One Saturday morning Lottie, just returned from marketing with her
mother, answered the telephone and recognised with difficulty Beck
Schaefer's voice, high-pitched and hysterical as it was.
"Lot, is this you?"
"Yes."
"Lot--Lot--listen. Listen!"
"I'm listening."
"Lot, listen. You know I've always liked you better than any of the
other girls, don't you? You're so sincere--so sincere and fair and
everything. You know that, don't you, Lot?"
"What's the matter," parried Lottie.
"Oh, Lot darling, Sam Butler and I--Sam--you know--Sam and I, we're----"
"Not!"
"Yes! Oh, Lottie, isn't it wonderful! This afternoon. Don't breathe it.
I'm scared to death. Will you be my bridesmaid? Lottie _dear_.
Sam goes to Camp Funston to-morrow. He's got a captaincy you know. I'm
going with him. We're to live in a shack with a tin roof and they say
it's hotter than hell down there in the summer and, oh, Lottie, I'm so
happy! We're to be married at the parsonage--Dr. Little. Mother doesn't
know a thing about it. Neither does Sam's mother. Sam's going to tell
his mother's companion after it's all over this afternoon, and then
we'll go up there. I hate to think.... Mama said she wanted to go to
California again this fall because it was going to be so uncomfortable
here this winter, and Lottie, when she said that something in me just
went kind of crazy.... Can you hear me? I don't want to talk any
louder.... I called up Sam and began to cry and we met downtown and
we decided to get married right away ... goodness knows I don't
deserve ... and oh, Lottie, I feel so _religious_! You'll come, won't
you? Won't you!"
Lottie came.
Beck had taken a room at the Blackstone Hotel and there she had packed,
written letters, dressed for her wedding. Lottie joined her there. Beck
had lost her telephone hysteria and was fairly calm and markedly pale.
She wore a taffeta frock and a small blue hat and none of her jewelry.
"I haven't even got an engagement ring," she said almost in triumph to
Lottie. "We didn't have time. Sam's going to buy it now--or after we're
married. I spent the whole morning on Michigan Avenue, shopping. Look."
"How's the Camp Funston laundress going to handle that, Beck dear?"
"I don't care. I wanted it nice. I've waited so long. But I'd have
been willing to go away with one shirtwaist and a knitted union suit,
honestly I would. It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I got
back here at twelve and had a bath and a bite of lunch and I packed and
dressed, and then, Lottie, I knelt down by the bed and prayed. I don't
know why I knelt down by the bed, exactly. I suppose because that's the
way you see them kneeling in the pictures or something. But anyway I
liked doing it. Lot, do you think I'm too pale? H'm? I put on quite a
lot of rouge and then I took it all off and now----"
A message from the hotel office announced Sam. They went down.
With Sam was a nervous and jocular best man, Ed Morrow. They drove
to the minister's study adjoining the church. It was an extremely
unbridal-looking party. Lottie, in her haste, was wearing an old
Georgette dress and a sailor hat recently rained on (no one was buying
new clothes these days) and slightly out of shape. The best man waxed
facetious. "Cheer up, Sam old boy! The worst is yet to come." He mopped
his face and winked at Lottie.
They were ushered into the minister's little study. He was not yet
there. They laughed and talked nervously. There was a warm-looking
bottle of mineral water on the window ledge; a bookcase full of well
bound books with an unread look about them; a bust of Henry Ward
Beecher; a brown leather chair scuffed, dented, and shiny with much
use; a little box of digestive tablets on the flat-topped desk. Sam,
in his smartly tailored uniform, seemed to fill the room. Beck did not
take her eyes from him. He was not at all the chubby middle-aged person
that Lottie had known. He looked a magnificently martial figure. The
fact that he was in the ordnance department did not detract from the
fit, cut, and becomingness of his uniform.
Dr. Little came in, a businesslike figure in gray tweed. A little
silence fell upon the four. The wedding service began. Dr. Little's
voice was not the exhorting voice of the preacher. Its tone, Lottie
thought, was blandly conversational. All of a sudden he was saying
"pronounce you man and wife" and Lottie was kissing the bride and the
groom and even the best man who, immediately afterward, looked startled
and then suspicious.
Beck had a calm and matronly air. It had descended upon her, complete,
like an all-enveloping robe.
And so they were married. After it was over Lottie went back to the
Red Cross shop. Three days later she had a letter from Beck. It was not
one of the remote and carefully impersonal letters of the modern bride.
It was packed with all the old-fashioned terms in which honeymoon
brides of a less sophisticated day used to voice their ecstasy.
"... Most wonderful man ... happiest girl in the world ... I thought I
knew him but I never dreamed he was so ... makes me feel so humble ...
wonder what I have ever done to deserve such a prince among...."
Lottie told her mother and Aunt Charlotte about it that evening at
dinner. It was very hot. Lottie had been ashamed of her own waspishness
and irritability before dinner. She attributed it to the weather.
Sometimes, nowadays, she wondered at her own manner. Was she growing
persnickety, she asked herself, and fault-finding and crabbed? It
seemed to her that the two old women were calmer, more tolerant, less
fault-finding than she. She was the crotchety one. It annoyed Lottie to
see Aunt Charlotte munching chocolates just before dinner. "Oh, Aunt
Charlotte, for heaven's sake! Can't you wait until after dinner? You
won't eat a thing."
"It doesn't matter if I don't, Lottie," Aunt Charlotte returned,
mildly. Aunt Charlotte, at seventy-five, and rapidly approaching
seventy-six, was now magnificently free. She defied life. What could
it do to her! Nothing that it had not already done. So she ate, slept,
talked as she pleased. A second youth seemed to have come upon her.
To-night, after Lottie's story of Beck Schaefer's marriage Mrs. Carrie
Payson had said, with apparent irrelevance, "I won't be here always,
Lottie. Neither will Aunt Charlotte." A little pause, then, "I wish you
were settled, too."
Lottie deliberately pretended to misunderstand. "Settled, mama! My
goodness I should think I'm settled enough!" She glanced about the
quiet old room. But she knew what her mother meant, and resented it.
Settled. Shelved. Her mother was thinking of Ben Gartz, Lottie knew.
Amazing things had happened to Ben Gartz in the last six months.
He had sold the bus. In its place was a long, low, smooth-running,
powerful gray car with special wheels and special tires and special
boxes and flaps and rods. Ben Gartz was transformed from a wistful,
fusty, and almost shabby middle-aged bachelor into a dapper beau in a
tailored Palm Beach suit, saw-edge sailor, and silk hose. He carried a
lemon-coloured cane. He had two rooms at an expensive Hyde Park hotel
near the lake. He had had the Paysons and the Kemps to dinner there.
There were lamps in the sitting room, and cushions, and a phonograph
with opera records. Ben put on some of these after dinner and listened,
his head on one side. He said it was the only way to live--with your
own things around you. "My books," he said, and waved a hand toward
a small sectional bookcase, in which thirty or forty volumes leaned
limply against each other. One or two had slipped down and now lay
supine on the roomy shelves. Lottie strolled over to the bookcase
and glanced at the titles. The Mystery of the Purple Shroud. One
Hundred Ways to Use the Chafing Dish. Eat and Grow Thin. Ben Gartz's
waist line had been one of the first things about him to register a
surprising change. Though his method of living had expanded his girth
had decreased. He made no secret of his method. "A Turkish bath once
a week," he said. "No sugar, no butter, no sweets or starches of any
kind. And I feel better for it. Yessir! I never felt so well in my
life. Sleep better. Walk better. Twenty-five pounds off already and
I'll do another twenty-five before I'm through. I don't even miss the
sugar in my coffee. I used to take saccharine. Not now. I don't even
miss it. Take my coffee black. Got so now I think you miss the real
flavour and spoil it using sugar and cream."
His face was a trifle jaundiced and haggard, one thought. The surprised
muscles were showing their resentment at the suddenly withdrawn
supports and cushions of fat.
Ben Gartz loved to play the host. He talked about the War, about
business, about Chicago's part in the War, about his own part in it. He
had bought bonds, sold bonds, given to this, that, the other. "Now take
these Eyetalians, for instance. How long do you suppose they'd held out
against the Austrians? Or the French, either, for that matter against
the Germans? They were just about all in, now I'm here to tell you."
His conversational facts were gleaned from the front-page headlines,
yet he expounded them with a fervour and an assurance that gave them
the effect of being inside information.
Of all his listeners Aunt Charlotte was the grimmest.
"Wasn't he interesting about the War?" Mrs. Carrie Payson had asked,
after they had left.
"About as interesting as a bill-of-lading," Aunt Charlotte had snapped.
Henry Kemp had laughed one of his hearty laughs so rare now. "What do
you know about bills-of-lading, Aunt Charlotte?"
"Not a thing, Henry. I don't even rightly know what a bill-of-lading
is. But it always sounded to me like about the dullest thing in the
world."
Ben Gartz had escorted them to the very elevator and had said, with a
final wave of the hand, just as they were descending, "Now that you've
found the way, come often."
Charley and Lottie, looking at each other, had given way completely.
Just after dinner, on the evening of Beck Schaefer's wedding day, Ben
Gartz telephoned. The telephone call had followed less than a minute
after Lottie's rebellious thoughts about him. "I hope my thinking of
him didn't do it," she said to herself as she answered the telephone.
Would she go driving? No, she didn't feel like it. Oh come on! Do you
good. We'll drop in at the Midway. There's a new revue there that's a
winner. She pleaded a headache. Then it's just what you need. Won't
take no for an answer. She went.
She wore her white wash-satin skirt and the pink sports coat and her
big hat and looked very well indeed. They drove to the Midway Gardens
in Ben's new car. Ben, parking the car, knew the auto starter. "H'are
you, Eddie." He knew the uniformed doorman. "H'are you, Jo." He knew
the head waiter. "H'are you, Al. Got a nice table for me?"
"Always find a table for you, Mr. Gartz. Yes, Mr. Gartz." Ben surveyed
the Gardens largely from the top of the terrace. They were worth
surveying. Your Chicago South Side dweller bores you with details.
"Look at that! Notice anything queer about this place?" he asks you.
You survey its chaste white beauty. "Queer? No, it's lovely----"
"Not a curved line in it!" announces the South Sider, largely. "Frank
Lloyd Wright designed it. Not a curved line in it--roof, balcony,
pillars, statues--anywhere."
Your surprised and grateful eyes confirm this boast as you glance about
at the scene before you.
Ben Gartz was fussy about his table. Near one of three dancing
platforms--but not too near. Near the music--but not too near. On the
terrace where one could see and be seen--but not too exposed to the
public gaze. At last they found it.
It was deliciously cool there in that great unroofed space. There was
even a breeze, miraculously caught within the four walls of the Garden.
They ordered iced drinks. There was a revue, between the general
dancing numbers. Ben applauded this revue vigorously. He seemed to
know a good deal about the girls who took part in it. Very young girls
they were, and exquisitely slim. Some of them had almost the angular
lines of adolescence. In one number they were supposed to represent
Light--Candle Light, Gas Light, Lamp Light, Electricity, Moonlight,
Sunlight, Starlight. Their costumes were bizarre, scanty to a degree
that would have been startling had they been less young and reticent of
flesh.
"I see you've got a couple of new ones," Ben remarked to Albert, the
head waiter, as that urbane individual passed their table.
"Yes," said Albert; and again, "Yes," in order not to seem less than
unctuous.
Lottie said to herself, "Oh, Lottie, don't be so magnificent. He isn't
so bad. He's enjoying himself, that's all. You're just a middle-aged
old gal who ought to be glad of the chance to spend a cool evening in
the Midway Garden, drinking claret lemonade. Glad of the chance."
But she wasn't.
Ben was all for dancing, of course. He had become amazingly proficient
at it, as does your plump middle-aged playboy. Lottie liked to dance,
too. She discovered that she didn't particularly like to dance with
Ben, though he was light, expert, and skillful at avoiding collisions
even on that crowded floor. Proximity proved him moist, soft, and
protuberant.
Seated at their table it was cool and almost restful. A row of slim
trees showed a fairy frieze above the tiled balcony that enclosed the
garden. The lights of the garden fell on them and gave them an unreal
quality. They seemed weird, dazzling. Lottie thought they looked like
trees in a Barrie fantasy. She opened her lips to utter this thought.
Then, "He won't know what I mean," she said to herself. Ben was eating
an ice out of a tall silver goblet. "Take a fruit ice like this," he
had explained, "there's nothing fattening in it. Now ice cream, that's
different. Not for me. Ice is all right, though. Raspberry ice."
"Those trees," said Lottie, and nodded toward them. Ben turned heavily,
a spoonful of raspberry ice poised halfway. "They're like fairy trees
in a Barrie play. Fantastic."
"Yeh," said Ben, and carried the laden spoon to his mouth. "Light's bad
for 'em, I guess, shining on 'em that way. Look how yellow the leaves
are already."
"There!" shouted Lottie, not aloud, but to her inner self. "You can't
expect me to marry a man who doesn't know what I'm talking about, can
you?"
"What are you smiling at, you little rascal!" Ben was saying. "Tell me
the joke."
"Was I smiling? I didn't know----" You little rascal! No one had ever
called Lottie a little rascal. She tried, now, to think of herself as
a little rascal and decided that the term was one that Ben had found
useful, perhaps, in conversation with the young ladies of the Light
revue. She did not resent being called a little rascal. She resented
the fact that Ben could not see the absurdity of applying the term
to a staid-appearing, conventionally-dressed, rather serious woman of
thirty-three or -four. She thought of Beck. Beck, in the old days,
would have shaken a forefinger at him and said, "Will you never grow
up, you bad boy!" Suddenly Lottie felt a little sick. "Let's go," she
said. "Do you mind? I'm--I've had a trying day."
On the way home Ben grew expansive. "Some fellas in my position would
have a shofe but I like to drive my own bus. I come home in the evening
and have my bath and my dinner and go out in the little wagon and it
rests me. Yessir! Rests me.... I'm thinking of moving north. A little
flat, maybe, and a housekeeper. A fella gets pretty sick of hotels."
"That would be nice. Everyone seems to be moving to the North Side."
"It's the place to live. The South Side is getting worse all the
time--dirt, and the I. C. smoke and all. And now that they've brought
all these niggers up from the South to work over at the Yards since the
war it isn't fit to live in, that's what. Why, look at Grand Boulevard!
Black way up to Forty-third Street. All those old houses. It's a shame!"
He was driving with one hand, expertly. The other was hung negligently
over the back of the seat. Lottie could feel it touching her shoulder
blades. It was touching them so lightly that she could not resent the
contact by moving slightly. Besides, she did not want to move. She
had a little amused curiosity about the arm. She wanted to know what
it would do next. She made up her mind that she would see the evening
through. She smiled to herself in the warm darkness. She relaxed a
little. She took off her hat and held it in her lap. The cool breeze on
her brow was like a drink of water to one thirsting.
They were driving slowly through Washington Park on the way home.
Lottie closed her eyes. How deliciously cool it was. Her bedroom at
home would be hot, she thought. It faced east, and to-night the scant
breeze was from the west. The car stopped. She opened her eyes. They
were parked by the roadside near the sunken gardens. The negligent
arm behind her suddenly tightened into a band of bone and muscle. The
loose-hung hand grasped her shoulder tight and hard. Ben Gartz was bent
over her. She was conscious of a smell of cigarettes and shaving lotion
and whiskey (he had had a highball earlier in the evening). Ben Gartz
was kissing Lottie with a good deal of vehemence and little restraint
and no finesse. It was an unexpected and open-mouthed kiss, mucous,
moist, and loathsome. She didn't enjoy it. Lottie felt besmeared,
befouled. Still, she did none of those statuesque or dramatic things
that ladies are supposed to do who have been unhandsomely kissed
against their will. For that matter, it had not been against her will.
She had not expected it, true, but she had had a mild and amused
curiosity about its possibility. She was now seized with a violent and
uncontrollable shudder. She had released herself with a push of her
strong hand against Ben's chest. Her eyes were wide and rather staring.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, hard.
"I want to go home," she said.
"Oh, say, Lottie, honestly, you're not mad! I don't know what made
me--say, on the square----"
Lottie put on her hat. "I'm not a bit angry, Ben. I just want to go
home. I'm sleepy."
But he refused to believe her, even while he shifted gears and drove
home at a sharp clip through the almost deserted park and down the
boulevard. It was almost as if he felt she should be resentful. "Say,
you must think I'm a bum, that's what. Why, Lottie, I didn't mean
anything. Why, I think you're one of the grandest girls I know. A fine
girl. There isn't a girl I respect more."
"Do you?" She said nothing more. She had nothing to more to say. She
felt calm, and almost happy. It was as though that kiss had cleansed
her, even while it soiled. She sensed that he was thinking hard. She
could almost hear his baffled mind scurrying about for words. She
sensed, too, that he had almost spoken of marriage but had cautiously
thought better of it in time.
They were at the curb outside the Prairie Avenue house. "Lottie, you're
sore; and I don't blame you. I'm dead sorry. On the square. I'm--say,
you'll prob'ly never speak to me again." He was as argumentative as
though he had trod on her toe.
She smiled as she turned at the steps. "I'm glad you kissed me, Ben. I
didn't like it. But I'm glad you kissed me."
She left him staring. She let herself into the house, ran quietly up
the stairs to the second floor. She went into the bathroom and turned
on the cold water faucet and washed her mouth inside and out with cold
water. Then with listerine. Then she saw a bottle marked peroxide and
took a mouthful. I think that if there had been a carbolic in the house
she might have taken a gargle of that, as a final cleanser, in her zeal
to be rid of the taste of the wet red kiss. She spat forcefully and
finally now, made a wry face and went into her bedroom. She took off
her clothes, came back and washed with soap and a rough cloth, brushed
her hair, put on a fresh nightgown and went to bed.
Lottie's middle-aged romance with Ben Gartz was over.