When the heir to a hundred millions of dollars is arrested in this country
for any act less than murder, he does not expect to sleep in a cell. The
police do not expect him to sleep in a cell, and the public would be
astonished--and a little vexed--if he were compelled to do so. They would
be vexed because in the event of his detention, they would be deprived of
the pleasure of railing against our institutions and of saying to their
neighbors in the street-car that, "a man with enough money can get away
with anything."
"Couldn't you bring in a kid without usin' the wood?" the lieutenant at
the desk said to the officer who had floored Potter. It did not seem
fitting to that lieutenant that a hundred millions of dollars should have
its scalp abraided by a night stick.
"Kid, hell!" said the officer. "If you'd 'a' seen the wallop he handed
Tom!"
Potter clung to the edge of the desk, dizzy, swaying, his head not clear
between blow and drink.
"Here," said the lieutenant, "come in here and lay down. Want I should
telephone anybody--or git a doctor?"
"No," said Potter, sinking on the lounge and closing his eyes.
The lieutenant went out and called the superintendent on the telephone.
"Got young Waite here," he said. "He tried to tear the Pontchartrain up by
the roots and Kerr had to drop the locust on him a bit. What'll I do wit'
the kid?"
"Hurt?"
"Didn't improve him none."
"Drunk?"
"So-so."
"Send somebody over to the Tuller with him and have him put to bed."
It was not for the public to know that the superintendent had two sons who
were employed in the Waite Motor Car Company's plant--for whom he desired
fair prospects and promotion.
So Potter slept in an excellent hotel bedroom instead of a cell. He
awakened in the morning with a head that was very sore; dressed and went
down to the office.
"Your car is out front," said the clerk. Even that detail had been
attended to by a solicitous police force.
At breakfast he read a paper on whose first page he divided honors with
the _Lusitania_. He was not interested in what was said about himself; at
first he was not especially interested in what was said about the
_Lusitania_, but as he read his interest grew, changing to hot anger as he
read the still incomplete list of the dead. More than one individual was
there named with whom Potter had broken bread.
Even in the editorial there was no demand for war; there was astonishment,
there was wrath, but it seemed to Potter there was some effort to find an
excuse for Germany's act.... Passengers warned.... Munitions....
Possibility of internal explosion.... Wait for particulars. The attitude
of the paper was not quite his father's attitude, not so frank, but he was
able to see it was his father's attitude disguised for popular
consumption. And he was intelligent enough to realize that the finger of
that paper was on the public pulse; that, without doubt, the paper was
dealing with the situation as the public wanted it dealt with--a public
not willing to resent blow with blow.
At the next table a man was saying, "Just because they've killed a
thousand or so is no reason for us to get into it. War would mean killing
another hundred thousand or maybe half a million. Because they've killed a
thousand, should we let them kill a hundred times as many more? That's
_sense_.... Make 'em pay for it...."
"What could we do, anyhow?" asked the other. "Might get in with our navy,
but there isn't anything for a navy to do. Couldn't send an army across
three thousand miles of ocean."
"Right. I'm for the Allies, but my idea is we can help a lot more by
staying neutral and sending 'em all the munitions they want."
"My idea exactly," agreed the other.
That was it. What could we do? We had no army. Potter had been told that
Uruguay had more artillery than the United States. There was no
ammunition!... The United States was ready for peace, and the old
absurdity about a million squirrel-shooters was gospel in the minds of a
hundred millions of people. A million squirrel-shooters armed with what?
Potter got up from the table and went out to his car. He wanted to be
alone; he wanted fresh air; he wanted to work off the various
uncomfortable sensations that possessed him. He drove recklessly out
Jefferson Avenue to the Country Club. At this hour it was deserted save
for servants. It would do him good, he thought, to play around alone,
without even a caddy, so he donned flannels and shoes, and carried his
caddy bag to the first tee.
Somebody else was teeing off--a girl. Potter did not glance at her, but
dropped his bag with a clatter and sat down on the bench to wait till she
should get out of his way.
"How do you do?" said the young woman.
Potter stood up automatically. "Good morning, Miss von Essen," he said,
without interest.
She turned her back on the ball she had been about to address and walked
toward him, slender, graceful, yellow hair blowing out from beneath a
tilted tam-o'-shanter. Her face was thin, not especially pretty at first
glance, but arresting. The features were distinct, and the expression,
even in repose, was one of eagerness--such an expression as one associated
with the possession of wit and daring. The expression was akin to
pertness, but was not pertness. One knew she could play golf or tennis.
One knew she had been a tomboy. One knew she had temper. Her whole
appearance and bearing were a perpetual challenge. "Come on," it seemed to
say. "Whatever it is, if there's a chance to take, let's do it." Potter
knew she was a girl about whom there had been shakings of the head, not so
much because of what she had done as because of what she might do.
Conservative mothers preferred some other friend for their daughters--and
you felt immediately that Hildegarde von Essen delighted to tantalize such
matrons and to set their tongues clacking.
"You gave away something yesterday that you needed yourself," she said,
with directness.
"No," said Potter, amused as at a pert child. She was only nineteen. "What
was it?"
"Advice. 'You'll be breaking into print _good_ one of these days, and
there'll be the devil to pay,'" she quoted. "'You'll get yourself talked
about if you don't ease off some,' says _you_ to _me_." The effect of it
was of a naughty child thrusting out her tongue. "And you take your
sanctimonious air right away to the Pontchartrain and drink too much and
get into a dis-_grace_-ful fight, and get arrested, and break into print
_good_. I s'pose," she said, thoughtfully, "you were jealous--afraid I
might steal some advertising and crowd you out."
Potter laughed, a good, whole-hearted, boyish laugh. The sort of laugh one
likes to hear. "It was funny, wasn't it?" he said.
"Impertinent, _I_ call it," she said, sharply.
He laughed again. "If you want advice on any subject, you go to an expert,
don't you? Well, I'm an expert on breaking into print and getting myself
talked about. My advice is worth something. I ought to charge for it....
Now there's a notion. How would it do for me to open an office with a sign
on the door, Expert Advice on Wild-oats Farming--Years of Experience?"
"You seem proud of it."
"No, I'm not exactly proud of it. I'm not like little girls who do things
for effect."
She turned her back and marched to her ball, but before she was ready for
the stroke she faced him again. "You're just a naughty little boy throwing
paper wads in school," she said, sweetly, "and you think you're a grown
man being _devilish_."
"Eh?" he said, a bit startled. On the face of it she had merely uttered a
saucy, childish gibe, but Potter was struck by it. He tucked it away in
his mind for future reference. There were elements of shrewdness, of
insight, of _truth_ in it.
"I have a puppy who chewed up my best slippers--because he hadn't anything
else to do," she said.
"Do your friends, by any chance, hint that your tongue is sharp?" he
asked.
She made no reply, but her driver whistled viciously through the air in a
practice stroke.
"I'll tell you what," he said, "just to show you I'm forgiving I'll let
you play around with me."
She looked at him an instant. "I'll give you a stroke a hole," she said.
"Eh?"
"I've seen you play," she said, calmly.
"Drive," he said, with a chuckle. "I ought to put up a cup, oughtn't I?"
"Make it a ride in that aeroplane thing of yours," she said. "I've always
wanted to see how it felt to fly. Not just go up and come down, but a
regular fly."
"Not a chance. Your father would assassinate me."
"You haven't much confidence in your game, have you? To beat a girl who
gives you a stroke a hole."
"We'd both break into print. Can't you see it in type? 'Hildegarde von
Essen explores the firmament with Potter Waite,' with some account of your
career with number of fines for speeding, and references to myself. Not
nice."
"Fiddlesticks! We shouldn't have to invite any reporters...."
"But they'd hear about it. They always do."
"A stroke a hole," she jeered.
"Very well. Give me a beating and I'll take you flying." He felt confident
enough, for he played a fair game of golf.
His confidence decreased after the first hole was played. He outdrove her
and had the distance of her, but her every stroke was down the center of
the course; she never overestimated her strength, and avoided trouble. On
the green she holed a twelve-foot putt--and the hole was hers.
He settled down to play his best. The thing became not merely a game of
golf between a man and a girl. It seemed to him that more was at stake
than victory or defeat in a pastime. He became interested, intensely
interested. He wanted to win and he played to win.... And he watched the
girl. _She_ interested him. She was so utterly natural, so without pose,
yet so very different from the ordinary run of girls, particularly
nineteen-year-old girls. There was a _tang_ about her. It was as if one
were eating bread and all unexpectedly encountered some unidentified, some
palate-intriguing spice. That defined her for Potter. If he had been going
to describe her he would have said she was highly spiced.
Potter played better than usual, but at the end of the ninth hole he was
two down. They had talked little. Now she sat down.
"Tired?" he asked.
"Not the least," she said, "but I find I play the last nine better if I
sit here a few minutes and get the first nine out of my mind.... Had you
any friends on the _Lusitania_?" She asked the question suddenly.
"Yes," he said.
"If I were a man--"
"If you were a man--?" he repeated after her.
"I'd enlist. I wouldn't wait for this country to go to war. I'd go across.
A good many boys have gone, haven't they? I'd go across and be an
aviator--or anything they'd let me be...."
"For the Allies? I took it for granted you would be on the other side of
the fence."
"Pro-German!" Her eyes flashed. "I leave that for Father and his cronies.
I believe they _celebrated_ last night--actually. My mother wasn't
German," she said. Potter knew Mrs. von Essen had died two years before.
"_I know Germans_," she said, presently. "I ought to; I've lived among
them all my life.... Sometimes I think the whole race is a button short."
Potter was to learn that in her vocabulary "a button short" meant not
quite complete mentally. "I like some of them, and I'd even trust some of
them, but most of them are arrogant _beasts_.... I've read their books,"
she said. "Dad has a lot of them. People used to think they were nice,
slow, harmless, fat, good-natured. Maybe some of them are. But I believe
that's what the German government _wanted_ the world to think." These were
unusual words to hear falling from a girl's lips. She had been _thinking_.
Perhaps that had happened in her life which made her think. "Will we
declare war?" she asked, in her sudden way.
"Last night I was sure we would. To-day I'm almost as sure we won't."
She nodded. "People don't realize.... But we'll be in it," she said. "No
matter how much we try to stay out, they'll force us in. They'll sink
another _Lusitania_ and another and another, until we _have_ to come in.
You'll see.... Partly because they don't understand--and partly because
that's the kind they are. You know a German never understands anybody but
a German. They can't. Just before Mother died she said to me, 'Garde'--she
always called me Garde--'don't marry a German, honey. Nobody but a German
woman should marry a German.' And Mother ought to know, oughtn't she? I'd
rather marry a _Chinaman_," she said, suddenly becoming girlish again.
"If we have war, what will all the Germans in this country do?"
"Talk loudly till war is declared. Then shut up and do sneaky things.
Nothing in the open.... I think," she said, slowly, evidently trying to
set aside prejudice and cling to fact--"I think most of them will be
loyal. In spite of their talk, I don't believe most of them would care to
live in Germany and in German conditions. That's why. But there'll be
enough." She got up quickly and teed her ball. "Let's go on," she said.
Hildegarde played the same steady game as before; Potter's mind was on
other things. Somehow he believed this girl was right; that she read the
future truly. The sinking of the _Lusitania_ meant war--sooner or later it
meant war.... And the country was unready for war. It did not want to get
ready for war.... She had spoken about going across to fight with the
Allies. He considered that. It was a thing he was to consider for days and
weeks to come. But that was a makeshift. He realized it was a makeshift.
There must be something better, something more logical than that.
He won a hole and halved a hole in the last nine.
"When do we fly?" she asked, eagerly.
"I shouldn't have promised."
"But you did."
He nodded. "Whenever you wish."
"Let's see. Suppose we say next Tuesday."
"My car is here. Can I drive you home?" he said.
"I was to telephone for my car. Yes, you may."
A limousine was just entering the grounds of the von Essen place in
Grossepoint when Potter and Hildegarde reached the drive.
"There's Father," she said, and her lips compressed a trifle.
A big man who looked not unlike Bismarck, and who endeavored to heighten
the likeness, alighted and stood beside the car, looking toward them. It
was obvious he was waiting for them. Potter stopped his car and lifted his
cap. Herman von Essen scowled.
"Since when are you friends with this young man?" he demanded. "Out of
that car and into the house. Have you no sense--to be seen in public with
this man whose picture is in the papers? For a girl to be with him is to
lose her reputation.... And you"--he turned on Potter furiously--"take
your car out of my grounds. Never speak with my daughter again. Do you
hear? You are a drunken young ruffian." He launched himself into a tirade
of great circumstantiality.
Potter's eyes were dark with the brooding expression which his friends
counted a signal of danger, but he remained motionless, save to turn
toward Hildegarde.
"I am sorry, Miss von Essen," he said. "I shouldn't have brought you. I
might have foreseen--"
She smiled. It was not a bright smile, but a reckless smile, as reckless
as one of Potter's own might be.
"Thank you for coming.... I hope we shall be friends." She did not glance
at her father, but walked erectly up the steps and disappeared in the
house. Von Essen continued verbally to chastise Potter, who did not look
at him. Perhaps he did not dare, fearing the weakness of his
self-restraint. The young man threw his car into gear and moved away,
leaving von Essen gesticulating behind him.
He drove to his own house, a mile beyond. Before he reached there the
brooding darkness was gone from his eyes; they twinkled. He was thinking
of Hildegarde.