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The Smart Set/Volume 51/Issue 3/They Went in Search of Love

By Cosmo Hamilton

E was utterly alone.

His slight figure, well built but for a tendency to stoop, had become very familiar to the good people of Mountfair. Always alone, always scrupulously well dressed, he made his daily appearance, if fine, with the regularity of clockwork. The coloured gardeners, who attempted to tease the ever-falling leaves from the grass round the pleasant houses, told the time by him. Children who tricycled themselves red in the face along the narrow white strip of asphalt, mother-near to their homes, grew accustomed to his quiet, smiling, wistful passing, and wondered a little. The barking dog, whose egotism found incessant vent in a wagging tongue when mere man had the temerity to walk near his house, began to eye this recurring figure with something almost like tolerance. The postmen, with their blobby bags, shot him nods, and in time one or two tabby cats elevated their tails when they saw him coming, and gave him the time of day in the wheedling language of their kind.

In the town of Mountfair—quite a town this, if you please, with its thirty thousand inhabitants—his rather ascetic, clean-cut profile and grey-besprinkled hair, his kindly, grey eyes into which a smile came often, and his sensitive, sympathetic mouth were often the subject of shop conversation. He had a ready and even eager “Good-morning” for the conductors of the rasping yellow trolley-cars which passed so often, packed like sardine tins at night and in the early morning; for the policemen who stood stolidly outside the brave, white municipal building with its fat pillars and pompous doorway, and round about the admirable station with its wide approach and steam-heated waiting-rooms, all duly tesselated; for the over-fat coloured lady in gamboge blouse who watched life from the shabby door of her paper-candy-shoe-shine store—hats ironed and cleaned; and for the proprietors of the many chemists' shops, among whom he carefully divided his patronage in the matter of pipe-mixture and tooth paste, eau-de-quinine, and shaving soap.

If you had asked the managers and waitresses, bell boys and telephone attendants of the Mountfair Hotel what they thought of Mr. Barton G. White, you would have received the same answer, “Fine; he gives no trouble.”

And that, after all, was a very splendid reputation to obtain after a year's residence in a place where the staff was frequently changed, and many little things were, in consequence, often none too smooth. But Barton White never complained; and if, which was seldom, irritability came upon him because the morning papers had not made their appearance, he took it with him along the road through the woods, to his favorite place perched high up above the town, and let the breeze blow it away.

He loved this quiet road. He liked to look at the great solid rock that bordered one side of it, the typical, inevitable rock which had, in a subtle sort of way, hardened and made determined those early pioneers who had started a great country and a great race. It interested him to watch the spittle from the higher ground trickle down the surface of it, leaving marks as though mammoth snails had crawled there.

His walk through the woods in the spring, when the young birches and ashes and oaks were in their first joyous green, filled him with exhilaration and gladness, and almost brought a song to his lips. And even in the late autumn, when almost all the leaves had fallen, and lay crinkled, dry, and yellow under his feet, he found a sort of satisfaction about them. The trees had done their appointed job well and fitly, as they would do it again in due course. He liked that. It was good.

Always on the edge of the Mount he would sit, hatless, on the flat of a rock, and look out over the wide stretch of land beneath. Peppered with small, verandahed houses with different-coloured roofs, intersected by patches of trees which turned to purple before they bared themselves to winter, with here and there a towering factory chimney forever stammering smoke, it ran on to crowded Newark and to the Hudson. And on clear days, when the mist had dried, the faint Brobdingnagian outline of the buildings of Manhattan grew against the sky, almost unearthly in their size.

At first, as a new man to the Mount, some twenty miles from New York, Burton White gazed at the faint outline of the wonderful, remorseless city, in which he had worked all his youth and some of his middle age, away with the eyes of the man who stops breathless and amazed to look back at some gigantic foe which he has overcome after a frightful struggle.

At first he sat up there alone and quiet and secure, smoking the good cigar that he had earned honestly and well, turned his eyes with a triumph and a sort of glee toward the monster city that had demanded twenty-five of the best years of his life in return for retirement, with enough money to keep him in comfort for the rest of it. Sometimes he waved his hat at those faint, huge buildings, and laughed to know that he had escaped with a whole skin and a healthy brain.

But when he realized that he was perilously near fifty, neither young enough to take part in the strenuous exercises of the rising generation nor old enough to care to sit on the hotel verandah with the veterans and take part in conversation about the past; when it became painfully obvious that he stood like a fish out of water in the excellent hotel in which he had taken up his quarters, having no home, with a wistful desire to enjoy a kind of imitation home life, he began to look back at the distant city, all of whose clashing sounds of vivid struggling never reached as far as his quiet, reposeful retreat, not with the triumph of the conqueror, but the regret of one who missed and needed the exhilaration of competition.

There, at any rate, he had had his place, and was known as a fairly successful man. He was a unit of some consideration, to whom his business friends stopped and spoke. But there, in Mountfair, perched up above the small, increasing town, among the woods and rocks, out of touch with life, out of reach of the great octopus arms of the city he knew so well, he was no one. He counted for nothing. He was an onlooker, observed casually only by coloured gardeners' and other men's children, trades-people, policemen, trolley conductors, dogs, and cats.

For twenty-five years he had enjoyed the comfort of home life, and had worked to provide his mother with much more than the mere necessities. When she died he retired to live on the interest of the money that he had saved, and had gone, unconsciously, in search of love. He wanted, once more, to be needed. He wanted, once more, and now more eagerly and poignantly, for some one person who should listen for his step and put her arms about his neck, to whom he could whisper “I love you, you are mine!”

then Miss Eleanor Parker Stretton came to live at the Mountfair Hotel.

At first she slipped into the daily routine almost unnoticed, a quiet, shy woman about whose dress there were still the signs of mourning. She was given a small table in one of the corners of the large dining-room, whose big windows caught all the sun, and whose polished floor had paths of green carpet. And here, day after day, always alone, always with studious punctuality, she took her meals—breakfast after the business men had left grumpily for New York, luncheon when the large tables near the windows were surrounded by children, and those elsewhere by the elderly men and women just returned from a little walk in the grounds, if fine, or mild exercise, if wet, up and down the glassed-in verandah with its lure of bright yellow rocking-chairs and boxes of geraniums. In due time she was discussed and considered by the gossips in the place. That goes without saying. A past was duly manufactured for her in the usual way—a present and a future as well. It was gathered that she was in possession of fairly comfortable means, from the fact that she had a sitting as well as a bed room, and that she bought the latest novels from the bookstore in the town. Also because she had three dinner gowns and five day dresses, and because the chambermaid told the private maid of the lady with five daughters, who told everybody else as quickly as she could, that she had eight pairs of shoes. She was not homogeneous. She did not foregather in the hall or between meals. She walked alone and then retired to her rooms. Overtures were made for the purpose of finding out her story—she obviously possessed a story—but were quietly eluded. And when it was finally agreed that Miss Stretton “must have been very pretty once,” she was left alone.

And yet, like Barton White, Eleanor Parker Stretton, having no home, had gone to the Mountfair Hotel with a wistful desire to find something approaching home-life there. For she, too, was utterly alone. And she, too, with more than half her life behind her, needed to be needed, because she, too, had known the blessing of having been needed, and being needed no longer left a great gap in her life and a hollow place in her heart.

From the age of fifteen she had been housekeeper, companion, sun meter, optimist to her father, a hard-working doctor in Brooklyn. To him she had gladly, eagerly devoted all the best years of her life, and when he died she stood alone, quite utterly alone, in this big callous, busy world, to make a new life in new surroundings amid new faces, but always with the same old hollow in her heart. She was forty-three, and her hair was very grey in places, and her head was very full of dreams that had never come true. The little house, the devoted husband, the young, rushing children, where were they?

Instead, she had a nice income from the hardly won savings of her good and charitable father; she had her books that so often awoke her regrets; she had her cheery little sitting-room with its angular hotel furniture and telephone, and gurgling steam-heater, and three evening gowns, five day dresses, and eight pairs of shoes.

Life is, however, very just in the matter of compensation. Romance, just a little touch of romance, was provided to this romanceless woman by Providence, who now took a sudden, small interest in her.

From the moment that she saw Barton White standing aloof upon the steps of the verandah with the morning sun upon his clean-cut profile and loneliness stamped upon his broad forehead, a thrill, a new and curious thrill, seemed to electrify her heart and bring into the hitherto monotonously quiet, empty day a new interest. But not for all her little fortune could she bring herself to give even so much as a distant good-morning to the man who passed her table three times a day to go to his Own in a distant corner, who so frequently paced up and down the glassed-in verandah where she sometimes sat and pretended to read so that she might watch the children, and who many times stood bare-headed in the elevator when she was on her way up or down.

Sometimes she imagined that she caught his wistful eyes upon her, but always, she told herself, that he must be looking at the pretty anæmic girl in the broad waistband who sat just behind her. Sometimes she was almost certain that he came towards her intending to speak, but as he always passed in silence she was obliged to assure herself that she was wrong.

But she wasn't wrong. She was very far from being wrong. Barton White would have given a year of his life to have had the courage to make friends with this sister in loneliness, to have been able to give and to receive some of the sympathy without which men and women must go thirsty through life; to have been able to exchange ideas, share walks, read the same books and feel that there was one person, just one, who was glad at his approach and who would lay a flower on his grave when he was called.

But her shyness was contagious, and the touch of mourning that was on her face as well as in her clothes made him fearful in intruding; and so several weeks went by and neither spoke, and neither guessed that each, in the fastnesses of lonely rooms, rehearsed little formal openings and phrases in the matter of weather and the tone of leaves and the state of politics, and neither dreamed that each woke in the morning with a new sense of interest and expectation, and the same feeling of relief at meeting, although wordlessly, in the hall.

But Providence, now alert, did not intend to be put out by such proceedings. He put Miss Eleanor Stretton to bed one day with a slight attack of the influenza, and then, in all confidence, went upon his much required way. He had, as he knew, every reason to be confident. The moment Barton White heard that the doctor had been called in to attend to Miss Eleanor Stretton, he set off hurriedly to the town, bought a great bunch of flowers and a dozen magazines, returned by the trolley, was fortunate enough to meet the doctor on his way to his hard-worked car, and asked after the patient.

“Oh, nothing to worry about, sir. A touch of influenza. We'll soon have her up and around again.”

With what relief and thankfulness did this shy man, now lover, hurry upstairs to the invalid's floor to find the chambermaid.

“These flowers to Miss Stretton with my compliments and best wishes for a speedy recovery,” he said, and went.

Now it happened that the chambermaid was young and brisk, and that she had noticed these two lonely people. All her national sentiment and spirit of romance flamed up, and this was the message that she delivered to the feverish lady:

“Mr. Barton White sends ye this bouquet with his dear love, ma'am, and he hopes to heaven that ye'll very soon bring the beautiful face down-stairs again.”

in this oddly comic-pathetic way these two strangers, who found the world as large and empty and unresponsive as the room in which a young child is shut up alone, came to be friends. The illness and the flowers, and more than both the sentimental, kindly Irish chambermaid, broke the ice. And daily all three of them widened the crack, because every day Barton White bought and sent in flowers, and every day the Irish girl altered and coloured the message.

Not since the awful hour that Death laid his hand on the shoulders of the over-tired man, who had waged a long war against him for other people's sake; had this woman been so happy. Illness was a blessing in disguise, and the scent of those daily gifts was filled with something that made her heart sing and her eyes bright and the world very beautiful. On the second day she wrote a short note of thanks to the man who had brought love into her life. It was a little formal, a little frightened, but it began cordially and ended very sincerely.

It took Barton White three hours to answer it, and at the end of that time he did not dare to read the closely written sheets to see what he had had the courage to say. There was nothing in them that called for timidity. He had merely told her all the news of the hotel as he had gathered it as a silent looker-on, and described, with a nice touch of humour, the effects of the turning leaves. Unconsciously he had slipped, here and there, into autobiography, and given her a brief peep into his kindly nature and starved sympathy. It was a quite charming effort

And that was the beginning of the daily letters that passed between these two, letters that warmed up gradually until Barton White wrote “I love you,” and Eleanor Stretton replied, “I love you.”

But when the doctor's car ceased to come honking round the drive, and it became known that Miss Stretton was well again, people asked themselves why it was that she remained in her rooms and had her meals sent up.

Barton White asked himself that question also. Only the Irish chambermaid knew the reason, and, placed upon her honor to say nothing, she held her tongue. It was an heroic effort, because never had she longed to tell the other servants anything so much as she longed to tell the strange things that were going on in Nos. 20 and 21.

But were they, under the circumstances, so very strange? Was it not very human, and therefore, perhaps, very foolish, for Miss Stretton to set herself eagerly to turn back the hands of the clock? Since the world began, men and women have endeavored to accomplish this impossible deed, and they will some time do so in one way or another so long as the old world wags. She was loved, and therefore she strove to do something to herself that would make her more attractive to the man who loved her.

Who could the two women be, then, who came up from the town to see her, carrying bags, other than the dressmaker and the hair-dresser? The one was required to render the three evening gowns and the five day frocks a little younger. The other came to “touch” Miss Stretton's greying hair—just to touch. The dresses were duly altered here and there. The primness was removed, the formality softened, and the hair, under the cunning fingers of the specialist, took on a warm red glow. Yes, red. The secret is out, the touch was the touch of henna!

And then another specialist arrived, a sort of clock repairer, too. This one set about putting back the hands with her own that were so soft and deft. She called it face massage, but it was something more than that, because a little blush was left on Miss Stretton's pale cheeks long after the woman had gone. The dressing table gleamed with dainty bottles of curious messes, one tiny round flat box of blush renewer, and a pencil. Yes, a pencil, which when applied with care to the eyebrows made them more arched, a little thicker.

And when, one afternoon, with the blinds discreetly placed, Miss Stretton stood in a frock that clung fashionably to her ankles, the excited Irish girl was asked, after several roundabout questions, “How old do you think I look now, Mary?” the answer came at once: “Sure, an' ye don't look wan day over twenty-sevin, ma'am—cross me heart and die if ye does.”

Whereupon a new daisy showed its face upon the Blarney Stone, and Miss Stretton nearly wept.

And what of Burton White during these days?

Here was a man all excited and eager, who had declared his love and been accepted. Here were hours and even days going by, and the woman in whose hands lay his future happiness, that whole new and splendid future that was no longer to be killed in isolation, remained upstairs, although the doctor had gone and health had returned.

“Give me ten days,” she had written, “ten days in which to regain all my strength and to think of all we mean to each other.”

And for the first two of them he waited with sympathetic impatience. Every day he sent her flowers, and every day a letter, sometimes two. And when he passed up the road that led to his favorite woods, he built metaphorically for her and himself the most charming compact houses on eligible sites, each one with a different coloured roof, and at night he stood at the window of his lonely bedroom and thought that all the myriad lights of Mountfair and Newark quivered very friendly congratulations, having come out especially to celebrate the good and glorious change in his way of life.

On the third day he caught himself eying his face in his looking-glass. What a pity that his hair was so grey. What a pity!

If—if he were to—suppose that he, like many of the business men he had known—

After all, grey hair was not necessary.

There were applications, juices, even dyes—he might as well be frank—he had seen them advertised in papers and magazines. Why look old when he now felt so young?

This sentence became a sort of motif in the music of the breeze. For one whole day he listened to it, and refused to hear it. What was the ultimate use of interfering with nature? Nevertheless, how good it would be to appear before her when she came down, she who loved. him, as he would have been if he had had the great good fortune to meet her ten years before!

The next morning he joined the business» men in the hotel in the motor-'bus, and adventured over a patch of unbelievable road on to the trolley track and down hill through the town to the station, and so once more into the great city where all his active years had been spent in work, to which he had dedicated his youth and manhood to the tender service of a mother's needs.

Once more he came to the active, splendid river, alive with great steam ferries carrying human toll to the market place, and the fleet of small, sturdy tugs spurting up water with their blunt noses in the determined discharge of their duty. Once more he looked at the funnels of the great liners that rested silently and briefly in dock, waiting to transfer men and mails to England, France, and Russia.

Once more he stood in the streets of New York, with their multitudinous noises, beneath buildings whose lofty ambition led them skyward.

There might still be that man in the barber's shop in the basement of the Astor Hotel who had so often cut his hair and aired his views as to the chances of the giants of Yale or Harvard in the national game. To the Astor he took a taxi. Hang expense; he was in love and he was loved! The two together spelled the nearest thing to heaven that man was permitted on earth. Yes, the man was there.

“Why, say,” he said, and held out a cordial hand; and when the word “dye” was whispered, he added, “Sure, right now. Will you take off your collar?”

That night Barton White returned to the Mountfair Hotel too late for dinner. He felt that his hair was almost too brown, and he remembered that the lights in the dining-room were somewhat piercing. Also the eyes. He dodged the bell-boy who worked the elevator, and hurried upstairs. A chambermaid was sitting in the passage at the top, reading The Evening Sun. He gave her good-evening and a little shock. He saw it in the sudden cavity of her mouth, and he knew as he put the key into the lock of his door that his dye would be all over the hotel before morning. The bottle that had weighed so heavily in his pocket, wrapped in the printed directions, was placed in a drawer, beneath a pile of underclothing.

Barton White was afraid to look at himself in the glass. The barber has said that he looked as good as thirty-one and a half. All the way back White had been puzzling to find out why he had not said either thirty-one or thirty-two. Was there anything in the nature of ribaldy [sic] in that “one and a half?” After all, health had a good deal to do with the shade of a man's hair, and he was well. Then, too, happiness was good for hair, and he was very happy. So why should he worry?

But for several days he went out for long walks, after telephoning to the town for Eleanor's flowers, and writing his letter to Eleanor, and he took his meals away from the hotel. A change of diet was notoriously good for the digestion. Poor, dear Barton White! How little he knew of the ways of all such places as these houses from home. His brown hair was already a stale joke!

And then, at last, the night came when he was able to say, “Tomorrow, tomorrow she comes.” She had written a little quivering note asking him to meet her at eleven o'clock in the covered-in verandah.

He was glad that it was to be eleven o'clock. The men would have gone out to the city, the women to their rooms or out to the town, and the children would be in the grounds under the chocolate eyes of coloured nursemaids.

Half-past ten found him pacing, pacing on the linoleum between the yellow rockng [sic]-chairs and the boxes of geraniums. The sun of the Indian summer shone down warmly upon the glass. A clear blue sky gleamed behind the remaining brown leaves of the trees outside, and laughter came from the servants' quarters in the left wing of the house.

He heard a step, and turned.

His heart was in his mouth, his hat in his hand.

The unforgiving light fell upon his hair.

A few paces from the doorway stood—

He drew up short as the lady with the red locks and pink cheeks and ankle-tight skirt stopped as though turned to stone.

For several moments these two, who had not been content to let well enough alone, and who had both tinkered with the hands of the clock, stood looking. Neither recognized the other. Neither saw in this person the one who was loved and needed. It was unspeakably pathetic. Finally, with dreaded nervousness, they moved simultaneously, gave each other a hurried “Good-morning!” and passed.

an hour later Barton White was washing his head, feverishly, and up in her room, with the bitter tears of humiliation in her eyes, Eleanor Stretton was removing the blush from her cheeks. It was no use. Anno Domini had hit them as it did everyone else, and had hit them very hard. “Good-morning!” Think of it! All that preparation and expense for a mutual “Good-morning!” All those priceless days wasted, their one touch of romance killed because of over-anxiety.

For the next few days both Barton White and Eleanor Stretton kept to their rooms. The one had severe indigestion, the other a slight recurrence of her complaint. The weather was so treacherous. But no flowers went up to No. 21, and no letters to No. 33. What went on in those rooms during these awful days no one knows. But in both grey gradually came back into two heads of hair, and with it a return to sense.

It was afternoon, with the sun setting all red behind the yellow leaves, when they came face to face again, the same dear, elderly people that they had been before their wistful adventure backwards into a never-to-be-recovered youth. His hair was nearly white as he stood hatless before her, and her cheeks a little too pale as she met his eyes.

“My dear!” he said.

“Oh, my dear!” she answered.

“I did it for you,” he said.

“And I for you,” she answered.

“But I loved you as you were and are,” he said.

“And I as I see you now,” she answered.

“Thank God, you've come back!” he said.

“Thank God for you!” she answered.

And as he put his arms about her shoulders and his lips upon her cheeks there was a little sound as though someone were creeping away on tiptoe through the dead leaves. It might have been Providence.


text: Talk:The Smart Set/Volume 51/Issue 3/They Went in Search of Love

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The Smart Set/Volume 14/Issue 1/Gran'father Coquesne

By Cosmo Hamilton

N the heights above the village of Givonne, occupied a fortnight before Sedan by squadrons of Prussian cavalry and many regiments of infantry, stood an ancient crucifix. The sun of innumerable summers had shone upon the stone image of the Man of Sorrows. Hundreds of winter storms had frowned upon Him. Spring flowers had sprung up year after year at His feet, and around Him there had been many harvestings as autumn had succeeded autumn.

The Prince of Peace looked down upon a scene which contained no suggestion of flowers or harvestings. In the once unbustling cobbled street stood groups of soldiers. The market-place had become a huge stable, the ancient church the quarters of the staff. A few feeble old villagers slunk here and there among the enemies of their country, a few children stood gazing doubtfully at the horses, a few pale-faced, despairing women hurried on domestic errands.

The Prince of War held the country in his grip.

On the outskirts of the village, a stone's throw from the Meuse, alone, stood the cottage of Gran'father Coquesne, cobbler.

With the war, its rights and wrongs, its horrors, its triumphs, I am not concerned. It is Gran'father Coquesne who concerns me—ex-Sergeant Antoine Marie Armand Coquesne, of the Imperial Guard, upon whose breast Napoleon had pinned with his own hands a medal for distinguished conduct in the field; Gran'father Coquesne, cobbler, the man who had lived too long.

Seated on a backless chair beside a tool-bench under the one window of the living-room, bent double over a woman's boot which was pressed between his trembling knees, was an old, gaunt man. His white hair hung down low upon his neck. His lips, beneath a straggling white mustache, trembled feebly. Upon the bridge of his eagle nose rested a large pair of spectacles through which his pale eyes peered uncertainly. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows and a leathern apron, battered and discolored, showed very little of his butcher-blue trousers, which ended at his ankles, bare above his dirty sabots. The strokes of his hammer, as he knocked the nails he took from his toothless mouth into the sole of the boot, were weak. One in three missed the nail and the hammer came down upon his fingers. And as he worked the tears trickled down his high cheek-bones and sunken cheeks, and he kept up a muttering, half-prayerful, half-irritable, wholly impotent.

The sun was setting upon an exquisite September day. Its red glow came in through the little window and fell gently upon the pathetic figure, upon the whitewashed walls of the room and its bare, clean floor. In the shade of the room, five feet from the bench and three from the wall, stood a low, wooden bed, with posts. At the other side of the window a low door stood half-open, and opposite the bed, in an angle of the room, was a short flight of stairs leading to the two bedrooms above. Its door opened into the room and was hooked back to the wall, which was broken here and there and showed lath and plaster.

A sudden bugle call rang out.

The old man raised his hammer with a gesture of passionate anger.

"Curse you!" he cried, "curse you! Thieves! Robbers! Cowards! Prussians!... Why am I too old, bon Dieu? Why am I too old? Why do I live to mend boots when my son bleeds for his country? Why am I allowed to linger about, peeling potatoes and carrying water, while our enemies burn our houses and murder our children?... Too old to fight—too old! Oh, bon Dieu, bon Dieu!"

He gave a shrill yell and his hammer fell feebly upon the boot. With an irritability intensely pathetic he flung the boot and the hammer away from him, buried his face in his hands and swayed himself backward and forward, weeping with rage and sorrow.

"Gran'father! Gran'father!"

The voice was merry, high-pitched and excited. The door was flung back and a hatless boy of eight, in ragged blouse and muddy sabots, dashed in and seized the old man's arm.

"Ah, ha! my little one," said the old man, a look of great affection and pride coming into his eyes. "Ah, ha! my Désiré!"

"Oh, gran'father, come quick!"

The child pulled the old man to his feet. "What is it, my brave one? What is it?"

"Soldiers! soldiers!" cried the boy, tugging the old man to the door. "Look! look!"

With sudden eagerness old Coquesne tottered out and looked back into the village. "Our soldiers? Mon Dieu, perhaps they have come, perhaps— But no, Prussians, always Prussians." He threw up his clenched hands and crept back to his chair.

Désiré danced for joy on the step. "Oh, gran'father," he cried, with a thrill of excitement in his clear, piping voice, "aren't they fine, aren't they grand? And, oh, grandfather, their horses! And look at their helmets; they shine like gold. Hans's helmet shines like gold, too. Are they Prussians like Hans?"

He noticed that the old man had returned to his chair, and for a moment he stood looking at him with a comically solemn reproachfulness. "Don't you like the soldiers, gran'father?" A sob came from the old cobbler, and the boy, with a sudden childish tenderness, ran to his side and flung his arms round the old man's neck.

Gran'father Coquesne held the boy in a passionate embrace and laid his white head upon the slight shoulder. "My little one, my little one!"

"Gran'father?" There was a suggestion of fright in the young voice.

"I am too old, and useless, and worn out. Just when I should be strong and full of fire I am no more use than a little one—no more use than you."

Tears sprang into Désire's eyes. "I—I don't want to cry, gran'father, but if you hold me so tight, I"

The cobbler let him loose and kissed his hands and face tenderly. "Ah, but I am sorry! Did gran'father hold him so tight? Ah, but gran'father loves his son's little son, my dearie, my dearie!" He patted the child in a kind of sing-song.

The shadow faded from the boy's face. Some of his excitement returned and he tried to pull himself away. "Gran'father, what do you think I've been doing? What do you think?"

"Ah, ha!" chuckled the old man. "But we take after our father. Mischief, as usual!"

"No, gran'father, only something that made Hans laugh. Gran'father," he whispered in a confidential way, "I was coming back from Mother Ducane's, where I left the boots"

"Ah, ha!" encouraged Coquesne, as the boy stopped for breath.

"I didn't stop to talk to anybody, because you told me not to"

"Good, good."

"Only to a cat that was bleeding from its leg."

"Those devils!"

"And as I came round the corner by the forge—why is nobody there now, grandfather? No fire, no sparks?"

"Lebœuf and his sons are better employed," cried the old man exultantly.

"Oh, well, as I came round the corner, who should I see but mama"

"Your mother?"

"With—" The boy stopped and looked laughingly up into the old man's face. "Guess!"

"I cannot guess, dearie! Tell me. I thought your mother was upstairs, weeping."

"With Hans, gran'father."

"Hans?" cried the old man, startled and incredulous. "Hans Dorf?"

"Yes, gran'father. Hans, my dear Hans!"

The old man clutched the boy's shoulders and a sudden hoarseness came into his voice. "Where were they? Go on!"

"They were walking arm in arm by the river, and Hans's spurs jingled whenever he walked over a stone. I wish I had spurs, gran'father."

"Arm in arm?" The old man looked at the boy with horror in his eyes.

"Yes, gran'father, and I believe mama likes Hans as much as I do. This is the third time I've seen them out walking. I threw a small stone at Hans and he laughed as it hit his helmet. No wonder mama likes Hans. He gives me sweets."

Gran'father Coquesne rose up and pushed the child away. His face was contorted with anger. "Arm in arm with a soldier of the country her husband is fighting!" he muttered. "It's bad enough to be forced to feed this Prussian beast, but for my son's wife to make a friend of him—perhaps even"

A woman's laugh drifted through the broken window. A man's deeper tones joined in.

"Désiré, I think I hear more soldiers coming. Run upstairs, my little one, and look out of the window. You will see better. Quick, then, quick."

"Oh, gran'father, how jolly!" The boy ran like the wind.

The old man followed him to the stairs. "But be careful, Désiré; do not lean out too far," he called.

The boy clattered up and could be heard crossing the room above. With an expression of fierce hatred and disgust the old man unhooked the door, almost closed it upon himself, and stood peering into the room from the lower stair.

Marie Coquesne pressed her pretty face close against the window for an instant and then stood in a coquettish attitude in the doorway. A big, good-looking Prussian touched her cheek with his finger.

"Don't, Monsieur Hans," said Marie; "someone may see."

"What do I care?" replied Hans, following her into the room and catching hold of her elbows. "Besides, there's no one to see. That's the best of being on the outskirts of the town—ha?"

Marie laughed—a bright, excited ripple. "You were in luck being billeted here, eh, m'sieur?"

"Was I? That remains to be seen."

The old man peered into the room. His face was white and his eyes gleamed fiercely.

"Indeed! How?" asked Marie, struggling slightly. Hans laughed. "I do not yet know, little sweetheart, how kind you are going to be!"

"Then I have not been kind?"

"Ah, yes, you have been kind—true. But not so land as I should like."

She looked into his face and made a move. "Are all Prussians so greedy?"

"I am greedy. Give me one more kiss."

"Will that satisfy m'sieur?"

"Yes." The Prussian tilted up her face and kissed it. "No. Another, and another, and another"—he kissed her each time—"and then I am not satisfied."

The old man stamped on the stairs, pretending to come down, and then pushed back the door. Beads of perspiration stood on his forehead and the veins on his temples beat hard.

Marie flung the Prussian's arms away and ran quickly to the table. Hans turned angrily.

"Ah, ha, my father," said Marie.

The old man made an effort to control his voice. "Ah, ha, my daughter!" he replied.

"Ah, ha, m'sieur!" Hans growled.

"It is a fine evening," the old man went on, going close to the Prussian in an oily, deferential manner, "and your soldiers arrive every moment."

"Oh!" said the Prussian rudely; "they do, do they?"

"When are we to lose you, my good friend?"

"Perhaps the end of the week; perhaps not. It doesn't affect you. There are quite enough of us in action to knock over your sorry fellows. They're a feeble, thin-livered lot, old man—poor fighting men, but good runners." He turned away and went toward Marie.

The old man lifted his arms to strike him, with an exclamation of hatred, and then altered his tone to one of banter. "Ah, you think so, m'sieur?"

"'Sssh!" said Marie to the Prussian. She had seen the gesture.

"'Sssh be hanged!" said the Prussian roughly. "What do I care for this interrupting old dotard!... Yes, old man, I do think so. And so will you, in a few short weeks, when our ring is complete and we have your Emperor and his army trapped like rats."

"We shall see, my soldier, we shall see!" replied the old man, trying to bring an easy smile to a mouth made hard with pain. He went over to his bench and shakily lighted a candle-end which stood in its own grease.

"Sst, quick!" said Hans, bending over Marie. "Another."

The woman evaded him deftly, darting a look at the cobbler. "Not now. Presently."

"But when?"

"When he and the boy are in bed."

Hans looked at her eagerly. "You will come to me?" The old man crept nearer, straining his ears. "You will slip down here?"

Marie put her finger on her lips and laughed softly. "Perhaps," she whispered. "But Désiré? Where is he, my father? Surely he is not out still?"

Hans turned away, rubbing his hands and smiling.

"No, no," said the cobbler, hardly able to speak. "He is upstairs. Listen; at this moment he comes down again."

The boy clattered down the bare stairs, calling, "Hans! Where is Hans?"

"Hello, little one!"

Désiré ran to him and jumped on his knee. "I have eaten those sweets you gave me, Hans. I have had no sweets before for a long time, Hans!"

"So, youngster!"

"They were nice—very."

Gran'father Coquesne bore the sight of his son's son on the knee of his enemy as long as he could. Then he shambled forward, with an oily smile, and put his hands on the child's shoulders. "But it is very kind of m'sieur to give the boy some sweets."

"Ah, yes, very kind," echoed Marie.

"Go away, old man."

"I like sweets," said Désiré.

Hans allowed himself a slight leer at the boy's mother. "And I, ha!"

The old man took the child away from the Prussian quickly. "But he is too heavy to nurse, eh, M'sieur Hans? He is growing into a little man now."

The Prussian rose, annoyed. "And I don't think he'll ever be called upon to fight us when he is one. If I know anything, his father will have had enough to last for a good bit." He swaggered to the door.

"Oh, Hans, don't go!" cried the boy.

"What? Oh, I'm going to smoke on the step till supper."

"It will not be long, m'sieur. I will go and get ready to cook it," said Marie.

"So?" replied Hans, smiling at her. "Good, good. I shall be ready."

Marie nodded to him and ran upstairs.

"Wait for me, Hans. I will come, too."

"No, no, Désiré," whispered the old man, clutching his arm. "I do not wish"

"But, gran'father," whimpered the child, struggling, "I want to go."

"Ah, dearie, but gran'father would have you stay with him."

"Yes, but why mayn't I go?"

"What!" cried the old man; "you love this Hans better than your gran'father?"

"Oh, gran'father!" With an infinitely tender smile the boy clasped his arms round the old man's knees.

"Then stay with me, dearie. See, I want you to help me play a funny joke upon your good friend Hans, that will amuse him. Will you, little one?"

"Oh, yes, gran'father."

The old man, with a gleam of cunning in his eyes, patted the boy's shoulder with a chuckle.

"Then bring me my hammer from the bench, and that large staple of iron you will see by its side."

The boy brought them back eagerly. "I've got them, gran'father. What are you going to do? Tell Désiré!"

"All in good time, my little one, all in good time. But it will be great fun—oh, great fun! He will enjoy it, your friend Hans. Ha! ha! What a joke! What a joke!... Now fetch the candle from my bench, and bring it quickly to me by Hans's bed."

"The candle? Yes." The boy darted away. "But quietly, boy, quietly. We must be mice." He shuffled as he spoke to the space on the farther side of the bed, and with the air of a man almost delirious began hammering the staple into the beam in the wall, on a level with the pillow.

Désiré held the candle close to the wall, trembling with pleasure. "But tell me, gran'father, tell me."

"See, we first drive in the staple so—and so—and so"

"Yes, yes."

"And then, the staple well and firmly in the wood, you give me the candle to hold."

"Here," said the boy, thrusting the piece of candle into the old man's hands.

The flame flickered in the old cobbler's unsteady grasp. "And then," he said, almost gaily, "you run—but quietly—to that coil of rope that is hanging to the nail yonder."

"I see it," said the boy.

"You then bring it to me; take the candle again"

"I've got it, gran'father."

"And then," continued the old man, putting the hammer on the bed, "we tie a great, strong knot through the staple so—and so."

"Go on, go on!" laughed the child, jumping about in his excitement.

"What then, my brave boy, what then? Why then, just to tease your good friend Hans and make him laugh, we put the rope loosely over his pillow, leaving a large loop here, so."

"Yes, yes, gran'father."

"And we then let the rest of the rope hang down in the shadow—so—and there it is, ready for use." He laughed, rubbing his hands gloatingly.

"But is that all, gran'father? That won't make Hans laugh."

"No, my little one, that is only the beginning. The rest of the joke must wait until your good friend Hans goes to bed. Oh, it will be good fun! How your good friend Hans—who so kindly gave you sweets—will enjoy it! You see that coil on the pillow? When he is in bed, asleep—I shall take care that he sleeps soundly—you will creep up and you will very carefully put the rope round his neck, my little one."

"Round his neck?"

"Yes, my little one, yes. What fun! What fun! And then you and I will catch hold of the rope and we will wind it tight on my winch."

"Gran'father! It will hurt him."

"Oh, no, no, it will not hurt. It is only in fun—just a game to tease him—and then we will let go, and see what your good friend Hans will say. Oh, it's a good game, a merry game."

The boy still looked doubtful. "Will he like it?"

Gran'father Coquesne chuckled. "He is a merry fellow, your friend Hans. He will sit up and see us and burst out laughing. 'Ah, ha!' he will say, 'so it is you, youngster, and the old man, playing tricks. Ha, ha! Good. Very funny. You shall have some more sweets!'"

The boy's face lit up. "And he will give me more sweets?"

"Certainly, my little one, certainly."

"Oh, how nice! But, gran'father, mother will send me to bed."

"No," chuckled the old man, with the gleam of cunning again in his eyes. "I have thought of that. I will need you to hold the candle while I finish the boot. But not a word, dearie. You understand?"

"Oh, yes, gran'father. That would spoil everything."

The old man laughed. "It would, dearie, it would indeed. You will be a little mouse."

The child clasped his hands, leaped up and kissed his grandfather, turned to the door and ran toward it gaily.

The old man waited for the door to open and close. Then, with a little cry of senile excitement, he flung his arms up. "Too old to fight—yes! But not yet too old to save the honor of my name and account for one, at least, of the enemies of my country."

came down stairs singing.

The old man pounced upon the hammer, hurriedly took the candle from the bed, and put it back on the bench. In cap and apron Marie entered, crossed the room lightly to the fireplace, and still singing, lifted the lids of the pots, stirring and tasting.

The old man watched her with a look of supreme disgust and contempt. "My daughter is merry to-night," he said cringingly.

"It is time, father. Mon Dieu! but we have been dull enough since the war, in all conscience."

The old man peered at her with a queer, sneering expression. "You are merry because you have a feeling that your husband is safe and unhurt?"

"Hey? Oh, Jacques is all right. He'll take care of himself, never fear."

"Ah, but how glad he will be to come back to his little house, and his child and his old father—and his faithful wife!"

Marie dropped a lid from the stove with a clatter. "Oh!" she cried petulantly, "don't keep talking to me when I'm busy. You only make me upset things."

"Ah, but I am sorry, my child. It is good to chat with you once again. For the past few days you have been so busy I have but seldom seen you."

"Well," said Marie shortly. "I've been in all the time, as usual, cooking and scrubbing—always cooking and scrubbing."

"I am not grumbling, my daughter. These are dreadful times, and our poor country bleeds itself to death. It is good to hear you sing again; even I am happier tonight, although I am too old to fight." He chuckled and murmured under his breath, "What fun! What fun!"

"The soup is steaming, father."

"I will light the lamp, my daughter," said the old man, shuffling to the table. "Our friend the enemy is hungry." "M'sieur Hans! M'sieur Hans!" called Marie, turning the soup into the four plates.

"He is talking to the little one; I will call him."

Going to the door, the old man stood for a moment looking at the stout young Prussian. A glint of fiendish joy was in his eyes. "M'sieur Hans," he said, with an air of great cordiality, "supper, my friend."

The Prussian swung the boy on his shoulder. "About time, too. It's half an hour late tonight, as it is. We're more than hungry—not so, youngster?"

"I am always hungry now, Hans. Mother, mother! Look at me!"

"Hungry or not," said Hans, putting the boy down, "he's heavy. What a pity he's not old enough to fight, eh, old man? Who knows—he might have put me away, hey?"

"Oh, Hans, I wouldn't shoot you!"

With a little cry he couldn't suppress, the cobbler dropped a spoon upon the table. He instantly turned it into a quavering laugh.

"Marie," broke in the old man, with feeble jocularity, "we will give our good friend here a treat. Shall we, Marie?"

"Meaning me, old man?"

"Yes, yes," cried Désiré.

"How, father?"

"I have one bottle of the excellent spirits which Jacques won at the regatta last year. Good, warm spirits, M'sieur Hans. You have been kind to the little one; you shall have it. Yes, but you shall."

"Sssh!"

A sound of galloping horses drifted in through the window.

"Poor devils," said Hans, "they're making a night of it. They'd envy me if they only knew—hey?" He looked at Marie and laughed uproariously.

"But yes, M'sieur Hans," piped the old man, placing the bottle upon the table, having carefully drawn the cork. "Although the fare is poor here we mean well. A glass, my daughter, a glass."

"Brandy, by Bismarck! A glass, my daughter, a glass." He gave an insolent imitation of the old man's treble. "Old man, you're my friend for life."

"I hope so, m'sieur, I hope so."

"This is the first brandy I shall have put in my stomach since we entered your curs country. This is luck. A glass now, quick."

"M'sieur is dry," said Marie, handing one.

"M'sieur is always dry, my dear. Go on, old man, raise the elbow. Brandy is an old friend of mine."

"Water, M'sieur Hans?" asked Marie.

"No, no!" cried the old man.

"Water? Get out," scoffed the Prussian. "I never play tricks with a friend." He raised the glass to Marie. "Hoch!" he said, and drank with enormous relish. "Ah, but that's the stuff. Why, father, it's as old as you are. How old are you? A hundred?"

The cobbler winced. "A good joke, hey, Désiré?" he said, filling the soldier's glass again and looking at him queerly. "A good joke. How our good friend m'sieur loves his jokes."

"So do we, gran'father." The boy turned to the Prussian, as though about to blurt out the old man's plans.

"Finish the soup, dearie," said the grandfather, touching him on the arm quickly. "It will get cold."

The boy caught the meaning look and laughed uproariously. "Oh, gran'father, what a joke!"

"Why, father," said Marie, "you haven't touched your plate."

"No, no," said the old man, fidgeting about the Prussian's chair, "there are others who need it more than I. I am too old. I do not count. If M'sieur Hans"

"Try M'sieur Hans," said the soldier, reaching out.

"Mine is all gone, too," said Désiré pathetically.

Hans stopped drinking the soup. "Share this, my youngster. I never expected it." "No, no," cried grandfather. "M'sieur is too kind."

Hans shook off the feeble hand. "Come on, youngster," he said. "Here you are." He poured half the soup into the child's plate, and turned to his glass to find it filled again.

"What! more? I wish all my hosts were like you, old man." He drank it at a draught, and put the glass down empty with a bang.

"Isn't Hans thirsty?" cried the boy.

The old man began stroking the Prussian's sleeve. "Ah, M'sieur Hans, it would have pleased me to have given you a bottle of this every day you are with us."

"Not half so much as it would have pleased me," retorted Hans; and then he broke out into a German song, and beat time on the table with a spoon. Gran'father Coquesne watched him with a growing smile; his fingers twitched convulsively, like the mouth of a cat before it springs upon an unconscious bird.

Marie drew the old man angrily aside. "Father," she whispered emphatically, "take the bottle away. He will make himself drunk."

"Tush, my child. Prussians cannot get drunk. They have no heads."

"But he is already tipsy."

The old man chuckled. "No, no," he said; "merry, my daughter, only merry."

"Well," said Marie, with a bright spot of anger on each cheek, "I warn you! If you let him finish the bottle I shall be very angry."

The old man broke into a kind of whine. "My Marie couldn't be angry with her poor old father. He means well, he means well."

Marie swung round on her heel, with her head in the air. "Come, Désiré. We will go to bed!"

"Spare the child to me for ten minutes," broke in the old man. "I need his help with a job that must be finished by the morning."

Hans staggered to his feet. "You're not going, sweetheart?"

"Sst! Quiet, stupid!"

"Oh—ah—yes," whispered Hans. "I understand, I understand. Mum's the word. You'll come—mind!"

"Yes, I'll come." Marie went up to the staircase. "Good night, father."

The grandfather had watched and listened eagerly. He stood with twitching fingers, looking sideways at the rope. "God's blessing, my daughter," he cried cordially.

"Good night, M'sieur Hans."

Hans waved his hand. "God's blessing, my daughter," he chuckled.

"Send Désiré soon, father."

"Yes, yes, Marie. A little while. A few short minutes."

The woman's steps echoed through the cottage. Then a door closed.

Désiré, bubbling with pleasure and excitement, made a little run for his grandfather. "Oh, what a joke!" he cried.

"Quietly, my little one, quietly."

"Hans, you must go to bed now."

"What's that, hey! Bed? All in good time, all in good time. Finish old man's bottle first." He drank again, and the glass fell on the floor. Hans kicked it into a corner, and sat on the edge of the table. "Here, old 'un," he shouted, "take off my boots."

Désiré ran forward. "Let me, Hans; I know the way." "You one, boy. Old 'un t'other. Here, old 'un."

"But yes, my good friend, instantly." The old man, with a twitch of pain, bent over the thrust-out leg. "They are good boots indeed," he said.

"They're Prussian boots. All good things come from Prussia. No French work for me. These boots never run away."

A rush of blood flooded the old man's face and neck, and a snarl of rage gurgled in his throat. But with a superhuman effort he mastered himself. "M'sieur is right," he said. "M'sieur is always right."

Désiré clapped his hands. "Now, Hans, go to bed."

In a stupid kind of way Hans looked from the old man to the child.

"Hello," he said, with a cunning smile, "you seem devilish anxious for me to go to bed. Washup, hey?"

"Nothing, Hans, nothing," laughed the boy wildly.

Hans lurched across the room toward the bed. "Shouldn't be bit surprised if youngster hasn't made me apple-pie, hey? Oh, I know these youngsters. Was youngster myself once. Hey?"

The old man shuffled quietly in front of him. "The bottle, m'sieur, the bottle. A sin to waste the rest."

Hans stopped and turned around. The old man breathed less heavily. "No intention of wasting, old 'un. Fill my glass. Ho! no glass? Alri', drink out of bottle. Ho! ho! Not first time, hey?" He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank. Then, finding it empty, he flung it with a roar of laughter at the old man. It missed his head by an inch, and fell with a thud against the soft wall.

"Bad shot, my son," laughed the old man.

"Not so much of that 'son,' old man. Praise God, there's nothing French about me." He yawned. "I say, but I'm sleepy. This brandy has gone to my head, and no mistake. Better snatch forty winks until she—" He pulled himself up and turned blusteringly. "Here, you, get to your beds. Can't have any hammering here to keep me awake." He lurched over to his bed, pitching his tunic on the foot of it.

"Gran'father." cried Désiré, "he's going, he's going!"

"Quiet, little one, quiet." The old man caught the child's eager hand. "We must be mice.... No, no, friend Hans, no hammering tonight. You will sleep well tonight, my Prussian, very well.... What a joke, hey, little one, what a joke!"

The Prussian, breathing heavily, growled. Désiré tugged eagerly at the old man's hand, pulling him to the table. Even more excited than the boy, the old cobbler blew out the lamp. A long shaft of moonlight streamed in through the window and fell upon the staircase.

Marie opened her door and called, "Désiré, Désiré!"

"Coming, my daughter, coming." He led the boy to the bed, and peered at the snoring soldier, touching him here and there to test the soundness of his deep. "Hans," he cried, bending low, "Hans, my friend, there is still a drop of the brandy in the bottom of the bottle.... No, he sleeps. What a joke, what a joke! Now, little one, the noose. Quietly—we are mice. Over head and round neck, so! Ha!"

The boy stood on tiptoe and slipped the rope over the Prussian's head, lifting it with an effort to do so. A growl was the only result.

"It's round, gran'father. Pull, pull!"

Marie came to the bottom of the stairs and stood, annoyed to find the old man and the boy still up. She was about to call when she saw Gran'father Coquesne slip the rope round the winch and with a feeble yell of triumph wind it madly. Then, with her hands held convulsively to her mouth to press back a shriek of horror, she heard her lover give a great gurgle, saw his hand drawn against the post of the bed and his legs kick spasmodically.

"Oh, gran'father," cried the boy, clapping his hands, "what a joke! what a joke! Look at his legs! Look at Hans's legs!"

The old man laughed deliriously, and then flung up his hand in salute, with an almost superb gesture. "For the honor of my country and my son!" he cried, and crossed himself. And then, breaking into feverish laughter again, he shuffled his feet about in a kind of dance.

"You've hurt him, gran'father!" cried the child fearfully.

"Ah! ha! What a joke! Your good friend Hans, he likes a joke. Ho! ho!"

"But, gran'father, he does not sit up and say, 'Ah, ha! You are clever, you are funny!'"

The old man shuffled across to the bed and touched the twitching body. "Not tonight, my dearie. He is too tired. He sleeps well."

"Oh, gran'father," whimpered the boy, "but where is the joke?"

The old man stifled a chuckle, and turned the boy away from the bed to prevent his catching sight of the staring, glazed eyes, the bulging lips of the strangled man. "But you shall have your sweets, my little one. Oh, yes, you shall have them, never fear. Run to bed now, and pray for your father—your father whose good name is saved!"

As he bent down to kiss the child's cheeks the woman tottered forward and went behind the door.

"Goodnight, dear gran'father."

"Good night, my little one, good night. The holy Virgin and all the angels guard your rest."

He waited in the middle of the room until the boy's step reached the top stair and he heard the door above open. Then, exultantly, he made his way to the bed, and began to untie the rope round the neck of the dead Prussian.

"Now, now, old man, aged a hundred, you who are too old to fight—we shall see. You may be too old, old man, but you have satisfactorily accounted for one of your country's enemies. Ah, ha!... Rope under the arms, tight, so—and now, with all your strength"

He pulled at the heavy body. It fell off the low bed upon the floor with a thud.

"And now, to the river—to the river. What a joke, what a joke! Ha! ha! ha! ha!"

Chuckling like a child, and pulling like a maniac, the old man got the body to the door of the cottage. Opening the door he pulled the body out, and shut it. The latch fell with a snap. The Last Post sang through the air from the village. The woman fell flat upon her face in the shaft of moonlight. A faint chuckling drifted in through the broken window.


text:
Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/308

 it matters a pin's head, for our business is to take whatever comes without noise of rejoicing or lamentation, since neither will last for very long. As for the wandering knight he chanced upon a road leading through the forest to a castle built there by the Lord Marcher of Estrighoil, both for the defence of his lordship and for his pleasure when he would leave his halls above Wye water, and go a-hunting in Wentwood. This castle was at first only one great round tower, but afterwards it had been made larger and furnished with an eight-sided tower and a hall, and surrounded by a pool of water; and it was on a high place looking over the greeny billows of the forest and many a hill and valley and long level of the beloved Gwentian land. As for the name I am in some difficulty for some call it Taroggy, some Strogul, and others Struggle, which has made learned men mix things up and confound this forest fort with the great castle of Estrighoil above the Wye and the Severn and Chepstow town. But I believe Struggle will suit us best, for it means something, and this is more than can be said of Taroggy, unless one happens to understand the niceties, contractions, mutations and amplifications of the tongue of the Terrestrial Paradise. And so it fell out that Sir Symon d'Espalion found himself about half-a-mile from this place, and as he stood musing and doubting whether to toil up or shamble down, the faint notes of a horn wound afar off were borne unto his ears; and looking to the quarter whence this music came, he saw in the valley below a goodly company on horseback,

title: Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/308


text:
Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/313

 peared to get out of a well-closed cupboard in her room, for the clicking of several locks was heard.

“What are you giving him?” asked Havelaar.

“Oh, make your mind easy. Max: it’s a biscuit out of a tin from Batavia! And the sugar also has always been under lock and key.”

Havelaar’s thoughts returned to the point where they had been interrupted.

“Do you know,” he continued, “that we haven’t yet paid the Doctor’s bill Oh, it is very hard!”

“My dear Max, we are living so economically here, we shall soon be able to pay everything! Besides, you’ll no doubt soon be made a Resident, and then everything will be settled in a very short time.”

“That’s exactly the thing that makes me sad,” said Havelaar. “I should be so very sorry to leave Lebak I’ll explain. Don’t you think we loved our Max even more after his illness? Well, it’s just in the same way that I shall love this poor place Lebak when the cancer has been cured from which it has suffered so many years. The thought of promotion dismays me, for I can’t be spared here, Tine! And yet, on the other hand, when I think of our debts ”

“It will all come right, Max! Even if now you had to go away from here, you could help Lebak later, when you are Governor-General.”

At this there showed savage streaks in Havelaar’s embroidery-pattern! There was anger in that florescence, those lace-holes became angular, pointed, they bit each other

Tine saw that she had said something amiss.

“Darling Max ” she began gently.

“Curse it! Do you want to let those poor wretches hunger so long? Can live on ”

“Darling Max!”

But he jumped up. There was no more drawing that evening.


text:
Page:A taxonomic revision of the Archipini of the Caribbean (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae, Tortricinae).pdf/5

Rh With few exceptions, Archipini in the Caribbean are restricted to mid- to high elevations (excluding the Mictopsichia group). This habitat preference, combined with the topographic complexity of the Caribbean islands, has driven high levels of endemism and surprisingly high levels of species richness for such a small geographic area. On Hispaniola, for example, there are four disjunct mountain ranges, with some peaks around 2000 m in elevation. The intervening valleys provide extreme topographic relief; e.g., the Hoya de Enriquillo valley between the Sierra de Bahoruco and the Sierra de Neiba has several points below sea level. This serves to create several smaller “islands” on Hispaniola itself, with the intervening “seas” (i.e., the valleys) inhospitable to montane archipine species. The majority of Caribbean archipine species are restricted to a single mountain range, and in some cases, to a single peak or series of closely situated peaks, raising questions about their conservation prospects. Of the non-Mictopsichia group of archipines, only five have been recorded from coastal elevations, and five are known from more than one island or archipelago.

The islands of the Caribbean provide an excellent realm in which to study insect biogeography, as demonstrated by the attention it has received from entomologists (see Liebherr 1988). Unfortunately, only rarely have Caribbean microlepidoptera been examined (Davis 1975; Heppner 1985; St. Laurent & McCabe 2016).

There exist no comprehensive Caribbean-centric revisions for any tortricid groups. Recent papers have begun to shed light on Caribbean tortricid diversity, but these have all been part of broader, Neotropical generic revisions (Razowski and Becker 2000b; Adamski and Brown 2001; Brown and Brown 2004; Phillips-Rodriguez and Powell 2007; Brown 2008; Razowski and Brown 2008; Brown 2009; Razowski and Becker 2010; Brown et al. 2018), isolated taxonomic treatments (Matthews et al. 2012, 2019; Brown et al. 2018; Gilligan et al. 2018; Austin et al. 2019), or faunal inventories of the Lepidoptera in general (Núñez-Aguila & Barro-Cañamero 2012; Perez-Gelabert 2020). The present paper represents the first comprehensive taxonomic revision of a Caribbean tortricid tribe.

Dissection methods follow Landry (2007); however, for some dissections slide-mounting was delayed to allow lateral imaging of the male genitalia. Genitalia and abdomens, when not permanently slide mounted, are preserved in glycerol-filled microvials pinned beneath the specimen. Genitalia were stained with a combination of Eosin Y and chlorazol black. Forewing length (FWL) was measured in a straight line from the base of the costa to the apex including the fringe to the nearest half-millimeter.

Images of adults and genitalia were captured using a Macroscopic Solutions Macropod Pro and Canon EOS 6D DSLR camera body using the Macro Photo MP-E 65 mm f/2.8 1–5× manual focus lens for EOS or EF 70–200 mm zoom lens with 10× or 20× Mitutoyo objective lenses for genitalia. Images were stacked as needed using Zerene Stacking Software Version 1.04 (Zerene Systems, LLC 2014). Figures were manipulated with Adobe Photoshop CC (2018). Maps were created with SimpleMappr


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Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/314

 He strode up and down angrily in the inner colonnade, and at last he said in a tone that to any stranger would have sounded rough and harsh, but was very differently understood by Tine:

“Damn this laxness, this shameful laxness! Here I have sat down waiting for justice a whole month, and meanwhile those poor people suffer terribly. The Regent seems to be confident that no one dares tackle him! Look ”

He went into his office, and returned with a letter in his hand, a letter which lies before me, reader!

“Look! in this letter he has the audacity to make proposals to me as to the of labour he will have performed by the people whom he has called up unlawfully. Isn’t this carrying impudence far? And do you know who those people are? They are women with little children, babies, pregnant women who have been driven from Parang Koodyang to the head-centre in order to labour for There are no more men! And they have nothing to eat, and they sleep in the road, and eat sand! Can eat sand? Must they eat sand until I am Governor-General? Curse it!”

Tine knew very well with whom Max was in reality angry, when he spoke like this to her, whom he loved so deeply.

“And,” continued Havelaar, “for all this the responsibility falls on me! If at this very moment some of these poor creatures are wandering about outside there if they see the gleam of our lamp, they will say: ‘There dwells the wretch who was to protect us! There he sits peacefully, with wife and child, and designs embroidery-patterns, and we lie here in the road with our children, starving like dogs of the forest!’ Yes, I hear it, I hear it, this cry for vengeance upon my head! Here, Max, here!”

And he kissed his child with a wildness that frightened the little one.

“My child, when they say to you that I am a wretch who had not the courage to do justice that so many mothers died through my fault  when they say to you that your father’s


text:
The Red Book Magazine/Volume 39/Number 6/Yacobson

ACOBSON should never have been a waiter. His hands were so big that seeing them fumble with spoons and cups was like watching a steam shovel try to pick up rice-grains; and his feet were so big they tripped him whenever he hurried; and his chest and legs were so big they bulged out of the biggest dress-suit they could find him as if they had tried to put him back into short-clothes. But the union had called a sudden strike the previous evening, just before dinner-time—a strike that swept even the kitchen and dining-room of the Ritz-Plaza bare; and worried assistant-managers were running around with napkins over their arms, incredibly meek of speech but praying voicelessly and continuously for anything that could carry a tray two feet without spilling it, to stop the gap till the union and the hotel-men's association could come to terms. So Yacobson, after three hours' confused intensive training in service-wagons and finger-bowls, attained in a day what should be the godlike dream of all good waiters—full charge of two tables in the Lucrezia Borgia Room of the Ritz-Plaza Hotel.

The papers had played up the strike in their reddest ink, and even at half-past seven the room held only a scattering of clients—which was fortunate for Yacobson. And the first of his tables was taken by a red-faced old gentleman so interested in market-reports that the only things he noticed about his food were its arrival and departure—which was still more fortunate. For Yacobson, in spite of his three hours' drill and some beautifully contradictory instructions by a frantic sub-superintendent, still understood very little of what he was about. Perhaps he was hampered by his imperfect command of English, which hardly extended as yet beyond “Yas,” “No,” and the names of the commoner edibles in a one-armed lunch. Indeed, if he had been able to read Dr. Eliot's Five-foot Shelf, it is doubtful whether he would ever have sought for his present grandeur, even; for Yacobson at home was a firm if inarticulate member of the Danish Socialist Party and thoroughly approved of the principle of strikes. Still, a week or so of picking up an existence from soup-kitchens and bread-lines can change political opinions with magic ease. In Yacobson they had developed a hunger almost larger than Yacobson.

Then this job had come—and a meal before he actually went to work! Not a real meal for such as Yacobson, but still a meal. At present Yacobson's mental horizon was bounded only by the conviction that as long as he kept the job, there would be meals.

The red-faced gentleman dug an absent spoon into his ice-cream. Yacobson, eying him wolfishly from afar, grinned suddenly. This was pretty easy, after all, this being a swell waiter, except for the stiff shirt and collar. They pinched; and his sleeves were too short—he tried to pull one of them farther down with his paw till a noise of ripping cloth arrested him. The white coat he used to wear in the Busy Beaver Lunch was a lot sweller, really. They fed you better there too—they gave you enough. He sighed regretfully. Still, he hadn't broken anything here, so far. And at the end of the week when he got his pay, he could go somewhere and really eat.

The red-faced gentleman wanted coffee. Yacobson brought it—a big cup, lukewarm and half of it in the saucer, an honor it shared for a time with Yacobson's thumb. But Consolidated Toothpicks had closed at 92, and the red-faced gentleman didn't notice. Yacobson turned away—and saw the party.

T was eight o'clock. The room had filled up a little, front and center—Yacobson's tables were near the wall toward the pantry-doors. The party moved toward them—a party in evening clothes, three men, two women, shepherded by the assistant manager. He tried to put them near the center of the room; there was a pause for an instant—something that looked like argument—a woman's voice, pleasantly imperious: “No—I want the quiet table—that nice one over by the wall with the oversize waiter.” The assistant manager shrugged his shoulders, giving in to Fate. Then they were seating themselves at Yacobson's table.

The assistant manager, whispering, obsequious: “I hope—allowances—everything somewhat confused—new men—I hope another waiter perhaps—not very experienced—”

“Oh, no!” And the vision in the shimmer-gold dress—she was really almost as beautiful as a girl in a facial-soap advertisement, honestly she was; even Yacobson's slow-moving mind had already described her as “good-looker, Ay say!” and you can see for yourself what mere allusion to her has done to this sentence. The vision, to get a fresh start, looked straight at Yacobson “This seems a very nice one—I like his large hands,” she remarked in a voice that was pleasanter than rustling green-backs. “Thank you so much.”

HE sub-manager retired, wagging himself politely, but managing somehow to take Yacobson along. Yacobson caught phrases shot at him with extreme swiftness out of the corner of the sub-manager's mouth.

“Very important clients—don't be rattled—understand? See they get all the service there is—big tip for you. For God's sake” (almost whining) “—for God's sake don't pull any bonehead plays! Wake up!”

Yacobson looked down at the fawning little person coldly, from his full height. As if anything in the world could rattle Yacobson!

“Ay get you, boss!” said Yacobson, and went back to his table.

As he dealt menu-cards about with the generous gesture of one pitching horseshoes, Yacobson began to take in the component elements of his party:

A sallowish girl with a luscious mouth, overpainted and powdered, in a dress that seemed to consist of two black straps; a prosperous-looking man of the pink, piggy, well-barbered type that has its stubby hands elaborately manicured, wears too many rings, tips heavily and curses at servants; a negligible man whose tortoise-shell glasses and neat hair said “private secretary;” a thin young man, athletically handsome without prettiness, jade shirt-studs or the more obvious actor's mannerisms—“good faller in scrap, that boy,” decided Yacobson; the vision. The Vision!

“Well, well, well,” the piggy man announced, “what are all the boyses and girlies having tonight?”

He looked around the table for approval, instinctively—he was jovial, one felt, the sort of all-around jolly good fellow who treated every one of his own remarks as a jest of the first water.

“Soup or oysters, sister?” He beamed at the sallowish girl “There's potadge à la rain and consommy—guess that's à la beef estract, hey? And—” Oh, dear, how merry he was, and how the rest of the party smiled at him! But suddenly he seemed to grow perturbed; he scowled, almost. “Waiter!” And this time, almost he snapped his fingers!

Yacobson should have sprung to attention at once. But a thought had come to Yacobson, and thoughts with him took much time and complete attention. He was looking at the Vision and saying something over and over in his mind to make it stick. He was almost saying it aloud in a thunderous whisper. “My Gawd,” he was almost saying, “that little girl ban Sally Divine!” And his mouth dropped open. For the movies held a place second only to eats in Yacobson's cosmos—and Peerless Films, presenting Sally Divine, have gone around the world in places that have never seen a cocktail or a safety-razor.

“Waiter!” said the piggy man again in the voice of the jolly fellow whom circumstances are always forcing to be unpleasant to others.

This time Yacobson heard. “Yas,” he said, and came forward an order-pad clutched tightly in one paw.

“Two bluepoint cocktails, one pottadge, one lobster bisque, one grapefruit,” the piggy man commanded, “an' the bluepoints gotta be cold this time—get that? Then—le's see—I'll have a small planked steak—and the filly mignon for you, sister, and two lamb chops Parisian for the lady across. —You, Charley? —Better make it three planked steaks—no, I'll have filly mignon after all—and some of the fresh asparagus would be good, an—”

“Ay don't get all that,” said Yacobson, scrawling with painful haste.

“Well, you oughta—I'm here for dinner, not to teach you how to speak English—get it? Oh, yes, Sally, but we're paying enough here, and I want a little service for my money. Got it now?”

“Ay got the soup and oysters now,” said Yacobson.

The piggy man's voice ascended—a broken wail.

“Great Henry, have I gotta say it all over again? Oh, all right—but of all the dumb Alfreds! All right—two planked steaks, small, no, better make it three after all, I guess—”

If anybody had had time to listen to unnecessary noises in the pantry, they might have heard Yacobson mutter as he filled his orders. The “mutter” is used in that figurative sense in which one might comment upon a steam siren's whisper. Also the mutter alternated; it was first, in tones that meant gentleness with Yacobson: “She ban sveet, that Sally girl. Better looker than her pictures. She ban all right.” Then growlingly: “Ay speak English all right. Ay know ay speak English good—just so good as he do—damn him!”

He was still absorbed in deliberate and painful thought as he went back to his table—so absorbed that the piggy man found his oysters sans cocktail-sauce, which led to further witty reproach from the piggy man. Slow, flat-footed, hulking, exaggeratedly cautious with such tiny things as soup-spoons, Yacobson managed to get past the salad course with only those minor mistakes which a less searching eye than that of the piggy man might well have overlooked. And doing so, a large, unhasty wrath began to smolder in Yacobson like a fire made of peat. His passages to and from the service-doors were to windy grumblings: “What for she married that svellhead fatty, what for?.... She run off with that young boy with the clean-washed face some time —Ay hope she do, by damn!”

And then the disaster came, like a bolt from the blue, like a snake in the grass, like a pitcher's home run, like any other simile that suggests both speed and unexpectedness. The piggy Divine, widely gesturing to the fervid young lady, gymnastically explanatory; the Yacobson approachant from the wrong side with a chocolate parfait. Bing!—and the piggy man was rubbing bruised knuckles, the fervid young lady squealing as half a parfait slid from her lap to her shoes, glass on the floor, confusion, sub-manager coming on the run, all occupants of the table talking at once. In the midst of this riot was only one calm person, Yacobson, on his knees, picking bits of glass from the floor with clumsy but unhurried fingers.

“Oh, my dress,” sobbed the fervid young lady, “my dress!”—and would not be comforted.

“Here, you!” bawled the piggy man, raging. “You fish! You clumsy, ignorant fool of a saphead Swede!” Then, as Yacobson continued to pick up glass, he turned to the sub-manager. He was trembling with excitement; his voice cracked with the injustice of a world that allowed things like this to happen at dinner.

“I want this man fired! He delib—he deliberately spilled ice-cream on Miss de Serum's dress and rooned it!” His excitement was so great that he nearly said “ruint.”

The sub-manager turned primly to Yacobson.

“You're fired,” he said. “Inexcusable. Get out!”

Yacobson arose. His face expressed neither joy nor sorrow Only he let the pieces of broken glass he had collected tinkle back to the floor.

“All right.” said Yacobson, and turned to walk away.

But here Sally Divine created astonishing diversion.

She had said nothing at all since the accident happened, except the expected feminine croonings to the fervid young lady: but her cheeks had been getting pinker and pinker, and her blue eyes cooler and cooler, all through her husband's speech. Now she spoke, and her voice was chilly as liquid air.

“I wont have you fire that man, Frank!” said Sally Divine

“What?” said the piggy man; and again, astoundedly “Wha-a-at?”

“I said I wouldn't have you fire that man, and I wont!” She breathed sharply; her lips paled, reddened again. “You knocked that dish into Josie's lap yourself. It was your fault and your clumsiness, and you're not going to put it off on anyone else, Frank Richards, not while I'm here. It's mean!”

HE fat man rose to his feet. The veins stood out on his forehead.

“That man—” he began.

“Sit down!” said Sally Divine from her chilly quietude, and the piggy man sat. Then she turned to the sub-manager

“So he isn't fired;” she said briefly. The sub-manager made a rapid decision. He beckoned to Yacobson.

“At the special request of one of our most valued clients—” he began very smoothly—then gave it up in despair.

“You're not fired—yet,” he announced.

“All right,” said Yacobson.

“Now go and thank the lady!” The sub-manager prompted his large, unruly child.

Yacobson advanced upon Sally like a mountain, halted.

“Thanks, lady,” he said. “They fire me tomorrow all the same. but Ay don't care. Ay seen you lots in the pictures,” he added graciously. “Ay liked those pictures. Thanks.”

There never was a goddess, from Sekhet down, who wouldn't respond to the brave-Newfoundland-dog look in the eyes of a properly muscle-bound hero. Sally Divine turned back to the sub-manager indignantly.

“Is that straight? You're going to fire him anyhow?”

The sub-manager hesitated—hemmed.

“Not tomorrow, perhaps. But ordinarily he would never have been taken on. And with our standard of service, we could hardly—”

“Oh,” said Sally Divine. “Yes, I see. I quite understand.”

But wholly without sarcasm! Instead she suddenly turned on the sub-manager the appealing innocent eyes that had made all America snuffle in “Whose Husband Are You?”

“But can't you do something for him?” breathed Sally piteously.

The sub-manager staggered, very nearly, as the eyes had their full effect. There was pleading in those eyes—and in the fact that their owner occupied the Michelangelo Suite; and somewhere before the sub-manager's dazzled vision flashed like “In Hoc Signo Vinces,” the Ritz-Plaza's celebrated motto: “Always Get the Guest What He Asks for—No Matter If It's the Moon.”

“Oh, couldn't you, please?” said Sally Divine; and then: “Surely you—”

The sub-manager smiled like a sheep attempting tact.

“I'm afraid we can hardly keep him as a waiter,” he said, with what he hoped was firmness, “but I could probably find—”

The goddess beckoned to Yacobson

“What else can you do besides wait on table?” she said. “Mr.—” She hesitated. “Mr.—”

“Yacobson,” said Yacobson

“Mr. Jacobson,” said Sally Divine, and completed her conquest. Yacobson grinned till his face was a pumpkin-lantern. He spread out his hands in front of her, his huge hands.

“Ay can rub,” he said, and paused. Then, as she did not seem to understand:

“Rub peoples,” he added. His fingers played galloping horses on an imaginary back.

“Oh, of course!” said Sally Divine. If she had been before the camera, she would have clapped her hands. “He can be a masseur in the Turkish bath!”

“I'm afraid—” said the sub-manager weakly. Then he wilted. “I will make inquiries if there is a vacancy. If so—” he ended.

“And I will make inquiries if Mr. Jacobson has filled the vacancy—sometime next week,” said Sally Divine, and this time her eyes, as she saw the sub-manager, went strangely cold again.

“I'm such a cat—I only stay where I'm humored,” she said, and turned back to her company and the piggy man, who had been trying to cover up his recent collapse by overofficious use of a napkin on Sister's dress.

The sub-manager saw his opportunity, summoned Yacobson away. But Yacobson lingered.

“Thanks,” he said again, loudly.

She smiled, once, swiftly. Already she was beginning to forget the whole incident.

“Isn't anything. Glad you liked the pictures,” she said, her increasing forgetfulness making her voice very friendly.

Going back to his boarding-house that night, Yacobson was reasoned with by strikers as to the relative merits of open shops and closed. The argument became quite heated—so heated that Yacobson was forced to crack two argumentative heads against each other in order to proceed on his way. But he did it almost abstractedly, with no fine joy in conflict. He was thinking: “She ban damn' good to me. She ban damn' white,” he was thinking. “She ban like that clean boy—they look at each other that way.” He was thinking: “That svellhead fatty —Ay like to tear him apart.” And people like Yacobson are dangerous when they think

ACOBSON did not wax fat—his muscles would not let him; but in the steamy orchid-house atmosphere of the Ritz-Plaza's Turkish bath he thrived exceedingly. It impressed him as being the only place he had ever struck, except a stokehold, that was properly warm. Besides, for once in his life he ranked as expert—his bear-paws had magic sinews in them; they loosened refractory muscles and smoothed out soreness with the delicate tactile sense of an A-1 safeblower's fingers solving the combination of an 1830 “cheesebox.” There were tips—more tips; there began to be regular customers; the sock where he kept his money grew bulgy and chinky. And whenever not eating or working or sleeping, he went to the movies.

The films that he favored featured Sally Divine, and as novelty in films meant nothing to Yacobson, he often saw the same film eight or ten times. Miss Divine, in the flesh, he did not see again. However, he gathered that she was still at the Ritz-Plaza; at least, her piggy husband paid frequent visits to the Turkish bath, and as he took these baths for one of two purposes, either to sober up or as a substitute for exercise, his visits were frequent.

On these visits, moreover, he always called for Yacobson, from some antic delight the loud and stupid take in annoying, mosquito-wise, any thing or person that seems to be stronger and less talkative than they. He was always merry with Yacobson, very merry indeed. He would lie on his marble slab, a wheezing pink sloppy bulk that Yacobson spanked and punched and twisted silently, talking to Yacobson of Yacobson, of the clumsiness of Yacobson, the boobishness, the utter turnip-faced stupidity of all Yacobsons in general and Yacobson in particular. Between involuntary grunts, as Yacobson slapped him, he would gasp out smoking-car sagas of the astounding innocence of Swedes in many practical matters.

It amused him—we must be charitable with other people's amusements. Perhaps, also, he was waiting for the day when Yacobson would answer back. But Yacobson only rubbed and whacked and said, “Yas,” and “No,” and “Ay don' know”—a contemptuous hugeness whose hands could have taken the piggy man to pieces like a cheap alarm-clock. And next day or the day after, the piggy man would return, and the process and the indictment of Yacobsons would be repeated, the length of the performance depending on the piggy man's alcoholic pressure at the moment.

The next four months brought no spectacular events at all—unless Yacobson's purchase of a film magazine an extraction therefrom of a rotogravure portrait of Sally Divine as Little Nell to pin on his wall may be called an event. Any other changes that took place were solely in the mind of Yacobson.

The steamy indoor life was changing him, quite how he did not know. He had always been heavy and slow, and that had been well enough. Now he felt both slow and heavy—a decided difference. Also the heat, that heat he had liked so well—it could hardly be said to get on the nerves of a Yacobson, I suppose. But he liked it less; now and then it got in his mouth like a bad taste, slimy and flat. Also, his temper had been slow of combustion. Now he was more irritable—he had almost answered the piggy man once, as a particular phase of Scandinavian character came under the teasing whip of the latter's tongue. He had not answered—but parts of the massage that followed had been unnecessarily vigorous, and for the rest of the day Yacobson had, half unconsciously considered cunning ways of hurting that soft pigginess, hurting it horribly. somehow, somewhere

VERY bad frame of mind for somebody who intends to hold his job—and nobody knew it better than Yacobson. He tried to counteract it by starting to talk to his customers and the other rubbers whenever he got a chance. It was while hearing Ike, a colleague, expound the news of the day in a slack period that Yacobson heard something that interested him extremely.

“'Big Film Star Seeks Reno Divorce,'” spelled Ike, along a headline Then more interestedly: “Say, Swedey that's one of your reg'lars; her husband is—that pink rubber porpoise that's sweatin' around here all the time.”

“Yas?” said Yacobson vaguely. “Who ban she?”

“Sally Divine, you simp! Say, I thought you said you went to the movies! It's been blowin' up for a long time all this mess—” The expert went on—under the alias of “Kinema Kiddo” he was a prominent contributor to the Answer Column of several screen magazines: “Gawd knows why she ever hooked up to this Richards goofer in the first place, but anyhow, everybody knows that she and Grant Gordon—you know; he does young college-boy stuff for Incando—well, anyhow, they're simply fried about each other, and it's a wonder she hasn't tried to break out on parole before. Anyhow, she's started now, and she'll get it, all righty. Old Richards'll take it sittin—she'll prob'ly slip him the berries.”

“Grant Gordon, who ban he?” said the unperturbed Yacobson.

“My Lordy, and it told me it was a fan! Why—” And Ike rattled off a brilliantly concise description of Gordon's face, figure and entire career—long enough for Yacobson to gather that Gordon had been the “clean-washed fallar” at the dinner-party that had changed Yacobson's job for him.

When Ike was all through, Yacobson sat silent for a moment. Then, finally: “She ditch that svellhead fatty—that ban damn' good. Ay ban damn' glad about that,” rumbled Yacobson slowly.

“So you're strong for Sally Divine, hey?” Ike grinned. “Well, I guess that's the way any judge or jury'd feel about it—say, that the boss comin?”

Shortly before Yacobson went off, the piggy man arrived, assisting a friend. Between them they managed to hold each other up. The friend, after removing the easier portions of his clothes, went to sleep on the floor and had to be put to bed, but the piggy man remained conscious though highly garrulous, and often under the impression that Yacobson was a prominent divorce-lawyer.

“I put it just straight as I can,” he moaned. “Oh,'s you, Swede! Well, I'll put it straight to you. Jus' listen.”

“Turn over!” commanded Yacobson.

The piggy man flopped peevishly over on his stomach. “Oh, hell, don't I get any peace nowhere,” he grumbled, a grumble that passed into a snore.

Yacobson paused and looked at him a moment before getting to work. He was red—he was red as catsup, with liquor and heat; and the smell of bad liquor steamed from him like dirty smoke. He was gross and flabby and soft like a half-filled hot-water bag, all over. There was no clean flesh about him. Looking at him, dispassionately, Yacobson felt a sudden impersonal desire—a desire to pick up that flabbiness and throw it away down some drainpipe proper to it, like a god getting rid of an unsuccessful world. A desire to snap pudgy arms between strong fingers, to break the weak chest like a hollow box of bone!

“Lemme tell you,” said the snore, passing back into words. “She's movie actress, my wife—grea' movie actress. But”—rising to a gurgling whine—“she's crooked, all the same. She's crooked, I tell you!”

Yacobson discovered that his hands had turned into hooks, that those hooks had sunk into the piggy man's neck—

“Hey!” said the piggy man, startledly. “Ouch! Whassat?”

The hooks became Yacobson's hands again. The red cloth that had been in front of his eyes and yet somehow part of them, disappeared. He went back to his rubbing and slapping. The piggy man continued his confidences.

OBODY noticed anything funny about Yacobson the next few weeks except that he started buying a lot of papers every day and pestering the other rubbers to read them to him at slack times. But then what he always wanted them to read was the Sally Divine divorce-case, so most of them were willing enough. They remembered that he seemed very interested at the report that Richards, Sally's husband, was going to file a counter-suit.

The case was to come on in a week when Mr. Richards paid his last visit to the Turkish bath, “—to get one more rub-down from the king of Sweden, here, before we hop the train west,” he explained very genially to his companion. He was not in liquor but seemed highly confident and pleased about something or other—he kept poking his friend in the ribs to emphasize his utterances, and jocularly calling him “Lawyer Bill.”

The two happened to be the only ones in the hot-room at the moment—it was after three in the afternoon—except for rubbers like Yacobson, and everybody knows that all servants are blind and deaf. So the piggy man was able to give full vent to his glee.

“Got her!” he repeated. “Got her cold!” And he slapped his bare knee. “All the proofs in the world, all wool and a yard wide. She can get her divorce—she wont make another picture—not with the country all worked up about Hollywood the way it is now! Sally Divine!” he chuckled. “Oh, Di-vine Sally! Spoil his pretty films for a while, I guess. too! Oh, Sally, you—” He went off into the unprintable, ending with, “What's that?” as a sudden noise behind him made him jump.

“Ay ban sorry,” said Yacobson, looming behind him. “Ay drop this.”” He extended a hand—a flesh-brush in the hand.

The piggy one chuckled again. “You're forgiven—it isn't your fault you're a Swede,” he announced. Then he turned to his companion. “Well, Billy, we'll have another powwow on the train—I got a compartment for us on the express. Got some stuff you haven't seen yet, either. Oh—”

“Come,” said Yacobson beside him inexorably. “You've sveated enough. I rub you. It is time.”

“Oh, all right.” And the fat man rose to go. “Best rubber in New York—and the biggest dumbbell,” he said to his friend as he turned, one hand on Yacobson's arm.

“Come!” repeated Yacobson inflexibly “It is time.” His eye had the hard frozen blue of the Arctic wave.

The piggy man laughed, departed to his slab. His friend drowsed a minute, it seemed, to the sound of slappings and rubbings.

Then, “Ouch!” he heard, and “What the —” in a voice grown suddenly bleak with terror, and then a horrible sound that ended swiftly. He leaped to his feet—turned—slipped. It was there on the slab, the horror, an instant seen through light steam like some frightful statue—hands gripping a throat, a pudgy body threshing about in its death-agony, a chest being broken to pieces by treading knees like a hollow box of bone.


text: Talk:The Red Book Magazine/Volume 39/Number 6/Yacobson