starve! It's nothing but cook, cook all the time, anyway. I'm
getting tired of it."
Kincaid said nothing. His fingers were resting on the dining-table.
When he took them away there were little patches of varnish showing
through the dust.
She went out into the kitchen and wearily put on a torn apron. The
sink was full of unwashed dishes. He saw them and was unwise enough
to comment on what he saw.
She turned upon him like a flash.
"If you don't like to see them, wash them yourself," she said. "I'm
sick of housework, anyway."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HER MEMORY
By Dwight M. Wiley
Warrington had really no right to be angry.
He was not engaged to Virginia, merely engaged with her in a
somewhat tempestuous summer flirtation. Down in his heart he knew it
for just that. But he was angry no less, for she had allowed a
"hulking ass" newly arrived at the Inn to "hog her whole program and
make him look a fool before every one."
"Ah ha!" cried the still small voice, "so it's Pride not Heart." And
that made him more angry than ever.
So he went away from the ball-room, out onto the dim veranda, and
strode up and down muttering things better left unmuttered.
Presently he stopped at the far shadowed end, lit a cigarette,
snapped his case viciously, and said "damn."
A demure voice just behind him said "shocking!" and he turned to
confront a small figure in a big chair backed up against the wall.
"I repeat, shocking," said the voice--a very nice voice. And
giggled--a very ripply little gurgly little giggle.
His anger went away.
"Mysterious lady of the shadows," he said (he was very good at that
sort of thing),"does my righteous wrath amuse you?"
He came nearer. He had thought he knew every girl at the Hotel. Here
was a strange one, and pretty. Very. He decided that monopolizing
Virginia had been a mistake.
"It's not a night for wrath, righteous or otherwise. See!" and she
stretched out her arms to the great moon hanging low over the golf
links beyond.
He hunted for a chair. This was bully. And when he had drawn one up,
quite close:
"Whence do you come, all silvery with the moon, to chide me for my
sins, moon maid?"
Without doubt he was outdoing himself.
She laughed softly and leaned toward him, elfin in the pale shimmer
of light. "I am Romance," she breathed, "and this is my night. The
night, the moon, and I conspire to make magic."
He secured a slim hand. The pace was telling. His voice was a little
husky.
"Your charms are very potent, moon maid," he said, "it is magic,
isn't it? It--it doesn't happen like this--really."
Their eyes met--clung.
"You--you take my breath," he stammered. "Does your heart mean what
your eyes are saying? Don't--don't look at me like that unless you
do--mean it."
She didn't answer in words. She, too, was breathing quickly.
He released her hand, and sprang up--half turned away. Then he
dropped to the arm of her chair. Swiftly he took her face in his two
hands. The throbbing of her throat intoxicated him. "I--I--love
me," he stammered.
Her lips moved. A sob more poignant than words. They kissed for a
long time.
There were footsteps down the veranda. She drew away. She recognized
her mother's voice and Miss Neilson's. She was thinking very
quickly. Should she send him away or end it now--end it all now?
"You darling--you darling. I--I love you," he was saying.
She leaned to him. "Kiss me. Kiss me--quickly."
The voices were quite close now.
"Mother," she called, "here I am." She laughed. "But I guess you
know I wouldn't run away. Mother, this is Mr.--ah--Brown, and we
have been discussing--doctors. Mr. Brown has an uncle in exactly my
condition. Hopelessly paralyzed."
She said it calmly. The world reeled. His brain was numb. She was
being wheeled away by the nurse. A wheeled chair--God!
"Good-night," she called.
A cripple. He had kissed her. Horrible! He made for the bar.
In her room while the nurse was making her ready for bed, the mother
said, "How strange you look, dear. And how--how beautiful."
She flung her arms wide in an intoxication of triumph. "Mother," she
half sobbed, "all my life to now I've been just--just a thing. A
cripple. Now--now--I am a woman."
"Oh, God!" she cried, her eyes starry. "Life is good--good. For
now--now I have--a Memory."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HIS JOURNEY'S END.
By Ruth Sterry
Fog enfolded the city in a drenching white veil.
It clung to the windows of the Palace Hotel and shut out the light
from the bedroom in which a man sat earnestly penning a letter. It
seemed to make an effort at entrance as though it would blot from
the paper the words he wrote.
"Palace Hotel,
Wednesday morning.
"Dear Miss Arliss,
"It seems strange to call you that when I am about to ask you to be
my wife. Yet what can I do when I have seen you only once?
"You surely remember, do you not, that one day when you and I met
and were held prisoners by the train wreck in the San Joaquin
Valley, you said I might call on you when I returned to San
Francisco after my trip to the Orient? But you could not have
dreamed what your permission meant to the lonely, business-bound
coffee merchant who long ago, in the poisonous lands of South
America, had shut his heart to women's smiles, and had turned deaf
ears to the music of their voices.
"Nor can I ever hope to make you understand what it meant during the
long journeying that followed the wreck. The memory of you with your
cheeriness, your undaunted smile in all the hardship of that wreck,
has brought new life to me.
"For eight months I have dreamed of you day and night. During that
time I have not once lost the picture of heated desert waste, the
ugly wreckage of the train, the groaning, weeping people--and you,
a girl with tender eyes, a smile of sympathy for the unluckiest
devil, and ready resourcefulness to ease pain that would have done
credit to an army nurse. I have dreamed of you in my home--awaiting
my coming with your radiant smile.
"And so, unable to come to you in simple friendship, I thought it
best to write first and explain. I wanted to come with your
permission granted after you knew that I love you--I love you. I
like to write the words, I want you for my wife.
"I stopped on my way from the station to buy all the flowers I could
find to send with this note. I chose spring blossoms because they
are so much like you.
"I am waiting with mad impatience for your answer. Do not regard my
love lightly. It springs from the unspent passions, the unfulfilled
ideals of a lifetime. Oh, my dear, speed your answer back to me. Say
I may come to you--now.
"Yours to eternity,
"John Marble."
It was three o'clock in the afternoon before the fog lifted. It
vanished before the piercing rays of the bright spring sun. At the
windows of the Palace Hotel little rays of sunlight struck aslant
the glass as though merrily demanding admission. They poured through
the windows of John Marble's room and illumined his face as he, with
trembling fingers, opened a note a messenger had brought. A single
sunbeam fell on the paper, blurring the lines so that he shifted it
to read:
"600 Pacific Avenue,
Wednesday afternoon.
"Mr. John Marble,
"Dear Sir:
"We put your flowers on her coffin to-day. She was like the spring
blossoms which she loved. They hold your letter to her buried in the
depths of their bloom. She had made my life a heaven for five bright
months. I am trying to bear God's will.
"Her husband,
"Morrison Grey."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By Harriet Lummis Smith
Forbes had bribed his way past the gateman and stood on the station
platform at the foot of the stairs, his manner drearily resigned. He
had come to meet a girl and he did not fancy the job.
"Hang it, man," he had protested, when Keith Chandler, his partner,
summoned to New York by a telegram, had deputed Forbes to meet the
four o'clock train, and incidentally, his sister-in-law. "I
shouldn't know the girl."
"I've never seen her myself," his friend reminded him. "She was in
Japan when Agnes and I were married, studying decorative art. Cabled
she'd come home for the wedding if we'd postpone it three months."
Chandler indulged himself in a smile of reminiscent scorn.
"If Mrs. Chandler would accompany me," said Forbes, brightening. He
really liked his partner's wife, partly because her devotion to her
husband made unnecessary those defenses he was accustomed to erect
about himself in the society of women under sixty. Chandler's answer
shattered his hopes.
"If Agnes could leave the baby it wouldn't be necessary to trouble
you. But the little thing's under the weather. Nothing serious, but
you couldn't bribe Agnes out of the house till the child's herself
again. And you won't have any trouble picking Diantha out of the
crowd. She looks like Agnes," Chandler ended complacently. "There
won't be two of that kind on any one train, my boy."
Forbes, immaculate in his gray business suit, frowningly scanned the
crowd hurrying past, the rabble of men with suit-cases on ahead, the
women following more deliberately. Heavens, what a swarm of women!
Forbes saw himself addressing the wrong girl and snubbed for his
pains.
Then all in a moment a figure took on distinction, a girl splendidly
tall, who carried herself as if proud of every inch, who walked the
station platform in a fashion suggesting that she could dance all
night, and go horseback riding in the morning. Yes, she was like
Mrs. Chandler, only larger, handsomer, more stunning in a word. Hat
in hand he approached her.
"Miss Byrd, I believe."
The girl halted, facing him squarely. He had no time for
explanations. A well-shaped, perfectly gloved hand rested lightly on
either shoulder. He had a bewildering impression of a tall figure
swaying toward him, of a fragrance too elusive to be called perfume,
of gray eyes flecked with violet. Then her lips touched his.
"Miss Byrd, indeed!" She was laughing in his face. "You are my first
and only brother, young man, and I warn you I shall make you live up
to the part." One hand slipped from his shoulder and through his
arm. He found himself walking beside her, following the porter who
carried her satchels, and listening mechanically to a flow of words
which fortunately required no reply.
The affair was a hideous nightmare. Mistaking him for Chandler, whom
she had never seen, this unsuspecting girl had kissed him before a
hundred witnesses. Most appalling of all, an explanation seemed an
unthinkable brutality. When once she knew, she could never look him
in the face again. It was essential to keep her in ignorance of her
blunder till he left her at Chandler's door.
Not till they were seated in a taxicab did she ask a direct
question. This was fortunate, as Forbes had been incapable of an
intelligent reply.
"How's the baby, Keith?"
"The baby--oh, yes, the little thing has been slightly under the
weather." As he repeated the information imparted by Chandler
earlier in the day, Forbes blushed to his ears.
"Little darling!" murmured the girl. "How many teeth has she?"
"Teeth! Oh--I--the usual number, I believe."
"I'm awfully ignorant, Keith. I ought to be ashamed to confess it,
but I really don't know what is the usual number for a child of six
months."
Vainly she waited for enlightenment. Forbes' answer was a tortured
smile. His agonized prayer that she might change the subject was
granted all too soon.
"How's Reggie?"
"I beg pardon." Forbes' jaw dropped. His Christian name was
Reginald.
"Mr. Forbes. I prefer to call him Reggie. Do you admire him as
extravagantly as Agnes does? Then I see I shall be forced to conceal
my prejudice to keep peace in the family."
"Prejudice? You are prejudiced against him?"
"Of course. Such a bundle of perfection."
"Oh, no." Forbes spoke with generous earnestness. "He's not that at
all. Just an ordinary good sort."
"Then you think I shall like him?"
The innocent question stabbed him. "No," Forbes said after a long
pause. "You won't like him." In his heart he felt he was
understating the case. She would regard him with abhorrence. Every
moment this deception continued, even though practised to spare her
feelings, added to her righteous grievance. The pain in his voice as
he spoke was a surprise to himself.
"He must be a singular person," mused the girl. "Agnes vows he is
perfection. You reassure me by acknowledging him human, and yet you
are certain I won't like him. Or is that because I am so
unreasonable?"
"Really, Miss Byrd----"
He thought she was going to kiss him again, she leaned toward him so
swiftly. His heart stood still though his mood could be hardly
characterized as shrinking. But she confined herself to beating a
tattoo against his arm with a little clenched fist.
"I won't be Miss Byrd to my only brother, I _won't_! Say Diantha."
"Di-an-tha."
"You say it as if it were Keren-Happuch. Try it again."
He stammered out the three melodious syllables. He was thinking less
of her name than of her eyes. There were golden mischievous lights
swimming like motes in the blue, and her drooping lashes made black
shadows. She turned her head and the curve of her neck was
distracting.
"Why, he's stopping," Diantha cried. "Are we there?"
Incredible as it seemed, they were at Chandler's door. "Wait,"
Forbes said to the driver, his voice hoarse. He took Diantha's arm
to assist her up the steps and she looked at him wonderingly.
"Aren't you coming in?"
"Not just now." Forbes forced a smile. It was possible that they
would never meet again, and if they did, her friendliness would have
been transformed into implacable enmity. He extended his hand.
"Good-bye," he whispered.
"_Au revoir._" His agreeable doubt whether her ideals of
sisterliness would lead her to something more affectionate than a
handclasp was merged in disappointment. The door swung open and she
disappeared. Forbes went back to the cab in a dejection only
partially dissipated by Mrs. Chandler's note next day.
"Dear Mr. Forbes:
"Can't you dine with us Friday? We have all enjoyed a good laugh
over Diantha's absurd mistake.
"Cordially yours,
"Agnes Byrd Chandler."
Forbes' uncertainty as to how far Mrs. Chandler was in her sister's
confidence was unenlightened three weeks later when he asked Diantha
to marry him. He had waited three weeks, not from choice, but
because he had been unable to induce that elusive young woman to
listen to him earlier.
She looked past him, her changeful eyes sombre and sad like the sea
under clouds. "I can't say yes," she murmured plaintively, "without
owning up. And if I own up, you'll want me to say no."
"Diantha!" he faltered. Used as he was to feminine extravagance in
speech, her words chilled him.
She turned her tragic gaze on him. "I knew it was you all the time."
"I don't understand."
"That day at the train. Agnes had sent me a kodak picture of Keith
and yourself taken on a fishing trip and I recognized you instantly.
I had a little prejudice against you to start with, Agnes praised
you so preposterously, and then when I saw you looking so bored and
superior--oh, I know it was immodest and unwomanly and perfectly
horrid, but I just had an intuition of the way you'd gone through
life holding women at arm's length, and I made up my mind to give
you something to think about."
The confession ended in a half sob. A tear clung for an instant to
her curving lashes then fell to her cheek. Forbes leaned closer,
murmuring something neither an assurance of forgiveness nor
altogether entreaty, but a mixture of both. If it was further food
for thought for which he pleaded, he did not ask in vain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HOPE
By Edward Thomas Noonan
"Here's a pathetic case of chronic melancholia," the doctor
continued, as we walked among the inmates. "That white-haired woman
has been here twenty-six years. She is entirely tractable with one
obsession. Every Sunday she writes this letter:
"'Sunday.
"'Dear John:
"'I am sorry we quarreled when you were going away out West. It was
all my fault. I hope you will forgive and write.
"'Your loving,
"'Esther.'
"Every Monday she asks for a letter, and, though receiving none,
becomes radiant with hope and says: 'It will come to-morrow.' The
last of the week she is depressed. Sunday she again writes her
letter. That has been her life for twenty-six years. Her youthful
face is due to her mental inactivity. Aimlessly she does whatever is
suggested. The years roll on and her emotions alternate between
silent grief and fervid hope.
"This is the male ward. That tall man has been here twenty years.
His history sheet says from alcoholism. He went to Alaska, struck
gold, and returned home to marry the girl he left behind. He found
her insane and began drinking, lost his fortune and then his reason,
and became a ward of the State, always talking about his girl and
events that happened long ago.
"He is the 'John' to whom 'Esther' writes her letter.
"They meet every day.
"They will never know each other."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
COLLUSION
By Lincoln Steffens
The sacred door of the Judge's chambers bolted open and he beheld
the light, lovely figure of a woman trembling before him; brave,
afraid.
"Oh, Judge," she panted, but she turned and closing the door
securely, put her back against it to hold it shut. And so at bay,
she called to him:
"Judge, Judge, can't I tell you the truth? Can't I? My lawyer says I
mustn't. He says perjury is the only way. And I--I have done
perjury, Judge. So has my husband. And I'll swear to it all in court
when we are under oath. But here where we are all alone, you and I,
unsworn, with no one to hear, can't I tell you the truth?
"I must. I can't stand the lies. Yes, yes, I know they are merely
forms, legal forms. My lawyer has explained that, and that we must
respect the law and comply with its requirements. And we'll do that,
Judge; we have, and I'll go through with it, if--I mean that it
would help me if I could know that you were not deceived by the
lies; if I could know that you knew the truth.
"And the truth is so much truer and more beautiful than the lies.
Ours is. I loved him, Judge. I love him now. And he loved me. And it
wasn't his fault that he fell in love with her. And she didn't mean
to--to hurt me so. She was my friend. I brought them together. I
was happy when I brought them together, her, my old chum, and him,
my lover; and when I saw that they took to each other, I was glad. I
never thought of their loving. I didn't think of that till, by and
by, I found that they were avoiding each other. I couldn't get them
to meet any more. That made me think--it was terrible what I
thought.
"I thought--Judge, I knew that they had agreed not to meet any more
because they had discovered that they loved each other. He admitted
it, when I asked him, finally. So did she, later, when upon my
demand, we all three met to speak what was in our hearts.
"That was when I refused to have it so. I wouldn't keep a man who
loved another woman. I couldn't, could I? And so I said I would go
away and get the divorce and let them be together and, by and
by--marry.
"It was all to be clean and honourable and fine, Judge. We didn't
know then the requirements of the law. We didn't know we shouldn't
have an honest understanding like that. And I--I didn't know that I
had to make charges against him that are not true, and that he had
to write me letters to prove he had refused to support me; false
letters; and coarse. He? Coarse? Judge, he----
"But I'm not complaining. We copied, my husband and I, the letters
the lawyer wrote out for us to sign and date back and show to you.
We have done our part. I have lived here, in this terrible place,
among these other--people. I have been here the required length of
time for the 'residence.' I have withstood the looks we get from
men--and women. We have obeyed the law, yes, and I will come to
your court and swear--I will swear falsely, Judge, to all you ask.
I must, mustn't I? I can't go on this way loving a man who doesn't
love me. And I can't keep two lovers apart, can I? When love is so
beautiful, so right, so good. Don't I know? And it must be pure.
"So I will do my duty, just as my lawyer does his, and as you do
yours. Oh, I know; I know how conscientious you all are, and
especially you, Judge. My lawyer has told me, again and again, that
you know it's all perjury. Every time I wanted to come to you and
tell you the truth, he has said that you understood. He forbade me
to come; he doesn't know I am here now. But I had to come. I think I
might not be able to go through with it if I had not told you the
truth myself: How we three have agreed perfectly, he and I and she;
how we are to pay each a third of the costs. They were so generous
about it, begging to pay all. And I want you to be sure we are all
perfectly reconciled to the change; all of us; I, too; perfectly.
"And, Judge, he, my husband, he couldn't, he simply could not have
written letters like that. Oh, I'll swear to them; I'll swear to
anything, I'll do anything, almost, if--if only you, Judge----"
The Judge rose.
"If," he finished for her, "if only I will understand. Well, I
will."
And he went to the door, opened it wide and, as she passed, he bowed
to the woman with the respect which, till that day, he had paid only
to the Law.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
FAITHFUL TO THE END
By Clair W. Perry
Embarkation of the 10th London Reservists for France was the
occasion of a demonstration in the city such as had not been seen
since the Canadian contingent crossed the Channel. The call for
these fresh troops had a sinister significance. It meant the
long-awaited "general advance" from Calais to Belfort was impending.
At the quay, where the dingy transports were swallowing up file
after file of England's youth, were hundreds of women and girls come
to bid a bitter-sweet farewell to their lads, whose vigorous bodies
were to be crammed into the hungry maw of war.
Lieutenant Topham, Wing Commander of the aerial division with the
10th, stood apart at the far end of the quay. He had just finished
superintending the loading of his machines. He was watching the
troops file aboard, hungrily absorbed in the dramatic scenes that
passed, one after the other like cinema scenes, when wife, mother,
sweetheart, sister, kissed loved ones good-bye. He moved nearer the
sloping gangway where were enacted these hasty tender farewells,
swift embraces at the foot of the passage, so swift the progress of
the tramping files was scarcely halted, each woman, for an instant,
giving up her soul in an embrace--and the next instant giving up
her son, brother, or mate to his Maker--or his destroyer.
Topham was deeply moved by the scenes. But it was a selfish emotion.
There was no one to bid him farewell. For the first time in his
careless life he felt the lack. He had no mother, no sister, no
sweetheart. His men friends, even, were not there; they had gone on
before.
As he moved nearer the ship on which he was to take passage for
France, and the wild dash in air for which he had been detailed, to
shell the recently established German Zeppelin base near "Hill 60,"
there came over him a premonition of death and a yearning emotion.
He wanted some human being to bid him farewell, some one who placed
his life above all else, a woman who cared.
In his abstracted progress he almost ran into the figure of a girl.
She was standing close to the moving file, and in her searching
eyes, as Topham looked in silent apology, he saw a fire that
thrilled him. He noted, too, beauty, and a band of mourning on her
sleeve. Her gaze pierced Topham with compelling appeal. The bugle
was giving its piercing call, "All hands on." With a sudden impulse
Topham stepped close to the girl.
"Are you sending--some one away?" he queried.
She shook her head and touched the band on her arm.
"My father--a month ago--at Ypres," she replied.
"I am going--over there," eagerly explained Topham, "and I have no
one. I feel that I--shall never return. I wonder if you---- Will
you kiss me good-bye? I promise you I shall never kiss another
woman--that I will be faithful--until the end," he finished with
wistful whimsicality.