The family thought that Ben Gartz was being heavily attentive. A man
who paid court to a woman through her family was an attentive man.
But after the first few weeks following Lottie's departure it was
unmistakably plain that his attentions were concentrating on the Kemp
branch of the family rather than on the Payson. The first box of candy
sent to Charley, for example, came a week after Lottie's sailing. It
was one of those large satin, brocade, lace-and-gold affairs. You have
seen them in the two-dollar-a-pound shops and have wondered who might
be so fatuous or so rich or so much in love as to buy them. Charley,
coming from work on a cool autumn day, found a great square package
on the dressing table in her bedroom. Her letters and packages and
telephone calls always were placed there, ready for homecoming.
"Any mail?" she said, to-day. Her quick eye had seen there was none.
And yet she so wanted some--one letter in particular--that she asked,
hopefully. Mail, to Charley, meant, those days, one of those thin
envelopes with a strip pasted over one end to show where the censor
had opened it. Then she had seen the box. It was an unavoidable box
holding, as it did, five pounds of Wood's most intricate sweets.
In these self-sacrificing days candy was one of the things you had
learned to forego. Therefore, "Wood's!" exclaimed Charley, removing the
wrappers. "Who do you suppose?--Oh, my goodness! It looks like a parlor
davenport; or a dressy coffin. Why, it's from that Ben Gartz! Well!
Lotta can't say I'm not keeping the home-fires burning."
She gave the brocade box to Jeannette for her dresser and more
than half its contents to her grandmother and Aunt Charlotte, both
of whom ate sweets in appalling quantities, the flickering flame
of their bodily furnaces doubtless calling for this quick form of
fuel. She herself scarcely tasted it, thinking more of a clear skin
than a pleased palate. She meant to write Ben a note of thanks. She
even started one; addressed one of her great square stiff art-paper
envelopes in her dashing hand. But something called her away and
she never finished it. He called at the house a week later, after
dinner--just dropped in as he was driving by--and mentioned it
delicately.
"Oh, Miss Charley, I sent you a little--I wondered if you got it----"
Then she was honestly ashamed. "Oh, Mr. Gartz, what a pig you must
think me! I started a note to you. Really----" She even ran back to her
room and returned with the envelope and the sheet of paper on which she
had written his name, and the date. He said he was going to keep the
piece of paper, and tucked it into his left-hand vest pocket with a
soulful look.
The box containing his second gift made the first one seem
infinitesimal. Mrs. Kemp was the recipient. She had said,
characteristically, that she didn't mind doing without white bread,
or sugar in her coffee, or new clothes, but it was hard not being
able to have flowers. She had always had flowers in the living room
until now--a standing order at the florist's. The box held two dozen
American Beauties whose legs stuck out through a slit in the end. It
was November, and American Beauties were fifteen dollars a dozen.
There weren't enough tall vases in the house to accommodate them all.
Their scarlet heads glowed in the jade-green background of the sun
parlour and all over the living room and even spilled back into Belle
Kemp's bedroom. Charley told her father that he ought to realise the
seriousness of it. "Where's your pride and manhood, Henry Kemp! Two
dozen American Beauties! It's equivalent to jewelry."
Henry, eyeing them, rubbed a rueful hand over his chin, even while he
grinned. "Next time I wish old Ben'd send the cash."
Things had come to a bad pass with Henry Kemp. It was no longer
necessary for him to say that business was not going. Business, for
him, was gone. Importing was as dead as war and U-boats could make it.
His house, together with many less flourishing and important ones, had
closed for lack of goods. It had been wiped out so completely that
there remained of it nothing to tell the tale except the exquisite
collection of Venetian glass, and Bohemian liqueur sets, and French
enamel opera glasses and toilette table pieces, and Hungarian china
and embroidery which Belle had acquired during the years in which her
husband had dealt in these precious things. Sometimes you saw Henry
looking at them--picking up a fine old piece of French china or Italian
glass from the buffet or dresser and turning it over to scan its
familiar stamp. He knew them as an expert knows diamonds. His eye could
detect any flaw in glaze or colour.
Now, at fifty, Henry Kemp, for years a successful merchant and
importer, was looking about for an opening. He would get something.
The young men were being drawn away by the hundreds of thousands. He
had been offered a position which would require his travelling for
six months in the year. He had no illusions about it. On the road, a
travelling salesman, at fifty. It was a bitter pill for Henry Kemp. He
could not yet force himself to swallow it.
His day stretched, empty, before him, but he made himself busy. Each
morning he rose at the hour to which his business had accustomed him
for years. He bathed and shaved and dressed carefully, as usual. He
breakfasted and glanced at the paper, doing both with the little air of
hurry that had meant the car waiting outside, or the 8:45 I. C. train
to catch. For twenty-five years he had gone downtown daily at a certain
time, his face alight with the eager alert expression which meant the
anticipation of a heavy mail and a day crowded with orders. He still
followed out this programme. But the eager look was absent. His springy
step was suddenly heavy, lagging. Belle sometimes wondered where he
went--how he filled his day. He belonged to clubs--big, comfortable,
prosperous clubs housed on Michigan Boulevard. But clubs, to American
business men, meant a place for a quiet business talk at luncheon.
During the day they were, for the most part, deserted. Sometimes
Charley said, "Lunch with me, father?"
"I've got to see a man at twelve. It's a conference. I can't tell how
long it'll last."
Henry Kemp presented that most tragic of spectacles, the American
business man at leisure.
In fairness to Belle Kemp it must be said that she did not nag him,
or reproach him, or bewail her lot or mope. He would get something,
she knew. He had a reputation for business acumen; a standing in the
community; hosts of influential friends. Besides, there was money for
present needs. They had lived well, the Kemps. Henry had denied his
wife and daughter nothing. Still Henry Kemp sensed that his wife was
thinking, "Failure." Failure at fifty. She was too much her mother's
daughter to think otherwise. So he walked off, jauntily, every morning,
with a haste that deceived no one, least of all himself.
Ben Gartz got into the way of sending tickets to the Kemps. Tickets for
concerts, tickets for war benefits, for the theatre. "I wonder if you
wouldn't like to use these? I can't go and I thought----"
He heard Charley speak of a book she had tried to get, and failed.
He sent to New York for it and had it mailed to her. It was the Bab
Ballads. He did not know that she wanted them for Jesse. She and Jesse
had read them together often. Now she thought that if she could send
them to him if only to amuse him for a day, or an hour even, in the
trenches or back of the lines, it would be something. Ben Gartz had
never heard of the book but he had written down the name, carefully, in
his little leather notebook. When Charley told him that she had sent
the volume ($4.50 net) to Jesse, in France, his face wore the strangest
look.
When Mrs. Payson heard of these things, as she inevitably did, she
looked a little aggrieved. "He's been here once since Lottie left--just
once. I can't blame him. Lottie treated him like a dog. If ever there
was an attentive man. But what's he come to your house so much for?"
"Oh, he and Henry----" Belle said lamely.
Aunt Charlotte spoke up from the silence which now enveloped her more
and more. "I suppose there's nothing Henry needs just now more than
candy and roses and theatre tickets and one thing and another."
Following these attentions--rather, breaking into the midst of them as
they came, thick and fast--the Kemps had Ben Gartz in to dinner. They
had had few dinner guests of late. Belle made a very special effort
and the dinner was delicious; a thing to tempt Ben's restaurant-jaded
appetite. The meat sauce was smooth, rich, zestful; the dressing for
the salad properly piquant, but suave; the sweet just light enough to
satisfy without cloying. Ben Gartz had become a connoisseur in these
things as does your fleshly man who learns late in life of gastronomic
delights.
After dinner he and Henry talked business. "Have a cigar, Henry."
"Thanks, but I don't smoke those heavy ones any more. They don't agree
with me. Try one of these."
Ben took it, eyed it, tucked it into his vest pocket and lighted one
of his own. He rolled it between his lips. He squinted up through the
smoke.
"Well now, Kemp, you hold on for awhile longer, will you? There may be
something pretty big breaking for you."
"How do you mean, breaking for me?"
"I don't want to say, right now. But I mean--well, I mean in our
business. We knew we had a big thing but we didn't know what we really
had. Why, it's colossal. There's only me--and Beck and Diblee. Beck's
getting pretty old. He's a pioneer among the jewelry manufacturers.
Crowding seventy, Beck is. Diblee's all right but he doesn't do for the
trade. He hasn't got the trick of mixing. He wears those eyeglasses
with a black ribbon, you know, and talks about the east, where he came
from, and they get sore, the wholesalers do.... Got any capital, Henry?
Not that we need capital, y'understand. Lord no! What we need is brains
and business experience and a mixer. I've got all three but say, I
can't be everywhere."
As if by magic Henry Kemp's face filled out, became firm where it
had sagged, glowed where it had been sallow with the jaundice of
discouragement.
"Why, say Ben--look here--you don't mean--"
"I don't mean anything, Kemp. Not yet. And perhaps I oughtn't to have
said anything. Of course old Beck and Diblee've got to be considered.
But I think I could swing it--if I pushed hard enough. The business is
getting to be enormous, I'm telling you. Four million kids in service,
every one of 'em with a watch on his wrist, y'understand, from doughboy
to general; and millions and millions more to come. Why, say, before
we're through with this thing----"
He gave Henry a tip on war stocks.
"No thanks," Henry said. "I can't afford to take any chances just now."
"But this isn't a chance, you chump. Where's your nerve! Can't you
trust a fellow that's giving it to you straight!"
Henry was tempted, but privately decided against it. It wasn't fair
to Belle and Charley to take the chance, he thought. A week later Ben
telephoned him.
"Sell out on that stuff Henry--you know--that I told you about."
"I didn't buy."
"Didn't----!"
"No."
"Why you darned fool, I just cleaned up twenty-five thousand on it,
that's all. My God, why----"
Henry put it out of his mind, grimly. He told himself he had done the
right thing. Sometimes Henry Kemp thought of his insurance. He carried
a big insurance. When he died it would amount to a tidy fortune for
Belle and Charley. But it had to be kept up. It was all clear now but
it had to be kept up.... He put that thought out of his mind. An ugly
thought.
Ben was just as good a sport about small stakes as he was about big
ones. He made a bet with Charley, for example. He seemed so certainly
on the losing side that Charley said, "But I won't bet on that. I'm
sure of it. You haven't a sporting chance."
"Oh, haven't I! That's what everybody thinks before the other fellow
wins. I'm just as sure as you are. I'm so sure that I'll bet you a
pair of gloves to a set of dice. What size do you wear? Understand,
I'm only asking to observe the formalities, that's all. I'm safe." He
laughed a fat chuckling laugh and took Charley's slim strong young
fingers in his own pulpy clasp. Charley was surprised to find herself
snatching her hand away, hotly. She hadn't meant to. It was purely
involuntary. The reaction against something distasteful. She won the
bet. He sent her half a dozen pairs of finest French glacé gloves.
Charley fingered them, thoughtfully. There was nothing pleased about
her expression. She was not a fool, Charley. But she told herself that
she was; poo-pood'd the idea that was growing in her mind. But now,
steadily, when he called at the house, telephoned, wrote, sent flowers
or candy she was out; did not answer; ignored the gifts. He found out
that she and her mother had arranged to meet at a tea-room for lunch
during Charley's noon hour one day, intercepted them, carried them
off almost bodily to the Blackstone. There, in the rich splendour of
the rose-and-cream dining room looking out upon the boulevard and the
lake beyond, he was in his element. A table by the window--the centre
window. Well, Maurice, what have you got out of season, h'm? Lobster?
Japanese persimmons? Artichokes? Corn on the cob? He remembered that
Charley had once said she adored Lobster Thermidor as the Blackstone
chef prepared it. "But none of your little crab-sized lobsters now,
Maurice! This young lady may be a baby vamp but she doesn't want your
little measly baby lobster, remember. A good big one. And hot. And
plenty of sauce.... Now then, Mrs. Kemp. How about you?"
Charley ate two bites of the big succulent crustacean and left the
rest disdainfully as a reproach and a punishment for him. She talked
little, and then of Lottie. Her manner was frigid, remote, baffling. A
baby vamp--she, Charley Kemp! who loathed cheapness, and bobbed hair,
and wriggling ways, and the whole new breed of her contemporaries who
were of the hard-drinking, stairway kissing, country-club petting
class. She thought of Jesse, looked out across the broad avenue to the
great blue expanse of lake as though it were in reality the ocean that
lay between them; and left her sweet untouched on her plate.
Mrs. Kemp did not speak to Charley of Ben Gartz's insistent attentions.
Probably she did not even admit to herself the meaning of them, at
first. But there is no doubt that she began, perhaps unconsciously, a
process of slow poisoning.
"They all say this will go on for years. There won't be a young man
left in the world--nor a middle-aged man, for that matter. Nothing but
old men and children. Look at France, and Poland, and Germany! I don't
know what the women are going to do."
"Do?" queried Charley, maliciously; she knew perfectly well what her
mother meant.
"Do for husbands. Girls must marry, you know."
"I don't see the necessity," said Charley, coolly. (Charley, who
stretched out her arms in the dark.)
"Well I do. How would you like to be another Aunt Charlotte? Or a
Lottie, for that matter?"
"There are worse fates, mother dear. For that matter, I know a lot of
married women who envy me my independence. I don't know any married
women I envy."
"That's complimentary to your father, I must say."
"Now, don't be personal, mother. I'd rather have Dad for a father than
any father I've ever seen. Why, he's darling. I love the way he doesn't
get me; and his laugh; and his sweetness with you; and his fineness
and dignity; and the way he's kept his waistline; and his fondness for
the country. Oh, everything about him as a father. But as the type of
husband for me Dad lacks the light touch.... What a conversation! I'm
surprised at you, Belle Kemp!"
One day, in mid-winter, Henry Kemp came home looking more lined and
careworn than usual. It was five o'clock. His wife was in their
bedroom. He always whistled an enquiring note or two when he let
himself in at the front door. It was a little conjugal call that meant,
"Are you home?" In her babyhood days Charley always used to come
pattering and staggering down the long hall at the sound of it. But
though he caught the child up in his arms he always kissed his wife
first. Not that Belle had always been there. She was not the kind of
wife who makes a point of being home to greet her lord when he returns
weary from the chase. As often as not a concert, or matinee, or late
bridge delayed her beyond her husband's homecoming time. Then the
little questioning whistle sounded plaintively in the empty apartment,
and Henry went about his tidying up for dinner with one ear cocked for
the click of the front-door lock.
To-night he whistled as usual. You almost felt the effort he made to
pucker his lips for the sound that used to be so blithe. Belle answered
him. "Yoo-hoo!" For the first time he found himself wishing she had
been out. He came into their bedroom. A large, gracious, rose-illumined
room it was. Belle was standing before the mirror doing something
to her hair. Her arms were raised. She smiled at him in the mirror.
"You're home early."
He came over to her, put his arm about her and kissed her rather
roughly. He was still in love with his somewhat selfish wife, was Henry
Kemp. And this kiss was a strange mixture of passion, of fear, and
defiance and protest against the cruel circumstance that was lashing
him now. Here he was, the lover, the generous provider, the kind and
tolerant husband and father, suddenly transformed by a malicious force
he was powerless to combat, into a mendicant; an asker instead of a
giver; a failure who had grown used to the feel of success. So now
he looked at this still-pretty woman who was his wife, and his arm
tightened about her and he kissed her hard, as though these things held
for him some tangible assurance.
"Henry!" she shrugged him away. "Now look at my hair!" He looked at it.
He looked at its reflection in the mirror; at her face, unlined and
rosy; at his own face near hers. He was startled at the contrast, so
sallow and haggard he seemed.
He rubbed a hand over his cheek and chin. "Gosh! I look seedy."
"You need a shave," Belle said, lightly. She turned away from the
mirror. He caught her arm, faced her, his face almost distorted with
pain.
"Belle, we'll have to get out of here."
"Out of--how do you mean?"
"Our lease is up in May. We'd have to go then, anyway. But I was
talking to a fellow to-day--Leach, of the David, Anderson company.
They've made a pile in war contracts. His wife's looking for an
apartment about this size and neighborhood. They'd take it off our
hands--the lease I mean."
"Now? You mean now!"
"Yes. We could take something smaller. We--we'll have to, Belle."
She threw a terrified glance around the room. It was a glance that
encompassed everything, as though she were seeing it all for the
first time. It was the look one gives a cherished thing that is about
to be snatched away. A luxurious room with its silken bed-covers and
rosy hangings. The room of a fastidious luxury-loving woman. Its
appointments were as carefully chosen as her gowns. The beds were
rich dark walnut, magnificently marked--not at all the walnut of Mrs.
Payson's great cumbersome edifice in the old Prairie Avenue house--but
exquisite pieces of bijouterie; plump, inviting; beds such as queens
have slept in. The reading lamp on the small table between gave just
the soothing subdued glow to make one's eleven o'clock printed page a
narcotic instead of a stimulant. Beside it a little clock of finest
French enamel picked out with platinum ticked almost soundlessly.
Terror lay in her eyes as they turned from their contemplation of this
to the man who stood before her. "Oh, Henry, can't we hold out just for
awhile? This war can't last much longer. Everybody says it'll be over
soon--the spring, perhaps--" She who had just spoken to Charley of its
endlessness.
"It's no use, Belle. No one knows how long it'll last. I hate to give
it up. But we've got to, that's all. We might as well face it."
"How about Ben Gartz? He promised to take you into the business--that
wonderful business."
"He didn't promise. He sort of hinted. He didn't mean any harm. He's a
big talker, Ben."
"But he meant it. I know he did. I know he did." A sudden thought came
to her. "How long has it been since he talked to you about--since he
last mentioned it to you?"
"Oh, it's been three weeks anyway."
She calculated quickly. It was three weeks since the Blackstone
luncheon when Charley had been so rude to him. She tucked this away in
the back of her mind; fenced for time. "Couldn't we sublet? I'd even be
willing to rent it furnished, to reliable people."
"Furnished? What good would that do? Where would we live?"
She had thought of that, too. "We could go to mother's to live for
awhile. There's loads of room. We could have the whole third floor, for
that matter, until this blows over. Lots of families----"
But at that his jaws came together and the lower one jutted out a
little in the line she had seen so seldom and yet knew so well. It
meant thus far and no farther.
"No, Belle. I may be broke, but I'm not that broke--yet. I'll provide
a home for my family. Maybe it won't be quite what we're used to; but
it'll be of my own providing. When I let you go back to your mother's
to live you can know I'm licked, beaten, done. But not until then,
understand."
She understood.
"Well, dear, we'll just have to do the best we can. When do you have to
give Leach your answer?"
"Within the week, I should say. Yes."
She smiled up at him, brightly. She patted his lean cheek with her soft
cool scented hand. "Well, you never can tell. Something may happen."
She left him to shave and dress.
He thought, "What a child she is. Women are."
She thought. "He's like a child. All men are.... Well, I've got to
manage this."
There were two telephone connections in that big apartment--one in the
front hall, another in the dining room at the rear. She went down the
hall, closed the dining room door carefully, called Ben Gartz's office
number in a low tense voice. It was not yet five-thirty. He might still
be there. He must be, she told herself.
He was. His tone, when he heard her name, was rather sulky. But she had
ways. We haven't seen a thing of you. Forgotten your old friends since
you've made all that horrid money. Talking of you only yesterday. Who?
Charley. Why not come up for dinner to-night. Just a plain family meal
but there was a rather special deep dish pie.
He would come. You could hear that it was against his better judgment.
But he would come. When she had hung up the receiver she sat for a
minute, breathing fast, as if she had been running a close race. Then
she went into the kitchen and began feverish preparations. Halfway,
she stopped suddenly, went back into the dining room, picked up the
receiver and gave her own telephone number, hung up quickly, opened
the door that led from the dining room to the long hall, and let the
telephone bell ring three times before she answered it. The maid opened
the swinging door that led to the kitchen but Belle shook her head.
"Never mind. I'll answer it." She said "hello," then hung up again,
once the buzzing had ceased. Then, carefully, she carried on a brief
conversation with some one who was not there--some one who evidently
wanted to come to see them all; and wouldn't he like to run in to
dinner. She went to the hall door and called. "Henry! Oh, Henry!"
A mumble from the direction of the bathroom meant that he was
handicapped by shaving lather.
"I just wanted to tell you. That was Ben Gartz who just called up. He
wanted to come up so I asked him to dinner. Is that all right?"
"'S'all right with me."
Grapefruit. Olives. A can of mushrooms to be opened. For over half an
hour she worked furiously. At six Charley came home.
"Hello, Dad. Where's mother?" He was reading the evening paper under
the amber-silk light of the living room. Charley kissed the top of his
head, patted his shoulder once, and went back to her room. A little
subdued these days was Charley--for Charley. "Any mail? I wonder what's
the matter with Lotta. I haven't had a letter in a month."
Her bedroom was down the long hall, halfway between the living room
and dining room. Her mother was already there, waiting. "Any mail?...
How pretty you look, mother! Your cheeks are all pink." But her eyes
went past her mother to the little sheaf of envelopes that lay on her
dressing table. She went toward them, quickly. But her mother stopped
her.
"Listen, Charley. Ben Gartz is coming to dinner to-night." Charley's
eyebrows went up ever so slightly. She said nothing. "Charley, Ben
Gartz could do a great deal for your father--and for all of us--if he
wanted to."
"Doesn't he want to?"
"Well, after all, why should he? It isn't as if we were related--or as
if he were one of the family."
"Lottie, you mean?" She knew what her mother meant. And yet she wanted
to give her a chance--a chance to save herself from this final infamy.
"N-n-no." Her voice had the rising inflection. "I don't think he cares
about Lottie any more."
"Then that snatches him definitely out of the family clutches, doesn't
it? Unless Aunt Charlotte----"
"Don't be funny, Charley. He's a man to be respected. He's
good-looking, not old; more than well-to-do--rich, really."
Charley's eyes were cold and hard. And they were no longer mother and
daughter, but two women, battle-locked. "M-m-m.... A little old and fat
though, don't you think, for most purposes? And just a wee bit common?
H'm?"
"Common! Well, when it comes to being common, my dear child, I don't
think there was anything fastidious about the choice you made last
June. After all, Delicatessen Dick isn't exactly----"
"Just a minute, mother. I want to get this thing straight. I'm to marry
your chubby little friend in order to save the family fortunes--is that
it?"
"N-no. I don't mean just that. I merely----"
"What do you mean, then? I want to hear you say it."
"You could do a really big thing for your father. You must have seen
how old he's grown in the last six months. I don't see how you can
stand by and not want to help. He had a chance. Ben Gartz practically
offered to take him into the business. But you were deliberately rude
to him. No man with any pride----"
Charley began to laugh then; not prettily. "Oh, mother, you quaint old
thing!" Belle stiffened. "I don't want to insult you, don't you know,
but I can't make a thing out of what you've said except that if I
marry this chubby little ridiculous old sport he'll take Dad into the
business and we'll all live happily ever after and I'll be just like
the noble heroine who sells herself to the rich old banker to pay the
muggidge. Oh mother!" She was laughing again; and then, suddenly, she
was crying, her face distorted. She was crying terribly.
"Sh-sh-sh! Your father'll hear you! There's nothing to make a scene
about."
"No scene!" said Charley, through her tears. "If you can't cry when
your mother dies when can you cry!"
She turned away from her then. Belle Kemp looked a little frightened.
But at the door she said what she still had to say. "He's coming here
to dinner to-night."
Charley, lifting heavy arms to take off her hat, seemed not to
hear. She looked at herself in the mirror a moment--stared at the
tear-stained red-eyed girl. At what she saw she began to sob again,
weakly. Then she shook herself angrily, and pushed her hair back from
her forehead with a hand that was closed into a fist. She went into the
living room, stood before her father reading there.
"Dad."
He looked up from his paper; stiffened. "Why, Charley, what's----"
Charley almost never cried. He was as disturbed as if this had been a
man standing there before him, red-eyed and shaken.
"Listen, Dad. You know that thing Ben Gartz spoke to you about a little
while ago? The business. Taking you into it, I mean?"
"That? Yes. What of it?"
"He hasn't said anything lately, has he?"
"Well, he--he--wasn't sure, you know. I thought at the time it was a
little wild. Ben's good-hearted, but he's a gabby boy. Doesn't mean
quite all he says."
"He meant it all right, Dad. But you see he--he'd like to have me marry
him first."
He stared, half willing to laugh if she gave him any encouragement. But
she did not. His newspaper came down with a crash, then, as his fingers
crushed it and threw it to the floor. "Gartz! You marry Ben Gartz!" She
was crying again, helplessly. His two hands gripped her shoulders.
"Why, the damned old l----" he stopped himself, shaking a little.
"That's it," said Charley, and she was smiling as she sobbed. "That's
the word.... I knew I could count on you, Dad. I knew."
His arms were about her. Her face was pressed against the good rough
cloth of his coat. "Sh-sh-sh Charley. Don't let your mother hear you.
We mustn't let her know. She'd be wild. He's coming here to dinner, the
oily old fox. Gosh, Charley, are you sure you----"
"I'm sure."
"We won't say anything to mother, will we?"
"No, Dad."
"She'd be sick, that's what. Sick. We'll fix him and his business, all
right."
"Yes. Talk about Jesse. Talk about Jesse a lot. And make it plain.
About Jesse. Then see what he has to say about his business."
The doorbell sounded. Charley was out of his arms and off to her room.
Belle came swiftly down the hall and darted into her bedroom for a
hasty dab at her flushed face with the powder-pad. Henry opened the
door. Ben's voice boomed. Henry's answered with hollow geniality.
"Come in, come in! Here, let me have that. Belle'll be here in a
minute."
Belle was there becomingly flushed, cordial. Ben was pressing her
hand. "It was mighty nice of you, let me tell you, to call me----"
She was panic-stricken but Henry had not heard, apparently. He had
interrupted with a foolish remark of his own.
"It's probably the last time in this place anyway, Ben. We're giving up
this flat, you know. End of the month."
"How's that?"
"Can't afford it."
Ben pursed his lips, drummed with his fingers on the arm of the deep
comfortable chair. "Well, now, perhaps----"
Charley came in, smiling a watery smile and palpably red-eyed. Her
father caught her and hugged the slender shoulder with a paternal and
yet quizzical gesture. "Nobody's supposed to notice that Charley's been
crying a little. She didn't get a letter from her boy in France and
she doesn't feel happy about it." She looked up at him, gratefully. He
patted her shoulder, turned pridefully to Ben. "Charley and her poet
are going to be married, you know, when this war's over--if it ever
_is_ over. Look at her blush! I guess these new-fangled girls have
got some old-fashioned ways left, after all, eh, Chas?"
"Yes, Dad."