ON one of those wet, warm, slushy February nights when the vapid air
sags like sodden wool in your lungs, and your cheek-bones bore through
your flesh, and your leaden feet seem strung directly from the roots of
your eyes, three girls stampeded their way through the jostling, peevish
street crowds with no other object in Heaven or Earth except just to
get--HOME.
It was supper time, too, somewhere between six and seven, the caved-in
hour of the day when the ruddy ghost of Other People's dinners flaunts
itself rather grossly in the pallid nostrils of Her Who Lives by the
Chafing-Dish.
One of the girls was a Medical Masseuse, trained brain and brawn in the
German Hospitals. One was a Public School Teacher with a tickle of chalk
dust in her lungs. One was a Cartoon Artist with a heart like chiffon
and a wit as accidentally malicious as the jab of a pin in a flirt's
belt.
All three of them were silly with fatigue. The writhing city cavorted
before them like a sick clown. A lame cab horse went strutting like a
mechanical toy. Crape on a door would have plunged them into hysterics.
Were you ever as tired as that?
It was, in short, the kind of night that rips out every one according to
his stitch. Rhoda Hanlan the Masseuse was ostentatiously sewed with
double thread and backstitched at that. Even the little Teacher, Ruth
MacLaurin, had a physique that was embroidered if not darned across its
raveled places. But Noreen Gaudette, the Cartoon Drawer, with her
spangled brain and her tissue-paper body, was merely basted together
with a single silken thread. It was the knowledge of being only basted
that gave Noreen the droll, puckered terror in her eyes whenever Life
tugged at her with any specially inordinate strain.
Yet it was Noreen who was popularly supposed to be built with an
electric battery instead of a heart.
The boarding-house that welcomed the three was rather tall for beauty,
narrow-shouldered, flat-chested, hunched together in the block like a
prudish, dour old spinster overcrowded in a street car. To call such a
house "Home" was like calling such a spinster "Mother." But the three
girls called it "Home" and rather liked the saucy taste of the word in
their mouths.
Across the threshold in a final spurt of energy the jaded girls pushed
with the joyous realization that there were now only five flights of
stairs between themselves and their own attic studio.
On the first floor the usual dreary vision greeted them of a hall table
strewn with stale letters--most evidently bills, which no one seemed in
a hurry to appropriate.
It was twenty-two stumbling, bundle-dropping steps to the next floor,
where the strictly Bachelor Quarters with half-swung doors emitted a
pleasant gritty sound of masculine voices, and a sumptuous cloud of
cigarette smoke which led the way frowardly up twenty-two more toiling
steps to the Old Maid's Floor, buffeted itself naughtily against the
sternly shut doors, and then mounted triumphantly like sweet incense to
the Romance Floor, where with door alluringly open the Much-Loved Girl
and her Mother were frankly and ingenuously preparing for the
Monday-Night-Lover's visit.
The vision of the Much-Loved Girl smote like a brutal flashlight upon
the three girls in the hall.
Out of curl, out of breath, jaded of face, bedraggled of clothes, they
stopped abruptly and stared into the vista.
Before their fretted eyes the room stretched fresh and clean as a newly
returned laundry package. The green rugs lay like velvet grass across
the floor. The chintz-covered furniture crisped like the crust of a
cake. Facing the gilt-bound mirror, the Much-Loved Girl sat joyously in
all her lingerie-waisted, lace-paper freshness, while her Mother hovered
over her to give one last maternal touch to a particularly rampageous
blond curl.
[Illustration: With no other object, except to get home]
The Much-Loved Girl was a cordial person. Her liquid, mirrored
reflection nodded gaily out into the hall. There was no fatigue in the
sparkling face. There was no rain or fog. There was no street-corner
insult. There was no harried stress of wherewithal. There was just
Youth, and Girl, and Cherishing.
She made the Masseuse and the little School Teacher think of a pale-pink
rose in a cut-glass vase. But she made Noreen Gaudette _feel_ like a
vegetable in a boiled dinner.
With one despairing gasp--half-chuckle and half-sob--the three girls
pulled themselves together and dashed up the last flight of stairs to
the Trunk-Room Floor, and their own attic studio, where bumping through
the darkness they turned a sulky stream of light upon a room more
tired-looking than themselves, and then, with almost fierce abandon,
collapsed into the nearest resting-places that they could reach.
It was a long time before any one spoke.
Between the treacherous breeze of the open window and a withering
blast of furnace heat the wilted muslin curtain swayed back and forth
with languid rhythm. Across the damp night air came faintly the
yearning, lovery smell of violets, and the far-off, mournful whine of a
sick hand-organ.
On the black fur hearth-rug Rhoda, the red-haired, lay prostrated like a
broken tiger lily with her long, lithe hands clutched desperately at her
temples.
"I am so tired," she said. "I am so tired that I can actually feel my
hair fade."
Ruth, the little Public School Teacher, laughed derisively from her
pillowed couch where she struggled intermittently with her suffocating
collar and the pinchy buckles on her overshoes.
"That's nothing," she asserted wanly. "I am so tired that I would like
to build me a pink-wadded silk house, just the shape of a slipper, where
I could snuggle down in the toe and go to sleep for a--million years. It
isn't to-morrow's early morning that racks me, it's the thought of all
the early mornings between now and the Judgment Day. Oh, any sentimental
person can cry at night, but when you begin to cry in the morning--to
lie awake and cry in the morning--" Her face sickened suddenly. "Did you
see that Mother downstairs?" she gasped, "fixing that curl? Think of
having a Mother!"
Then Noreen Gaudette opened her great gray eyes and grinned
diabolically. She had a funny little manner of cartooning her emotions.
"Think of having a Mother?" she scoffed. "What nonsense!--_Think of
having a c-u-r-l!_
"You talk like Sunday-Paper debutantes," she drawled. "You don't know
anything about being tired. Why, I am so tired--I am so tired--that I
wish--I wish that the first man who ever proposed to me would come back
and ask me--_again_!"
It was then that the Landlady, knocking at the door, presented a card,
"Mr. Ernest T. Dextwood," for Miss Gaudette, and the innocent-looking
conversation exploded suddenly like a short-fused firecracker.
Rhoda in an instant was sitting bolt upright with her arms around her
knees rocking to and fro in convulsive delight. Ruth much more
thoughtfully jumped for Noreen's bureau drawer. But Noreen herself,
after one long, hyphenated "Oh, my _H-e-a-v-e-n-s_!" threw off her damp,
wrinkled coat, stalked over to the open window, and knelt down
quiveringly where she could smother her blazing face in the inconsequent
darkness.
For miles and miles the teasing lights of Other Women's homes stretched
out before her. From the window-sill below her rose the persistent
purple smell of violets, and the cooing, gauzy laughter of the
Much-Loved Girl. Fatigue was in the damp air, surely, but Spring was
also there, and Lonesomeness, and worst of all, that desolating sense of
patient, dying snow wasting away before one's eyes like Life itself.
When Noreen turned again to her friends her eyelids drooped defiantly
across her eyes. Her lips were like a scarlet petal under the bite of
her teeth. There in the jetty black and scathing white of her dress she
loomed up suddenly like one of her own best drawings--pulseless ink and
stale white paper vitalized all in an instant by some miraculous
emotional power. A living Cartoon of "_Fatigue_" she stood
there--"_Fatigue_," as she herself would have drawn it--no flaccid
failure of wilted bone and sagging flesh, but _Verve_--the taut Brain's
pitiless rally of the Body that can not afford to rest--the verve of
Factory Lights blazing overtime, the verve of the Runner who drops at
his goal.
"All the time I am gone," she grinned, "pray over and over, 'Lead Noreen
not into temptation.'" Her voice broke suddenly into wistful laughter:
"Why to meet again a man who used to love you--it's like offering
store-credit to a pauper."
Then she slammed the door behind her and started downstairs for the
bleak, plush parlor, with a chaotic sense of absurdity and bravado.
But when she reached the middle of the bachelor stairway and looked down
casually and spied her clumsy arctics butting out from her wet-edged
skirt all her nervousness focused instantly in her shaking knees, and
she collapsed abruptly on the friendly dark stair and clutching hold of
the banister, began to whimper.
In the midst of her stifled tears a door banged hard above her, the
floor creaked under a sturdy step, and the tall, narrow form of the
Political Economist silhouetted itself against the feeble light of the
upper landing.
One step down he came into the darkness--two steps, three steps, four,
until at last in choking miserable embarrassment, Noreen cried out
hysterically:
"Don't step on me--I'm _crying_!"
With a gasp of astonishment the young man struck a sputtering match and
bent down waving it before him.
"Why, it's _you_, Miss Gaudette," he exclaimed with relief. "What's the
matter? Are you ill? What are you crying about?" and he dropped down
beside her and commenced to fan her frantically with his hat.
"What _are_ you crying about?" he persisted helplessly, drugged
man-like, by the same embarrassment that mounted like wine to the
woman's brain.
Noreen began to laugh snuffingly.
"I'm not crying about anything special," she acknowledged. "I'm just
crying. I'm crying partly because I'm tired--and partly because I've got
my overshoes on--but _mostly_"--her voice began to catch again--"but
mostly--because there's a _man_ waiting to see me in the parlor."
The Political Economist shifted uneasily in his rain coat and stared
into Noreen's eyes.
"Great Heavens!" he stammered. "Do you always cry when men come to see
you? Is that why you never invited _me_ to call?"
Noreen shook her head. "I never have men come to see me," she answered
quite simply. "I go to see _them_. I study in their studios. I work on
their newspapers. I caricature their enemies. Oh, it isn't _men_ that
I'm afraid of," she added blithely, "but _this_ is something particular.
_This_ is something really very funny. Did you ever make a wish that
something perfectly preposterous would happen?"
"Oh, yes," said the Political Economist reassuringly. "This very day I
said that I wished my Stenographer would swallow the telephone."
"But she didn't swallow it, did she?" persisted Noreen triumphantly.
"Now I said that I wished some one would swallow the telephone and she
_did_ swallow it!"
Then her face in the dusky light flared piteously with harlequined
emotions. Her eyes blazed bright with toy excitement. Her lips curved
impishly with exaggerated drollery. But when for a second her head
drooped back against the banister her jaded small face looked for all
the world like a death-mask of a Jester.
The Political Economist's heart crinkled uncomfortably within him.
"Why, you poor little girl," he said. "I didn't know that women got as
tired as that. Let me take off your overshoes."
Noreen stood up like a well-trained pony and shed her clumsy footgear.
The Man's voice grew peremptory. "Your skirt is sopping wet. Are you
crazy? Didn't have time to get into dry things? Nonsense! Have you had
any supper? What? _N-o?_ Wait a minute."
In an instant he was flying up the stairs, and when he came back there
was a big glass of cool milk in his hand.
Noreen drank it ravenously, and then started downstairs with abrupt,
quick courage.
When she reached the ground floor the Political Economist leaned over
the banisters and shouted in a piercing whisper:
"I'll leave your overshoes outside my door where you can get them on
your way up later."
Then he laughed teasingly and added:
"I--hope--you'll--have--a--good--time."
And Noreen, cleaving for one last second to the outer edge of the
banisters, smiled up at him, so strainingly _up_, that her face, to the
man above her, looked like a little flat white plate with a
crimson-lipped rose wilting on it.
Then she disappeared into the parlor.
With equal abruptness the Political Economist changed his mind about
going out, and went back instead to his own room and plunged himself
down in his chair, and smoked and thought, until his friend, the Poet at
the big writing-desk, slapped down his manuscript and stared at him
inquisitively.
"Lord Almighty! I wish I could draw!" said the Political Economist. It
was not so much an exclamation as a reverent entreaty. His eyes narrowed
sketchily across the vision that haunted him. "If I could draw," he
persisted, "I'd make a picture that would hit the world like a knuckled
fist straight between its selfish old eyes. And I'd call that picture
'Talent.' I'd make an ocean chopping white and squally, with _black_
clouds scudding like fury across the sky, and no land in sight except
rocks. And I'd fill that ocean full of sharks and things--not showing
too much, you know, but just an occasional shimmer of fins through the
foam. And I'd make a sailboat scooting along, tipped 'way over on her
side toward you, with just a slip of an eager-faced girl in it. And I'd
wedge her in there, wind-blown, spray-dashed, foot and back braced to
the death, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other, and
weather-almighty roaring all around her. And I'd make the riskiest
little leak in the bottom of that boat rammed desperately with a box of
chocolates, and a bunch of violets, and a large paper compliment in a
man's handwriting reading: 'Oh, how _clever_ you are.' And I'd have that
girl's face haggard with hunger, starved for sleep, tense with fear,
ravished with excitement. But I'd have her chin _up_, and her eyes
_open_, and the tiniest tilt of a quizzical smile hounding you like mad
across the snug, gilt frame. Maybe, too, I'd have a woman's magazine
blowing around telling in chaste language how to keep the hair 'smooth'
and the hands 'velvety,' and admonishing girls above all things not to
be eaten by sharks! Good Heavens, Man!" he finished disjointedly, "a
girl doesn't know how to sail a boat anyway!"
"_W-h-a-t_ are you talking about?" moaned the Poet.
The Political Economist began to knock the ashes furiously out of his
pipe.
"What am I talking about?" he cried; "I'm talking about _girls_. I've
always said that I'd gladly fall in love if I only could decide what
kind of a girl I wanted to fall in love with. Well, I've decided!"
The Poet's face furrowed. "Is it the Much-Loved Girl?" he stammered.
The Political Economist's smoldering temper began to blaze.
"No, it isn't," ejaculated the Political Economist. "The Much-Loved Girl
is a sweet enough, airy, fairy sort of girl, but I'm not going to fall
in love with just a pretty valentine."
"Going to try a 'Comic'?" the Poet suggested pleasantly.
The Political Economist ignored the impertinence. "I am reasonably well
off," he continued meditatively, "and I'm reasonably good-looking, and
I've contributed eleven articles on 'Men and Women' to modern economic
literature, but it's dawned on me all of a sudden that in spite of all
my beauteous theories regarding life in general, I am just one big shirk
when it comes to life in particular."
The Poet put down his pen and pushed aside his bottle of rhyming fluid,
and began to take notice.
"Whom are you going to fall in love with?" he demanded.
The Political Economist sank back into his chair.
"I don't quite know," he added simply, "but she's going to be some
tired girl. Whatever else she may or may not be, she's got to be a tired
girl."
"A tired girl?" scoffed the Poet. "That's no kind of a girl to marry.
Choose somebody who's all pink and white freshness. That's the kind of a
girl to make a man happy."
The Political Economist smiled a bit viciously behind his cigar.
"Half an hour ago," he affirmed, "I was a beast just like you. Good
Heavens! Man," he cried out suddenly, "did you ever see a girl cry?
Really cry, I mean. Not because her manicure scissors jabbed her thumb,
but because her great, strong, tyrant, sexless brain had goaded her poor
little woman-body to the very cruelest, last vestige of its strength and
spirit. Did you ever see a girl like that Miss Gaudette upstairs--she's
the Artist, you know, who did those cartoons last year that played the
devil itself with 'Congress Assembled'--did you ever see a girl like
_that_ just plain thrown down, tripped in her tracks, sobbing like a
hurt, tired child? Your pink and white prettiness can cry like a rampant
tragedy-queen all she wants to over a misfitted collar, but my hand is
going here and now to the big-brained girl who cries like a child!"
"In short," interrupted the Poet, "you are going to help--Miss Gaudette
sail her boat?"
"Y-e-s," said the Political Economist.
"And so," mocked the Poet, "you are going to jump aboard and steer the
young lady adroitly to some port of your own choosing?"
The older man's jaws tightened ominously. "No, by the Lord Almighty,
that's just what I am not going to do!" he promised. "I'm going to help
her sail to the port of her own choosing!"
The Poet began to rummage in his mind for adequate arguments. "Oh,
allegorically," he conceded, "your scheme is utterly charming, but from
any material, matrimonial point of view I should want to remind myself
pretty hard that overwrought brains do not focus very easily on domestic
interests, nor do arms which have tugged as you say at 'sheets' and
'tillers' curve very dimplingly around youngsters' shoulders."
The Political Economist blew seven mighty smoke-puffs from his pipe.
"That would be the economic price I deserve to pay for not having
arrived earlier on the scene," he said quietly.
The Poet began to chuckle. "You certainly are hard hit," he scoffed.
"Political Economy
Gone to rhyme with Hominy!