him and, as he doffed his cap and bent, she clasped him about the
neck, drew his close-cropped head down, and kissed him on the lips.
There was no time for words. Topham had to spring for the moving
gang-plank. The bugle had sounded its last call for stragglers such
as he. The girl who had given him his sweet farewell was swallowed
up in the crowd.
Halfway across the Channel Topham found he could not even recall the
girl's features, the colour of her eyes or hair. All that remained
to him was a dim expression of sweet, yearning womanliness, an
abstract conception.
At the transfer hospital, a week later, Topham's shattered, helpless
form was laid for a few moments on a cot. His fall from a great
height after a desperate duel with a German Taube left him victor
and hero but with the shadow of death hovering over him. Numbness
mercifully stilled the pain that had gripped him and he lay passive.
It was not until he felt the touch of a hand softer than that of the
hurrying surgeon who had given hasty "first aid" examination that he
opened his eyes. A woman nurse, the only one he had seen so near the
lines, was bending over him. He could see only dimly. A mist was
over his eyes from the explosion of his engine. Her touch, however,
seemed to give him a thrill of vitality. When she moved on he sank
into semi-coma, with the feeling of chill. Death bearing down on
him. She moved again to his side and he moaned. The grim grip was
tightening. Like a boy he was afraid. In the world there was only
himself, this woman, and approaching death.
"I am going," he muttered swiftly, as the nurse bent near. "Will you
kiss me good-bye? I can promise you--I will be faithful--until the
end." His smile was a pitiful effort at humour. He felt her warm
lips on his--and then oblivion.
Topham came to himself--save for the memory of a delirium of travel
in motor-ambulance and boat--in a clean white bed in a large, lofty
room. When his senses cleared he knew he was in England. White-clad
nurses moved about the room in which were many other beds containing
huddled or stretched-out figures. At his first movement one of the
nurses came to his bedside. Her keen glance, under her significant
cap, spoke efficiency and warm human sympathy. A few deft touches, a
spoon of medicine, a pat of the pillow, and she was gone.
Topham awoke again in the dark small hours when man's vitality is at
its lowest ebb; awoke with that familiar depression, as of a chill
hand gripping his heart--squeezing his very soul. It was Death,
again, groping for him. Only his brain seemed clear. He tinkled,
with a supreme effort, the bell at his bedside. A nurse came, her
face indistinct in the dim light, and bent over him in an attitude
of solicitation.
"What is it?" she asked, and her voice seemed that of an angel from
Heaven.
"I--I am almost gone," gasped Topham. "My heart is stopping. I--I
am not afraid--but--it is so lonely. I have no one. Could
you--kiss me--good-bye?"
He was halted by a swift movement. She had raised his head and he
swallowed a draft of something that sent a liquid thrill through
him. In a trice his feeling changed from that of a sinking,
suffocating soul to that of a man whose life is rushing back into
him. The nurse was smiling into his eyes.
"You were going to say," she murmured musically, "that you will be
faithful to the end."
Topham opened his eyes wider. That face--the ripe lips--the clear,
burning eyes! They were those of the girl at the quay--of the nurse
at the transfer hospital--no, of the nurse who had bent over him
when he first regained consciousness here--yes, of all three. A
deep flush overspread his pallid face.
"You said you would be faithful to the end," she repeated roguishly.
He groped for an answer.
"In my mind," he confessed, "I did not know you. But in my heart I
must have known you all the time."
Then she kissed him again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ARLETTA
By Margaret Ade
It was on a Monday morning in August that Miss Backbay climbed the
brownstone steps to the rooming-house conducted by Mrs. Edward
Southend in Massachusetts Avenue, Boston. Miss Backbay was short,
stout, and sixty, and her face was flushed and scowling.
"I wish to speak with Mrs. Southend," she snapped at the woman who
opened the door. The woman, a middle-aged, quiet-looking little
woman, glanced at the card and said: "I am Mrs. Southend, Miss
Backbay; come this way please."
In the parlour Miss Backbay and Mrs. Southend looked into each
other's eyes for a few moments and exchanged a silent challenge;
then Miss Backbay leaned forward in her chair and said: "I have
come, Mrs. Southend, to talk with you concerning this--this affair
between your son and my niece. Miss Arletta Backbay. I have, as you
know, brought her up, and I love her as if she were my own daughter.
She is the last of the Backbays--the Backbays of Backbay. Our
family lived on Beacon Hill when Boston Common was a farming
district. The Backbays are direct--_direct_ descendants of William
I, King of England--William the Conqueror."
Miss Backbay drew a long, deep breath.
Mrs. Southend was silent.
"I have devoted years of my life," Miss Backbay continued, "to the
education of my niece. Nothing has been spared to prepare her for
the high social position to which, by her ancestry alone, she is
entitled. I am going into this bit of family history so you will
understand--so you will see this affair from my viewpoint. I have
been exceedingly careful in the selection of her teachers, her
associates, and her servants. Your son came to us well recommended
by his pastor and by his former employer. I have no fault to find
with him as--as a chauffeur, but as a suitor for the hand of my
niece he--he is impossible. Absolutely! The thing is absurd. I--I
have done what I could to break up this affair. I have discharged
him. But my niece has defied me. She assures me that she loves him
and--and will marry him in spite of everything. She is headstrong,
self-willed, and--and completely bewitched. She has lost all
pride--pride in her ancient lineage. Now I have come to you to
beseech you to use your influence with your son. Induce him to leave
the city--he must leave the city, if only for a year. I--I shall
pay----"
"Pardon me, just a moment, Miss Backbay." Mrs. Southend left the
room, and in a few minutes she returned carrying a large volume, her
fingers between the pages.
"As I listened to you, Miss Backbay, the thought came to me very
forcibly that it is a pity--a great pity--that you could not have
selected your ancestors as you do your servants--from the better
class of respectable working people. But, of course, you could not.
You could, however, try to live them down--forget them--some of
them, anyway. Listen to this biographical sketch of your most famous
ancestor. It is from page 659 of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica':
'William I, King of England--William the Conqueror, born 1027 or
1028. He was the bastard son of Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy,
by Arletta, the daughter of a tanner.'"
Mrs. Southend closed the book with a bang.
"Not much to boast about, is it? We all have ancestors, Miss
Backbay, but the less said about some of them the better. And now,
if my son wants to go out of _his_ class and mix it up with Robert
the Devil and Arletta--why, that's his--his funeral. You'll excuse
me now, Miss Backbay. I have my husband's dinner to prepare."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
WHICH?
By Joseph Hall
They were two women, one young, radiant, the other gently,
beautifully old.
"But, Auntie, it's such fun."
The older rose.
"Wait."
In a moment she had returned. Two faded yellow letters lay upon the
young girl's lap.
"Read them."
Wonderingly the girl obeyed. The first read:
"Dearest:
"I leave you to John. It is plain you care for him. I love you. Just
now it seems that life without you is impossible. But I can no
longer doubt. If you cared, there would be no doubt. John is my
friend. I would rather see you his than any others, since you cannot
be mine. God bless you.
"Will."
The other:
"Beloved:
"I am leaving you to the better man. For me there can never be
another love. But it is best--it is the right thing--and I am,
yes, I am glad that it is Will you love instead of me. You cannot be
anything but happy with him. With me--but that is a dream I must
learn to forget.
"As ever and ever,
"John."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT THE VANDALS LEAVE
By Herbert Riley Howe
The war was over, and he was back in his native city that had been
retaken from the Vandals. He was walking rapidly through a dimly lit
quarter. A woman touched his arm and accosted him in fuddled
accents.
"Where are you going, M'sieu? With me, hein?"
He laughed.
"No, not with you, old girl. I'm going to find my sweetheart."
He looked down at her. They were near a street lamp. She screamed.
He seized her by the shoulders and dragged her closer to the light.
His fingers dug her flesh, and his eyes gleamed.
"Joan!" he gasped.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
BEN T. ALLEN, ATTY., VS. HIMSELF
By William H. Hamby
"Lawyers always get theirs." The hardware dealer on the north side
spoke with some bitterness and entire literalness. The check for one
hundred and seventy-five dollars just wrenched from its stub bore
"Ben T. Allen, Atty.," in the middle, and "Peter Shaw Hardware Co.,"
at the bottom.
Peter, by the aid and advice of counsel, had been resisting the
payment of a merchant's tax of five dollars a year which the alleged
city of Clayton Center had insisted on collecting. The case had now
been in the supreme court two years. This check was merely "on
account."
The check had occasioned the remark, but the bitterness back of it
was engendered by another case, in which Peter had been prosecuting
his claims for the affection of Betty Lane, court stenographer.
Attorney Allen appeared against him this time instead of for him,
and in both cases Peter seemed to be getting the worst of it.
But that, of course, is all in the viewpoint. At that moment
Attorney Allen stood by the front window of his offices, his thick
hair tangled like the fleece of a black sheep after a restless
night, his soul splashing in a vat of gloom. Betty Lane had just
passed through the courthouse yard on her way to work. Nature had
made Betty very attractive, but her job had made her independent.
The lawyer was bitterly despondent. Law practice in Clayton Center
was no longer lucrative. Although Allen was very dextrous in
twisting three-ply bandages around the eyes of the Lady with the
Scales, the Lady with the Pencil at the right of the Judge was not
so blind. The citizens of Clayton Center had developed a spineless,
milksop tendency to settle even their constitutional rights out of
court. Besides Betty's seven dollars a day Allen's income looked as
ill-fed as a dromedary in an elephant parade.
The young lawyer's heart was so heavy over his light matrimonial
prospects that he went out that night with some of the boys and got
drunk. In returning at one A. M., singing "It Was at Aunt
Dinah's Quilting Party--I was seeing Nellie home," he fell off the
board sidewalk and broke the established precedent that a drunken
man cannot hurt himself by a fall.
The breaking of one leg was the most fortunate accident upon which a
distressed barrister ever fell. It gave him two legs on which to
stand in court.
He sued the city immediately for ten thousand dollars' damages on
account of the defective sidewalk. His three companions swore
positively that there was not only one hole in the walk, but two,
and not only two loose boards, but six.
Moreover, it was not a plain fracture of the limb. Allen proved by a
liver specialist that the jolt had permanently deranged his liver; a
spine specialist testified the jar had injured the fourteenth
vertebra; a nerve specialist swore that the shock of the fall and
subsequent anguish of mind in seeing his law practice drop away
would probably result in a total breakdown.
The jury gave him four thousand dollars' damages--twice what he
hoped. And the city attorney, having a fraternal feeling for
fractured legal legs, advised the city to pay instead of appeal.
One bright morning, fully recovered and adorned in a natty spring
suit, Ben T. Allen went to the courthouse to get an order from the
court to the city treasurer for his four thousand dollars' damages.
There was a click of a typewriter in an anteroom. Betty Lane, the
court stenographer, was down early working out some notes.
Ben T. Allen went in, laid his hat debonairly on a stack of
notebooks, sat on the edge of her desk, and locked his hands around
his knees and smiled possessively.
"Why, good morning, Mr. Allen." Betty looked up and nodded. "Allow
me to congratulate you."
"For what?"
"Why, haven't you seen the supreme court's decision in this
morning's paper? You won your case. Peter Shaw does not have to pay
his annual five-dollar merchant tax."
"Good!" exclaimed Allen. "No, I had not seen it."
"Yes," nodded Betty, with something not quite transparent in her
smile, "the judge who handed down the decision sustained your
contention, that as the notices of election, at which the town was
incorporated thirty-eight years ago, were posted only nineteen days
instead of twenty, as the law requires, the articles of
incorporation were illegally adopted. Therefore, the town is
non-existent. Its officers have no right to levy or collect taxes,
to sue or to be sued, to receive or _pay out moneys_."
"Good heavens!" Allen felt himself slowly collapsing on the table,
sick in every organ described by the specialists.
"Sometimes," smiled Betty, as she glanced out of the window toward
the hardware store--"_sometimes_ a lawyer gets his."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE JOKE ON PRESTON
By Lewis Allen
"Has the prisoner secured counsel?"
"No, your honour," responded District Attorney Masters.
Judge Horton looked over the tops of his steel-rimmed spectacles,
first at the unkempt prisoner, and then around the courtroom.
"The court will provide counsel for your defense. Have you any
choice?" he asked the prisoner.
The prisoner had not. He didn't know one man from another in the
courtroom. A faint suspicion of a smile showed on District Attorney
Master's face. He winked slyly at several of his brother attorneys,
and even smiled rather knowingly at the judge when he made the
suggestion that the court appoint Mr. Preston attorney for the
defense. A titter went around the courtroom at this, and young John
Preston flushed to the roots of his yellow hair as he arose and went
forward to consult with his client.
"Honest to God, are you a lawyer?" asked the prisoner, in a voice
that carried. It took nearly two minutes to restore decorum.
In spite of his embarrassment young Preston thanked the court and
asked for a day's postponement in order to acquaint himself with his
client's case. This was granted, and after adjournment the District
Attorney took young Preston aside, put his hand patronizingly on his
shoulder, and said:
"Great Scott, Johnnie, give the poor devil a square deal! The only
thing in the world for him is a plea of guilty and a request for
leniency."
"Thank you, sir," said Preston rather stiffly, "but I at least want
to know something of my client's case."
"Now, now, Johnnie, you must learn to take things in the proper
spirit. Every young lawyer must have his first case, and he must
expect a certain amount of good-natured raillery over it, and,
believe me, it isn't every man fresh from law school who gets a
murder case for the very first thing. Be sensible about it, boy. I'm
advising you for your father's sake. We were partners, you know."
"Yes, I know," answered Preston.
"Oh, don't be stubborn, Johnnie! Why, dash it all, the prisoner has
confessed!"
"A great many innocent men have confessed under the third degree,"
and young Preston bowed rather too formally and turned on his heel.
"He'll get the chair if you fight the case," snapped the District
Attorney.
"He'll get the chair--or liberty, sir," was all young Preston
replied, and he hurried over to the jail, where he was secluded in
the cell with his client, the prisoner.
It wasn't much of a story the prisoner told. He said his name was
Farral, that he was a plain hobo, and that with another hobo he had
got into a fight with a freight brakeman who wouldn't let them jump
the train. Both picked up lumps of coal to defend themselves, and in
the mix-up the poor brakeman's skull was crushed. He managed to
shoot and kill the other hobo, but he died before they got him to
the hospital.
Young Preston said nothing, for five minutes. Farral became nervous.
Finally he said:
"Say, kid, I ain't blamin' you any. You gotter have your first case
some time, and so they wished you on me. The only thing to do is to
plead guilty to self-defense----"
"Never do," said young Preston. "There isn't a juryman in the county
who would agree to justifiable homicide."
"But I confessed, kid; I confessed. Whatcher goin' to do about it
now?"
"Just what did you say? Give me the exact words."
"I says to the captain, 'Don't put me through no third degree. I
killed him!'"
"What made you say that?"
"They'd put it on me anyway. I thought it would help me."
"What was the name of the man with you?"
"I don't know. I never saw him before."
"His name was Ichabod Jones," said Preston impressively, "and don't
you ever forget it. Remember, you have known this man for a long
while and that he went under the name of 'Black Ike.'"
Preston talked a half-hour longer with the man and drilled him over
and over before he left him.
When the case came up the prosecution introduced witnesses
sufficient to prove that the brakeman had been killed and then
introduced the confession.
"We rest the case there, your honour," said District Attorney
Masters, with somewhat of a flourish.
Young Preston put his client on the stand without delay and had him
tell his story of the fight, which was to the effect that it was not
he, but the other man, who killed the brakeman.
"What was the other man's name?" asked Preston.
"Ichabod Jones," replied the prisoner; "at least, that's what he
told me."
"How did you always address him?"
"I always called him Ike."
"You may tell the court just what you said in this _alleged_
confession."
"I didn't make no confession. I said to the captain, 'Don't put me
through no third degree. _Ike_ killed him.'"
And, for all that the prosecuting attorney could prove to the
contrary, Ike did.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE IDYL
By Joseph F. Whelan
Let us have a day of idyl, you and I,
Upon some mountain-top, with no one by
Save birds and flowers and waving trees that sigh,
And crooning winds whose lyrics never die.
The Poet handed it to the Girl, with rather a quizzical smile. They
did not know each other. He had seen her walking along one of the
park paths, and the loneliness of her face stopped him. She read the
verse, then gazed at him a few seconds, half amused, half annoyed,
then wholly joyous. He read compliance in her eyes.
"Rather rude, isn't it?" he asked. "But the desperation of
loneliness is heavy on my soul."
They sauntered to the gates and boarded a street car, which whirled
them, with twenty other people equally though unconsciously lonely,
toward the mountain. She did not speak until they were zig-zagging
along a bridle path up the mountainside. Then she unfolded the verse
and said musingly:
"A day of idyl! A year ago I thought that every day would be an
idyl." And the sweet mouth soured in the churn of memory.
"My dear lady," he said, "memories have no place in a day of idyl.
Oh, let me teach you how to live, live, live, if only for an hour!
Let's sing the song of nature which is happiness--dance the dance
of winds which is joy--think the thought of butterflies which is
nothing! Oh, there is happiness everywhere, everywhere--even for
you and me!"
They reached a little hillock where a clump of bushes cast a
tempting shadow.
"Let's sit down a while," she said, pouring water on a rocket.
For a few minutes they sat in silence. The idyl had not yet begun.
From behind them came voices, and a woman's laugh startled the air
and the Poet. Nearer came the voices, and the Girl gripped the
grasses at her sides. The couple swung jauntily past without
noticing them and settled down in the long grass at the foot of the
hillock.
The Poet and the Girl were statues. Their faces were averted. From
the long grass came the noise of kisses.
The sun slipped away. The air was hot and heavy and all around was
the silence of premonition. A bird piped fretfully, and a peevish
breeze shook the leaves. The amorous couple in the long grass rose.
"Say," said the man, looking at his watch, "if we're goin' to see
that show we've got to hustle."
And they hurried away.
The Girl rose, walked a few yards, then stood gazing on the far
horizon of departed time. Then she returned.
"That was my husband," she said.
The Poet sprang to his feet as though released by a spring. His face
was gray as the sky.
"God help us both!" he cried. "The woman was my wife."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
WITHHELD
By Ella B. Argo
Every time he had tried to propose to her they had been interrupted.
There was the moonlight night on the beach when a sudden storm sent
them scurrying to shelter. Once it was in her mother's drawing-room
and callers were announced. He had almost reached the interrogation
point while dancing when a colliding couple made them slip, and for
weeks a broken ankle made her inaccessible. He might have put the
momentous question in writing, but that did not appeal to his sense
of fitness.
Lately she felt like Evangeline, since business always took him out
of New York the day before she arrived, and twice illness called her
home when he was to have met her at some resort. The Evangeline
feeling was strong to-night, because he had inexplicably failed to
keep his Miami appointment to accompany her mother and herself home,
and at the last moment they had decided to come by sea.
Then suddenly off Norfolk she came face to face with him on the
deck. She was excitedly responsive to his white-faced,
trembling-voiced rapture at seeing her, and they both forgot to make
explanations.
It was late, but they paced the deck for an hour, and every moment
of that hour she expected him to speak, although one passenger
walked disconcertingly near them.
His love had taken on a new humility, for where once he had been
masterful, impetuous, he now seemed afraid and looked at her
adoringly but despairingly, as though at some inaccessible heaven.
She fought between modesty and a desire to encourage him. The hours
flew, and he had not even sought a secluded corner. She sent away
the maid who came with her mother's summons and lingered another
moment for the words she felt were trembling on the lips beneath the
love-agonized eyes. He accepted her proud good-night without
remonstrance, although he clung to her hand as though he would never
let it go.
"This must be good-bye," he said. "The ship will dock before you are
up, and I have to make a dash for the train."
No word of future meeting.
Almost all the passengers had landed and her mother and the maid
were far ahead in the crowd when she remembered a silver cup she had
left in the stateroom. Her way back was barred first by a laughing
and weeping reunited Cuban family, and then by a group of men
excitedly discussing the quick capture of a murderer who had claimed
self-defense in a political quarrel but had run. It seemed the man
was prominent, and it sounded interesting, but her mother would
worry if she stopped.
The emotional Cuban family was again in her way. The cup was knocked
from her hand, and it rolled down the deck. She picked it up and
turned to see him framed in a door opened by the restless passenger
of the night before.
Then her sun went down in eternal blackness. He was handcuffed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
UP AND DOWN
By Bertha Lowry Gwynne