“Manny! Oh, my good God, honest? Honest, Manny? My Manny, my good son, what’s going to be a doctor, what’s going to be so good to his family!”
She kissed him. She pawed over his face, his hair. He suffered that. Writing? Well.... Where was the street? Well.... He’d be a doctor.... Etta, his father, his mother, Reba....
“Sure, Ma.”
Emmanuel watched the patient go out of his office. He hadn’t been able to do anything for the girl. He hadn’t dared to do anything for her. In fact, he had shaken his head even before hearing her request. Her eyes had told him. Sorry for the girl? Yes. Of course he was sorry for her. But it wasn’t ethical.... He had to laugh at the word. Ethics—smug euphemism. Simply afraid, that was the truth. Couldn’t risk it. He, the well-known physician, member of medical associations, “a respected member of the community.”
Seven years ago, perhaps, when money had been needed. When impatient eyes were watching him. Four pairs of eyes—no, six, because there had been Etta’s family, too. Now there was enough money. Now there was his office. The mahogany desk with its impressive medical volumes, the white enamel instrument cabinet. An X-ray apparatus.The elaborate washstand with its gleaming appointments. The blue-lettered sign on the window: E. Manfred Woll, M.D.
“That’s not I, of course,” he told himself.
E. Manfred Woll.... Etta’s doing.
“You can’t have a kike name in a swell neighbourhood like this,” she had told him.
All right, the physician,medicinæ doctor, that was E. Manfred Woll. But then where was Emmanuel Wolkowitz? He didn’t know.
There used to be a street. That wasn’t any more. Upstairs there was only his apartment, with every piece of correct furniture just so, with every proper picture just so, every cushion rigid, every piece of china, every vase as the interior decorator had planned it. He was living in an interior decorator’s apartment! Etta’s doing.
Etta herself, his wife, composed of a pretty face, a carefully, painfully, pretty face, of just so much obedient, matter-of-fact sex, so much wifely devotion, solicitude:
“Dearie, you’re so tired!” Every day.... “Here, let me get the girl to make you a nice hot cup of tea.”
There used to be a melody.... In the beginning he had attempted to get Etta to sing. She had replied:
“Oh, I don’t know! Too much trouble. Lessons and everything. Of course, if I was a single girl it would be nice to learn and get a job in a show or in vaudeville. But ain’t I got the best husband in the world to take care of me now?”
Well, she didn’t understand! Emmanuel watched the things in the office, he watched himself seated at the desk of E. Manfred Woll, M.D. Funny, that was!
Etta came in. As usual:
“Am I disturbing you, dear?”
He didn’t reply. She would come in, anyway. She seated herself on the edge of his desk, her pretty legs two silken flashes as they rocked. She toyed with his paper knife, the self-consciously ornamental onyx knife, her gift.
“That car salesman is going to come around to-morrow. What shall I tell him?”
“The salesman. I don’t know! What do you want to tell him?”
Etta pouted. In spite of the usual smile she had so carefully cultivated during the last seven years, her eyes were cold.
“It isn’t whatIwant to tell him. You know that. I’m not the one for whose sake we’re getting that limousine. But you can’t be driving around in that dingy sedan. You ought to have a real car. People expect it of you.”
Always that argument. The apartment people expected of him, her dresses people expected of him, his name people expected of him. Nothing for her. Everything for him. Oh, a good wife!
“You expect it of me, too, don’t you, Etta?”
“Well....”
“You all expect it of me? Your father expected an interest on his money: a nice home for you, nice clothes for you. He got it. My family.... Well, they’re well off now, they’ve no troubles. A nice home in the Bronx. Reba got her dowry, she got her lawyer.... Aren’t you, all of you, satisfied yet? What else do you want?”
“Manny, I don’t understand you.”
“No!”
“What is the matter with you to-day?”
To-day.... Seven years, nine, twelve....
“Etta, what would you say if I told you I’m through?”
“What do you mean, ‘through’?”
“That I’m going away?”
“Where are you going?”
He couldn’t answer that. Where would he be going? To the street? The street....
Etta had left him, shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t bother to try to understand him. One of his unaccountable fits! Alone, Emmanuel continued sitting at his desk. Would he really go away?
The telephone rang. He recognized the voice. His uncle. For years the “support of the family,” who had helped him through college, helped his father with the basement penny business. A self-satisfied, ruthless, self-made man, narrow, full of many hatreds. A charitable, religious Jew, a good father. Cloaks and suits.
“Manny, my son Dewey is gonna have for him a graduation party from high school. I want you positively to come.”
Emmanuel promised. He liked Dewey, a boy who wasforced to be bright, who was forced to be the best student in his class, Dewey, who had once received a beating in his presence for daring to read a novel on a Saturday instead of going to the synagogue. Was Dewey perhaps like himself?
Emmanuel walked out of the house. At the door his chauffeur asked:
“Shall I get the car, sir?”
“No, I’ll walk.”
The man touched his cap, looked after Emmanuel stupidly. It was raining. Emmanuel didn’t care. The rain would do him good to-day, he thought. It would be good to walk into the street while it was raining. Already the afternoon, dusk-cloaked, was slipping away and in the coming darkness the pavement of the street would reflect the light from the windows. Yellow pools of light.... It would be a long walk. The street was far away.
Too far away. After some five blocks Emmanuel stopped. Could that distance to the street be covered to-day? Could it be covered in a year, in a lifetime? Perhaps it wasn’t there at all. There was no melody now—perhaps there never had been a melody....
And did it matter now? He was a doctor. Could he tell that to the street? Could he tell about his family, about Etta?
Was there nothing else than to go back home? That he couldn’t answer. After all the years, that distant street was still calling Emmanuel. Maybe.... Even if there should be no melody, one could go on toward the street. But—home? He walked on.
Then he remembered. Wasn’t there something he had intended to do on the way? What? Oh, Dewey.... The graduation party would be a grand affair. He wouldn’t go, of course, but a gift would be expected. A set of books?
A set of books for Dewey? Who was so much like himself? Books? Dewey was like himself! But then....
“They were my tools,” the thought came to him. “I couldn’t use them. They weren’t the right tools.... Yes, they were.... Those others weren’t right.... The ones at college. Now they’re at home. Etta’s? She can have them. Let her have them. Wrong tools, all of them wrong tools.... The others, too.... Allthe books I’ve ever had!” And then the zig-zag pattern: “Tools, books, tools, tools....”
He entered a shop. No books.... He pointed to a table. To the clerk he muttered:
“These....”
He gave Dewey’s name, the address. He stood there, watching the large package being wrapped up. He nodded:
“That’s right....”
A set of carpenter’s tools. A hammer, a saw, a plane.
Out of the shop. He went on. How far the street was! No—there it was, approaching him, coming toward him. There, that was the street. He stopped for a breath. These were the stones ... his feet were touching the pavement.... And the street was dark. But this end had always been dark, he remembered. Emmanuel lifted his head, his eyes searched the darkness. Nothing yet. But he knew. The yellow pools would be farther on, much farther on....
“Kirwin, you’ll find rain in hell as soon as you will a straight girl in a dance hall in Manila! Don’t wax sentimental over a pretty blonde, out here, until you know the circumstances which landed the lady among the half-breeds. I’ll wager that girl is as tough as they make ’em in even this off country.”
This from young Angier.
“I’ll take you! There’s something in her face that one can tie to. Call her over, at the end of this dance, and let’s settle it. Long wait ahead of us, anyway, until Mayhew shows up. He won’t be in a hurry, with this deluge. Been roughing it sufficiently; he’ll be taking it easy while he is in town.” Kirwin’s older and somewhat graver face was turned toward the dancing couples. He stared at them from underneath beetling brows, dispassionately appraising the girl whom they were discussing.
“Ever find out why Mayhew is in the islands?” asked Angier idly. “Secretive cuss! Acts like a Secret Service bird—prowling around unlikely places, such as this joint in which he arranged to meet us to-night.”
“Job brought him. That’s straight enough. But I see what you mean. He does seem to be looking for something outside the job. Now, as to that bet——”
Seriously they arranged the terms of the wager. In the byways of the world, trifles are serious when big things are not happening.
“Two to one——”
It was young Angier who plunged the deepest. He was at the age when a man is sure that he knows the woman game.
“It will be the same old tale,” he said. “Men! One man; then two men; then a few more—and the streets.”
It rained—as if a gigantic bucket of water were being emptied from the clouds that lowered over the city.
Manila, like all ladies, has moods; and when she weeps it means trouble. Her rainy mood is sinister—reminiscent of untold horrors. The Moat, evil in even its modernized form, seems, when bespattered by the raindrops that turn oily as they strike, to be hiding dark secrets of a past age. Over the wet and slippery Bridge of Spain many men have gone to their ruin; through the Puerta Isabella Dos many women have reached the bottom. Manila blinks through the downpour, knowing full well that men are strong, and men are weak, but no man can be both. And well does Manila know that few women in her clutches have achieved the first.
The tin roof reverberated under the bombardment of the rain. The wind hit the building, which vibrated. A breath of damp, cool air blew in to the crowded dance hall. The dancers paused, for an instant taken aback by the fury of the storm. They felt the insecurity of the human being in the face of the elements. The clamour of the trap drum was unaccompanied by the sliding sound of feet; even the feet faltered. The wind died down as suddenly as it had arisen. The music of the Filipino jazz band broke forth with renewed vigour. The dancers again set out upon the vast floor, moving along in the fox trot as interpreted by the two hemispheres.
At a table near the dancing floor sat the two officers who had made the bet. They waited for their white uniforms to dry out from the storm that had caught them unprepared. Amusement showed in their sunburnt faces as they watched the many odd variations of the great American dance. The dancers circled past their table, the mestizos throwing out their feet with waving motions inherited from the Spanish habanera, the full-blood natives flopping carelessly along in heelless chinelas which necessitated exaggerated glides, the Chinamen shuffling. Dancing with these assorted breeds were girls as unmistakably Caucasian as their partners were Oriental. These girls clung precariously to the loose sleeves of the Chinaman, the unconfined shirt tails of the Filipino, the starched coat of the mestizo. The painted faces lookedup at the yellow, brown, and bistre skins of their partners. White teeth gleamed from the men’s open mouths; gold fillings flashed between the dangerously smiling lips of the girls.
Angier grinned.
“Watch your pure and very blonde lady leering up at that greasy old chino! Young for it, too. Now you, Kirwin—you never believe wrong of a pretty woman, though you agree about the shortcomings of the ugly ones. But you are wrong, old top! Sin overtakes the fair, not the unlovely. Look at that girl’s dress. Disreputable! What decent woman would show all of her naked shoulders and most of her back to this crowd? Do you suppose that the chino dancing with her thinks she is decent? Not on your life he doesn’t! His decent women swathe themselves in stiff brocades and padded coats.”
“So do his indecent ones. Stick to facts.”
They ordered another round of the sickeningly sweet and depressingly lukewarm soft drinks of a reformed Manila. The straws wilted as soon as touched, and fell over the sides of the tall glasses in the manner of Victorian heroines who swoon.
The music stopped. The dancers separated, going to the different tables.
Pink and shabby, tawdry skirts; very lovely hair in long and thick curls down her back and hanging in her eyes—that variety of soft blue eye which, when angry, suggests steel heated to the white pitch, but which crinkles engagingly when merry; face hard and sophisticated—the dancer of the wager!
Easy to induce her to sit down at their table; impossible to persuade her to take a drink from the flasks with which they were armed against contingencies. She insisted on soda water—and then more soda water.
“I want something sweet and cold,” she told them. “God—how I’ve missed it! I hate places where there’s not enough ice for ice cream.”
Before the soda water arrived the music started again. Kirwin half rose from his chair and bowed ceremoniously to the girl. “Will you give me the pleasure of this dance?”
“Gee!” exclaimed the young person. “And the soda water on the way!”
“I thought you’d like it,” muttered the man.
“Like it? Like to dance?” She broke into laughter. “Say—don’t you know yet that a person’s job is never fun? It’s bread and butter for me to move my feet, not pleasure.”
She seized the glass of purplish mixture that was being placed before her and plunged the spoon, and after that her nose, into its enticing depths.
“Now, this is real joy!” she announced.
“Where you living?” Angier was already at the business of winning his bet.
The girl turned on him a cold and wary look that, as she studied his frank boyish face, softened into good fellowship.
“Over in the Tondo—a Ford-sized life in a Ford-sized room. I take my shower under an oil can, and that after I’ve gone out and fetched in the water that’s in the can. And if the water runs out before the soap’s off, I’ve got to hustle into my kimono and get some more to fill up the darned can—and then jump under it like the house was on fire, so’s the water won’t give out again. That’s comfort for you! And me used to Broadway! I tell you—give me Broadway, with the human toads staring at you! Out here, there’s nothing to stare at you except half-breed frogs. I’m not strong for half-breeds. That’s the reason I came over here when you called me—because you fellows are white.” She gave them another of her wary looks; prepared for their unbelief.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Miss Casey—to you!” replied the girl promptly, and with emphasis on the title.
“What’s your name to the chinos?” asked the amused Angier.
The girl’s face turned a dark and painful red. She glanced helplessly at the man whose manner toward her was marked by a difference.
Kirwin smiled kindly in response to this glance.
“That’s enough, Angier,” he said with some sternness in his voice. “Miss Casey, my friend is distinctly young and rather flippant; take him with a grain of salt.”
“Sure!” responded Miss Casey. “I’ve often met ’em like that. They’re harmless.”
Angier lifted his glass to his merry young mouth. From theglass issued a gurgle or two. Miss Casey eyed him for a moment; then turned to Kirwin with a degree of confidence.
“Say—what did you two fellows call me over here for? I know it wasn’t just to have a good time. You can’t fool Mary. I know the difference in men. He’s guying me, but he isn’t tough.”
Kirwin bowed, growing respect in his deep-set eyes.
“Miss Casey, we owe you an apology. We did an unpardonable thing; we made a bet on you. It isn’t what men should do about a woman——”
“ ...But you did it about me, because I’m not a woman—I’m just a dance-hall girl in the Orient? Oh, don’t apologize; I understand. I’m used to it.”
There was no longer a trace of the ironic in Kirwin’s deference. Something of old-fashioned ceremony crept into his manner and softened the girl. She smiled at him without rancour.
“Don’t say a word,” she said kindly, with the obvious intent of putting him at his ease. “You haven’t hurt my feelings a bit. I know when to get mad; and I know when not to. I don’t think either of you meant a thing. And it’s a comfort to be sitting here with two men from home. Forget it!”
Angier withdrew his face from the tall glass. He put his hand on the roughened hand of the girl as it rested on the table beside her soda water.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “And I want to ask you something quite aside from the bet. We’re all Americans, as you said. Is there anything that we could do for you?”
Mary Casey put her other hand on top of his and pressed it. For a moment there was a mist over her blue eyes.
“You’re a nice boy. Much obliged. But there isn’t anything. I’m taking care of myself; and I can pay my rent, and pick up my meals one way or another. And not from men!” The guarded look was again in evidence as she said this. Then she laughed. “You see how mean I am, about suspecting men! But I have to be that way. There aren’t too many you can trust.”
To the jerky strains of Manila’s latest jazz—a tune already, in America, a year old and buried—she leaned across the rickety table and looked from one to the other of the men.
It was a direct, level look.
“What was the bet?”
“Oh, I say! Miss Casey!” began Angier uncomfortably. “See here: I’ve already said I was sorry I’d made it.” He took out his cigarette case. He struck a match. There was a tinge of nervousness in his manner.
Mary extended her hand for a cigarette.
“Might as well have one,” she said; “though it does register guilt, in the movies, for a woman to smoke!” She leaned back in her cane chair and absently watched the thin blue vapour that curled up from her nose. Her rouged lips were parted in a rather hard smile. “Never occurred to you, did it, that women could stay straight easier if you men weren’t so keen on saying we were crooked? Of course I can guess what the bet was! And I can very nearly guess which of you it was who bet for me. And—on account of one of you having taken a chance on me—I may tell you a thing or two before the evening is over. I’d somehow like a man who had the nerve to take a chance like that—on my side—to win his bet!”
The muchacho approached the table for orders. He bowed obsequiously to the two officers and brushed his arm contemptuously across the shoulder of Mary Casey. He drew back suddenly, rubbing his cheek. Miss Casey’s hand had administered a smart slap on that yellow expanse. She glanced apologetically at the two Americans.
“It’s the only way to treat ’em,” she informed them. “Treat ’em rough, and in a hurry! That’s my way, and it works. If you don’t know the game, this is no place for you.”
She looked out over the floor. A stout and perspiring mestizo, with the unmistakable Chinese look, was approaching.
“I must dance with this bum. He’s one of the ‘influential patrons,’ and the management would have a fit and bounce me if I turned him down. I’ll be back after he’s walked a mile on my feet.”
The two men watched her as she steered the lumbering mestizo through the crowd. Neither of them spoke.
At the end of the dance she returned to the table and sat down as a matter of course. This was the Orient, and a long way from home and its standards of caste. And these Americans had been decent to her—kind to her.
“Ain’t it fierce, to have to dance with a man that’s a hop toad and an elephant all in one?” she inquired with a passing annoyance.
“Know the game? Sure I know the game—and a darned good thing I do!” she continued, taking up the conversation where they had left it. “I’ve known it since I was a kid. I’m twenty-three now; and I’ve been thanking my stars all that time that I knew it. You put yourself through the China Coast, and you need to know the ropes of life. You think I’d want to be one of those sweet, innocent dunces that you men always like to believe we blondes are—and that we aren’t, so many times? I’d have fallen into the paws of a Chink—I would! Innocent sweetness can’t come through the China Coast whole, and don’t you forget it! I’ve walked straight, but it wasn’t by being sweet and innocent that I did it. It was by knowing every devilment that men can be up to. They are all alike—the men I meet. Their skins are different colours, but their ideas are the same. All yellow inside, and black and brown and white outside.”
Musingly, she sipped her soda water. In this repose her mouth showed hard lines in crescents at the corners. There were wrinkles raying out from her eyes—baby eyes, at times. These eyes now turned contritely to the two officers.
“That was hitting below the belt, wasn’t it? My turn to apologize now! But it isn’t often I meet fellows like you—fellows who’ll talk to me instead of wanting to paw me—guys who are drunk, and——” Her voice trailed off. She stared unseeingly at the crowd as it pranced past the table. “God! I don’t blame men for the way things are with us girls! If I was a man I’d play the game that way, too, I guess. They haven’t got a thing staked on the turn of the wheel. But we’ve got everything to lose. And if we aren’t careful we lose it; that’s all.”
The wind came up again and tore at the house, and around the house, with concentrated enmity. It played with the loose shell windows as the cat with the mouse. Inspired by this lack of control in the elements, Kirwin became elemental in his questioning of the girl.
“Born and brought up in New York, on Eighth Avenue, you say? Then why out here?”
“What’s a girl who’s poor to do to feed herself? Not but what the men’ll feed her—if she’s a fool! A man goes and marries, and gets a girl baby. And does he have that girl baby taught a trade when she leaves grammar school, like he does his sons? He does, like hell! He throws her out—in front of men—to catch a husband! ’Tisn’t fair to the girls. Look at me: I didn’t know how to do a thing except dance. I’d learned how to do that on the sidewalks, to hurdy-gurdies.”
The noise of the rain on the roof deadened her voice, so that the men had to lean across the table in order to hear her next words.
“I said I’d tell you a few things. All right! I will! It may help you in your bets on other women.”
Her voice became shriller, more filled with excitement. The rain no longer deadened it; it was charged with an electricity that carried it above the storm.
“When I knew that if I didn’t want to marry one of the poor simps I met—with his hair slicked down with grease till it looked like shiny black shoes—I’d have to scratch for my living, I got busy and hunted a job in a cheap dance hall in that part of town. My job was to dance with any dirty, smelly man who came in and hadn’t got a girl along. Not much of a trade, but it was a long sight better than the one my sister took up—on the streets! That was another trade you didn’t have to be trained for!
“‘Mary, be careful!’ my mother kept telling me. ‘A girl has got to be careful—because the men won’t be careful for her.’
“By the time I’d learned the game of taking care of myself, I’d worked up to a sweller dance hall on Broadway. The fellows who came in there were clean, except in their minds. But I kept saying to myself: ‘Mary, be careful!’
“And then, one evening, in came a seedy-looking man who made you think he’d seen better times and a fatter living. Always shaved clean, and smelled of talcum powder. But his clothes were brushed until there wasn’t a bit of nap left on them, I used to think when I was dancing with him and looking at his shoulder. He was an actor, out of a job, he told me. They tell you the story of their lives when they’re dancing with you.
“Once he came in downright hungry. I shared with him that night the dinner the management gave me.
“I got in the habit of looking for him, and sharing my dinner with him. I respected myself a lot because I was giving him dinner instead of him feeding me. Silly, wasn’t it?” She looked at Kirwin.
Kirwin nodded gravely. “I understand that perfectly,” he said. “You would feel that way. So should I, in your place.”
“Thanks!” said Mary Casey. “Well—you know—after you’ve fed a man when he’s hungry, you get to sort of think you own him. You feel like you’re his mother, you might say. I got to feeling that way about Teddy. I felt like he was mine. I don’t suppose I thought about marrying; I knew he couldn’t support me. But I never thought about anything that I’d be doing, way off in life, when we were older, without thinking about him being right there with me. You know what I mean? I just didn’t think we’d ever be anywhere without the other one being there, too. Not that he said anything much, only—‘I’m awful fond of you, kid!’ But I didn’t mind. I was fool happy, dancing afternoons with all sorts of men, and all the time thinking that pretty soon Teddy’d be coming in by the doorkeeper, and looking around for me—and then sit in the darkish restaurant eating part of my dinner—though it did used to leave me pretty hungry, for the dinner the management gave us wasn’t much on size. Some of the girls used to kick about those dinners; you’re awful hungry after you’ve been dragged around the floor for hours and hours by heavy-footed hicks. But the management laughed at the complaints; said the girls would keep their figures if they didn’t eat too much. I’ll say I kept mine! I was ’most starved every night when I got to bed. My stomach used to feel as if it was sticking to my backbone. I was on the floor every dance. I was popular with the men who came there. It isn’t that I’m pretty; I’m not. And so they look again to see what the deuce I am. And that gets a man’s goat—when he can’t make out what he likes about a girl.
“Anyhow, if I’d ever been pretty I’d have lost it by now. I’ve been so darned careful; and when a girl’s careful, and suspects everybody, she gets hard and mean looking. Theother girls—those that aren’t careful—get hard and tough. It all comes to the same thing; they look the same way in the face. Women can’t look soft in the face unless they’re taken care of by their people.”
“When you are talking this way, you don’t look hard,” interrupted Kirwin.
“That’s because it’s a comfort to sit here and say everything that comes into my head. Most times, when I’m across a table from a man, I have to think before I open my mouth: ‘Will this give him a handle?’ And so I just say: ‘Oh! Isn’t this a lovely floor?’ And: ‘My! But you are a dandy dancer!’ When like as not he’s stepped all over me.”
“Men are brutes! They even step on the ladies’ toes!” the laughing Angier remarked.
“They step on more than their toes,” the girl countered. “They step on anything the girl gives them a chance to step on! At least, most of them do. I never saw but one who wouldn’t. And I lost him—lost sight of him, I mean—on account of losing his card.” She lifted her long and thick lashes of a golden brown that caught the light from the swinging oil lamps and formed a delicate nimbus around her serious eyes. “But I’m going to tell you about him. I’d like you to know I’ve met one man I could respect. Men who hang around dance halls not even a boob could think much of!
“It was this way:
“Times got worse. I got so I couldn’t make out. They raised my rent on me. I couldn’t go to live with my people. They bunked and washed and cooked in one room, with a window and the fire escape for their excitement; and I’d got used to better. I couldn’t go back there—not with Teddy in my head. He’d have looked down on me, see?
“So Teddy says to me: ‘Why don’t you try South America? I’ve been told they pay high, down there, for American dancers. And board and lodging thrown in,’ he says. And he says that he’ll see if he can get me a chance, through a friend of his that’s in town looking for girls to go down to Colon. This friend came in to talk to me about it. It’s a swell chance to make big money, he says. The Panamanians are ready spenders, he says, and crazy over dancing. And Teddy kept trying to make me go.
“I went. The boat got in about seven o’clock in the evening. The man they sent to meet me said that I was to hop into my dance clothes and hurry along with him to the hall. My trunk would go up afterward.
“Say, I’m telling you—I never did see a dance hall like that one! It was a scream! The guy hadn’t told me that the Panamanians were all colours! Everything was sitting at the tables, from putty-coloured dudes with diamonds in their embroidered shirts to jet-black niggers in fine clothes. Each man had poured a bottle of scent over himself. The smell of that perfume, and the smell of the different breeds of people, all hot and perspiring, was something fierce. It made me feel queer, all of a sudden.
“I sat down at one of the tables, and the fat, cream-coloured woman who ran the place came over and gave me something to drink, to cool me off, she said. It made me cool, but odd feeling. I leaned my head on my hand, so’s the floor would stop going around. And something—the heat, maybe—made me so sleepy I thought to myself I’d swap my job for a bed, if I could of found a bed. And then I realized that somebody was stroking my arm; long, pressing strokes like you give a cat’s back. There wasn’t much feeling in my arm, it was sorter dead; but I knew darned well that somebody was fooling with it. I opened my eyes wide. It was a coon who was fooling with my arm! A real coon, like we have at home—only this one spoke a lingo that I guess was Spanish. Any rate, I didn’t understand a word he said. And I jumped away from him; I never had had a coon stroke my arm, and I didn’t like it a bit. So I says to him: ‘You get away from me!’ But he laughed so all his teeth showed; and he reached over and grabbed me. That waked me up sure enough; and I kicked and screamed. And the next thing I knew a white man had come across the room and lifted that coon by the scruff of his neck and thrown him in a corner. I’ve seen fights in my day—but say! I never saw a prettier one than that! The white man cleaned out the crowd!
“The cream-coloured woman rushed over and began jabbering at him; and the dudes with the diamond buttons stood close by and laughed and whispered to each other in their crazy talk, and pushed their shoulders up in the air until you couldn’t see their big ears; but that American paid no attention to them. He treated them so like scum that I was proud to be standing by him.
“The American took me by the arm—not spoony; just sort of as if he was boss around those diggings—and walked me over to a table in a far corner, away from the jabbering dudes. We sat down. I was sorter nervous by that time. There was something I didn’t get, if you know what I mean? So that man tells me:
“‘This is no place for an American girl! How’d you come here?’
“I told him all about the contract I’d signed to dance there. And I told him about Teddy, and everything else I could think of. He was a comfort in the midst of all those funny people. He didn’t smell of perfume, and he had on plain white clothes, and they were clean around the collar and cuffs. Different, that’s all. While I was talking, he sat there looking at me with his eyes half shut, like he was sizing me up. And every now and then he’d nod his head. Once I heard him muttering something about: ‘My first assay would be—pure gold!’ And I got scared; I thought that he was crazy, too. But when he saw how I was getting as far away in my chair as I could, he laughed—first time he’d laughed. And I noticed that his nose stayed quiet while he was laughing, instead of working up and down like the dagos’ noses did. And his eyes laughed; and the dagos’ eyes don’t laugh. That made me trust him.
“He told me that he was a mining engineer, down there on a job for a Denver crowd.
“‘Miss Casey,’ the engineer fellow said then, ‘I’m not going to leave you here! Do you know what sort of place you’re in?’
“I told him all over again about the contract to dance. He frowned, and beat on the table with his forefinger. And when I stopped talking he told me what kind of place it was. I don’t suppose I need to tell you?
“I never would have got out of there whole except for that American. I tell you what, I burn candles in the church for that man!
“He explained it all to me; just what business Teddy’s friend was up to, shipping girls down to the dance halls in South and Central America. But I didn’t like to believe Teddy knewwhat that friend of his was wishing on me. The American thought he knew; and he called him an awful word. I felt mad—and sick—and I told him that he was lying about Teddy. But I didn’t believe he was lying. And he was awful nice about it; said he didn’t blame me for talking up for my friends! But say! What men are friends to girls like me? Never but one man was straight with me—that fellow in Panama!”
The blue eyes were not hard now; neither did they crinkle merrily. Mary Casey’s soul looked out of them.
“That engineer fellow was the man I told you I could respect,” she stated gravely. “You know what he did for me? He helped me get away from that place! He worked our way through the jabbering crowd until we were near the door; and then, when the music was blaring loud, he threw his coat over my dance dress and grabbed me with his left arm while he pushed off the men who ran in front of us with his right fist. He had a heavy fist—that fellow! I saw one man’s nose start bleeding. And a few more were knocked over like ninepins. It only takes one white man to ball out a crowd of niggers and spinnachers.
“‘Sorry for the rough-house, Miss Casey,’ said the engineer fellow, ‘but we have to make our get-away before these nigger police show up.’
“We made it! We ran along the crooked streets that I’d thought were so funny when I drove up from the boat; but they weren’t quite as funny when we were running along them in the dark and I was catching my heels in the holes between the big paving blocks that didn’t fit even against each other. One of the heels came off, and we didn’t have time to go back and pick it up. I hobbled along as well as I could, holding on to the engineer fellow’s nice hard arm. I didn’t want to fuss when he was being such a good sport.
“All the way down to the docks the engineer fellow was telling me, as well as he could for running and dodging from shadow to shadow of the squatty houses, and looking up and down each street that we had to cross, what I was to do when I got to New Orleans. But I didn’t hear a word he said: I was so busy thinking how nice it was to have a man like that taking care of me—and how strong his arm was. If I’d stopped thinking about his arm and thought more aboutwhat he was saying to me, I’d have been better off. But you never are foxy at the time that you ought to be.
“He swung me aboard a ship just as the gangplank was drawn up. All he had time to do was to push a card into my hand.
“‘Here’s my address,’ he said. ‘Let me know how you are coming on, and where you are.’ And then he said: ‘Hasta la mañana!’ which I’d picked up in the dance hall, and knew meant that he was going to see me some time.
“The captain was looking over the rail of the ship. The engineer fellow threw him a little package twisted up in a piece of paper that he tore from a notebook; and he said something to the captain in Spanish.
“So there I was, on a banana ship—in my dance dress and one heel off my slippers, and the engineer fellow’s coat over my shoulders! I must have struck that captain dumb! But I didn’t care. I was too busy staring at the engineer fellow back there on the dock.
“A puff of wind came up and blew the card that he had given me out of my hand and down into the water. I leaned way over the rail and saw it sucked under by the churning of the machinery. And then I remembered that I hadn’t read it. I’d been too busy staring at him to read his note. I ran after the captain and asked him if he knew the name of the fellow. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he’d never seen the chap before.’ I took the fellow’s coat off and looked through the pockets to see if there wasn’t another card in one of them. But there wasn’t a thing except some papers scrawled all over with his figuring—his mining work, I guess.
“That’s the way I lost out. But I’ve always kept the coat. It reminds me that I once met a good man.
“When we got to New Orleans with those bananas, I was still a long way from home. And I didn’t have a cent of money; my purse was in the trunk that they’d been going to send up to the dance hall at Colon. I said to the captain the day we made port:
“‘I don’t know how I am to pay you, unless you wait until I get a job in this town.’
“The captain told me that the engineer fellow had paid my passage, and fifty dollars over for me to get a start on—buy some clothes to wear when I was out looking for a job. Thatwas a real man, that fellow! And as I didn’t know his name having been such a fool about not reading his card for looking at him, I couldn’t hunt him up to pay it back. So I burn candles for him.”
Silence—except for the noise of the jazz band and the shuffling feet.
Kirwin broke this silence. He leaned nearer the girl; his voice was very kind as he spoke to her.
“You shouldn’t have come out here. No girl should come out here so long as she can make a cent in the States.”
“Dance halls in the States are supposed to be respectable. They’ll keep girls on that they suspect a lot about; but they bounce her as soon as all the people outside the business know about her. See? Everybody who went to dance halls in New York knew I’d left on that contract; I’d been such a fool I’d told it all around, trusting Teddy and his friend as I did. That closed the doors of every place I tried to get an engagement. I’ve chased half way round the world, now, trying to get to some place where they couldn’t find out about it. San Anton—’Frisco—Honolulu—I’ve tried ’em all. And I’ve sloped out of all of ’em for the same reason. Running away from the flag, I was, instead of following it like the cocktails did. Somebody’d always show up who was there that night in Colon, or who had heard about it; and nobody believed my tale. I don’t blame ’em! I wouldn’t have believed it if any girl had tried to pass off on me that she’d been such a fool. Girls like me are supposed to know their way around. But I’d been too smashed on Teddy to see straight. That was my one big mistake: to get soft on him. Girls like me can’t afford to care for a man.
“It did me one good turn—that jolt at Colon. It knocked Teddy out of my head. I couldn’t help seeing the difference between him and the engineer fellow.”
She absently stirred the sediment at the bottom of her glass.
“Listen: now I’ve told you all this—there’s one more thing I want to tell you—I’ve walked straight, even out here. You believe me?” Her voice was tense.
Kirwin and Angier spoke at once. “Yes!”
“I wish I could see that engineer fellow again, and tell him that, too. He did a lot for me.”
The rattle of the trap drum, the bellow of the brasses roseabove the storm that still raged outside. The rain beat on the roof in rivalry with the drum.
“Nice night to be getting back to the Tondo in a shaky carromata!” said Mary Casey. “But it’s near closing time. You can tell by the state of the chinks’ camisas. When they are soaked through, it’s early morning. Chinks don’t heat up as soon as other men. Ain’t they a sweet lot? And heavy on their feet! Oof!” She lifted one slippered foot and rubbed it tenderly.
A Filipino walked up with mincing gait. He thrust out a dance ticket. With a shrug of her thin shoulders Mary Casey went on the floor and abandoned herself to his arms.
Angier turned a sober face to Kirwin.
“You win!” he said.
Kirwin twisted his wrist around until he could see the face of the watch strapped there.
“No use to wait for Mayhew. It’s two o’clock.”
He clapped his hands together sharply. He settled their score with the muchacho who came in response to that summons. The two men arose from the table of empty glasses.
Fresh air came in to them as they opened the door. Seeming a part of that fresh air was the tall and lean man whom they encountered on the narrow sidewalk. A man in white linen of unmilitary cut, on his close-cropped head a slouched panama that had seen better days. As the three hailed a passing calesa and took refuge within its cramped depths from the downpour, the man took off the battered panama and carefully drained the water from its brim. The little horse attached to the calesa by casual harness ambled down the street.
Above the sloshing sound made by the little horse’s feet as he wandered through the puddles, the tall man lifted up his voice and spoke:
“Hard time getting away from the dames at the hotel,” he announced grimly. “Those women would chew over a bit of heaven itself until it was as pallid and unappetizing as an over-masticated piece of bacon! I fled for my life, finally. Healthier down in the bowels of the earth, surrounded by gold that doesn’t belong to me, and that I am merely passing on for the chaps who are buying up Masbate.”
“Does it never make you want some gold of your own, Mayhew?” inquired the curious Angier. “I’d not be ableto stand the strain of being a mining expert. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. That sort of stuff.”
“Might if I hadn’t been very busy with something else. I’ve been prospecting for human gold. Struck the vein once, and lost it through a fluke.” He turned a rather shame-faced gaze on his friends. “What would you say if I told you that for years I’d been chasing a pipe-dream from pillar to post—always trying to catch up with it and see if I was right in my assay? Taking unlikely jobs which would carry me to unlikely places—never overlooking a dance hall this side of hell—with only one thing tangible enough to prove to me that it wasn’t actually a dream—a broken slipper heel that I’d picked up in the street on my way back from—from the vision, you might say!”
“So it’s a woman you’ve been sleuthing, you old son of a gun!” howled gleefully the unobservant Angier.
But Kirwin leaned forward and touched the cochero on the shoulder. “Mano!” he commanded. “And hurry that plug along!”
The calesa turned a corner on one of its two inadequate wheels. The three men were thrown against each other.
“What the devil, Kirwin——” began Angier. “Oh, I see!” He whistled softly.
“Sila!” Kirwin directed the cochero.
The calesa veered around a curve on its other wheel.
“Poco más!”
The calesa came to an abrupt halt in front of the dance hall that they had quitted a short time before. The men of the jazz band were coming out, their swathed instruments under their arms. The proprietor was fitting the key into the lock of the door.
Kirwin leaned from the calesa and looked anxiously up and down the narrow street. A solitary female figure, huddled under a dripping umbrella, was picking its way, with the delicate step of the dancer, between the pools of water that overflowed from the gutter on to the sidewalk.
Kirwin sprang from the calesa. He pulled the astonished Mayhew after him. With one hand on Mayhew’s shoulder, he turned him in the direction of the huddled figure under the umbrella.
“Go fit that heel to Cinderella!” he laughed.
IN March the war came much nearer to the town, and an aviation camp was set up just outside, in the wheatfields by the National Road. It took shape, as it were, overnight, as if by some enchantment; Célestine, from the round window of her garret room in the inn, saw the planes alighting like white birds in the rose of the dawn. They came five by five from the east; for two days they remained as they had landed, shelterless and inert, as if worn out. Then heavy trucks came rumbling, threw off bales of canvas and partitions of thin wood, and soon a flying camp stood complete, with its tents and its sheds, its hundreds of busy mechanics.
Many of the white birds seemed wounded. Holes were in the wings, some of the wings trailed. The conductors of those weary dragons were sunken-eyed; their faces tattooed with oil, their hair matted. But a lull had come; somewhere in the hills to the east the new drive at last had been stopped; you could hear at night the soft drumming of the guns. The flying men cleaned up. Primp, in freshly pressed uniforms and shining boots, they strolled about, very young men, slim and elegant, twirling swagger sticks and parading gaiety. Gaiety, although each one of them bore stamped upon his heart, as pure gold is stamped, a small secret figure which stood for a certain day, a certain hour, the end of youth, of joy, of adventure and love. Mostly they passed by the inn, on their way to the brighter cafés at the centre of the town; but some of them stopped at the inn and sat at the tables under the trees. Célestine’s heart beat faster when they were there; she watched them as she worked; from a distance, for she did not wait on the tables.
She was not allowed to wait on the tables because she was not pretty.
The mistress of the inn believed in pretty serving maids, and Célestine was not pretty. The thick skin of her face was a mask which let pass not a ray of the iridescences of the soul; before that sad dead face men stood embarrassed or even angry. So she did not wear the white aprons and caps, the lacy waists of the tablemaids, but rough blue garments; and did not flit outside under the trees, but was held to the bedrooms and the kitchen’s back regions. She was the drudge; she started with the day. She polished boots, laid fires, carried hot water and trays up countless stairs, made beds, swept rooms, swabbed halls. She carried heavy luggage upstairs and obeyed the rageful tyranny of the bells. Midnight would strike before she threw herself upon her narrow pallet under the eaves.
Every afternoon, from four to six, she took the baby of the mistress of the inn out in its perambulator. This was her recreation and her rest. After the flying field had been established on the National Road, it was there she would go. The place had become the town promenade. Out to it, along the road, especially on Sundays, the inhabitants would go in family groups—in family groups in which there were no men, unless, perhaps, some brittle old grandfather.
Once at the field, they stood about respectfully noting everything avidly and calling one another’s attention to what they saw; and small boys, terribly interested in what for several years now had been the male’s sole interest, slipping under the ropes, got to where they had no business to be.
Célestine, still more shy than the rest, took her station across the road from the camp and a little to one side. From here she could see across the plains to the hills in the east, and also that part of the flying field from which the planes sprang into the air or hoveringly landed. She sat in the clover; it was peaceful here; the baby slept; her own soul drowsed. An old farmer across the way ploughed slowly behind his one old horse; now and then a lark went high up in the air and sang. It was hard to remember that in the low hills beyond, pretty as opals, red carnage boiled and men died.
From those far hills the planes came winging back late inthe afternoon. Far-fixed eyes of mechanics on the field, a pointing finger here or there, were the first signs to Célestine.
She saw dots, small and incredibly high. They became moths, shining—white—and quick as thunder the fliers were near. They came from great battles, and jousts, and fabulous adventures; and as they neared, with hearts seemingly full of a secret joy at terrible pranks they had played, they gambolled and capered and tumbled along the skies.
Usually they came in by fives, in arrow formation, but there were two that always went paired. Célestine learned to distinguish these two. One was a young Frenchman who, on the ground, wore the dark blue of an Alpine chasseur; but the other, in a drab uniform, was a foreigner. These two homed it later than the others: so late that sometimes Célestine could not wait and had to go away without seeing them. When they alighted, the pilots who had come in ahead, and the mechanics who stayed on the ground, strolled to the two planes; they asked questions and looked amused, and sometimes laughed loudly. One day Célestine heard herself resume to herself in words the effect this daily scene had upon her. “These two are the favourites,” she said to herself. “They are the Benjamins of the camp!”
The civilian onlookers, loitering about the camp, called the one in yellow uniform “l’Américain” and credited him with great deeds. “There’sa rough boy!” they would say. “There’sone who does tricks in the air!” For him Célestine felt a secret preference. The way he landed delighted her. As his plane, swirling down, touched the earth, he looked, in his leather helmet and armour, like some fabulous knight of the air; but even as his plane still rolled along the ground, he snatched off the leather helmet and became a red-headed boy. He always landed thus. While still rushing along the ground at tremendous speed, he snatched off his helmet and became a boy with carrot-red hair. Then something laughed within Célestine, and a bubble of tenderness burst softly in her heart.
Years ago, when a little girl in her native village in Brittany, she had loved secretly the neighbour’s son, whose hair was just like that. Now, whenever the plane landed, she saw her native village; she saw the small port, the stone mole, the painted boat heaving, the blue sea.
Gradually Célestine’s life, her drab beastlike life, became lit with a dim radiance as from a shaded lamp; her life centred itself altogether on the flying field. In the morning she kept running to her garret room as she worked; and, if she had any luck, saw the planes depart, five by five, five by five, then two. In the afternoon she was at her post in the clover field across the road from the camp. The farmer ploughed over there, a lark singing over his bent head. Farther, the hills were like opals in the sun. And on the other side of those hills the war was going on. She imagined the two fliers in the sky over there. Holding her eyes shut, she saw them in the great heights, wheeling and circling, falling and rising, in a cloud of enemy planes. She saw them, in manœuvres abrupt as lightning, pierce again and again the hostile envelopment—and planes fell, many, falling slowly, like snow drifting.
Late in the afternoon the two came home. The others came first, by fives, sometimes in quick succession, sometimes with long waits between. Sometimes, instead of five, there were four, the winged squadron was broken and on the field there would be much agitation, runnings to and fro, anxious questionings. But the two for whom Célestine waited usually came last, and came always in joy, tumbling like clowns down the skies. The American struck the earth—fabulous and formidable like a god. He snatched off his helmet—and he was a boy, a laughing red-haired boy. Through Célestine’s tired body a dull thud of tenderness went resounding deliciously.
About this time the enemy began to bomb the town at night. When came the first of these air raids Célestine did not know what was happening. She was awakened by a rapping of machine guns, by a boom-rrump, boom-rrump of upward shooting cannon, and, leaning out of her garret window, saw pretty cracklings of light up in the sky, as of many fireflies flashing into life suddenly and then dying. Then came an enormous single explosion, and everything went quiet. Célestine slid out into the black silent streets which were ghostily filling with whispering, shivering people; and following them came to a place, near the railroad track, where a little house had stood which she knew very well. The house was no longer there; where it had stood was only a great black hole.
But next night was worse. As, awakened again by the machine guns, Célestine stood uncertain in the narrow hallway outside of her room, a great explosion pressed both walls against her flanks as if they were going to meet, and another, following still nearer, shook the inn as if it were coming down like a pack of cards. Explosion followed explosion for hours as the malevolent birds buzzed in the dark sky overhead; and when at last they had gone, in the light of dawn Célestine saw that a whole block of houses near by lay ripped open, with red-quilt shreds of pulverized beds waving slowly in the cold morning wind.
The people of the town began to go out into the fields every night. By five every afternoon the iron shutters of all the shops clattered shut simultaneously, and along the streets went processions of women, children, babes, and old men, carrying their blankets out to the fields for the night; by sundown the city was an empty city. Célestine remained in her garret room and, lying on her back in her narrow bed, shook to ecstasies of fear and exulting vision. Lying there, rocked by terrific concussions, the whole world seemingly going to pieces beneath and about her body, small kernel in a cosmic chaos, she looked upward out of her soul into the night’s black inverted bowl and saw her champions flying there. In thunder-swift chargings, they darted to and fro among the night-enshrouded invaders. The American led all. For a time she saw him as pilot of a plane; then suddenly the wings attached themselves to his body, and he was an archangel with terrible swift sword; then again he was a boy, a laughing red-headed boy—and her withered heart, compressed layer and layer upon itself, opened out like a flower in the midst of her ignoble terror.
Just as abruptly as the night raiding had begun, it ceased for a time, and one evening the two fliers appeared at the inn and took rooms for the night. They had a ten-days’ leave, were going to Paris on the early morning train, and were very gay. Célestine watched them from her work with beating heart as they sat at their table in the court, lingering over their wine; and when finally she understood that they had taken rooms and were to be here for the night, a great excitement possessed her. She ran up to the rooms, although she had made them up early in the day, and made them up allover again; and when they had retired she stationed herself in the dark hallway, to await a possible call for service, hopeful at once and afraid.
After a while the door opened, light splashed out into the hall, and a voice called.
She rushed to answer it. The young Frenchman stood in the doorway. “Dis-donc, Madelon,” he said lightly, giving her the name of the song. “Dis-donc, Madelon, you know, we are freezing in this big tomb of yours!”
She ran swiftly down the three flights to the cellar, and came back with kindling and paper; she ran down once more and returned with a basket full of small logs. She squatted before the hearth and built up a fire.
She felt, rather than saw, the two armchairs behind her, spread side by side before the hearth as for a vigil of friendship. The young Frenchman was in one; the other was empty. Her heart gave a queer jump as she heard a step approach. It came from the other room, approached, stopped; there was the creak of crushed springs. He was there too, now, the other one, the American, in his big chair. She tried to strike a match, and failed.
The young Frenchman began to twit her amorously. Seen from behind, she was attractive enough, with firm white neck upon which strayed ringlets of her yellow hair. He rose, he stooped, he was near her. “Allons, Madelon, my lass—a little kiss. Just one small one, there where thy hair makes shadow!”
At another time probably she would not have been displeased: it was so seldom a man mistook and made love to her. But, somehow, the American’s being here made a difference. Somehow, this was not the way she wished to be seen by the American. She turned toward her gay persecutor the mask of her face—usually this was enough. But this time, perhaps because of the wine, or because of the frolic in his veins at the thought of his leave from Death’s incessant haunting, or merely because the flame of the fire left her in shadow, the boy did not quit, but rather increased his half-mocking demonstration of a half-assumed order, and finally, unconsciously, she turned to the other the eyes of one harassed. He sat there at ease, half smiling, but immediate communication leaped to him from her.“Come,” he cried, “Pierre! Quit this—you’re an utter nuisance!”
And smiling at her, he added, enunciating very slowly and carefully: “One must pardon him, mademoiselle: he is a littlesaoul, vous savez.”
The contrast between his scrupulous manner and his use of that word “saoul,” supposed to be uttered only by such low-class people as she, and not by gentlemen like him; the funny mewing drawl of his “voo-oo-ah saaav-ez”; and something so simple about him—these things suddenly created in her a tender delight, and she broke out laughing. He joined in, laughing at himself; the other joined in: all three were laughing. The young Frenchman, content with himself, and rather glad to have been stopped, let her be.
But then, after they had laughed, there was no more reason for staying. The fire was now drawing finely; everything about the room was in order; the two friends, in their chairs, were lighting their pipes. Célestine tiptoed out and closed the door.
She was out in the dark cold hall once more, all alone. But something of them was there. Their boots. They stood at the door, two pairs of them; one pair standing up stiff, as if at attention, the other pair careened over, as if tired. She gathered them up to her bosom, and took them up to her room to clean them.
By the light of the candle, reflected in her cracked mirror, she looked at them long after she had set them up on her washstand. One pair was light, of fine leather moulded to slender leg, and just a little fussy with many hooks; the other two were heavy and honest, and with enormous feet—ah, enormous!
She held the boots up before her eyes to realize fully the enormity of those feet, and laughed delightedly—then passed her hands over them in caress.
She now set to work and scrubbed and polished with adoration till late into the night.
They left early in the morning, and she did not see them. Once they called for hot water, but seized the pitcher with disembodied hands that reached out at the end of bare arms thrust through the door’s narrow crack. And when they came downstairs, all ready to go, her first intention, whichhad been to view them in their lustrous boots, dissolved into a sudden panic which sent her scurrying into the farthest depths of the black corridor.
So she did not see them, and when they returned they did not stop at the inn, but reported directly to the camp. The first she knew of their return was when, from her daily stationing in the field, she saw them, winged once more, swooping down like thunder out of the drifting opalescence of a sunset sky. The old relation reëstablished itself; every afternoon, in the field across the way from the Fliers’ Camp, Célestine stood and waited, and watched them as they homed.
As she stood thus in the clover field one late afternoon a plane came winging all alone from afar toward the camp—fast, with the directness of a wounded thing seeking its lair to die. As it came near, it did not approach the ground in the usual gradual circlings, but lit straight, with a sort of desperate urgency—and Célestine recognized the young Frenchman. Even as he still rolled along the ground, his helmet-framed face was turned sidewise toward the sheds, and with open mouth he was shouting out a question. Everybody about the camp was running to him; when the plane at last came to a standstill, all the men of the camp, pilots and mechanics, were grouped about it. Sagging in his seat, again he was asking the question. Célestine, from where she stood, could not hear at all, but just as surely as if she had heard, she knew that it was a question he was thus asking with his open mouth, and what question.
The men about the plane all shook their heads negatively; then, all together, they raised their heads and looked afar toward the east, the seams in their faces showing deep.
The flier climbed stiffly out of his cockpit and stood among the others. He was relating something. Not able to hear a word, Célestine followed what he said, terribly, by the way his hands went. There had been a combat. Two planes high in flight—this the two hands showed—and then many, many attacking them. The two hands, in fight and flight, darted here, darted there, rose, fell, turned over, slid sidewise down, for a while stubbornly together. Then the two hands went apart—and the tale continued, told by only one hand—the tale of one plane only—of the teller’s ownplane. That plane was alone, cut off, pursued by many, in dire distress; it twisted and strove like a moth in a flame. Finally it abandoned itself, it fell; fell long, forsaken and loose like a dead leaf—it was doomed. But no—abruptly, the descriptive hand, almost touching the earth, straightened out with a supple movement; the plane, at full speed, went scuttling along the heads of the wheat, the pursuit shaken off, free!
The narrator halted. Again he shouted his question, fiercely, as though the violence of it might have potency in creating the right answer. But the others, all shaking their heads, stepped free from the plane and looked upward in the sky, toward the east.
It was time for Célestine to go, but she could not go. In the field she remained, waiting—but out of the east no more planes were coming. The crying of the child in its carriage finally recalled her to herself.
During the following days she saw that the young Frenchman was not flying; he loitered aimlessly among the sheds. He began to come to the inn. He would sit in a corner, looking fixedly at his table, drinking one glass of strong stuff after the other, till finally, told that the place was shutting up for the night, he would stiffly depart without a glance at the one who had spoken.
Then one day he shook himself and rose after the first drink. And the following afternoon Célestine saw that he was flying once more, captain of a squadron of five.
This, somehow, settled her last doubt, and when night had come, in a corner of the inn garden, she made a little grave.
It was thus they did in her native village, in Brittany. There, when a fisherman, gone to the far banks of Iceland, did not return at the end of the season, little untenanted graves were made along the churchyard wall in memory of those who had thus vanished.
Célestine made such a grave, in a corner of the garden where two thick stone walls met behind a thick chestnut tree. The recess was well hidden; few ever came there. She made a rectangular outline with white pebbles, drawing it thin so that one happening here should not quite be sure of what he saw; she bought a small Virgin of green porcelain and set it at the head. The little Virgin stood there always,a rosary drawn through her rudimentary hand, and with downcast eyes seemed to meditate upon the grave.
Every night now, no matter how weary she was, Célestine came here, and in the silence and the darkness said a prayer. This is all she had of what had passed—the little make-believe grave, and the nightly prayer, there in the secret silence behind the tree. The war had moved on to the east; there was talk of great victories; and the flying camp had gone to other parts as suddenly as it had come a few months before.
The moment of prayer at the end of the day came to have for her a sweet importance. It coloured the day, the long hard day. It lay there ahead, through the effort, the sweat, and the grime, like a small still harbour of pure blue water. And its peace overflowed back into the day; it made of the whole day a still, white peace. Within the peace she moved and toiled as if in a haze, deliciously numb of life’s asperities and life’s screams.
The war ended; she held to her grave, her prayer, and her secret, and a year went by. Then, one summer day, suddenly he reappeared, solid, alive, in flesh and blood.
She was washing the red flagging at the entrance of the court, and was on her knees amid soap and suds, as the omnibus, come from the station with many valises on its top, halted before the entrance. And he, leaping out, turned to give his hand to a fair-haired girl who was stepping down after him.
At first Célestine did not believe her eyes; then, when she did, she began to tremble. Kneeling there on the wet flagging, she trembled and trembled, her big opaque blue eyes raised to the newcomers as if they had been gods arisen from the sea.