had been discovered, one Sunday night, debating the transposition of Chapter Two with a literary ticket-collector in the chill and dismal recesses of a Harlem subway station. And latest among his confidantes was Mrs. Gilbert, who sat with him by the hour and alternated between Bilphism and literature in an intense cross-fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shakespeare was a Bilphist," she assured him through a fixed smile. "Oh, yes! He was a Bilphist. It's been proved."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this Dick would look a bit blank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you've read 'Hamlet' you can't help but see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he—he lived in a more credulous age—a more religious age."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she demanded the whole loaf:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, but you see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the <i>bon mot</i> of her belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula—which was perhaps not a formula; it was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of all formulas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm <i>sure</i> it will. I went to Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's <i>mad</i> about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be <i>extraordinary</i>. But she'd never seen you or known anything about you—not even your <i>name</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his own traffic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my friends are joshing me—oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care. I think a person ought to be able to take joshing. But I've got a sort of conviction," he concluded gloomily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're an ancient soul, I always say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe I am." Dick had reached the stage where he no longer fought, but submitted. He <i>must</i> be an ancient soul, he fancied grotesquely; so old as to be absolutely rotten. However, the reiteration of the phrase still somewhat embarrassed him and sent uncomfortable shivers up his back. He changed the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is my distinguished cousin Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's on the go somewhere, with some one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick paused, considered, and then, screwing up his face into what was evidently begun as a smile but ended as a terrifying frown, delivered a comment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert started, beamed half a second too late, and breathed her "Really?" in the tone of a detective play-whisper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I <i>think</i> so," corrected Dick gravely. "She's the first girl I've ever seen him with, so much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, of course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see her settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not claiming I'm right, mind you," he assured the infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back at him. "I'm saying nothing that I'd want Gloria to know. But I think Mad Anthony is interested—tremendously so. He talks about her constantly. In any one else that'd be a bad sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria is a very young soul—" began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria'd be a very young nut not to marry him." He stopped and faced her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and strained to its ultimate show of intensity—this as if to make up by his sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. "Gloria's a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She's uncontrollable. How she's done it I don't know, but lately she's picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn't seem to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were—" He paused for breath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes," interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anæmic attempt to hide the immense interest with which she listened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "there it is. I mean that the men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate. Now they aren't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast—her bosom trembled, inflated, remained so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in a torrent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? He knew Gloria. He'd seen enough of Gloria to know how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so spoiled—in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed sticks. Perhaps—one never knew—it was this that had given that health and <i>hardiness</i> to her whole personality. And then ever since she was twelve years old she'd had boys about her so thick—oh, so thick one couldn't <i>move</i>. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to single them out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college—they lasted on an average of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came—a new one—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his father. The others had been—wretched. They never seemed to know when she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind. They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her, making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they would never get over Gloria . . . at least two of them had since married, though. . . . But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill—to this day Mr. Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no longer bothered to refuse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as a private engagement—with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena. She was sure it had, because—this must go no further—she had come in unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed. She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a new man came.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers! Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in desperation! Young men threatening South America! . . . Young men writing the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick fancied that Mrs. Gilbert's eyes had seen some of these letters.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents, substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths and beginning again—with the next.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was absolutely going to no more college dances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This had begun the change—not so much in her actual habits, for she danced, and had as many "dates" as ever—but they were dates in a different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly—enjoying the crowds around her, the manner in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous, and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about her—for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night in a chiffon evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine—it had been in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career—she became suddenly anæsthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties, who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she insulted would return like a domestic animal—but indifferently, without contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more—she yawned at them. She seemed—and it was so strange—she seemed to her mother to be growing cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his aunt's discourse waxed in content—it stands here pruned by half, of all side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own mental distresses—he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired head, expressing—almost anything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a sense Gloria's past was an old story to him. He had followed it with the eyes of a journalist, for he was going to write a book about her some day. But his interests, just at present, were family interests. He wanted to know, in particular, who was this Joseph Bloeckman that he had seen her with several times; and those two girls she was with constantly, "this" Rachael Jerryl and "this" Miss Kane—surely Miss Kane wasn't exactly the sort one would associate with Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But the moment had passed. Mrs. Gilbert having climbed the hill of exposition was about to glide swiftly down the ski-jump of collapse. Her eyes were like a blue sky seen through two round, red window-casements. The flesh about her mouth was trembling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And at the moment the door opened, admitting into the room Gloria and the two young ladies lately mentioned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO YOUNG WOMEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do, Mrs. Gilbert!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Miss Kane and Miss Jerryl are presented to Mr. Richard Caramel. "This is Dick" (laughter).<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard so much about you," says Miss Kane between a giggle and a shout.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do," says Miss Jerryl shyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel tries to move about as if his figure were better. He is torn between his innate cordiality and the fact that he considers these girls rather common—not at all the Farmover type.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria has disappeared into the bedroom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do sit down," beams Mrs. Gilbert, who is by now quite herself. "Take off your things." Dick is afraid she will make some remark about the age of his soul, but he forgets his qualms in completing a conscientious, novelist's examination of the two young women. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel Kane had originated in a rising family of East Orange. She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between plumpness and width. Her hair was black and elaborately arranged. This, in conjunction with her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the prominent motion picture actress. People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she believed them. She suspected hopefully that they were afraid of her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the impression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag that she constantly carried, waving it wildly, beseechingly—and, alas, to little spectacular avail. She was also tremendously timely: she knew the latest songs, all the latest songs—when one of them was played on the phonograph she would rise to her feet and rock her shoulders back and forth and snap her fingers, and if there was no music she would accompany herself by humming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"—and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria—he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, passenger, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "We had the most <i>hectic</i> time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely <i>nutty</i>! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was <i>pet</i>rified, but Gloria simply <i>wouldn't</i> get off."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all <i>howled</i>, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "—your mother and I."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A pause—Muriel turned to Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a great writer, aren't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul—like Richard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Ancient Soul breathed a gasp of relief—it was out at last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then as if she had been considering it for five minutes, Gloria made a sudden announcement:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to give a party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, can I come?" cried Muriel with facetious daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A dinner. Seven people: Muriel and Rachael and I, and you, Dick, and Anthony, and that man named Noble—I liked him—and Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel and Rachael went into soft and purring ecstasies of enthusiasm. Mrs. Gilbert blinked and beamed. With an air of casualness Dick broke in with a question:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenting a faint hostility, Gloria turned to him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Joseph Bloeckman? He's the moving picture man. Vice-president of 'Films Par Excellence.' He and father do a lot of business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, will you all come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They would all come. A date was arranged within the week. Dick rose, adjusted hat, coat, and muffler, and gave out a general smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By-by," said Muriel, waving her hand gaily, "call me up some time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel blushed for her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DEPLORABLE END OF THE CHEVALIER O'KEEFE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon at the Beaux Arts—afterward they went up to his apartment and he wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine Burke, usher at Keith's, had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her, for since a lamentable affair with a débutante the preceding summer, when he had discovered that after half a dozen kisses a proposal was expected, he had been wary of girls of his own class. It was only too easy to turn a critical eye on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy—but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance on one's social level.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine, curled up at the foot of the lounge, considered him with narrow slanting eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You drink all the time, don't you?" she said suddenly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, I suppose so," replied Anthony in some surprise. "Don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nope. I go on parties sometimes—you know, about once a week, but I only take two or three drinks. You and your friends keep on drinking all the time. I should think you'd ruin your health."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was somewhat touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, aren't you sweet to worry about me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't drink so very much," he declared. "Last month I didn't touch a drop for three weeks. And I only get really tight about once a week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you have something to drink every day and you're only twenty-five. Haven't you any ambition? Think what you'll be at forty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sincerely trust that I won't live that long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She clicked her tongue with her teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!" she said as he mixed another cocktail—and then: "Are you any relation to Adam Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, he's my grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?" She was obviously thrilled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Absolutely."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's funny. My daddy used to work for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a queer old man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is he nice?" she demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, in private life he's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell us about him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why," Anthony considered "—he's all shrunken up and he's got the remains of some gray hair that always looks as though the wind were in it. He's very moral."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's done a lot of good," said Geraldine with intense gravity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rot!" scoffed Anthony. "He's a pious ass—a chickenbrain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her mind left the subject and flitted on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you live with him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't I board in a Methodist parsonage?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she made a little clicking sound to express disapproval. Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart—how completely moral she would still be after the inevitable wave came that would wash her off the sands of respectability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you hate him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder. I never liked him. You never like people who do things for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does he hate you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but I don't suppose it matters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine was persistently interested. She held her glass, untasted, between finger and thumb and regarded him with eyes in which there was a touch of awe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you mean a hypocrite?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Anthony impatiently, "maybe he's not. But he doesn't like the things that I like, and so, as far as I'm concerned, he's uninteresting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hm." Her curiosity seemed, at length, satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a funny one," she commented thoughtfully. "Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They don't—but I shouldn't blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She scorned this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll fall in love someday. Oh, you will—I know." She nodded wisely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It'd be idiotic to be overconfident. That's what ruined the Chevalier O'Keefe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who was he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A creature of my splendid mind. He's my one creation, the Chevalier."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cra-a-azy!" she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope-ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no!" objected Anthony, "oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn't play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won't bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess I can understand anything that's got any sense to it," answered Geraldine a bit testily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what about him? Did he die?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and 'reddish hair.' He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O'Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called—well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire's. It was the rule at St. Voltaire's that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier's farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then he rode out to St. Voltaire's, slew his horse at the door, and presented the carcass to the monastery cook.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At five o'clock that night he felt, for the first time, free—forever free from sex. No woman could enter the monastery; no monk could descend below the second story. So as he climbed the winding stair that led to his cell at the very top of the Tower of Chastity he paused for a moment by an open window which looked down fifty feet on to a road below. It was all so beautiful, he thought, this world that he was leaving, the golden shower of sun beating down upon the long fields, the spray of trees in the distance, the vineyards, quiet and green, freshening wide miles before him. He leaned his elbows on the window casement and gazed at the winding road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, as it happened, Thérèse, a peasant girl of sixteen from a neighboring village, was at that moment passing along this same road that ran in front of the monastery. Five minutes before, the little piece of ribbon which held up the stocking on her pretty left leg had worn through and broken. Being a girl of rare modesty she had thought to wait until she arrived home before repairing it, but it had bothered her to such an extent that she felt she could endure it no longer. So, as she passed the Tower of Chastity, she stopped and with a pretty gesture lifted her skirt—as little as possible, be it said to her credit—to adjust her garter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Up in the tower the newest arrival in the ancient monastery of St. Voltaire, as though pulled forward by a gigantic and irresistible hand, leaned from the window. Further he leaned and further until suddenly one of the stones loosened under his weight, broke from its cement with a soft powdery sound—and, first headlong, then head over heels, finally in a vast and impressive revolution tumbled the Chevalier O'Keefe, bound for the hard earth and eternal damnation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thérèse was so much upset by the occurrence that she ran all the way home and for ten years spent an hour a day in secret prayer for the soul of the monk whose neck and vows were simultaneously broken on that unfortunate Sunday afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And the Chevalier O'Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. What do you think, Geraldine?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine, lost long before, could only smile roguishly, wave her first finger at him, and repeat her bridge-all, her explain-all:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Crazy!" she said, "you cra-a-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His thin face was kindly, she thought, and his eyes quite gentle. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because, unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part about the stocking!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi she stood for a moment in the doorway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>will</i> get married," she was insisting, "you wait and see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was playing with an ancient tennis ball, and he bounced it carefully on the floor several times before he answered with a soupçon of acidity:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a little idiot, Geraldine."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled provokingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That'd be silly too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it would, would it? Well, I'll just bet you'll marry somebody inside of a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony bounced the tennis ball very hard. This was one of his handsome days, she thought; a sort of intensity had displaced the melancholy in his dark eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine," he said, at length, "in the first place I have no one I want to marry; in the second place I haven't enough money to support two people; in the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people of my type; in the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the abstract consideration of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine only narrowed her eyes knowingly, made her clicking sound, and said she must be going. It was late.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Call me up soon," she reminded him as he kissed her good-by, "you haven't for three weeks, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I will," he promised fervently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He shut the door and coming back into the room stood for a moment lost in thought with the tennis-ball still clasped in his hand. There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully—assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought with emotion—aloud, ejaculative, for he was hurt and confused.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No <i>idea</i> of getting married, by <i>God</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of a sudden he hurled the tennis ball violently across the room, where it barely missed the lamp, and, rebounding here and there for a moment, lay still upon the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SIGNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For her dinner Gloria had taken a table in the Cascades at the Biltmore, and when the men met in the hall outside a little after eight, "that person Bloeckman" was the target of six masculine eyes. He was a stoutening, ruddy Jew of about thirty-five, with an expressive face under smooth sandy hair—and, no doubt, in most business gatherings his personality would have been considered ingratiating. He sauntered up to the three younger men, who stood in a group smoking as they waited for their hostess, and introduced himself with a little too evident assurance—nevertheless it is to be doubted whether he received the intended impression of faint and ironic chill: there was no hint of understanding in his manner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You related to Adam J. Patch?" he inquired of Anthony, emitting two slender strings of smoke from nostrils overwide.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony admitted it with the ghost of a smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a fine man," pronounced Bloeckman profoundly. "He's a fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," agreed Anthony, "he certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman squinted at his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Time these girls were showing up . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony waited breathlessly; it came——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . but then," with a widening smile, "you know how women are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The three young men nodded; Bloeckman looked casually about him, his eyes resting critically on the ceiling and then passing lower. His expression combined that of a Middle Western farmer appraising his wheat crop and that of an actor wondering whether he is observed—the public manner of all good Americans. As he finished his survey he turned back quickly to the reticent trio, determined to strike to their very heart and core.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You college men? . . . Harvard, eh. I see the Princeton boys beat you fellows in hockey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Unfortunate man. He had drawn another blank. They had been three years out and heeded only the big football games. Whether, after the failure of this sally, Mr. Bloeckman would have perceived himself to be in a cynical atmosphere is problematical, for——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria arrived. Muriel arrived. Rachael arrived. After a hurried "Hello, people!" uttered by Gloria and echoed by the other two, the three swept by into the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A moment later Muriel appeared in a state of elaborate undress and <i>crept</i> toward them. She was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker up and thrower away of men, an unscrupulous and fundamentally unmoved toyer with affections. Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury at first sight—a woman with wide hips affecting a panther-like litheness! As they waited the extra three minutes for Gloria, and, by polite assumption, for Rachael, he was unable to take his eyes from her. She would turn her head away, lowering her eyelashes and biting her nether lip in an amazing exhibition of coyness. She would rest her hands on her hips and sway from side to side in tune to the music, saying:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you ever hear such perfect ragtime? I just can't make my shoulders behave when I hear that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman clapped his hands gallantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to be on the stage."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to be!" cried Muriel; "will you back me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sure will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With becoming modesty Muriel ceased her motions and turned to Maury, asking what he had "seen" this year. He interpreted this as referring to the dramatic world, and they had a gay and exhilarating exchange of titles, after this manner:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Have you seen "Peg o' My Heart"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Eagerly</i>) It's wonderful! You want to see it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Have you seen "Omar, the Tentmaker"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: No, but I hear it's wonderful. I'm very anxious to see it. Have you seen "Fair and Warmer"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Hopefully</i>) Yes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't think it's very good. It's trashy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Faintly</i>) Yes, that's true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: But I went to "Within the Law" last night and I thought it was fine. Have you seen "The Little Café"?. . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This continued until they ran out of plays. Dick, meanwhile, turned to Mr. Bloeckman, determined to extract what gold he could from this unpromising load.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hear all the new novels are sold to the moving pictures as soon as they come out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. Of course the main thing in a moving picture is a strong story."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, I suppose so."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So many novels are all full of talk and psychology. Of course those aren't as valuable to us. It's impossible to make much of that interesting on the screen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You want plots first," said Richard brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course. Plots first—" He paused, shifted his gaze. His pause spread, included the others with all the authority of a warning finger. Gloria followed by Rachael was coming out of the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Among other things it developed during dinner that Joseph Bloeckman never danced, but spent the music time watching the others with the bored tolerance of an elder among children. He was a dignified man and a proud one. Born in Munich he had begun his American career as a peanut vender with a travelling circus. At eighteen he was a side show ballyhoo; later, the manager of the side show, and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more financial ability, more imagination, and more practical ideas . . . and now he sat here and contemplated the immortal Gloria for whom young Stuart Holcome had gone from New York to Pasadena—watched her, and knew that presently she would cease dancing and come back to sit on his left hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hoped she would hurry. The oysters had been standing some minutes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile Anthony, who had been placed on Gloria's left hand, was dancing with her, always in a certain fourth of the floor. This, had there been stags, would have been a delicate tribute to the girl, meaning "Damn you, don't cut in!" It was very consciously intimate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, looking down at her, "you look mighty sweet to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She met his eyes over the horizontal half foot that separated them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you—Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In fact you're uncomfortably beautiful," he added. There was no smile this time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you're very charming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't this nice?" he laughed. "We actually approve of each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, usually?" She had caught quickly at his remark, as she always did at any unexplained allusion to herself, however faint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lowered his voice, and when he spoke there was in it no more than a wisp of badinage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does a priest approve the Pope?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—but that's probably the vaguest compliment I ever received."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I can muster a few bromides."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I wouldn't have you strain yourself. Look at Muriel! Right here next to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced over his shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a translation of the song into some foreign tongue but became eventually apparent as an attempt to fill out the metre of the song with the only words she knew—the words of the title—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"He's a rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-time picking man,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-picking, picking, pick, pick,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-pick, pick, pick."</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —and so on, into phrases still more strange and barbaric. When she caught the amused glances of Anthony and Gloria she acknowledged them only with a faint smile and a half-closing of her eyes, to indicate that the music entering into her soul had put her into an ecstatic and exceedingly seductive trance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The music ended and they returned to their table, whose solitary but dignified occupant arose and tendered each of them a smile so ingratiating that it was as if he were shaking their hands and congratulating them on a brilliant performance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blockhead never will dance! I think he has a wooden leg," remarked Gloria to the table at large. The three young men started and the gentleman referred to winced perceptibly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was the one rough spot in the course of Bloeckman's acquaintance with Gloria. She relentlessly punned on his name. First it had been "Block-house," lately, the more invidious "Blockhead." He had requested with a strong undertone of irony that she use his first name, and this she had done obediently several times—then slipping, helpless, repentant but dissolved in laughter, back into "Blockhead."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a very sad and thoughtless thing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid Mr. Bloeckman thinks we're a frivolous crowd," sighed Muriel, waving a balanced oyster in his direction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He has that air," murmured Rachael. Anthony tried to remember whether she had said anything before. He thought not. It was her initial remark. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman suddenly cleared his throat and said in a loud, distinct voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary. When a man speaks he's merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the stunned pause that followed this astounding remark, Anthony choked suddenly on an oyster and hurried his napkin to his face. Rachael and Muriel raised a mild if somewhat surprised laugh, in which Dick and Maury joined, both of them red in the face and restraining uproariousness with the most apparent difficulty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—My God!" thought Anthony. "It's a subtitle from one of his movies. The man's memorized it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria alone made no sound. She fixed Mr. Bloeckman with a glance of silent reproach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for the love of Heaven! Where on earth did you dig that up?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman looked at her uncertainly, not sure of her intention. But in a moment he recovered his poise and assumed the bland and consciously tolerant smile of an intellectual among spoiled and callow youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The soup came up from the kitchen—but simultaneously the orchestra leader came up from the bar, where he had absorbed the tone color inherent in a seidel of beer. So the soup was left to cool during the delivery of a ballad entitled "Everything's at Home Except Your Wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers. Several times Anthony wondered what Bloeckman was telling her. He was chewing a cigar back and forth in his mouth, and had expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ten o'clock found Gloria and Anthony beginning a dance. Just as they were out of ear-shot of the table she said in a low voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance over by the door. I want to go down to the drug-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Obediently Anthony guided her through the crowd in the designated direction; in the hall she left him for a moment, to reappear with a cloak over her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want some gum-drops," she said, humorously apologetic; "you can't guess what for this time. It's just that I want to bite my finger-nails, and I will if I don't get some gum-drops." She sighed, and resumed as they stepped into the empty elevator: "I've been biting 'em all day. A bit nervous, you see. Excuse the pun. It was unintentional—the words just arranged themselves. Gloria Gilbert, the female wag."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Reaching the ground floor they naïvely avoided the hotel candy counter, descended the wide front staircase, and walking through several corridors found a drug-store in the Grand Central Station. After an intense examination of the perfume counter she made her purchase. Then on some mutual unmentioned impulse they strolled, arm in arm, not in the direction from which they had come, but out into Forty-third Street.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, sound, urban, city, night, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The night was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left, and for a hushed moment the traffic sounds and the murmur of water flowing in the gutters seemed an illusive and rarefied prolongation of that music to which they had lately danced. When Anthony spoke it was with surety that his words came from something breathless and desirous that the night had conceived in their two hearts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's take a taxi and ride around a bit!" he suggested, without looking at her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, Gloria, Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, city, night, sound, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> A cab yawned at the curb. As it moved off like a boat on a labyrinthine ocean and lost itself among the inchoate night masses of the great buildings, among the now stilled, now strident, cries and clangings, Anthony put his arm around the girl, drew her over to him and kissed her damp, childish mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was silent. She turned her face up to him, pale under the wisps and patches of light that trailed in like moonshine through a foliage. Her eyes were gleaming ripples in the white lake of her face; the shadows of her hair bordered the brow with a persuasive unintimate dusk. No love was there, surely; nor the imprint of any love. Her beauty was cool as this damp breeze, as the moist softness of her own lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're such a swan in this light," he whispered after a moment. There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted in out of the dark. Anthony laughed, noiselessly and exultantly, turning his face up and away from her, half in an overpowering rush of triumph, half lest her sight of him should spoil the splendid immobility of her expression. Such a kiss—it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="urban, city, night, visibility, affect, pleasure, sound, car"><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The buildings fell away in melted shadows; this was the Park now, and after a long while the great white ghost of the Metropolitan Museum moved majestically past, echoing sonorously to the rush of the cab.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria! Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes appeared to regard him out of many thousand years: all emotion she might have felt, all words she might have uttered, would have seemed inadequate beside the adequacy of her silence, ineloquent against the eloquence of her beauty—and of her body, close to him, slender and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell him to turn around," she murmured, "and drive pretty fast going back. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Up in the supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane looked up with roguishness extraordinary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, where have <i>you</i> been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To call up mother," answered Gloria coolly. "I promised her I would. Did we miss a dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then followed an incident that though slight in itself Anthony had cause to reflect on many years afterward. Joseph Bloeckman, leaning well back in his chair, fixed him with a peculiar glance, in which several emotions were curiously and inextricably mingled. He did not greet Gloria except by rising, and he immediately resumed a conversation with Richard Caramel about the influence of literature on the moving pictures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The stark and unexpected miracle of a night fades out with the lingering death of the last stars and the premature birth of the first newsboys. The flame retreats to some remote and platonic fire; the white heat has gone from the iron and the glow from the coal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Along the shelves of Anthony's library, filling a wall amply, crept a chill and insolent pencil of sunlight touching with frigid disapproval Thérèse of France and Ann the Superwoman, Jenny of the Orient Ballet and Zuleika the Conjurer—and Hoosier Cora—then down a shelf and into the years, resting pityingly on the over-invoked shades of Helen, Thaïs, Salome, and Cleopatra.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, shaved and bathed, sat in his most deeply cushioned chair and watched it until at the steady rising of the sun it lay glinting for a moment on the silk ends of the rug—and went out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was ten o'clock. The Sunday Times, scattered about his feet, proclaimed by rotogravure and editorial, by social revelation and sporting sheet, that the world had been tremendously engrossed during the past week in the business of moving toward some splendid if somewhat indeterminate goal. For his part Anthony had been once to his grandfather's, twice to his broker's, and three times to his tailor's—and in the last hour of the week's last day he had kissed a very beautiful and charming girl.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he reached home his imagination had been teeming with high-pitched, unfamiliar dreams. There was suddenly no question on his mind, no eternal problem for a solution and re-solution. He had experienced an emotion that was neither mental nor physical, nor merely a mixture of the two, and the love of life absorbed him for the present to the exclusion of all else. He was content to let the experiment remain isolated and unique. Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere—of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and débutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many <i>females</i>, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So far as he could see, she had neither submitted to any will of his nor caressed his vanity—except as her pleasure in his company was a caress. Indeed he had no reason for thinking she had given him aught that she did not give to others. This was as it should be. The idea of an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed on would proclaim themselves unharmed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having decided this he went to the phone and called up the Plaza Hotel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was out. Her mother knew neither where she had gone nor when she would return.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was somehow at this point that the first wrongness in the case asserted itself. There was an element of callousness, almost of indecency, in Gloria's absence from home. He suspected that by going out she had intrigued him into a disadvantage. Returning she would find his name, and smile. Most discreetly! He should have waited a few hours in order to drive home the utter inconsequence with which he regarded the incident. What an asinine blunder! She would think he considered himself particularly favored. She would think he was reacting with the most inept intimacy to a quite trivial episode.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered that during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded that man. Him—Anthony Patch! Horror!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and <i>snap!</i>—the poor plate could but develop, confined like all things to its nature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Anthony, lying upon his couch and staring at the orange lamp, passed his thin fingers incessantly through his dark hair and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and Jewels and Jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her cheeks in faint pastel, milky lace to rest in pale disarray against her neck—damask was used but to cover priests and divans in these days, and cloth of Samarand was remembered only by the romantic poets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She would go elsewhere after a while, tilting her head a hundred ways under a hundred bonnets, seeking in vain for mock cherries to match her lips or plumes that were graceful as her own supple body.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Noon would come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and comic women.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, road, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter. . . . Then—then night would come drifting down and perhaps another damp. The signs would spill their light into the street. Who knew? No wiser than he, they haply sought to recapture that picture done in cream and shadow they had seen on the hushed Avenue the night before. And they might, ah, they might! A thousand taxis would yawn at a thousand corners, and only to him was that kiss forever lost and done. In a thousand guises Thaïs would hail a cab and turn up her face for loving. And her pallor would be virginal and lovely, and her kiss chaste as the moon. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He sprang excitedly to his feet. How inappropriate that she should be out! He had realized at last what he wanted—to kiss her again, to find rest in her great immobility. She was the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony dressed and went out, as he should have done long before, and down to Richard Caramel's room to hear the last revision of the last chapter of "The Demon Lover." He did not call Gloria again until six. He did not find her in until eight and—oh, climax of anticlimaxes!—she could give him no engagement until Tuesday afternoon. A broken piece of gutta-percha clattered to the floor as he banged up the phone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BLACK MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tuesday was freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if she remembered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I called you four times on Sunday," he told her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was surprise in her voice and interest in her expression. Silently he cursed himself for having told her. He might have known her pride did not deal in such petty triumphs. Even then he had not guessed at the truth—that never having had to worry about men she had seldom used the wary subterfuges, the playings out and haulings in, that were the stock in trade of her sisterhood. When she liked a man, that was trick enough. Did she think she loved him—there was an ultimate and fatal thrust. Her charm endlessly preserved itself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was anxious to see you," he said simply. "I want to talk to you—I mean really talk, somewhere where we can be alone. May I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He swallowed a sudden lump of panic. He felt that she knew what he wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean, not at a tea table," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, all right, but not to-day. I want to get some exercise. Let's walk!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was bitter and raw. All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue. It was almost impossible to talk, and discomfort made him distracted, so much so that he turned at Sixty-first Street to find that she was no longer beside him. He looked around. She was forty feet in the rear standing motionless, her face half hidden in her fur coat collar, moved either by anger or laughter—he could not determine which. He started back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let me interrupt your walk!" she called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm mighty sorry," he answered in confusion. "Did I go too fast?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm cold," she announced. "I want to go home. And you walk too fast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Side by side they started for the Plaza. He wished he could see her face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Men don't usually get so absorbed in themselves when they're with me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very interesting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It <i>is</i> rather too cold to walk," he said, briskly, to hide his annoyance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer and he wondered if she would dismiss him at the hotel entrance. She walked in without speaking, however, and to the elevator, throwing him a single remark as she entered it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd better come up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hesitated for the fraction of a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better call some other time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just as you say." Her words were murmured as an aside. The main concern of life was the adjusting of some stray wisps of hair in the elevator mirror. Her cheeks were brilliant, her eyes sparkled—she had never seemed so lovely, so exquisitely to be desired.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Despising himself, he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong—in his own eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet significant encounter he had been completely defeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> However, by the time she reappeared in the sitting-room he had explained himself to himself with sophistic satisfaction. After all he had done the strongest thing, he thought. He had wanted to come up, he had come. Yet what happened later on that afternoon must be traced to the indignity he had experienced in the elevator; the girl was worrying him intolerably, so much so that when she came out he involuntarily drifted into criticism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A business friend of father's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Odd sort of fellow!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He doesn't like you either," she said with a sudden smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm flattered at his notice. He evidently considers me a—" He broke off with "Is he in love with you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The deuce you don't," he insisted. "Of course he is. I remember the look he gave me when we got back to the table. He'd probably have had me quietly assaulted by a delegation of movie supes if you hadn't invented that phone call."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He didn't mind. I told him afterward what really happened."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You told him!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He asked me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like that very well," he remonstrated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you don't?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business is it of his?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None. That's why I told him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony in a turmoil bit savagely at his mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why should I lie?" she demanded directly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I do. It happened to interest him to know that I kissed you, and I happened to be in a good humor, so I satisfied his curiosity by a simple and precise 'yes.' Being rather a sensible man, after his fashion, he dropped the subject."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except to say that he hated me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it worries you? Well, if you must probe this stupendous matter to its depths he didn't say he hated you. I simply know he does."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It doesn't wor——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, let's drop it!" she cried spiritedly. "It's a most uninteresting matter to me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a tremendous effort Anthony made his acquiescence a twist of subject, and they drifted into an ancient question-and-answer game concerned with each other's pasts, gradually warming as they discovered the age-old, immemorial resemblances in tastes and ideas. They said things that were more revealing than they intended—but each pretended to accept the other at face, or rather word, value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third—before long the best lines cancel out—and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping that such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," Anthony was saying earnestly, "that the position of a man with neither necessity nor ambition is unfortunate. Heaven knows it'd be pathetic of me to be sorry for myself—yet, sometimes I envy Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her silence was encouragement. It was as near as she ever came to an intentional lure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—And there used to be dignified occupations for a gentleman who had leisure, things a little more constructive than filling up the landscape with smoke or juggling some one else's money. There's science, of course: sometimes I wish I'd taken a good foundation, say at Boston Tech. But now, by golly, I'd have to sit down for two years and struggle through the fundamentals of physics and chemistry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've told you I don't know what anybody ought to do," she said ungraciously, and at her indifference his rancor was born again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Aren't you interested in anything except yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glared; his growing enjoyment in the conversation was ripped to shreds. She had been irritable and vindictive all day, and it seemed to him that for this moment he hated her hard selfishness. He stared morosely at the fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him—as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He moved closer and taking her hand pulled her ever so gently toward him until she half lay against his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he kissed her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he whispered very softly. Again she had made a magic, subtle and pervading as a spilt perfume, irresistible and sweet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward, neither the next day nor after many years, could he remember the important things of that afternoon. Had she been moved? In his arms had she spoken a little—or at all? What measure of enjoyment had she taken in his kisses? And had she at any time lost herself ever so little?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, for him there was no doubt. He had risen and paced the floor in sheer ecstasy. That such a girl should be; should poise curled in a corner of the couch like a swallow newly landed from a clean swift flight, watching him with inscrutable eyes. He would stop his pacing and, half shy each time at first, drop his arm around her and find her kiss.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn't want to fall in love. He wasn't coming to see her any more—already she had haunted too many of his ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow—only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He <i>would</i> come back—eternally. He should have known!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn't do—and wouldn't last." As he spoke there was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in ourselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her. He remembered it in this form—perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and polished it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As always when he was with her she seemed to grow gradually older until at the end ruminations too deep for words would be wintering in her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour passed, and the fire leaped up in little ecstasies as though its fading life was sweet. It was five now, and the clock over the mantel became articulate in sound. Then as if a brutish sensibility in him was reminded by those thin, tinny beats that the petals were falling from the flowered afternoon, Anthony pulled her quickly to her feet and held her helpless, without breath, in a kiss that was neither a game nor a tribute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her arms fell to her side. In an instant she was free.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't!" she said quietly. "I don't want that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She sat down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her. A frown had gathered between her eyes. Anthony sank down beside her and closed his hand over hers. It was lifeless and unresponsive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!" He made a motion as if to put his arm about her but she drew away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want that," she repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry," he said, a little impatiently. "I—I didn't know you made such fine distinctions."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She did not answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't you kiss me, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to." It seemed to him she had not moved for hours.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A sudden change, isn't it?" Annoyance was growing in his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She appeared uninterested. It was almost as though she were looking at some one else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No reply. He rose and regarded her angrily, uncertainly. Again he sat down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, Gloria, won't you kiss me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No." Her lips, parting for the word, had just faintly stirred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again he got to his feet, this time with less decision, less confidence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right—I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was aware of a certain irremediable lack of originality in his remarks. Indeed he felt that the whole atmosphere had grown oppressive. He wished she would speak, rail at him, cry out upon him, anything but this pervasive and chilling silence. He cursed himself for a weak fool; his clearest desire was to move her, to hurt her, to see her wince. Helplessly, involuntarily, he erred again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're tired of kissing me I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw her lips curl slightly and his last dignity left him. She spoke, at length:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I believe you've made that remark several times before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked about him immediately, saw his hat and coat on a chair—blundered into them, during an intolerable moment. Looking again at the couch he perceived that she had not turned, not even moved. With a shaken, immediately regretted "good-by" he went quickly but without dignity from the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For over a moment Gloria made no sound. Her lips were still curled; her glance was straight, proud, remote. Then her eyes blurred a little, and she murmured three words half aloud to the death-bound fire:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by, you ass!" she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PANIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man had had the hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden of his despair. Instead of seizing the girl and holding her by sheer strength until she became passive to his desire, instead of beating down her will by the force of his own, he had walked, defeated and powerless, from her door, with the corners of his mouth drooping and what force there might have been in his grief and rage hidden behind the manner of a whipped schoolboy. At one minute she had liked him tremendously—ah, she had nearly loved him. In the next he had become a thing of indifference to her, an insolent and efficiently humiliated man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had no great self-reproach—some, of course, but there were other things dominant in him now, far more urgent. He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life. By her three minutes of utter unwavering indifference the girl had lifted herself from a high but somehow casual position in his mind, to be instead his complete preoccupation. However much his wild thoughts varied between a passionate desire for her kisses and an equally passionate craving to hurt and mar her, the residue of his mind craved in finer fashion to possess the triumphant soul that had shone through those three minutes. She was beautiful—but especially she was without mercy. He must own that strength that could send him away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At present no such analysis was possible to Anthony. His clarity of mind, all those endless resources which he thought his irony had brought him were swept aside. Not only for that night but for the days and weeks that followed his books were to be but furniture and his friends only people who lived and walked in a nebulous outer world from which he was trying to escape—that world was cold and full of bleak wind, and for a little while he had seen into a warm house where fires shone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> About midnight he began to realize that he was hungry. He went down into Fifty-second Street, where it was so cold that he could scarcely see; the moisture froze on his lashes and in the corners of his lips. Everywhere dreariness had come down from the north, settling upon the thin and cheerless street, where black bundled figures blacker still against the night, moved stumbling along the sidewalk through the shrieking wind, sliding their feet cautiously ahead as though they were on skis. Anthony turned over toward Sixth Avenue, so absorbed in his thoughts as not to notice that several passers-by had stared at him. His overcoat was wide open, and the wind was biting in, hard and full of merciless death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a while a waitress spoke to him, a fat waitress with black-rimmed eye-glasses from which dangled a long black cord.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Order, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up resentfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wanna order or doncha?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course," he protested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I ast you three times. This ain't no rest-room."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was after two. He was down around Thirtieth Street somewhere, and after a moment he found and translated the<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>S'DLIHC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> in a white semicircle of letters upon the glass front. The place was inhabited sparsely by three or four bleak and half-frozen night-hawks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me some bacon and eggs and coffee, please."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The waitress bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, hurried away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> God! Gloria's kisses had been such flowers. He remembered as though it had been years ago the low freshness of her voice, the beautiful lines of her body shining through her clothes, her face lily-colored under the lamps of the street—under the lamps.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Misery struck at him again, piling a sort of terror upon the ache and yearning. He had lost her. It was true—no denying it, no softening it. But a new idea had seared his sky—what of Bloeckman! What would happen now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be worn—a bright flower in his button-hole, safe and secure from the things she feared. He felt that she had been playing with the idea of marrying Bloeckman, and it was well possible that this disappointment in Anthony might throw her on sudden impulse into Bloeckman's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idea drove him childishly frantic. He wanted to kill Bloeckman and make him suffer for his hideous presumption. He was saying this over and over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate and fright in his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, behind this obscene jealousy, Anthony was in love at last, profoundly and truly in love, as the word goes between man and woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His coffee appeared at his elbow and gave off for a certain time a gradually diminishing wisp of steam. The night manager, seated at his desk, glanced at the motionless figure alone at the last table, and then with a sigh moved down upon him just as the hour hand crossed the figure three on the big clock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WISDOM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew to his self-respect.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own from out the effortless past.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Memory is short," he thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe." Oh, memory is very short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly be. Wasn't it possible, the more possible because she had never loved him, that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men. He winced. The implication struck out at him—other men. Two months—God! Better three weeks, two weeks——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought this the second evening after the catastrophe when he was undressing, and at this point he threw himself down on the bed and lay there, trembling very slightly and looking at the top of the canopy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two weeks—that was worse than no time at all. In two weeks he would approach her much as he would have to now, without personality or confidence—remaining still the man who had gone too far and then for a period that in time was but a moment but in fact an eternity, whined. No, two weeks was too short a time. Whatever poignancy there had been for her in that afternoon must have time to dull. He must give her a period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly, with a true perspective that would remember his pleasantness as well as his humiliation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off, finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then—silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give the desired impression when they met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE INTERVAL</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed completely, the six weeks held many abominable days. He dreaded the sight of Dick and Maury, imagining wildly that they knew all—but when the three met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre of attention; "The Demon Lover" had been accepted for immediate publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He no longer craved the warmth and security of Maury's society which had cheered him no further back than November. Only Gloria could give that now and no one else ever again. So Dick's success rejoiced him only casually and worried him not a little. It meant that the world was going ahead—writing and reading and publishing—and living. And he wanted the world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks—while Gloria forgot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO ENCOUNTERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine's company. He took her once to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him, not as Gloria had, but quieting those erotic sensibilities in him that worried over Gloria. It didn't matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss—to be enjoyed to the utmost for its short moment. To Geraldine things belonged in definite pigeonholes: a kiss was one thing, anything further was quite another; a kiss was all right; the other things were "bad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first was—he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding a single sentence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash—the effect being given of a tug bringing in an ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he muttered inanely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young—with a man he had never seen before!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that the barber's chair was vacated and he read down the newspaper column three times in succession.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink, so it was inevitable that they should converse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Mr. Patch," said Bloeckman amiably enough.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the fluctuations of the mercury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you come in here much?" inquired Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, very seldom." He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until lately, been his favorite.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nice bar. One of the best bars in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He was in evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll be hurrying on. I'm going to dinner with Miss Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced himself as his vis-à-vis's prospective murderer he could not have struck a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous effort he mustered a rigid—oh, so rigid—smile, and said a conventional good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with grief and fear and abominable imaginings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WEAKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in his apartment trying to read "L'Éducation Sentimental," and something in the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free, they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy's. The Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs. Gilbert's voice, soft as maple syrup running into a glass container, had for him a quality of horror in its single "Hello-o-ah?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Miss Gloria's not feeling well. She's lying down, asleep. Who shall I say called?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody!" he shouted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SERENADE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first thing he said to her was: "Why, you've bobbed your hair!" and she answered: "Yes, isn't it gorgeous?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all sunshine outdoors," he said gravely. "Don't you want to take a walk?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt so bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire's chaotic message to whosoever would listen: something about "I worked and I saved and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, road, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" she cried, "I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there's ever been any winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, though!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All women <i>are</i> birds," he ventured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What kind am I?"—quick and eager.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls—and robin girls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I—a buzzard?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed and shook her head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick's a fox terrier, a trick fox terrier," she continued.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Maury's a cat." Simultaneously it occurred to him how like Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a discreet silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever make long engagements?" he pleaded, "even if it's a week ahead, I think it'd be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and afternoon both."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It would be, wouldn't it?" She thought for a moment. "Let's do it next Sunday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. I'll map out a programme that'll take up every minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They would sit on the lounge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore—for he was young now as he would never be again, and more triumphant than death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Six o'clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won a hundred-yard dash!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, "I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that he loved her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He phoned next morning—no hesitation now, no uncertainty—instead a delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all I called you up to say—dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm glad you did."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I could see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You will, to-morrow night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a long time, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes—" Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Couldn't I come to-night?" He dared anything in the glory and revelation of that almost whispered "yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have a date."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I might—I might be able to break it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"—a sheer cry, a rhapsody. "Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another pause and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—I'm glad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony's face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night! His dark eyes were gleaming—around his mouth were lines it was a kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink, starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very still, and looking at him wide-eyed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one triumphant and enduring embrace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ==<i>BOOK TWO</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (129-190)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE RADIANT HOUR</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> AFTER a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in "practical discussions," as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not as much as I do you," the critic of belles-lettres would insist. "If you really loved me you'd want every one to know it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do," she protested; "I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're twins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ecstatic thought!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mother says"—she hesitated uncertainly—"mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and—and in love before they're born."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bilphism gained its easiest convert. . . . After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why did you laugh?" she cried, "you've done that twice before. There's nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don't mind playing the fool, and I don't mind having you do it, but I can't stand it when we're together."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't say you're sorry! If you can't think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a pause. Anthony was depressed. . . . At length Gloria murmured:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I was mean."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You weren't. I was the one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Peace was restored—the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression—yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known it—for three weeks Gloria had seen no one else—and she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughter's attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warm——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> —Yet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabs—quaint device—and the staid bill of fares on which they scribbled "you know I do," pushing it over for the other to see.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, Gloria," he would cry, "please let me explain!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't explain. Kiss me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think that's right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I don't like this kiss-and-forget."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't want to argue. I think it's wonderful that we <i>can</i> kiss and forget, and when we can't it'll be time to argue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that Anthony arose and punched himself into his overcoat—for a moment it appeared that the scene of the preceding February was to be repeated, but knowing how deeply she was moved he retained his dignity with his pride, and in a moment Gloria was sobbing in his arms, her lovely face miserable as a frightened little girl's.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile they kept unfolding to each other, unwillingly, by curious reactions and evasions, by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to no avail. She possessed him now—nor did she desire the dead years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony," she would say, "always when I'm mean to you I'm sorry afterward. I'd give my right hand to save you one little moment's pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely—taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfort—of these she never complained until they were over—or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why do you like Muriel?" he demanded one day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't—very much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why do you go with her?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just for some one to go with. They're no exertion, those girls. They sort of believe everything I tell 'em—but I rather like Rachael. I think she's cute—and so clean and slick, don't you? I used to have other friends—in Kansas City and at school—casual, all of them, girls who just flitted into my range and out of it for no more reason than that boys took us places together. They didn't interest me after environment stopped throwing us together. Now they're mostly married. What does it matter—they were all just people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You like men better, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, much better. I've got a man's mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later she told him about the beginnings of her friendship with Bloeckman. One day in Delmonico's, Gloria and Rachael had come upon Bloeckman and Mr. Gilbert having luncheon and curiosity had impelled her to make it a party of four. She had liked him—rather. He was a relief from younger men, satisfied as he was with so little. He humored her and he laughed, whether he understood her or not. She met him several times, despite the open disapproval of her parents, and within a month he had asked her to marry him, tendering her everything from a villa in Italy to a brilliant career on the screen. She had laughed in his face—and he had laughed too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But he had not given up. To the time of Anthony's arrival in the arena he had been making steady progress. She treated him rather well—except that she had called him always by an invidious nickname—perceiving, meanwhile, that he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The night before the engagement was announced she told Bloeckman. It was a heavy blow. She did not enlighten Anthony as to the details, but she implied that he had not hesitated to argue with her. Anthony gathered that the interview had terminated on a stormy note, with Gloria very cool and unmoved lying in her corner of the sofa and Joseph Bloeckman of "Films Par Excellence" pacing the carpet with eyes narrowed and head bowed. Gloria had been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to show it. In a final burst of kindness she had tried to make him hate her, there at the last. But Anthony, understanding that Gloria's indifference was her strongest appeal, judged how futile this must have been. He wondered, often but quite casually, about Bloeckman—finally he forgot him entirely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>HEYDAY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, sunshine, navigation, river, road, metaphor, traffic, city, urban, sound, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon they found front seats on the sunny roof of a bus and rode for hours from the fading Square up along the sullied river, and then, as the stray beams fled the westward streets, sailed down the turgid Avenue, darkening with ominous bees from the department stores. The traffic was clotted and gripped in a patternless jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the crowd as they waited for the moan of the traffic whistle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't it good!" cried Gloria. "Look!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="animal, driver, traffic"><br /> <poem><br /> A miller's wagon, stark white with flour, driven by a powdery clown, passed in front of them behind a white horse and his black team-mate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a pity!" she complained; "they'd look so beautiful in the dusk, if only both horses were white. I'm mighty happy just this minute, in this city."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony shook his head in disagreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think the city's a mountebank. Always struggling to approach the tremendous and impressive urbanity ascribed to it. Trying to be romantically metropolitan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't. I think it is impressive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Momentarily. But it's really a transparent, artificial sort of spectacle. It's got its press-agented stars and its flimsy, unenduring stage settings and, I'll admit, the greatest army of supers ever assembled—" He paused, laughed shortly, and added: "Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, traffic, law, pedestrian, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll bet policemen think people are fools," said Gloria thoughtfully, as she watched a large but cowardly lady being helped across the street. "He always sees them frightened and inefficient and old—they are," she added. And then: "We'd better get off. I told mother I'd have an early supper and go to bed. She says I look tired, damn it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish we were married," he muttered soberly; "there'll be no good night then and we can do just as we want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't it be good! I think we ought to travel a lot. I want to go to the Mediterranean and Italy. And I'd like to go on the stage some time—say for about a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. I'll write a play for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't that be good! And I'll act in it. And then some time when we have more money"—old Adam's death was always thus tactfully alluded to—"we'll build a magnificent estate, won't we?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, with private swimming pools."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens of them. And private rivers. Oh, I wish it were now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Odd coincidence—he had just been wishing that very thing. They plunged like divers into the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic to each other . . . both were walking alone in a dispassionate garden with a ghost found in a dream.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them look back and see that the loves of other summers long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their years. Always the most poignant moments were when some artificial barrier kept them apart: in the theatre their hands would steal together, join, give and return gentle pressures through the long dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes—not knowing that they were but following in the footsteps of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment. And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen days now—fifteen—fourteen——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE DISGRESSIONS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Just before the engagement was announced Anthony had gone up to Tarrytown to see his grandfather, who, a little more wizened and grizzly as time played its ultimate chuckling tricks, greeted the news with profound cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you're going to get married, are you?" He said this with such a dubious mildness and shook his head up and down so many times that Anthony was not a little depressed. While he was unaware of his grandfather's intentions he presumed that a large part of the money would come to him. A good deal would go in charities, of course; a good deal to carry on the business of reform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to work?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—" temporized Anthony, somewhat disconcerted. "I <i>am</i> working. You know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, I mean work," said Adam Patch dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not quite sure yet what I'll do. I'm not exactly a beggar, grampa," he asserted with some spirit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man considered this with eyes half closed. Then almost apologetically he asked:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much do you save a year?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing so far——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so after just managing to get along on your money you've decided that by some miracle two of you can get along on it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has some money of her own. Enough to buy clothes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How much?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without considering this question impertinent, Anthony answered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About a hundred a month."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's altogether about seventy-five hundred a year." Then he added softly: "It ought to be plenty. If you have any sense it ought to be plenty. But the question is whether you have any or not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it is." It was shameful to be compelled to endure this pious browbeating from the old man, and his next words were stiffened with vanity. "I can manage very well. You seem convinced that I'm utterly worthless. At any rate I came up here simply to tell you that I'm getting married in June. Good-by, sir." With this he turned away and headed for the door, unaware that in that instant his grandfather, for the first time, rather liked him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait!" called Adam Patch, "I want to talk to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony faced about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sit down. Stay all night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Anthony resumed his seat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to see Gloria to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's her name?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "New York girl? Some one you know?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's from the Middle West."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business her father in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a celluloid corporation or trust or something. They're from Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You going to be married out there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, no, sir. We thought we'd be married in New York—rather quietly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Like to have the wedding out here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated. The suggestion made no appeal to him, but it was certainly the part of wisdom to give the old man, if possible, a proprietary interest in his married life. In addition Anthony was a little touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very kind of you, grampa, but wouldn't it be a lot of trouble?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everything's a lot of trouble. Your father was married here—but in the old house."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—I thought he was married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch considered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. He <i>was</i> married in Boston."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony felt a moment's embarrassment at having made the correction, and he covered it up with words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll speak to Gloria about it. Personally I'd like to, but of course it's up to the Gilberts, you see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His grandfather drew a long sigh, half closed his eyes, and sank back in his chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In a hurry?" he asked in a different tone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not especially."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder," began Adam Patch, looking out with a mild, kindly glance at the lilac bushes that rustled against the windows, "I wonder if you ever think about the after-life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—sometimes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think a great deal about the after-life." His eyes were dim but his voice was confident and clear. "I was sitting here to-day thinking about what's lying in wait for us, and somehow I began to remember an afternoon nearly sixty-five years ago, when I was playing with my little sister Annie, down where that summer-house is now." He pointed out into the long flower-garden, his eyes trembling of tears, his voice shaking.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I began thinking—and it seemed to me that <i>you</i> ought to think a little more about the after-life. You ought to be—steadier"—he paused and seemed to grope about for the right word—"more industrious—why——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then his expression altered, his entire personality seemed to snap together like a trap, and when he continued the softness had gone from his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—Why, when I was just two years older than you," he rasped with a cunning chuckle, "I sent three members of the firm of Wrenn and Hunt to the poorhouse."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started with embarrassment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, good-by," added his grandfather suddenly, "you'll miss your train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony left the house unusually elated, and strangely sorry for the old man; not because his wealth could buy him "neither youth nor digestion" but because he had asked Anthony to be married there, and because he had forgotten something about his son's wedding that he should have remembered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel, who was one of the ushers, caused Anthony and Gloria much distress in the last few weeks by continually stealing the rays of their spot-light. "The Demon Lover" had been published in April, and it interrupted the love affair as it may be said to have interrupted everything its author came in contact with. It was a highly original, rather overwritten piece of sustained description concerned with a Don Juan of the New York slums. As Maury and Anthony had said before, as the more hospitable critics were saying then, there was no writer in America with such power to describe the atavistic and unsubtle reactions of that section of society.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The book hesitated and then suddenly "went." Editions, small at first, then larger, crowded each other week by week. A spokesman of the Salvation Army denounced it as a cynical misrepresentation of all the uplift taking place in the underworld. Clever press-agenting spread the unfounded rumor that "Gypsy" Smith was beginning a libel suit because one of the principal characters was a burlesque of himself. It was barred from the public library of Burlington, Iowa, and a Mid-Western columnist announced by innuendo that Richard Caramel was in a sanitarium with delirium tremens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The author, indeed, spent his days in a state of pleasant madness. The book was in his conversation three-fourths of the time—he wanted to know if one had heard "the latest"; he would go into a store and in a loud voice order books to be charged to him, in order to catch a chance morsel of recognition from clerk or customer. He knew to a town in what sections of the country it was selling best; he knew exactly what he cleared on each edition, and when he met any one who had not read it, or, as it happened only too often, had not heard of it, he succumbed to moody depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So it was natural for Anthony and Gloria to decide, in their jealousy, that he was so swollen with conceit as to be a bore. To Dick's great annoyance Gloria publicly boasted that she had never read "The Demon Lover," and didn't intend to until every one stopped talking about it. As a matter of fact, she had no time to read now, for the presents were pouring in—first a scattering, then an avalanche, varying from the bric-à-brac of forgotten family friends to the photographs of forgotten poor relations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gave them an elaborate "drinking set," which included silver goblets, cocktail shaker, and bottle-openers. The extortion from Dick was more conventional—a tea set from Tiffany's. From Joseph Bloeckman came a simple and exquisite travelling clock, with his card. There was even a cigarette-holder from Bounds; this touched Anthony and made him want to weep—indeed, any emotion short of hysteria seemed natural in the half-dozen people who were swept up by this tremendous sacrifice to convention. The room set aside in the Plaza bulged with offerings sent by Harvard friends and by associates of his grandfather, with remembrances of Gloria's Farmover days, and with rather pathetic trophies from her former beaux, which last arrived with esoteric, melancholy messages, written on cards tucked carefully inside, beginning "I little thought when—" or "I'm sure I wish you all the happiness—" or even "When you get this I shall be on my way to——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The most munificent gift was simultaneously the most disappointing. It was a concession of Adam Patch's—a check for five thousand dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To most of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in her unsmiling face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look, Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Darn nice, isn't it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No answer until an hour later when she would give him a careful account of her precise reaction to the gift, whether it would have been improved by being smaller or larger, whether she was surprised at getting it, and, if so, just how much surprised.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert arranged and rearranged a hypothetical house, distributing the gifts among the different rooms, tabulating articles as "second-best clock" or "silver to use <i>every</i> day," and embarrassing Anthony and Gloria by semi-facetious references to a room she called the nursery. She was pleased by old Adam's gift and thereafter had it that he was a very ancient soul, "as much as anything else." As Adam Patch never quite decided whether she referred to the advancing senility of his mind or to some private and psychic schema of her own, it cannot be said to have pleased him. Indeed he always spoke of her to Anthony as "that old woman, the mother," as though she were a character in a comedy he had seen staged many times before. Concerning Gloria he was unable to make up his mind. She attracted him but, as she herself told Anthony, he had decided that she was frivolous and was afraid to approve of her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Five days!—A dancing platform was being erected on the lawn at Tarrytown. Four days!—A special train was chartered to convey the guests to and from New York. Three days!——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE DIARY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> She was dressed in blue silk pajamas and standing by her bed with her hand on the light to put the room in darkness, when she changed her mind and opening a table drawer brought out a little black book—a "Line-a-day" diary. This she had kept for seven years. Many of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial "I am going to keep a diary for my children." Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time—in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fashionable at Yale—she had been flattered because "Touch down" Michaud had "rushed" her all evening. She sighed, remembering the grown-up satin dress she had been so proud of and the orchestra playing "Yama-yama, My Yama Man" and "Jungle-Town." So long ago!—the names: Eltynge Reardon, Jim Parsons, "Curly" McGregor, Kenneth Cowan, "Fish-eye" Fry (whom she had liked for being so ugly), Carter Kirby—he had sent her a present; so had Tudor Baird;—Marty Reffer, the first man she had been in love with for more than a day, and Stuart Holcome, who had run away with her in his automobile and tried to make her marry him by force. And Larry Fenwick, whom she had always admired because he had told her one night that if she wouldn't kiss him she could get out of his car and walk home. What a list!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And, after all, an obsolete list. She was in love now, set for the eternal romance that was to be the synthesis of all romance, yet sad for these men and these moonlights and for the "thrills" she had had—and the kisses. The past—her past, oh, what a joy! She had been exuberantly happy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Turning over the pages her eyes rested idly on the scattered entries of the past four months. She read the last few carefully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, tree, moonlight"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 1st</i>.—I know Bill Carstairs hates me because I was so disagreeable, but I hate to be sentimentalized over sometimes. We drove out to the Rockyear Country Club and the most wonderful moon kept shining through the trees. My silver dress is getting tarnished. Funny how one forgets the other nights at Rockyear—with Kenneth Cowan when I loved him so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 3rd</i>.—After two hours of Schroeder who, they inform me, has millions, I've decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men. There's nothing so often overdone and from to-day I swear to be amused. We talked about 'love'—how banal! With how many men have I talked about love?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 11th</i>.—Patch actually called up to-day! and when he forswore me about a month ago he fairly raged out the door. I'm gradually losing faith in any man being susceptible to fatal injuries.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 20th</i>.—Spent the day with Anthony. Maybe I'll marry him some time. I kind of like his ideas—he stimulates all the originality in me. Blockhead came around about ten in his new car and took me out Riverside Drive. I liked him to-night: he's so considerate. He knew I didn't want to talk so he was quiet all during the ride.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 21st</i>.—Woke up thinking of Anthony and sure enough he called and sounded sweet on the phone—so I broke a date for him. To-day I feel I'd break anything for him, including the ten commandments and my neck. He's coming at eight and I shall wear pink and look very fresh and starched——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She paused here, remembering that after he had gone that night she had undressed with the shivering April air streaming in the windows. Yet it seemed she had not felt the cold, warmed by the profound banalities burning in her heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The next entry occurred a few days later:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>April 24th</i>.—I want to marry Anthony, because husbands are so often 'husbands' and I must marry a lover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There are four general types of husbands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (1) The husband who always wants to stay in in the evening, has no vices and works for a salary. Totally undesirable!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (2) The atavistic master whose mistress one is, to wait on his pleasure. This sort always considers every pretty woman 'shallow,' a sort of peacock with arrested development.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (3) Next comes the worshipper, the idolater of his wife and all that is his, to the utter oblivion of everything else. This sort demands an emotional actress for a wife. God! it must be an exertion to be thought righteous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (4) And Anthony—a temporarily passionate lover with wisdom enough to realize when it has flown and that it must fly. And I want to get married to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What grubworms women are to crawl on their bellies through colorless marriages! Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting—it's going to be the performance, the live, lovely, glamourous performance, and the world shall be the scenery. I refuse to dedicate my life to posterity. Surely one owes as much to the current generation as to one's unwanted children. What a fate—to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers. . . . Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Such children, however, poor dear babies, have little in common with the wedded state.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 7th</i>.—Moral question: Was it wrong to make Bloeckman love me? Because I did really make him. He was almost sweetly sad to-night. How opportune it was that my throat is swollen plunk together and tears were easy to muster. But he's just the past—buried already in my plentiful lavender.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>June 8th</i>.—And to-day I've promised not to chew my mouth. Well, I won't, I suppose—but if he'd only asked me not to eat!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blowing bubbles—that's what we're doing, Anthony and me. And we blew such beautiful ones to-day, and they'll explode and then we'll blow more and more, I guess—bubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water is used up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the June 8th's of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girl—it was the name, Bob Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it was—and, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember. Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a moment she found a pencil and holding it unsteadily drew three parallel lines beneath the last entry. Then she printed FINIS in large capitals, put the book back in the drawer, and crept into bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BREATH OF THE CAVE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment after the bridal dinner, Anthony snapped out his lights and, feeling impersonal and fragile as a piece of china waiting on a serving table, got into bed. It was a warm night—a sheet was enough for comfort—and through his wide-open windows came sound, evanescent and summery, alive with remote anticipation. He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colorful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust. And there was something beyond that; he knew now. There was the union of his soul with Gloria's, whose radiant fire and freshness was the living material of which the dead beauty of books was made.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving sound—something the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness—and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that a new note separated itself jarringly from the soft crying of the night. It was a noise from an areaway within a hundred feet from his rear window, the noise of a woman's laughter. It began low, incessant and whining—some servant-maid with her fellow, he thought—and then it grew in volume and became hysterical, until it reminded him of a girl he had seen overcome with nervous laughter at a vaudeville performance. Then it sank, receded, only to rise again and include words—a coarse joke, some bit of obscure horseplay he could not distinguish. It would break off for a moment and he would just catch the low rumble of a man's voice, then begin again—interminably; at first annoying, then strangely terrible. He shivered, and getting up out of bed went to the window. It had reached a high point, tensed and stifled, almost the quality of a scream—then it ceased and left behind it a silence empty and menacing as the greater silence overhead. Anthony stood by the window a moment longer before he returned to his bed. He found himself upset and shaken. Try as he might to strangle his reaction, some animal quality in that unrestrained laughter had grasped at his imagination, and for the first time in four months aroused his old aversion and horror toward all the business of life. The room had grown smothery. He wanted to be out in some cool and bitter breeze, miles above the cities, and to live serene and detached back in the corners of his mind. Life was that sound out there, that ghastly reiterated female sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my <i>God</i>!" he cried, drawing in his breath sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Burying his face in the pillows he tried in vain to concentrate upon the details of the next day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MORNING</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the gray light he found that it was only five o'clock. He regretted nervously that he had awakened so early—he would appear fagged at the wedding. He envied Gloria who could hide her fatigue with careful pigmentation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In his bathroom he contemplated himself in the mirror and saw that he was unusually white—half a dozen small imperfections stood out against the morning pallor of his complexion, and overnight he had grown the faint stubble of a beard—the general effect, he fancied, was unprepossessing, haggard, half unwell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On his dressing table were spread a number of articles which he told over carefully with suddenly fumbling fingers—their tickets to California, the book of traveller's checks, his watch, set to the half minute, the key to his apartment, which he must not forget to give to Maury, and, most important of all, the ring. It was of platinum set around with small emeralds; Gloria had insisted on this; she had always wanted an emerald wedding ring, she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the third present he had given her; first had come the engagement ring, and then a little gold cigarette-case. He would be giving her many things now—clothes and jewels and friends and excitement. It seemed absurd that from now on he would pay for all her meals. It was going to cost: he wondered if he had not underestimated for this trip, and if he had not better cash a larger check. The question worried him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was the day—unsought, unsuspected six months before, but now breaking in yellow light through his east window, dancing along the carpet as though the sun were smiling at some ancient and reiterated gag of his own.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a nervous one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By God!" he muttered to himself, "I'm as good as married!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE USHERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Six young men in</i> CROSS PATCH'S <i>library growing more and more cheery under the influence of Mumm's Extra Dry, set surreptitiously in cold pails by the bookcases.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FIRST YOUNG MAN: By golly! Believe me, in my next book I'm going to do a wedding scene that'll knock 'em cold!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE SECOND YOUNG MAN: Met a débutante th'other day said she thought your book was powerful. As a rule young girls cry for this primitive business.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE THIRD YOUNG MAN: Where's Anthony?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Walking up and down outside talking to himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: Lord! Did you see the minister? Most peculiar looking teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Think they're natural. Funny thing people having gold teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: They say they love 'em. My dentist told me once a woman came to him and insisted on having two of her teeth covered with gold. No reason at all. All right the way they were.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Hear you got out a book, Dicky. 'Gratulations!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Stiffly</i>) Thanks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Innocently</i>) What is it? College stories?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>More stiffly</i>) No. Not college stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Pity! Hasn't been a good book about Harvard for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Touchily</i>) Why don't you supply the lack?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car model"><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: I think I saw a squad of guests turn the drive in a Packard just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Might open a couple more bottles on the strength of that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THIRD YOUNG MAN: It was the shock of my life when I heard the old man was going to have a wet wedding. Rabid prohibitionist, you know.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Snapping his fingers excitedly</i>) By gad! I knew I'd forgotten something. Kept thinking it was my vest.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What was it?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Maliciously</i>) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (<i>Facetiously</i>) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN <i>looks nervously at his watch. Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an ass I am!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding. Name's Haines or Hampton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Hurriedly spurring his imagination</i>) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my glass, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Who? Old Adam?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: He's my uncle, Otis.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Yes, Cable, she is.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, Dicky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why are all grooms given the title of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Maury, the professional cynic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Faker yourself! What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: What do <i>you</i> know?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: You don't know yourself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Don't hedge!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, natural selection?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Wrong.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I give it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (<i>Laughter.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There <i>is</i> a connection.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: What is it then?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion</i>) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Frowning</i>) Let me just think a minute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Sitting up suddenly</i>) Listen!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Weightily</i>) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to God I'd sent that present.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCH'S organ</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There were five hundred eyes boring through the back of his cutaway and the sun glinting on the clergyman's inappropriately bourgeois teeth. With difficulty he restrained a laugh. Gloria was saying something in a clear proud voice and he tried to think that the affair was irrevocable, that every second was significant, that his life was being slashed into two periods and that the face of the world was changing before him. He tried to recapture that ecstatic sensation of ten weeks before. All these emotions eluded him, he did not even feel the physical nervousness of that very morning—it was all one gigantic aftermath. And those gold teeth! He wondered if the clergyman were married; he wondered perversely if a clergyman could perform his own marriage service. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But as he took Gloria into his arms he was conscious of a strong reaction. The blood was moving in his veins now. A languorous and pleasant content settled like a weight upon him, bringing responsibility and possession. He was married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening—and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Late one night they arrived in Santa Barbara, where the night clerk at the Hotel Lafcadio refused to admit them, on the grounds that they were not married.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The clerk thought that Gloria was beautiful. He did not think that anything so beautiful as Gloria could be moral.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"CON AMORE"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That first half-year—the trip West, the long months' loiter along the California coast, and the gray house near Greenwich where they lived until late autumn made the country dreary—those days, those places, saw the enraptured hours. The breathless idyl of their engagement gave way, first, to the intense romance of the more passionate relationship. The breathless idyl left them, fled on to other lovers; they looked around one day and it was gone, how they scarcely knew. Had either of them lost the other in the days of the idyl, the love lost would have been ever to the loser that dim desire without fulfilment which stands back of all life. But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idyl passed, bearing with it its extortion of youth. Came a day when Gloria found that other men no longer bored her; came a day when Anthony discovered that he could sit again late into the evening, talking with Dick of those tremendous abstractions that had once occupied his world. But, knowing they had had the best of love, they clung to what remained. Love lingered—by way of long conversations at night into those stark hours when the mind thins and sharpens and the borrowings from dreams become the stuff of all life, by way of deep and intimate kindnesses they developed toward each other, by way of their laughing at the same absurdities and thinking the same things noble and the same things sad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was, first of all, a time of discovery. The things they found in each other were so diverse, so intermixed and, moreover, so sugared with love as to seem at the time not so much discoveries as isolated phenomena—to be allowed for, and to be forgotten. Anthony found that he was living with a girl of tremendous nervous tension and of the most high-handed selfishness. Gloria knew within a month that her husband was an utter coward toward any one of a million phantasms created by his imagination. Her perception was intermittent, for this cowardice sprang out, became almost obscenely evident, then faded and vanished as though it had been only a creation of her own mind. Her reactions to it were not those attributed to her sex—it roused her neither to disgust nor to a premature feeling of motherhood. Herself almost completely without physical fear, she was unable to understand, and so she made the most of what she felt to be his fear's redeeming feature, which was that though he was a coward under a shock and a coward under a strain—when his imagination was given play—he had yet a sort of dashing recklessness that moved her on its brief occasions almost to admiration, and a pride that usually steadied him when he thought he was observed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed, risk, affect, safety, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> The trait first showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough café she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred in a San Francisco hotel, when they had been married a week, gave the matter certainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after midnight and pitch dark in their room. Gloria was dozing off and Anthony's even breathing beside her made her suppose that he was asleep, when suddenly she saw him raise himself on his elbow and stare at the window.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is it, dearest?" she murmured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing"—he had relaxed to his pillow and turned toward her—"nothing, my darling wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable. . . . Come into my arms," she added in a rush of tenderness; "I can sleep so well, so well with you in my arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Coming into Gloria's arms had a quite definite meaning. It required that he should slide one arm under her shoulder, lock both arms about her, and arrange himself as nearly as possible as a sort of three-sided crib for her luxurious ease. Anthony, who tossed, whose arms went tinglingly to sleep after half an hour of that position, would wait until she was asleep and roll her gently over to her side of the bed—then, left to his own devices, he would curl himself into his usual knots.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, having attained sentimental comfort, retired into her doze. Five minutes ticked away on Bloeckman's travelling clock; silence lay all about the room, over the unfamiliar, impersonal furniture and the half-oppressive ceiling that melted imperceptibly into invisible walls on both sides. Then there was suddenly a rattling flutter at the window, staccato and loud upon the hushed, pent air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a leap Anthony was out of the bed and standing tense beside it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" he cried in an awful voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria lay very still, wide awake now and engrossed not so much in the rattling as in the rigid breathless figure whose voice had reached from the bedside into that ominous dark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The sound stopped; the room was quiet as before—then Anthony pouring words in at the telephone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Some one just tried to get into the room! . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's some one at the window!" His voice was emphatic now, faintly terrified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right! Hurry!" He hung up the receiver; stood motionless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . There was a rush and commotion at the door, a knocking—Anthony went to open it upon an excited night clerk with three bell-boys grouped staring behind him. Between thumb and finger the night clerk held a wet pen with the threat of a weapon; one of the bell-boys had seized a telephone directory and was looking at it sheepishly. Simultaneously the group was joined by the hastily summoned house-detective, and as one man they surged into the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lights sprang on with a click. Gathering a piece of sheet about her Gloria dove away from sight, shutting her eyes to keep out the horror of this unpremeditated visitation. There was no vestige of an idea in her stricken sensibilities save that her Anthony was at grievous fault.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The night clerk was speaking from the window, his tone half of the servant, half of the teacher reproving a schoolboy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody out there," he declared conclusively; "my golly, nobody <i>could</i> be out there. This here's a sheer fall to the street of fifty feet. It was the wind you heard, tugging at the blind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she was sorry for him. She wanted only to comfort him and draw him back tenderly into her arms, to tell them to go away because the thing their presence connotated was odious. Yet she could not raise her head for shame. She heard a broken sentence, apologies, conventions of the employee and one unrestrained snicker from a bell-boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been nervous as the devil all evening," Anthony was saying; "somehow that noise just shook me—I was only about half awake."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sure, I understand," said the night clerk with comfortable tact; "been that way myself."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The door closed; the lights snapped out; Anthony crossed the floor quietly and crept into bed. Gloria, feigning to be heavy with sleep, gave a quiet little sigh and slipped into his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was it, dear?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing," he answered, his voice still shaken; "I thought there was somebody at the window, so I looked out, but I couldn't see any one and the noise kept up, so I phoned down-stairs. Sorry if I disturbed you, but I'm awfully darn nervous to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Catching the lie, she gave an interior start—he had not gone to the window, nor near the window. He had stood by the bed and then sent in his call of fear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said—and then: "I'm so sleepy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an hour they lay awake side by side, Gloria with her eyes shut so tight that blue moons formed and revolved against backgrounds of deepest mauve, Anthony staring blindly into the darkness overhead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After many weeks it came gradually out into the light, to be laughed and joked at. They made a tradition to fit over it—whenever that overpowering terror of the night attacked Anthony, she would put her arms about him and croon, soft as a song:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll protect my Anthony. Oh, nobody's ever going to harm my Anthony!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would laugh as though it were a jest they played for their mutual amusement, but to Gloria it was never quite a jest. It was, at first, a keen disappointment; later, it was one of the times when she controlled her temper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The management of Gloria's temper, whether it was aroused by a lack of hot water for her bath or by a skirmish with her husband, became almost the primary duty of Anthony's day. It must be done just so—by this much silence, by that much pressure, by this much yielding, by that much force. It was in her angers with their attendant cruelties that her inordinate egotism chiefly displayed itself. Because she was brave, because she was "spoiled," because of her outrageous and commendable independence of judgment, and finally because of her arrogant consciousness that she had never seen a girl as beautiful as herself, Gloria had developed into a consistent, practising Nietzschean. This, of course, with overtones of profound sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, for example, her stomach. She was used to certain dishes, and she had a strong conviction that she could not possibly eat anything else. There must be a lemonade and a tomato sandwich late in the morning, then a light lunch with a stuffed tomato. Not only did she require food from a selection of a dozen dishes, but in addition this food must be prepared in just a certain way. One of the most annoying half hours of the first fortnight occurred in Los Angeles, when an unhappy waiter brought her a tomato stuffed with chicken salad instead of celery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We always serve it that way, madame," he quavered to the gray eyes that regarded him wrathfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria made no answer, but when the waiter had turned discreetly away she banged both fists upon the table until the china and silver rattled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor Gloria!" laughed Anthony unwittingly, "you can't get what you want ever, can you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't eat <i>stuff</i>!" she flared up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll call back the waiter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want you to! He doesn't know anything, the darn <i>fool</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it isn't the hotel's fault. Either send it back, forget it, or be a sport and eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shut up!" she said succinctly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why take it out on me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I'm <i>not</i>," she wailed, "but I simply <i>can't</i> eat it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony subsided helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go somewhere else," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't <i>want</i> to go anywhere else. I'm tired of being trotted around to a dozen cafés and not getting <i>one thing</i> fit to eat."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When did we go around to a dozen cafés?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd <i>have</i> to in <i>this</i> town," insisted Gloria with ready sophistry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, bewildered, tried another tack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you try to eat it? It can't be as bad as you think."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just—because—I—don't—like—chicken!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She picked up her fork and began poking contemptuously at the tomato, and Anthony expected her to begin flinging the stuffings in all directions. He was sure that she was approximately as angry as she had ever been—for an instant he had detected a spark of hate directed as much toward him as toward any one else—and Gloria angry was, for the present, unapproachable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, surprisingly, he saw that she had tentatively raised the fork to her lips and tasted the chicken salad. Her frown had not abated and he stared at her anxiously, making no comment and daring scarcely to breathe. She tasted another forkful—in another moment she was eating. With difficulty Anthony restrained a chuckle; when at length he spoke his words had no possible connection with chicken salad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This incident, with variations, ran like a lugubrious fugue through the first year of marriage; always it left Anthony baffled, irritated, and depressed. But another rough brushing of temperaments, a question of laundry-bags, he found even more annoying as it ended inevitably in a decisive defeat for him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One afternoon in Coronado, where they made the longest stay of their trip, more than three weeks, Gloria was arraying herself brilliantly for tea. Anthony, who had been down-stairs listening to the latest rumor bulletins of war in Europe, entered the room, kissed the back of her powdered neck, and went to his dresser. After a great pulling out and pushing in of drawers, evidently unsatisfactory, he turned around to the Unfinished Masterpiece.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got any handkerchiefs, Gloria?" he asked. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her golden head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a one. I'm using one of yours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The last one, I deduce." He laughed dryly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She applied an emphatic though very delicate contour to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't the laundry back?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated—then, with sudden discernment, opened the closet door. His suspicions were verified. On the hook provided hung the blue bag furnished by the hotel. This was full of his clothes—he had put them there himself. The floor beneath it was littered with an astonishing mass of finery—lingerie, stockings, dresses, nightgowns, and pajamas—most of it scarcely worn but all of it coming indubitably under the general heading of Gloria's laundry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He stood holding the closet door open.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lip line was being erased and corrected according to some mysterious perspective; not a finger trembled as she manipulated the lip-stick, not a glance wavered in his direction. It was a triumph of concentration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever sent out the laundry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It most certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I guess I haven't, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," began Anthony, sitting down on the bed and trying to catch her mirrored eyes, "you're a nice fellow, you are! I've sent it out every time it's been sent since we left New York, and over a week ago you promised you'd do it for a change. All you'd have to do would be to cram your own junk into that bag and ring for the chambermaid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, why fuss about the laundry?" exclaimed Gloria petulantly, "I'll take care of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I haven't fussed about it. I'd just as soon divide the bother with you, but when we run out of handkerchiefs it's darn near time something's done."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered that he was being extraordinarily logical. But Gloria, unimpressed, put away her cosmetics and casually offered him her back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hook me up," she suggested; "Anthony, dearest, I forgot all about it. I meant to, honestly, and I will to-day. Don't be cross with your sweetheart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What could Anthony do then but draw her down upon his knee and kiss a shade of color from her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't mind," she murmured with a smile, radiant and magnanimous. "You can kiss all the paint off my lips any time you want."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They went down to tea. They bought some handkerchiefs in a notion store near by. All was forgotten.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But two days later Anthony looked in the closet and saw the bag still hung limp upon its hook and that the gay and vivid pile on the floor had increased surprisingly in height.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—" Her voice was full of real distress. Despairingly Anthony went to the phone and called the chambermaid.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," he said impatiently, "that you expect me to be some sort of French valet to you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed, so infectiously that Anthony was unwise enough to smile. Unfortunate man! In some intangible manner his smile made her mistress of the situation—with an air of injured righteousness she went emphatically to the closet and began pushing her laundry violently into the bag. Anthony watched her—ashamed of himself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There!" she said, implying that her fingers had been worked to the bone by a brutal taskmaster.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He considered, nevertheless, that he had given her an object-lesson and that the matter was closed, but on the contrary it was merely beginning. Laundry pile followed laundry pile—at long intervals; dearth of handkerchief followed dearth of handkerchief—at short ones; not to mention dearth of sock, of shirt, of everything. And Anthony found at length that either he must send it out himself or go through the increasingly unpleasant ordeal of a verbal battle with Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>GLORIA AND GENERAL LEE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On their way East they stopped two days in Washington, strolling about with some hostility in its atmosphere of harsh repellent light, of distance without freedom, of pomp without splendor—it seemed a pasty-pale and self-conscious city. The second day they made an ill-advised trip to General Lee's old home at Arlington.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect, temperature, smell, passengers"><br /> <poem><br /> The bus which bore them was crowded with hot, unprosperous people, and Anthony, intimate to Gloria, felt a storm brewing. It broke at the Zoo, where the party stopped for ten minutes. The Zoo, it seemed, smelt of monkeys. Anthony laughed; Gloria called down the curse of Heaven upon monkeys, including in her malevolence all the passengers of the bus and their perspiring offspring who had hied themselves monkey-ward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus"><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually the bus moved on to Arlington. There it met other busses and immediately a swarm of women and children were leaving a trail of peanut-shells through the halls of General Lee and crowding at length into the room where he was married. On the wall of this room a pleasing sign announced in large red letters "Ladies' Toilet." At this final blow Gloria broke down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think it's perfectly terrible!" she said furiously, "the idea of letting these people come here! And of encouraging them by making these houses show-places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," objected Anthony, "if they weren't kept up they'd go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if they did!" she exclaimed as they sought the wide pillared porch. "Do you think they've left a breath of 1860 here? This has become a thing of 1914."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you want to preserve old things?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you <i>can't</i>, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; Washington Irving's dead and his books are rotting in our estimation year by year—then let the graveyard rot too, as it should, as all things should. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you think that just as a time goes to pieces its houses ought to go too?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course! Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. How many of these—these <i>animals</i>"—she waved her hand around—"get anything from this, for all the histories and guide-books and restorations in existence? How many of them who think that, at best, appreciation is talking in undertones and walking on tiptoes would even come here if it was any trouble? I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses—bound for dust—mortal——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small boy appeared beside them and, swinging a handful of banana-peels, flung them valiantly in the direction of the Potomac.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SENTIMENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously with the fall of Liège, Anthony and Gloria arrived in New York. In retrospect the six weeks seemed miraculously happy. They had found to a great extent, as most young couples find in some measure, that they possessed in common many fixed ideas and curiosities and odd quirks of mind; they were essentially companionable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it had been a struggle to keep many of their conversations on the level of discussions. Arguments were fatal to Gloria's disposition. She had all her life been associated either with her mental inferiors or with men who, under the almost hostile intimidation of her beauty, had not dared to contradict her; naturally, then, it irritated her when Anthony emerged from the state in which her pronouncements were an infallible and ultimate decision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He failed to realize, at first, that this was the result partly of her "female" education and partly of her beauty, and he was inclined to include her with her entire sex as curiously and definitely limited. It maddened him to find she had no sense of justice. But he discovered that, when a subject did interest her, her brain tired less quickly than his. What he chiefly missed in her mind was the pedantic teleology—the sense of order and accuracy, the sense of life as a mysteriously correlated piece of patchwork, but he understood after a while that such a quality in her would have been incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each other's hearts. The day they left the hotel in Coronado she sat down on one of the beds while they were packing, and began to weep bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest—" His arms were around her; he pulled her head down upon his shoulder. "What is it, my own Gloria? Tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We're going away," she sobbed. "Oh, Anthony, it's sort of the first place we've lived together. Our two little beds here—side by side—they'll be always waiting for us, and we're never coming back to 'em any more."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was tearing at his heart as she always could. Sentiment came over him, rushed into his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, why, we're going on to another room. And two other little beds. We're going to be together all our lives."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Words flooded from her in a low husky voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it won't be—like our two beds—ever again. Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost—something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He held her passionately near, discerning far beyond any criticism of her sentiment, a wise grasping of the minute, if only an indulgence of her desire to cry—Gloria the idler, caresser of her own dreams, extracting poignancy from the memorable things of life and youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon when he returned from the station with the tickets he found her asleep on one of the beds, her arm curled about a black object which he could not at first identify. Coming closer he found it was one of his shoes, not a particularly new one, nor clean one, but her face, tear-stained, was pressed against it, and he understood her ancient and most honorable message. There was almost ecstasy in waking her and seeing her smile at him, shy but well aware of her own nicety of imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With no appraisal of the worth or dross of these two things, it seemed to Anthony that they lay somewhere near the heart of love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE GRAY HOUSE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing—oh, that eternal hand!—a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And this time with Gloria and Anthony, this first year of marriage, and the gray house caught them in that stage when the organ-grinder was slowly undergoing his inevitable metamorphosis. She was twenty-three; he was twenty-six.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gray house was, at first, of sheerly pastoral intent. They lived impatiently in Anthony's apartment for the first fortnight after the return from California, in a stifled atmosphere of open trunks, too many callers, and the eternal laundry-bags. They discussed with their friends the stupendous problem of their future. Dick and Maury would sit with them agreeing solemnly, almost thoughtfully, as Anthony ran through his list of what they "ought" to do, and where they "ought" to live.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to take Gloria abroad," he complained, "except for this damn war—and next to that I'd sort of like to have a place in the country, somewhere near New York, of course, where I could write—or whatever I decide to do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't he cute?" she required of Maury. "'Whatever he decides to do!' But what am <i>I</i> going to do if he works? Maury, will you take me around if Anthony works?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anyway, I'm not going to work yet," said Anthony quickly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was vaguely understood between them that on some misty day he would enter a sort of glorified diplomatic service and be envied by princes and prime ministers for his beautiful wife.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria helplessly, "I'm sure I don't know. We talk and talk and never get anywhere, and we ask all our friends and they just answer the way we want 'em to. I wish somebody'd take care of us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you go out to—out to Greenwich or something?" suggested Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like that," said Gloria, brightening. "Do you think we could get a house there?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick shrugged his shoulders and Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You two amuse me," he said. "Of all the unpractical people! As soon as a place is mentioned you expect us to pull great piles of photographs out of our pockets showing the different styles of architecture available in bungalows."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's just what I don't want," wailed Gloria, "a hot stuffy bungalow, with a lot of babies next door and their father cutting the grass in his shirt sleeves——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For Heaven's sake, Gloria," interrupted Maury, "nobody wants to lock you up in a bungalow. Who in God's name brought bungalows into the conversation? But you'll never get a place anywhere unless you go out and hunt for it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go where? You say 'go out and hunt for it,' but where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With dignity Maury waved his hand paw-like about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Out anywhere. Out in the country. There're lots of places."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look here!" Richard Caramel brought his yellow eye rakishly into play. "The trouble with you two is that you're all disorganized. Do you know anything about New York State? Shut up, Anthony, I'm talking to Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," she admitted finally, "I've been to two or three house parties in Portchester and around in Connecticut—but, of course, that isn't in New York State, is it? And neither is Morristown," she finished with drowsy irrelevance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a shout of laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Lord!" cried Dick, "neither is Morristown!' No, and neither is Santa Barbara, Gloria. Now listen. To begin with, unless you have a fortune there's no use considering any place like Newport or Southhampton or Tuxedo. They're out of the question."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They all agreed to this solemnly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And personally I hate New Jersey. Then, of course, there's upper New York, above Tuxedo."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> "Too cold," said Gloria briefly. "I was there once in an automobile."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, it seems to me there're a lot of towns like Rye between New York and Greenwich where you could buy a little gray house of some——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria leaped at the phrase triumphantly. For the first time since their return East she knew what she wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>yes!</i>" she cried. "Oh, <i>yes!</i> that's it: a little gray house with sort of white around and a whole lot of swamp maples just as brown and gold as an October picture in a gallery. Where can we find one?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Unfortunately, I've mislaid my list of little gray houses with swamp maples around them—but I'll try to find it. Meanwhile you take a piece of paper and write down the names of seven possible towns. And every day this week you take a trip to one of those towns."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" protested Gloria, collapsing mentally, "why won't you do it for us? I hate trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, hire a car, and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm tired of discussing it. Seems to me all we do is talk about where to live."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My exquisite wife wearies of thought," remarked Anthony ironically. "She must have a tomato sandwich to stimulate her jaded nerves. Let's go out to tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the unfortunate upshot of this conversation, they took Dick's advice literally, and two days later went out to Rye, where they wandered around with an irritated real estate agent, like bewildered babes in the wood. They were shown houses at a hundred a month which closely adjoined other houses at a hundred a month; they were shown isolated houses to which they invariably took violent dislikes, though they submitted weakly to the agent's desire that they "look at that stove—some stove!" and to a great shaking of doorposts and tapping of walls, intended evidently to show that the house would not immediately collapse, no matter how convincingly it gave that impression. They gazed through windows into interiors furnished either "commercially" with slab-like chairs and unyielding settees, or "home-like" with the melancholy bric-à-brac of other summers—crossed tennis rackets, fit-form couches, and depressing Gibson girls. With a feeling of guilt they looked at a few really nice houses, aloof, dignified, and cool—at three hundred a month. They went away from Rye thanking the real estate agent very much indeed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the crowded train back to New York the seat behind was occupied by a super-respirating Latin whose last few meals had obviously been composed entirely of garlic. They reached the apartment gratefully, almost hysterically, and Gloria rushed for a hot bath in the reproachless bathroom. So far as the question of a future abode was concerned both of them were incapacitated for a week.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The matter eventually worked itself out with unhoped-for romance. Anthony ran into the living room one afternoon fairly radiating "the idea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "I've got it," he was exclaiming as though he had just caught a mouse. "We'll get a car."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gee whiz! Haven't we got troubles enough taking care of ourselves?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, rural, navigation"><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me a second to explain, can't you? Just let's leave our stuff with Dick and just pile a couple of suitcases in our car, the one we're going to buy—we'll have to have one in the country anyway—and just start out in the direction of New Haven. You see, as we get out of commuting distance from New York, the rents'll get cheaper, and as soon as we find a house we want we'll just settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> By his frequent and soothing interpolation of the word "just" he aroused her lethargic enthusiasm. Strutting violently about the room, he simulated a dynamic and irresistible efficiency. "We'll buy a car to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, city, urban, navigation, affect, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> Life, limping after imagination's ten-league boots, saw them out of town a week later in a cheap but sparkling new roadster, saw them through the chaotic unintelligible Bronx, then over a wide murky district which alternated cheerless blue-green wastes with suburbs of tremendous and sordid activity. They left New York at eleven and it was well past a hot and beatific noon when they moved rakishly through Pelham.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "These aren't towns," said Gloria scornfully, "these are just city blocks plumped down coldly into waste acres. I imagine all the men here have their mustaches stained from drinking their coffee too quickly in the morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And play pinochle on the commuting trains."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's pinochle?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't be so literal. How should I know? But it sounds as though they ought to play it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I like it. It sounds as if it were something where you sort of cracked your knuckles or something. . . . Let me drive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony looked at her suspiciously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, agency, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> "You swear you're a good driver?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Since I was fourteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road side, safety, driver, sound, pleasure, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He stopped the car cautiously at the side of the road and they changed seats. Then with a horrible grinding noise the car was put in gear, Gloria adding an accompaniment of laughter which seemed to Anthony disquieting and in the worst possible taste.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Here we go!" she yelled. "Whoo-oop!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="speed, haptic, car, driving, traffic, risk, affect, driver, skill"><br /> <poem><br /> Their heads snapped back like marionettes on a single wire as the car leaped ahead and curved retchingly about a standing milk-wagon, whose driver stood up on his seat and bellowed after them. In the immemorial tradition of the road Anthony retorted with a few brief epigrams as to the grossness of the milk-delivering profession. He cut his remarks short, however, and turned to Gloria with the growing conviction that he had made a grave mistake in relinquishing control and that Gloria was a driver of many eccentricities and of infinite carelessness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Remember now!" he warned her nervously, "the man said we oughtn't to go over twenty miles an hour for the first five thousand miles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded briefly, but evidently intending to accomplish the prohibitive distance as quickly as possible, slightly increased her speed. A moment later he made another attempt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic sign, law, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "See that sign? Do you want to get us pinched?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, for Heaven's sake," cried Gloria in exasperation, "you <i>always</i> exaggerate things so!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want to get arrested."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="affect, law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's arresting you? You're so persistent—just like you were about my cough medicine last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was for your own good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ha! I might as well be living with mama."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a thing to say to me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, visibility, speed, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> A standing policeman swerved into view, was hastily passed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See him?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law"><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you drive me crazy! He didn't arrest us, did he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When he does it'll be too late," countered Anthony brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her reply was scornful, almost injured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, slowness"><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, this old thing won't <i>go</i> over thirty-five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It isn't old."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It is in spirit."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, train, risk, traffic, safety, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> That afternoon the car joined the laundry-bags and Gloria's appetite as one of the trinity of contention. He warned her of railroad tracks; he pointed out approaching automobiles; finally he insisted on taking the wheel and a furious, insulted Gloria sat silently beside him between the towns of Larchmont and Rye.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="agency, driving, car part, affect, safety, traffic, navigation, road, macadam, gravel, road surface, tree, visibility, sunshine"><br /> <poem><br /> But it was due to this furious silence of hers that the gray house materialized from its abstraction, for just beyond Rye he surrendered gloomily to it and re-relinquished the wheel. Mutely he beseeched her and Gloria, instantly cheered, vowed to be more careful. But because a discourteous street-car persisted callously in remaining upon its track Gloria ducked down a side-street—and thereafter that afternoon was never able to find her way back to the Post Road. The street they finally mistook for it lost its Post-Road aspect when it had gone five miles from Cos Cob. Its macadam became gravel, then dirt—moreover, it narrowed and developed a border of maple trees, through which filtered the westering sun, making its endless experiments with shadow designs upon the long grass.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We're lost now," complained Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, visibility"><br /> <poem><br /> "Read that sign!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Marietta—Five Miles. What's Marietta?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="navigation, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> "Never heard of it, but let's go on. We can't turn here and there's probably a detour back to the Post Road."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="road surface, road condition, road, risk, rural"><br /> <poem><br /> The way became scarred with deepening ruts and insidious shoulders of stone. Three farmhouses faced them momentarily, slid by. A town sprang up in a cluster of dull roofs around a white tall steeple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver, accident, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, hesitating between two approaches, and making her choice too late, drove over a fire-hydrant and ripped the transmission violently from the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was dark when the real-estate agent of Marietta showed them the gray house. They came upon it just west of the village, where it rested against a sky that was a warm blue cloak buttoned with tiny stars. The gray house had been there when women who kept cats were probably witches, when Paul Revere made false teeth in Boston preparatory to arousing the great commercial people, when our ancestors were gloriously deserting Washington in droves. Since those days the house had been bolstered up in a feeble corner, considerably repartitioned and newly plastered inside, amplified by a kitchen and added to by a side-porch—but, save for where some jovial oaf had roofed the new kitchen with red tin, Colonial it defiantly remained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you happen to come to Marietta?" demanded the real-estate agent in a tone that was first cousin to suspicion. He was showing them through four spacious and airy bedrooms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, accident, driving, garage"><br /> <poem><br /> "We broke down," explained Gloria. "I drove over a fire-hydrant and we had ourselves towed to the garage and then we saw your sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man nodded, unable to follow such a sally of spontaneity. There was something subtly immoral in doing anything without several months' consideration.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, pleasure, road, dust, summer, rain, sound, sunshine, agriculture, plant"><br /> <poem><br /> They signed a lease that night and, in the agent's car, returned jubilantly to the somnolent and dilapidated Marietta Inn, which was too broken for even the chance immoralities and consequent gaieties of a country road-house. Half the night they lay awake planning the things they were to do there. Anthony was going to work at an astounding pace on his history and thus ingratiate himself with his cynical grandfather. . . . When the car was repaired they would explore the country and join the nearest "really nice" club, where Gloria would play golf "or something" while Anthony wrote. This, of course, was Anthony's idea—Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant still in a shadowy hinterland. Between paragraphs Anthony would come and kiss her as she lay indolently in the hammock. . . . The hammock! a host of new dreams in tune to its imagined rhythm, while the wind stirred it and waves of sun undulated over the shadows of blown wheat, or the dusty road freckled and darkened with quiet summer rain. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And guests—here they had a long argument, both of them trying to be extraordinarily mature and far-sighted. Anthony claimed that they would need people at least every other week-end "as a sort of change." This provoked an involved and extremely sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him. . . . Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? Oh, what'll we do then?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll have a dog," suggested Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want one. I want a kitty." She went thoroughly and with great enthusiasm into the history, habits, and tastes of a cat she had once possessed. Anthony considered that it must have been a horrible character with neither personal magnetism nor a loyal heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later they slept, to wake an hour before dawn with the gray house dancing in phantom glory before their dazzled eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SOUL OF GLORIA</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For that autumn the gray house welcomed them with a rush of sentiment that falsified its cynical old age. True, there were the laundry-bags, there was Gloria's appetite, there was Anthony's tendency to brood and his imaginative "nervousness," but there were intervals also of an unhoped-for serenity. Close together on the porch they would wait for the moon to stream across the silver acres of farmland, jump a thick wood and tumble waves of radiance at their feet. In such a moonlight Gloria's face was of a pervading, reminiscent white, and with a modicum of effort they would slip off the blinders of custom and each would find in the other almost the quintessential romance of the vanished June.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One night while her head lay upon his heart and their cigarettes glowed in swerving buttons of light through the dome of darkness over the bed, she spoke for the first time and fragmentarily of the men who had hung for brief moments on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you ever think of them?" he asked her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only occasionally—when something happens that recalls a particular man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you remember—their kisses?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All sorts of things. . . . Men are different with women."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Different in what way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, entirely—and quite inexpressibly. Men who had the most firmly rooted reputation for being this way or that would sometimes be surprisingly inconsistent with me. Brutal men were tender, negligible men were astonishingly loyal and lovable, and, often, honorable men took attitudes that were anything but honorable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For instance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there was a boy named Percy Wolcott from Cornell who was quite a hero in college, a great athlete, and saved a lot of people from a fire or something like that. But I soon found he was stupid in a rather dangerous way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What way?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems he had some naïve conception of a woman 'fit to be his wife,' a particular conception that I used to run into a lot and that always drove me wild. He demanded a girl who'd never been kissed and who liked to sew and sit home and pay tribute to his self-esteem. And I'll bet a hat if he's gotten an idiot to sit and be stupid with him he's tearing out on the side with some much speedier lady."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd be sorry for his wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wouldn't. Think what an ass she'd be not to realize it before she married him. He's the sort whose idea of honoring and respecting a woman would be never to give her any excitement. With the best intentions, he was deep in the dark ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was his attitude toward you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm coming to that. As I told you—or did I tell you?—he was mighty good-looking: big brown honest eyes and one of those smiles that guarantee the heart behind it is twenty-karat gold. Being young and credulous, I thought he had some discretion, so I kissed him fervently one night when we were riding around after a dance at the Homestead at Hot Springs. It had been a wonderful week, I remember—with the most luscious trees spread like green lather, sort of, all over the valley and a mist rising out of them on October mornings like bonfires lit to turn them brown——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about your friend with the ideals?" interrupted Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems that when he kissed me he began to think that perhaps he could get away with a little more, that I needn't be 'respected' like this Beatrice Fairfax glad-girl of his imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd he do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much. I pushed him off a sixteen-foot embankment before he was well started."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hurt him?" inquired Anthony with a laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Broke his arm and sprained his ankle. He told the story all over Hot Springs, and when his arm healed a man named Barley who liked me fought him and broke it over again. Oh, it was all an awful mess. He threatened to sue Barley, and Barley—he was from Georgia—was seen buying a gun in town. But before that mama had dragged me North again, much against my will, so I never did find out all that happened—though I saw Barley once in the Vanderbilt lobby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed long and loud.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What a career! I suppose I ought to be furious because you've kissed so many men. I'm not, though."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this she sat up in bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's funny, but I'm so sure that those kisses left no mark on me—no taint of promiscuity, I mean—even though a man once told me in all seriousness that he hated to think I'd been a public drinking glass."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He had his nerve."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just laughed and told him to think of me rather as a loving-cup that goes from hand to hand but should be valued none the less."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Somehow it doesn't bother me—on the other hand it would, of course, if you'd done any more than kiss them. But I believe <i>you're</i> absolutely incapable of jealousy except as hurt vanity. Why don't you care what I've done? Wouldn't you prefer it if I'd been absolutely innocent?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all in the impression it might have made on you. <i>My</i> kisses were because the man was good-looking, or because there was a slick moon, or even because I've felt vaguely sentimental and a little stirred. But that's all—it's had utterly no effect on me. But you'd remember and let memories haunt you and worry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't you ever kissed any one like you've kissed me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," she answered simply. "As I've told you, men have tried—oh, lots of things. Any pretty girl has that experience. . . . You see," she resumed, "it doesn't matter to me how many women you've stayed with in the past, so long as it was merely a physical satisfaction, but I don't believe I could endure the idea of your ever having lived with another woman for a protracted period or even having wanted to marry some possible girl. It's different somehow. There'd be all the little intimacies remembered—and they'd dull that freshness that after all is the most precious part of love."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rapturously he pulled her down beside him on the pillow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, my darling," he whispered, "as if I remembered anything but your dear kisses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Gloria, in a very mild voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, did I hear anybody say they were thirsty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed abruptly and with a sheepish and amused grin got out of bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "With just a <i>little</i> piece of ice in the water," she added. "Do you suppose I could have that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria used the adjective "little" whenever she asked a favor—it made the favor sound less arduous. But Anthony laughed again—whether she wanted a cake of ice or a marble of it, he must go down-stairs to the kitchen. . . . Her voice followed him through the hall: "And just a <i>little</i> cracker with just a <i>little</i> marmalade on it. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, gosh!" sighed Anthony in rapturous slang, "she's wonderful, that girl! She <i>has</i> it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When we have a baby," she began one day—this, it had already been decided, was to be after three years—"I want it to look like you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except its legs," he insinuated slyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, except his legs. He's got to have my legs. But the rest of him can be you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My nose?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, perhaps my nose. But certainly your eyes—and my mouth, and I guess my shape of the face. I wonder; I think he'd be sort of cute if he had my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Gloria, you've appropriated the whole baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I didn't mean to," she apologized cheerfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let him have my neck at least," he urged, regarding himself gravely in the glass. "You've often said you liked my neck because the Adam's apple doesn't show, and, besides, your neck's too short."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, it is <i>not</i>!" she cried indignantly, turning to the mirror, "it's just right. I don't believe I've ever seen a better neck."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's too short," he repeated teasingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Short?" Her tone expressed exasperated wonder. "Short? You're crazy!" She elongated and contracted it to convince herself of its reptilian sinuousness. "Do you call <i>that</i> a short neck?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "One of the shortest I've ever seen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For the first time in weeks tears started from Gloria's eyes and the look she gave him had a quality of real pain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My Lord, Gloria!" He approached her in bewilderment and took her elbows in his hands. "Don't cry, <i>please!</i> Didn't you know I was only kidding? Gloria, look at me! Why, dearest, you've got the longest neck I've ever seen. Honestly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her tears dissolved in a twisted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—you shouldn't have said that, then. Let's talk about the b-baby."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony paced the floor and spoke as though rehearsing for a debate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To put it briefly, there are two babies we could have, two distinct and logical babies, utterly differentiated. There's the baby that's the combination of the best of both of us. Your body, my eyes, my mind, your intelligence—and then there is the baby which is our worst—my body, your disposition, and my irresolution."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like that second baby," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What I'd really like," continued Anthony, "would be to have two sets of triplets one year apart and then experiment with the six boys——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor me," she interjected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—I'd educate them each in a different country and by a different system and when they were twenty-three I'd call them together and see what they were like."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's have 'em all with my neck," suggested Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE END OF A CHAPTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, personification, agency, driving, driver, speed, safety"><br /> <poem><br /> The car was at length repaired and with a deliberate vengeance took up where it left off the business of causing infinite dissension. Who should drive? How fast should Gloria go? These two questions and the eternal recriminations involved ran through the days. They motored to the Post-Road towns, Rye, Portchester, and Greenwich, and called on a dozen friends, mostly Gloria's, who all seemed to be in different stages of having babies and in this respect as well as in others bored her to a point of nervous distraction. For an hour after each visit she would bite her fingers furiously and be inclined to take out her rancor on Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I loathe women," she cried in a mild temper. "What on earth can you say to them—except talk 'lady-lady'? I've enthused over a dozen babies that I've wanted only to choke. And every one of those girls is either incipiently jealous and suspicious of her husband if he's charming or beginning to be bored with him if he isn't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever intend to see any women?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. They never seem clean to me—never—never. Except just a few. Constance Shaw—you know, the Mrs. Merriam who came over to see us last Tuesday—is almost the only one. She's so tall and fresh-looking and stately."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like them so tall."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though they went to several dinner dances at various country clubs, they decided that the autumn was too nearly over for them to "go out" on any scale, even had they been so inclined. He hated golf; Gloria liked it only mildly, and though she enjoyed a violent rush that some undergraduates gave her one night and was glad that Anthony should be proud of her beauty, she also perceived that their hostess for the evening, a Mrs. Granby, was somewhat disquieted by the fact that Anthony's classmate, Alec Granby, joined with enthusiasm in the rush. The Granbys never phoned again, and though Gloria laughed, it piqued her not a little.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see," she explained to Anthony, "if I wasn't married it wouldn't worry her—but she's been to the movies in her day and she thinks I may be a vampire. But the point is that placating such people requires an effort that I'm simply unwilling to make. . . . And those cute little freshmen making eyes at me and paying me idiotic compliments! I've grown up, Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> Marietta itself offered little social life. Half a dozen farm-estates formed a hectagon around it, but these belonged to ancient men who displayed themselves only as inert, gray-thatched lumps in the back of limousines on their way to the station, whither they were sometimes accompanied by equally ancient and doubly massive wives. The townspeople were a particularly uninteresting type—unmarried females were predominant for the most part—with school-festival horizons and souls bleak as the forbidding white architecture of the three churches. The only native with whom they came into close contact was the broad-hipped, broad-shouldered Swedish girl who came every day to do their work. She was silent and efficient, and Gloria, after finding her weeping violently into her bowed arms upon the kitchen table, developed an uncanny fear of her and stopped complaining about the food. Because of her untold and esoteric grief the girl stayed on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's penchant for premonitions and her bursts of vague supernaturalism were a surprise to Anthony. Either some complex, properly and scientifically inhibited in the early years with her Bilphistic mother, or some inherited hypersensitiveness, made her susceptible to any suggestion of the psychic, and, far from gullible about the motives of people, she was inclined to credit any extraordinary happening attributed to the whimsical perambulations of the buried. The desperate squeakings about the old house on windy nights that to Anthony were burglars with revolvers ready in hand represented to Gloria the auras, evil and restive, of dead generations, expiating the inexpiable upon the ancient and romantic hearth. One night, because of two swift bangs down-stairs, which Anthony fearfully but unavailingly investigated, they lay awake nearly until dawn asking each other examination-paper questions about the history of the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In October Muriel came out for a two weeks' visit. Gloria had called her on long-distance, and Miss Kane ended the conversation characteristically by saying "All-ll-ll righty. I'll be there with bells!" She arrived with a dozen popular songs under her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to have a phonograph out here in the country," she said, "just a little Vic—they don't cost much. Then whenever you're lonesome you can have Caruso or Al Jolson right at your door."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She worried Anthony to distraction by telling him that "he was the first clever man she had ever known and she got so tired of shallow people." He wondered that people fell in love with such women. Yet he supposed that under a certain impassioned glance even she might take on a softness and promise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Gloria, violently showing off her love for Anthony, was diverted into a state of purring content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally Richard Caramel arrived for a garrulous and to Gloria painfully literary week-end, during which he discussed himself with Anthony long after she lay in childlike sleep up-stairs.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been mighty funny, this success and all," said Dick. "Just before the novel appeared I'd been trying, without success, to sell some short stories. Then, after my book came out, I polished up three and had them accepted by one of the magazines that had rejected them before. I've done a lot of them since; publishers don't pay me for my book till this winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You mean write trash?" He considered. "If you mean deliberately injecting a slushy fade-out into each one, I'm not. But I don't suppose I'm being so careful. I'm certainly writing faster and I don't seem to be thinking as much as I used to. Perhaps it's because I don't get any conversation, now that you're married and Maury's gone to Philadelphia. Haven't the old urge and ambition. Early success and all that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Doesn't it worry you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Frantically. I get a thing I call sentence-fever that must be like buck-fever—it's a sort of intense literary self-consciousness that comes when I try to force myself. But the really awful days aren't when I think I can't write. They're when I wonder whether any writing is worth while at all—I mean whether I'm not a sort of glorified buffoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I like to hear you talk that way," said Anthony with a touch of his old patronizing insolence. "I was afraid you'd gotten a bit idiotic over your work. Read the damnedest interview you gave out——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick interrupted with an agonized expression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good Lord! Don't mention it. Young lady wrote it—most admiring young lady. Kept telling me my work was 'strong,' and I sort of lost my head and made a lot of strange pronouncements. Some of it was good, though, don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; that part about the wise writer writing for the youth of his generation, the critic of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterward."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I believe a lot of it," admitted Richard Caramel with a faint beam. "It simply was a mistake to give it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In November they moved into Anthony's apartment, from which they sallied triumphantly to the Yale-Harvard and Harvard-Princeton football games, to the St. Nicholas ice-skating rink, to a thorough round of the theatres and to a miscellany of entertainments—from small, staid dances to the great affairs that Gloria loved, held in those few houses where lackeys with powdered wigs scurried around in magnificent Anglomania under the direction of gigantic majordomos. Their intention was to go abroad the first of the year or, at any rate, when the war was over. Anthony had actually completed a Chestertonian essay on the twelfth century by way of introduction to his proposed book and Gloria had done some extensive research work on the question of Russian sable coats—in fact the winter was approaching quite comfortably, when the Bilphistic demiurge decided suddenly in mid-December that Mrs. Gilbert's soul had aged sufficiently in its present incarnation. In consequence Anthony took a miserable and hysterical Gloria out to Kansas City, where, in the fashion of mankind, they paid the terrible and mind-shaking deference to the dead.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert became, for the first and last time in his life, a truly pathetic figure. That woman he had broken to wait upon his body and play congregation to his mind had ironically deserted him—just when he could not much longer have supported her. Never again would he be able so satisfactorily to bore and bully a human soul.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (191-260)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SYMPOSIUM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> GLORIA had lulled Anthony's mind to sleep. She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun. In those first years what he believed bore invariably the stamp of Gloria; he saw the sun always through the pattern of the curtain.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a sort of lassitude that brought them back to Marietta for another summer. Through a golden enervating spring they had loitered, restive and lazily extravagant, along the California coast, joining other parties intermittently and drifting from Pasadena to Coronado, from Coronado to Santa Barbara, with no purpose more apparent than Gloria's desire to dance by different music or catch some infinitesimal variant among the changing colors of the sea. Out of the Pacific there rose to greet them savage rocklands and equally barbaric hostelries built that at tea-time one might drowse into a languid wicker bazaar glorified by the polo costumes of Southhampton and Lake Forest and Newport and Palm Beach. And, as the waves met and splashed and glittered in the most placid of the bays, so they joined this group and that, and with them shifted stations, murmuring ever of those strange unsubstantial gaieties in wait just over the next green and fruitful valley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A simple healthy leisure class it was—the best of the men not unpleasantly undergraduate—they seemed to be on a perpetual candidates list for some etherealized "Porcellian" or "Skull and Bones" extended out indefinitely into the world; the women, of more than average beauty, fragilely athletic, somewhat idiotic as hostesses but charming and infinitely decorative as guests. Sedately and gracefully they danced the steps of their selection in the balmy tea hours, accomplishing with a certain dignity the movements so horribly burlesqued by clerk and chorus girl the country over. It seemed ironic that in this lone and discredited offspring of the arts Americans should excel, unquestionably.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having danced and splashed through a lavish spring, Anthony and Gloria found that they had spent too much money and for this must go into retirement for a certain period. There was Anthony's "work," they said. Almost before they knew it they were back in the gray house, more aware now that other lovers had slept there, other names had been called over the banisters, other couples had sat upon the porch steps watching the gray-green fields and the black bulk of woods beyond.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was the same Anthony, more restless, inclined to quicken only under the stimulus of several high-balls, faintly, almost imperceptibly, apathetic toward Gloria. But Gloria—she would be twenty-four in August and was in an attractive but sincere panic about it. Six years to thirty! Had she been less in love with Anthony her sense of the flight of time would have expressed itself in a reawakened interest in other men, in a deliberate intention of extracting a transient gleam of romance from every potential lover who glanced at her with lowered brows over a shining dinner table. She said to Anthony one day:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They were bound eastward through a parched and lifeless Indiana, and she had looked up from one of her beloved moving picture magazines to find a casual conversation suddenly turned grave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part, visibility, road, rural, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony frowned out the car window. As the track crossed a country road a farmer appeared momentarily in his wagon; he was chewing on a straw and was apparently the same farmer they had passed a dozen times before, sitting in silent and malignant symbolism. As Anthony turned to Gloria his frown intensified.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You worry me," he objected; "I can imagine <i>wanting</i> another woman under certain transitory circumstances, but I can't imagine taking her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't feel that way, Anthony. I can't be bothered resisting things I want. My way is not to want them—to want nobody but you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet when I think that if you just happened to take a fancy to some one——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't be an idiot!" she exclaimed. "There'd be nothing casual about it. And I can't even imagine the possibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This emphatically closed the conversation. Anthony's unfailing appreciation made her happier in his company than in any one's else. She definitely enjoyed him—she loved him. So the summer began very much as had the one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was, however, one radical change in ménage. The icy-hearted Scandinavian, whose austere cooking and sardonic manner of waiting on table had so depressed Gloria, gave way to an exceedingly efficient Japanese whose name was Tanalahaka, but who confessed that he heeded any summons which included the dissyllable "Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana was unusually small even for a Japanese, and displayed a somewhat naïve conception of himself as a man of the world. On the day of his arrival from "R. Gugimoniki, Japanese Reliable Employment Agency," he called Anthony into his room to see the treasures of his trunk. These included a large collection of Japanese post cards, which he was all for explaining to his employer at once, individually and at great length. Among them were half a dozen of pornographic intent and plainly of American origin, though the makers had modestly omitted both their names and the form for mailing. He next brought out some of his own handiwork—a pair of American pants, which he had made himself, and two suits of solid silk underwear. He informed Anthony confidentially as to the purpose for which these latter were reserved. The next exhibit was a rather good copy of an etching of Abraham Lincoln, to whose face he had given an unmistakable Japanese cast. Last came a flute; he had made it himself but it was broken: he was going to fix it soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After these polite formalities, which Anthony conjectured must be native to Japan, Tana delivered a long harangue in splintered English on the relation of master and servant from which Anthony gathered that he had worked on large estates but had always quarrelled with the other servants because they were not honest. They had a great time over the word "honest," and in fact became rather irritated with each other, because Anthony persisted stubbornly that Tana was trying to say "hornets," and even went to the extent of buzzing in the manner of a bee and flapping his arms to imitate wings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After three-quarters of an hour Anthony was released with the warm assurance that they would have other nice chats in which Tana would tell "how we do in my countree."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such was Tana's garrulous première in the gray house—and he fulfilled its promise. Though he was conscientious and honorable, he was unquestionably a terrific bore. He seemed unable to control his tongue, sometimes continuing from paragraph to paragraph with a look akin to pain in his small brown eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sunday and Monday afternoons he read the comic sections of the newspapers. One cartoon which contained a facetious Japanese butler diverted him enormously, though he claimed that the protagonist, who to Anthony appeared clearly Oriental, had really an American face. The difficulty with the funny paper was that when, aided by Anthony, he had spelled out the last three pictures and assimilated their context with a concentration surely adequate for Kant's "Critique," he had entirely forgotten what the first pictures were about.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the middle of June Anthony and Gloria celebrated their first anniversary by having a "date." Anthony knocked at the door and she ran to let him in. Then they sat together on the couch calling over those names they had made for each other, new combinations of endearments ages old. Yet to this "date" was appended no attenuated good-night with its ecstasy of regret.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in June horror leered out at Gloria, struck at her and frightened her bright soul back half a generation. Then slowly it faded out, faded back into that impenetrable darkness whence it had come—taking relentlessly its modicum of youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With an infallible sense of the dramatic it chose a little railroad station in a wretched village near Portchester. The station platform lay all day bare as a prairie, exposed to the dusty yellow sun and to the glance of that most obnoxious type of countryman who lives near a metropolis and has attained its cheap smartness without its urbanity. A dozen of these yokels, red-eyed, cheerless as scarecrows, saw the incident. Dimly it passed across their confused and uncomprehending minds, taken at its broadest for a coarse joke, at its subtlest for a "shame." Meanwhile there upon the platform a measure of brightness faded from the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With Eric Merriam, Anthony had been sitting over a decanter of Scotch all the hot summer afternoon, while Gloria and Constance Merriam swam and sunned themselves at the Beach Club, the latter under a striped parasol-awning, Gloria stretched sensuously upon the soft hot sand, tanning her inevitable legs. Later they had all four played with inconsequential sandwiches; then Gloria had risen, tapping Anthony's knee with her parasol to get his attention.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've got to go, dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now?" He looked at her unwillingly. At that moment nothing seemed of more importance than to idle on that shady porch drinking mellowed Scotch, while his host reminisced interminably on the byplay of some forgotten political campaign.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've really got to go," repeated Gloria. "We can get a taxi to the station. . . . Come on, Anthony!" she commanded a bit more imperiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now see here—" Merriam, his yarn cut off, made conventional objections, meanwhile provocatively filling his guest's glass with a high-ball that should have been sipped through ten minutes. But at Gloria's annoyed "We really <i>must!</i>" Anthony drank it off, got to his feet and made an elaborate bow to his hostess.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems we 'must,'" he said, with little grace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> In a minute he was following Gloria down a garden-walk between tall rose-bushes, her parasol brushing gently the June-blooming leaves. Most inconsiderate, he thought, as they reached the road. He felt with injured naïvete that Gloria should not have interrupted such innocent and harmless enjoyment. The whiskey had both soothed and clarified the restless things in his mind. It occurred to him that she had taken this same attitude several times before. Was he always to retreat from pleasant episodes at a touch of her parasol or a flicker of her eye? His unwillingness blurred to ill will, which rose within him like a resistless bubble. He kept silent, perversely inhibiting a desire to reproach her. They found a taxi in front of the Inn; rode silently to the little station. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then Anthony knew what he wanted—to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go over to see the Barneses," he said without looking at her. "I don't feel like going home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Mrs. Barnes, née Rachael Jerryl, had a summer place several miles from Redgate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We went there day before yesterday," she answered shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure they'd be glad to see us." He felt that that was not a strong enough note, braced himself stubbornly, and added: "I want to see the Barneses. I haven't any desire to go home."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I haven't any desire to go to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly they stared at each other.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony," she said with annoyance, "this is Sunday night and they probably have guests for supper. Why we should go in at this hour——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why couldn't we have stayed at the Merriams'?" he burst out. "Why go home when we were having a perfectly decent time? They asked us to supper."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They had to. Give me the money and I'll get the railroad tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly will not! I'm in no humor for a ride in that damn hot train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria stamped her foot on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, you act as if you're tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary, I'm perfectly sober."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But his voice had slipped into a husky key and she knew with certainty that this was untrue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're sober you'll give me the money for the tickets."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was too late to talk to him that way. In his mind was but one idea—that Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily a dull and sullen hate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go in the train," he said, his voice trembling a little with anger. "We're going to the Barneses."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not!" she cried. "If you go I'm going home alone."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word she turned toward the ticket office; simultaneously he remembered that she had some money with her and that this was not the sort of victory he wanted, the sort he must have. He took a step after her and seized her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here!" he muttered, "you're <i>not</i> going alone!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly am—why, Anthony!" This exclamation as she tried to pull away from him and he only tightened his grasp.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked at her with narrowed and malicious eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let go!" Her cry had a quality of fierceness. "If you have <i>any</i> decency you'll let go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?" He knew why. But he took a confused and not quite confident pride in holding her there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going home, do you understand? And you're going to let me go!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes were burning now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you going to make a scene here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I say you're not going! I'm tired of your eternal selfishness!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I only want to go home." Two wrathful tears started from her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This time you're going to do what <i>I</i> say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Slowly her body straightened: her head went back in a gesture of infinite scorn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hate you!" Her low words were expelled like venom through her clenched teeth. "Oh, <i>let</i> me go! Oh, I <i>hate</i> you!" She tried to jerk herself away but he only grasped the other arm. "I hate you! I hate you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At Gloria's fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you brute!" she sobbed. "Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, if there was one <i>man</i> here you couldn't do this! You couldn't do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct—until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta," he said with fine reserve.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For answer Gloria seized his hand with both of hers and raising it to her mouth bit deeply into his thumb. He scarcely noticed the pain; seeing the blood spurt he absent-mindedly drew out his handkerchief and wrapped the wound. That too was part of the triumph he supposed—it was inevitable that defeat should thus be resented—and as such was beneath notice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was sobbing, almost without tears, profoundly and bitterly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I won't go! I won't go! You—can't—make—me—go! You've—you've killed any love I ever had for you, and any respect. But all that's left in me would die before I'd move from this place. Oh, if I'd thought <i>you'd</i> lay your hands on me——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're going with me," he said brutally, "if I have to carry you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, car part, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He turned, beckoned to a taxicab, told the driver to go to Marietta. The man dismounted and swung the door open. Anthony faced his wife and said between his clenched teeth:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Will you get in?—or will I <i>put</i> you in?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> With a subdued cry of infinite pain and despair she yielded herself up and got into the car.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, affect, twilight, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> All the long ride, through the increasing dark of twilight, she sat huddled in her side of the car, her silence broken by an occasional dry and solitary sob. Anthony stared out the window, his mind working dully on the slowly changing significance of what had occurred. Something was wrong—that last cry of Gloria's had struck a chord which echoed posthumously and with incongruous disquiet in his heart. He must be right—yet, she seemed such a pathetic little thing now, broken and dispirited, humiliated beyond the measure of her lot to bear. The sleeves of her dress were torn; her parasol was gone, forgotten on the platform. It was a new costume, he remembered, and she had been so proud of it that very morning when they had left the house. . . . He began wondering if any one they knew had seen the incident. And persistently there recurred to him her cry:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All that's left in me would die——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This gave him a confused and increasing worry. It fitted so well with the Gloria who lay in the corner—no longer a proud Gloria, nor any Gloria he had known. He asked himself if it were possible. While he did not believe she would cease to love him—this, of course, was unthinkable—it was yet problematical whether Gloria without her arrogance, her independence, her virginal confidence and courage, would be the girl of his glory, the radiant woman who was precious and charming because she was ineffably, triumphantly herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was very drunk even then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on his bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was after one o'clock and the hall seemed extraordinarily quiet when Gloria, wide-eyed and sleepless, traversed it and pushed open the door of his room. He had been too befuddled to open the windows and the air was stale and thick with whiskey. She stood for a moment by his bed, a slender, exquisitely graceful figure in her boyish silk pajamas—then with abandon she flung herself upon him, half waking him in the frantic emotion of her embrace, dropping her warm tears upon his throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Anthony!" she cried passionately, "oh, my darling, you don't know what you did!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seemed, last night," she said gravely, her fingers playing in his hair, "that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you, but never in quite the same way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, she was aware even then that she would forget in time and that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. After that morning the incident was never mentioned and its deep wound healed with Anthony's hand—and if there was triumph some darker force than theirs possessed it, possessed the knowledge and the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIETZSCHEAN INCIDENT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony's fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle "Never give a damn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not for anything or anybody," she said, "except myself and, by implication, for Anthony. That's the rule of all life and if it weren't I'd be that way anyhow. Nobody'd do anything for me if it didn't gratify them to, and I'd do as little for them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was on the front porch of the nicest lady in Marietta when she said this, and as she finished she gave a curious little cry and sank in a dead faint to the porch floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> The lady brought her to and drove her home in her car. It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably with child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay upon the long lounge down-stairs. Day was slipping warmly out the window, touching the late roses on the porch pillars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All I think of ever is that I love you," she wailed. "I value my body because you think it's beautiful. And this body of mine—of yours—to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It's simply intolerable. Oh, Anthony, I'm not afraid of the pain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He consoled her desperately—but in vain. She continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then afterward I might have wide hips and be pale, with all my freshness gone and no radiance in my hair."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, asking:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it certain?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>I</i> don't know anything. I've always hated obstrics, or whatever you call them. I thought I'd have a child some time. But not now."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for God's sake don't lie there and go to pieces."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her sobs lapsed. She drew down a merciful silence from the twilight which filled the room. "Turn on the lights," she pleaded. "These days seem so short—June seemed—to—have—longer days when I was a little girl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The lights snapped on and it was as though blue drapes of softest silk had been dropped behind the windows and the door. Her pallor, her immobility, without grief now, or joy, awoke his sympathy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want me to have it?" she asked listlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm indifferent. That is, I'm neutral. If you have it I'll probably be glad. If you don't—well, that's all right too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd make up your mind one way or the other!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Suppose you make up <i>your</i> mind."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She looked at him contemptuously, scorning to answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd think you'd been singled out of all the women in the world for this crowning indignity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What if I do!" she cried angrily. "It isn't an indignity for them. It's their one excuse for living. It's the one thing they're good for. It <i>is</i> an indignity for <i>me.</i><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See here, Gloria, I'm with you whatever you do, but for God's sake be a sport about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, don't <i>fuss</i> at me!" she wailed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book from the shelf and dropped into a chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense on the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll drive over and see Constance Merriam to-morrow."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. And I'll go to Tarrytown and see Grampa."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—You see," she added, "it isn't that I'm afraid—of this or anything else. I'm being true to me, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," he agreed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE PRACTICAL MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls; atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his hand together with "Photographic Histories of the World War," official Explain-alls, and the "Personal Impressions" of war correspondents and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during Anthony's visit his grandfather's secretary, Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time "Accomplished Gin-physician" of "Pat's Place" in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would appear with an extra. The old man attacked each paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for preservation and thrusting them into one of his already bulging files.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what have you been doing?" he asked Anthony blandly. "Nothing? Well, I thought so. I've been intending to drive over and see you, all summer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've been writing. Don't you remember the essay I sent you—the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Essay? You never sent <i>me</i> any essay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch shook his head mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no. You never sent <i>me</i> any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you read it, Grampa," insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, "you read it and disagreed with it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth, displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing his error and covering it up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you're writing," he said quickly. "Well, why don't you go over and write about these Germans? Write something real, something about what's going on, something people can read."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anybody can't be a war correspondent," objected Anthony. "You have to have some newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can't spare the money to go over as a free-lance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll send you over," suggested his grandfather surprisingly. "I'll get you over as an authorized correspondent of any newspaper you pick out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony recoiled from the idea—almost simultaneously he bounded toward it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—don't—know——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He would have to leave Gloria, whose whole life yearned toward him and enfolded him. Gloria was in trouble. Oh, the thing wasn't feasible—yet—he saw himself in khaki, leaning, as all war correspondents lean, upon a heavy stick, portfolio at shoulder—trying to look like an Englishman. "I'd like to think it over," he confessed. "It's certainly very kind of you. I'll think it over and I'll let you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thinking it over absorbed him on the journey to New York. He had had one of those sudden flashes of illumination vouchsafed to all men who are dominated by a strong and beloved woman, which show them a world of harder men, more fiercely trained and grappling with the abstractions of thought and war. In that world the arms of Gloria would exist only as the hot embrace of a chance mistress, coolly sought and quickly forgotten. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These unfamiliar phantoms were crowding closely about him when he boarded his train for Marietta, in the Grand Central Station. The car was crowded; he secured the last vacant seat and it was only after several minutes that he gave even a casual glance to the man beside him. When he did he saw a heavy lay of jaw and nose, a curved chin and small, puffed-under eyes. In a moment he recognized Joseph Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Simultaneously they both half rose, were half embarrassed, and exchanged what amounted to a half handshake. Then, as though to complete the matter, they both half laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," remarked Anthony without inspiration, "I haven't seen you for a long time." Immediately he regretted his words and started to add: "I didn't know you lived out this way." But Bloeckman anticipated him by asking pleasantly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How's your wife? . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's very well. How've you been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Excellent." His tone amplified the grandeur of the word.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It seemed to Anthony that during the last year Bloeckman had grown tremendously in dignity. The boiled look was gone, he seemed "done" at last. In addition he was no longer overdressed. The inappropriate facetiousness he had affected in ties had given way to a sturdy dark pattern, and his right hand, which had formerly displayed two heavy rings, was now innocent of ornament and even without the raw glow of a manicure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This dignity appeared also in his personality. The last aura of the successful travelling-man had faded from him, that deliberate ingratiation of which the lowest form is the bawdy joke in the Pullman smoker. One imagined that, having been fawned upon financially, he had attained aloofness; having been snubbed socially, he had acquired reticence. But whatever had given him weight instead of bulk, Anthony no longer felt a correct superiority in his presence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you remember Caramel, Richard Caramel? I believe you met him one night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember. He was writing a book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he sold it to the movies. Then they had some scenario man named Jordan work on it. Well, Dick subscribes to a clipping bureau and he's furious because about half the movie reviewers speak of the 'power and strength of William Jordan's "Demon Lover."' Didn't mention old Dick at all. You'd think this fellow Jordan had actually conceived and developed the thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman nodded comprehensively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Most of the contracts state that the original writer's name goes into all the paid publicity. Is Caramel still writing?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes. Writing hard. Short stories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, that's fine, that's fine. . . . You on this train often?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About once a week. We live in Marietta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is that so? Well, well! I live near Cos Cob myself. Bought a place there only recently. We're only five miles apart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll have to come and see us." Anthony was surprised at his own courtesy. "I'm sure Gloria'd be delighted to see an old friend. Anybody'll tell you where the house is—it's our second season there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you." Then, as though returning a complementary politeness: "How is your grandfather?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's been well. I had lunch with him to-day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A great character," said Bloeckman severely. "A fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE TRIUMPH OF LETHARGY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony found his wife deep in the porch hammock voluptuously engaged with a lemonade and a tomato sandwich and carrying on an apparently cheery conversation with Tana upon one of Tana's complicated themes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In my countree," Anthony recognized his invariable preface, "all time—peoples—eat rice—because haven't got. Cannot eat what no have got." Had his nationality not been desperately apparent one would have thought he had acquired his knowledge of his native land from American primary-school geographies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When the Oriental had been squelched and dismissed to the kitchen, Anthony turned questioningly to Gloria:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all right," she announced, smiling broadly. "And it surprised me more than it does you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's no doubt?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None! Couldn't be!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They rejoiced happily, gay again with reborn irresponsibility. Then he told her of his opportunity to go abroad, and that he was almost ashamed to reject it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do <i>you</i> think? Just tell me frankly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Anthony!" Her eyes were startled. "Do you want to go? Without me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His face fell—yet he knew, with his wife's question, that it was too late. Her arms, sweet and strangling, were around him, for he had made all such choices back in that room in the Plaza the year before. This was an anachronism from an age of such dreams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he lied, in a great burst of comprehension, "of course I don't. I was thinking you might go as a nurse or something." He wondered dully if his grandfather would consider this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As she smiled he realized again how beautiful she was, a gorgeous girl of miraculous freshness and sheerly honorable eyes. She embraced his suggestion with luxurious intensity, holding it aloft like a sun of her own making and basking in its beams. She strung together an amazing synopsis for an extravaganza of martial adventure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After supper, surfeited with the subject, she yawned. She wanted not to talk but only to read "Penrod," stretched upon the lounge until at midnight she fell asleep. But Anthony, after he had carried her romantically up the stairs, stayed awake to brood upon the day, vaguely angry with her, vaguely dissatisfied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I going to do?" he began at breakfast. "Here we've been married a year and we've just worried around without even being efficient people of leisure."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you ought to do something," she admitted, being in an agreeable and loquacious humor. This was not the first of these discussions, but as they usually developed Anthony in the rôle of protagonist, she had come to avoid them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, class"><br /> <poem><br /> "It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work," he continued, "but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How you've changed!" remarked Gloria. "Once you told me you didn't see why an American couldn't loaf gracefully."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, damn it, I wasn't married. And the old mind was working at top speed and now it's going round and round like a cog-wheel with nothing to catch it. As a matter of fact I think that if I hadn't met you I <i>would</i> have done something. But you make leisure so subtly attractive——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it's all my fault——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I didn't mean that, and you know I didn't. But here I'm almost twenty-seven and——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she interrupted in vexation, "you make me tired! Talking as though I were objecting or hindering you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was just discussing it, Gloria. Can't I discuss——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd be strong enough to settle——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—something with you without——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—your own problems without coming to me. You <i>talk</i> a lot about going to work. I could use more money very easily, but <i>I'm</i> not complaining. Whether you work or not I love you." Her last words were gentle as fine snow upon hard ground. But for the moment neither was attending to the other—they were each engaged in polishing and perfecting his own attitude.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have worked—some." This by Anthony was an imprudent bringing up of raw reserves. Gloria laughed, torn between delight and derision; she resented his sophistry as at the same time she admired his nonchalance. She would never blame him for being the ineffectual idler so long as he did it sincerely, from the attitude that nothing much was worth doing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Work!" she scoffed. "Oh, you sad bird! You bluffer! Work—that means a great arranging of the desk and the lights, a great sharpening of pencils, and 'Gloria, don't sing!' and 'Please keep that damn Tana away from me,' and 'Let me read you my opening sentence,' and 'I won't be through for a long time, Gloria, so don't stay up for me,' and a tremendous consumption of tea or coffee. And that's all. In just about an hour I hear the old pencil stop scratching and look over. You've got out a book and you're 'looking up' something. Then you're reading. Then yawns—then bed and a great tossing about because you're all full of caffeine and can't sleep. Two weeks later the whole performance over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With much difficulty Anthony retained a scanty breech-clout of dignity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that's a <i>slight</i> exaggeration. You know <i>darn well</i> I sold an essay to The Florentine—and it attracted a lot of attention considering the circulation of The Florentine. And what's more, Gloria, you know I sat up till five o'clock in the morning finishing it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lapsed into silence, giving him rope. And if he had not hanged himself he had certainly come to the end of it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At least," he concluded feebly, "I'm perfectly willing to be a war correspondent."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But so was Gloria. They were both willing—anxious; they assured each other of it. The evening ended on a note of tremendous sentiment, the majesty of leisure, the ill health of Adam Patch, love at any cost.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony!" she called over the banister one afternoon a week later, "there's some one at the door." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, who had been lolling in the hammock on the sun-speckled south porch, strolled around to the front of the house. A foreign car, large and impressive, crouched like an immense and saturnine bug at the foot of the path. A man in a soft pongee suit, with cap to match, hailed him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there, Patch. Ran over to call on you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Bloeckman; as always, infinitesimally improved, of subtler intonation, of more convincing ease.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm awfully glad you did." Anthony raised his voice to a vine-covered window: "Glor-i-<i>a</i>! We've got a visitor!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm in the tub," wailed Gloria politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a smile the two men acknowledged the triumph of her alibi.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She'll be down. Come round here on the side-porch. Like a drink? Gloria's always in the tub—good third of every day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Pity she doesn't live on the Sound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can't afford it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As coming from Adam Patch's grandson, Bloeckman took this as a form of pleasantry. After fifteen minutes filled with estimable brilliancies, Gloria appeared, fresh in starched yellow, bringing atmosphere and an increase of vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to be a successful sensation in the movies," she announced. "I hear that Mary Pickford makes a million dollars annually."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You could, you know," said Bloeckman. "I think you'd film very well."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Would you let me, Anthony? If I only play unsophisticated rôles?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As the conversation continued in stilted commas, Anthony wondered that to him and Bloeckman both this girl had once been the most stimulating, the most tonic personality they had ever known—and now the three sat like overoiled machines, without conflict, without fear, without elation, heavily enamelled little figures secure beyond enjoyment in a world where death and war, dull emotion and noble savagery were covering a continent with the smoke of terror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose. . . . Life was no more than this summer afternoon; a faint wind stirring the lace collar of Gloria's dress; the slow baking drowsiness of the veranda. . . . Intolerably unmoved they all seemed, removed from any romantic imminency of action. Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Any day next week," Bloeckman was saying to Gloria. "Here—take this card. What they do is to give you a test of about three hundred feet of film, and they can tell pretty accurately from that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about Wednesday?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wednesday's fine. Just phone me and I'll go around with you——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, dust, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He was on his feet, shaking hands briskly—then his car was a wraith of dust down the road. Anthony turned to his wife in bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't mind if I have a trial, Anthony. Just a trial? I've got to go to town Wednesday, <i>any</i>how."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But it's so silly! You don't want to go into the movies—moon around a studio all day with a lot of cheap chorus people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lot of mooning around Mary Pickford does!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody isn't a Mary Pickford."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't see how you'd object to my <i>try</i>ing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do, though. I hate actors."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you make me tired. Do you imagine I have a very thrilling time dozing on this damn porch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wouldn't mind if you loved me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course I love you," she said impatiently, making out a quick case for herself. "It's just because I do that I hate to see you go to pieces by just lying around and saying you ought to work. Perhaps if I <i>did</i> go into this for a while it'd stir you up so you'd do something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's just your craving for excitement, that's all it is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe it is! It's a perfectly natural craving, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you go to the movies I'm going to Europe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, go on then! <i>I'm</i> not stopping you!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To show she was not stopping him she melted into melancholy tears. Together they marshalled the armies of sentiment—words, kisses, endearments, self-reproaches. They attained nothing. Inevitably they attained nothing. Finally, in a burst of gargantuan emotion each of them sat down and wrote a letter. Anthony's was to his grandfather; Gloria's was to Joseph Bloeckman. It was a triumph of lethargy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One day early in July Anthony, returned from an afternoon in New York, called up-stairs to Gloria. Receiving no answer he guessed she was asleep and so went into the pantry for one of the little sandwiches that were always prepared for them. He found Tana seated at the kitchen table before a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends—cigar-boxes, knives, pencils, the tops of cans, and some scraps of paper covered with elaborate figures and diagrams.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil you doing?" demanded Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana politely grinned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I show you," he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I tell——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You making a dog-house?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, sa." Tana grinned again. "Make typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Typewriter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sa. I think, oh all time I think, lie in bed think 'bout typewutta."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So you thought you'd make one, eh?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, munching a sandwich, leaned leisurely against the sink. Tana opened and closed his mouth several times as though testing its capacity for action. Then with a rush he began:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I been think—typewutta—has, oh, many many many many <i>thing</i>. Oh many many many many." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Many keys. I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No-o? <i>Yes</i>—key! Many many many many lettah. Like so a-b-c."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, you're right."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell." He screwed his face up in a tremendous effort to express himself: "I been think—many words—end same. Like i-n-g."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You bet. A whole raft of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So—I make—typewutta—quick. Not so many lettah——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a great idea, Tana. Save time. You'll make a fortune. Press one key and there's 'ing.' Hope you work it out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana laughed disparagingly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wait. I tell——" <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Mrs. Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out. Wait, I tell—" Again he screwed up his face for action. "<i>My</i> typewutta——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is she?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here—I make." He pointed to the miscellany of junk on the table.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean Mrs. Patch."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She out." Tana reassured him. "She be back five o'clock, she say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Down in the village?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Went off be-fore lunch. She go Mr. Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony started.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Went out with Mr. Bloeckman?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She be back five."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, affect, road"><br /> <poem><br /> Without a word Anthony left the kitchen with Tana's disconsolate "I tell" trailing after him. So this was Gloria's idea of excitement, by God! His fists were clenched; within a moment he had worked himself up to a tremendous pitch of indignation. He went to the door and looked out; there was no car in sight and his watch stood at four minutes of five. With furious energy he dashed down to the end of the path—as far as the bend of the road a mile off he could see no car—except—but it was a farmer's flivver. Then, in an undignified pursuit of dignity, he rushed back to the shelter of the house as quickly as he had rushed out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Pacing up and down the living room he began an angry rehearsal of the speech he would make to her when she came in——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So this is love!" he would begin—or no, it sounded too much like the popular phrase "So this is Paris!" He must be dignified, hurt, grieved. Anyhow—"So this is what <i>you</i> do when I have to go up and trot all day around the hot city on business. No wonder I can't write! No wonder I don't dare let you out of my sight!" He was expanding now, warming to his subject. "I'll tell you," he continued, "I'll tell you—" He paused, catching a familiar ring in the words—then he realized—it was Tana's "I tell."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Yet Anthony neither laughed nor seemed absurd to himself. To his frantic imagination it was already six—seven—eight, and she was never coming! Bloeckman finding her bored and unhappy had persuaded her to go to California with him. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —There was a great to-do out in front, a joyous "Yoho, Anthony!" and he rose trembling, weakly happy to see her fluttering up the path. Bloeckman was following, cap in hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest!" she cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been for the best jaunt—all over New York State."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll have to be starting home," said Bloeckman, almost immediately. "Wish you'd both been here when I came."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry I wasn't," answered Anthony dryly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he had departed Anthony hesitated. The fear was gone from his heart, yet he felt that some protest was ethically apropos. Gloria resolved his uncertainty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, car, agency"><br /> <poem><br /> "I knew you wouldn't mind. He came just before lunch and said he had to go to Garrison on business and wouldn't I go with him. He looked so lonesome, Anthony. And I drove his car all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired—tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure—that, and the sense of death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose I don't care," he answered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One must be broad about these things, and Gloria being young, being beautiful, must have reasonable privileges. Yet it wearied him that he failed to understand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WINTER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She rolled over on her back and lay still for a moment in the great bed watching the February sun suffer one last attenuated refinement in its passage through the leaded panes into the room. For a time she had no accurate sense of her whereabouts or of the events of the day before, or the day before that; then, like a suspended pendulum, memory began to beat out its story, releasing with each swing a burdened quota of time until her life was given back to her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She could hear, now, Anthony's troubled breathing beside her; she could smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the resultant strain distributed easily over her body—it was a tremendous effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing herself into performing an impossible action. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth to get rid of that intolerable taste; then back by the bedside listening to the rattle of Bounds's key in the outer door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Wake up, Anthony!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She climbed into bed beside him and closed her eyes. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> Almost the last thing she remembered was a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Lacy. Mrs. Lacy had said, "Sure you don't want us to get you a taxi?" and Anthony had replied that he guessed they could walk over to Fifth all right. Then they had both attempted, imprudently, to bow—and collapsed absurdly into a battalion of empty milk bottles just outside the door. There must have been two dozen milk bottles standing open-mouthed in the dark. She could conceive of no plausible explanation of those milk bottles. Perhaps they had been attracted by the singing in the Lacy house and had hurried over agape with wonder to see the fun. Well, they'd had the worst of it—though it seemed that she and Anthony never would get up, the perverse things rolled so. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> Still, they had found a taxi. "My meter's broken and it'll cost you a dollar and a half to get home," said the taxi driver. "Well," said Anthony, "I'm young Packy McFarland and if you'll come down here I'll beat you till you can't stand up." . . . At that point the man had driven off without them. They must have found another taxi, for they were in the apartment. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What time is it?" Anthony was sitting up in bed, staring at her with owlish precision.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was obviously a rhetorical question. Gloria could think of no reason why she should be expected to know the time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Golly, I feel like the devil!" muttered Anthony dispassionately. Relaxing, he tumbled back upon his pillow. "Bring on your grim reaper!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, how'd we finally get home last night?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Taxi."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" Then, after a pause: "Did you put me to bed?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Seems to me you put <i>me</i> to bed. What day is it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday? I hope so. If it's Wednesday, I've got to start work at that idiotic place. Supposed to be down at nine or some such ungodly hour."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ask Bounds," suggested Gloria feebly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds!" he called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Sprightly, sober—a voice from a world that it seemed in the past two days they had left forever, Bounds sprang in short steps down the hall and appeared in the half darkness of the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What day, Bounds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "February the twenty-second, I think, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean day of the week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tuesday, sir." "Thanks." After a pause: "Are you ready for breakfast, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, and Bounds, before you get it, will you make a pitcher of water, and set it here beside the bed? I'm a little thirsty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds retreated in sober dignity down the hallway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Lincoln's birthday," affirmed Anthony without enthusiasm, "or St. Valentine's or somebody's. When did we start on this insane party?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sunday night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After prayers?" he suggested sardonically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> "We raced all over town in those hansoms and Maury sat up with his driver, don't you remember? Then we came home and he tried to cook some bacon—came out of the pantry with a few blackened remains, insisting it was 'fried to the proverbial crisp.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them laughed, spontaneously but with some difficulty, and lying there side by side reviewed the chain of events that had ended in this rusty and chaotic dawn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They had been in New York for almost four months, since the country had grown too cool in late October. They had given up California this year, partly because of lack of funds, partly with the idea of going abroad should this interminable war, persisting now into its second year, end during the winter. Of late their income had lost elasticity; no longer did it stretch to cover gay whims and pleasant extravagances, and Anthony had spent many puzzled and unsatisfactory hours over a densely figured pad, making remarkable budgets that left huge margins for "amusements, trips, etc.," and trying to apportion, even approximately, their past expenditures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered a time when in going on a "party" with his two best friends, he and Maury had invariably paid more than their share of the expenses. They would buy the tickets for the theatre or squabble between themselves for the dinner check. It had seemed fitting; Dick, with his naïveté and his astonishing fund of information about himself, had been a diverting, almost juvenile, figure—court jester to their royalty. But this was no longer true. It was Dick who always had money; it was Anthony who entertained within limitations—always excepting occasional wild, wine-inspired, check-cashing parties—and it was Anthony who was solemn about it next morning and told the scornful and disgusted Gloria that they'd have to be "more careful next time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the two years since the publication of "The Demon Lover," Dick had made over twenty-five thousand dollars, most of it lately, when the reward of the author of fiction had begun to swell unprecedentedly as a result of the voracious hunger of the motion pictures for plots. He received seven hundred dollars for every story, at that time a large emolument for such a young man—he was not quite thirty—and for every one that contained enough "action" (kissing, shooting, and sacrificing) for the movies, he obtained an additional thousand. His stories varied; there was a measure of vitality and a sort of instinctive technic in all of them, but none attained the personality of "The Demon Lover," and there were several that Anthony considered downright cheap. These, Dick explained severely, were to widen his audience. Wasn't it true that men who had attained real permanence from Shakespeare to Mark Twain had appealed to the many as well as to the elect?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Though Anthony and Maury disagreed, Gloria told him to go ahead and make as much money as he could—that was the only thing that counted anyhow. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury, a little stouter, faintly mellower, and more complaisant, had gone to work in Philadelphia. He came to New York once or twice a month and on such occasions the four of them travelled the popular routes from dinner to the theatre, thence to the Frolic or, perhaps, at the urging of the ever-curious Gloria, to one of the cellars of Greenwich Village, notorious through the furious but short-lived vogue of the "new poetry movement."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, after many monologues directed at his reticent wife, Anthony determined to "get something to do," for the winter at any rate. He wanted to please his grandfather and even, in a measure, to see how he liked it himself. He discovered during several tentative semi-social calls that employers were not interested in a young man who was only going to "try it for a few months or so." As the grandson of Adam Patch he was received everywhere with marked courtesy, but the old man was a back number now—the heyday of his fame as first an "oppressor" and then an uplifter of the people had been during the twenty years preceding his retirement. Anthony even found several of the younger men who were under the impression that Adam Patch had been dead for some years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Eventually Anthony went to his grandfather and asked his advice, which turned out to be that he should enter the bond business as a salesman, a tedious suggestion to Anthony, but one that in the end he determined to follow. Sheer money in deft manipulation had fascinations under all circumstances, while almost any side of manufacturing would be insufferably dull. He considered newspaper work but decided that the hours were not ordered for a married man. And he lingered over pleasant fancies of himself either as editor of a brilliant weekly of opinion, an American Mercure de France, or as scintillant producer of satiric comedy and Parisian musical revue. However, the approaches to these latter guilds seemed to be guarded by professional secrets. Men drifted into them by the devious highways of writing and acting. It was palpably impossible to get on a magazine unless you had been on one before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So in the end he entered, by way of his grandfather's letter, that Sanctum Americanum where sat the president of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy at his "cleared desk," and issued therefrom employed. He was to begin work on the twenty-third of February.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, speed, road, city, urban"><br /> <poem><br /> In tribute to the momentous occasion this two-day revel had been planned, since, he said, after he began working he'd have to get to bed early during the week. Maury Noble had arrived from Philadelphia on a trip that had to do with seeing some man in Wall Street (whom, incidentally, he failed to see), and Richard Caramel had been half persuaded, half tricked into joining them. They had condescended to a wet and fashionable wedding on Monday afternoon, and in the evening had occurred the dénouement: Gloria, going beyond her accustomed limit of four precisely timed cocktails, led them on as gay and joyous a bacchanal as they had ever known, disclosing an astonishing knowledge of ballet steps, and singing songs which she confessed had been taught her by her cook when she was innocent and seventeen. She repeated these by request at intervals throughout the evening with such frank conviviality that Anthony, far from being annoyed, was gratified at this fresh source of entertainment. The occasion was memorable in other ways—a long conversation between Maury and a defunct crab, which he was dragging around on the end of a string, as to whether the crab was fully conversant with the applications of the binomial theorem, and the aforementioned race in two hansom cabs with the sedate and impressive shadows of Fifth Avenue for audience, ending in a labyrinthine escape into the darkness of Central Park. Finally Anthony and Gloria had paid a call on some wild young married people—the Lacys—and collapsed in the empty milk bottles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Morning now—theirs to add up the checks cashed here and there in clubs, stores, restaurants. Theirs to air the dank staleness of wine and cigarettes out of the tall blue front room, to pick up the broken glass and brush at the stained fabric of chairs and sofas; to give Bounds suits and dresses for the cleaners; finally, to take their smothery half-feverish bodies and faded depressed spirits out into the chill air of February, that life might go on and Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy obtain the services of a vigorous man at nine next morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="law, traffic, car"><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember," called Anthony from the bathroom, "when Maury got out at the corner of One Hundred and Tenth Street and acted as a traffic cop, beckoning cars forward and motioning them back? They must have thought he was a private detective."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After each reminiscence they both laughed inordinately, their overwrought nerves responding as acutely and janglingly to mirth as to depression.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria at the mirror was wondering at the splendid color and freshness of her face—it seemed that she had never looked so well, though her stomach hurt her and her head was aching furiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> The day passed slowly. Anthony, riding in a taxi to his broker's to borrow money on a bond, found that he had only two dollars in his pocket. The fare would cost all of that, but he felt that on this particular afternoon he could not have endured the subway. When the taximetre reached his limit he must get out and walk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driving, driver"><br /> <poem><br /> With this his mind drifted off into one of its characteristic day-dreams. . . . In this dream he discovered that the metre was going too fast—the driver had dishonestly adjusted it. Calmly he reached his destination and then nonchalantly handed the man what he justly owed him. The man showed fight, but almost before his hands were up Anthony had knocked him down with one terrific blow. And when he rose Anthony quickly sidestepped and floored him definitely with a crack in the temple.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . He was in court now. The judge had fined him five dollars and he had no money. Would the court take his check? Ah, but the court did not know him. Well, he could identify himself by having them call his apartment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . They did so. Yes, it was Mrs. Anthony Patch speaking—but how did she know that this man was her husband? How could she know? Let the police sergeant ask her if she remembered the milk bottles . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He leaned forward hurriedly and tapped at the glass. The taxi was only at Brooklyn Bridge, but the metre showed a dollar and eighty cents, and Anthony would never have omitted the ten per cent tip.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later in the afternoon he returned to the apartment. Gloria had also been out—shopping—and was asleep, curled in a corner of the sofa with her purchase locked securely in her arms. Her face was as untroubled as a little girl's, and the bundle that she pressed tightly to her bosom was a child's doll, a profound and infinitely healing balm to her disturbed and childish heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DESTINY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was with this party, more especially with Gloria's part in it, that a decided change began to come over their way of living. The magnificent attitude of not giving a damn altered overnight; from being a mere tenet of Gloria's it became the entire solace and justification for what they chose to do and what consequence it brought. Not to be sorry, not to loose one cry of regret, to live according to a clear code of honor toward each other, and to seek the moment's happiness as fervently and persistently as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No one cares about us but ourselves, Anthony," she said one day. "It'd be ridiculous for me to go about pretending I felt any obligations toward the world, and as for worrying what people think about me, I simply <i>don't</i>, that's all. Since I was a little girl in dancing-school I've been criticised by the mothers of all the little girls who weren't as popular as I was, and I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was because of a party in the "Boul' Mich'" one night, where Constance Merriam had seen her as one of a highly stimulated party of four. Constance Merriam, "as an old school friend," had gone to the trouble of inviting her to lunch next day in order to inform her how terrible it was.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I told her I couldn't see it," Gloria told Anthony. "Eric Merriam is a sort of sublimated Percy Wolcott—you remember that man in Hot Springs I told you about—his idea of respecting Constance is to leave her at home with her sewing and her baby and her book, and such innocuous amusements, whenever he's going on a party that promises to be anything but deathly dull."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you tell her that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I certainly did. And I told her that what she really objected to was that I was having a better time than she was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony applauded her. He was tremendously proud of Gloria, proud that she never failed to eclipse whatever other women might be in the party, proud that men were always glad to revel with her in great rowdy groups, without any attempt to do more than enjoy her beauty and the warmth of her vitality.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> These "parties" gradually became their chief source of entertainment. Still in love, still enormously interested in each other, they yet found as spring drew near that staying at home in the evening palled on them; books were unreal; the old magic of being alone had long since vanished—instead they preferred to be bored by a stupid musical comedy, or to go to dinner with the most uninteresting of their acquaintances, so long as there would be enough cocktails to keep the conversation from becoming utterly intolerable. A scattering of younger married people who had been their friends in school or college, as well as a varied assortment of single men, began to think instinctively of them whenever color and excitement were needed, so there was scarcely a day without its phone call, its "Wondered what you were doing this evening." Wives, as a rule, were afraid of Gloria—her facile attainment of the centre of the stage, her innocent but nevertheless disturbing way of becoming a favorite with husbands—these things drove them instinctively into an attitude of profound distrust, heightened by the fact that Gloria was largely unresponsive to any intimacy shown her by a woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On the appointed Wednesday in February Anthony had gone to the imposing offices of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy and listened to many vague instructions delivered by an energetic young man of about his own age, named Kahler, who wore a defiant yellow pompadour, and in announcing himself as an assistant secretary gave the impression that it was a tribute to exceptional ability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's two kinds of men here, you'll find," he said. "There's the man who gets to be an assistant secretary or treasurer, gets his name on our folder here, before he's thirty, and there's the man who gets his name there at forty-five. The man who gets his name there at forty-five stays there the rest of his life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the man who gets it there at thirty?" inquired Anthony politely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, he gets up here, you see." He pointed to a list of assistant vice-presidents upon the folder. "Or maybe he gets to be president or secretary or treasurer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And what about these over here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Those? Oh, those are the trustees—the men with capital."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now some people," continued Kahler, "think that whether a man gets started early or late depends on whether he's got a college education. But they're wrong."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had one; I was Buckleigh, class of nineteen-eleven, but when I came down to the Street I soon found that the things that would help me here weren't the fancy things I learned in college. In fact, I had to get a lot of fancy stuff out of my head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony could not help wondering what possible "fancy stuff" he had learned at Buckleigh in nineteen-eleven. An irrepressible idea that it was some sort of needlework recurred to him throughout the rest of the conversation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "See that fellow over there?" Kahler pointed to a youngish-looking man with handsome gray hair, sitting at a desk inside a mahogany railing. "That's Mr. Ellinger, the first vice-president. Been everywhere, seen everything; got a fine education."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In vain did Anthony try to open his mind to the romance of finance; he could think of Mr. Ellinger only as one of the buyers of the handsome leather sets of Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo, and Gibbon that lined the wall of the big bookstores.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the damp and uninspiring month of March he was prepared for salesmanship. Lacking enthusiasm he was capable of viewing the turmoil and bustle that surrounded him only as a fruitless circumambient striving toward an incomprehensible goal, tangibly evidenced only by the rival mansions of Mr. Frick and Mr. Carnegie on Fifth Avenue. That these portentous vice-presidents and trustees should be actually the fathers of the "best men" he had known at Harvard seemed to him incongruous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He ate in an employees' lunch-room up-stairs with an uneasy suspicion that he was being uplifted, wondering through that first week if the dozens of young clerks, some of them alert and immaculate, and just out of college, lived in flamboyant hope of crowding onto that narrow slip of cardboard before the catastrophic thirties. The conversation that interwove with the pattern of the day's work was all much of a piece. One discussed how Mr. Wilson had made his money, what method Mr. Hiemer had employed, and the means resorted to by Mr. Hardy. One related age-old but eternally breathless anecdotes of the fortunes stumbled on precipitously in the Street by a "butcher" or a "bartender," or "a darn <i>mess</i>enger boy, by golly!" and then one talked of the current gambles, and whether it was best to go out for a hundred thousand a year or be content with twenty. During the preceding year one of the assistant secretaries had invested all his savings in Bethlehem Steel. The story of his spectacular magnificence, of his haughty resignation in January, and of the triumphal palace he was now building in California, was the favorite office subject. The man's very name had acquired a magic significance, symbolizing as he did the aspirations of all good Americans. Anecdotes were told about him—how one of the vice-presidents had advised him to sell, by golly, but he had hung on, even bought on margin, "and <i>now</i> look where he is!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Such, obviously, was the stuff of life—a dizzy triumph dazzling the eyes of all of them, a gypsy siren to content them with meagre wage and with the arithmetical improbability of their eventual success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To Anthony the notion became appalling. He felt that to succeed here the idea of success must grasp and limit his mind. It seemed to him that the essential element in these men at the top was their faith that their affairs were the very core of life. All other things being equal, self-assurance and opportunism won out over technical knowledge; it was obvious that the more expert work went on near the bottom—so, with appropriate efficiency, the technical experts were kept there.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His determination to stay in at night during the week did not survive, and a good half of the time he came to work with a splitting, sickish headache and the crowded horror of the morning subway ringing in his ears like an echo of hell.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, abruptly, he quit. He had remained in bed all one Monday, and late in the evening, overcome by one of those attacks of moody despair to which he periodically succumbed, he wrote and mailed a letter to Mr. Wilson, confessing that he considered himself ill adapted to the work. Gloria, coming in from the theatre with Richard Caramel, found him on the lounge, silently staring at the high ceiling, more depressed and discouraged than he had been at any time since their marriage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She wanted him to whine. If he had she would have reproached him bitterly, for she was not a little annoyed, but he only lay there so utterly miserable that she felt sorry for him, and kneeling down she stroked his head, saying how little it mattered, how little anything mattered so long as they loved each other. It was like their first year, and Anthony, reacting to her cool hand, to her voice that was soft as breath itself upon his ear, became almost cheerful, and talked with her of his future plans. He even regretted, silently, before he went to bed that he had so hastily mailed his resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment," Gloria had said. "It's the sum of all your judgments that counts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, sound, personification"><br /> <poem><br /> In mid-April came a letter from the real-estate agent in Marietta, encouraging them to take the gray house for another year at a slightly increased rental, and enclosing a lease made out for their signatures. For a week lease and letter lay carelessly neglected on Anthony's desk. They had no intention of returning to Marietta. They were weary of the place, and had been bored most of the preceding summer. Besides, their car had deteriorated to a rattling mass of hypochondriacal metal, and a new one was financially inadvisable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But because of another wild revel, enduring through four days and participated in, at one time or another, by more than a dozen people, they did sign the lease; to their utter horror they signed it and sent it, and immediately it seemed as though they heard the gray house, drably malevolent at last, licking its white chops and waiting to devour them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, where's that lease?" she called in high alarm one Sunday morning, sick and sober to reality. "Where did you leave it? It was here!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then she knew where it was. She remembered the house party they had planned on the crest of their exuberance; she remembered a room full of men to whose less exhilarated moments she and Anthony were of no importance, and Anthony's boast of the transcendent merit and seclusion of the gray house, that it was so isolated that it didn't matter how much noise went on there. Then Dick, who had visited them, cried enthusiastically that it was the best little house imaginable, and that they were idiotic not to take it for another summer. It had been easy to work themselves up to a sense of how hot and deserted the city was getting, of how cool and ambrosial were the charms of Marietta. Anthony had picked up the lease and waved it wildly, found Gloria happily acquiescent, and with one last burst of garrulous decision during which all the men agreed with solemn handshakes that they would come out for a visit . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony," she cried, "we've signed and sent it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The lease!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, <i>An</i>thony!" There was utter misery in her voice. For the summer, for eternity, they had built themselves a prison. It seemed to strike at the last roots of their stability. Anthony thought they might arrange it with the real-estate agent. They could no longer afford the double rent, and going to Marietta meant giving up his apartment, his reproachless apartment with the exquisite bath and the rooms for which he had bought his furniture and hangings—it was the closest to a home that he had ever had—familiar with memories of four colorful years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But it was not arranged with the real-estate agent, nor was it arranged at all. Dispiritedly, without even any talk of making the best of it, without even Gloria's all-sufficing "I don't care," they went back to the house that they now knew heeded neither youth nor love—only those austere and incommunicable memories that they could never share.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE SINISTER SUMMER</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a horror in the house that summer. It came with them and settled itself over the place like a sombre pall, pervasive through the lower rooms, gradually spreading and climbing up the narrow stairs until it oppressed their very sleep. Anthony and Gloria grew to hate being there alone. Her bedroom, which had seemed so pink and young and delicate, appropriate to her pastel-shaded lingerie tossed here and there on chair and bed, seemed now to whisper with its rustling curtains:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ah, my beautiful young lady, yours is not the first daintiness and delicacy that has faded here under the summer suns . . . generations of unloved women have adorned themselves by that glass for rustic lovers who paid no heed. . . . Youth has come into this room in palest blue and left it in the gray cerements of despair, and through long nights many girls have lain awake where that bed stands pouring out waves of misery into the darkness."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria finally tumbled all her clothes and unguents ingloriously out of it, declaring that she had come to live with Anthony, and making the excuse that one of her screens was rotten and admitted bugs. So her room was abandoned to insensitive guests, and they dressed and slept in her husband's chamber, which Gloria considered somehow "good," as though Anthony's presence there had acted as exterminator of any uneasy shadows of the past that might have hovered about its walls.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The distinction between "good" and "bad," ordered early and summarily out of both their lives, had been reinstated in another form. Gloria insisted that any one invited to the gray house must be "good," which, in the case of a girl, meant that she must be either simple and reproachless or, if otherwise, must possess a certain solidity and strength. Always intensely sceptical of her sex, her judgments were now concerned with the question of whether women were or were not clean. By uncleanliness she meant a variety of things, a lack of pride, a slackness in fibre and, most of all, the unmistakable aura of promiscuity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Women soil easily," she said, "far more easily than men. Unless a girl's very young and brave it's almost impossible for her to go down-hill without a certain hysterical animality, the cunning, dirty sort of animality. A man's different—and I suppose that's why one of the commonest characters of romance is a man going gallantly to the devil."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was disposed to like many men, preferably those who gave her frank homage and unfailing entertainment—but often with a flash of insight she told Anthony that some one of his friends was merely using him, and consequently had best be left alone. Anthony customarily demurred, insisting that the accused was a "good one," but he found that his judgment was more fallible than hers, memorably when, as it happened on several occasions, he was left with a succession of restaurant checks for which to render a solitary account.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> More from their fear of solitude than from any desire to go through the fuss and bother of entertaining, they filled the house with guests every week-end, and often on through the week. The week-end parties were much the same. When the three or four men invited had arrived, drinking was more or less in order, followed by a hilarious dinner and a ride to the Cradle Beach Country Club, which they had joined because it was inexpensive, lively if not fashionable, and almost a necessity for just such occasions as these. Moreover, it was of no great moment what one did there, and so long as the Patch party were reasonably inaudible, it mattered little whether or not the social dictators of Cradle Beach saw the gay Gloria imbibing cocktails in the supper room at frequent intervals during the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Saturday ended, generally, in a glamourous confusion—it proving often necessary to assist a muddled guest to bed. Sunday brought the New York papers and a quiet morning of recuperating on the porch—and Sunday afternoon meant good-by to the one or two guests who must return to the city, and a great revival of drinking among the one or two who remained until next day, concluding in a convivial if not hilarious evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The faithful Tana, pedagogue by nature and man of all work by profession, had returned with them. Among their more frequent guests a tradition had sprung up about him. Maury Noble remarked one afternoon that his real name was Tannenbaum, and that he was a German agent kept in this country to disseminate Teutonic propaganda through Westchester County, and, after that, mysterious letters began to arrive from Philadelphia addressed to the bewildered Oriental as "Lt. Emile Tannenbaum," containing a few cryptic messages signed "General Staff," and adorned with an atmospheric double column of facetious Japanese. Anthony always handed them to Tana without a smile; hours afterward the recipient could be found puzzling over them in the kitchen and declaring earnestly that the perpendicular symbols were not Japanese, nor anything resembling Japanese.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria had taken a strong dislike to the man ever since the day when, returning unexpectedly from the village, she had discovered him reclining on Anthony's bed, puzzling out a newspaper. It was the instinct of all servants to be fond of Anthony and to detest Gloria, and Tana was no exception to the rule. But he was thoroughly afraid of her and made plain his aversion only in his moodier moments by subtly addressing Anthony with remarks intended for her ear:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What Miz Pats want dinner?" he would say, looking at his master. Or else he would comment about the bitter selfishness of "'Merican peoples" in such manner that there was no doubt who were the "peoples" referred to.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But they dared not dismiss him. Such a step would have been abhorrent to their inertia. They endured Tana as they endured ill weather and sickness of the body and the estimable Will of God—as they endured all things, even themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>IN DARKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One sultry afternoon late in July Richard Caramel telephoned from New York that he and Maury were coming out, bringing a friend with them. They arrived about five, a little drunk, accompanied by a small, stocky man of thirty-five, whom they introduced as Mr. Joe Hull, one of the best fellows that Anthony and Gloria had ever met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Joe Hull had a yellow beard continually fighting through his skin and a low voice which varied between basso profundo and a husky whisper. Anthony, carrying Maury's suitcase up-stairs, followed into the room and carefully closed the door.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury chuckled enthusiastically.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who, Hull? Oh, <i>he's</i> all right. He's a good one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, but who is he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hull? He's just a good fellow. He's a prince." His laughter redoubled, culminating in a succession of pleasant catlike grins. Anthony hesitated between a smile and a frown.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He looks sort of funny to me. Weird-looking clothes"—he paused—"I've got a sneaking suspicion you two picked him up somewhere last night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Ridiculous," declared Maury. "Why, I've known him all my life." However, as he capped this statement with another series of chuckles, Anthony was impelled to remark: "The devil you have!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, just before dinner, while Maury and Dick were conversing uproariously, with Joe Hull listening in silence as he sipped his drink, Gloria drew Anthony into the dining room:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like this man Hull," she said. "I wish he'd use Tana's bathtub."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't very well ask him to."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I don't want him in ours."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He seems to be a simple soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's got on white shoes that look like gloves. I can see his toes right through them. Uh! Who is he, anyway?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've got me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I think they've got their nerve to bring him out here. This isn't a Sailor's Rescue Home!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They were tight when they phoned. Maury said they've been on a party since yesterday afternoon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria shook her head angrily, and saying no more returned to the porch. Anthony saw that she was trying to forget her uncertainty and devote herself to enjoying the evening.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="temperature, road"><br /> <poem><br /> It had been a tropical day, and even into late twilight the heat-waves emanating from the dry road were quivering faintly like undulating panes of isinglass. The sky was cloudless, but far beyond the woods in the direction of the Sound a faint and persistent rolling had commenced. When Tana announced dinner the men, at a word from Gloria, remained coatless and went inside.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury began a song, which they accomplished in harmony during the first course. It had two lines and was sung to a popular air called Daisy Dear. The lines were:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us, </div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—the moral de<i>cline</i>!"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Each rendition was greeted with bursts of enthusiasm and prolonged applause.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" suggested Maury. "You seem the least bit depressed."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not," she lied.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here, Tannenbaum!" he called over his shoulder. "I've filled you a drink. Come on!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria tried to stay his arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Please don't, Maury!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not? Maybe he'll play the flute for us after dinner. Here, Tana."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tana, grinning, bore the glass away to the kitchen. In a few moments Maury gave him another.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria!" he cried. "For Heaven's sakes everybody, cheer up Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dearest, have another drink," counselled Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cheer up, Gloria," said Joe Hull easily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria winced at this uncalled-for use of her first name, and glanced around to see if any one else had noticed it. The word coming so glibly from the lips of a man to whom she had taken an inordinate dislike repelled her. A moment later she noticed that Joe Hull had given Tana another drink, and her anger increased, heightened somewhat from the effects of the alcohol.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—and once," Maury was saying, "Peter Granby and I went into a Turkish bath in Boston, about two o'clock at night. There was no one there but the proprietor, and we jammed him into a closet and locked the door. Then a fella came in and wanted a Turkish bath. Thought we were the rubbers, by golly! Well, we just picked him up and tossed him into the pool with all his clothes on. Then we dragged him out and laid him on a slab and slapped him until he was black and blue. 'Not so rough, fellows!' he'd say in a little squeaky voice, 'please! . . .'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Was this Maury? thought Gloria. From any one else the story would have amused her, but from Maury, the infinitely appreciative, the apotheosis of tact and consideration. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"The—pan-ic—has—come—over us,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>So <i>ha-a-as</i>—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A drum of thunder from outside drowned out the rest of the song; Gloria shivered and tried to empty her glass, but the first taste nauseated her, and she set it down. Dinner was over and they all marched into the big room, bearing several bottles and decanters. Some one had closed the porch door to keep out the wind, and in consequence circular tentacles of cigar smoke were twisting already upon the heavy air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paging Lieutenant Tannenbaum!" Again it was the changeling Maury. "Bring us the flute!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Maury rushed into the kitchen; Richard Caramel started the phonograph and approached Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance with your well-known cousin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to dance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'm going to carry you around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As though he were doing something of overpowering importance, he picked her up in his fat little arms and started trotting gravely about the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Set me down, Dick! I'm dizzy!" she insisted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He dumped her in a bouncing bundle on the couch, and rushed off to the kitchen, shouting "Tana! Tana!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then, without warning, she felt other arms around her, felt herself lifted from the lounge. Joe Hull had picked her up and was trying, drunkenly, to imitate Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Put me down!" she said sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His maudlin laugh, and the sight of that prickly yellow jaw close to her face stirred her to intolerable disgust.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At once!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The—pan-ic—" he began, but got no further, for Gloria's hand swung around swiftly and caught him in the cheek. At this he all at once let go of her, and she fell to the floor, her shoulder hitting the table a glancing blow in transit. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the room seemed full of men and smoke. There was Tana in his white coat reeling about supported by Maury. Into his flute he was blowing a weird blend of sound that was known, cried Anthony, as the Japanese train-song. Joe Hull had found a box of candles and was juggling them, yelling "One down!" every time he missed, and Dick was dancing by himself in a fascinated whirl around and about the room. It appeared to her that everything in the room was staggering in grotesque fourth-dimensional gyrations through intersecting planes of hazy blue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Outside, the storm had come up amazingly—the lulls within were filled with the scrape of the tall bushes against the house and the roaring of the rain on the tin roof of the kitchen. The lightning was interminable, letting down thick drips of thunder like pig iron from the heart of a white-hot furnace. Gloria could see that the rain was spitting in at three of the windows—but she could not move to shut them. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . She was in the hall. She had said good night but no one had heard or heeded her. It seemed for an instant as though something had looked down over the head of the banister, but she could not have gone back into the living room—better madness than the madness of that clamor. . . . Up-stairs she fumbled for the electric switch and missed it in the darkness; a roomful of lightning showed her the button plainly on the wall. But when the impenetrable black shut down, it again eluded her fumbling fingers, so she slipped off her dress and petticoat and threw herself weakly on the dry side of the half-drenched bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her eyes. From down-stairs arose the babel of the drinkers, punctured suddenly by a tinkling shiver of broken glass, and then another, and by a soaring fragment of unsteady, irregular song. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She lay there for something over two hours—so she calculated afterward, sheerly by piecing together the bits of time. She was conscious, even aware, after a long while that the noise down-stairs had lessened, and that the storm was moving off westward, throwing back lingering showers of sound that fell, heavy and lifeless as her soul, into the soggy fields. This was succeeded by a slow, reluctant scattering of the rain and wind, until there was nothing outside her windows but a gentle dripping and the swishing play of a cluster of wet vine against the sill. She was in a state half-way between sleeping and waking, with neither condition predominant . . . and she was harassed by a desire to rid herself of a weight pressing down upon her breast. She felt that if she could cry the weight would be lifted, and forcing the lids of her eyes together she tried to raise a lump in her throat . . . to no avail. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Drip! Drip! Drip! The sound was not unpleasant—like spring, like a cool rain of her childhood, that made cheerful mud in her back yard and watered the tiny garden she had dug with miniature rake and spade and hoe. Drip—dri-ip! It was like days when the rain came out of yellow skies that melted just before twilight and shot one radiant shaft of sunlight diagonally down the heavens into the damp green trees. So cool, so clear and clean—and her mother there at the centre of the world, at the centre of the rain, safe and dry and strong. She wanted her mother now, and her mother was dead, beyond sight and touch forever. And this weight was pressing on her, pressing on her—oh, it pressed on her so!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She became rigid. Some one had come to the door and was standing regarding her, very quiet except for a slight swaying motion. She could see the outline of his figure distinct against some indistinguishable light. There was no sound anywhere, only a great persuasive silence—even the dripping had ceased . . . only this figure, swaying, swaying in the doorway, an indiscernible and subtly menacing terror, a personality filthy under its varnish, like smallpox spots under a layer of powder. Yet her tired heart, beating until it shook her breasts, made her sure that there was still life in her, desperately shaken, threatened. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The minute or succession of minutes prolonged itself interminably, and a swimming blur began to form before her eyes, which tried with childish persistence to pierce the gloom in the direction of the door. In another instant it seemed that some unimaginable force would shatter her out of existence . . . and then the figure in the doorway—it was Hull, she saw, Hull—turned deliberately and, still slightly swaying, moved back and off, as if absorbed into that incomprehensible light that had given him dimension.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Blood rushed back into her limbs, blood and life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself into stray, swaying figures in the gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a panic she fumbled clumsily at her coat, found the sleeve just as she heard Anthony's footsteps on the lower stair. She dared not wait; he might not let her go, and even Anthony was part of this weight, part of this evil house and the sombre darkness that was growing up about it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Through the hall then . . . and down the back stairs, hearing Anthony's voice in the bedroom she had just left——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she had reached the kitchen now, passed out through the doorway into the night. A hundred drops, startled by a flare of wind from a dripping tree, scattered on her and she pressed them gladly to her face with hot hands.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The voice was infinitely remote, muffed and made plaintive by the walls she had just left. She rounded the house and started down the front path toward the road, almost exultant as she turned into it, and followed the carpet of short grass alongside, moving with caution in the intense darkness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She broke into a run, stumbled over the segment of a branch twisted off by the wind. The voice was outside the house now. Anthony, finding the bedroom deserted, had come onto the porch. But this thing was driving her forward; it was back there with Anthony, and she must go on in her flight under this dim and oppressive heaven, forcing herself through the silence ahead as though it were a tangible barrier before her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had gone some distance along the barely discernible road, probably half a mile, passed a single deserted barn that loomed up, black and foreboding, the only building of any sort between the gray house and Marietta; then she turned the fork, where the road entered the wood and ran between two high walls of leaves and branches that nearly touched overhead. She noticed suddenly a thin, longitudinal gleam of silver upon the road before her, like a bright sword half embedded in the mud. As she came closer she gave a little cry of satisfaction—it was a wagon-rut full of water, and glancing heavenward she saw a light rift of sky and knew that the moon was out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She started violently. Anthony was not two hundred feet behind her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, wait for me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shut her lips tightly to keep from screaming, and increased her gait. Before she had gone another hundred yards the woods disappeared, rolling back like a dark stocking from the leg of the road. Three minutes' walk ahead of her, suspended in the now high and limitless air, she saw a thin interlacing of attenuated gleams and glitters, centred in a regular undulation on some one invisible point. Abruptly she knew where she would go. That was the great cascade of wires that rose high over the river, like the legs of a gigantic spider whose eye was the little green light in the switch-house, and ran with the railroad bridge in the direction of the station. The station! There would be the train to take her away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, it's me! It's Anthony! Gloria, I won't try to stop you! For God's sake, where are you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer but began to run, keeping on the high side of the road and leaping the gleaming puddles—dimensionless pools of thin, unsubstantial gold. Turning sharply to the left, she followed a narrow wagon road, serving to avoid a dark body on the ground. She looked up as an owl hooted mournfully from a solitary tree. Just ahead of her she could see the trestle that led to the railroad bridge and the steps mounting up to it. The station lay across the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another sounds startled her, the melancholy siren of an approaching train, and almost simultaneously, a repeated call, thin now and far away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria! Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony must have followed the main road. She laughed with a sort of malicious cunning at having eluded him; she could spare the time to wait until the train went by.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamor, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clocklike tick of the rails, moved toward the bridge—it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. The light was tepid, the temperature of warm blood. . . . The clicking blended suddenly with itself in a rush of even sound, and then, elongating in sombre elasticity, the thing roared blindly by her and thundered onto the bridge, racing the lurid shaft of fire it cast into the solemn river alongside. Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence crept down again over the wet country; the faint dripping resumed, and suddenly a great shower of drops tumbled upon Gloria stirring her out of the trance-like torpor which the passage of the train had wrought. She ran swiftly down a descending level to the bank and began climbing the iron stairway to the bridge, remembering that it was something she had always wanted to do, and that she would have the added excitement of traversing the yard-wide plank that ran beside the tracks over the river.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There! This was better. She was at the top now and could see the lands about her as successive sweeps of open country, cold under the moon, coarsely patched and seamed with thin rows and heavy clumps of trees. To her right, half a mile down the river, which trailed away behind the light like the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of freedom. This was what she had wanted, to stand alone where it was high and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Like a startled child she scurried along the plank, hopping, skipping, jumping, with an ecstatic sense of her own physical lightness. Let him come now—she no longer feared that, only she must first reach the station, because that was part of the game. She was happy. Her hat, snatched off, was clutched tightly in her hand, and her short curled hair bobbed up and down about her ears. She had thought she would never feel so young again, but this was her night, her world. Triumphantly she laughed as she left the plank, and reaching the wooden platform flung herself down happily beside an iron roof-post.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Here I am!" she called, gay as the dawn in her elation. "Here I am, Anthony, dear—old, worried Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria!" He reached the platform, ran toward her. "Are you all right?" Coming up he knelt and took her in his arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was the matter? Why did you leave?" he queried anxiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I had to—there was something"—she paused and a flicker of uneasiness lashed at her mind—"there was something sitting on me—here." She put her hand on her breast. "I had to go out and get away from it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean by 'something'?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—that man Hull——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he bother you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He came to my door, drunk. I think I'd gotten sort of crazy by that time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, dearest——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Wearily she laid her head upon his shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go back," he suggested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shivered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Uh! No, I couldn't. It'd come and sit on me again." Her voice rose to a cry that hung plaintive on the darkness. "That thing——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There—there," he soothed her, pulling her close to him. "We won't do anything you don't want to do. What do you want to do? Just sit here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want—I want to go away."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh—anywhere."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By golly, Gloria," he cried, "you're still tight!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I haven't been, all evening. I went up-stairs about, oh, I don't know, about half an hour after dinner . . . Ouch!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had inadvertently touched her right shoulder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It hurts me. I hurt it some way. I don't know—somebody picked me up and dropped me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, come home. It's late and damp."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can't," she wailed. "Oh, Anthony, don't ask me to! I will to-morrow. You go home and I'll wait here for a train. I'll go to a hotel——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'll go with you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't want you with me. I want to be alone. I want to sleep—oh, I want to sleep. And then to-morrow, when you've got all the smell of whiskey and cigarettes out of the house, and everything straight, and Hull is gone, then I'll come home. If I went now, that thing—oh—!" She covered her eyes with her hand; Anthony saw the futility of trying to persuade her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was all sober when you left," he said. "Dick was asleep on the lounge and Maury and I were having a discussion. That fellow Hull had wandered off somewhere. Then I began to realize I hadn't seen you for several hours, so I went up-stairs——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off as a salutatory "Hello, there!" boomed suddenly out of the darkness. Gloria sprang to her feet and he did likewise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's Maury's voice," she cried excitedly. "If it's Hull with him, keep them away, keep them away!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's there?" Anthony called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just Dick and Maury," returned two voices reassuringly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Hull?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's in bed. Passed out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Their figures appeared dimly on the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What the devil are you and Gloria doing here?" inquired Richard Caramel with sleepy bewilderment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are <i>you</i> two doing here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Damned if I know. We followed you, and had the deuce of a time doing it. I heard you out on the porch yelling for Gloria, so I woke up the Caramel here and got it through his head, with some difficulty, that if there was a search-party we'd better be on it. He slowed me up by sitting down in the road at intervals and asking me what it was all about. We tracked you by the pleasant scent of Canadian Club."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a rattle of nervous laughter under the low train-shed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How did you track us, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we followed along down the road and then we suddenly lost you. Seems you turned off at a wagon-trail. After a while somebody hailed us and asked us if we were looking for a young girl. Well, we came up and found it was a little shivering old man, sitting on a fallen tree like somebody in a fairy tale. 'She turned down here,' he said, 'and most steppud on me, goin' somewhere in an awful hustle, and then a fella in short golfin' pants come runnin' along and went after her. He throwed me this.' The old fellow had a dollar bill he was waving around——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, the poor old man!" ejaculated Gloria, moved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I threw him another and we went on, though he asked us to stay and tell him what it was all about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Poor old man," repeated Gloria dismally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick sat down sleepily on a box.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And now what?" he inquired in the tone of stoic resignation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's upset," explained Anthony. "She and I are going to the city by the next train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury in the darkness had pulled a time-table from his pocket.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strike a match."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tiny flare leaped out of the opaque background illuminating the four faces, grotesque and unfamiliar here in the open night.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see. Two, two-thirty—no, that's evening. By gad, you won't get a train till five-thirty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony hesitated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he muttered uncertainly, "we've decided to stay here and wait for it. You two might as well go back and sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You go, too, Anthony," urged Gloria; "I want you to have some sleep, dear. You've been as pale as a ghost all day."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, you little idiot!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very well. You stay, we stay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He walked out from under the shed and surveyed the heavens.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather a nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's see." Gloria moved after him and the other two followed her. "Let's sit out here," she suggested. "I like it much better."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Dick converted a long box into a backrest and found a board dry enough for Gloria to sit on. Anthony dropped down beside her and with some effort Dick hoisted himself onto an apple-barrel near them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tana went to sleep in the porch hammock," he remarked. "We carried him in and left him next to the kitchen stove to dry. He was drenched to the skin."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That awful little man!" sighed Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do!" The voice, sonorous and funereal, had come from above, and they looked up startled to find that in some manner Maury had climbed to the roof of the shed, where he sat dangling his feet over the edge, outlined as a shadowy and fantastic gargoyle against the now brilliant sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It must be for such occasions as this," he began softly, his words having the effect of floating down from an immense height and settling softly upon his auditors, "that the righteous of the land decorate the railroads with bill-boards asserting in red and yellow that 'Jesus Christ is God,' placing them, appropriately enough, next to announcements that 'Gunter's Whiskey is Good.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was gentle laughter and the three below kept their heads tilted upward.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think I shall tell you the story of my education," continued Maury, "under these sardonic constellations."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do! Please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall I, really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They waited expectantly while he directed a ruminative yawn toward the white smiling moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, "as an infant I prayed. I stored up prayers against future wickedness. One year I stored up nineteen hundred 'Now I lay me's.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Throw down a cigarette," murmured some one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A small package reached the platform simultaneously with the stentorian command:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Silence! I am about to unburden myself of many memorable remarks reserved for the darkness of such earths and the brilliance of such skies."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Below, a lighted match was passed from cigarette to cigarette. The voice resumed:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me. I believed that because a man cried out 'My God!' when a safe fell on him, it proved that belief was rooted deep in the human breast. Then I went to school. For fourteen years half a hundred earnest men pointed to ancient flint-locks and cried to me: 'There's the real thing. These new rifles are only shallow, superficial imitations.' They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned things by calling them 'clever'.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And so I turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning. This, at least, did me no harm. I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth—and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me. The fibre of my mind coarsened and my eyes grew miserably keen. Life rose around my island like a sea, and presently I was swimming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The transition was subtle—the thing had lain in wait for me for some time. It has its insidious, seemingly innocuous trap for every one. With me? No—I didn't try to seduce the janitor's wife—nor did I run through the streets unclothed, proclaiming my virility. It is never quite passion that does the business—it is the dress that passion wears. I became bored—that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts. Beauty was behind me, do you understand?—I was grown." He paused. "End of school and college period. Opening of Part Two."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Three quietly active points of light showed the location of his listeners. Gloria was now half sitting, half lying, in Anthony's lap. His arm was around her so tightly that she could hear the beating of his heart. Richard Caramel, perched on the apple-barrel, from time to time stirred and gave off a faint grunt.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I grew up then, into this land of jazz, and fell immediately into a state of almost audible confusion. Life stood over me like an immoral schoolmistress, editing my ordered thoughts. But, with a mistaken faith in intelligence, I plodded on. I read Smith, who laughed at charity and insisted that the sneer was the highest form of self-expression—but Smith himself replaced charity as an obscurer of the light. I read Jones, who neatly disposed of individualism—and behold! Jones was still in my way. I did not think—I was a battle-ground for the thoughts of many men; rather was I one of those desirable but impotent countries over which the great powers surge back and forth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life—and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But after a few tastes of this latter dish I had had enough. Here! I said, Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you—it's a wall that an active you runs up against. So I wrapped myself in what I thought was my invulnerable scepticism and decided that my education was complete. But it was too late. Protect myself as I might by making no new ties with tragic and predestined humanity, I was lost with the rest. I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off to give emphasis to his last observation—after a moment he yawned and resumed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose that the beginning of the second phase of my education was a ghastly dissatisfaction at being used in spite of myself for some inscrutable purpose of whose ultimate goal I was unaware—if, indeed, there <i>was</i> an ultimate goal. It was a difficult choice. The schoolmistress seemed to be saying, 'We're going to play football and nothing but football. If you don't want to play football you can't play at all——'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What was I to do—the playtime was so short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You see, I felt that we were even denied what consolation there might have been in being a figment of a corporate man rising from his knees. Do you think that I leaped at this pessimism, grasped it as a sweetly smug superior thing, no more depressing really than, say, a gray autumn day before a fire?—I don't think I did that. I was a great deal too warm for that, and too alive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature—nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly in her face. She had invented ways to rid the race of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher—or, let us say, her more amusing—though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circumvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white—in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might organize them for material prosperity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper—and presently the breed of the leper is the salt of the earth. If any one can find any lesson in that, let him stand forth."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's only one lesson to be learned from life, anyway," interrupted Gloria, not in contradiction but in a sort of melancholy agreement.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's that?" demanded Maury sharply.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That there's no lesson to be learned from life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a short silence Maury said:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young Gloria, the beautiful and merciless lady, first looked at the world with the fundamental sophistication I have struggled to attain, that Anthony never will attain, that Dick will never fully understand."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a disgusted groan from the apple-barrel. Anthony, grown accustomed to the dark, could see plainly the flash of Richard Caramel's yellow eye and the look of resentment on his face as he cried:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're crazy! By your own statement I should have attained some experience by trying."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? Struggling in a laboratory through weary years for one iota of relative truth in a mass of wheels or a test tube——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury paused, and in his answer, when it came, there was a measure of weariness, a bitter overnote that lingered for a moment in those three minds before it floated up and off like a bubble bound for the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not I," he said softly. "I was born tired—but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria—to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the distance a deep sound that had been audible for some moments identified itself by a plaintive mooing like that of a gigantic cow and by the pearly spot of a headlight apparent half a mile away. It was a steam-driven train this time, rumbling and groaning, and as it tumbled by with a monstrous complaint it sent a shower of sparks and cinders over the platform.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not one jot!" Again Maury's voice dropped down to them as from a great height. "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe—why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I could quote you the philosophy of the hour—but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France—" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know—the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself—these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know anything else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen—as the wisest men have done since—oh, since the failure of a certain matter—a strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over—and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.'<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So the men did, and they died.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my high-balls are dead and the night's almost over, and soon there'll be an awful jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two little stores over there behind the station, and there'll be a great running up and down upon the earth for a few hours— Well," he concluded with a laugh, "thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest knowing we've left the world a little better for having lived in it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened against the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive," said Anthony sleepily. "You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her far-sighted detachment by falling asleep—I can tell that by the fact that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my broken body."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have I bored you?" inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, you have disappointed us. You've shot a lot of arrows but did you shoot any birds?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I leave the birds to Dick," said Maury hurriedly. "I speak erratically, in disassociated fragments."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You can get no rise from me," muttered Dick. "My mind is full of any number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Quarter to five," sighed Dick; "almost another hour to wait. Look! Two gone." He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes. "Sleep of the Patch family——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups, his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now—on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm—the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her—then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Beautiful_and_Damned&diff=785 The Beautiful and Damned 2026-02-26T11:18:33Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: </p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html"<br /> genre="Novel"<br /> journal=""<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1922"<br /> page_range="1-449"<br /> other_data="Other text data"<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (1-30)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> IN 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore. The year in which this story opens found him wearying; his campaign had grown desultory; 1861 was creeping up slowly on 1895; his thoughts ran a great deal on the Civil War, somewhat on his dead wife and son, almost infinitesimally on his grandson Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in his career Adam Patch had married an anæmic lady of thirty, Alicia Withers, who brought him one hundred thousand dollars and an impeccable entré into the banking circles of New York. Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never obtained even a private printing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This Fifth Avenue Chesterfield married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrune, the Boston "Society Contralto," and the single child of the union was, at the request of his grandfather, christened Anthony Comstock Patch. When he went to Harvard, the Comstock dropped out of his name to a nether hell of oblivion and was never heard of thereafter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together—so often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at five, the year of his mother's death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical. She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of the Southern negro.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid. After Henrietta Lebrune Patch had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, father and son lived up at grampa's in Tarrytown, and Ulysses came daily to Anthony's nursery and expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Anthony hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to Atlantic City, "oh, some time soon now"; but none of them ever materialized. One trip they did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PAST AND PERSON OF THE HERO</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly, until, for the first time since her marriage, her person held for one day an unquestioned supremacy over her own drawing room. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed—it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; enormous, as nearly exhaustive as a boy's could be—his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. So Anthony kept up a correspondence with a half dozen "Stamp and Coin" companies and it was rare that the mail failed to bring him new stamp-books or packages of glittering approval sheets—there was a mysterious fascination in transferring his acquisitions interminably from one book to another. His stamps were his greatest happiness and he bestowed impatient frowns on any one who interrupted him at play with them; they devoured his allowance every month, and he lay awake at night musing untiringly on their variety and many-colored splendor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At sixteen he had lived almost entirely within himself, an inarticulate boy, thoroughly un-American, and politely bewildered by his contemporaries. The two preceding years had been spent in Europe with a private tutor, who persuaded him that Harvard was the thing; it would "open doors," it would be a tremendous tonic, it would give him innumerable self-sacrificing and devoted friends. So he went to Harvard—there was no other logical thing to be done with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oblivious to the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never to have a part.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. He made the Pudding. He drank—quietly and in the proper tradition. It was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well." In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then abroad again—to Rome this time, where he dallied with architecture and painting in turn, took up the violin, and wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets, supposedly the ruminations of a thirteenth-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It became established among his Harvard intimates that he was in Rome, and those of them who were abroad that year looked him up and discovered with him, on many moonlight excursions, much in the city that was older than the Renaissance or indeed than the republic. Maury Noble, from Philadelphia, for instance, remained two months, and together they realized the peculiar charm of Latin women and had a delightful sense of being very young and free in a civilization that was very old and free. Not a few acquaintances of his grandfather's called on him, and had he so desired he might have been <i>persona grata</i> with the diplomatic set—indeed, he found that his inclinations tended more and more toward conviviality, but that long adolescent aloofness and consequent shyness still dictated to his conduct.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He returned to America in 1912 because of one of his grandfather's sudden illnesses, and after an excessively tiresome talk with the perpetually convalescent old man he decided to put off until his grandfather's death the idea of living permanently abroad. After a prolonged search he took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and to all appearances settled down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In 1913 Anthony Patch's adjustment of himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of melancholy humor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One of those men devoid of the symmetry of feature essential to the Aryan ideal, he was yet, here and there, considered handsome—moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE REPROACHLESS APARTMENT</div></poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, city, urban, road, affect, haptic, metaphor, driving, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it seemed to Anthony, were the uprights of a gigantic ladder stretching from Washington Square to Central Park. Coming up-town on top of a bus toward Fifty-second Street invariably gave him the sensation of hoisting himself hand by hand on a series of treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps to the sidewalk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block, pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses—and then in a jiffy he was under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was burned to a murky black.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment—Anthony's bedroom and bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them were immense. Under the ceilings of the former even the great canopied bed seemed of only average size. On the floor an exotic rug of crimson velvet was soft as fleece on his bare feet. His bathroom, in contrast to the rather portentous character of his bedroom, was gay, bright, extremely habitable and even faintly facetious. Framed around the walls were photographs of four celebrated thespian beauties of the day: Julia Sanderson as "The Sunshine Girl," Ina Claire as "The Quaker Girl," Billie Burke as "The Mind-the-Paint Girl," and Hazel Dawn as "The Pink Lady." Between Billie Burke and Hazel Dawn hung a print representing a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun—this, claimed Anthony, symbolized the cold shower.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The bathtub, equipped with an ingenious bookholder, was low and large. Beside it a wall wardrobe bulged with sufficient linen for three men and with a generation of neckties. There was no skimpy glorified towel of a carpet—instead, a rich rug, like the one in his bedroom a miracle of softness, that seemed almost to massage the wet foot emerging from the tub. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> All in all a room to conjure with—it was easy to see that Anthony dressed there, arranged his immaculate hair there, in fact did everything but sleep and eat there. It was his pride, this bathroom. He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NOR DOES HE SPIN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The apartment was kept clean by an English servant with the singularly, almost theatrically, appropriate name of Bounds, whose technic was marred only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. Had he been entirely Anthony's Bounds this defect would have been summarily remedied, but he was also the Bounds of two other gentlemen in the neighborhood. From eight until eleven in the morning he was entirely Anthony's. He arrived with the mail and cooked breakfast. At nine-thirty he pulled the edge of Anthony's blanket and spoke a few terse words—Anthony never remembered clearly what they were and rather suspected they were deprecative; then he served breakfast on a card-table in the front room, made the bed and, after asking with some hostility if there was anything else, withdrew.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the mornings, at least once a week, Anthony went to see his broker. His income was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who had never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance, judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in contemplating his grandfather's money—even more, for the latter appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and explicitly—money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a <i>raison d'être</i> in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well again—the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and wire fences guarding the estate—this, said the public, was because it was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth—who before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general reprobate—ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better," Anthony said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last week, pulled out his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Train late?" he asked mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot, but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of meek accusation in his voice—and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentions—and simultaneously a glimmer in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the room—he detested Shuttleworth—but the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that you're here you ought to <i>do</i> something," said his grandfather softly, "accomplish something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony waited for him to speak of "leaving something done when you pass on." Then he made a suggestion:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought—it seemed to me that perhaps I'm best qualified to write—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—history," finished Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "History? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, sir. A history of the Middle Ages." Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said "Middle Ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Middle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see I've lived so much abroad—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why you should write about the Middle Ages, I don't know. Dark Ages, we used to call 'em. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that they're over now." He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the "corruption of the monasteries." Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think you'll be able to do any work in New York—or do you really intend to work at all?" This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, yes, I do, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When'll you be done?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there'll be an outline, you see—and a lot of preliminary reading."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd have done enough of that already."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothing—and contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>AFTERNOON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of "Erewhon." It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he was singing as he turned on the tap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes;</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul la-a-dy</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>My . . . heart . . . cries—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatre—Caramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was glad <i>he</i> wasn't going to work on <i>his</i> book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he sang lightly,<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possible—and, if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are glad to see each other now—their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp, restless—he is at rest now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven o'clock. Where's the Caramel? (<i>Impatiently</i>.) I wish he'd finish that interminable novel. I've spent more time hungry——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: He's got a new name for it. "The Demon Lover "—not bad, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>interested</i>) "The Demon Lover"? Oh "woman wailing"—No—not a bit bad! Not bad at all—d'you think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>His eyes narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval</i>) Drove me crazy the other day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: How?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That habit of taking notes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems I'd said something night before that he considered material but he'd forgotten it—so he had at me. He'd say "Can't you try to concentrate?" And I'd say "You bore me to tears. How do I remember?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (MAURY <i>laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Dick doesn't necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: That rather impressive talent——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. (<i>Silence, and then:</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced</i>) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>With laughter</i>) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? Just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Still considering his own last observation</i>) I remember.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Let's order. He'll be—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Sure. Let's order. I told him—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (<i>He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw</i>.) Here y'are, Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A NEW VOICE: (<i>Fiercely</i>) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Débutantes still after you, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>In person</i> RICHARD CARAMEL <i>is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>When he reaches the table he shakes hands with</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> MAURY. <i>He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Fixing</i> ANTHONY <i>eagerly with the bright eye</i>) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Noble æsthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: We never pass out, my beardless boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: All in our parties are characterized by a certain haughty distinction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: The particularly silly sort who boast about being "tanks"! Trouble is you're both in the eighteenth century. School of the Old English Squire. Drink quietly until you roll under the table. Never have a good time. Oh, no, that isn't done at all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: This from Chapter Six, I'll bet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Going to the theatre?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening doing some deep thinking over of life's problems. The thing is tersely called "The Woman." I presume that she will "pay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: My God! Is that what it is? Let's go to the Follies again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I'm tired of it. I've seen it three times. (<i>To</i> DICK.) The first time, we went out after Act One and found a most amazing bar. When we came back we entered the wrong theatre.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Had a protracted dispute with a scared young couple we thought were in our seats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>As though talking to himself</i>) I think—that when I've done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I'll do a musical comedy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I know—with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to. And all the critics will groan and grunt about "Dear old Pinafore." And I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Pompously</i>) Art isn't meaningless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: In other words, Dick, you're playing before a grand stand peopled with ghosts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Give a good show anyhow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY:(<i>To</i> MAURY) On the contrary, I'd feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, even admitting all that, be a decent pragmatist and grant a poor man the instinct to live. Would you want every one to accept that sophistic rot?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Yeah, I suppose so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, sir! I believe that every one in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don't complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligences.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Here the soup arrives and what</i> MAURY <i>might have gone on to say is lost for all time</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward they visited a ticket speculator and, at a price, obtained seats for a new musical comedy called "High Jinks." In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see the first-night crowd come in. There were opera cloaks stitched of myriad, many-colored silks and furs; there were jewels dripping from arms and throats and ear-tips of white and rose; there were innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial lake of laughter. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the play they parted—Maury was going to a dance at Sherry's, Anthony homeward and to bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin—too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices and craning their necks here and there in fatuous supercilious glances. They were dressed in suits of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; their turn-over collars were notched at the Adam's apple; they wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passed a bewildered old lady borne along like a basket of eggs between two men who exclaimed to her of the wonders of Times Square—explained them so quickly that the old lady, trying to be impartially interested, waved her head here and there like a piece of wind-worried old orange-peel. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the Astor, mama!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! See the chariot race sign——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's where we were to-day. No, <i>there!</i>”"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good gracious! . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You should worry and grow thin like a dime." He recognized the current witticism of the year as it issued stridently from one of the pairs at his elbow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I says to him, I says——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, haptic, sound, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughter hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He turned thankfully down the hush that blew like a dark wind out of a cross-street, passed a bakery-restaurant in whose windows a dozen roast chickens turned over and over on an automatic spit. From the door came a smell that was hot, doughy, and pink. A drug-store next, exhaling medicines, spilt soda water and a pleasant undertone from the cosmetic counter; then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling, smelling folded and vaguely yellow. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store and emerged feeling better—the cigar store was cheerful, humanity in a navy blue mist, buying a luxury . . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, there was a loneliness here——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> His cigarette, its smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as it passed the illusion faded; it diminished to the faintest of drums—then to a far-away droning eagle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car, road, risk, safety, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> There were the bells and the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long conversation with a voice that was in the white wind, a conversation that took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself</i>) Whither shall I journey now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Petulantly</i>) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Fifteen years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: And what's the name of the place?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In astonishment</i>) What?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Very much depressed</i>) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Even so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What of me? What chance shall I have?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>After a dissatisfied pause</i>) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It's expected that they'll be very busy shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What will I be? Tell me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it's not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a "susciety gurl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What's that?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as</i> THE VOICE <i>scratching its head</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>At length</i>) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Placidly</i>) It all sounds so vulgar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In a whisper</i>) Will I be paid?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Yes, as usual—in love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips</i>) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Soberly</i>) You will love it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The dialogue ends here, with</i> BEAUTY <i>still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>All this took place seven years before</i> ANTHONY <i>sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER II (31-73)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PORTRAIT OF A SIREN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> CRISPNESS folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony's mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, to bear children unto three dozen millionaires. Five dozen virtuous females of the second layer were proclaiming not only this fitness, but in addition a tremendous undaunted ambition toward the first three dozen young men, who were of course invited to each of the ninety-six parties—as were the young lady's group of family friends, acquaintances, college boys, and eager young outsiders. To continue, there was a third layer from the skirts of the city, from Newark and the Jersey suburbs up to bitter Connecticut and the ineligible sections of Long Island—and doubtless contiguous layers down to the city's shoes: Jewesses were coming out into a society of Jewish men and women, from Riverside to the Bronx, and looking forward to a rising young broker or jeweller and a kosher wedding; Irish girls were casting their eyes, with license at last to do so, upon a society of young Tammany politicians, pious undertakers, and grown-up choirboys.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> And, naturally, the city caught the contagious air of entré—the working girls, poor ugly souls, wrapping soap in the factories and showing finery in the big stores, dreamed that perhaps in the spectacular excitement of this winter they might obtain for themselves the coveted male—as in a muddled carnival crowd an inefficient pickpocket may consider his chances increased. And the chimneys commenced to smoke and the subway's foulness was freshened. And the actresses came out in new plays and the publishers came out with new books and the Castles came out with new dances. And the railroads came out with new schedules containing new mistakes instead of the old ones that the commuters had grown used to. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The City was coming out!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, ran unexpectedly into Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel had on one of those knee-length, sheep-lined coats long worn by the working men of the Middle West, that were just coming into fashionable approval. His soft hat was of a discreet dark brown, and from under it his clear eye flamed like a topaz. He stopped Anthony enthusiastically, slapping him on the arms more from a desire to keep himself warm than from playfulness, and, after his inevitable hand shake, exploded into sound.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cold as the devil— Good Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, and took notes while she talked—so she couldn't see me, you know, just as though I were writing casually—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had seized Anthony's arm and was walking him briskly up Madison Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where to?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nowhere in particular."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, then what's the use?" demanded Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They stopped and stared at each other, and Anthony wondered if the cold made his own face as repellent as Dick Caramel's, whose nose was crimson, whose bulging brow was blue, whose yellow unmatched eyes were red and watery at the rims. After a moment they began walking again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Done some good work on my novel." Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. "But I have to get out once in a while." He glanced at Anthony apologetically, as though craving encouragement. "I have to talk. I guess very few people ever really <i>think</i>, I mean sit down and ponder and have ideas in sequence. I do my thinking in writing or conversation. You've got to have a start, sort of—something to defend or contradict—don't you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't mind carrying you, Dick, but with that coat—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "that on paper your first paragraph contains the idea you're going to damn or enlarge on. In conversation you've got your vis-à-vis's last statement—but when you simply <i>ponder</i>, why, your ideas just succeed each other like magic-lantern pictures and each one forces out the last."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They passed Forty-fifth Street and slowed down slightly. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke and frosted breath into the air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's walk up to the Plaza and have an egg-nog," suggested Anthony. "Do you good. Air'll get the rotten nicotine out of your lungs. Come on—I'll let you talk about your book all the way."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to if it bores you. I mean you needn't do it as a favor." The words tumbled out in haste, and though he tried to keep his face casual it screwed up uncertainly. Anthony was compelled to protest: "Bore me? I should say not!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin—" began Dick, but Anthony interrupted by stretching out his arms and breathing forth a low cry of exultation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good weather!" he exclaimed, "isn't it? Makes me feel about ten. I mean it makes me feel as I should have felt when I was ten. Murderous! Oh, God! one minute it's my world, and the next I'm the world's fool. To-day it's my world and everything's easy, easy. Even Nothing is easy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Got a cousin up at the Plaza. Famous girl. We can go up and meet her. She lives there in the winter—has lately anyway—with her mother and father."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Didn't know you had cousins in New York."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Her name's Gloria. She's from home—Kansas City. Her mother's a practising Bilphist, and her father's quite dull but a perfect gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What are they? Literary material?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They try to be. All the old man does is tell me he just met the most wonderful character for a novel. Then he tells me about some idiotic friend of his and then he says: '<i>There's</i> a character for you! Why don't you write him up? Everybody'd be interested in <i>him</i>.' Or else he tells me about Japan or Paris, or some other very obvious place, and says: 'Why don't you write a story about that place? That'd be a wonderful setting for a story!'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How about the girl?" inquired Anthony casually, "Gloria—Gloria what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gilbert. Oh, you've heard of her—Gloria Gilbert. Goes to dances at colleges—all that sort of thing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard her name."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-looking—in fact damned attractive."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't care for young girls as a rule," said Anthony, frowning.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was not strictly true. While it seemed to him that the average débutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness interested him enormously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's darn nice—not a brain in her head."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed in a one-syllabled snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By that you mean that she hasn't a line of literary patter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I don't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick, you know what passes as brains in a girl for you. Earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. The kind who when they were sixteen argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrong—and whether it was immoral for freshmen to drink beer."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was offended. His scowl crinkled like crushed paper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No—" he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes; kind who just at present sit in corners and confer on the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick turned to him, a curious falling in his whole countenance. His question was almost an appeal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What's the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I were a sort of inferior."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was confused, but he was also cold and a little uncomfortable, so he took refuge in attack.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't think your brains matter, Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course they matter!" exclaimed Dick angrily. "What do you mean? Why don't they matter?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You might know too much for your pen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I couldn't possibly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I can imagine," insisted Anthony, "a man knowing too much for his talent to express. Like me. Suppose, for instance, I have more wisdom than you, and less talent. It would tend to make me inarticulate. You, on the contrary, have enough water to fill the pail and a big enough pail to hold the water."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't follow you at all," complained Dick in a crestfallen tone. Infinitely dismayed, he seemed to bulge in protest. He was staring intently at Anthony and caroming off a succession of passers-by, who reproached him with fierce, resentful glances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I simply mean that a talent like Wells's could carry the intelligence of a Spencer. But an inferior talent can only be graceful when it's carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick considered, unable to decide the exact degree of criticism intended by Anthony's remarks. But Anthony, with that facility which seemed so frequently to flow from him, continued, his dark eyes gleaming in his thin face, his chin raised, his voice raised, his whole physical being raised:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Say I am proud and sane and wise—an Athenian among Greeks. Well, I might fail where a lesser man would succeed. He could imitate, he could adorn, he could be enthusiastic, he could be hopefully constructive. But this hypothetical me would be too proud to imitate, too sane to be enthusiastic, too sophisticated to be Utopian, too Grecian to adorn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then you don't think the artist works from his intelligence?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. He goes on improving, if he can, what he imitates in the way of style, and choosing from his own interpretation of the things around him what constitutes material. But after all every writer writes because it's his mode of living. Don't tell me you like this 'Divine Function of the Artist' business?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not accustomed even to refer to myself as an artist."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick," said Anthony, changing his tone, "I want to beg your pardon."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For that outburst. I'm honestly sorry. I was talking for effect."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Somewhat mollified, Dick rejoined:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've often said you were a Philistine at heart."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a crackling dusk when they turned in under the white façade of the Plaza and tasted slowly the foam and yellow thickness of an egg-nog. Anthony looked at his companion. Richard Caramel's nose and brow were slowly approaching a like pigmentation; the red was leaving the one, the blue deserting the other. Glancing in a mirror, Anthony was glad to find that his own skin had not discolored. On the contrary, a faint glow had kindled in his cheeks—he fancied that he had never looked so well.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Enough for me," said Dick, his tone that of an athlete in training. "I want to go up and see the Gilberts. Won't you come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—yes. If you don't dedicate me to the parents and dash off in the corner with Dora."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not Dora—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A clerk announced them over the phone, and ascending to the tenth floor they followed a winding corridor and knocked at 1088. The door was answered by a middle-aged lady—Mrs. Gilbert herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" She spoke in the conventional American lady-lady language. "Well, I'm <i>aw</i>fully glad to see you—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Hasty interjections by Dick, and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Mr. Pats? Well, do come in, and leave your coat there." She pointed to a chair and changed her inflection to a deprecatory laugh full of minute gasps. "This is really lovely—lovely. Why, Richard, you haven't been here for <i>so</i> long—no!—no!" The latter monosyllables served half as responses, half as periods, to some vague starts from Dick. "Well, do sit down and tell me what you've been doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One crossed and recrossed; one stood and bowed ever so gently; one smiled again and again with helpless stupidity; one wondered if she would ever sit down—at length one slid thankfully into a chair and settled for a pleasant call.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose it's because you've been busy—as much as anything else," smiled Mrs. Gilbert somewhat ambiguously. The "as much as anything else" she used to balance all her more rickety sentences. She had two other ones: "at least that's the way I look at it" and "pure and simple"—these three, alternated, gave each of her remarks an air of being a general reflection on life, as though she had calculated all causes and, at length, put her finger on the ultimate one.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel's face, Anthony saw, was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who are of no further value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are you a writer too, Mr. Pats? . . . Well, perhaps we can all bask in Richard's fame."—Gentle laughter led by Mrs. Gilbert.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria's out," she said, with an air of laying down an axiom from which she would proceed to derive results. "She's dancing somewhere. Gloria goes, goes, goes. I tell her I don't see how she stands it. She dances all afternoon and all night, until I think she's going to wear herself to a shadow. Her father is very worried about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled from one to the other. They both smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was composed, Anthony perceived, of a succession of semicircles and parabolas, like those figures that gifted folk make on the typewriter: head, arms, bust, hips, thighs, and ankles were in a bewildering tier of roundnesses. Well ordered and clean she was, with hair of an artificially rich gray; her large face sheltered weather-beaten blue eyes and was adorned with just the faintest white mustache.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," she remarked to Anthony, "that Richard is an ancient soul."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the tense pause that followed, Anthony considered a pun—something about Dick having been much walked upon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We all have souls of different ages," continued Mrs. Gilbert radiantly; "at least that's what I say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps so," agreed Anthony with an air of quickening to a hopeful idea. The voice bubbled on:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria has a very young soul—irresponsible, as much as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's sparkling, Aunt Catherine," said Richard pleasantly. "A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," confessed Mrs. Gilbert, "all I know is that she goes and goes and goes—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The number of goings to Gloria's discredit was lost in the rattle of the door-knob as it turned to admit Mr. Gilbert. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was a short man with a mustache resting like a small white cloud beneath his undistinguished nose. He had reached the stage where his value as a social creature was a black and imponderable negative. His ideas were the popular delusions of twenty years before; his mind steered a wabbly and anæmic course in the wake of the daily newspaper editorials. After graduating from a small but terrifying Western university, he had entered the celluloid business, and as this required only the minute measure of intelligence he brought to it, he did well for several years—in fact until about 1911, when he began exchanging contracts for vague agreements with the moving picture industry. The moving picture industry had decided about 1912 to gobble him up, and at this time he was, so to speak, delicately balanced on its tongue. Meanwhile he was supervising manager of the Associated Mid-western Film Materials Company, spending six months of each year in New York and the remainder in Kansas City and St. Louis. He felt credulously that there was a good thing coming to him—and his wife thought so, and his daughter thought so too.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals, she was always in a mix-up—he had irritated her once and she had used toward him words that he had not thought were part of her vocabulary. His wife was easier. After fifteen years of incessant guerilla warfare he had conquered her—it was a war of muddled optimism against organized dulness, and something in the number of "yes's" with which he could poison a conversation had won him the victory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes-yes," he would say, "yes-yes-yes-yes. Let me see. That was the summer of—let me see—ninety-one or ninety-two—Yes-yes-yes-yes——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fifteen years of yes's had beaten Mrs. Gilbert. Fifteen further years of that incessant unaffirmative affirmative, accompanied by the perpetual flicking of ash-mushrooms from thirty-two thousand cigars, had broken her. To this husband of hers she made the last concession of married life, which is more complete, more irrevocable, than the first—she listened to him. She told herself that the years had brought her tolerance—actually they had slain what measure she had ever possessed of moral courage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She introduced him to Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is Mr. Pats," she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, temperature"><br /> <poem><br /> The young man and the old touched flesh; Mr. Gilbert's hand was soft, worn away to the pulpy semblance of a squeezed grapefruit. Then husband and wife exchanged greetings—he told her it had grown colder out; he said he had walked down to a news-stand on Forty-fourth Street for a Kansas City paper. He had intended to ride back in the bus but he had found it too cold, yes, yes, yes, yes, too cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert added flavor to his adventure by being impressed with his courage in braving the harsh air.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you <i>are</i> spunky!" she exclaimed admiringly. "You <i>are</i> spunky. I wouldn't have gone out for anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert with true masculine impassivity disregarded the awe he had excited in his wife. He turned to the two young men and triumphantly routed them on the subject of the weather. Richard Caramel was called on to remember the month of November in Kansas. No sooner had the theme been pushed toward him, however, than it was violently fished back to be lingered over, pawed over, elongated, and generally devitalized by its sponsor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> The immemorial thesis that the days somewhere were warm but the nights very pleasant was successfully propounded and they decided the exact distance on an obscure railroad between two points that Dick had inadvertently mentioned. Anthony fixed Mr. Gilbert with a steady stare and went into a trance through which, after a moment, Mrs. Gilbert's smiling voice penetrated:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems as though the cold were damper here—it seems to eat into my bones."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the tip of Mr. Gilbert's tongue, he could not be blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where's Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She ought to be here any minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Have you met my daughter, Mr.——?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Haven't had the pleasure. I've heard Dick speak of her often."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She and Richard are cousins."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes?" Anthony smiled with some effort. He was not used to the society of his seniors, and his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness. It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick being cousins. He managed within the next minute to throw an agonized glance at his friend.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel was afraid they'd have to toddle off.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea—something about being glad they'd come, anyhow, even if they'd only seen an old lady 'way too old to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one bar in three-four time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Would they come again soon?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria would be <i>aw</i>fully sorry!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Smiles!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bang!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A LADY'S LEGS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Behind Maury Noble's attractive indolence, his irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention, as he stated it in college, had been to use three years in travel, three years in utter leisure—and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker; but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious purpose and significant design—as though Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go along the earth and to see all the billions of humans who bred and wept and slew each other here and there upon it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in America, he was sallying into the search for amusement with the same consistent absorption. He who had never taken more than a few cocktails or a pint of wine at a sitting, taught himself to drink as he would have taught himself Greek—like Greek it would be the gateway to a wealth of new sensations, new psychic states, new reactions in joy or misery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His habits were a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth Street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home. Foremost on the latter list were Anthony Patch and Richard Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury's mother lived with her married son in Philadelphia, and there Maury went usually for the week-ends, so one Saturday night when Anthony, prowling the chilly streets in a fit of utter boredom, dropped in at the Molton Arms he was overjoyed to find that Mr. Noble was at home.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His spirits soared faster than the flying elevator. This was so good, so extremely good, to be about to talk to Maury—who would be equally happy at seeing him. They would look at each other with a deep affection just behind their eyes which both would conceal beneath some attenuated raillery. Had it been summer they would have gone out together and indolently sipped two long Tom Collinses, as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill's, or a thimbleful of Maury's Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and catlike, in his favorite chair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There he was! The room closed about Anthony, warmed him. The glow of that strong persuasive mind, that temperament almost Oriental in its outward impassivity, warmed Anthony's restless soul and brought him a peace that could be likened only to the peace a stupid woman gives. One must understand all—else one must take all for granted. Maury filled the room, tigerlike, godlike. The winds outside were stilled; the brass candlesticks on the mantel glowed like tapers before an altar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What keeps you here to-day?" Anthony spread himself over a yielding sofa and made an elbow-rest among the pillows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Just been here an hour. Tea dance—and I stayed so late I missed my train to Philadelphia."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange to stay so long," commented Anthony curiously.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rather. What'd you do?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine. Little usher at Keith's. I told you about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Paid me a call about three and stayed till five. Peculiar little soul—she gets me. She's so utterly stupid."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was silent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Strange as it may seem," continued Anthony, "so far as I'm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> He had known her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the Park. She had a vague family—a shadowy aunt and uncle who shared with her an apartment in the labyrinthine hundreds. She was company, familiar and faintly intimate and restful. Further than that he did not care to experiment—not from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She has two stunts," he informed Maury; "one of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say 'You cra-a-azy!' when some one makes a remark that's over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in my imagination."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury stirred in his chair and spoke.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Remarkable that a person can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that actually takes the whole universe in the most matter-of-fact way. From the influence of Rousseau to the bearing of the tariff rates on her dinner, the whole phenomenon is utterly strange to her. She's just been carried along from an age of spearheads and plunked down here with the equipment of an archer for going into a pistol duel. You could sweep away the entire crust of history and she'd never know the difference."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish our Richard would write about her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Anthony, surely you don't think she's worth writing about."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As much as anybody," he answered, yawning. "You know I was thinking to-day that I have a great confidence in Dick. So long as he sticks to people and not to ideas, and as long as his inspirations come from life and not from art, and always granting a normal growth, I believe he'll be a big man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think the appearance of the black note-book would prove that he's going to life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony raised himself on his elbow and answered eagerly:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he accurately transcribe his own sister?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they were off for half an hour on literature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A classic," suggested Anthony, "is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a time the subject temporarily lost its tang. The interest of the two young men was not particularly technical. They were in love with generalities. Anthony had recently discovered Samuel Butler and the brisk aphorisms in the note-book seemed to him the quintessence of criticism. Maury, his whole mind so thoroughly mellowed by the very hardness of his scheme of life, seemed inevitably the wiser of the two, yet in the actual stuff of their intelligences they were not, it seemed, fundamentally different.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They drifted from letters to the curiosities of each other's day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Whose tea was it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "People named Abercrombie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why'd you stay late? Meet a luscious débutante?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you really?" Anthony's voice lifted in surprise.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not a débutante exactly. Said she came out two winters ago in Kansas City."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of left-over?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No," answered Maury with some amusement, "I think that's the last thing I'd say about her. She seemed—well, somehow the youngest person there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Not too young to make you miss a train."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Young enough. Beautiful child."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled in his one-syllable snort.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, Maury, you're in your second childhood. What do you mean by beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury gazed helplessly into space.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I can't describe her exactly—except to say that she was beautiful. She was—tremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was a sort of attenuated vice. She's a nervous kind—said she always ate gum-drops at teas because she had to stand around so long in one place."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What'd you talk about—Bergson? Bilphism? Whether the one-step is immoral?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "As a matter of fact we did talk on Bilphism. Seems her mother's a Bilphist. Mostly, though, we talked about legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony rocked in glee.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My God! Whose legs?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hers. She talked a lot about hers. As though they were a sort of choice bric-à-brac. She aroused a great desire to see them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What is she—a dancer?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I found she was a cousin of Dick's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony sat upright so suddenly that the pillow he released stood on end like a live thing and dove to the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Name's Gloria Gilbert?" he cried.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes. Isn't she remarkable?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure I don't know—but for sheer dulness her father—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," interrupted Maury with implacable conviction, "her family may be as sad as professional mourners but I'm inclined to think that she's a quite authentic and original character. The outer signs of the cut-and-dried Yale prom girl and all that—but different, very emphatically different."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Go on, go on!" urged Anthony. "Soon as Dick told me she didn't have a brain in her head I knew she must be pretty good."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did he say that?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Swore to it," said Anthony with another snorting laugh.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what he means by brains in a woman is—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know," interrupted Anthony eagerly, "he means a smattering of literary misinformation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's it. The kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes it's a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin too—her own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely she usually approximated it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You sat enraptured by her low alto?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze, if I remember rightly."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's got you going—oh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in his family!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Snowing hard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Another winter." Maury's voice from the window was almost a whisper.<br /> "We're growing old, Anthony. I'm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to thirty, and then I'm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was silent for a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>are</i> old, Maury," he agreed at length. "The first signs of a very dissolute and wabbly senescence—you have spent the afternoon talking about tan and a lady's legs."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Maury pulled down the shade with a sudden harsh snap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come—oh, for a Caramel to take notes—and another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonys—yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "After all, Anthony, it's you who are very romantic and young. It's you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. It's me who tries again and again to be moved—let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me. Nothing—quite—stirs me.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yet," he murmured after another long pause, "there was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old—like me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TURBULENCE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony turned over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the rug was beckoning and perishable to his perishable feet, and Bounds, horribly inappropriate in his soft collar, was of stuff as fading as the gauze of frozen breath he uttered. He was close to the bed, his hand still lowered where he had been jerking at the upper blanket, his dark-brown eyes fixed imperturbably upon his master.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bows!" muttered the drowsy god. "Thachew, Bows?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's I, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved his head, forced his eyes wide, and blinked triumphantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Bounds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you get off—yeow-ow-oh-oh-oh God!—" Anthony yawned insufferably and the contents of his brain seemed to fall together in a dense hash. He made a fresh start.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Can you come around about four and serve some tea and sandwiches or something?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony considered with chilling lack of inspiration. "Some sandwiches," he repeated helplessly, "oh, some cheese sandwiches and jelly ones and chicken and olive, I guess. Never mind breakfast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The strain of invention was too much. He shut his eyes wearily, let his head roll to rest inertly, and quickly relaxed what he had regained of muscular control. Out of a crevice of his mind crept the vague but inevitable spectre of the night before—but it proved in this case to be nothing but a seemingly interminable conversation with Richard Caramel, who had called on him at midnight; they had drunk four bottles of beer and munched dry crusts of bread while Anthony listened to a reading of the first part of "The Demon Lover."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Came a voice now after many hours. Anthony disregarded it, as sleep closed over him, folded down upon him, crept up into the byways of his mind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Suddenly he was awake, saying: "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "For how many, sir?" It was still Bounds, standing patient and motionless at the foot of the bed—Bounds who divided his manner among three gentlemen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How many what?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think, sir, I'd better know how many are coming. I'll have to plan for the sandwiches, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Two," muttered Anthony huskily; "lady and a gentleman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bounds said, "Thank you, sir," and moved away, bearing with him his humiliating reproachful soft collar, reproachful to each of the three gentlemen, who only demanded of him a third.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After a long time Anthony arose and drew an opalescent dressing grown of brown and blue over his slim pleasant figure. With a last yawn he went into the bathroom, and turning on the dresser light (the bathroom had no outside exposure) he contemplated himself in the mirror with some interest. A wretched apparition, he thought; he usually thought so in the morning—sleep made his face unnaturally pale. He lit a cigarette and glanced through several letters and the morning Tribune.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour later, shaven and dressed, he was sitting at his desk looking at a small piece of paper he had taken out of his wallet. It was scrawled with semi-legible memoranda: "See Mr. Howland at five. Get hair-cut. See about Rivers' bill. Go book-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And under the last: "Cash in bank, $690 (crossed out), $612 (crossed out), $607."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Finally, down at the bottom and in a hurried scrawl: "Dick and Gloria Gilbert for tea."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This last item brought him obvious satisfaction. His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the uneaten sandwiches.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was a growing lack of color in Anthony's days. He felt it constantly and sometimes traced it to a talk he had had with Maury Noble a month before. That anything so ingenuous, so priggish, as a sense of waste should oppress him was absurd, but there was no denying the fact that some unwelcome survival of a fetish had drawn him three weeks before down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours of acute and startling panic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In justification of his manner of living there was first, of course, The Meaninglessness of Life. As aides and ministers, pages and squires, butlers and lackeys to this great Khan there were a thousand books glowing on his shelves, there was his apartment and all the money that was to be his when the old man up the river should choke on his last morality. From a world fraught with the menace of débutantes and the stupidity of many Geraldines he was thankfully delivered—rather should he emulate the feline immobility of Maury and wear proudly the culminative wisdom of the numbered generations.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Over and against these things was something which his brain persistently analyzed and dealt with as a tiresome complex but which, though logically disposed of and bravely trampled under foot, had sent him out through the soft slush of late November to a library which had none of the books he most wanted. It is fair to analyze Anthony as far as he could analyze himself; further than that it is, of course, presumption. He found in himself a growing horror and loneliness. The idea of eating alone frightened him; in preference he dined often with men he detested. Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —If I am essentially weak, he thought, I need work to do, work to do. It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity, with neither the poise of Maury nor the enthusiasm of Dick. It seemed a tragedy to want nothing—and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was—some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After cocktails and luncheon at the University Club Anthony felt better. He had run into two men from his class at Harvard, and in contrast to the gray heaviness of their conversation his life assumed color. Both of them were married: one spent his coffee time in sketching an extra-nuptial adventure to the bland and appreciative smiles of the other. Both of them, he thought, were Mr. Gilberts in embryo; the number of their "yes's" would have to be quadrupled, their natures crabbed by twenty years—then they would be no more than obsolete and broken machines, pseudo-wise and valueless, nursed to an utter senility by the women they had broken.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ah, he was more than that, as he paced the long carpet in the lounge after dinner, pausing at the window to look into the harried street. He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a stray boyishness he saw himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather's money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam. The clarity of his mind, its sophistication, its versatile intelligence, all at their maturity and dominated by some purpose yet to be born would find him work to do. On this minor his dream faded—work to do: he tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lustreless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people—and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Lord Verulam! Talleyrand!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Back in his apartment the grayness returned. His cocktails had died, making him sleepy, somewhat befogged and inclined to be surly. Lord Verulam—he? The very thought was bitter. Anthony Patch with no record of achievement, without courage, without strength to be satisfied with truth when it was given him. Oh, he was a pretentious fool, making careers out of cocktails and meanwhile regretting, weakly and secretly, the collapse of an insufficient and wretched idealism. He had garnished his soul in the subtlest taste and now he longed for the old rubbish. He was empty, it seemed, empty as an old bottle——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The buzzer rang at the door. Anthony sprang up and lifted the tube to his ear. It was Richard Caramel's voice, stilted and facetious:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Announcing Miss Gloria Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE BEAUTIFUL LADY</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he said, smiling and holding the door ajar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick bowed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, this is Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" she cried, holding out a little gloved hand. Under her fur coat her dress was Alice-blue, with white lace crinkled stiffly about her throat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let me take your things."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony stretched out his arms and the brown mass of fur tumbled into them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thanks."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you think of her, Anthony?" Richard Caramel demanded barbarously. "Isn't she beautiful?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!" cried the girl defiantly—withal unmoved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was dazzling—alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance. Her hair, full of a heavenly glamour, was gay against the winter color of the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony moved about, magician-like, turning the mushroom lamp into an orange glory. The stirred fire burnished the copper andirons on the hearth——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a solid block of ice," murmured Gloria casually, glancing around with eyes whose irises were of the most delicate and transparent bluish white. "What a slick fire! We found a place where you could stand on an iron-bar grating, sort of, and it blew warm air up at you—but Dick wouldn't wait there with me. I told him to go on alone and let me be happy."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Conventional enough this. She seemed talking for her own pleasure, without effort. Anthony, sitting at one end of the sofa, examined her profile against the foreground of the lamp: the exquisite regularity of nose and upper lip, the chin, faintly decided, balanced beautifully on a rather short neck. On a photograph she must have been completely classical, almost cold—but the glow of her hair and cheeks, at once flushed and fragile, made her the most living person he had ever seen.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . Think you've got the best name I've heard," she was saying, still apparently to herself; her glance rested on him a moment and then flitted past him—to the Italian bracket-lamps clinging like luminous yellow turtles at intervals along the walls, to the books row upon row, then to her cousin on the other side. "Anthony Patch. Only you ought to look sort of like a horse, with a long narrow face—and you ought to be in tatters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all the Patch part, though. How should Anthony look?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You look like Anthony," she assured him seriously—he thought she had scarcely seen him—"rather majestic," she continued, "and solemn."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony indulged in a disconcerted smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Only I like alliterative names," she went on, "all except mine. Mine's too flamboyant. I used to know two girls named Jinks, though, and just think if they'd been named anything except what they were named—Judy Jinks and Jerry Jinks. Cute, what? Don't you think?" Her childish mouth was parted, awaiting a rejoinder.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Everybody in the next generation," suggested Dick, "will be named Peter or Barbara—because at present all the piquant literary characters are named Peter or Barbara."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony continued the prophecy:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course Gladys and Eleanor, having graced the last generation of heroines and being at present in their social prime, will be passed on to the next generation of shop-girls——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Displacing Ella and Stella," interrupted Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Pearl and Jewel," Gloria added cordially, "and Earl and Elmer and Minnie."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then I'll come along," remarked Dick, "and picking up the obsolete name, Jewel, I'll attach it to some quaint and attractive character and it'll start its career all over again."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice took up the thread of subject and wove along with faintly upturning, half-humorous intonations for sentence ends—as though defying interruption—and intervals of shadowy laughter. Dick had told her that Anthony's man was named Bounds—she thought that was wonderful! Dick had made some sad pun about Bounds doing patchwork, but if there was one thing worse than a pun, she said, it was a person who, as the inevitable come-back to a pun, gave the perpetrator a mock-reproachful look.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where are you from?" inquired Anthony. He knew, but beauty had rendered him thoughtless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Kansas City, Missouri."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They put her out the same time they barred cigarettes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did they bar cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a reformer or something, isn't he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I blush for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So do I," she confessed. "I detest reformers, especially the sort who try to reform me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Are there many of those?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dozens. It's 'Oh, Gloria, if you smoke so many cigarettes you'll lose your pretty complexion!' and 'Oh, Gloria, why don't you marry and settle down?'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony agreed emphatically while he wondered who had had the temerity to speak thus to such a personage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And then," she continued, "there are all the subtle reformers who tell you the wild stories they've heard about you and how they've been sticking up for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw, at length, that her eyes were gray, very level and cool, and when they rested on him he understood what Maury had meant by saying she was very young and very old. She talked always about herself as a very charming child might talk, and her comments on her tastes and distastes were unaffected and spontaneous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I must confess," said Anthony gravely, "that even <i>I</i>'ve heard one thing about you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Alert at once, she sat up straight. Those eyes, with the grayness and eternity of a cliff of soft granite, caught his.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell me. I'll believe it. I always believe anything any one tells me about myself—don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Invariably!" agreed the two men in unison.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, tell me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not sure that I ought to," teased Anthony, smiling unwillingly. She was so obviously interested, in a state of almost laughable self-absorption.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He means your nickname," said her cousin.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What name?" inquired Anthony, politely puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Instantly she was shy—then she laughed, rolled back against the cushions, and turned her eyes up as she spoke:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Coast-to-Coast Gloria." Her voice was full of laughter, laughter undefined as the varying shadows playing between fire and lamp upon her hair. "O Lord!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Still Anthony was puzzled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "<i>Me</i>”, I mean. That's what some silly boys coined for <i>me</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you see, Anthony," explained Dick, "traveller of a nation-wide notoriety and all that. Isn't that what you've heard? She's been called that for years—since she was seventeen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony's eyes became sad and humorous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this female Methuselah you've brought in here, Caramel?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She disregarded this, possibly rather resented it, for she switched back to the main topic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>have</i> you heard of me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Something about your physique."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh," she said, coolly disappointed, "that all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Your tan."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My tan?" She was puzzled. Her hand rose to her throat, rested there an instant as though the fingers were feeling variants of color.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you remember Maury Noble? Man you met about a month ago. You made a great impression."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She thought a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I remember—but he didn't call me up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He was afraid to, I don't doubt."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was black dark without now and Anthony wondered that his apartment had ever seemed gray—so warm and friendly were the books and pictures on the walls and the good Bounds offering tea from a respectful shadow and the three nice people giving out waves of interest and laughter back and forth across the happy fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DISSATISFACTION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> On Thursday afternoon Gloria and Anthony had tea together in the grill room at the Plaza. Her fur-trimmed suit was gray—"because with gray you <i>have</i> to wear a lot of paint," she explained—and a small toque sat rakishly on her head, allowing yellow ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a child's hands should be.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As they entered, the orchestra were sounding the preliminary whimpers to a maxixe, a tune full of castanets and facile faintly languorous violin harmonies, appropriate to the crowded winter grill teeming with an excited college crowd, high-spirited at the approach of the holidays. Carefully, Gloria considered several locations, and rather to Anthony's annoyance paraded him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naïve was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abstractedly she watched the dancers for a few moments, commenting murmurously as a couple eddied near.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's a pretty girl in blue"—and as Anthony looked obediently—" there! No. behind you—there!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," he agreed helplessly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You didn't see her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd rather look at you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I know, but she was pretty. Except that she had big ankles."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Was she?—I mean, did she?" he said indifferently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A girl's salutation came from a couple dancing close to them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Gloria! O Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello there."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's that?" he demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. Somebody." She caught sight of another face. "Hello, Muriel!" Then to Anthony: "There's Muriel Kane. Now I think she's attractive, 'cept not very." <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony chuckled appreciatively.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Attractive, 'cept not very," he repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled—was interested immediately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why is that funny?" Her tone was pathetically intent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It just was."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you want to dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. But let's sit," she decided.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And talk about you? You love to talk about you, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes." Caught in a vanity, she laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I imagine your autobiography would be a classic."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick says I haven't got one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick!" he exclaimed. "What does he know about you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nothing. But he says the biography of every woman begins with the first kiss that counts, and ends when her last child is laid in her arms."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's talking from his book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He says unloved women have no biographies—they have histories."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Surely you don't claim to be unloved!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I suppose not."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then why haven't you a biography? Haven't you ever had a kiss that counted?" As the words left his lips he drew in his breath sharply as though to suck them back. This <i>baby</i>!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know what you mean 'counts,'" she objected.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish you'd tell me how old you are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Twenty-two," she said, meeting his eyes gravely. "How old did you think?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "About eighteen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to start being that. I don't like being twenty-two. I hate it more than anything in the world."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Being twenty-two?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No. Getting old and everything. Getting married."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever want to marry?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to have responsibility and a lot of children to take care of."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Evidently she did not doubt that on her lips all things were good. He waited rather breathlessly for her next remark, expecting it to follow up her last. She was smiling, without amusement but pleasantly, and after an interval half a dozen words fell into the space between them:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I had some gum-drops."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You shall!" He beckoned to a waiter and sent him to the cigar counter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "D'you mind? I love gum-drops. Everybody kids me about it because I'm always whacking away at one—whenever my daddy's not around."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not at all.—Who are all these children?" he asked suddenly. "Do you know them all?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, but they're from—oh, from everywhere, I suppose. Don't you ever come here?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Very seldom. I don't care particularly for 'nice girls.'"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Immediately he had her attention. She turned a definite shoulder to the dancers, relaxed in her chair, and demanded:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What <i>do</i>” you do with yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Thanks to a cocktail Anthony welcomed the question. In a mood to talk, he wanted, moreover, to impress this girl whose interest seemed so tantalizingly elusive—she stopped to browse in unexpected pastures, hurried quickly over the inobviously obvious. He wanted to pose. He wanted to appear suddenly to her in novel and heroic colors. He wanted to stir her from that casualness she showed toward everything except herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I do nothing," he began, realizing simultaneously that his words were to lack the debonair grace he craved for them. "I do nothing, for there's nothing I can do that's worth doing."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?" He had neither surprised her nor even held her, yet she had certainly understood him, if indeed he had said aught worth understanding.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you approve of lazy men?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She nodded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I suppose so, if they're gracefully lazy. Is that possible for an American?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why not?" he demanded, discomfited.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But her mind had left the subject and wandered up ten floors.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My daddy's mad at me," she observed dispassionately.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle"—his words gathered conviction—"it astonishes me. It—it—I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He broke off. She watched him inscrutably. He waited for her to agree or disagree, but she did neither.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever form judgments on things?" he asked with some exasperation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her head and her eyes wandered back to the dancers as she answered:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know. I don't know anything about—what you should do, or what anybody should do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he admitted apologetically, "neither do I, of course, but——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I just think of people," she continued, "whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You don't want to do anything?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to sleep."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For a second he was startled, almost as though she had meant this literally.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sleep?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Sort of. I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe—and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me. But I never want to change people or get excited over them."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a quaint little determinist," laughed Anthony. "It's your world, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well—" she said with a quick upward glance, "isn't it? As long as I'm—young."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She had paused slightly before the last word and Anthony suspected that she had started to say "beautiful." It was undeniably what she had intended.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes brightened and he waited for her to enlarge on the theme. He had drawn her out, at any rate—he bent forward slightly to catch the words.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But "Let's dance!" was all she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ADMIRATION</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That winter afternoon at the Plaza was the first of a succession of "dates" Anthony made with her in the blurred and stimulating days before Christmas. Invariably she was busy. What particular strata of the city's social life claimed her he was a long time finding out. It seemed to matter very little. She attended the semi-public charity dances at the big hotels; he saw her several times at dinner parties in Sherry's, and once as he waited for her to dress, Mrs. Gilbert, apropos of her daughter's habit of "going," rattled off an amazing holiday programme that included half a dozen dances to which Anthony had received cards.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He made engagements with her several times for lunch and tea—the former were hurried and, to him at least, rather unsatisfactory occasions, for she was sleepy-eyed and casual, incapable of concentrating upon anything or of giving consecutive attention to his remarks. When after two of these sallow meals he accused her of tendering him the skin and bones of the day she laughed and gave him a tea-time three days off. This was infinitely more satisfactory.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One Sunday afternoon just before Christmas he called up and found her in the lull directly after some important but mysterious quarrel: she informed him in a tone of mingled wrath and amusement that she had sent a man out of her apartment—here Anthony speculated violently—and that the man had been giving a little dinner for her that very night and that of course she wasn't going. So Anthony took her to supper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's go to something!" she proposed as they went down in the elevator. "I want to see a show, don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Inquiry at the hotel ticket desk disclosed only two Sunday night "concerts."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They're always the same," she complained unhappily, "same old Yiddish comedians. Oh, let's go somewhere!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> To conceal a guilty suspicion that he should have arranged a performance of some kind for her approval Anthony affected a knowing cheerfulness.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We'll go to a good cabaret."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've seen every one in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, we'll find a new one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was in wretched humor; that was evident. Her gray eyes were granite now indeed. When she wasn't speaking she stared straight in front of her as if at some distasteful abstraction in the lobby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, come on, then."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driver, passenger, navigation, city, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> He followed her, a graceful girl even in her enveloping fur, out to a taxicab, and, with an air of having a definite place in mind, instructed the driver to go over to Broadway and then turn south. He made several casual attempts at conversation but as she adopted an impenetrable armor of silence and answered him in sentences as morose as the cold darkness of the taxicab he gave up, and assuming a like mood fell into a dim gloom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="visibility, urban, car"><br /> <poem><br /> A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony's eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign spelling "Marathon" in glorious yellow script, adorned with electrical leaves and flowers that alternately vanished and beamed upon the wet and glistening street. He leaned and rapped on the taxi-window and in a moment was receiving information from a colored doorman: Yes, this was a cabaret. Fine cabaret. Bes' showina city!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shall we try it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, car part"><br /> <poem><br /> With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door and prepared to follow it; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this unsung palace of pleasure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The gay habitats of the very rich and the very poor, the very dashing and the very criminal, not to mention the lately exploited very Bohemian, are made known to the awed high school girls of Augusta, Georgia, and Redwing, Minnesota, not only through the bepictured and entrancing spreads of the Sunday theatrical supplements but through the shocked and alarmful eyes of Mr. Rupert Hughes and other chroniclers of the mad pace of America. But the excursions of Harlem onto Broadway, the deviltries of the dull and the revelries of the respectable are a matter of esoteric knowledge only to the participants themselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A tip circulates—and in the place knowingly mentioned, gather the lower moral-classes on Saturday and Sunday nights—the little troubled men who are pictured in the comics as "the Consumer" or "the Public." They have made sure that the place has three qualifications: it is cheap; it imitates with a sort of shoddy and mechanical wistfulness the glittering antics of the great cafés in the theatre district; and—this, above all, important—it is a place where they can "take a nice girl," which means, of course, that every one has become equally harmless, timid, and uninteresting through lack of money and imagination.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people with hyphenated occupations: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks—clerks of the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery and broken hopes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They name these brummagem cabarets after Pullman cars. The "Marathon"! Not for them the salacious similes borrowed from the cafés of Paris! This is where their docile patrons bring their "nice women," whose starved fancies are only too willing to believe that the scene is comparatively gay and joyous, and even faintly immoral. This is life! Who cares for the morrow?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Abandoned people!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony and Gloria, seated, looked about them. At the next table a party of four were in process of being joined by a party of three, two men and a girl, who were evidently late—and the manner of the girl was a study in national sociology. She was meeting some new men—and she was pretending desperately. By gesture she was pretending and by words and by the scarcely perceptible motionings of her eyelids that she belonged to a class a little superior to the class with which she now had to do, that a while ago she had been, and presently would again be, in a higher, rarer air. She was almost painfully refined—she wore a last year's hat covered with violets no more yearningly pretentious and palpably artificial than herself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Fascinated, Anthony and Gloria watched the girl sit down and radiate the impression that she was only condescendingly present. For <i>me</i>, her eyes said, this is practically a slumming expedition, to be cloaked with belittling laughter and semi-apologetics.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —And the other women passionately poured out the impression that though they were in the crowd they were not of it. This was not the sort of place to which they were accustomed; they had dropped in because it was near by and convenient—every party in the restaurant poured out that impression . . . who knew? They were forever changing class, all of them—the women often marrying above their opportunities, the men striking suddenly a magnificent opulence: a sufficiently preposterous advertising scheme, a celestialized ice cream cone. Meanwhile, they met here to eat, closing their eyes to the economy displayed in infrequent changings of table-cloths, in the casualness of the cabaret performers, most of all in the colloquial carelessness and familiarity of the waiters. One was sure that these waiters were not impressed by their patrons. One expected that presently they would sit at the tables . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you object to this?" inquired Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria's face warmed and for the first time that evening she smiled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love it," she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-à-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor—and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the illusion snapped like a nest of threads; the room grouped itself around him, voices, faces, movement; the garish shimmer of the lights overhead became real, became portentous; breath began, the slow respiration that she and he took in time with this docile hundred, the rise and fall of bosoms, the eternal meaningless play and interplay and tossing and reiterating of word and phrase—all these wrenched his senses open to the suffocating pressure of life—and then her voice came at him, cool as the suspended dream he had left behind.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I belong here," she murmured, "I'm like these people."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For an instant this seemed a sardonic and unnecessary paradox hurled at him across the impassable distances she created about herself. Her entrancement had increased—her eyes rested upon a Semitic violinist who swayed his shoulders to the rhythm of the year's mellowest fox-trot:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"Something—goes</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Ring-a-ting-a-ling-a-ling</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Right in-your ear——"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she spoke, from the centre of this pervasive illusion of her own. It amazed him. It was like blasphemy from the mouth of a child.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm like they are—like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a young idiot!" he insisted wildly. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She shook her blond head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, I'm not. I <i>am</i> like them. . . . You ought to see. . . . You don't know me." She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. "I've got a streak of what you'd call cheapness. I don't know where I get it but it's—oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I'm this because of this or that because of that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down <i>now</i>, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What were you thinking?" she asked.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just that I'm not a realist," he said, and then: "No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance—that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it—then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER III (74-128)===<br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> FROM his undergraduate days as editor of The Harvard Crimson Richard Caramel had desired to write. But as a senior he had picked up the glorified illusion that certain men were set aside for "service" and, going into the world, were to accomplish a vague yearnful something which would react either in eternal reward or, at the least, in the personal satisfaction of having striven for the greatest good of the greatest number.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This spirit has long rocked the colleges in America. It begins, as a rule, during the immaturities and facile impressions of freshman year—sometimes back in preparatory school. Prosperous apostles known for their emotional acting go the rounds of the universities and, by frightening the amiable sheep and dulling the quickening of interest and intellectual curiosity which is the purpose of all education, distil a mysterious conviction of sin, harking back to childhood crimes and to the ever-present menace of "women." To these lectures go the wicked youths to cheer and joke and the timid to swallow the tasty pills, which would be harmless if administered to farmers' wives and pious drug-clerks but are rather dangerous medicine for these "future leaders of men."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This octopus was strong enough to wind a sinuous tentacle about Richard Caramel. The year after his graduation it called him into the slums of New York to muck about with bewildered Italians as secretary to an "Alien Young Men's Rescue Association." He labored at it over a year before the monotony began to weary him. The aliens kept coming inexhaustibly—Italians, Poles, Scandinavians, Czechs, Armenians—with the same wrongs, the same exceptionally ugly faces and very much the same smells, though he fancied that these grew more profuse and diverse as the months passed. His eventual conclusions about the expediency of service were vague, but concerning his own relation to it they were abrupt and decisive. Any amiable young man, his head ringing with the latest crusade, could accomplish as much as he could with the débris of Europe—and it was time for him to write.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had been living in a down-town Y.M.C.A., but when he quit the task of making sow-ear purses out of sows' ears, he moved up-town and went to work immediately as a reporter for The Sun. He kept at this for a year, doing desultory writing on the side, with little success, and then one day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career. On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the horses' hoofs in the snow. . . This he handed in. Next morning a marked copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note: "Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen the snow threatening—and had postponed the parade until another day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover.". . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In January, the Monday of the months, Richard Caramel's nose was blue constantly, a sardonic blue, vaguely suggestive of the flames licking around a sinner. His book was nearly ready, and as it grew in completeness it seemed to grow also in its demands, sapping him, overpowering him, until he walked haggard and conquered in its shadow. Not only to Anthony and Maury did he pour out his hopes and boasts and indecisions, but to any one who could be prevailed upon to listen. He called on polite but bewildered publishers, he discussed it with his casual vis-à-vis at the Harvard Club; it was even claimed by Anthony that he had been discovered, one Sunday night, debating the transposition of Chapter Two with a literary ticket-collector in the chill and dismal recesses of a Harlem subway station. And latest among his confidantes was Mrs. Gilbert, who sat with him by the hour and alternated between Bilphism and literature in an intense cross-fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Shakespeare was a Bilphist," she assured him through a fixed smile. "Oh, yes! He was a Bilphist. It's been proved."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At this Dick would look a bit blank.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you've read 'Hamlet' you can't help but see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, he—he lived in a more credulous age—a more religious age."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But she demanded the whole loaf:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, yes, but you see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the <i>bon mot</i> of her belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula—which was perhaps not a formula; it was the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of all formulas.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm <i>sure</i> it will. I went to Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's <i>mad</i> about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be <i>extraordinary</i>. But she'd never seen you or known anything about you—not even your <i>name</i>."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, law"><br /> <poem><br /> Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his own traffic.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my friends are joshing me—oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care. I think a person ought to be able to take joshing. But I've got a sort of conviction," he concluded gloomily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're an ancient soul, I always say."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Maybe I am." Dick had reached the stage where he no longer fought, but submitted. He <i>must</i> be an ancient soul, he fancied grotesquely; so old as to be absolutely rotten. However, the reiteration of the phrase still somewhat embarrassed him and sent uncomfortable shivers up his back. He changed the subject.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Where is my distinguished cousin Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "She's on the go somewhere, with some one."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick paused, considered, and then, screwing up his face into what was evidently begun as a smile but ended as a terrifying frown, delivered a comment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert started, beamed half a second too late, and breathed her "Really?" in the tone of a detective play-whisper.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I <i>think</i> so," corrected Dick gravely. "She's the first girl I've ever seen him with, so much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, of course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see her settle down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm not claiming I'm right, mind you," he assured the infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back at him. "I'm saying nothing that I'd want Gloria to know. But I think Mad Anthony is interested—tremendously so. He talks about her constantly. In any one else that'd be a bad sign."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria is a very young soul—" began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria'd be a very young nut not to marry him." He stopped and faced her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and strained to its ultimate show of intensity—this as if to make up by his sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. "Gloria's a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She's uncontrollable. How she's done it I don't know, but lately she's picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn't seem to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were—" He paused for breath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes-yes-yes," interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anæmic attempt to hide the immense interest with which she listened.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "there it is. I mean that the men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate. Now they aren't."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast—her bosom trembled, inflated, remained so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in a torrent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? He knew Gloria. He'd seen enough of Gloria to know how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so spoiled—in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed sticks. Perhaps—one never knew—it was this that had given that health and <i>hardiness</i> to her whole personality. And then ever since she was twelve years old she'd had boys about her so thick—oh, so thick one couldn't <i>move</i>. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to single them out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college—they lasted on an average of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came—a new one—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his father. The others had been—wretched. They never seemed to know when she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind. They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her, making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they would never get over Gloria . . . at least two of them had since married, though. . . . But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill—to this day Mr. Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no longer bothered to refuse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as a private engagement—with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena. She was sure it had, because—this must go no further—she had come in unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed. She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a new man came.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers! Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in desperation! Young men threatening South America! . . . Young men writing the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick fancied that Mrs. Gilbert's eyes had seen some of these letters.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents, substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths and beginning again—with the next.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was absolutely going to no more college dances.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This had begun the change—not so much in her actual habits, for she danced, and had as many "dates" as ever—but they were dates in a different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly—enjoying the crowds around her, the manner in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous, and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about her—for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night in a chiffon evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine—it had been in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career—she became suddenly anæsthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties, who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she insulted would return like a domestic animal—but indifferently, without contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more—she yawned at them. She seemed—and it was so strange—she seemed to her mother to be growing cold.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his aunt's discourse waxed in content—it stands here pruned by half, of all side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own mental distresses—he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired head, expressing—almost anything.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a sense Gloria's past was an old story to him. He had followed it with the eyes of a journalist, for he was going to write a book about her some day. But his interests, just at present, were family interests. He wanted to know, in particular, who was this Joseph Bloeckman that he had seen her with several times; and those two girls she was with constantly, "this" Rachael Jerryl and "this" Miss Kane—surely Miss Kane wasn't exactly the sort one would associate with Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But the moment had passed. Mrs. Gilbert having climbed the hill of exposition was about to glide swiftly down the ski-jump of collapse. Her eyes were like a blue sky seen through two round, red window-casements. The flesh about her mouth was trembling.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And at the moment the door opened, admitting into the room Gloria and the two young ladies lately mentioned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO YOUNG WOMEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do, Mrs. Gilbert!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Miss Kane and Miss Jerryl are presented to Mr. Richard Caramel. "This is Dick" (laughter).<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've heard so much about you," says Miss Kane between a giggle and a shout.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do," says Miss Jerryl shyly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel tries to move about as if his figure were better. He is torn between his innate cordiality and the fact that he considers these girls rather common—not at all the Farmover type.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria has disappeared into the bedroom.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do sit down," beams Mrs. Gilbert, who is by now quite herself. "Take off your things." Dick is afraid she will make some remark about the age of his soul, but he forgets his qualms in completing a conscientious, novelist's examination of the two young women. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel Kane had originated in a rising family of East Orange. She was short rather than small, and hovered audaciously between plumpness and width. Her hair was black and elaborately arranged. This, in conjunction with her handsome, rather bovine eyes, and her over-red lips, combined to make her resemble Theda Bara, the prominent motion picture actress. People told her constantly that she was a "vampire," and she believed them. She suspected hopefully that they were afraid of her, and she did her utmost under all circumstances to give the impression of danger. An imaginative man could see the red flag that she constantly carried, waving it wildly, beseechingly—and, alas, to little spectacular avail. She was also tremendously timely: she knew the latest songs, all the latest songs—when one of them was played on the phonograph she would rise to her feet and rock her shoulders back and forth and snap her fingers, and if there was no music she would accompany herself by humming.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"—and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria—he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, passenger, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> "We had the most <i>hectic</i> time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely <i>nutty</i>! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was <i>pet</i>rified, but Gloria simply <i>wouldn't</i> get off."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all <i>howled</i>, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "—your mother and I."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Gloria.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A pause—Muriel turned to Dick.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a great writer, aren't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul—like Richard."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The Ancient Soul breathed a gasp of relief—it was out at last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then as if she had been considering it for five minutes, Gloria made a sudden announcement:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm going to give a party."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, can I come?" cried Muriel with facetious daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A dinner. Seven people: Muriel and Rachael and I, and you, Dick, and Anthony, and that man named Noble—I liked him—and Bloeckman."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Muriel and Rachael went into soft and purring ecstasies of enthusiasm. Mrs. Gilbert blinked and beamed. With an air of casualness Dick broke in with a question:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who is this fellow Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Scenting a faint hostility, Gloria turned to him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Joseph Bloeckman? He's the moving picture man. Vice-president of 'Films Par Excellence.' He and father do a lot of business."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, will you all come?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They would all come. A date was arranged within the week. Dick rose, adjusted hat, coat, and muffler, and gave out a general smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "By-by," said Muriel, waving her hand gaily, "call me up some time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Richard Caramel blushed for her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>DEPLORABLE END OF THE CHEVALIER O'KEEFE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon at the Beaux Arts—afterward they went up to his apartment and he wheeled out the little rolling-table that held his supply of liquor, selecting vermouth, gin, and absinthe for a proper stimulant.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine Burke, usher at Keith's, had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her, for since a lamentable affair with a débutante the preceding summer, when he had discovered that after half a dozen kisses a proposal was expected, he had been wary of girls of his own class. It was only too easy to turn a critical eye on their imperfections: some physical harshness or a general lack of personal delicacy—but a girl who was usher at Keith's was approached with a different attitude. One could tolerate qualities in an intimate valet that would be unforgivable in a mere acquaintance on one's social level.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine, curled up at the foot of the lounge, considered him with narrow slanting eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You drink all the time, don't you?" she said suddenly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, I suppose so," replied Anthony in some surprise. "Don't you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nope. I go on parties sometimes—you know, about once a week, but I only take two or three drinks. You and your friends keep on drinking all the time. I should think you'd ruin your health."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was somewhat touched.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, aren't you sweet to worry about me!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I do."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't drink so very much," he declared. "Last month I didn't touch a drop for three weeks. And I only get really tight about once a week."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But you have something to drink every day and you're only twenty-five. Haven't you any ambition? Think what you'll be at forty?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sincerely trust that I won't live that long."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She clicked her tongue with her teeth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!" she said as he mixed another cocktail—and then: "Are you any relation to Adam Patch?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, he's my grandfather."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Really?" She was obviously thrilled.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Absolutely."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's funny. My daddy used to work for him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a queer old man."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is he nice?" she demanded.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, in private life he's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell us about him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why," Anthony considered "—he's all shrunken up and he's got the remains of some gray hair that always looks as though the wind were in it. He's very moral."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's done a lot of good," said Geraldine with intense gravity.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Rot!" scoffed Anthony. "He's a pious ass—a chickenbrain."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her mind left the subject and flitted on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't you live with him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why don't I board in a Methodist parsonage?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You cra-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again she made a little clicking sound to express disapproval. Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart—how completely moral she would still be after the inevitable wave came that would wash her off the sands of respectability.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you hate him?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wonder. I never liked him. You never like people who do things for you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does he hate you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "My dear Geraldine," protested Anthony, frowning humorously, "do have another cocktail. I annoy him. If I smoke a cigarette he comes into the room sniffing. He's a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite. I probably wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't had a few drinks, but I don't suppose it matters."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Geraldine was persistently interested. She held her glass, untasted, between finger and thumb and regarded him with eyes in which there was a touch of awe.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you mean a hypocrite?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," said Anthony impatiently, "maybe he's not. But he doesn't like the things that I like, and so, as far as I'm concerned, he's uninteresting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hm." Her curiosity seemed, at length, satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a funny one," she commented thoughtfully. "Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "They don't—but I shouldn't blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She scorned this.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'll fall in love someday. Oh, you will—I know." She nodded wisely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It'd be idiotic to be overconfident. That's what ruined the Chevalier O'Keefe."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who was he?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A creature of my splendid mind. He's my one creation, the Chevalier."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Cra-a-azy!" she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope-ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no!" objected Anthony, "oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn't play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won't bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I guess I can understand anything that's got any sense to it," answered Geraldine a bit testily.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, what about him? Did he die?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and 'reddish hair.' He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O'Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called—well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire's. It was the rule at St. Voltaire's that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier's farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then he rode out to St. Voltaire's, slew his horse at the door, and presented the carcass to the monastery cook.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "At five o'clock that night he felt, for the first time, free—forever free from sex. No woman could enter the monastery; no monk could descend below the second story. So as he climbed the winding stair that led to his cell at the very top of the Tower of Chastity he paused for a moment by an open window which looked down fifty feet on to a road below. It was all so beautiful, he thought, this world that he was leaving, the golden shower of sun beating down upon the long fields, the spray of trees in the distance, the vineyards, quiet and green, freshening wide miles before him. He leaned his elbows on the window casement and gazed at the winding road.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now, as it happened, Thérèse, a peasant girl of sixteen from a neighboring village, was at that moment passing along this same road that ran in front of the monastery. Five minutes before, the little piece of ribbon which held up the stocking on her pretty left leg had worn through and broken. Being a girl of rare modesty she had thought to wait until she arrived home before repairing it, but it had bothered her to such an extent that she felt she could endure it no longer. So, as she passed the Tower of Chastity, she stopped and with a pretty gesture lifted her skirt—as little as possible, be it said to her credit—to adjust her garter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Up in the tower the newest arrival in the ancient monastery of St. Voltaire, as though pulled forward by a gigantic and irresistible hand, leaned from the window. Further he leaned and further until suddenly one of the stones loosened under his weight, broke from its cement with a soft powdery sound—and, first headlong, then head over heels, finally in a vast and impressive revolution tumbled the Chevalier O'Keefe, bound for the hard earth and eternal damnation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thérèse was so much upset by the occurrence that she ran all the way home and for ten years spent an hour a day in secret prayer for the soul of the monk whose neck and vows were simultaneously broken on that unfortunate Sunday afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And the Chevalier O'Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. What do you think, Geraldine?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine, lost long before, could only smile roguishly, wave her first finger at him, and repeat her bridge-all, her explain-all:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Crazy!" she said, "you cra-a-azy!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His thin face was kindly, she thought, and his eyes quite gentle. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because, unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part about the stocking!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi she stood for a moment in the doorway.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You <i>will</i> get married," she was insisting, "you wait and see."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was playing with an ancient tennis ball, and he bounced it carefully on the floor several times before he answered with a soupçon of acidity:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're a little idiot, Geraldine."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She smiled provokingly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That'd be silly too."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it would, would it? Well, I'll just bet you'll marry somebody inside of a year."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony bounced the tennis ball very hard. This was one of his handsome days, she thought; a sort of intensity had displaced the melancholy in his dark eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Geraldine," he said, at length, "in the first place I have no one I want to marry; in the second place I haven't enough money to support two people; in the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people of my type; in the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the abstract consideration of it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Geraldine only narrowed her eyes knowingly, made her clicking sound, and said she must be going. It was late.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Call me up soon," she reminded him as he kissed her good-by, "you haven't for three weeks, you know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I will," he promised fervently.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He shut the door and coming back into the room stood for a moment lost in thought with the tennis-ball still clasped in his hand. There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully—assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought with emotion—aloud, ejaculative, for he was hurt and confused.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No <i>idea</i> of getting married, by <i>God</i>!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Of a sudden he hurled the tennis ball violently across the room, where it barely missed the lamp, and, rebounding here and there for a moment, lay still upon the floor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SIGNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For her dinner Gloria had taken a table in the Cascades at the Biltmore, and when the men met in the hall outside a little after eight, "that person Bloeckman" was the target of six masculine eyes. He was a stoutening, ruddy Jew of about thirty-five, with an expressive face under smooth sandy hair—and, no doubt, in most business gatherings his personality would have been considered ingratiating. He sauntered up to the three younger men, who stood in a group smoking as they waited for their hostess, and introduced himself with a little too evident assurance—nevertheless it is to be doubted whether he received the intended impression of faint and ironic chill: there was no hint of understanding in his manner.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You related to Adam J. Patch?" he inquired of Anthony, emitting two slender strings of smoke from nostrils overwide.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony admitted it with the ghost of a smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He's a fine man," pronounced Bloeckman profoundly. "He's a fine example of an American."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes," agreed Anthony, "he certainly is."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman squinted at his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Time these girls were showing up . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —Anthony waited breathlessly; it came——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ". . . but then," with a widening smile, "you know how women are."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The three young men nodded; Bloeckman looked casually about him, his eyes resting critically on the ceiling and then passing lower. His expression combined that of a Middle Western farmer appraising his wheat crop and that of an actor wondering whether he is observed—the public manner of all good Americans. As he finished his survey he turned back quickly to the reticent trio, determined to strike to their very heart and core.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You college men? . . . Harvard, eh. I see the Princeton boys beat you fellows in hockey."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Unfortunate man. He had drawn another blank. They had been three years out and heeded only the big football games. Whether, after the failure of this sally, Mr. Bloeckman would have perceived himself to be in a cynical atmosphere is problematical, for——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria arrived. Muriel arrived. Rachael arrived. After a hurried "Hello, people!" uttered by Gloria and echoed by the other two, the three swept by into the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A moment later Muriel appeared in a state of elaborate undress and <i>crept</i> toward them. She was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker up and thrower away of men, an unscrupulous and fundamentally unmoved toyer with affections. Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury at first sight—a woman with wide hips affecting a panther-like litheness! As they waited the extra three minutes for Gloria, and, by polite assumption, for Rachael, he was unable to take his eyes from her. She would turn her head away, lowering her eyelashes and biting her nether lip in an amazing exhibition of coyness. She would rest her hands on her hips and sway from side to side in tune to the music, saying:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you ever hear such perfect ragtime? I just can't make my shoulders behave when I hear that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman clapped his hands gallantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You ought to be on the stage."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'd like to be!" cried Muriel; "will you back me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I sure will."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With becoming modesty Muriel ceased her motions and turned to Maury, asking what he had "seen" this year. He interpreted this as referring to the dramatic world, and they had a gay and exhilarating exchange of titles, after this manner:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: Have you seen "Peg o' My Heart"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, I haven't.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: (<i>Eagerly</i>) It's wonderful! You want to see it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Have you seen "Omar, the Tentmaker"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: No, but I hear it's wonderful. I'm very anxious to see it. Have you seen "Fair and Warmer"?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Hopefully</i>) Yes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: I don't think it's very good. It's trashy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Faintly</i>) Yes, that's true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MURIEL: But I went to "Within the Law" last night and I thought it was fine. Have you seen "The Little Café"?. . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This continued until they ran out of plays. Dick, meanwhile, turned to Mr. Bloeckman, determined to extract what gold he could from this unpromising load.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I hear all the new novels are sold to the moving pictures as soon as they come out."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's true. Of course the main thing in a moving picture is a strong story."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes, I suppose so."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "So many novels are all full of talk and psychology. Of course those aren't as valuable to us. It's impossible to make much of that interesting on the screen."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You want plots first," said Richard brilliantly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course. Plots first—" He paused, shifted his gaze. His pause spread, included the others with all the authority of a warning finger. Gloria followed by Rachael was coming out of the dressing room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Among other things it developed during dinner that Joseph Bloeckman never danced, but spent the music time watching the others with the bored tolerance of an elder among children. He was a dignified man and a proud one. Born in Munich he had begun his American career as a peanut vender with a travelling circus. At eighteen he was a side show ballyhoo; later, the manager of the side show, and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more financial ability, more imagination, and more practical ideas . . . and now he sat here and contemplated the immortal Gloria for whom young Stuart Holcome had gone from New York to Pasadena—watched her, and knew that presently she would cease dancing and come back to sit on his left hand.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hoped she would hurry. The oysters had been standing some minutes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Meanwhile Anthony, who had been placed on Gloria's left hand, was dancing with her, always in a certain fourth of the floor. This, had there been stags, would have been a delicate tribute to the girl, meaning "Damn you, don't cut in!" It was very consciously intimate.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well," he began, looking down at her, "you look mighty sweet to-night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She met his eyes over the horizontal half foot that separated them.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Thank you—Anthony."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "In fact you're uncomfortably beautiful," he added. There was no smile this time.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And you're very charming."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Isn't this nice?" he laughed. "We actually approve of each other."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, usually?" She had caught quickly at his remark, as she always did at any unexplained allusion to herself, however faint.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lowered his voice, and when he spoke there was in it no more than a wisp of badinage.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Does a priest approve the Pope?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know—but that's probably the vaguest compliment I ever received."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I can muster a few bromides."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I wouldn't have you strain yourself. Look at Muriel! Right here next to us."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced over his shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a translation of the song into some foreign tongue but became eventually apparent as an attempt to fill out the metre of the song with the only words she knew—the words of the title—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"He's a rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-picker,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A rag-time picking man,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-picking, picking, pick, pick,</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>Rag-pick, pick, pick."</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> —and so on, into phrases still more strange and barbaric. When she caught the amused glances of Anthony and Gloria she acknowledged them only with a faint smile and a half-closing of her eyes, to indicate that the music entering into her soul had put her into an ecstatic and exceedingly seductive trance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The music ended and they returned to their table, whose solitary but dignified occupant arose and tendered each of them a smile so ingratiating that it was as if he were shaking their hands and congratulating them on a brilliant performance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Blockhead never will dance! I think he has a wooden leg," remarked Gloria to the table at large. The three young men started and the gentleman referred to winced perceptibly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was the one rough spot in the course of Bloeckman's acquaintance with Gloria. She relentlessly punned on his name. First it had been "Block-house," lately, the more invidious "Blockhead." He had requested with a strong undertone of irony that she use his first name, and this she had done obediently several times—then slipping, helpless, repentant but dissolved in laughter, back into "Blockhead."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a very sad and thoughtless thing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm afraid Mr. Bloeckman thinks we're a frivolous crowd," sighed Muriel, waving a balanced oyster in his direction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He has that air," murmured Rachael. Anthony tried to remember whether she had said anything before. He thought not. It was her initial remark. <br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Mr. Bloeckman suddenly cleared his throat and said in a loud, distinct voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "On the contrary. When a man speaks he's merely tradition. He has at best a few thousand years back of him. But woman, why, she is the miraculous mouthpiece of posterity."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the stunned pause that followed this astounding remark, Anthony choked suddenly on an oyster and hurried his napkin to his face. Rachael and Muriel raised a mild if somewhat surprised laugh, in which Dick and Maury joined, both of them red in the face and restraining uproariousness with the most apparent difficulty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—My God!" thought Anthony. "It's a subtitle from one of his movies. The man's memorized it!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria alone made no sound. She fixed Mr. Bloeckman with a glance of silent reproach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, for the love of Heaven! Where on earth did you dig that up?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Bloeckman looked at her uncertainly, not sure of her intention. But in a moment he recovered his poise and assumed the bland and consciously tolerant smile of an intellectual among spoiled and callow youth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The soup came up from the kitchen—but simultaneously the orchestra leader came up from the bar, where he had absorbed the tone color inherent in a seidel of beer. So the soup was left to cool during the delivery of a ballad entitled "Everything's at Home Except Your Wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers. Several times Anthony wondered what Bloeckman was telling her. He was chewing a cigar back and forth in his mouth, and had expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Ten o'clock found Gloria and Anthony beginning a dance. Just as they were out of ear-shot of the table she said in a low voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dance over by the door. I want to go down to the drug-store."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Obediently Anthony guided her through the crowd in the designated direction; in the hall she left him for a moment, to reappear with a cloak over her arm.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want some gum-drops," she said, humorously apologetic; "you can't guess what for this time. It's just that I want to bite my finger-nails, and I will if I don't get some gum-drops." She sighed, and resumed as they stepped into the empty elevator: "I've been biting 'em all day. A bit nervous, you see. Excuse the pun. It was unintentional—the words just arranged themselves. Gloria Gilbert, the female wag."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Reaching the ground floor they naïvely avoided the hotel candy counter, descended the wide front staircase, and walking through several corridors found a drug-store in the Grand Central Station. After an intense examination of the perfume counter she made her purchase. Then on some mutual unmentioned impulse they strolled, arm in arm, not in the direction from which they had come, but out into Forty-third Street.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="traffic, sound, urban, city, night, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> The night was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left, and for a hushed moment the traffic sounds and the murmur of water flowing in the gutters seemed an illusive and rarefied prolongation of that music to which they had lately danced. When Anthony spoke it was with surety that his words came from something breathless and desirous that the night had conceived in their two hearts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving"><br /> <poem><br /> "Let's take a taxi and ride around a bit!" he suggested, without looking at her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, Gloria, Gloria!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, city, night, sound, affect, pleasure"><br /> <poem><br /> A cab yawned at the curb. As it moved off like a boat on a labyrinthine ocean and lost itself among the inchoate night masses of the great buildings, among the now stilled, now strident, cries and clangings, Anthony put his arm around the girl, drew her over to him and kissed her damp, childish mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was silent. She turned her face up to him, pale under the wisps and patches of light that trailed in like moonshine through a foliage. Her eyes were gleaming ripples in the white lake of her face; the shadows of her hair bordered the brow with a persuasive unintimate dusk. No love was there, surely; nor the imprint of any love. Her beauty was cool as this damp breeze, as the moist softness of her own lips.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You're such a swan in this light," he whispered after a moment. There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted in out of the dark. Anthony laughed, noiselessly and exultantly, turning his face up and away from her, half in an overpowering rush of triumph, half lest her sight of him should spoil the splendid immobility of her expression. Such a kiss—it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="urban, city, night, visibility, affect, pleasure, sound, car"><br /> <poem><br /> . . . The buildings fell away in melted shadows; this was the Park now, and after a long while the great white ghost of the Metropolitan Museum moved majestically past, echoing sonorously to the rush of the cab.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria! Why, Gloria!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her eyes appeared to regard him out of many thousand years: all emotion she might have felt, all words she might have uttered, would have seemed inadequate beside the adequacy of her silence, ineloquent against the eloquence of her beauty—and of her body, close to him, slender and cool.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="driver, driving, speed"><br /> <poem><br /> "Tell him to turn around," she murmured, "and drive pretty fast going back. . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Up in the supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane looked up with roguishness extraordinary.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, where have <i>you</i> been?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "To call up mother," answered Gloria coolly. "I promised her I would. Did we miss a dance?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then followed an incident that though slight in itself Anthony had cause to reflect on many years afterward. Joseph Bloeckman, leaning well back in his chair, fixed him with a peculiar glance, in which several emotions were curiously and inextricably mingled. He did not greet Gloria except by rising, and he immediately resumed a conversation with Richard Caramel about the influence of literature on the moving pictures.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The stark and unexpected miracle of a night fades out with the lingering death of the last stars and the premature birth of the first newsboys. The flame retreats to some remote and platonic fire; the white heat has gone from the iron and the glow from the coal.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Along the shelves of Anthony's library, filling a wall amply, crept a chill and insolent pencil of sunlight touching with frigid disapproval Thérèse of France and Ann the Superwoman, Jenny of the Orient Ballet and Zuleika the Conjurer—and Hoosier Cora—then down a shelf and into the years, resting pityingly on the over-invoked shades of Helen, Thaïs, Salome, and Cleopatra.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony, shaved and bathed, sat in his most deeply cushioned chair and watched it until at the steady rising of the sun it lay glinting for a moment on the silk ends of the rug—and went out.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was ten o'clock. The Sunday Times, scattered about his feet, proclaimed by rotogravure and editorial, by social revelation and sporting sheet, that the world had been tremendously engrossed during the past week in the business of moving toward some splendid if somewhat indeterminate goal. For his part Anthony had been once to his grandfather's, twice to his broker's, and three times to his tailor's—and in the last hour of the week's last day he had kissed a very beautiful and charming girl.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When he reached home his imagination had been teeming with high-pitched, unfamiliar dreams. There was suddenly no question on his mind, no eternal problem for a solution and re-solution. He had experienced an emotion that was neither mental nor physical, nor merely a mixture of the two, and the love of life absorbed him for the present to the exclusion of all else. He was content to let the experiment remain isolated and unique. Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere—of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls and débutantes, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were so many <i>females</i>, in the word's most contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So far as he could see, she had neither submitted to any will of his nor caressed his vanity—except as her pleasure in his company was a caress. Indeed he had no reason for thinking she had given him aught that she did not give to others. This was as it should be. The idea of an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed on would proclaim themselves unharmed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Having decided this he went to the phone and called up the Plaza Hotel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria was out. Her mother knew neither where she had gone nor when she would return.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was somehow at this point that the first wrongness in the case asserted itself. There was an element of callousness, almost of indecency, in Gloria's absence from home. He suspected that by going out she had intrigued him into a disadvantage. Returning she would find his name, and smile. Most discreetly! He should have waited a few hours in order to drive home the utter inconsequence with which he regarded the incident. What an asinine blunder! She would think he considered himself particularly favored. She would think he was reacting with the most inept intimacy to a quite trivial episode.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He remembered that during the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. Anthony wondered in horror if Gloria would regard him as he had regarded that man. Him—Anthony Patch! Horror!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and <i>snap!</i>—the poor plate could but develop, confined like all things to its nature.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But Anthony, lying upon his couch and staring at the orange lamp, passed his thin fingers incessantly through his dark hair and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and Jewels and Jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her cheeks in faint pastel, milky lace to rest in pale disarray against her neck—damask was used but to cover priests and divans in these days, and cloth of Samarand was remembered only by the romantic poets.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She would go elsewhere after a while, tilting her head a hundred ways under a hundred bonnets, seeking in vain for mock cherries to match her lips or plumes that were graceful as her own supple body.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Noon would come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede, her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and comic women.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, personification, road, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter. . . . Then—then night would come drifting down and perhaps another damp. The signs would spill their light into the street. Who knew? No wiser than he, they haply sought to recapture that picture done in cream and shadow they had seen on the hushed Avenue the night before. And they might, ah, they might! A thousand taxis would yawn at a thousand corners, and only to him was that kiss forever lost and done. In a thousand guises Thaïs would hail a cab and turn up her face for loving. And her pallor would be virginal and lovely, and her kiss chaste as the moon. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He sprang excitedly to his feet. How inappropriate that she should be out! He had realized at last what he wanted—to kiss her again, to find rest in her great immobility. She was the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony dressed and went out, as he should have done long before, and down to Richard Caramel's room to hear the last revision of the last chapter of "The Demon Lover." He did not call Gloria again until six. He did not find her in until eight and—oh, climax of anticlimaxes!—she could give him no engagement until Tuesday afternoon. A broken piece of gutta-percha clattered to the floor as he banged up the phone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>BLACK MAGIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Tuesday was freezing cold. He called at a bleak two o'clock and as they shook hands he wondered confusedly whether he had ever kissed her; it was almost unbelievable—he seriously doubted if she remembered it.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I called you four times on Sunday," he told her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Did you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> There was surprise in her voice and interest in her expression. Silently he cursed himself for having told her. He might have known her pride did not deal in such petty triumphs. Even then he had not guessed at the truth—that never having had to worry about men she had seldom used the wary subterfuges, the playings out and haulings in, that were the stock in trade of her sisterhood. When she liked a man, that was trick enough. Did she think she loved him—there was an ultimate and fatal thrust. Her charm endlessly preserved itself.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I was anxious to see you," he said simply. "I want to talk to you—I mean really talk, somewhere where we can be alone. May I?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What do you mean?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He swallowed a sudden lump of panic. He felt that she knew what he wanted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I mean, not at a tea table," he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, all right, but not to-day. I want to get some exercise. Let's walk!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was bitter and raw. All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue. It was almost impossible to talk, and discomfort made him distracted, so much so that he turned at Sixty-first Street to find that she was no longer beside him. He looked around. She was forty feet in the rear standing motionless, her face half hidden in her fur coat collar, moved either by anger or laughter—he could not determine which. He started back.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't let me interrupt your walk!" she called.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm mighty sorry," he answered in confusion. "Did I go too fast?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm cold," she announced. "I want to go home. And you walk too fast."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Side by side they started for the Plaza. He wished he could see her face.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Men don't usually get so absorbed in themselves when they're with me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm sorry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's very interesting."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It <i>is</i> rather too cold to walk," he said, briskly, to hide his annoyance.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She made no answer and he wondered if she would dismiss him at the hotel entrance. She walked in without speaking, however, and to the elevator, throwing him a single remark as she entered it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You'd better come up."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He hesitated for the fraction of a moment.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better call some other time."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Just as you say." Her words were murmured as an aside. The main concern of life was the adjusting of some stray wisps of hair in the elevator mirror. Her cheeks were brilliant, her eyes sparkled—she had never seemed so lovely, so exquisitely to be desired.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Despising himself, he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong—in his own eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet significant encounter he had been completely defeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> However, by the time she reappeared in the sitting-room he had explained himself to himself with sophistic satisfaction. After all he had done the strongest thing, he thought. He had wanted to come up, he had come. Yet what happened later on that afternoon must be traced to the indignity he had experienced in the elevator; the girl was worrying him intolerably, so much so that when she came out he involuntarily drifted into criticism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Who's this Bloeckman, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A business friend of father's."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Odd sort of fellow!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He doesn't like you either," she said with a sudden smile.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony laughed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm flattered at his notice. He evidently considers me a—" He broke off with "Is he in love with you?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't know."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "The deuce you don't," he insisted. "Of course he is. I remember the look he gave me when we got back to the table. He'd probably have had me quietly assaulted by a delegation of movie supes if you hadn't invented that phone call."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He didn't mind. I told him afterward what really happened."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You told him!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "He asked me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't like that very well," he remonstrated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, you don't?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What business is it of his?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "None. That's why I told him."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony in a turmoil bit savagely at his mouth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why should I lie?" she demanded directly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I do. It happened to interest him to know that I kissed you, and I happened to be in a good humor, so I satisfied his curiosity by a simple and precise 'yes.' Being rather a sensible man, after his fashion, he dropped the subject."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Except to say that he hated me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, it worries you? Well, if you must probe this stupendous matter to its depths he didn't say he hated you. I simply know he does."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It doesn't wor——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, let's drop it!" she cried spiritedly. "It's a most uninteresting matter to me."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> With a tremendous effort Anthony made his acquiescence a twist of subject, and they drifted into an ancient question-and-answer game concerned with each other's pasts, gradually warming as they discovered the age-old, immemorial resemblances in tastes and ideas. They said things that were more revealing than they intended—but each pretended to accept the other at face, or rather word, value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third—before long the best lines cancel out—and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping that such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It seems to me," Anthony was saying earnestly, "that the position of a man with neither necessity nor ambition is unfortunate. Heaven knows it'd be pathetic of me to be sorry for myself—yet, sometimes I envy Dick."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her silence was encouragement. It was as near as she ever came to an intentional lure.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—And there used to be dignified occupations for a gentleman who had leisure, things a little more constructive than filling up the landscape with smoke or juggling some one else's money. There's science, of course: sometimes I wish I'd taken a good foundation, say at Boston Tech. But now, by golly, I'd have to sit down for two years and struggle through the fundamentals of physics and chemistry."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She yawned.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I've told you I don't know what anybody ought to do," she said ungraciously, and at her indifference his rancor was born again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Aren't you interested in anything except yourself?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Not much."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glared; his growing enjoyment in the conversation was ripped to shreds. She had been irritable and vindictive all day, and it seemed to him that for this moment he hated her hard selfishness. He stared morosely at the fire.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him—as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He moved closer and taking her hand pulled her ever so gently toward him until she half lay against his shoulder. She smiled up at him as he kissed her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria," he whispered very softly. Again she had made a magic, subtle and pervading as a spilt perfume, irresistible and sweet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward, neither the next day nor after many years, could he remember the important things of that afternoon. Had she been moved? In his arms had she spoken a little—or at all? What measure of enjoyment had she taken in his kisses? And had she at any time lost herself ever so little?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oh, for him there was no doubt. He had risen and paced the floor in sheer ecstasy. That such a girl should be; should poise curled in a corner of the couch like a swallow newly landed from a clean swift flight, watching him with inscrutable eyes. He would stop his pacing and, half shy each time at first, drop his arm around her and find her kiss.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he didn't want to fall in love. He wasn't coming to see her any more—already she had haunted too many of his ways.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow—only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He <i>would</i> come back—eternally. He should have known!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn't do—and wouldn't last." As he spoke there was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in ourselves.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her. He remembered it in this form—perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and polished it:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As always when he was with her she seemed to grow gradually older until at the end ruminations too deep for words would be wintering in her eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> An hour passed, and the fire leaped up in little ecstasies as though its fading life was sweet. It was five now, and the clock over the mantel became articulate in sound. Then as if a brutish sensibility in him was reminded by those thin, tinny beats that the petals were falling from the flowered afternoon, Anthony pulled her quickly to her feet and held her helpless, without breath, in a kiss that was neither a game nor a tribute.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her arms fell to her side. In an instant she was free.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't!" she said quietly. "I don't want that."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She sat down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her. A frown had gathered between her eyes. Anthony sank down beside her and closed his hand over hers. It was lifeless and unresponsive.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, Gloria!" He made a motion as if to put his arm about her but she drew away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want that," she repeated.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm very sorry," he said, a little impatiently. "I—I didn't know you made such fine distinctions."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She did not answer.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Won't you kiss me, Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I don't want to." It seemed to him she had not moved for hours.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A sudden change, isn't it?" Annoyance was growing in his voice.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Is it?" She appeared uninterested. It was almost as though she were looking at some one else.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Perhaps I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> No reply. He rose and regarded her angrily, uncertainly. Again he sat down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Gloria, Gloria, won't you kiss me?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No." Her lips, parting for the word, had just faintly stirred.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Again he got to his feet, this time with less decision, less confidence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Then I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right—I'll go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He was aware of a certain irremediable lack of originality in his remarks. Indeed he felt that the whole atmosphere had grown oppressive. He wished she would speak, rail at him, cry out upon him, anything but this pervasive and chilling silence. He cursed himself for a weak fool; his clearest desire was to move her, to hurt her, to see her wince. Helplessly, involuntarily, he erred again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "If you're tired of kissing me I'd better go."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He saw her lips curl slightly and his last dignity left him. She spoke, at length:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I believe you've made that remark several times before."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He looked about him immediately, saw his hat and coat on a chair—blundered into them, during an intolerable moment. Looking again at the couch he perceived that she had not turned, not even moved. With a shaken, immediately regretted "good-by" he went quickly but without dignity from the room.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> For over a moment Gloria made no sound. Her lips were still curled; her glance was straight, proud, remote. Then her eyes blurred a little, and she murmured three words half aloud to the death-bound fire:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good-by, you ass!" she said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PANIC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The man had had the hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden of his despair. Instead of seizing the girl and holding her by sheer strength until she became passive to his desire, instead of beating down her will by the force of his own, he had walked, defeated and powerless, from her door, with the corners of his mouth drooping and what force there might have been in his grief and rage hidden behind the manner of a whipped schoolboy. At one minute she had liked him tremendously—ah, she had nearly loved him. In the next he had become a thing of indifference to her, an insolent and efficiently humiliated man.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He had no great self-reproach—some, of course, but there were other things dominant in him now, far more urgent. He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life. By her three minutes of utter unwavering indifference the girl had lifted herself from a high but somehow casual position in his mind, to be instead his complete preoccupation. However much his wild thoughts varied between a passionate desire for her kisses and an equally passionate craving to hurt and mar her, the residue of his mind craved in finer fashion to possess the triumphant soul that had shone through those three minutes. She was beautiful—but especially she was without mercy. He must own that strength that could send him away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At present no such analysis was possible to Anthony. His clarity of mind, all those endless resources which he thought his irony had brought him were swept aside. Not only for that night but for the days and weeks that followed his books were to be but furniture and his friends only people who lived and walked in a nebulous outer world from which he was trying to escape—that world was cold and full of bleak wind, and for a little while he had seen into a warm house where fires shone.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> About midnight he began to realize that he was hungry. He went down into Fifty-second Street, where it was so cold that he could scarcely see; the moisture froze on his lashes and in the corners of his lips. Everywhere dreariness had come down from the north, settling upon the thin and cheerless street, where black bundled figures blacker still against the night, moved stumbling along the sidewalk through the shrieking wind, sliding their feet cautiously ahead as though they were on skis. Anthony turned over toward Sixth Avenue, so absorbed in his thoughts as not to notice that several passers-by had stared at him. His overcoat was wide open, and the wind was biting in, hard and full of merciless death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> . . . After a while a waitress spoke to him, a fat waitress with black-rimmed eye-glasses from which dangled a long black cord.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Order, please!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Her voice, he considered, was unnecessarily loud. He looked up resentfully.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You wanna order or doncha?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Of course," he protested.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I ast you three times. This ain't no rest-room."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He glanced at the big clock and discovered with a start that it was after two. He was down around Thirtieth Street somewhere, and after a moment he found and translated the<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>S'DLIHC</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> in a white semicircle of letters upon the glass front. The place was inhabited sparsely by three or four bleak and half-frozen night-hawks.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Give me some bacon and eggs and coffee, please."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The waitress bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, hurried away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> God! Gloria's kisses had been such flowers. He remembered as though it had been years ago the low freshness of her voice, the beautiful lines of her body shining through her clothes, her face lily-colored under the lamps of the street—under the lamps.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Misery struck at him again, piling a sort of terror upon the ache and yearning. He had lost her. It was true—no denying it, no softening it. But a new idea had seared his sky—what of Bloeckman! What would happen now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be worn—a bright flower in his button-hole, safe and secure from the things she feared. He felt that she had been playing with the idea of marrying Bloeckman, and it was well possible that this disappointment in Anthony might throw her on sudden impulse into Bloeckman's arms.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The idea drove him childishly frantic. He wanted to kill Bloeckman and make him suffer for his hideous presumption. He was saying this over and over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate and fright in his eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> But, behind this obscene jealousy, Anthony was in love at last, profoundly and truly in love, as the word goes between man and woman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His coffee appeared at his elbow and gave off for a certain time a gradually diminishing wisp of steam. The night manager, seated at his desk, glanced at the motionless figure alone at the last table, and then with a sigh moved down upon him just as the hour hand crossed the figure three on the big clock.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WISDOM</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and sinew to his self-respect.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own from out the effortless past.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Memory is short," he thought.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, I believe." Oh, memory is very short!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly be. Wasn't it possible, the more possible because she had never loved him, that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men. He winced. The implication struck out at him—other men. Two months—God! Better three weeks, two weeks——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He thought this the second evening after the catastrophe when he was undressing, and at this point he threw himself down on the bed and lay there, trembling very slightly and looking at the top of the canopy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two weeks—that was worse than no time at all. In two weeks he would approach her much as he would have to now, without personality or confidence—remaining still the man who had gone too far and then for a period that in time was but a moment but in fact an eternity, whined. No, two weeks was too short a time. Whatever poignancy there had been for her in that afternoon must have time to dull. He must give her a period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly, with a true perspective that would remember his pleasantness as well as his humiliation.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off, finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then—silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give the desired impression when they met.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE INTERVAL</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed completely, the six weeks held many abominable days. He dreaded the sight of Dick and Maury, imagining wildly that they knew all—but when the three met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre of attention; "The Demon Lover" had been accepted for immediate publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He no longer craved the warmth and security of Maury's society which had cheered him no further back than November. Only Gloria could give that now and no one else ever again. So Dick's success rejoiced him only casually and worried him not a little. It meant that the world was going ahead—writing and reading and publishing—and living. And he wanted the world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks—while Gloria forgot.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>TWO ENCOUNTERS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine's company. He took her once to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him, not as Gloria had, but quieting those erotic sensibilities in him that worried over Gloria. It didn't matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss—to be enjoyed to the utmost for its short moment. To Geraldine things belonged in definite pigeonholes: a kiss was one thing, anything further was quite another; a kiss was all right; the other things were "bad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first was—he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding a single sentence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash—the effect being given of a tug bringing in an ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "How do you do?" he muttered inanely.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young—with a man he had never seen before!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was then that the barber's chair was vacated and he read down the newspaper column three times in succession.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink, so it was inevitable that they should converse.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Hello, Mr. Patch," said Bloeckman amiably enough.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the fluctuations of the mercury.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you come in here much?" inquired Bloeckman.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "No, very seldom." He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until lately, been his favorite.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nice bar. One of the best bars in town."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He was in evening dress.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, I'll be hurrying on. I'm going to dinner with Miss Gilbert."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced himself as his vis-à-vis's prospective murderer he could not have struck a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous effort he mustered a rigid—oh, so rigid—smile, and said a conventional good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with grief and fear and abominable imaginings.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>WEAKNESS</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in his apartment trying to read "L'Éducation Sentimental," and something in the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free, they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy's. The Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs. Gilbert's voice, soft as maple syrup running into a glass container, had for him a quality of horror in its single "Hello-o-ah?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Miss Gloria's not feeling well. She's lying down, asleep. Who shall I say called?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Nobody!" he shouted.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>SERENADE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The first thing he said to her was: "Why, you've bobbed your hair!" and she answered: "Yes, isn't it gorgeous?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's all sunshine outdoors," he said gravely. "Don't you want to take a walk?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt so bad.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire's chaotic message to whosoever would listen: something about "I worked and I saved and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, road, car model"><br /> <poem><br /> All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!" she cried, "I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there's ever been any winter."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you, though!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All women <i>are</i> birds," he ventured.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What kind am I?"—quick and eager.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls—and robin girls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What am I—a buzzard?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> She laughed and shook her head.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Dick's a fox terrier, a trick fox terrier," she continued.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And Maury's a cat." Simultaneously it occurred to him how like Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a discreet silence.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Don't you ever make long engagements?" he pleaded, "even if it's a week ahead, I think it'd be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and afternoon both."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It would be, wouldn't it?" She thought for a moment. "Let's do it next Sunday."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "All right. I'll map out a programme that'll take up every minute."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They would sit on the lounge.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore—for he was young now as he would never be again, and more triumphant than death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> Six o'clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won a hundred-yard dash!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, "I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that he loved her.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He phoned next morning—no hesitation now, no uncertainty—instead a delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning—Gloria."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good morning."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's all I called you up to say—dear."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I'm glad you did."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I wish I could see you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You will, to-morrow night."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "That's a long time, isn't it?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Yes—" Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Couldn't I come to-night?" He dared anything in the glory and revelation of that almost whispered "yes."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I have a date."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "But I might—I might be able to break it."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Oh!"—a sheer cry, a rhapsody. "Gloria?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "What?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I love you."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Another pause and then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I—I'm glad."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony's face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night! His dark eyes were gleaming—around his mouth were lines it was a kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink, starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very still, and looking at him wide-eyed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one triumphant and enduring embrace.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung https://wiki.uni-konstanz.de/offroad/index.php?title=The_Beautiful_and_Damned&diff=784 The Beautiful and Damned 2026-02-25T09:27:38Z

<p>Alina.2.hartung: Created page with "<meta author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott" additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html" genre="Novel" journal="" publisher="" year_of_publication="1922" page_range="1-449" other_data="Other text data" /> <annotations> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>== ===CHAPTER I (1-30)=== <paragraph keywords="car, bus, city, urban"> <poem> </poem> </paragraph> <paragraph keywords=""> <poem> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div> </po..."</p> <hr /> <div><meta<br /> author="Fitzgerald, F. Scott"<br /> additional_information="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9830/pg9830-images.html"<br /> genre="Novel"<br /> journal=""<br /> publisher=""<br /> year_of_publication="1922"<br /> page_range="1-449"<br /> other_data="Other text data"<br /> /><br /> <annotations><br /> ==<i>BOOK ONE</i>==<br /> <br /> ===CHAPTER I (1-30)===<br /> <paragraph keywords="car, bus, city, urban"><br /> <poem><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>ANTHONY PATCH</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> IN 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor, literature, vice, art, patent medicines, and Sunday theatres. His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age. From an armchair in the office of his Tarrytown estate he directed against the enormous hypothetical enemy, unrighteousness, a campaign which went on through fifteen years, during which he displayed himself a rabid monomaniac, an unqualified nuisance, and an intolerable bore. The year in which this story opens found him wearying; his campaign had grown desultory; 1861 was creeping up slowly on 1895; his thoughts ran a great deal on the Civil War, somewhat on his dead wife and son, almost infinitesimally on his grandson Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Early in his career Adam Patch had married an anæmic lady of thirty, Alicia Withers, who brought him one hundred thousand dollars and an impeccable entré into the banking circles of New York. Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after his death to be immoderately verbose and overpoweringly dull, it never obtained even a private printing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This Fifth Avenue Chesterfield married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrune, the Boston "Society Contralto," and the single child of the union was, at the request of his grandfather, christened Anthony Comstock Patch. When he went to Harvard, the Comstock dropped out of his name to a nether hell of oblivion and was never heard of thereafter.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Young Anthony had one picture of his father and mother together—so often had it faced his eyes in childhood that it had acquired the impersonality of furniture, but every one who came into his bedroom regarded it with interest. It showed a dandy of the nineties, spare and handsome, standing beside a tall dark lady with a muff and the suggestion of a bustle. Between them was a little boy with long brown curls, dressed in a velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit. This was Anthony at five, the year of his mother's death.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His memories of the Boston Society Contralto were nebulous and musical. She was a lady who sang, sang, sang, in the music room of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of the Southern negro.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His recollections of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll the lapels of his coat, were much more vivid. After Henrietta Lebrune Patch had "joined another choir," as her widower huskily remarked from time to time, father and son lived up at grampa's in Tarrytown, and Ulysses came daily to Anthony's nursery and expelled pleasant, thick-smelling words for sometimes as much as an hour. He was continually promising Anthony hunting trips and fishing trips and excursions to Atlantic City, "oh, some time soon now"; but none of them ever materialized. One trip they did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the rest of his life.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>PAST AND PERSON OF THE HERO</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At eleven he had a horror of death. Within six impressionable years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly, until, for the first time since her marriage, her person held for one day an unquestioned supremacy over her own drawing room. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed—it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; enormous, as nearly exhaustive as a boy's could be—his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. So Anthony kept up a correspondence with a half dozen "Stamp and Coin" companies and it was rare that the mail failed to bring him new stamp-books or packages of glittering approval sheets—there was a mysterious fascination in transferring his acquisitions interminably from one book to another. His stamps were his greatest happiness and he bestowed impatient frowns on any one who interrupted him at play with them; they devoured his allowance every month, and he lay awake at night musing untiringly on their variety and many-colored splendor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At sixteen he had lived almost entirely within himself, an inarticulate boy, thoroughly un-American, and politely bewildered by his contemporaries. The two preceding years had been spent in Europe with a private tutor, who persuaded him that Harvard was the thing; it would "open doors," it would be a tremendous tonic, it would give him innumerable self-sacrificing and devoted friends. So he went to Harvard—there was no other logical thing to be done with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Oblivious to the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery he would parade before a mirror in his room or lie stretched in satin along his window-seat looking down on the yard and realizing dimly this clamor, breathless and immediate, in which it seemed he was never to have a part.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Curiously enough he found in senior year that he had acquired a position in his class. He learned that he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition. This amused him but secretly pleased him—he began going out, at first a little and then a great deal. He made the Pudding. He drank—quietly and in the proper tradition. It was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have "done extremely well." In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then abroad again—to Rome this time, where he dallied with architecture and painting in turn, took up the violin, and wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets, supposedly the ruminations of a thirteenth-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It became established among his Harvard intimates that he was in Rome, and those of them who were abroad that year looked him up and discovered with him, on many moonlight excursions, much in the city that was older than the Renaissance or indeed than the republic. Maury Noble, from Philadelphia, for instance, remained two months, and together they realized the peculiar charm of Latin women and had a delightful sense of being very young and free in a civilization that was very old and free. Not a few acquaintances of his grandfather's called on him, and had he so desired he might have been <i>persona grata</i> with the diplomatic set—indeed, he found that his inclinations tended more and more toward conviviality, but that long adolescent aloofness and consequent shyness still dictated to his conduct.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He returned to America in 1912 because of one of his grandfather's sudden illnesses, and after an excessively tiresome talk with the perpetually convalescent old man he decided to put off until his grandfather's death the idea of living permanently abroad. After a prolonged search he took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and to all appearances settled down.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In 1913 Anthony Patch's adjustment of himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue eyes were charming, whether alert with intelligence or half closed in an expression of melancholy humor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> One of those men devoid of the symmetry of feature essential to the Aryan ideal, he was yet, here and there, considered handsome—moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THE REPROACHLESS APARTMENT</div></poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="bus, city, urban, road, affect, haptic, metaphor, driving, passenger"><br /> <poem><br /> Fifth and Sixth Avenues, it seemed to Anthony, were the uprights of a gigantic ladder stretching from Washington Square to Central Park. Coming up-town on top of a bus toward Fifty-second Street invariably gave him the sensation of hoisting himself hand by hand on a series of treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps to the sidewalk.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block, pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses—and then in a jiffy he was under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted, read, and entertained.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of smoke nor of incense—it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold; this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield was burned to a murky black.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment—Anthony's bedroom and bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Both of them were immense. Under the ceilings of the former even the great canopied bed seemed of only average size. On the floor an exotic rug of crimson velvet was soft as fleece on his bare feet. His bathroom, in contrast to the rather portentous character of his bedroom, was gay, bright, extremely habitable and even faintly facetious. Framed around the walls were photographs of four celebrated thespian beauties of the day: Julia Sanderson as "The Sunshine Girl," Ina Claire as "The Quaker Girl," Billie Burke as "The Mind-the-Paint Girl," and Hazel Dawn as "The Pink Lady." Between Billie Burke and Hazel Dawn hung a print representing a great stretch of snow presided over by a cold and formidable sun—this, claimed Anthony, symbolized the cold shower.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The bathtub, equipped with an ingenious bookholder, was low and large. Beside it a wall wardrobe bulged with sufficient linen for three men and with a generation of neckties. There was no skimpy glorified towel of a carpet—instead, a rich rug, like the one in his bedroom a miracle of softness, that seemed almost to massage the wet foot emerging from the tub. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> All in all a room to conjure with—it was easy to see that Anthony dressed there, arranged his immaculate hair there, in fact did everything but sleep and eat there. It was his pride, this bathroom. He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NOR DOES HE SPIN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The apartment was kept clean by an English servant with the singularly, almost theatrically, appropriate name of Bounds, whose technic was marred only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. Had he been entirely Anthony's Bounds this defect would have been summarily remedied, but he was also the Bounds of two other gentlemen in the neighborhood. From eight until eleven in the morning he was entirely Anthony's. He arrived with the mail and cooked breakfast. At nine-thirty he pulled the edge of Anthony's blanket and spoke a few terse words—Anthony never remembered clearly what they were and rather suspected they were deprecative; then he served breakfast on a card-table in the front room, made the bed and, after asking with some hostility if there was anything else, withdrew.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> In the mornings, at least once a week, Anthony went to see his broker. His income was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who had never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance, judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas he sent him a five-hundred-dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, if possible, as he was always a little, not very, hard up.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The visits to his broker varied from semi-social chats to discussions of the safety of eight per cent investments, and Anthony always enjoyed them. The big trust company building seemed to link him definitely to the great fortunes whose solidarity he respected and to assure him that he was adequately chaperoned by the hierarchy of finance. From these hurried men he derived the same sense of safety that he had in contemplating his grandfather's money—even more, for the latter appeared, vaguely, a demand loan made by the world to Adam Patch's own moral righteousness, while this money down-town seemed rather to have been grasped and held by sheer indomitable strengths and tremendous feats of will; in addition, it seemed more definitely and explicitly—money.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Closely as Anthony trod on the heels of his income, he considered it to be enough. Some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a <i>raison d'être</i> in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This flashes back to the conversation with his grandfather immediately upon his return from Rome.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, driving, road"><br /> <poem><br /> He had hoped to find his grandfather dead, but had learned by telephoning from the pier that Adam Patch was comparatively well again—the next day he had concealed his disappointment and gone out to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station his taxicab entered an elaborately groomed drive that threaded a veritable maze of walls and wire fences guarding the estate—this, said the public, was because it was definitely known that if the Socialists had their way, one of the first men they'd assassinate would be old Cross Patch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was late and the venerable philanthropist was awaiting him in a glass-walled sun parlor, where he was glancing through the morning papers for the second time. His secretary, Edward Shuttleworth—who before his regeneration had been gambler, saloon-keeper, and general reprobate—ushered Anthony into the room, exhibiting his redeemer and benefactor as though he were displaying a treasure of immense value.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They shook hands gravely. "I'm awfully glad to hear you're better," Anthony said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The senior Patch, with an air of having seen his grandson only last week, pulled out his watch.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> "Train late?" he asked mildly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It had irritated him to wait for Anthony. He was under the delusion not only that in his youth he had handled his practical affairs with the utmost scrupulousness, even to keeping every engagement on the dot, but also that this was the direct and primary cause of his success.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "It's been late a good deal this month," he remarked with a shade of meek accusation in his voice—and then after a long sigh, "Sit down."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony surveyed his grandfather with that tacit amazement which always attended the sight. That this feeble, unintelligent old man was possessed of such power that, yellow journals to the contrary, the men in the republic whose souls he could not have bought directly or indirectly would scarcely have populated White Plains, seemed as impossible to believe as that he had once been a pink-and-white baby.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously transposing his colors like a child trying over a paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and canticles on earth.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The amenities having been gingerly touched upon, Anthony felt that he was expected to outline his intentions—and simultaneously a glimmer in the old man's eye warned him against broaching, for the present, his desire to live abroad. He wished that Shuttleworth would have tact enough to leave the room—he detested Shuttleworth—but the secretary had settled blandly in a rocker and was dividing between the two Patches the glances of his faded eyes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Now that you're here you ought to <i>do</i> something," said his grandfather softly, "accomplish something."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony waited for him to speak of "leaving something done when you pass on." Then he made a suggestion:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I thought—it seemed to me that perhaps I'm best qualified to write—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Adam Patch winced, visualizing a family poet with a long hair and three mistresses.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "—history," finished Anthony.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "History? History of what? The Civil War? The Revolution?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why—no, sir. A history of the Middle Ages." Simultaneously an idea was born for a history of the Renaissance popes, written from some novel angle. Still, he was glad he had said "Middle Ages."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Middle Ages? Why not your own country? Something you know about?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, you see I've lived so much abroad—"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why you should write about the Middle Ages, I don't know. Dark Ages, we used to call 'em. Nobody knows what happened, and nobody cares, except that they're over now." He continued for some minutes on the uselessness of such information, touching, naturally, on the Spanish Inquisition and the "corruption of the monasteries." Then:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Do you think you'll be able to do any work in New York—or do you really intend to work at all?" This last with soft, almost imperceptible, cynicism.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Why, yes, I do, sir."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "When'll you be done?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Well, there'll be an outline, you see—and a lot of preliminary reading."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "I should think you'd have done enough of that already."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> The conversation worked itself jerkily toward a rather abrupt conclusion, when Anthony rose, looked at his watch, and remarked that he had an engagement with his broker that afternoon. He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating. He would come out again in a few days, he said.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Nevertheless, it was due to this encounter that work had come into his life as a permanent idea. During the year that had passed since then, he had made several lists of authorities, he had even experimented with chapter titles and the division of his work into periods, but not one line of actual writing existed at present, or seemed likely ever to exist. He did nothing—and contrary to the most accredited copy-book logic, he managed to divert himself with more than average content.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>AFTERNOON</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was October in 1913, midway in a week of pleasant days, with the sunshine loitering in the cross-streets and the atmosphere so languid as to seem weighted with ghostly falling leaves. It was pleasant to sit lazily by the open window finishing a chapter of "Erewhon." It was pleasant to yawn about five, toss the book on a table, and saunter humming along the hall to his bath.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he was singing as he turned on the tap.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes;</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul la-a-dy</div><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>My . . . heart . . . cries—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He raised his voice to compete with the flood of water pouring into the tub, and as he looked at the picture of Hazel Dawn upon the wall he put an imaginary violin to his shoulder and softly caressed it with a phantom bow. Through his closed lips he made a humming noise, which he vaguely imagined resembled the sound of a violin. After a moment his hands ceased their gyrations and wandered to his shirt, which he began to unfasten. Stripped, and adopting an athletic posture like the tiger-skin man in the advertisement, he regarded himself with some satisfaction in the mirror, breaking off to dabble a tentative foot in the tub. Readjusting a faucet and indulging in a few preliminary grunts, he slid in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once accustomed to the temperature of the water he relaxed into a state of drowsy content. When he finished his bath he would dress leisurely and walk down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz, where he had an appointment for dinner with his two most frequent companions, Dick Caramel and Maury Noble. Afterward he and Maury were going to the theatre—Caramel would probably trot home and work on his book, which ought to be finished pretty soon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Anthony was glad <i>he</i> wasn't going to work on <i>his</i> book. The notion of sitting down and conjuring up, not only words in which to clothe thoughts but thoughts worthy of being clothed—the whole thing was absurdly beyond his desires.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the thick carpet on his feet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focused upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther down the alley.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> It was a girl in a red negligé, silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where Anthony could hear children playing.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out the window. The woman was standing up now; she had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished. Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned to the bathroom and reparted his hair.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"To . . . you . . . beaut-if-ul lady,"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> he sang lightly,<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>"I raise . . . my . . . eyes—"</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>THREE MEN</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant, protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat, as though it has been licked by a possible—and, if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are glad to see each other now—their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity; Maury Noble behind that fine and absurdly catlike face is all but purring. And Anthony, nervous as a will-o'-the-wisp, restless—he is at rest now.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> They are engaged in one of those easy short-speech conversations that only men under thirty or men under great stress indulge in.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven o'clock. Where's the Caramel? (<i>Impatiently</i>.) I wish he'd finish that interminable novel. I've spent more time hungry——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: He's got a new name for it. "The Demon Lover "—not bad, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>interested</i>) "The Demon Lover"? Oh "woman wailing"—No—not a bit bad! Not bad at all—d'you think?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Seven.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>His eyes narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval</i>) Drove me crazy the other day.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: How?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: That habit of taking notes.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Me, too. Seems I'd said something night before that he considered material but he'd forgotten it—so he had at me. He'd say "Can't you try to concentrate?" And I'd say "You bore me to tears. How do I remember?"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (MAURY <i>laughs noiselessly, by a sort of bland and appreciative widening of his features</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Dick doesn't necessarily see more than any one else. He merely can put down a larger proportion of what he sees.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: That rather impressive talent——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. Impressive!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Oh, yes. (<i>Silence, and then:</i>)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: (<i>With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced</i>) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>With laughter</i>) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? Just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: (<i>Still considering his own last observation</i>) I remember.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Let's order. He'll be—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Sure. Let's order. I told him—<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (<i>He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw</i>.) Here y'are, Caramel.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> A NEW VOICE: (<i>Fiercely</i>) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Débutantes still after you, eh?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>In person</i> RICHARD CARAMEL <i>is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>When he reaches the table he shakes hands with</i> ANTHONY <i>and</i> MAURY. <i>He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Fixing</i> ANTHONY <i>eagerly with the bright eye</i>) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Noble æsthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: We never pass out, my beardless boy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: All in our parties are characterized by a certain haughty distinction.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: The particularly silly sort who boast about being "tanks"! Trouble is you're both in the eighteenth century. School of the Old English Squire. Drink quietly until you roll under the table. Never have a good time. Oh, no, that isn't done at all.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: This from Chapter Six, I'll bet.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Going to the theatre?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening doing some deep thinking over of life's problems. The thing is tersely called "The Woman." I presume that she will "pay."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: My God! Is that what it is? Let's go to the Follies again.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I'm tired of it. I've seen it three times. (<i>To</i> DICK.) The first time, we went out after Act One and found a most amazing bar. When we came back we entered the wrong theatre.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Had a protracted dispute with a scared young couple we thought were in our seats.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>As though talking to himself</i>) I think—that when I've done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I'll do a musical comedy.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: I know—with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to. And all the critics will groan and grunt about "Dear old Pinafore." And I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: (<i>Pompously</i>) Art isn't meaningless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: In other words, Dick, you're playing before a grand stand peopled with ghosts.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: Give a good show anyhow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY:(<i>To</i> MAURY) On the contrary, I'd feel that it being a meaningless world, why write? The very attempt to give it purpose is purposeless.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> DICK: Well, even admitting all that, be a decent pragmatist and grant a poor man the instinct to live. Would you want every one to accept that sophistic rot?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> ANTHONY: Yeah, I suppose so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> MAURY: No, sir! I believe that every one in America but a selected thousand should be compelled to accept a very rigid system of morals—Roman Catholicism, for instance. I don't complain of conventional morality. I complain rather of the mediocre heretics who seize upon the findings of sophistication and adopt the pose of a moral freedom to which they are by no means entitled by their intelligences.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>Here the soup arrives and what</i> MAURY <i>might have gone on to say is lost for all time</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>NIGHT</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Afterward they visited a ticket speculator and, at a price, obtained seats for a new musical comedy called "High Jinks." In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see the first-night crowd come in. There were opera cloaks stitched of myriad, many-colored silks and furs; there were jewels dripping from arms and throats and ear-tips of white and rose; there were innumerable broad shimmers down the middles of innumerable silk hats; there were shoes of gold and bronze and red and shining black; there were the high-piled, tight-packed coiffures of many women and the slick, watered hair of well-kept men—most of all there was the ebbing, flowing, chattering, chuckling, foaming, slow-rolling wave effect of this cheerful sea of people as to-night it poured its glittering torrent into the artificial lake of laughter. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> After the play they parted—Maury was going to a dance at Sherry's, Anthony homeward and to bed.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car"><br /> <poem><br /> He found his way slowly over the jostled evening mass of Times Square, which the chariot race and its thousand satellites made rarely beautiful and bright and intimate with carnival. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin—too fat, too lean, yet floating upon this autumn air as upon their own warm and passionate breaths poured out into the night. Here, for all their vulgarity, he thought, they were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices and craning their necks here and there in fatuous supercilious glances. They were dressed in suits of the exaggerated tightness then semi-fashionable; their turn-over collars were notched at the Adam's apple; they wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Passed a bewildered old lady borne along like a basket of eggs between two men who exclaimed to her of the wonders of Times Square—explained them so quickly that the old lady, trying to be impartially interested, waved her head here and there like a piece of wind-worried old orange-peel. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's the Astor, mama!"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Look! See the chariot race sign——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "There's where we were to-day. No, <i>there!</i>”"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "Good gracious! . . ."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "You should worry and grow thin like a dime." He recognized the current witticism of the year as it issued stridently from one of the pairs at his elbow.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> "And I says to him, I says——"<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="car, haptic, sound, train, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughter hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath—and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light—light dividing like pearls—forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> He turned thankfully down the hush that blew like a dark wind out of a cross-street, passed a bakery-restaurant in whose windows a dozen roast chickens turned over and over on an automatic spit. From the door came a smell that was hot, doughy, and pink. A drug-store next, exhaling medicines, spilt soda water and a pleasant undertone from the cosmetic counter; then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling, smelling folded and vaguely yellow. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store and emerged feeling better—the cigar store was cheerful, humanity in a navy blue mist, buying a luxury . . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, there was a loneliness here——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="train"><br /> <poem><br /> His cigarette, its smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as it passed the illusion faded; it diminished to the faintest of drums—then to a far-away droning eagle.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords="sound, car, road, risk, safety, affect"><br /> <poem><br /> There were the bells and the continued low blur of auto horns from Fifth Avenue, but his own street was silent and he was safe in here from all the threat of life, for there was his door and the long hall and his guardian bedroom—safe, safe! The arc-light shining into his window seemed for this hour like the moon, only brighter and more beautiful than the moon.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <div style='text-align: center;'>A FLASH-BACK IN PARADISE</div><br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>Beauty, who was born anew every hundred years, sat in a sort of outdoor waiting room through which blew gusts of white wind and occasionally a breathless hurried star. The stars winked at her intimately as they went by and the winds made a soft incessant flurry in her hair. She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one—the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>It became known to her, at length, that she was to be born again. Sighing, she began a long conversation with a voice that was in the white wind, a conversation that took many hours and of which I can give only a fragment here</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself</i>) Whither shall I journey now?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Petulantly</i>) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Fifteen years.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: And what's the name of the place?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men——<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In astonishment</i>) What?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Very much depressed</i>) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying "Do this!" and "Do that!" and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as "Mrs. So-and-so" or as "the wife."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: But this can't be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Even so.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What of me? What chance shall I have?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It will be "harder going," if I may borrow a phrase.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>After a dissatisfied pause</i>) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: It's expected that they'll be very busy shortly.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Oh!<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What will I be? Tell me?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it's not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a "susciety gurl."<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: What's that?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as</i> THE VOICE <i>scratching its head</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>At length</i>) It's a sort of bogus aristocrat.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: Bogus? What is bogus?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>Placidly</i>) It all sounds so vulgar.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>In a whisper</i>) Will I be paid?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: Yes, as usual—in love.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> BEAUTY: (<i>With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips</i>) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> THE VOICE: (<i>Soberly</i>) You will love it. . . .<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> (<i>The dialogue ends here, with</i> BEAUTY <i>still sitting quietly, the stars pausing in an ecstasy of appreciation, the wind, white and gusty, blowing through her hair</i>.<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> <paragraph keywords=""><br /> <poem><br /> <i>All this took place seven years before</i> ANTHONY <i>sat by the front windows of his apartment and listened to the chimes of St. Anne's</i>.)<br /> </poem><br /> </paragraph><br /> <br /> <br /> </annotations></div>

Alina.2.hartung