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Young People's Pride (Harper's Bazar serial)/Part 2

ANCY ELLICOTT hadn't really meant to break her engagement to Louis Crowe. Even when, after eight months of it, Louis' novel and Louis job in an advertising agency had both failed to produce the necessary funds that were to take them back to Paris for work and material—for both Louis and Nancy were artists, though not Greenwich Villagers. But her conventional mother had always distrusted Louis and Louis had seemed so unreasonable over her chance to get a job in the European office of Harper's Bazar and young people's pride in both of them had prevented any helpful sort of explanation. So Louis found himself in jail that evening for calling a St. Louis policeman a big blue boob in a moment of pique—and when he tried to explain matters to Mrs. Ellicott over the telephone next morning, that excellent lady reverted o the Primitive Female Protecting Her Young. Exit Louis, therefore, to New York, a firing of himself from his job, and a bitter decision to go to Sheol by the nearest and most gentlemanly route while Nancy stayed in St. Louis sick at heart but unwilling to be the first to make up. Meanwhile, Ted Billett, Louis' closest friend, and three-quarters in love with Elinor Piper, daughter of the great financier, was slipping into an entanglement with the lovely and mysterious Mrs. Severance whose apartment on Riverside Drive seemed a little too expensive to be accounted for by the salary she got from Mode. Louis' worry over the latter complication grew—Ted was restless and scarred by memories of France—what would happen if Mrs. Severance—?

There was very good reason indeed for Louis to worry. For that very evening, as he did his best to reduce the family conversation to monosyllables at Scarsdale a scene was going on in Mrs. Severance's expensive apartment on Riverside Drive that would have opened his eyes to much. Mrs. Severance was dining delightfully—but she was not dining with Ted—and her guest though a good deal older than herself, seemed very much at home. And meanwhile a letter from Peter Piper was on the way to Scarsdale, asking Louis down to Southampton over Labor Day for Elinor's dance—Ted was to be there, too—and the complicated net of circumstance into which the four young people had stepped so blithely was to draw dangerously close about them before the orchestra had started playing “Home, Sweet Home.” For Ted had come to the cross roads of decision, and when Elinor—but that's telling the secrets of the second instalment of this brilliant novel of modern young people before we should.

HE sky had been a blue steam all day, but at night it quieted; there were faint airs. From the window of the apartment on Riverside Drive you could see it grow gentle, fade from a strong heat of azure through gray gauze into darkness, thick-soft as a sable's fur at first, then uneasily patterned all at once with idle leopard-spottings and strokes of light. The lights fell into the river and dissolved, the dark wash took them and carried them into streaks of lesser, more fluid light. Even so, if there could have been country silence for even five minutes at a time, the running river, the hills so disturbed with light beyond, might have worn some aspect of peace. But even in the high bird's-nest of the apartment there was no real silence, only a pretending at silence, like the forced quiet of a child told to keep still in a corner—the two people dining together could talk in whispers, if they wanted, and still be heard, but always at the back of the brain of either ran a thin pulsation of mumbling sound like the buzz of a kettle-drum softly struck in a passage of music where the orchestra talks full-voiced—the night sound of the city, breathing and moving and saying words.

They must have been married rather contentedly for quite a while now, they said so little of importance at dinner and yet seemed so quietly pleased at having dinner together and so neat at understanding half sentences without asking explanations. That would have been the first conclusion of anybody who had been able to take out a wall and watch their doll-house unobserved. Besides, though the short, decided man with the grayish hair must be fifty at least, the woman who stood his own height when she rose from the table was too slimly mature for anything but the thirties. Not a highly original New York couple by any means—a prospering banker or president of a Consolidated Toothpick Company with a beautiful wife, American matron-without-children model, except for her chin which was less dimpled than cleft with decisiveness and the wholly original luster of her hair, a buried luster like the shine of “Murray's red gold” in a Border ballad. A wife rather less society-stricken than the run of such wives, since she obviously preferred hot August in a New York apartment with her husband's company to beach-picnics at Greenwich or Southampton without it. Still the apartment, though compact as an army mess-kit, was perfectly furnished, and the maid who had served the cool little dinner was an efficient effacedness of the race that housekeepers with large families and little money assert passed with the Spanish War. Money enough, and the knowledge of how to use it without blatancy or pinching—that would have been the second conclusion.

They were sitting in deep chairs in the living-room now, a tall-stemmed reading lamp glowing softly between them, hardly speaking. The tiredness that had been in the man's face like the writing in a “crossed” letter began to leave it softly. He reached over, took the woman's hand and held it—not closely or with greediness but with a firm clasp that had something weary like appeal in it and something strong like a knowledge of rest.

“Always like this, at home,” he said slowly.

“It is rather sweet.” Her voice had the gentleness of water running into water. Her eyes looked at him once and left him deliberately, but not as if they didn't care. It must have been a love-match in the beginning then—her eyes seemed so infirm.

“You'll read a little?”

“Yes.”

“Home,” he said. He seemed queerly satisfied to say the word, queerly moved as if, even after so much reality had been lived through together, he couldn't quite believe that it was reality.

“And I've been waiting for it—five days, six days, this time?”

HE must have been at the seashore after all—tan or lack of it meant little these days, especially to a woman who lived in this kind of an apartment. The third conclusion might been rather sentimental, a title out of a picture—something about “Even in the Wastes of the Giant City the Weary Heart Will Turn To—Just Home.”

A doll on a small table began to buzz mysteriously in its internals. The man released the woman's hand—both looking deeply annoyed.

“I thought we had a private number here,” said the man, the tiredness coming back into his face like scribbles on parchment.

She crossed to the telephone with a charming furtiveness—you could see she was playing they had just been found behind the piano together in a game of hide-and-seek. The doll was disemboweled of its telephone.

“No—No—Oh, very well—”

“What was it?”

She smiled,

“Is this the Eclair Picture Palace?” she mimicked.

Both seemed almost childishly relieved. So in spite of his successful-business-man mouth, he wasn't the kind that is less a husband than a telephone-receiver, especially at home. Still, she would have made a difference even to telephone-receivers, that could be felt even without the usual complement of senses.

“That was—bothersome for a minute.” His tone lent the words a quaint accent of scare.

“Oh, well if you have one at all—the way the service is now—”

“There won't be any telephones when we take our vacation together, that's settled.”

She had been kneeling, examining a bookcase for books. Now she turned with one in her hand, her hair ruddy and smooth as amber in the reflected light. “No, but telegrams. And wireless,” she whispered mockingly, the more mockingly because it so obviously made him worried as a worried boy.

She came over and stood smoothing his ear a moment, a half-unconscious customary gesture, no doubt, for he relaxed under it and the look of rest came back. Then she went to her chair, sat down and opened the book.

“No use borrowing trouble now, dear. Now listen, cigar?”

“Going.”

“Ash-tray?”

“Yes.”

“And remember not to knock it over when you get excited. Promise?”

“Um.”

“Very well.”

Mrs. Severance's even voice began to flow into the stillness.

“As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt—”

ND that's the end of the chapter,” Mrs. Severance's voice trailed off into silence. She closed the book with a soft sound. The man, whom it might be rather more convenient than otherwise to call Mr. Severance, opened his eyes. He had not been asleep, but he had found by a good deal of experience that he paid more attention to Dickens if he closed his eyes while she read.

“Thank you, dear.”

“Thank you. You know I love it. Especially Pip.”

He considered.

“There was a word one of my young men used the other day about Dickens. Gusto, I think—yes, that was it. Well, I find that, as I grow older, that seems to be the thing I value rather more than most men of my age. Gusto.” He smiled. “Though I take it more—quietly, perhaps—than I did when I was young,” he added rather quaintly.

“You are young,” said Mrs. Severance carefully.

“Not really, dear. I can give half a dozen youngsters I know four strokes in nine holes and beat them. I can handle the bank in half the time and with half the worry that some of my people take to one department. And for a little while more, Rose, I may be able to satisfy you. But,” and he passed a hand lightly over his hair, “it's gray, you know,” he ended.

“As if it mattered,” said Mrs. Severance, a little pettishly.

“It does matter, Rose.” His eyes darkened with memory—with the sort of memory that hurts more to forget than even to remember. “Do you realize that I am sixteen years older than you are?” he said a little hurriedly, as if he were trying to scribble the memory over with any kind of words.

“But, my dear,” and she smiled, “you were sixteen years older six years ago—remember? There's less real difference between us now than there was then.”

“Yes, I certainly wasn't as young in some ways—six years ago. but then nobody could be with you, for a month even, and not feel himself turn younger whether he wanted to or not.”

“So that's settled.” She was trying to carry it lightly, to take the darkness out of his eyes. “And once you've bought our steamer tickets we can leave it all behind at the wharf and by the time we land we'll be so disgracefully young that no one will recognize us—just think—we can keep going back and back till I'm putting my hair up for the first time and you're in little short trousers—and then babies, I suppose, and the other side of getting born—” but her voice, for once, turned ineffectually against his centeredness of gaze that seemed now as if it had turned back on itself for a struggling moment and regarded neither what was nor what might be, but only what was past.

“Six years ago,” he said with the same drowsy thoughtfulness. “Well, Rose, I shall always be—most grateful—for those six years.

HE started to speak, but he checked her. “I think I would be willing to make a substantial endowment to any Protestant Church that still really believed in hell,” he said, “because that was very like hell—six years ago.'

Intensity began to come into his voice like a color of darkness, though he still spoke slowly.

“You can stand nearly everything in life but being tired of yourself. And six years ago I was tired—tired to death.”

Her hand reached over and touched him medicinally.

“I suppose I had no right,” he began again and then stopped. “No, I think the strong man tires less easily but more wholly than the weak one when he does tire. And I was strong enough.

“I'd played a big game, you know. When my father died we hadn't much left but position—and that was going. I don't blame my father—he wasn't a business man—he should have been a literary critic—that little book of essays of his still sells, you know; not much, but there's a demand for a dozen copies every year and that's a good deal for an American who's been dead for thirty. Well, that's where the children get their liking for things like that—I've got it, too, a little—I could have done something there if I'd had time. But I never had time.

“I could have done it when I got out of Harvard—drifted along like half a dozen people I know, played at law, played at writing, played always and forever at being a gentleman—ended up as an officer of the Century Club with what little money I had in an annuity. But I couldn't stand the idea of just scraping along. And for nearly ten years I put those things aside.

“You know about my going West and the way I lived there. It wasn't easy when I'd been at Harvard and gone everywhere in New York and Boston—starting in so far below the bottom that you couldn't even see the bottom unless you squinted your eyes. But I never took a job with more money if I thought I could learn anything in a job with less—and every place I went I stayed until I could handle the job of the man two places ahead of me—and if I didn't get his job when I asked for it I went somewhere else. I don't think I read a book except a technical one for the first five years. And after that, when the chain-stores started going they asked me back to New York— a big offer, too—but it wasn't the kind I wanted and I threw it down. I knew just how I wanted to come back to New York and that's the way I came.

“I don't suppose my morals were too edifying those years. But they were as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go to pieces with drink—and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over women—and I kept away from that kind of woman. I could have married a dozen times if I'd wanted, but I didn't want—that old hocus-pocus of tradition was still with me, stronger than death—I thought I knew the kind of wife I wanted and she was in the East.

“Then the partnership with Jessup came and I took it. And after a year I was made. I wasn't the last of one of the penniless old families that give each other dinners once a month and pretend they're the real society because they haven't money enough to trail in the present society game; even by then I was—what did that last newspaper story say?—'a figure of nationwide importance.' Then it must be just about time, I thought. that this figure of nationwide importance began to look around a little, and married the wife he'd been waiting for, and started to pick up all the things he hadn't had for twelve years.

“Well—Mary. And I was so careful about Mary,” his lips twisted, half whimsically, half painfully. “I was so damn sure. I was so damn sure I knew everything about women.

“She had all the qualities I'd said to myself I wanted—beauty, position, breeding, a good enough mind, some common sense. She hadn't money, but there I thought I could help her—the way she ran things for her father on what they had showed what she could do with more. We weren't in love with each other—oh, dear no—but that I considered on the whole an advantage—she attracted me, and it's fair enough to say that beside most of the men she'd been seeing my combination of having been Old New York and being one of the young big coming men from the West on my own ability dazzled her rather. And anyhow I didn't want—passion—exactly. I thought it would take too much time when I was only in the middle of my game and getting as much real solid fun out of it as a kid gets out of cooking his own dinner in camp. I wanted a partner and a home and children and somebody to sit at the head of my table when I wanted to be—public—and yet somebody you could be at home with when you wanted to be at home. And I thought I had them all in Mary—I thought I was being about the most sensible man in the world.

“Well, up till after both children were born I think I tried pretty hard. I gave her all I could think of—materially at least. And then I found out in spite of myself that you can't be married to a woman—even bearably—and neither be lovers nor friends with her. And Mary and I never got beyond the social acquaintance stage.

“It wasn't all Mary's fault, either—I can see that now. A good deal was in the way she'd been brought up—they weren't modern about the blisses of ignorance in the 'nineties. But the rest of it was Mary and she couldn't have changed it any more than she could have been rude to a servant, or raised her voice more than usual when she really wanted something done.

“She'd been brought up never to be demonstrative—that was one thing. But that wasn't the main trouble—the main trouble was her most curious, most frigid self-sufficiency. Until her children came she was the most wholly self-sufficient person I've ever known. She was really only happy when she was entirely alone, always. It wasn't egotism exactly—she's always had a very well-mannered conviction of her own relative unimportance—it was just that in spite of the fact that she seemed so perfectly healthy and calm and composed whenever she was with other people they'd be sure to hurt her a little somehow or other without meaning to—the only person she could genuinely depend on never to hurt her was herself.

“As for men, she'd formed one crystallized opinion of men in the first weeks of our marriage and she's kept it ever since. She looks at them as if they were a kind of tame wolf about the house—something you must never show you're afraid of, something you must feed and look after and be publicly amiable to because you must be just—but something you never, never would bring in the house of your own accord or touch without feeling the you, that you had to preserve so jealously against all the things that could possibly hurt it, start to shrink and be pained inside.

“Then the children came—she did and does love them. She lives for them. But they're part of herself, too, you see, an essential part, and as she can't give herself to anybody but herself she can't give them to me even in the easiest kind of partnership, really. You don't leave small children alone with even the tamest kind of wolf—and she's the kind of woman whose children are always small to her. And she's their mother—and so she has her way.

“That's the way it got worse. Right up to six years ago.

“I'd done my job—I was president of the Commercial. And I'd made my money, and the money still kept coming in almost as if it didn't make any difference what I did about it. I'd won my game. And what was there in it for me?

I didn't have a home—I had a place where I ate and slept. I didn't have a wife—I had an acquaintance who kept house for me. I had children—at school and college. I didn't have real hobbies—I hadn't had time for them. And I was forty-nine. All I could do was go on making money till I died.

“Well, you changed that,” his voice shook a little.

“You came and I saw and knew and took you. And I'm not sorry. Because you've made me alive again. And I'm going to be alive now till I die.

“Funny—I was never so anxious about anything happening as I have been about—our approaching mutual disappearance. Especially the last six months when I've been planning. But now that's settled.

“Mary will have more than enough, and the children are grown, They won't know—I still have brains enough to settle that and money will do nearly anything. It'll be a nine days' wonder. 'Sudden Disappearance of Prominent Financier—Foul Play Suspected,' and that'll be all.

“As for the Commercial—I haven't come to my age without finding out that nobody in the world is indispensable. If a taxi ran over me to-morrow, they'd have to do without me—and Harris and the young men can handle things.

“But you know where there'll be an elderly gentleman retired from business with a country house and a garden where he can putter around in all his worst clothes. And a wife that reads Dickens to him in the  evening—oh, yes, Rose, we'll take Dickens along. And he'll be pretty contented as things go—that retired old gentleman.”

The darkness had passed from his eyes—he was smiling now.

“Be nice—eh, Rose?”

He took her hand—the warm touch was still strong, still reassuring. Only the eyes that he was not looking at now seemed singularly unsure, as if they had seen something they had pondered over lightly as a mere possibility, years ago, take on a sudden impatient body and demand to be heard.

She let her hand lie lightly in his for a moment. Then she rose.

“Half-past twelve,” she said a little stiffly. “Time for two such genuine antiques as we are to think of being put away in our cases for the night.”

ANE ELLEN swayed back and forth in the porch hammock, hugging herself with fat arms. All her dolls lay spread out wretchedly on the floor beneath her, she had stripped them of every rag and they had the dejected appearance of victims ready for sacrifice to Baal. “The Choolies are mad!” she sang to herself. “The Choolies are mad!”

It had been a perfectly sensible idea to try and water the flowers on the parlor carpet with her doll's watering-pot—those flowers hadn't had any water for an awful long time. But Mother had punished her in the Third Degree, which was by hair-brush, and Aunt Elsie had taken the watering-pot away, and Rosalind and Dickie had put on such offensively virtuous expressions as soon as they heard her being punished that she was mad at them all. And not ordinarily mad—not mad just by herself—the Choolies were divinely incensed as well.

“The Choolies are mad!” she hummed again like a battle-cry, “Choolies are dolls and all the Choolies are mad!”

The Choolies were only mad on rare occasions. It took something genuinely out of the ordinary to turn an inoffensive pink celluloid doll with one of its legs off into an angry Choolie. But when they were mad the family had discovered by painful experience the only thing to do was to leave Jane Ellen quite entirely alone.

“The Choolies are mad, mad, mad!” she chanted and chanted, her plump legs swinging, her mouth set like a prophet's calling down lightnings on Babylon the splendid.

Then she stopped swinging. Somebody was coming up the path—any of the people she was mad at?—no—only Uncle Louis. Were the Choolies mad at Uncle Louis? She considered a moment.

“Hello, Jane Ellen, how goes it?”

The small mouth was full of rebellion.

“Um mad!

“Oh—sorry. What a about?”

Defiantly:

“Um mad. And the Choolies are mad—they're mad—they're mad—”

Louis looked at her a moment, but was too wise to smile.

“They aren't mad at you, but they're mad at Motha and Aunt Elsie and Ro and Dickie and, oh—evvabody!” Jane Ellen stated graciously.

“Well, as long as they aren't mad at me— Any letters for me, Jane Ellen?”

“Yash.”

Louis found them on the desk, looked them over, once, twice. A letter from Peter Piper. Two advertisements, A letter with a French stamp. Nothing from Nancy.

Louis went out on the porch again to read his letters, to the accompaniment of Jane Ellen's untirable chant. “The Choolies are mad,” buzzed in his ears, “The Choolies, the Choolies are mad.” For a moment Louis saw the Choolies, they were all women like Mrs. Ellicott, but they stood up in front of him taller than the sky and one of them had hidden Nancy away in her black silk pocket—put her somewhere where Louis never would see her again.

“Louis, you look at me sternaly—don't look at me so sternaly, Louis—the Choolies aren't mad at you—” said Jane Ellen anxiously. “Fy do you look at me so sternaly?”

Louis grinned his best at her. “Sorry, Jane Ellen. But my girl's chucked me and I've chucked my job—and consequently all my Choolies are mad—”

HAT night was distinguished by four uneasy meals in different localities. The first was Louis' and he ate it as if he were consuming sawdust while the Crowes talked all around him in the suppressed voices of people watching a military funeral pass to its muffled drums. Mrs. Crowe was too wise to try and comfort him in public except by silence, and even Dickie was still too surprised at Louis' peevish “Oh, get out, kid,” when he tried to drag him into their usual evening boxing-match, to do anything but confide despondently to his mother that he didn't see why Louis had to act so queer about any girl.

The second meal was infinitely gayer on the surface, though a certain kind of strainedness, a little like the strainedness in the pauses of a perfectly friendly football game when both sides are too evenly matched to score, ran through it. Still, whatever strainedness there was could hardly have been Mrs. Severance's fault.

The impeccable Elizabeth showed no surprise at being told she could have the day and needn't be back till breakfast to-morrow. She might have thought that there seemed to be a good deal of rather perishable food in the ice-box to be wasted, if Mrs. Severance were going to have dinner out. But Elizabeth had always been one of the rare people who took pride in “knowing when they were suited,” and the apartment on Riverside Drive had suited her perfectly for four years. She was also a great deal too clever to abstract any of those fragile viands to take to her widowed sister on Long Island—Mrs. Severance was so good at finding uses for all sorts of odd things—Elizabeth felt sure she would find some use or other for that, too.

Ted certainly found a good deal of use for some of it, thought Mrs. Severance whimsically. It had hardly been a Paolo and Francesca diner-a-deux—both had been much too frankly hungry when they came to it and Ted's most romantic remarks so far had been devoted to a vivid precipitation of Mrs. Severance's housekeeping. But all men are very much like hungry little boys every so often, Mrs. Severance reflected. Ted really began to wonder around nine thirty. At first there had been only coming in and finding Rose just through setting the table, and then they had been too busy with dinner and their usual fence of talk to allow for any unfortunate calculations as to how Mrs. Severance could do it on her salary. But what a perfect little apartment—and even supposing all the furniture and so forth was family inheritances, and they fitted each other much to smoothly for that, the mere upkeep of the place must run a good deal beyond any Mode salary. Mr. Severance? Ted wasn't sure. Oh, well, he was too comfortable at the moment to look gift horses of any description too sternly in the mouth.

Rose was beautiful—it was Ted and Rose by now. He would like to see some one paint her sometime as Summer, drowsy and golden, passing through fields of August, holding close to her rich warm body the tall sheaves of her golden fruitful corn. And again the firelight crept close to him, and under its touch all his senses stirred like leaves in light wind, glad to be hurt with firelight and then left soothed and heavy and warm.

NLY now he had a charm against what the firelight meant—what it had been meaning more and more these last few weeks with Rose Severance. It was not a very powerful-looking charm—a dozen lines of a letter from Elinor Piper asking him to come to Southampton, but it began “Dear Ted” and ended “Elinor” and he thought it would serve.

That ought to be enough—that small thing only magical from what you made it mean against what it really was—that wish that nobody could even nickname hope—to keep you cool against the waves of firelight that rose over you like the scent of a harvest meadow. It was, almost.

Rose had been telling him how unhappy she was all evening. Not whiningly—and not, as he remembered later, with any specific details—but in a way that made him feel as if he, as part of the world that had hurt her, was partly responsible. And to want exceedingly to help. And then the only way he could think of helping was to put himself like kindling into the firelight, and he mustn't do that. “Elinor,” he said under his breath like an exorcism, but Rose was very breathing and good to look at and in the next chair.

His fingers took a long time getting his watch.

“I've got to go, Rose, really.”

“Must you? What's the time—eleven?—why heavens, I've kept you here ages, haven't I, and done nothing but moan about my troubles all the time.”

“You know I liked it.” Ted's voice was curiously, boyishly honest in a way he hated but a way that was one of Rose's reasons why he was here with her.

“Well, come again,” she said frankly. “It was fun. I loved it.”

“I will—Lord knows I thank you enough—after 252A Madison Avenue it was simply perfect. And Rose—”

“Well?”

“I'm awful damn sorry. I wish I could help.”

He thought she was going to laugh. Instead she turned perfectly grave.

“I wish you could, Ted.”

They shook hands—it seemed to Ted with a good deal of effort to do only that. Then they stood looking at each other.

There was so little between them—only a charm that nobody could say was even partly real—but somewhere in Ted's brain it said “Elinor” and he managed to shake hands again and get out of the door.

Mrs. Severance waited several minutes, listening, a faint smile curling her mouth with intentness and satisfaction. No, this time he wouldn't come back—nor next time, maybe—but there would be other times—

Then she went into the pantry and started heating water for the dishes that she had explained reassuringly to Ted they were leaving for Elizabeth. There was no need at all of Elizabeth's knowing any more than was absolutely necessary.

R. Severance—the courtesy title at least is due him—seems to be a man with quite a number of costly possessions. At least here he is with another house, a dinner-table, servants, guests, another Mrs. Severance or somebody who seems to fill her place very adequately at the opposite end of the table, all as if Rose and the Riverside Drive apartment and reading Dickens aloud were only parts of a doll-house kept in one locked drawer of his desk.

The dinner is flawless, the guests importantly jeweled or stomached, depending on their sex, Mrs. Severance an admirable hostess—and yet in spite of it all, Mr. Severance does not seem to be enjoying himself as he should. But this may be due to a sort of minstrel give-and-take of dialogue that keeps going on between what he says for publication and what he thinks.

“Well, Frazee, I'll be ready to go into that loan matter with you inside of a month,” says his voice, and his mind, “Frazee, you slippery old burglar, it won't be a month before you'll be spreading the news that my disappearance means suicide and that the Commercial is rotten, lock, stock and barrel.”

“Yes, dear,” in answer to a relayed query from the other Mrs, Severance. “The children took the small car to the dance.”

“And, Mary, if they'd ever been our children instead of your keeping them always yours, there wouldn't be that little surprise in store for you that I've arranged.”

“Cigar, Winthrop?

“Better take two, my friend—they won't be as good after Mary has charge of that end of the house.”

So it goes—until Mr. Severance has dined very well indeed. And yet Winthrop, chatting with Frazee, just before they go out of the door, finds it necessary to whisper to him for some reason—half a dozen words under cover of a discussion of what the Shipping Board's new move will mean to the mercantile marine. “I told you so, George. See his hands? The old boy's failing.”

HE fourth meal is Nancy's and it doesn't seem very happy. Finally it is over and Mr. Ellicott has rustled himself away from intrusion behind the evening paper.

“Nobody—phoned to-day—did they, mother?”

“No, dear.” The voice is not as easy as it might be, but Nancy does not notice.

“Oh.”

Nor does Nancy notice how hurriedly her mother's next question comes.

“Did you see Mrs. Winters, darling?”

“Oh yes—I saw her.”

“And you're going on to New York?”

“Yes—next week, I think.”

“With her. And going to stay with her?”

“I suppose so.”

Mrs. Ellicott sighs relievedly.

“That's so nice.”

Nancy will be safe now—as safe as if she were under an anesthetic. Mrs, Winters will take care of that. She must have a little talk with dear Isabella Winters.

But that night Nancy is alone in her room—doing up her engagement ring and Louis' letters in a wobbly package. She is not quite just, though; she keeps one letter—the first.

ARGARET Crowe, who, having just come to her seventeenth birthday in this present day and generation, felt it her official family duty to season the general conversation with an appropriate pepper of heartlessness, had really put it very well. She had said that while she didn't suppose one house-party over Labor Day would more than partially rivet a broken heart, it honestly was a relief for everybody else to get Louis out of the house for a while and mother needn't look at her that way because she was as sorry as any of the rest of them for poor old Louis, but when people went about like walking cadavers and nearly bit you every time you mentioned anything that had to do with marriage, it was time they went somewhere else for a while and stayed there till they got over it.

And Mrs. Crowe, though dutifully rebuking her for her flippant treatment of a brother's pain, agreed with the sense of her remarks if not with the wording. It had taken a good deal of quiet obstinacy on the part of the whole family to get Louis to accept Peter Piper's invitation—Mrs. Crowe, who was understanding, knew at what cost—the cost of a man who has lost a hand's first appearance in company with the stump unbandaged—but anything would be better than the mopey Louis of the last two weeks and a half, and Mrs. Crowe had been taught by a good deal of living the aseptic powers of having to go through the motions of ordinary life in front of a casual audience, even when it seemed that those motions were no longer of any account. So Louis took clean flannels and a bitter mind to Southampton on the last day of August, and, as soon as he got off the  train, was swung into a Virginia reel of consecutive amusements that, fortunately, allowed him little time to think.

When he did, it was only to wonder rather frigidly if this fellow with glasses who played tennis and danced and swam and watched and commented athletically on the Davis Cup finals, sitting between Elinor Piper and Juliet Bellamy whom he had taken to dances off and on ever since he had had his first pair of pumps, could really be he. The two people didn't feel in the least the same.

The two Mr. Crowes, he thought. “Mr. Louis Crowe—meet Mr. Louis Crowe. On our right, ladies and gentlemen, we have one of the country's greatest curiosities—a young gentleman who insists upon going on existing when there is nothing at all that makes his existence useful or interesting or proud. A very realistic wax figure that will toddle, talk small talk and play almost any sort of game until you might easily believe it to be genuinely alive. Mr. Louis Crowe.

The house-party was to last a week, except for Ted Billett who would have to go back after Labor Day—and before eight hours of it were over, Louis was watching Ted with grandmotherly interest, a little mordant jealousy, and humor, that, at times, verged toward the hysterical. Nancy—and especially the loss of her—had made him as sensitive as a skinless man to the winds and vagaries of other young people in love—and while Ted could look at and talk with Elinor Piper and think himself as safe as a turtle under its shell from the observations and discoveries of the rest of the party, he could no more hide himself or his intentions from Louis' painful scrutiny than he could have hid the fact that he had suddenly turned bright green. So Louis, a little with the sense of his own extreme generosity, but sincerely enough in the main, began to play kind shepherd, confidant, referee and second-between-the-rounds to Ted's as yet quite unexpressed strivings—and since most of him was only too willing to busy itself with anything but reminiscences of Nancy, he began to congratulate himself shortly that under his entirely unacknowledged guidance things really seemed to be getting along very well.

ND here, too, his streak of ineradicable humor—that bright plaything made out of knives that is so fine to juggle with light-handedly until the hand meets it in its descent a fraction of a second too soon came often and singularly to his aid. He could see himself in a property white beard stretching feeble hands in blessing over a kneeling and respectful Elinor and Ted. “Bless you, my dear, dear children—for though my own happiness has gone with yesteryear, at least I have made you—find each other—and perhaps, when you sit at evening among the happy shouts of your posterity” but here Louis broke off into a snort of laughter. That was really starting to carry matters along a little too fast.

Of course, Ted had confided nothing formally as yet—but then, thought Louis sourly out of his own experience, he wouldn't; that was the way you always felt; and Ted had never been a person of easy confidences. The most he had done had been to take Louis grimly aside from the dance they had gone to last night and explain in one ferocious and muffled sentence, delivered half at Louis and half at a large tree, that if Hinky Selvage didn't stop dancing with Elinor that way he, Ted, would carry him unobtrusively behind a bush and force him to swallow most of his own front teeth. And again Louis, looking back as a man might to the feverish details of a major operation, realized with cynic mirth that that was a very favorable symptom indeed. Oh, everything was going along simply finely for Ted, if the poor fool only knew it. But that he would no more believe, of course, than you would a dentist who told you he wasn't going to hurt. People in love were poor fools—damn fools—unutterably lucky, unutterably perfect fools.

Ted and Louis must have one talk, though, before it all happened beyond redemption, and Ted started wearing that beautiful anesthetized smile and began to concoct small kindly fatal conspiracies with Elinor about Louis and some nice girl. They hadn't had a real chance to talk since Louis came back from St. Louis, and shortly—oh, very shortly indeed by the way things looked—the only thing they would be able to talk about would be Elinor and how wonderful she and requited love and young happy marriage were—and however glad Louis might be for Ted and his luck he really wouldn't be able to stand that, under the present circumstances, for very long at a time. Ted would be gone into fortune—into a fortune that Louis would be the last person on earth to grudge him—but that meant the end of eight years of fighting, mockery, and friendship together as surely as if those years were marbles and Elinor were dropping them down a well. They could pick it up later—after Ted had been married a year say—but it would have changed then, it wouldn't be the same.

Louis smiled rather wryly. He wondered if that was at all like what Ted might have thought when he and Nancy—but that wasn't comparable in the least. But Nancy and he were different. Nancy—and with that, the pain came so dazzlingly for a minute that Louis had to shut his eyes to bear it—and something that wasn't just stupidly rude had to be said to Juliet Bellamy in answer to her loud clear question as to whether he was falling asleep.

LL up to and through Labor Day Louis bluffed and maneuvered like the head of a small but vicious Balkan State in an International Congress for Ted and Elinor and toward tea-time decided sardonically that it was quite time his adopted infants took any further responsibilities off his shoulders. There was no use delaying conclusions any longer—Louis felt as he looked at his victims like a workmanlike god who simply must finish the rough draft of the particular world he is moiling with before sunset in spite of any or all rebellious or slipshod qualities in its clay. There would be a dance that evening. There would be, Louis thought with some proprietary pride, a large and sentimental moon. A few craftily casual words with Elinor before dinner—a real talk with Ted in one of the intermissions of the dance—a watch-dog efficiency in guarding the two from intrusion while they got the business over with neatly in any one of several very suitable spots that Louis had picked out already in his mind's eye. And then, having thoroughly settled Ted for the rest of his years in such a solid and satisfactory way—perhaps the queer gods that had everyone in charge, in spite of their fatal leaning toward practical joking where the literary were concerned, might find enough applause in their little tin hearts for Louis' acquired and vicarious merit to give him in some strange and painful way another chance to be alive again and not merely the present wandering specter-of-body that people who knew nothing about it seemed to take so unreasonably for Louis Crowe.

So he laid his snares, feeling quite like Nimrod the mighty, though outwardly he was only kneeling on the Piper porch, waiting for the dice to come round to him in a vociferous game of craps that Juliet had organized—he seldom shot without winning now, he noticed with superstitious awe. And tea passed to a sound of muffled crumpets, and every one went up to dress for dinner.

RS. Winters' little apartment is on West Seventy-ninth Street—she heads letters from it playfully “The Hen Coop” for there is almost always some member of her own sex doing time with the generous Mrs. Winters. Mrs. Winters is quite celebrated in St. Louis for her personally-conducted tours of New York with stout Middle-Western matrons or spectacled schoolgirls east for visits and clothes—Mrs. Winters has the perfectly varnished manners, the lust for retailing unimportant statistics and the supercilious fixed smile of a professional guide. Mrs. Winters' little apartment, that all the friends who come to her to be fed and bedded and patronized tell her is so charmingly New Yorky because of the dear little kitchenette with the asthmatic gas-plates, the imitation English plate-rail around the dining-room wall, the bookcase with real books—a countable number of them—and on top of it the genuine signed photograph of Caruso for which Mrs. Winters paid the sum she always makes you guess about at a charity bazaar.

Mrs. Winters herself—the Mrs. Winters who is so interested in young people as long as they will do exactly what she wants them to—every inch of her, from her waved white hair to the black jet spangles on her dinner gown or the notes of her “cultivated” voice, as frosted and correct artificial as a piece of glacé fruit. And with her, Nancy, dressed for dinner too, because Mrs. Winters feels it to be one's duty to oneself to dress for dinner always, no matter how much one's guests may wish to relax—Nancy as much out of place in the apartment whose very cushion seem to smell of that modern old-maidishness that takes itself for superior feminist virtue as a crocus would be in an exhibition of wool flowers—a Nancy who doesn't talk much and has faint blue stains under her eyes.

“So everything went very satisfactorily indeed to-day, dear Nancy?”

Mrs. Winters' voice implies the uselessness of the question. Nancy is staying with Mrs. Winters—it would be very strange indeed if even the least important accompaniments of such a visit were not of the most satisfactory kind.

“Yes, Mrs. Winters. Nothing particularly happened, that is—but they like my work.”

“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Winters croons at her; she is being motherly. The effect produced is rather that of a sudden assumption of life and vicarious motherhood on the part of a small, brightly-painted porcelain hen.

“Then they will be sending you over shortly, no doubt? Across the wide, wide sea—” adds Mrs. Winters archly, but Nancy is too tired to respond to the fancy.

“I suppose they will when they get ready,” she answers briefly and returns to her chicken croquette with the thought that in its sleekness, genteelness, crumblingness, and generally unnourishing qualities it is rather like Mrs. Winters. An immense desire, after two weeks of Mrs. Winters' mental and physical cuisine, for something as hearty and gross as the mere sight of a double planked steak possesses her achingly—but Mrs. Winters was told once that she “ate like a bird.”

“Well, in that case, dear Nancy, you certainly must not leave New York indefinitely without making the most of your opportunities,” Mrs. Winters' tones are full of genteel decision. “I have made out a little list, dear Nancy, of some things which I thought, in my funny old way, might possibly be worth your while. We will talk it over after dinner, if you like—”

“Thank you so much, dear Mrs. Winters,” says Nancy with dutiful hopelessness. She is only too well acquainted with Mrs. Winters' little lists.

“As an artist, as an artist, dear Nancy, especially,” Mrs. Winters breathes somewhat heavily, “Things That Should Interest You. Nothing Bizarre, you understand, Nothing Merely Freakish—but some of the Things in New York that I, Personally, have found Worth While.”

HE Things that Mrs. Winters Has Found Personally Worth While include a great many public monuments. She will give Nancy a similar list of Things Worth While in Paris, too, before Nancy sails—and Nancy smiles acceptably as each one of them is mentioned.

Only Mrs. Winters cannot see what Nancy is thinking—for if she could she might become startlingly human at once, as even the most perfectly poised of females is apt to do when she finds a rat in the middle of her neat white bed. For Nancy is thinking quite freely of various quaint and everlasting places of torment that might very well be devised for Mrs. Winters—and of the naked fact that once arrived in Paris it will matter very little to anybody what becomes of her and least of all to herself—and that Mrs. Winters doesn't know that she saw a chance mention of Mr. Louis Crowe, the author of “Dancer's Holiday,” to-day in the Bookman and that she cut it out because it had Louis' name in it and that it is now in the smallest pocket of her bag with his creased and recreased first letter and the lucky piece she had from her nicest uncle and a little dim photograph of Mr. Ellicott and half a dozen other small precious childish things.

HE dance is at the Pipers' this time—the last Piper dance of the Southampton season and the biggest—other people may give dances after it but everybody who knows will only think of them as relatively pleasant or useless addenda. The last Piper dance has been the official period to the Southampton summer ever since Elinor's début—and this time the period is sure to be bigger and rounder than ever, since it closes the most successful season Southampton has ever had.

Nothing very original about its being a masquerade, from Mr. Piper a courteously gray-haired mandarin in jade-green robes beside Mrs. Piper—lovely Mary Embree that was—in the silks of a Chinese empress, heavy and shining and crusted as the wings of a jeweler's butterfly, her reticent eye watching the bright broken patterns of the dancing as impassively as if she were viewing men being tortured or invested with honor from the Dragon Throne, to Louis, a diffident Pierrot who has discovered no even bearably comfortable way of combining spectacles and a mask, and Peter who is gradually turning purple under the fur of a dancing bear. Nothing much out of the ordinary in the tunes and the three orchestras and the fact that a dozen gentlemen dressed as the Devil are finding their tails very inconvenient as regards the shimmy, and a dozen Joan of Arcs are eying each other with looks of dumb hatred whenever they pass. Nothing singular about the light heart throb of the music, the smell of powder and scent and heat and flowers, the whole loose drifting garland of the dancers, blowing over and around the floor in the idle designs of sand floating like scraps of colored paper through a smooth wind heavy with music as the hours run away like light water through the fingers. But outside the house the Italian gardens are open, little lanterns spot them like elf-lights, shining on hedge-green, pale marble; the night is pallid with near and crowded stars, the air warm as summer water, sweet as dear youth. The unmasking is to take place at midnight and it is past eleven when Louis drops back into the stag line after being stuck for a dance and a half with a leaden-footed human flower-basket who devoted the entire time to nervous giggles and the single coy statement that she just knew he never could guess who she was but she recognized him perfectly. He starts looking around for Ted. There he is, scanning the clown's parade with the eyes of an anxious hawk, disgruntled nervousness plain in every line of his body. Then Louis remembers that he saw a slim Chinese girl in loose blue silks go off the floor ten minutes or so ago with a tall musketeer. He goes over and touches Ted on a parti-colored arm—the latter is dressed as a red and gilt harlequin—and feels the muscle he touches twitch under his hand.

“Cigaret? It's getting hotter than cotton in here—they'll have to open more windows—”

“What?” Then recognizing voice and glasses, “Oh, yeah—guess so—awful mob isn't it?” and they thread their way out into the cool.

They wander down from the porch and into the gardens, past benches where the talk that is going on seems to be chiefly in throaty undertones and halts nervously as their steps crunch past.

“This side of Paradise next stop!” says Louis amusedly, then a little louder, “Amusez-vous bien, mes enfants,” at a small and carefully modulated shriek that comes from the other side of the low hedge. “The night's still young. But Good Lord, isn't there any place in the whole works where two respectable people can sit without feeling like chaperons?”

They find one finally—it is at the far end of the gardens—a seat the only reason for whose obvious desertion seems to be, comments Louis, that some untactful person has strung a dim but still perfectly visible lantern directly above it—and relapse upon it silently. It is not until the first cigarets of both are little red dying stars on the grass beside them that either really starts to talk.

“Cool,” says Louis, stretching his arms. The night lies over them light as spray—a great swimming bath and quietness of soft black, hushed silver—above them the whole radiant helmet of heaven is white as milk with its stars. From the house they have left, glowing yellow in all its windows, unreal against the night as if it were only a huge flat toy made out of paper with a candle burning behind it, comes music, blurred but insistent, faint as if heard over water, dull and throbbing like horse-hoofs muffled with leather treading a lonely road.

“Um. Good party.”

“Real Piper party, Ted. And, speaking of Pipers, friend Peter certainly seems to be enjoying himself—”

“Really?”

“Third bench on the left as we came down. Never go to a costume-party dressed as a dancing bear if you want to get any quiet work in on the side. Rule One of Crowe's Social Code for Our Own First Families.”

Ted chuckles uneasily and there 1s silence for another while as they smoke. Both are in very real need of talking each other but each must feel his way a little carefully because they are friends. Then:

“I,” says Ted and,

“You,” says Louis, simultaneously. Both laugh and the little tension that has grown up between them snaps at once.

“I suppose you know that Nancy's and my engagement went bust about three weeks ago,” begins Louis with elaborate calm, his eyes fixed on his shoes.

Ted clears his throat.

“Didn't know. Afraid it was something like that, though—way you were looking,” he says, putting his words one after the other, as slowly as if he were building with children's blocks—theirs has never been a friendship of easy emotion. “What was it? Don't tell me unless you want to, of course—you know—"

“Want to, rather.” Ted knows that he is smiling, and how, though he is not looking at his face. “After all—old friends, all that. My dear old college chum,” but the mockery breaks down. “My fault, I guess,” he says in a voice like metal.

“It was, Ted. Acted like a fool. And then, this waiting business—not much use going over that, now. But it's broken. Got my—property—such as it was, all back in a neat little parcel two weeks ago. That's why I quit friend Vanamee—you ought to have known from that.”

“Did, I suppose, only I hoped it wasn't. I'm damn sorry, Louis.”

“Thanks, Ted.”

HEY shake hands, but not theatrically.

“Oh well—oh hell—oh dammit, you know how blasted sorry I am. That's all I can say, I guess—”

“Well, so am I. And it was my fault, chiefly. And that's all I can say.”

“Look here, though.” Ted's voice is doing its best to be logical in spite of the fact that two things, the fact that he unutterably sorry for Louis and the fact that he mustn't show it in silly ways, are fighting in him like wrestlers. “Are you sure it's as bad as all that? I mean girls—” Ted flounders hopelessly between his eagerness to help and his knowledge that it will take ungodly tact. “I mean, Nancy's different all right—but they change their minds—and then they come around—and—”

Louis spreads out his hands. It is somehow queerly comforting not to let himself be comforted in any degree.

“What's the use? Tried to explain—got her mother—Nancy was out but she certainly left a message—easier if we never saw each other again—well—then she sent back everything—she knew I'd try to phone her—tried to explain—never a word since then except my name and address on the package—oh, it's over, Ted. Feenee. But it's pretty well smashed me. For the present, at least.”

“But if you started it,” Ted says stubbornly.

“Oh, I did, of course—gentlemanly supposition anyhow—that's why—don't you see?”

“Can't say I do exactly.”

“Well?”

“Well?”

“We're both of us too proud, Ted. And too poor. And starting again—can't you—visualize—it wouldn't be the way it was—only both of us thinking about that all the time—and still we couldn't get married. I've got less right than ever, now—oh, but how could we after what we've said—" and this time his voice has lost all the attitudes of youth, it is singularly older and seems to come from the center of a place full of pain.

“I wish I could help, though, Caw. You know,” says Ted. The nickname is a discarded one from Freshman year and the time when neither had quite grown up into the full Anglo-Saxon tradition of trying to conceal any genuine partiality for one's particular friends, as if it were a peculiarly sentimental species of crime.

“Wish you could.” Then later, “Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

OTH smoke and are silent for a time, remembering small things out of the last eight years.

“But what are you going to do, Louis, now you've kissed the great god Advertising a fond good-by?”

Louis stirs uneasily.

“Dunno—exactly. I told you about those two short stories Easten wanted me to take out of my novel? Well, I've done it and sent 'em in—and he'll buy 'em all right.”

“That's fine!”

“It's a little money, anyhow. And then—remember Dick Lamoureux?”

"Yes."

“Got a letter from him right after—I came back from St. Louis. Well, he's got a big job with the American Express in Paris—European Advertising Manager or something like that—he's been crazy to have either of us come over ever since that idea of the three of us getting an apartment on the Rive Gauche fell through. Well, he says, if I can come over, he'll get me some sort of a job—not much to go on at first, but they want people who are willing to stay—enough to live on anyway—I want to get out of the country, Ted.”

“Should think you. Good Lord—Paris! Why, you lucky, lucky Indian!” says Ted affectionately. “When'll you leave?”

“Don't know. He said cable him if I really decided—think I will They need men and I can get a fair enough letter from Vanamee. I've been thinking it over ever since the letter came—wondering if I'd take it. Think I will now. Well.”

“Well, I wish I was going along, Caw.”

And this time Louis is really able to smile.

“No, you don't.”

Oh, well—but, honestly—well, no I suppose I don't. And I suppose that's something you know all about, too, you—private detective!”

“Private detective! Why, you poor ass if you haven't noticed how I've been playing godmother to you all the way through this house-party”

“I have. I suppose I'd thank anybody else. Coming from you, though, I can only say that such was both my hope and my expectation.”

Oh, you perfect ass!” Both laugh, a little unsteadily.

“Well, Louis, what think?” says Ted, finding some difficulty with his words for some reason or other.

“Think? Can't tell, my amorous child. Coldly considered, I think you've the heck of a good chance—and I'm very strong for it, needless to say—and if you don't go and put it over pretty soon I'll be intensely annoyed—one of the pleasures I've promised myself for years and years has been getting most disgracefully oiled at your wedding, Ted.”

“Well, to-night is going to be zero hour, I think,” Ted proceeds with a try at being flippant and Louis cackles with mirth.

“I knew it. I knew it. Old Uncle Louis, the Young Proposer's Guide and Pocket Companion.” Then his voice changes. “Luck,” he says briefly.

“Thanks. Need it.”

“Of course I'm not worthy,” Ted begins diffidently but Louis stops him.

“They never are. I wasn't. But that doesn't make any difference. You've got to—n'est-ce pas?”

“You devil! Yes. But when I think of it—”

“Don't!”

“But leaving out everything else—it seems so cheeky! When Elinor's got everything, including all the money in the world, and I—”

“We talked that over a long time ago, remember? And remember what we decided—that it didn't matter, in this year and world at least. Of course I'm assuming that you're really in love with her—”

“I am,” from Ted very soberly. “Oh, I am, all right.”

“Well then, go ahead. And, Theodore, I shall watch your antic motions with the greatest sarcastic delight, both now and in the future—either way it breaks. Moreover, I'll take anybody out of the action that you don't want around—and if there were anything else I could do—”

“Got to win off my own service,” says Ted. “You know. But thanks all the same. Only when I think of—some incidents of Paris—and how awful near I've come to making a complete fool of myself with that Severance woman in the last month—well—”

“Look here, Ted.” Louis is really worried. “You're not going to let that—interfere—are you? Right now?” “I've got to tell her.” Ted's smile is a trifle painful. “Got to, you know. Oh, not that. But France. The whole business.”

“But good heavens, man, you aren't going to make it the start of the conversation?”

“Well—maybe not, But it's all got to be—explained. Only way I'll ever feel decent—and I don't suppose I'll feel too decent then.”

“But Ted—oh, it's your game, of course. Only I don't think it's being—fair—to either of you to tell her just now.”

“Can't help it, Louis.” Ted's face sets into what Louis once christened his “mule-look.” “I've thought it over backwards and sideways and all around the block—and I can't squirm out of it because it'll be—incredibly hard to do. As a mater of fact,” he pauses, “it'll tell itself, you know, probably,” he ends, more prophetically than he would probably care to know.

“Well, I simply don't see—”

“Must,” after that Louis knows there is very little good of arguing the point much further. He has not known Ted for eight years without finding out that a certain bitter and Calvinistic penchant for self-crucifixion is one of his ruling forces—and one of those least easily deduced from his externals. Still, he makes a last effort.

“Now, don't start getting all tied up about that. Keep your mind on Elinor.”

“That's not—hard.”

“Good—I see that you have all the proper reactions. And you'll excuse me for saying that I don't think she's too good you—and even if she were she'd have to marry somebody, you know—and when you put it, put it straight, and let Paris and everything else you're worrying about go plumb to the ash-can! And that's good advice.”

“I know it. I'll tell you, of course.”

“Well, I should think you would!”

Louis looks at his watch.

“Great Scott—they'll be unmasking in twenty minutes. And I've got to go back and cut Juliet out of the herd and take her to supper—”

They rise and look at each other. Then,

“Hope this is the last time, Ted, old fel—which isn't any reflection on the last eight years or so,” says Louis slowly, and their hands grip once and hard. Then they both start talking fast as they walk back to the house to cover the unworthy emotion. But just as they are going in the door, Louis hisses into Ted's ear, an advisory whisper.

“Now go and eat all the supper you can, you idiot—it always helps.


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Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 7.djvu/19

JULY 1917

HETHER Canada finally adopts conscription or not, she must realise that she owes a debt to the men in khaki and their dependents—a debt that must be paid in cold, hard cash, or its equivalent. In a short war the voluntary system of recruiting could done effective work if sufficient pay were given the soldier. In a long War, and the great European conflict may last another year, conscription becomes necessary to cope with the situation as it augments itself, and it becomes even more necessary that the dependents of those at the Front should be given a decent living while the bread-earner is serving the State. It becomes even more incumbent on the Government to protect those dependents when, by the scourge of war, their men folk are taken permanently from them in the death-sweep of battle.

"How are we doing our duty by those who have given their all?" is the biggest question facing Canadians to-day. There are other questions of large economic value—food regulation, munitions, conscription of man-power and wealth, and pressing constitutional problems, yet the only way to keep alive a real flaming spirit of patriotism is to show our fighting men that they can serve the State with the assured knowledge that the State will protect their families. If Canada is to put forth her utmost strength, this must be done. Patriotism, after all, begins at home. The average Canadian of ordinary ethics loves his family, and his first duty is to see that they are amply protected and provided for; from no sense of slacking he will wait, and wait a long time, before he crosses the ocean to fight his country's battles, if he must leave that family unprotected.

The situation as it confronts the returned soldier to-day is the only way by which the man-in-the-street can judge of the treatment which may be meted out to him should he enlist, either voluntarily or under conscription.

It is a question whether the present rate of pay, $1.10 a day, is sufficient to cope with to-day's high cost of living. It is quite true that at the beginning of the war the rate was fair enough as conditions were then, but with the constant rise in the price of food and other commodities, it would seem that either the rate of pay, or the separation allowance should be increased.

The pension problem is another vital consideration. Here again the original problem has changed with changing conditions; but yet the remuneration for the sacrifice made is far too small to satisfy any fair-minded citizen, or to appeal to the man who, in fighting, risks limb and life. Those who have crossed the seas during the last three years in the cause of justice, liberty and freedom, did so of their own free will; many gave up regular incomes to fight a common foe. As voluntary citizen soldiers they deserve far better treatment than the conscript soldier of former days. The Government owes it to every man in the Overseas Army and to every man at home, to bring order out of the present pension muddle and to inaugurate an efficient and workable plan of compensation. So far as is possible, no man should be worse off, financially, because he gives his life and services to his country. We who enjoy comfort and security while they endure the hardship and chance of a terrible war should see to it that they receive, as a just right and not as a charity, a compensation worthy of their heroism and self-sacrifice. If needs be, Canada should not only welcome but invite extraordinary taxation that the men at the Front may be fittingly recompensed. By the same argument those who were depending on the man who does not return should be adequately cared for. The Canadian soldier, sleeping his last sleep in France or Belgium, or in the near east, would rest easier if he knew that his women and children are not only shielded from want, but enabled to live in some degree of comfort, and that provision is made whereby his children may receive an education and a start in life.

The pension problem is new to Canada and mistakes will occur, but fair play should be assured in the findings of the commissioners, and prompt settlement of all claims should be ordered. There has been time now for a fair plan to be worked out and put into operation.

Various Veterans’ Associations have recommended that a pension schedule on a basis of $100.00 a month for total disability should be instituted at once; this was months ago, but as yet no action has been taken.

The pension schedule as it is at present is woefully inadequate: For disability of over 80 per cent., the amount is $384.00 a year; for over 60 per cent. but under 80 per cent., the amount is $260.00 a year; for total deafness, the soldier receives $280.00, quit claim; for partial deafness of both ears, he receives a gratuity of $100.00. Pensions such as these give the soldier no chance to return to the position he occupied before the War.

Widows and orphans are even less adequately provided for, It is quite true that a non-partisan committee of the House of Commons is considering the whole question of pensions for revision, but Parliament should discuss the question so that the whole country may know exactly what is being done.

I have it on the best authority that the Pensions Board has notified all soldiers’ aid commissions and other organisations that "all information with regard to pensions will be, henceforth, considered confidential." This act on the part of the Pensions Board may have been brought about on the assumption that such information, if published, would discourage enlisting and spread discontent; but the best way to obviate complaints, is to make a thorough investigation as to how local boards are carrying out the duties entrusted to them. Secrecy in public affairs smacks too much of that overbearing Prussian bureaucracy which brought on this war with all its consequences. The remedy of any bad condition is not in the suppression of questionable methods, but in thorough investigation and free information regarding it and in a rapid and radical change of policy to something better. The policy of secrecy have been necessary in some departments in the initial stages of the War, but it is not only unnecessary now, but most unwise. People must know the worst if abuses are to be corrected, and if they are to put forth their best endeavours to carry the war to a successful end.

Secrecy of Army and Navy procedures cannot be successfully imposed; neither can it be excused or justified on any grounds whatsoever. Even without newspaper publicity information regarding outstanding cases spreads rapidly among friends of each man affected and this soon finds an outlet into the ranks of civilians and thus becomes common knowledge. It could not possibly be suppressed, even if all the periodicals in the Dominion should fall short of their required duty to the public. And in the instance of certain flagrant cases it would soon create an even greater public uproar than these have so far done, because word of mouth rumours are always magnified when popular imagination becomes inflamed.

Let us leave the pension problem for the time being, and turn our attention to the treatment which is accorded wounded soldiers when they finally arrive back in their respective home centres. It is quite true that the Government has spent a lot of money on buildings for looking after convalescents and those who have been incurably wounded, but from talks I have had with a number of these returned men I find there are still many complaints regarding the treatment accorded them.

Their first contention is that there is a daily delay in medical attendance which keeps them waiting sometimes for hours, and at a great inconvenience to themselves and family.

In the second place, they claim there is a general neglect of any attention to some patients when there is a "big crowd" in attendance to be looked after.

They claim, in the third place, that there is a lot of unnecessary red tape and officiousness in connection with wounded men which sometimes occasion worry, inconvenience, and undue exertion to those who are in a weak condition.

In the fourth place they claim there is a delay of from four to six weeks in forwarding accounts of men's pay from Ottawa.

In the fifth place there seems to be a lack of clear understanding among the men as to "where they are at"—what their standing and status really is.

They find in the sixth place, very unsuitable accommodation for amputation convalescents, and a tardy provision of artificial limbs for those who sorely need them.

In the seventh place they believe there is a "cold charity" spirit in handling men who have returned broken and unfit for further service, which contrasts a great deal with the spirit at present prevailing in Great Britain.

In the eighth place it is claimed that men are too readily separated from their families by sending them to convalescent homes in inaccessible places.

These findings have all been gained from interviews with army and navy veterans in (Continued on page 42)


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the two state ministries is provided by the federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

Health care, including hospitalization and medication, is provided to all citizens, with only a nominal fee paid for medical insurance. In general, the quality of medical personnel and health care provided is good and has helped to provide a level of public health which is second to none in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, there are a number of problems existing in the health services, some of which are associated with the rigid state-controlled system of health administration. Deterioration of the traditional physician-patient relationship has been, according to Czechoslovak public opinion, one of the more regrettable developments. By imposing heavy administrative duties on doctors, encouraging overspecialization of practitioners, and establishing relatively low pay scales, the regime has contributed to an increasingly impersonal physician-patient relationship and to a general lessening of prestige for the medical profession. Dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs was voiced by doctors and the general public in a survey conducted by the Dubcek regime in 1968. Specific criticism was leveled at the government's disposition to treat the sick more as temporary incapacitated units of "productive society" than as human beings who are ill.

As of December 1971 there were 31,426 physicians in Czechoslovakia, or one for every 460 inhabitants. This is the highest ratio in Eastern Europe, where the average is over 1:600, and one of the most favorable ratios in the world. Since the 1930's there has been a substantial increase in the size of the medical profession. As a consequence, the number of physicians increased from 7.9 per 10,000 inhabitants in 1937, to 10.9 in 1960, and to 23.9 in 1971. Other health professionals and paramedical personnel in the country, in the year indicated, were as follows:

The distribution of professional medical personnel is regarded as satisfactory, although there have been reports of shortages of doctors and dentists in some of the outlying border regions. Of much greater concern is a chronic shortage of nurses and other paramedical personnel which has resulted in reports of inadequate nursing care.

Contrasting to practice in Western nations, the Czechoslovak medical profession has a large proportion of women; over four-tenths of all practitioners were women in 1971. Women doctors dominate such specialities as infectious diseases, allergies, pediatrics, ophthalmology, and dermatology, but are a minority in such fields as surgery, orthopedics, urology, and prosthetics.

Czechoslovakia has 10 medical schools and 9 dental schools offering degrees in medicine and dentistry. All of these facilities operate under the authority of the Czech and Slovak ministries of education and receive their financial support from the government. Nursing education is conducted in hospitals throughout the country, while other paramedical training is offered at specialized secondary schools.

Health facilities are inadequate both quantitatively and qualitatively. There are an insufficient number of hospitals to adequately treat the sick, and many of those that exist are old and without modern medical equipment. The existence of poor medical facilities has affected the length of stay in the hospital, which on the average is roughly double that in the West. In an attempt to remedy the situation, new hospitals are being constructed and modern equipment is gradually replacing the old. In 1971, Czechoslovakia had 249 general hospitals with a total of 114,706 beds, or a ratio of roughly 8.0 beds per 1,000 persons. Additional medical facilities included specialized clinics, sanatoriums, and maternity homes (Figure 12).

The bulk of public health services are rendered on an outpatient basis, either through hospital departments established for that purpose or through networks of polyclinics, district health centers, and medical stations. By 1971 there were 416 polyclinics,

14

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PAGE 24 ABC

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HE Fathers of Confederation, where are they, and the political prophets, do they life forever? They have followed one another into the wiser and happier citizenship of a country that is fairer even than this dear land they loved so well, and which is to-day giving many infallible proofs of being worthy of their love.

Sir Charles Tupper was the last to leave us, as though he lingered on to see the fulfilment of his wonderful political prophecies—prophecies which many of the wisest of his contemporaries thought were the dreams of a visionary.

Although the Fathers of Confederation have all gone on into another land, the widows of the two who celebrated the union of the Canadian Provinces fifty years ago by getting married, have been graciously spared to us to see this National Jubilee—Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe and Lady Tilley, both of whom have contributed not a little to the happy and wholesome development of this young nation.

It was at surprise to some of the Canadian assembled in London in 1867 to complete arrangements for the Confederation of the Provinces on the First of July of that year, when Sir John Macdonald's engagement to Miss Agnes Bernard was announced, Miss Bernard was the sister of his private secretary and the daughter of an English gentleman who had occupied a most distinguished place in the government of Jamaica.

It was well known that for some time Sir John had been most devoted to this talented lady, but the impression had gone abroad that she had declined his repeated offers of marriage, not because she did not love him, but because, like a wise woman, she wished to prove him. But presently she accepted his offer, and they were married on the sixteenth of February, 1867. No Canadian marriage in London, or anywhere else for that matter, was ever witnessed by so brilliant an assemblage of Canada's distinguished men and women, and ho affair of this kind has ever awakend so widespread an interest, or has been fraught with happier results.

Bishop Fulford, the Metropolitan of Canada, happening to be in London at the time, tied the nuptial knot, and all the Canadian delegates and many distinguished English persons witnessed the ceremony. The four bridesmaids were Canadian girls, daughters of the Confederation delegates.

At the wedding breakfast Sir John made one of his wittiest speeches. The happy union of the Canadian Provinces, under the gracious rule of the best Queen who ever lived, he said, had led him to contemplate matrimony, to bring his life under the personal sway of the Queen of Hearts.

It was a great occasion in the history of Canada, for no man needed a wife more than Sir John, who had been a widower for nearly ten years, and no one could have made a better wife than the brilliant woman whom he led to the altar that day who, though twenty-one years younger than he, was one with him in all the varied experiences of his eventful life.

Queen Victoria was interested in that marriage, and before the honeymoon was over commanded that the distinguished bride and bridegroom be presented to her at court. Sir John used to say jocosely that he explained to Her Gracious Majesty that day how he had been forced by a woman's witchery to swear allegiance to a new queen, the Queen of Hearts.

The old saying, "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on," was never popular in London, for the sun has a selfish way in that great city of not shining very much on anybody; so Lady Macdonald had no reason to bemoan her fate in having a dull, dreary day for her marriage. She always laughingly maintained that she had learned by observation that wedding days, like dreams, go by contraries,

Canada was no strange land to Lady Macdonald; she was only a girl in her teens when she came with her mother to reside in Ontario, where her brother had preceded her.

There was something very beautiful in the loving devotion of Lady Macdonald to her husband, who needed so much the strength and comfort and companionship of such a wife. Those who saw her, day after day, in the Speaker's Gallery, when Parliament was in session, sometimes wondered whether it was her interest in Canadian politics, or her deeper interest in her husband that brought her to the House. It was said that they learned a deaf and dumb alphabet of their own that they might have a word with each other while the House was in session, without fear of being interpreted of the other members.

During Sir John’s sudden. prostration, a few years after their marriage, almost everybody felt that he could not recover, but Lady Macdonald would not give him up, and by her untiring ministrations succeeded in nursing him back to health; but the time came in 1891, when even her supreme love and devotion could not prolong his days.

When sorrow-stricken, nothing touched this lovable woman more tenderly than the autograph letter of love and sympathy which Queen Victoria sent her. In recognition of the distinguished services which Sir John had rendered his country, the Queen was graciously pleased to bestow a peerage on his widow, who assumed the title, Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe.

Sir Leonard Tilley, who at the time of Confederation, was Premier of New Brunswick, was present at Sit John's marriage, where the matrimonial microbe got in so much effective work that he soon followed his illustrious leader's example.

Sir Leonard was singularly blessed in winning the heart and hand of Miss Alice Chipman, of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, a devoted and charming helpmeet, who by her wise counsel and winning personality contributed not a little to his success in the larger sphere of Dominion politics, and who made his home one of the most delightful and restful that a public man ever enjoyed. When Mr. Gladstone was asked how he succeeded in standing the work and worry of public life he said, "I am happy at home." Sir Leonard could bear the burdens of state because he was happy at home.

It was a brilliant period in the social life of Ottawa when the two Confederation brides appeared at the Capital, and by their striking personalities, rare gifts, and winsome ways won for themselves, all unconsciously, the leadership in that galaxy of notable Canadian women. No social function was complete without their Presence. Both were delightful conversationalists who possessed (Continued on page 26)


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Rh You all saw a number of large, heavy boxes lowered into the hold before we sailed. I know you did, because you asked me what they containted and commented upon the large letter H which was painted upon each box. These boxes contain the various parts of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose assembling this upon the strips of beach described in Bowen's manuscript—the beach where he found the dead body of the apelike man—provided there is sufficient space above high water; otherwise we shall have to assemble it on deck and lower it over the side. After it is assembled, I shall carry tackle and ropes to the cliff-top, and then it will be comparatively simple to hoist the search-party and its supplies in safety. Or I can make a sufficient number of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance reveals."

That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona's towering barrier.

"You see now," remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan the summit thousands of feet above us, "how futile it would have been to waste our time in working out details of a plan to surmount those." And he jerked his thumb toward the cliffs. "It would take weeks, possibly months, to construct a ladder to the top. I had no conception of their formidable height. Our mortar would not carry a line halfway to the crest of the lowest point. There is no use discussing any plan other than the hydro-aeroplane. We'll find the beach and get busy."

Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could discern surf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw the line of breakers broken by a long sweep of rolling surf upon a narrow beach. The launch was lowered, and five of us made a landing, getting a good ducking in the ice-cold waters in the doing of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the clean-picked bones of what might have been the skeleton of a high order of ape or a very low order of man, lying close to the base of the cliff. Billings was satisfied, as were the rest of us, that this was the beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further found that there was ample room to assemble the seaplane.

ILLINGS, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting, with the result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the large boxes marked "H" upon the beach, and were busily engaged in opening them. Two days later the plane was assembled and tuned. We loaded tackles and ropes, water, food and ammunition in it, and then we each implored Billings to let us be the one to accompany him. But he would take no one. That was Billings; if there was any especially difficult or dangerous work to be done, that one man could do, Billings always did it himself. If he needed assistance, he never called for volunteers—just selected the man or men he considered best qualified for the duty. He said that he considered the principles underlying all volunteer service fundamentally wrong, and that it seemed to him that calling for volunteers reflected upon the courage and loyalty of the entire command.

We rolld the plane down to the water's edge, and Billings moutned the pilot's seat. There was a moment's delay as he assured himself that he had everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over his armament and ammunition to see that nothing had been omitted. Besides pistol and rifle, there was the machine-gun mounted in front of him on the plane, and ammunition for all three. Bowen's account of the terrors of Caspak had impressed us all with the necessity for proper means of defense.

At last all was ready. The motor was started, and we pushed the plane out into the surf. A moment later, and she was skimming seaward. Gently she rose from the surface of the water, executed a wide spiral as she mounted rapidly, circled once far above us and then disappeared over the crest of the cliffs. We all stood silent and expectant, our eyes glued upon the towering summit above us. Hollis, who was now in command, consulted his wristwatch at frequent intervals.

"Gad," exclaimed Short, "we ought to be hearing from him pretty soon!"

Hollis laughed nervously. "He's been gone only ten minutes," he announced.

"Seems like an hour," snapped Short. "What's that? Did you hear that? He's firing! It's the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and here we are as helpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand miles away! We can't do a thing. We don't know what's happening. Why didn't he let one of us go with him?"

Yes, it was the machine-gun. We could hear it distinctly for at least a minute. Then came silence. That was two weeks ago. We have had no sign or signal from Tom Billings since.

'LL never forget my first impressions of Caspak as I circled in, high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked down through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me. The hot, humid atmosphere of Caspak condenses as it is fanned by the cold Antarctic air-currents which sweep across the crater's top, sending a tenuous ribbon of vapor far out across the Pacific. Through this the picture gave one the suggestion of a colossal impressionistic canvas in greens and browns and scarlets and yellows surrounding the deep blue of the inland sea—just blobs of color taking form through the tumbling mist.

I dived close to the cliffs and skirted them for several miles without finding the least indication of a suitable landing-place; and then I swung back at a lower level, looking for a clearing close to the bottom of the mighty escarpment; but I could find none of sufficient area to insure safety. I was flying pretty low by this time, not only looking for landing places but watching the myriad life beneath me. I was down pretty well toward the south end of the island, where an arm of the lake reaches far inland, and I could see the surface of the water literally black with creatures of some sort. I was too far up to recognize individuals, but the general impression was of a vast army of amphibious monsters. The land was almost equally alive with crawling, leaping, running, flying things. It was one of the latter which nearly did for me while my attention was fixed upon the weird scene below.

The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of the sun from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most terrific creature


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The latest geological time scale, based on physics, shows us that the age of mammals—that is, the Miocene and Oligocene periods—can be placed about 16,000,000 years ago. The Mesozoic age of reptiles dates back at least 150,000,000 years. The Paleozoic age of fishes and amphibians dates back at least 300,000,000 years, while the Precambrian dates back at least one billion years. During such time, the losses are, of course, tremendous, and even a sheet of water six miles deep would have vanished entirely out into space long before the passing of such a cycle. Our water supply even now is getting smaller and smaller as time goes on. The moon has lost practically all of it, and so has Mars—both of these bodies being far older than the earth.

The point about invisibility, regarding "The Man Who Could Vanish", is explained in the answer to another letter of one of our correspondents.—Editor.]

Editor,

One of your writers, namely A. Hyatt Verrill, certainly does write amazing stories. I am amazed as to why his crab people should develop a semi-human mouth, a big hooked nose, steepled eyes, and hig flap ears. Why should people, developed to such an extent in mental telepathy need ears like a hunting dog?

Why should a civilized people, such as those in "Through the Crater's Rim," walk on their hands, and use their feet, when animals such as rats, squirrels, kangaroos, etc., know enough to use the members nearest their head and eyes?

Why should Dr. Unsinn declare that he does not intend to produce invisibility by causing a body to permit light rays passing through it? How in the world can invisibility otherwise be produced? It is true that if the reflected light cannot be seen, the object itself cannot be seen. But what of the light rays intercepted by that body? If the reflected light rays of a building are invisible, does that permit reflected light rays from a building in the next street to pass through the first building unaltered?

[Our correspondent asks why Mr. Verrill's crab people should develop a semi-human mouth, a big hooked nose, steepled eyes, and big flapped ears; also why should people developed to such an extent in mental telepathy need ears like a hunting dog. To this we can only answer that if our correspondent has ever visited an aquarium or museum of natural history he will readily see that the shapes and varieties of living beings are endless and most astonishing. Some of the most fearful and amazing creatures which have been fished up or dredged from the depths of the ocean by deep sea expeditions prove this point. There are fish with a good sawlike instrument. Other fish are luminous all over, while still others have luminous eyes, characteristics which have been created by their curious environment. There are so many things in nature that we can not explain that it would be futile to try to ennumerate them all. There are many organs in the human body even, such as, for instance, the appendix, for which there is no good explanation; hairs in the face of the male, which certainly are not needed these days, and many other organs, which remain for no good reason as far as we know.

The same answer might hold true about the people who walk on their hands. It is not at all impossible, though perhaps a little far-fetched, that such creatures could exist.

Regarding the invisibility—we refer to another letter published here, about an invisible spider web; as the correspondent says, truly, the spokes of a wheel can not be seen when the wheel is revolving rapidly. The same is true of the blades of an electric fan, or the propeller of an airplane which certainly are broad and solid. You can see a house or a face right through the blades, and while the object thus viewed may appear a little darker, it is still there with all its characteristics, Now take a stick and wave it too and fro rapidly. It becomes invisible. Is it such a far-fetched idea then, that by means of some apparatus, the human body, or anything, for that matter, may be vibrated at such a rapidity that, although standing stationary, it will be not seen? This is not impossible in latter-day science.—Editor.]

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text: Cariou v. Prince

title: Cariou v. Prince


text: Index:Everywoman's World, Volume 8, Number 2.djvu