Jim slunk out and slunk down the marble steps and down the winding walk
and through the monstrous gate into the highway along the sea, enraged
at himself and at Charity and at Peter Cheever. If he had met Cheever he
would have picked him up and flung him over the sea-wall. But there was
little danger of Peter Cheever's being found so near his wife.
_“Tell her that wastes her time and me,”_ kept running through Jim's
head. He was furious at Charity for wasting so much of him. He had
followed her about and moped at her closed door like a stray dog. And
she had never even thrown him a bone.
A wave ran up on the beach and seemed to try to embrace the earth,
possess it. But it fell away baffled. Over its subsiding pother sprang a
new wave with the same bosomful of desire and the same frantic clutching
here and there--the same rebuff, the same destruction under the surge of
the next and the next. The descending night gave a strange pathos to the
eternal vanity.
Jim Dyckman stood and faced the ocean. Once more he discovered that life
was too much for him to understand. He was ashamed of himself for his
vain endeavor to envelop Charity Coe and absorb her into the deeps of
his love. He was most ashamed because he had failed and must slither
back into the undertow with the many other men whom Charity had refused
to love.
He was ashamed of Charity Coe, too, for squandering her prime and her
pride. He was enraged at her blindness to Pete Cheever's duplicity or
her complacency with it. He hated Charity for a while--nearly. At any
rate he was ashamed of her, ashamed of the world, in a rebel mood.
As he stood wind-blown and spray-flogged and glad to be beaten, a shabby
old carriage went by. It was piled to overflowing with some of Miss
Silsby's girls taking a seeing-Newport tour on the cheap.
The driver was, or said he had been in his time, coachman to some of the
oldest families. He ventured their names with familiarity and knew their
houses by heart. He told quaint stories of their ways, how old Mrs.
Noxon once swore down a mutinous stableman, how Miss Wossom ran
away with her coachman. There was something finely old-fashioned
and conservative about that. A new-rich would have run away with a
chauffeur.
The driver knew Jim Dyckman's back and pointed him out. The girls
laughed, remembering Kedzie's encounter with him. They laughed so loud
that Dyckman turned, startled by the racket. But the carriage rolled
them away and he did not hear them wondering what had become of Kedzie.
The gloaming saddened them, and they felt very sorry for her. But Jim
Dyckman gave her no thought.
He was tearing apart his emotions toward Charity and resolving that he
must never see her again. In the analytical chemistry of the soul he
found that this resolution was three parts hopelessness of winning her,
three parts a decent sense of the wickedness of courting another man's
woman, three parts resentment at her for treating him properly, and
one part a feeling that he would make himself most valuable to her by
staying away.
Never a homeless dog slinking through an alley in search of a sidelong
ash-barrel to sleep in felt more poverty-stricken, woebegone, than Jim
Dyckman. He moped along the stately road, as much afraid of his future
as Kedzie had been, trudging the same highway. She had wondered if board
and lodging would fail her. This was not Jim Dyckman's fear, but his own
was as great, for everybody was some dreadful elbow-companion.
Lucian showed Jupiter himself cowering on his throne in the sky and
twiddling his thunderbolt with trembling hand as he wondered what the
fates held in store for him, and saw on earth the increasing impudence
of the skeptics.
So Jim Dyckman, unconscious that he was following in Kedzie's footsteps,
walked miserably on his way. He had no place to go to but the finest
yacht in the harbor. He had no money to depend on but a few millions of
his own and the Pelion plus Ossa fortunes of his father and mother and
their relatives--a mere sierra of gold mountains.
He drifted down to the landing-place and went out to his yacht in a
hackney launch. He was received at her snowy sides as if he were the
emperor of somewhere come to visit one of his rear admirals. He went
up the steps as if he were a school-boy caught playing hooky and going
up-stairs to play the bass drum to his mother's slipper.
His mother was on the shade-deck, reclining. The big white wicker lounge
looked as if a small avalanche had fallen on it. From the upturned
points of her white shoes back to her white hair she was a study in
foreshortening that would have interested a draftsman.
Spread out on a huge wicker arm-chair sat Jim's father, also all white,
except for his big pink hands and his big pink face. It seemed that he
ought to have been smoking a white cigar. As a matter of fact, he had
sat so still that half the weed was ash.
When the two moved to greet Jim there was a mighty creaking of wicker.
There was another when Jim spilled his own great weight into a chair.
A steward in white raised his eyebrows inquiringly and Jim nodded the
eighth of an inch. It was the equivalent of ordering a drink.
Dyckman senior turned to Dyckman seniora and said, “Enter Hamlet in the
graveyard! Where's the skull, my boy, where's the skull?”
“Let the child alone,” Mrs. Dyckman protested. “It's too hot for
fooling. You might kiss your poor mother, though. No, don't get up, just
throw me one.”
Jim rose heavily, went to her, bent far down, kissed her, and would
have risen again, but her big arms encompassed his neck and held him,
uncomfortably, till he knelt by her side and laid his head on her bosom.
He felt exceedingly foolish, but nearer to comfort than he had been for
a long while. He wished that he might be a boy again in his mother's
arms and be altogether content and carefree as he had been there. As if
children were content and carefree! Great Heavens! do they not begin to
squirm and kick before they are born?
Mrs. Dyckman was suffocated a trifle by his weight and her own and
her corsets, but her heart ached for him somewhere down deep and she
whispered:
“Can't he tell his mother what he wants? Maybe she can get it for him.”
He laughed bitterly and extricated himself from her clasp, patted her
fat arm, and turned away. His father jealously seized his sleeve.
“Anything serious, old man? You know I'm here.”
Jim squeezed his father's hand and shook his head and turned to the
drink which had arrived. He took it from the tray to his chair and sat
meditating Newport across the top of his glass. Between the rail of the
deck and the edge of the awning he saw a long slice of it. It was vanity
and emptiness to him. He spoke at length.
“Fact is, folks, I've got to go back to New York or somewhere.”
“Good Lord!” his father said. “I'm all mixed up in a golf tournament. I
think I've got a chance to lick the boots off old Wainwright.”
“Oh dear!” sighed Mrs. Dyckman, “there's to be the most interesting
lecture by that Hindu poet. And it's so much more comfortable here than
ashore. This boat is the coziest you've ever had.”
“Stay here, darling,” said Jim. “I'll make you a present of her.”
“Oh, that's glorious,” said Mrs. Dyckman. “I've never had a yacht of my
own. It's a shame to take it from you, but you can get another. And of
course you'll always be welcome here--which is more than a certain other
big Dyckman will be if he doesn't look sharp.”
“For the Lord's sake, Jim, don't give it to her. She's the meanest
old miser about her own things.” Dyckman senior pushed his chair back
against the rail.
“Watch out!” Mrs. Dyckman gasped. “You're scraping the paint off my
yacht.”
Jim rose again. “I've just about time to make the last train for the
day,” he said.
His mother sat up and clutched at his hand. “Can't I help you, honey?
Please let me! What is the matter?”
“The matter is I'm a lunkhead and Newport bores me stiff. That's all.
Don't worry. I'll go get the packing started.”
He went along the deck, and his parents helplessly craned their necks
after him. His father groaned. Jim had “everything.” There was nothing
to get for him, no toy to buy to divert him with.
“He wants a new toy, and he doesn't know what it is,” said the old man.
But Jim wanted an old toy on a shelf too high for his reach. He ran away
from the sight of it.
And Dyckman was fleeing to Charity's next resting-place, after all, for
she also returned in a few days to New York. She was restive under
the goad to return to France. She repented her selfish neglect of
the children of all ages she had adopted abroad. One thing held her
back--the dread of putting the ocean again between her and her husband.
She thought it small of her to leave so many heroes to suffer without
her ministrations, in order that she might prevent one non-hero from
having too good a time without her ministrations. But womankind has
never been encouraged to adopt the policy of the greatest good to the
greatest number. Hardly!
Charity was conscience-smitten, however, and she cast about for a way to
absolve herself. Money is the old and ever-reliable way of paying debts
physical, moral, and religious. Charity determined to arrange some big
fete to bring in a heap of money for the wounded of France, the blind
fathers, and the fatherless children.
Everybody was giving entertainments at this time in behalf of some
school of victims of the war. The only excuse for amusements in America
seemed to be that the profits went to the belligerents in one way or
another.
Charity was distressed by the need of an oddity, a novel note which
should make itself heard among the clamors for Belgian relief, for
Polish relief, for Armenian succor, for German, French, Italian, Russian
widows and orphans.
Charity's secretary, Miss Gurdon, made dozens of suggestions, but none
of them was big enough to interest Charity. One day a card came up to
her with a letter of introduction from Mrs. Noxon:
CHARITY DEAR,--This will acquaint you with a very clever girl, Miss
Grace Havender. Her mother was a school friend of mine. Miss Havender
arranges to have moving pictures taken of people. They are ever so much
quainter than stupid still-life pictures. Posterity ought to see you
with your poor wounded soldiers, but meanwhile we really should have a
chance to perpetuate you as you are. You are always on the go, and an
ordinary picture does not represent you.
Anyway, you will be nice to Miss Havender, for the sake of
Yours affectionately,
MARTHA NOXON.
Charity did not want a picture of herself, but she went down to get rid
of Miss Havender politely and to recommend her to friends of greater
passion for their own likenesses. Miss Havender was a forward young
person and launched at once into a defense of moving pictures.
“Oh, I admire the movies immensely,” Charity interposed. “We had some of
them in the hospitals abroad. If you could have seen that dear Charlie
Chaplin convulse a whole ward of battered soldiers and make them forget
their pain and their anxieties! He was more of a nurse than a hundred
of us. If he isn't a benefactor, I don't know who is. Oh, I admire the
movies, but I'd rather see them than be them, you know.
“Still, an idea has just occurred to me. You know I'm terribly in need
of a pile of money.”
Miss Havender looked about her and smiled.
“Oh, I don't mean for myself. I have far too much, but for the soldiers.
I want something that will bring in a big sum. It occurs to me that if
a lot of us got up a story and acted it ourselves, it would be
tremendously interesting to--well, to ourselves. And our friends would
flock to see it. Amateur performances are ghastly from an artistic
standpoint, but they're great fun.
“It just struck me that if we got up a play and had a cast made up of
Mr. Jim Dyckman and Tom Duane and Winnie Nicolls and Miss Bettany and
the young Stowe Webbs and Mrs. Neff and people like that it would be
dreadfully bad art, but much more amusing than if we had all the stars
in the world--Mr. Drew and his daughter and his niece Miss Barrymore and
her brothers, and Miss Anglin and Miss Bates or Miss Adams or anybody
like that. Don't you think so? Or what do you think? Could it be done,
or has it been--or what about it?”
Miss Havender gasped. She saw new vistas of business opening before her.
“Yes, it has been done in a small way, and it was great fun, as you say;
but it would have been more fun if it hadn't been so crude. What you
would need would be a director who was not an amateur. Now, our director
is marvelous--Mr. Ferriday. He's the Belasco of the photoplays. He's as
great as Griffith. He takes his art like a priest. If you had him you
could do wonders.”
“Then we must have him, by all means,” said Charity, smiling a little at
the gleam in Miss Havender's eyes. She had a feeling that Miss Havender
had a deep, personal interest in Mr. Ferriday. Miss Havender had; most
of the women in his environs had. In the first place, he was powerful
and could increase or diminish or check salaries. He distributed places
and patronage with a royal prerogative. But he was hungry for praise and
suffered from the lack of social prestige granted “the new art.”
Miss Havender seconded Charity's motion with enthusiasm. After a long
conference it was agreed that Miss Havender should broach the matter to
the great Mr. Ferriday while Charity recruited actors and authors.
As Charity rummaged in her hand-bag for a pencil to write Miss
Havender's telephone number with, she turned out Kedzie Thropp's
crumpled, shabby card. She started.
“Oh, for Heaven's sake! The poor child! I had forgotten her completely.
You might be able to do something for her. This Miss Adair is the
prettiest thing, and I promised to get her a job. She might photograph
splendidly. Won't you try to find her a place?”
“I'll guarantee her one,” said Miss Havender, who was sure that the firm
would be glad to put Mrs. Cheever under obligations. The firm was in
need of patronage, as Mr. Ferriday's lavish expenditures had crippled
its treasury, while his artistic whims had held up the delivery of
nearly finished films.
Miss Havender told Charity to send the girl to her at the office any day
and she would take care of her. Charity kept Kedzie's card in her hand,
and, as soon as Miss Havender was gone, ran to her desk to write Kedzie.
She told a pale lie--it seemed a gratuitous insult to confess that she
had forgotten.
DEAR MISS ADAIR,--Please forgive my delay in keeping my promise, but I
have been unable to find anything likely to interest you till to-day.
But now Miss Grace Havender, of the Hyperfilm Company, has just assured
me that if you will call on her at her office she will see that you are
engaged. You will photograph so beautifully that I am sure you will have
a great career. Please don't fail to call on Miss Havender.
Yours, with best wishes,
CHARITY C. CHEEVER.
She sent the letter to the address Kedzie had given her--which was that
of Kedzie's abandoned boarding-house.