The Vertical City, Page 2

  BACK PAY

  I set out to write a love story, and for the purpose sharpened abright-pink pencil with a glass ruby frivolously at the eraser end.

  Something sweet. Something dainty. A candied rose leaf after all thebitter war lozenges. A miss. A kiss. A golf stick. A motor car. Or, ifneed be, a bit of khaki, but without one single spot of blood or mud,and nicely pressed as to those fetching peg-top trouser effects wherethey wing out just below the skirt-coat. The oldest story in the worldtold newly. No wear out to it. Editors know. It's as staple as eggsor printed lawn or ipecac. The good old-fashioned love story with theabove-mentioned miss, kiss, and, if need be for the sake of timeliness,the bit of khaki, pressed.

  Just my luck that, with one of these modish tales at the tip of my pinkpencil, Hester Bevins should come pounding and clamoring at the door ofmy mental reservation, quite drowning out the rather high, the lipsy,and, if I do say it myself, distinctly musical patter of Arline. Thatwas to have been her name. Arline Kildane. Sweet, don't you think, andwith just a bit of wild Irish rose in it?

  But Hester Bevins would not let herself be gainsaid, sobbing a little,elbowing her way through the group of mental unborns, and leaving me toblow my pitch pipe for a minor key.

  Not that Hester's isn't one of the oldest stories in the world, too. Nomatter how newly told, she is as old as sin, and sin is but a few weeksyounger than love--and how often the two are interchangeable!

  If it be a fact that the true lady is, in theory, either a virgin ora lawful wife, then Hester Bevins stands immediately convicted on twocharges.

  She was neither. The most that can be said for her is that she washonestly what she was.

  "If the wages of sin is death," she said to a roadhouse party ofroysterers one dawn, "then I've quite a bit of back pay coming to me."And joined in the shout that rose off the table.

  I can sketch her in for you rather simply because of the hackneyedlines of her very, very old story. Whose pasts so quickly mold anddisintegrate as those of women of Hester's stripe? Their yesterdays areentirely soluble in the easy waters of their to-days.

  For the first seventeen years of her life she lived in what we mightcall Any American Town of, say, fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants.Her particular one was in Ohio. Demopolis, I think. One of thosechange-engine-and-take-on-water stops with a stucco art-nouveau station,a roof drooping all round it, as if it needed to be shaved off likeedges of a pie, and the name of the town writ in conch shells on agreen slant of terrace. You know--the kind that first establishes aten-o'clock curfew for its young, its dance halls and motion-picturetheaters, and then sends in a hurry call for a social-service expertfrom one of the large Eastern cities to come and diagnose its malignantvice undergrowth.

  Hester Bevins, of a mother who died bearing her and one of thosedisappearing fathers who can speed away after the accident without evenstopping to pick up the child or leave a license number, was reared--no,grew up, is better--in the home of an aunt. A blond aunt with many goldteeth and many pink and blue wrappers.

  Whatever Hester knew of the kind of home that fostered her, it leftapparently no welt across her sensibilities. It was a rather poor house,an unpainted frame in a poor street, but there was never a lack ofgayety or, for that matter, any pinching lack of funds. It was an actualfact that, at thirteen, cotton or lisle stockings brought out alittle irritated rash on Hester's slim young legs, and she wore silk.Abominations, it is true, at three pair for a dollar, that sprang runsand would not hold a darn, but, just the same, they were silk. There wasan air of easy _camaraderie_ and easy money about that house. It wasnot unusual for her to come home from school at high noon and find afront-room group of one, two, three, or four guests, almost invariablymen. Frequently these guests handed her out as much as half a dollarfor candy money, and not another child in school reckoned in more thanpennies.

  Once a guest, for reasons of odd change, I suppose, handed her outthirteen cents. Outraged, at the meanness of the sum, and with an earlyand deep-dyed superstition of thirteen, she dashed the coins out of hishand and to the four corners of the room, escaping in the guffaw oflaughter that went up.

  Often her childish sleep in a small top room with slanting sides wouldbe broken upon by loud ribaldry that lasted into dawn, but never byword, and certainly not by deed, was she to know from her aunt any ofits sordid significance.

  Literally, Hester Bevins was left to feather her own nest. There wereno demands made upon her. Once, in the little atrocious front parlor ofhorsehair and chromo, one of the guests, the town baggage-master, tobe exact, made to embrace her, receiving from the left rear a soundingsmack across cheek and ear from the aunt.

  "Cut that! Hester, go out and play! Whatever she's got to learn fromlife, she can't say she learned it in my house."

  There were even two years of high school, and at sixteen, when she went,at her own volition, to clerk in Finley's two-story department store onHigh Street, she was still innocent, although she and Gerald Fishbackwere openly sweethearts.

  Gerald was a Thor. Of course, you are not to take that literally; but ifever there was a carnification of the great god himself, then Gerald wasin his image. A wide streak of the Scandinavian ran through his make-up,although he had been born in Middletown, and from there had comerecently to the Finley Dry Goods Company as an accountant.

  He was so the viking in his bigness that once, on a picnic, he hadcarried two girls, screaming their fun, across twenty feet of stream.Hester was one of them.

  It was at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, thenseventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a ramblerrose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed littlegazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runawaystream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she worea crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-centsilk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with pointsto them.

  They were in the very heart of Wallach's Grove, under a naturalcathedral of trees, the noises of the revelers and the small explosionsof soda-water and beer bottles almost remote enough for perfect quiet.He was stretched his full and splendid length at the picknickers'immemorial business of plucking and sucking grass blades, and she seatedvery trimly, her little blue-serge skirt crawling up ever so slightly toreveal the silken ankle, on a rock beside him.

  "Tickle-tickle!" she cried, with some of that irrepressible animalspirit of hers, and leaning to brush his ear with a twig.

  He caught at her hand.

  "Hester," he said, "marry me."

  She felt a foaming through her until her finger tips sang.

  "Well, I like that!" was what she said, though, and flung up a pointedprofile that was like that same gazelle's smelling the moon.

  He was very darkly red, and rose to his knees to clasp her about thewaist. She felt like relaxing back against his blondness and feeling herfingers plow through the great double wave of his hair. But she did not.

  "You're too poor," she said.

  He sat back without speaking for a long minute.

  "Money isn't everything," he said, finally, and with something gone fromhis voice.

  "I know," she said, looking off; "but it's a great deal if you happen towant it more than anything else in the world."

  "Then, if that's how you feel about it, Hester, next to wanting you, Iwant it, too, more than anything else in the world."

  "There's no future in bookkeeping."

  "I know a fellow in Cincinnati who's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar man.Hester? Dear?"

  "A week?"

  "Why, of course not, dear--a month!"

  "Faugh!" she said, still looking off.

  He felt out for her hand, at the touch of her reddening up again.

  "Hester," he said, "you're the most beautiful, the most exciting, themost maddening, the most--the most everything girl in the world!You're not going to have an easy time of it, Hester, with your--yourenvironment and your dangerousness, if you d
on't settle down--quick,with some strong fellow to take care of you. A fellow who loves you.That's me, Hester. I want to make a little home for you and protect you.I can't promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you thebigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?"

  She would not let her hand relax to his.

  "I hate this town," she said.

  "There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there."

  "Faugh!"

  "Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis."

  "No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even littlemetropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spendersand mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, andmachine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!"

  "And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester.You're beautiful."

  "That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I'vegot a pink-crepe-de-Chine soul. Pink crepe de Chine--you hear?"

  He sat back on his heels.

  "It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with thatsalesman from New York?"

  "Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up HighStreet, evenings!"

  "But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?"

  "Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?"

  "But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?"

  "Well, of all the nerve!"

  But it was.

  * * * * *

  The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-stripedsoft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter thestory. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, orwhatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer.

  Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic,manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattelof one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island,vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs butof the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations.

  You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was anapartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated onthe windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type fromthe pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine,mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, tothe pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with asmall mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded withpaper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom witha sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing scales,and overloaded medicine chest of cosmetic array in frosted bottles,sleeping-, headache-, sedative powders, _et al_. There were also a negromaid, two Pomeranian dogs, and last, but by no means least, a privatetelephone inclosed in a hall closet and lighted by an electric bulb thatturned on automatically to the opening of the door.

  There was nothing sinister about Wheeler. He was a rather fair exponentof that amazing genus known as "typical New-Yorker," a roll of money inhis pocket, and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He went in forlight checked suits, wore a platinum-and-Oriental-pearl chain across hiswaistcoat, and slept at a Turkish bath once a week; was once named in alarge corporation scandal, escaping indictment only after violent andexpensive skirmishes; could be either savage or familiar with waiters;wore highly manicured nails, which he regarded frequently in public,white-silk socks only; and maintained, on a twenty-thousand-a-yearscale in the decorous suburb of Rosencranz, a decorous wife and threechildren, and, like all men of his code, his ethics were strictly doubledecked. He would not permit his nineteen-year-old daughter Marion somuch as a shopping tour to the city without the chaperonage of hermother or a friend, forbade in his wife, a comely enough woman with awhite unmarcelled coiffure and upper arms a bit baggy with witheringflesh, even the slightest of shirtwaist V's unless filled in withnet, and kept up, at an expense of no less than fifteen thousand ayear--thirty the war year that tractors jumped into the war-industryclass--the very high-priced, -tempered, -handed, and -stepping Hester ofwild-gazelle charm.

  Not that Hester stepped much. There were a long underslung roadsterand a great tan limousine with yellow-silk curtains at the call of herprivate telephone.

  The Wheeler family used, not without complaint, a large open car of veryearly vintage, which in winter was shut in with flapping curtains withisinglass peepers, and leaked cold air badly.

  On more than one occasion they passed on the road--these cars. Thelong tan limousine with the shock absorbers, foot warmers, two brownPomeranian dogs, little case of enamel-top bottles, fresh flowers, andoutside this little jewel-case interior, smartly exposed, so that theblast hit him from all sides, a chauffeur in uniform that harmonizednicely with the tans and yellows. And then the grotesque caravan of theAzoic motor age, with its flapping curtains and ununiformed youth invisored cap at the wheel.

  There is undoubtedly an unsavory aspect to this story. For purpose offiction, it is neither fragrant nor easily digested. But it is not sounsavory as the social scheme which made it possible for those two carsto pass thus on the road, and, at the same time, Charles G. Wheeler toremain the unchallenged member of the three lodges, the corporations,and the Rosencranz church, with a memorial window in his name on theleft side as you enter, and again his name spelled out on a brass plateat the end of a front pew.

  No one but God and Mrs. Wheeler knew what was in her heart. It ispossible that she did not know what the world knew, but hardly. That sheendured it is not admirable, but then there were the three children,and, besides, she lived in a world that let it go at that. And so shecontinued to hold up her head in her rather poor, mute way, rode besideher husband to funerals, weddings, and to the college Commencement oftheir son at Yale. Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little inprivate, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body and soul.

  But the Wheelers' is another story, also a running social sore; but itwas Hester, you remember, who came sobbing and clamoring to be told.

  As Wheeler once said of her, she was a darn fine clothes horse. Therewas no pushed-up line of flesh across the middle of her back, asthe corsets did it to Mrs. Wheeler. She was honed to the ounce. Thewhite-enameled weighing scales, the sweet oils, the flexible fingers ofher masseur, the dumb-bells, the cabinet, salt-water, needle-spray,and vapor baths saw to that. Her skin, unlike Marion Wheeler's, wasunfreckled, and as heavily and tropically white as a magnolia leaf, and,of course, she reddened her lips, and the moonlike pallor came out morethan ever.

  As I said, she was frankly what she was. No man looked at her more thanonce without knowing it. To use an awkward metaphor, it was before herface like an overtone; it was an invisible caul. The wells of her eyeswere muddy with it.

  But withal, she commanded something of a manner, even from Wheeler. Hehad no key to the apartment. He never entered her room without knocking.There were certain of his friends she would not tolerate, from one oranother aversion, to be party to their not infrequent carousals. Mendid not always rise from their chairs when she entered a room, but shesuffered few liberties from them. She was absolutely indomitable in herdemands.

  "Lord!" ventured Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon,lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered inorchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat,pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't theseYvette bills pretty steep?

  "One midnight-blue-and-silver gown . . . . . . . . . $485.00 One blue-and-silver head bandeau . . . . . . . . . . 50.00 One serge-and-satin trotteur gown . . . . . . . . . 275.00 One ciel-blue tea gown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280.00

  "Is that the cheapest you can drink tea? Whew!"

  She put down her coffee cup, which she usually held with one littlefinger poised elegantly outward as if for flight.

  "You've got a nerve!" she said, rising and pushing back her chair. "Overwhose ticker are you getting quotations that I come
cheap?"

  He was immediately conciliatory, rising also to enfold her in an embracethat easily held her slightness.

  "Go on," he said. "You could work me for the Woolworth Building indiamonds if you wanted it badly enough."

  "Funny way of showing it! I may be a lot of things, Wheeler, but I'm notcheap. You're darn lucky that the war is on and I'm not asking for aFrench car."

  He crushed his lips to hers.

  "You devil!" he said.

  There were frequent parties. Dancing at Broadway cabarets, all-night joyrides, punctuated with road-house stop-overs, and not infrequently, ingroups of three or four couples, ten-day pilgrimages to showy Americanspas.

  "Getting boiled out," they called it. It was part of Hester's scheme forkeeping her sveltness.

  Her friendships were necessarily rather confined to a definitecircle--within her own apartment house, in fact. On the floor above,also in large, bright rooms of high rental, and so that they wereexchanging visits frequently during the day, often _en deshabille_,using the stairway that wound up round the elevator shaft, lived acertain Mrs. Kitty Drew, I believe she called herself. She was plump andblond, and so very scented that her aroma lay on a hallway for an hourafter she had scurried through it. She was well known and chieflydistinguished by a large court-plaster crescent which she wore on herleft shoulder blade. She enjoyed the bounty of a Wall Street brokerwho for one day had attained the conspicuousness of cornering the eggmarket.

  There were two or three others within this group. A Mrs. Denison, halfFrench, and a younger girl called Babe. But Mrs. Drew and Hester wereintimates. They dwaddled daily in one or the other's apartment, usuallylazy and lacy with negligee, lounging about on the mounds of lingeriepillows over chocolates, cigarettes, novels, Pomeranians, and always theheadache powders, nerve sedatives, or smelling salts, a running line of:"Lord! I've a head!" "I need a good cry for the blues!" "Talk about adark-brown taste!" or, "There was some kick to those cocktails lastnight," through their conversation.

  KITTY: "Br-r-r! I'm as nervous as a cat to-day."

  HESTER: "Naughty, naughty bad doggie to bite muvver's diamond ring."

  KITTY: "Leave it to you to land a pear-shaped diamond on your hooks."

  HESTER: "He fell for it, just like that!"

  KITTY: "You could milk a billiard ball."

  HESTER: "I don't see any 'quality of mercy' to spare around your flat."

  There were the two years of high school, you see.

  "Ed's going out to Geyser Springs next month for the cure. I told him hecould not go without me unless over my dead body, he could not."

  "Geyser Springs. That's thirty miles from my home town."

  "Your home town? Nighty-night! I thought you was born on the corner ofForty-second Street and Broadway with a lobster claw in your mouth."

  "Demopolis, Ohio."

  "What is that--a skin disease?"

  "My last relation in the world died out there two years ago. An aunt.Wouldn't mind some Geyser Springs myself if I could get some of thisstiffness out of my joints."

  "Come on! I dare you! May Denison and Chris will come in on it, and Babecan always find somebody. Make it three or four cars full and let'smotor out. We all need a good boiling, anyways. Wheeler looks aboutready for spontaneous combustion, and I got a twinge in my left littletoe. You on?"

  "I am, if he is."

  "If he is!' He'd fall for life in an Igorrote village with a ring in hisnose if you wanted it."

  And truly enough, it did come about that on a height-of-the-seasonevening a highly cosmopolitan party of four couples trooped into thesolid-marble foyer of the Geyser Springs Hotel, motor coated, goggled,veiled; a whole litter of pigskin and patent-leather bags, hampers,and hat boxes, two golf bags, two Pomeranians, a bull in spiked collar,furs, leather coats, monogrammed rugs, thermos bottles, air pillows,robes, and an _ensemble_ of fourteen wardrobe trunks sent by express.

  They took the "cure." Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at thecasino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for thesmarter European idea, with a special _a la carte_ menu for each meal.Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates ofthe "cure," appeared at their table. Strange midnight goings-on werereported by the more conservative hotel guests, and the privacy of theircircle was allowed full integrity by the little veranda groups of goutyladies or middle-aged husbands with liver spots on their faces. The bathattendants reveled in the largest tips of the season. When Hester walkeddown the large dining room evenings, she was a signal for the craning ofnecks for the newest shock of her newest extreme toilette. The kinds oftoilettes that shocked the women into envy and mental notes of how theunderarm was cut, and the men into covert delight. Wheeler liked to sitback and put her through her paces like a high-strung filly.

  "Make 'em sit up, girl! You got them all looking like dimes aroundhere."

  One night she descended to the dining room in a black evening gown sodaringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegantthing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the clatter ofdishes pausing.

  There was a gold bird of paradise dipped down her hair over oneshoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied withit as she walked.

  "Take it from me," said Kitty, who felt fat in lavender that night,"she's going it one too strong."

  Another evening she descended, always last, in a cloth of silver with atiny, an absurd, an impeccably tight silver turban dipped down over oneeye, and absolutely devoid of jewels except the pear-shaped diamond onher left forefinger.

  They were a noisy, a spending, a cosmopolitan crowd of too-well-fed menand too-well-groomed women, ignored by the veranda groups of wives andmothers, openly dazzling and arousing a tremendous curiosity in theyounger set, and quite obviously sought after by their own kind.

  But Hester's world, too, is all run through with sharply defined socialschisms.

  "I wish that Irwin woman wouldn't always hang round our crowd," shesaid, one morning, as she and Kitty lay side by side in the cooling roomafter their baths, massages, manicures, and shampoos. "I don't want tobe seen running with her."

  "Did you see the square emerald she wore last night?"

  "Fake. I know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made upfor her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybodystanding back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes toTessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on her. She's cheap."

  Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and herlittle mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow.

  "We can't all be top-notchers, Hester," she said. "You're hard asnails."

  "I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones whoaren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've gotto play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as wellhave the game."

  "If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one morewife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if Ihad to play it on a South Dakota farm."

  "'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well,' I used to write in acopy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything isworth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin.I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stockof myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes," mused Hester, her armsin a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There'snot been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd havemarried me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow,too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future toladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was apretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been prettylucky in the long run, I guess."

  "Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarettein the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you apiece of flint is morning cereal. Haven't you ever had a love affair?I've bee
n married twice--that's how chicken hearted I can be. Haven'tyou ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walkedinto the room?"

  "Once."

  "Once what?"

  "I liked a fellow. Pretty much. A blond. Say, he was blond! I alwaysthink to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you've got the bluest eyes underheaven. Only, his didn't have any dregs."

  "Thanks, dearie."

  "I sometimes wonder about Gerald. I ought to drive over while we're outhere. Poor old Gerald Fishback!"

  "Sweet name--'Fishback.' No wonder you went wrong, dearie."

  "Oh, I'm not getting soft. I saw my bed and made it, nice and soft andcomfy, and I'm lying on it without a whimper."

  "You just bet your life you made it up nice and comfy! You've the rightidea; I have to hand that to you. You command respect from them. Lord!Ed would as soon fire a teacup at me as not. But, with me, it pays. Thelast one he broke he made up to me with my opal-and-diamond beetle."

  "Wouldn't wear an opal if it was set next to the Hope diamond."

  "Superstitious, dearie?"

  "Unlucky. Never knew it to fail."

  "Not a superstition in my bones. I don't believe in walking underladders or opening an umbrella in the house or sitting down withthirteen, but, Lordy! never saw the like with you! Thought you'd havethe hysterics over that little old vanity mirror you broke that day outat the races."

  "Br-r-r! I hated it."

  "Lay easy, dearie. Nothing can touch you the way he's raking in the warcontracts."

  "Great--isn't it?"

  "Play for a country home, dearie. I always say real estate and jewelryare something in the hand. Look ahead in this game, I always say."

  "You just bet I've looked ahead."

  "So have I, but not enough."

  "Somehow, I never feel afraid. I could get a job to-morrow if I had to."

  "Say, dearie, if it comes to that, with twenty pounds off me, there'snot a chorus I couldn't land back in."

  "I worked once, you know, in Lichtig's import shop."

  "Fifth Avenue?"

  "Yes. It was in between the salesman and Al. I sold two thousand fivehundred dollars' worth of gowns the first week."

  "Sure enough?"

  "'Girl,' old man Lichtig said to me the day I quit--'girl,' he said, 'ifever you need this job again, comeback; it's waiting.'"

  "Fine chance!"

  "I've got the last twenty-five dollars I earned pinned away this minutein the pocket of the little dark-blue suit I wore to work. I paid forthat suit with my first month's savings. A little dark-blue Norfolk,Lichtig let me have out of stock for twenty-seven fifty."

  "Were they giving them away with a pound of tea?"

  "Honest, Kitty, it was neat. Little white shirt waist, tan shoes, andone of those slick little five-dollar sailors, and every cent paid outof my salary. I could step into that outfit to-morrow, look the part,and land back that job or any other. I had a way with the trade, evenback at Finley's."

  "Here, hold my jewel bag, honey; I'm going to die of cold-creamsuffocation if she don't soon come back and unsmear me."

  "Opal beetle in it?"

  "Yes, dearie; but it won't bite. It's muzzled with my diamondhorseshoe."

  "Nothing doing, Kit. Put it under your pillow."

  "You better watch out. There's a thirteenth letter in the alphabet; youmight accidentally use it some day. You're going to have a sweet timeto-night, you are!"

  "Why?"

  "The boys have engaged De Butera to come up to the rooms."

  "You mean the fortune teller over at the Stag Hotel?"

  "She's not a fortune teller, you poor nervous wreck. She's thehighest-priced spiritualist in the world. Moving tables--spooks--woof!"

  "Faugh!" said Hester, rising from her couch and feeling with her littlebare feet for the daintiest of pink-silk mules. "I could make tablesmove, too, at forty dollars an hour. Where's my attendant? I want analcohol rub."

  They did hold seance that night in a fine spirit of lark, huddledtogether in the _de-luxe_ sitting room of one of their suites, andlittle half-hysterical shrieks and much promiscuous ribaldry under coverof darkness.

  Madame de Butera was of a distinctly fat and earthy blondness, with acoarse-lace waist over pink, and short hands covered with turquoiserings of many shapes and blues.

  Tables moved. A dead sister of Wheeler's spoke in thin, high voice. Whyis it the dead are always so vocally thin and high?

  A chair tilted itself on hind legs, eliciting squeals from the women.Babe spoke with a gentleman friend long since passed on, and Kitty witha deceased husband, and began to cry quite sobbily and took little sipsof highball quite gulpily. May Denison, who was openly defiant, allowedherself to be hypnotized and lay rigid between two chairs, andKitty went off into rampant hysteria until Wheeler finally placed ahundred-dollar bill over the closed eyes, and whether under it, or tothe legerdemain of madam's manipulating hands, the tight eyes opened,May, amid riots of laughter, claiming for herself the hundred-dollarbill, and Kitty, quite resuscitated, jumping up for a table cancan, heryellow hair tumbling, and her china-blue eyes with the dregs in theminclined to water.

  All but Hester. She sat off by herself in a peacock-colored gown thatwrapped her body suavity as if the fabric were soaking wet, a band ofsmoky-blue about her forehead. Never intoxicated, a slight amount ofalcohol had a tendency to make her morose.

  "What's the matter, Cleo?" asked Wheeler, sitting down beside her andlifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remoteanalogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen."What's the matter Cleo? Does the spook stuff get your goat?"

  She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenlywind-blown.

  "God!" she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm."Wheeler--can--can the--dead--speak?"

  But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, andthe following morning there they were, the eight of them, light withlaughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, offfor a day's motoring through the springtime countryside.

  "Where to?" shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat inthe first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind.

  "I thought Crystal Cave was the spot"--from May Denison in the last ofthe cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil.

  "Crystal Cave it is, then."

  "Is that through Demopolis?"

  Followed a scanning of maps.

  "Sure! Here it is! See! Granite City. Mitchell. Demopolis. CrystalCave."

  "Good Lord! Hester, you're not going to spend any time in that dump?"

  "It's my home town," she replied, coldly. "The only relation I had isburied there. It's nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-housesteps and pick me up as you drive back, I've been wanting to get thereever since we're down here. Wanting to stop by your home town youhaven't seen in five years isn't unreasonable, is it?"

  He admitted it wasn't, leaning to kiss her.

  She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually foundirresistible.

  "Honey," she said, "what do you think?"

  "What?"

  "Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom'swindow the day before we left."

  "The deuce he is!" he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediatelycovering his.

  "She's wiring her sister in the 'Girlie Revue' to go in and buy it forher."

  "Outrage--fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman's back! Look at thebeautiful scenery, honey! You're always prating about views. Look atthose hills over there! Great--isn't it?"

  "I wouldn't expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn't war year and you landingone big contract after another. I'd hate to see May show herself inthat chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire. I couldtelegraph Meyerbloom himself. I bought the sable rug of him. I'd hateit, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat us to it. So would you. What'sfifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs in
to the hundredthousands? Honey?"

  "Wire," he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers.

  * * * * *

  They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but withpleasantry and gibe.

  "Give my love to the town pump."

  "Rush the old oaken growler for me."

  "So long!" she called, eager to be rid of them. "Pick me up at sixsharp."

  She walked slowly up High Street. Passers-by turned to stare, butotherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store,and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made aforay down into the little side street where she had spent those queerlyremote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! Thelittle unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard on thesite. Everything seemed to have shrunk. The street was narrower anddirtier than she recalled it.

  She made one stop, at the house of Maggie Simms, a high-school chum. Itwas a frame house, too, and she remembered that the front door openeddirectly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly usedinstead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie wasmarried and living in Cincinnati. Oh, fine--a master mechanic, and therewere twins. She started back toward Finley's, thinking of Gerald, andhalfway she changed her mind.

  Maggie Simms married and living in Cincinnati. Twins! Heigh-ho! What aworld! The visit was hardly a success. At half after five she was on herway back to the court-house steps. Stupid to have made it six!

  And then, of course, and quite as you would have it, Gerald Fishbackcame along. She recognized his blondness long before he saw her. He wasbigger and more tanned, and, as of old, carried his hat in his hand. Shenoticed that there were no creases down the front of his trousers, butthe tweed was good and he gave off that intangible aroma of well-being.

  She was surprised at the old thrill racing over her. Seeing him was likea stab of quick steel through the very pit of her being. She reachedout, touching him, before he saw her.

  "Gerald," she said, soft and teasingly.

  It was actually as if he had been waiting for that touch, because beforehe could possibly have perceived her her name was on his lips.

  "Hester!" he said, the blueness of his eyes flashing between blinks."Not Hester?"

  "Yes, Hester," she said, smiling up at him.

  He grasped both her hands, stammering for words that wanted to comequicker than he could articulate.

  "Hester!" he kept repeating. "Hester!"

  "To think you knew me, Gerald!"

  "Know you! I'd know you blindfolded. And how--I--You're beautiful,Hester! I think you've grown five years younger."

  "You've got on, Gerald. You look it."

  "Yes; I'm general manager now at Finley's."

  "I'm so glad. Married?"

  "Not while there's a Hester Bevins on earth."

  She started at her own name.

  "How do you know I'm not married?"

  "I--I know--" he said, reddening up.

  "Isn't there some place we can talk, Gerald? I've thirty minutes beforemy friends call for me."

  "'Thirty minutes?'"

  "Your rooms? Haven't you rooms or a room where we could go and sitdown?"

  "Why--why, no, Hester," he said, still red. "I'd rather you didn'tgo there. But here. Let's stop in at the St. James Hotel. There's aparlor."

  To her surprise, she felt herself color up and was pleasantly consciousof her finger tips.

  "You darling!" She smiled up at him.

  They were seated presently in the unaired plush-and-cherry,Nottingham-and-Axminster parlor of a small-town hotel.

  "Hester," he said, "you're like a vision come to earth."

  "I'm a bad durl," she said, challenging his eyes for what he knew.

  "You're a little saint walked down and leaving an empty pedestal in mydreams."

  She placed her forefinger over his mouth.

  "Sh-h!" she said. "I'm not a saint, Gerald; you know that."

  "Yes," he said, with a great deal of boyishness in his defiance, "I doknow it, Hester, but it is those who have been through the fire who cansometimes come out--new. It was your early environment."

  "My aunt died on the town, Gerald, I heard. I could have saved her allthat if I had only known. She was cheap, aunt was. Poor soul! She neverlooked ahead."

  "It was your early environment, Hester. I've explained that often enoughto them here. I'd bank on you, Hester--swear by you."

  She patted him.

  "I'm a pretty bad egg, Gerald. According to the standards of a townlike this, I'm rotten, and they're about right. For five years, Gerald,I've--"

  "The real _you_ is ahead of--and not behind you, Hester."

  "How wonderful," she said, "for you to feel that way, but--"

  "Hester," he said, more and more the big boy, and his big blond headnearing hers, "I don't care about anything that's past; I only knowthat, for me, you are the--"

  "Gerald," she said, "for God's sake!"

  "I'm a two hundred-a-month man now, Hester. I want to build you theprettiest, the whitest little house in this town. Out in the Briarwoodsection. I'll make them kowtow to you, Hester; I--"

  "Why," she said, slowly, and looking at him with a certain sadness, "youcouldn't keep me in stockings, Gerald! The aigrettes on this hat costmore than one month of your salary."

  "Good God!" he said.

  "You're a dear, sweet boy just the same; but you remember what I toldyou about my crepe-de-Chine soul."

  "Just the same, I love you best in those crispy white shirt waists youused to wear and the little blue suits and sailor hats. You rememberthat day at Finleys' picnic, Hester, that day, dear, that you--you--"

  "You dear boy!"

  "But it--your mistake--it--it's all over. You work now, don't you,Hester?"

  Somehow, looking into the blueness of his eyes and their entreaty forher affirmative, she did what you or I might have done. She half lied,regretting it while the words still smoked on her lips.

  "Why, yes, Gerald; I've held a fine position in Lichtig Brothers, NewYork importers. Those places sometimes pay as high as seventy-five aweek. But I don't make any bones, Gerald; I've not been an angel."

  "The--the salesman, Hester?"--his lips quivering with a nausea for thequestion.

  "I haven't seen him in four years," she answered, truthfully.

  He laid his cheek on her hand.

  "I knew you'd come through. It was your environment. I'll marry youto-morrow--to-day, Hester. I love you."

  "You darling boy!" she said, her lips back tight against her teeth. "Youdarling, darling boy!"

  "Please, Hester! We'll forget what has been."

  "Let me go," she said, rising and pinning on her hat; "let me go--or--orI'll cry, and--and I don't want to cry."

  "Hester," he called, rushing after her and wanting to fold her back intohis arms, "let me prove my trust--my love--"

  "Don't! Let me go! Let me go!"

  At slightly after six the ultra cavalcade drew up at the court-housesteps. She was greeted with the pleasantries and the gibes.

  "Have a good time, sweetness?" asked Wheeler, arranging her rugs.

  "Yes," she said, lying back and letting her lids droop; "buttired--very, very tired."

  At the hotel, she stopped a moment to write a telegram before going upfor the vapor bath, nap, and massage that were to precede dinner.

  "Meyerbloom & Co., Furriers. Fifth Avenue, New York," it was addressed.

  * * * * *

  This is not a war story except that it has to do with profiteering,parlor patriots, and the return of Gerald Fishback.

  While Hester was living this tale, and the chinchilla coat wasenveloping her like an ineffably tender caress, three hundred thousandof her country's youths were at strangle hold across three thousandmiles of sea, and on a notorious night when Hester walked, fully dressedin a green gown of iridescent fish scales, into the electric fountain o
fa seaside cabaret, and Wheeler had to carry her to her car wrapped in asable rug, Gerald Fishback was lying with his face in Flanders mud, andhis eye sockets blackly deep and full of shrapnel, and a lung-eating gascloud rolling at him across the vast bombarded dawn.

  * * * * *

  Hester read of him one morning, sitting up in bed against a mound oflace-over-pink pillows, a masseuse at the pink soles of her feet. It wasas if his name catapulted at her from a column she never troubled toread. She remained quite still, looking at the name for a full fiveminutes after it had pierced her full consciousness. Then, suddenly, sheswung out of bed, tilting over the masseuse.

  "Tessie," she said, evenly enough, "that will do. I have to hurry toLong Island to a base hospital. Go to that little telephone in thehall--will you?--and call my car."

  But the visit was not so easy of execution. It required two days of redtape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seasidehospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had beenthe resort hotel of more than one dancing orgy.

  She thought she would faint when she saw him, jerking herself back witha straining of all her faculties. The blood seemed to drain awayfrom her body, leaving her ready to sink, and only the watchful andthreatening eye of a man nurse sustained her. He was sitting up in bed,and she would never have recognized in him anything of Gerald exceptfor the shining Scandinavian quality of his hair. His eyes were notbandaged, but their sockets were dry and bare like the beds of old lakeslong since drained. She had only seen the like in eyeless marble busts.There were unsuspected cheek bones, pitched now very high in his face,and his neck, rising above the army nightshirt, seemed cruelly long,possibly from thinness.

  "Are you Hester?" whispered the man nurse.

  She nodded, her tonsils squeezed together in an absolute knot.

  "He called for you all through his delirium," he said, and went out. Shestood at the bedside, trying to keep down the screams from her speechwhen it should come. But he was too quick for her.

  "Hester," he said, feeling out.

  And in their embrace, her agony melted to tears that choked and seared,beat and scalded her, and all the time it was he who held her with rigidarm, whispered to her, soothed down the sobs which tore through her likethe rip of silk, seeming to split her being.

  "Now--now! Why, Hester! Now--now--now! Sh-h! It will be over in aminute. You mustn't feel badly. Come now, is this the way to greet afellow that's so darn glad to see you that nothing matters? Why I cansee you, Hester. Plain as day in your little crispy waist. Now, now!You'll get used to it in a minute. Now--now--"

  "I can't stand it, Gerald! I can't! Can't! Kill me, Gerald, but don'task me to stand it!"

  He stroked down the side of her, lingering at her cheek.

  "Sh-h! Take your time, dear," he said, with the first furry note in hisvoice. "I know it's hard, but take your time. You'll get used to me.It's the shock, that's all. Sh-h!"

  She covered his neck with kisses and scalding tears, her compassion forhim racing through her in chills.

  "I could tear out my eyes, Gerald, and give them to you. I could tearout my heart and give it to you. I'm bursting of pain. Gerald! Gerald!"

  There was no sense of proportion left her. She could think only of whather own physical suffering might do in penance. She would willingly haveopened the arteries of her heart and bled for him on the moment. Hercompassion wanted to scream. She, who had never sacrificed anything,wanted suddenly to bleed at his feet, and prayed to do so on theagonized crest of the moment.

  "There's a girl! Why, I'm going to get well, Hester, and do whatthousands of others of the blinded are doing. Build up a new, a useful,and a busy life."

  "It's not fair! It's not fair!"

  "I'm ready now, except for this old left lung. It's burnt a bit, yousee--gas."

  "God! God!"

  "It's pretty bad, I admit. But there's another way of looking at it.There's a glory in being chosen to bear your country's wounds."

  "Your beautiful eyes! Your blue, beautiful eyes! O God, what does itall mean? Living! Dying! All the rotters, all the rat-eyed ones I know,scot-free and Gerald chosen. God! God! where are you?"

  "He was never so close to me as now, Hester. And with you here, dear, Heis closer than ever."

  "I'll never leave you, Gerald," she said, crying down into his sleeveagain. "Don't be afraid of the dark, dear; I'll never leave you."

  "Nonsense!" he said, smoothing her hair that the hat had fallen awayfrom.

  "Never! Never! I wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawlon my hands and knees for you. I'll never leave you, Gerald--never!"

  "My beautiful Hester!" he said, unsteadily, and then again, "Nonsense!"

  But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned and she was obliged toleave him, but not without throbbing promises of the to-morrow'sreturn, and then there took place, downstairs in an anteroom, a long, acloseted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tapeand filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse wascalled finally to help her through the corridors to her car.

  Gerald's left lung was burned out and he had three, possibly four, weeksto live.

  All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains,she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down heruncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in hermind.

  * * * * *

  That night a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Driveapartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinumchain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but thesobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had beentalking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until hehad fallen quite still.

  "And--and that's all, Wheeler," she ended up. "I've told you everything.We were never more than just--friends--Gerald and me. You must take myword for it, because I swear it before God."

  "I take your word, Hester," he said, huskily.

  "And there he lies, Wheeler, without--without any eyes in his head. Justas if they'd been burned out by irons. And he--he smiles when he talks.That's the awful part. Smiles like--well, I guess like the angel he--healmost is. You see, he says it's a glory to carry the wounds of hiscountry. Just think! just think! that boy to feel that, the way he liesthere!"

  "Poor boy! Poor, poor boy!"

  "Gerald's like that. So--so full of faith. And, Wheeler, he thinks he'sgoing to get well and lead a useful life like they teach the blind todo. He reminds me of one of those Greek statues down at the Athens Cafe.You know--broken. That's it; he's a broken statue."

  "Poor fellow! Poor fellow! Do something for him. Buy the finest fruit inthe town for him. Send a case of wine. Two."

  "I--I think I must be torn to pieces inside, Wheeler, the way I'vecried."

  "Poor little girl!"

  "Wheeler?"

  "Now, now," he said; "taking it so to heart won't do no good. It'srotten, I know, but worrying won't help. Got me right upset, too. Come,get it off your mind. Let's take a ride. Doll up; you look a bit peaked.Come now, and to-morrow we'll buy out the town for him."

  "Wheeler?" she said. "Wheeler?"

  "What?"

  "Don't look, Wheeler. I've something else to ask of you--somethingqueer."

  "Now, now," he said, his voice hardening but trying to maintain achiding note; "you know what you promised after the chinchilla--no morethis year until--"

  "No, no; for God's sake, not that! It's still about Gerald."

  "Well?"

  "Wheeler, he's only got four weeks to live. Five at the outside."

  "Now, now, girl; we've been all over that."

  "He loves me, Wheeler, Gerald does."

  "Yes?" dryly.

  "It would be like doing something decent--the only decent thing I'vedone in all my life, Wheeler, almost like doing something for the war,the way these women in the pretty white caps have
done, and you knowwe--we haven't turned a finger for it except to--to gain--if I wasto--to marry Gerald for those few weeks, Wheeler. I know it's a--rottensacrifice, but I guess that's the only kind I'm capable of making."

  He sat squat, with his knees spread.

  "You crazy?" he said.

  "It would mean, Wheeler, his dying happy. He doesn't know it's all upwith him. He'd be made happy for the poor little rest of his life. Heloves me. You see, Wheeler, I was his first--his only sweetheart. I'm ona pedestal, he says, in his dreams. I never told you--but that boy waswilling to marry me, Wheeler, knowing--some--of the things I am. He'salways carried round a dream of me, you see--no, you wouldn't see, butI've been--well, I guess sort of a medallion that won't tarnish in hisheart. Wheeler, for the boy's few weeks he has left? Wheeler?"

  "Well, I'll be hanged!"

  "I'm not turning holy, Wheeler. I am what I am. But that boy lyingout there--I can't bear it! It wouldn't make any difference withus--afterward. You know where you stand with me and for always, but itwould mean the dying happy of a boy who fought for us. Let me marrythat boy, Wheeler. Let his light go out in happiness. Wheeler? Please,Wheeler?" He would not meet her eyes. "Wheeler?"

  "Go to it, Hester," he said, coughing about in his throat and rising towalk away. "Bring him here and give him the fat of the land. You cancount on me to keep out of the way. Go to it," he repeated.

  And so they were married, Hester holding his hand beside the hospitalcot, the man nurse and doctor standing by, and the chaplain incantingthe immemorial words. A bar of sunshine lay across the bed, and Geraldpronounced each "I will" in a lifted voice that carried to the fourcorners of the little room. She was allowed to stay that night pasthospital hours, and they talked with the dusk flowing over them.

  "Hester, Hester," he said, "I should have had the strength to hold outagainst your making this terrible sacrifice."

  "It's the happiest hour of my life," she said, kissing him.

  "I feel well enough to get up now, sweetheart."

  "Gerald, don't force. You've weeks ahead before you are ready for that."

  "But to-morrow, dear, home! In whose car are you calling for meto-morrow to take me _home_?"

  "In a friend's, dearest."

  "Won't I be crowding up our little apartment? Describe it again to me,dearest--our _home_."

  "It's so little, Gerald. Three rooms and the littlest, babiest kitchen.When you're once up, I'll teach its every corner to you."

  Tears seeped through the line where his lids had been, and it was almostmore than she could bear.

  "I'll make it up to you, though, Hester. I know I should have beenstrong enough to hold out against your marrying me, but I'll make it up.I've a great scheme; a sort of braille system of accountancy--"

  "Please, Gerald--not now!"

  "If only, Hester, I felt easier about the finances. Will your savingsstand the strain? Your staying at home from your work this way--and thenme--"

  "Gerald dear, I've told you so often--I've saved more than we need."

  "My girl!"

  "My dear, my dear!" she said.

  * * * * *

  They moved him with hardly a jar in an army ambulance, and with theyellow limousine riding alongside to be of possible aid, and she had thebed stripped of its laces and cool with linen for him, and he sighed outwhen they placed him on it and would not let go her hand.

  "What a feeling of space for so little a room!"

  "It's the open windows, love."

  He lay back tiredly.

  "What sweet linen!"

  "I shopped it for you."

  "You, too--you're in linen, Hester?"

  "A percale shirt waist. I shopped it for you, too."

  "Give me your hand," he said, and pressed a string of close kisses intoits palm.

  The simplicity of the outrageous subterfuge amazed even her. She heldhothouse grapes at two dollars a pound to his lips, and he ate themthrough a smile.

  "Naughty, extravagant girl!" he said.

  "I saw them on a fruit stand for thirty cents, and couldn't resist."

  "Never mind; I'll make it up to you."

  Later, he asked for braille books, turning his sightless face toward heras he studied, trying to concentrate through the pain in his lung.

  "If only you wouldn't insist upon the books awhile yet, dear. The doctorsays it's too soon."

  "I feel so strong, Hester, with you near, and, besides, I must start thepot boiling."

  She kissed down into the high nap of his hair, softly.

  Evenings, she read to him newspaper accounts of his fellow-soldiers, andthe day of the peace, for which he had paid so terribly, she rolled hisbed, alone, with a great tugging and straining, to the open window,where the wind from the river could blow in against him and steamboatwhistles shoot up like rockets.

  She was so inexpressibly glad for the peace day. Somehow, it seemedeasier and less blackly futile to give him up.

  Of Wheeler for three running weeks she had not a glimpse, and then, oneday, he sent up a hamper, not a box, but an actual trunk of roses, andshe, in turn, sent them up the back way to Kitty's flat, not wantingeven their fragrance released.

  With Kitty there were little hurried confabs each day outside theapartment door in the hallway before the elevator shaft. A veil of aweseemed to wrap the Drew woman.

  "I can't get it out of my head, Hester. It's like a fairy story, and, inanother way, it's a scream--Wheeler standing for this."

  "Sh-h, Kitty! His ears are so sensitive."

  "Quit shushing me every time I open my mouth. Poor kid! Let me have alook at him. He wouldn't know."

  "No! No!"

  "God! if it wasn't so sad it would be a scream--Wheeler footing thebills!"

  "Oh--you! Oh--oh--you!"

  "All right, all right! Don't take the measles over it. I'm going. Here'ssome chicken broth I brought down. Ed sent it up to me from Sherry's."

  But Hester poured it into the sink for some nameless reason, and brewedsome fresh from a fowl she tipped the hallboy a dollar to go out andpurchase.

  She slept on a cot at the foot of his bed, so sensitive to his wakingthat almost before he came up to consciousness she was at his side. Allday she wore the little white shirt waists, a starchy one fresh eachmorning, and at night scratchy little unlacy nightgowns with longsleeves and high yokes. He liked to run his hand along the crispness ofthe fabric.

  "I love you in cool stuff, Hester. You're so cool yourself, I alwaysthink of you in the little white waist and blue skirt. You remember,dear--Finleys' annual?"

  "I--I'm going to dress like that for you always, Gerald."

  "I won't let you be going back to work for long, sweetheart. I've someplans up my sleeve, I have."

  "Yes! Yes!"

  But when the end did come, it was with as much of a shock as if she hadnot been for days expecting it. The doctor had just left, puncturing hisarm and squirting into his poor tired system a panacea for the pain. Buthe would not react to it, fighting down the drowsiness.

  "Hester," he said, suddenly, and a little weakly, "lean down,sweetheart, and kiss me--long--long--"

  She did, and it was with the pressure of her lips to his that he died.

  * * * * *

  It was about a week after the funeral that Wheeler came back. She was onthe _chaise-longue_ that had been dragged out into the parlor, in thewebbiest of white negligees, a little large-eyed, a little subdued, butsweetening the smile she turned toward him by a trick she had of liftingthe brows.

  "Hel-lo, Wheeler!" she said, raising her cheek to be kissed.

  He trailed his lips, but did not seek her mouth, sitting down ratherawkwardly and in the spread-kneed fashion he had.

  "Well, girl--you all right?"

  "You helped," she said.

  "It gave me a jolt, too. I made over twenty-five thousand to the RedCross on the strength of it."

  "Thank you, Wheeler."

  "Lord
!" he said, rising and rubbing his hands together. "Give us acouple of fingers to drink, honey; I'm cotton-mouthed."

  She reached languidly for a blue-enameled bell, lying back, with herarms dangling and her smile out. Then, as if realizing that the occasionmust be lifted, turned her face to him.

  "Old bummer!" she said, using one of her terms of endearment for him andtwo-thirds closing her eyes. Then did he stoop and kiss her roundly onthe lips.

  * * * * *

  For the remainder of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernallydipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for thelinguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Ormaybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history would help.

  In any event, after an evening of musical comedy and of gelatinousdancing, Hester awoke at four o'clock the next morning out of an hour ofsound sleep, leaping to her knees there in bed like a quick flame, hergesture shooting straight up toward the jointure of wall and ceiling.

  "Gerald!" she called, her smoky black hair floating around her and herarms cutting through the room's blackness. "Gerald!" Suddenly the roomwas not black. It was light with the Scandinavian blondness of Gerald,the head of him nebulous there above the pink-satin canopy of herdressing table, and, more than that, the drained lakes of his socketswere deep with eyes. Yes, in all their amazing blueness, but queerlysharpened to steel points that went through Hester and through her as ifbayonets were pushing into her breasts and her breathing.

  "Gerald!" she shrieked, in one more cry that curdled the quiet, and satup in bed, trembling and hugging herself, and breathing in until herlips were drawn shudderingly against her teeth like wind-sucked windowshades.

  "Gerald!" And then the picture did a sort of moving-picture fade-out,and black Lottie came running with her hair grotesquely greased andflattened to take out the kink, and gave her a drink of water with theaddition of two drops from a bottle, and turned on the night light andwent back to bed.

  The next morning Hester carried about what she called "a head," and,since it was Wheeler's day at Rosencranz, remained in bed until threeo'clock, Kitty curled at the foot of it the greater part of theforenoon.

  "It was the rotten night did me up. Dreams! Ugh! dreams!"

  "No wonder," diagnosed Kitty, sweetly. "Indigestion from having yourcake and eating it."

  At three she dressed and called for her car, driving down to the IvyFuneral Rooms, a Gothic Thanatopsis, set, with one of those laughs upher sleeves in which the vertical city so loves to indulge, right inthe heart of the town, between an automobile-accessory shop and aquick-lunch room. Gerald had been buried from there with simpleflag-draped service in the Gothic chapel that was protected from theview and roar of the Elevated trains by suitably stained windows. Therewas a check in Hester's purse made out for an amount that correspondedto the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms. And righthere again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least forthe neurologist's chart. At the very door to the establishment--withone foot across the threshold, in fact--she paused, her face tiltedtoward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she sawthere her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom asif against the incision of quick steel. Then, without even entering, sherushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of everyspeed regulation, homeward.

  That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell onHester. They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair,which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of hercoiffure. For herself, Hester would have let it remain.

  Wheeler was frankly perplexed. God knows it was bad enough to be calledupon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hesterwasn't there to show that side to him if she had it. To be pretty frankabout it, she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. Morethan nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truthwas known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw offholiday iridescence. There were limits!

  "You're off your feed, girl. Go off by yourself and speed up."

  "It's the nights, Gerald. Good God--I mean Wheeler! They kill me. Ican't sleep. Can't you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops? Hedoesn't know my case. Nerves, he calls it. It's this head. If only Icould get rid of this head!"

  "You women and your nerves and your heads! Are you all alike? Get outand get some exercise. Keep down your gasoline bills and it will sendyour spirits up. There's such a thing as having it too good."

  She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her mostbizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process ofdyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design. This one, along, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginningdown around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in aburst of crimson.

  He thought her so exquisitely rare that he was not above the poor, soggydevice of drinking his dinner wine from the cup of her small crimsonslipper, and she dangled on his knee like the dangerous little flame shenone too subtly purported to be, and he spanked her quickly and softlyacross the wrists because she was too nervous to hold the match steadilyenough for his cigar to take light, and then kissed away all the mocksting.

  But the next morning, at the fateful four o'clock, and in spite of foursleeping-drops, Lottie on the cot at the foot of her bed, and the nightlight burning, she awoke on the crest of such a shriek that a stilettomight have slit the silence, the end of the sheet crammed up and intoher mouth, and, ignoring all of Lottie's calming, sat up on her knees,her streaming eyes on the jointure of wall and ceiling, where the open,accusing ones of Gerald looked down at her. It was not that they wereterrible eyes. They were full of the sweet blue, and clear as lakes. Itwas only that they knew. Those eyes _knew. They knew!_ She tried thedevice there at four o'clock in the morning of tearing up the stillunpaid check to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, and then she curled up in bedwith her hand in the negro maid's and her face half buried in thepillow.

  "Help me, Lottie!" she begged; "help me!"

  "Law! Pore child! Gettin' the horrors every night thisaway! I've beenthrough it before with other ladies, but I never saw a case of the soberhorrors befoh. Looks like they's the worst of all. Go to sleep, child.I's holdin'."

  You see, Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. Abird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eyeview can sometimes be very, very close.

  And then, one night, after Hester had beat her hands down into themattress and implored Gerald to close his accusing eyes, she sat up inbed, waiting for the first streak of dawn to show itself, railing at thepain in her head.

  "God! My head! Rub it, Lottie! My head! My eyes! The back of my neck!"

  The next morning she did what you probably have been expecting she woulddo. She rose and dressed, sending Lottie to bed for a needed rest.Dressed herself in the little old blue-serge suit that had been hangingin the very back of a closet for four years, with a five-and twoten-dollar bills pinned into its pocket, and pressed the little bluesailor hat down on the smooth, winglike quality of her hair. She lookedsmaller, peculiarly, indescribably younger. She wrote Wheeler a note,dropping it down the mail-chute in the hall, and then came back, lookingabout rather aimlessly for something she might want to pack. There wasnothing; so she went out quite bare and simply, with all her lovelyjewels in the leather case on the upper shelf of the bedroom closet, asshe had explained to Wheeler in the note.

  That afternoon she presented herself to Lichtig. He was again as youwould expect--round-bellied, and wore his cigar up obliquely from onecorner of his mouth. He engaged her immediately at an increase of fivedollars a week, and as she was leaving with the promise to report ateight-thirty the next morning he pinched her cheek, she pulling awayangrily.

  "None of that!"

  "My mistake," he apologized.

  She considered it promiscuous and cheap, and you know
her aversion forcheapness.

  Then she obtained, after a few forays in and out of brownstone housesin West Forty-fifth Street, one of those hall bedrooms so familiar tohuman-interest stories--the iron-bed, washstand, and slop-jar kind.There was a five-dollar advance required. That left her twenty dollars.

  She shopped a bit then in an Eighth Avenue department store, and, withthe day well on the wane, took a street car up to the Ivy Funeral Rooms.This time she entered, but the proprietor did not recognize her untilshe explained. As you know, she looked smaller and younger, and therewas no tan car at the curb.

  "I want to pay this off by the week," she said, handing him outthe statement and a much-folded ten-dollar bill. He looked at her,surprised. "Yes," she said, her teeth biting off the word in a click.

  "Certainly," he replied, handing her out a receipt for the ten.

  "I will pay five dollars a week hereafter."

  "That will stretch it out to twenty-eight weeks," he said, stilldoubtfully.

  "I can't help it; I must."

  "Certainly," he said, "that will be all right," but looked puzzled.

  That night she slept in the hall bedroom in the Eighth Avenue,machine-stitched nightgown. She dropped off about midnight, praying notto awaken at four. But she did--with a slight start, sitting up in bed,her eyes where the wall and ceiling joined.

  Gerald's face was there, and his blue eyes were open, but the steelpoints were gone. They were smiling eyes. They seemed to embrace her, towash her in their fluid.

  All her fear and the pain in her head were gone. She sat up, looking athim, the tears streaming down over her smile and her lips moving.

  Then, sighing out like a child, she lay back on the pillow, turned over,and went to sleep.

  * * * * *

  And this is the story of Hester which so insisted to be told. I thinkshe must have wanted you to know. And wanted Gerald to know that youknow, and, in the end, I rather think she wanted God to know.