Used by permission ofLippincott's Magazine.
T
HIS is the story of Hickory Dock, and of a Man and a Girl who trifled with Time.
Hickory Dock was a clock, and, of course, the Man, being a man, called it a clock, but the Girl, being a girl, called it a Hickory Dock for no more legitimate reason than that once upon a time
"Hickory, Dickory, Dock,A Mouse ran up the Clock."
—Girls are funny things.
The Man and the Girl were very busy collecting a Home—in one room. They were just as poor as Art and Music could make them, but poverty does not matter much to lovers. The Man had collected the Girl, a wee diamond ring, a big Morris chair, two or three green and rose rugs, a shiny chafing-dish, and various incidentals. The Girl was no less discriminating. She had accumulated the Man, a Bagdad couch-cover, half-a-dozen pictures, a huge gilt mirror, three or four bits of fine china and silver,and a fair-sized boxful of lace and ruffles that idled under the couch until the Wedding-Day. The room was strikingly homelike, masculinely homelike, in all its features, but it was by no means home—yet. No place is home untiltwopeople have latch-keys. The Girl woreherkey ostentatiously on a long, fine chain round her neck, but its mate hung high and dusty on a brass hook over the fireplace, and the sight of it teased the Man more than anything else that had ever happened to him in his life. The Girl was easily mistress of the situation, but the Man, you see, was not yet Master.
It was tacitly understood that if the Wedding-Dayeverarrived, the Girl should slip the extra key into her husband's hand the very first second that the Minister closed his eyes for the blessing. She would have chosen to do this openly in exchange for her ring, but the Man contended that it might not be legal to be married with a latch-key—some ministers are so particular. It was a joke, anyway—everything except the Wedding-Day itself. Meanwhile Hickory Dock kept track of the passing hours.
When the Man first brought Hickory Dock to the Girl, in a mysteriously pulsating tissue-paper package, the Girl pretended at once that she thought it was a dynamite bomb, and dropped it precipitously on the table and sought immediate refuge in theMan's arms, from which propitious haven she ventured forth at last and picked up the package gingerly, and rubbed her cheek against it—after the manner of girls with bombs. Then she began to tug at the string and tear at the paper.
"Why, it's a Hickory Dock!" she exclaimed with delight,—"a real, live Hickory Dock!" and brandished the gift on high to the imminent peril of time and chance, and then fled back to the Man's arms with no excuse whatsoever. She was a bold little lover.
"But it's ac-l-o-c-k," remonstrated the Man with whimsical impatience. He had spent half his month's earnings on the gift. "Why can't you call it a clock? Why can't youevercall things by their right names?"
Then the Girl dimpled and blushed and burrowed her head in his shoulder, and whispered humbly, "Right name? Right names? Call things by their right names? Would you rather I calledyouby your right name—Mr. James Herbert Humphrey Jason?"
Thatsettled the matter—settled it so hard that the Girl had to whisper the Man's wrong name seven times in his ear before he was satisfied. No man is practical about everything.
There are a good many things to do when you are in love, but the Girl did not mean that theArt ofConversationshould be altogether lost, so she plunged for a topic.
"I think it was beautiful of you to give me a Hickory Dock," she ventured at last.
The Man shifted a trifle uneasily and laughed. "I thought perhaps it would please you," he stammered. "You see, now I have given youall my time."
The Girl chuckled with amused delight. "Yes—all your time. And it's nice to have a Hickory Dock that says 'Till he comes! Till he comes! Till he comes!'"
"Till he comes to—stay," persisted the Man. There was no sparkle in his sentiment. He said things very plainly, but his words drove the Girl across the room to the window with her face flaming. He jumped and followed her, and caught her almost roughly by the shoulder and turned her round.
"Rosalie, Rosalie," he demanded, "will you love me till theend of time?" There was no gallantry in his face but a great, dogged persistency that frightened the Girl into a flippant answer. She brushed her fluff of hair across his face and struggled away from him.
"I will love you," she teased, "until—the clock stops."
Then the Man burst out laughing, suddenly andunexpectedly, like a boy, and romped her back again across the room, and snatched up the clock and stole away the key.
"Hickory Dock shallneverstop!" he cried triumphantly. "I will wind it till I die. And no one else must ever meddle with it."
"But suppose you forget?" the Girl suggested half wistfully.
"I shallneverforget," said the Man. "I will wind Hickory Dock every week as long as I live. Ip-r-o-m-i-s-e!" His lips shut almost defiantly.
"But it isn't fair," the Girl insisted. "It isn't fair for me to let you make such a long promise. You—might—stop—loving me." Her eyes filled quickly with tears. "Promise me just for one year,"—she stamped her foot,—"I won't take any other promise."
So, half provoked and half amused, the Man bound himself then and there for the paltry term of a year. But to fulfil his own sincerity and seriousness he took the clock and stopped it for a moment that he might start it up again with the Girl close in his arms. A half-frightened, half-willing captive, she stood in her prison and looked with furtive eyes into the little, potential face of Hickory Dock.
"You—and I—for—all time," whispered the Man solemnly as he started the little mechanism throbbing once more on its way, and he stoopeddown to seal the pledge with a kiss, but once more the significance of his word and act startled the Girl, and she clutched at the clock and ran across the room with it, and set it down very hard on her desk beside the Man's picture. Then, half ashamed of her flight, she stooped down suddenly and patted the little, ticking surface of ebony and glass and silver.
"It's a wonderful little Hickory Dock," she mused softly. "I never saw one just like it before."
The Man hesitated for a second and drew his mouth into a funny twist. "I don't believe thereisanother one like it in all the world," he acknowledged, half laughingly,—"that is, notjustlike it. I've had it fixed so that it won't strikeeleven. I'm utterly tired of having you say 'There! it's eleven o'clock and you'vegotto go home.'Now, after ten o'clock nothing can strike till twelve, and that gives me two whole hours to use my own judgment in."
The Girl took one eager step towards him, when suddenly over the city roofs and across the square came the hateful, strident chime of midnight. Midnight?Midnight?The Girl rushed frantically to her closet and pulled the Man's coat out from among her fluffy dresses and thrust it into his hands, and he fled distractedly for his train without "Good-by."
That was the trouble with having a lover who lived so far away and was so busy that he could come only one evening a week. Long as you could make that one evening, something always got crowded out. If you made love, there was no time to talk. If you talked, there was no time to make love. If you spent a great time in greetings, it curtailed your good-by. If you began your good-by any earlier, why, it cut your evening right in two. So the Girl sat and sulked a sad little while over the general misery of the situation, until at last, to comfort herself with the only means at hand, she went over to the closet and opened the door just wide enough to stick her nose in and sniff ecstatically.
"Oh! O—h!" she crooned. "O—h! What a nice, smoky smell."
Then she took Hickory Dock and went to bed. This method of bunking was nice for her, but it played sad havoc with Hickory Dock, who lay on his back and whizzed and whirred and spun around at such a rate that when morning came he was minutes and hours, not to say days, ahead of time.
This gain in time seemed rather an advantage to the Girl. She felt that it was a good omen and must in some manner hasten the Wedding-Day, but when she confided the same to the Man at his next visit he viewed the fact with righteous scorn, thoughthe fancy itself pleased him mightily. The Girl learned that night, however, to eschew Hickory Dock as a rag doll. She did not learn this, though, through any particular solicitude for Hickory Dock, but rather because she had to stand by respectfully a whole precious hour and watch the Man's lean, clever fingers tinker with the little, jeweled mechanism. It was a fearful waste of time. "You are so kind tolittlethings," she whispered at last, with a catch in her voice that made the Man drop his work suddenly and give all his attention tobigthings. And another evening went, while Hickory Dock stood up like a hero and refused to strike eleven.
So every Sunday night throughout the Winter and the Spring and the Summer, the Man came joyously climbing up the long stairs to the Girl's room, and every Sunday night Hickory Dock was started off on a fresh round of Time and Love.
Hickory Dock, indeed, became a very precious object, for both Man and Girl had reached that particular stage of love where they craved the wonderful sensation of owning some vital thing together. But they were so busy loving that they did not recognize the instinct. The man looked upon Hickory Dock as an exceedingly blessed toy. The Girl grew gradually to cherish the little clock with a certain tender superstition and tingling reverence that senther heart pounding every time the Man's fingers turned to any casual tinkering.
And the Girl grew so exquisitely dear that the Man thought all women were like her. And the Man grew so sturdily precious that the Girl knew positively there was no person on earth to be compared with him. Over this happiness Hickory Dock presided throbbingly, and though he balked sometimes and bolted or lagged, he never stopped, and he never struck eleven.
Thus things went on in the customary way that things do go on with men and girls—until the Chronic Quarrel happened. The Chronic Quarrel was a trouble quite distinct from any ordinary lovers' disturbance, and it was a very silly little thing like this: The Girl had a nature that was emotionally apprehensive. She was always looking, as it were, for "dead men in the woods." She was always saying, "Suppose you get tired of me?" "Suppose I died?" "Suppose I found out that you had a wife living?" "Suppose you lost all your legs and arms in a railroad accident when you were coming here some Sunday night?"
And one day the Man had snapped her short with "Suppose? Suppose? What arrant nonsense! Suppose?—Suppose I fall in love with the Girl in the Office?"
It seemed to him the most extravagant suppositionthat he could possibly imagine, and he was perfectly delighted with its effect on his Sweetheart. She grew silent at once and very wistful.
After that he met all her apprehensions with "Suppose?—Suppose I fall in love with the Girl in the Office!"
And one day the Girl looked up at him with hot tears in her eyes and said tersely, "Well, why don't you fall in love with her if youwantto?"
That, of course, made a little trouble, but it was delicious fun making up, and the "Girl in the Office" became gradually one of those irresistibly dangerous jokes that always begin with laughter and end just as invariably with tears. When the Girl was sad or blue the Man was clumsy enough to try and cheer her with facetious allusions to the "Girl in the Office," and when the Girl was supremely, radiantly happy she used to boast, "Why, I'm so happy I don't care arapabout your old 'Girl in the Office.'" But whatever way the joke began, it always ended disastrously, with bitterness and tears, yet neither Man nor Girl could bear to formally taboo the subject lest it should look like the first shirking of their perfect intimacy and freedom of speech. The Man felt that in love like theirs he ought to be able to say anything he wanted to, so he kept on saying it, while the Girl claimed an equal if more caustic liberty of expression, andthe Chronic Quarrel began to fester a little round its edges.
One night in November, when Hickory Dock was nearly a year old in love, the Chronic Quarrel came to a climax. The Man was very listless that evening, and absent-minded, and altogether inadequate. The Girl accused him of indifference. He accused her in return of a shrewish temper. She suggested that perhaps he regretted his visit. He failed to contradict her. Then the Girl drew herself up to an absurd height for so small a creature and said stiffly,—
"You don't have to come next Sunday night if you don't want to."
At her scathing words the Man straightened up very suddenly in his chair and gazed over at the little clock in a startled sort of way.
"Why, of course I shall come," he retorted impulsively, "Hickory Dock needs me, if you don't."
"Oh, come and wind the clock by all means," flared the Girl. "I'm gladsomethingneeds you!"
Then the Man followed his own judgment and went home, though it was only ten o'clock.
"I'm not going to write to him this week," sobbed poor Rosalie. "I think he's very disagreeable."
But when the next Sunday came and the Manwaslate, it seemed as though an Eternity had been tacked onto a hundred years. It was fully quarter-past eight before he came climbing up the stairs.
The Girl looked scornfully at the clock. Her throat ached like a bruise. "You didn't hurry yourself much, did you?" she asked spitefully.
The Man looked up quickly and bit his lip. "The train was late," he replied briefly. He did not stop to take off his coat, but walked over to the table and wound Hickory Dock. Then he hesitated the smallest possible fraction of a moment, but the Girl made no move, so he picked up his hat and started for the door.
The Girl's heart sank, but her pride rose proportionally. "Is that all you came for?" she flushed. "Good! I am very tired to-night."
Then the Man went away. She counted every footfall on the stairs. In the little hush at the street doorway she felt that he must surely turn and come running back again, breathless and eager, with outstretched arms and all the kisses she was starving for. But when she heard the front door slam with a vicious finality she went and threw herself, sobbing on the couch. "Fifty miles just to wind a clock!" she raged in grief and chagrin. "I'll punish him for it if that's all he comes for."
So the next Sunday night she took Hickory Dockwith a cruel jerk, and put him on the floor just outside her door, and left a candle burning so that the Man could not possibly fail to see what was intended. "If all he comes for is to wind the clock, just because hepromised, there's no earthly use of his coming in," she reasoned, and went into her room and shut and locked her door, waiting nervously with clutched hands for the footfall on the stairs. "He loves some one else! He loves some one else!" she kept prodding herself.
Just at eight o'clock the Man came. She heard him very distinctly on the creaky board at the head of the stairs, and her heart beat to suffocation. Then she heard him come close to the door, as though he stooped down, and then he—laughed.
"Oh, very well," thought the Girl. "So he thinks it's funny, does he? He has no business to laugh while I am crying, even if he does love some one else.—Ihate him!"
The Man knocked on the door very softly, and the Girl gripped tight hold of her chair for fear she should jump up and let him in. He knocked again, and she heard him give a strange little gasp of surprise. Then he tried the door-handle. It turned fatuously, but the door would not open. He pushed his weight against it,—she could almost feel the soft whirr of his coat on the wood,—butthe door would not yield.—Then he turned very suddenly and went away.
The Girl got up with a sort of gloating look, as though she liked her pain. "Next Sunday night is the last Sunday night of his year's promise," she brooded; "then everything will be over. He will see how wise I was not to let him promise forever and ever. I will send Hickory Dock to him by express to save his coming for the final ceremony." Then she went out and got Hickory Dock and brought him in and shook him, but Hickory Dock continued to tick, "Till he comes! Till he comes! Till he comes!"
It was a very tedious week. It is perfectly absurd to measure a week by the fact that seven days make it—some days are longer than others. By Wednesday the Girl's proud little heart had capitulated utterly, and she decided not to send Hickory Dock away by express, but to let things take their natural course. And every time she thought of the "natural course" her heart began to pound with expectation. Of course, she would not acknowledge that she really expected the Man to come after her cruel treatment of him the previous week. "Everything is over. Everything is over," she kept preaching to herself with many gestures and illustrations; but next to God she put her faith in promises, and hadn't the Man promised a great, sacredlover's promise that he would come every Sunday for a year? So when the final Sunday actually came she went to her wedding-box and took out her "second best" of everything, silk and ruffles and laces, and dressed herself up for sheer pride and joy, with tingling thoughts of the night when she should wear her "first best" things. She put on a soft, little, white Summer dress that the Man liked better than anything else, and stuck a pink bow in her hair, and big rosettes on her slippers, and drew the big Morris chair towards the fire, and brought the Man's pipe and tobacco-box from behind the gilt mirror. Then she took Hickory Dock very tenderly and put him outside the door, with two pink candles flaming beside him, and a huge pink rose over his left ear. She thought the Man could smell the rose the second he opened the street door. Then she went back to her room, and left her door a wee crack open, and crouched down on the floor close to it, like a happy, wounded thing, andwaited—
But the Man did not come. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, she waited, cramped and cold, hoping against hope, fearing against fear. Every creak on the stairs thrilled her. Every fresh disappointment chilled her right through to her heart. She sat and rocked herself in a huddled heap of pain, she tauntedherself with lack of spirit, she goaded herself with intricate remorse—but she never left her bitter vigil until half-past two. Then some clatter of milkmen in the street roused her to the realization of a new day, and she got up dazed and icy, like one in a dream, and limped over to her couch and threw herself down to sleep like a drunken person.
Late the next morning she woke heavily with a vague, dull sense of loss which she could not immediately explain. She lay and looked with astonishment at the wrinkled folds of the white mull dress that bound her limbs like a shroud. She clutched at the tightness of her collar, and fingered with surprise the pink bow in her hair. Then slowly, one by one, the events of the previous night came back to her in all their significance, and with a muffled scream of heartbreak she buried her face in the pillow. She cried till her heart felt like a clenched fist within her, and then, with her passion exhausted, she got up like a little, cold, rumpled ghost and pattered out to the hall in her silk-stockinged feet, and picked up Hickory Dock with his wilted pink rose and brought him in and put him back on her desk. Then she brought in the mussy, pink-smooched candlesticks and stowed them far away in her closet behind everything else. The faintest possible scent of tobacco-smoke came to her from the closet depths, and as she reached instinctivelyto take a sad little whiff she became suddenly conscious that there was a strange, uncannyhushin the room, as though a soul had left its body. She turned back quickly and cried out with a smothered cry. Hickory Dock had stopped!
"Until—the—end—of—Time," she gasped, and staggered hard against the closet-door. Then in a flash she burst out laughing stridently, and rushed for Hickory Dock and grabbed him by his little silver handle, opened the window with a bang, and threw him with all her might and main down into the brick alley four stories below, where he fell with a sickening crash among a wee handful of scattered rose petals.
—The days that followed were like horrid dreams, the nights, like hideous realities. The fire would not burn. The sun and moon would not shine, and life itself settled down like a pall. Every detail of that Sunday night stamped and re stamped itself upon her mind. Back of her outraged love was the crueller pain of her outraged faith. The Man of his own free will had made a sacred promise and broken it! She realized now for the first time in her life why men went to the devil because women had failed them—not disappointed them, butfailedthem! She could even imagine how poor mothers felt when fathers shirked their fatherhood. She tasted in oneweek's imagination all possible woman sorrows of the world.
At the end of the second week she began to realize the depth of isolation into which her engagement had thrown her. For a year and a half she had thought nothing, dreamed nothing, cared for nothing except the Man. Now, with the Man swept away, there was no place to turn either for comfort or amusement.
At the end of the third week, when no word came, she began to gather together all the Man's little personal effects, and consigned them to a box out of sight—the pipe and tobacco, a favorite book, his soft Turkish slippers, his best gloves, and even a little poem which he had written for her to set to music. It was a pretty little love-song that they had made together, but as she hummed it over now for the last time she wondered if, after all,woman's musicdid not do more than man's words to make love Singable.
When a month was up she began to strip the room of everything that the Man had brought towards the making of their Home. It was like stripping tendons. She had never realized before how thoroughly the Man's personality had dominated her room as well as her life. When she had crowded his books, his pictures, his college trophies, his Morris chair, his rugs, into one corner of herroom and covered them with two big sheets, her little, paltry, feminine possessions looked like chiffon in a desert.
While she was pondering what to do next her rent fell due. The month's idling had completely emptied her pewter savings-bank that she had been keeping as a sort of precious joke for the Honeymoon. The rent-bill startled her into spasmodic efforts at composition. She had been quite busy for a year writing songs for some Educational people, but how could one make harmony with a heart full of discord and all life off the key. A single week convinced her of the utter futility of these efforts. In one high-strung, wakeful night she decided all at once to give up the whole struggle and go back to her little country village, where at least she would find free food and shelter until she could get her grip again.
For three days she struggled heroically with burlap and packing-boxes. She felt as though every nail she pounded was hurting the Man as well as herself, and she pounded just as hard as she possibly could.
When the room was stripped of every atom of personality except her couch, and the duplicate latch-key, which still hung high and dusty, a deliciously cruel thought came to the Girl, and the irony of it set her eyes flashing. On the night beforeher intended departure she took the key and put it into a pretty little box and sent it to the Man.
"He'll know by that token," she said, "that there's no more 'Home' for him and me. He will get his furniture a few days later, and then he will see that everything is scattered and shattered. Even if he's married by this time, the key will hurt him, for his wife will want to know what it means, and he never can tell her."
Then she cried so hard that her overwrought, half-starved little body collapsed, and she crept into her bed and was sick all night and all the next day, so that there was no possible thought or chance of packing or traveling. But towards the second evening she struggled up to get herself a taste of food and wine from her cupboard, and, wrapping herself in her pink kimono, huddled over the fire to try and find a little blaze and cheer.
Just as the flames commenced to flush her cheeks the lock clicked. She started up in alarm. The door opened abruptly, and the Man strode in with a very determined, husbandly look on his haggard face. For the fraction of a second he stood and looked at her pitifully frightened and disheveled little figure.
"Forgive me," he cried, "but Ihadto come like this." Then he took one mighty stride andcaught her up in his arms and carried her back to her open bed and tucked her in like a child while she clung to his neck laughing and sobbing and crying as though her brain was turned. He smoothed her hair, he kissed her eyes, he rubbed his rough cheek confidently against her soft one, and finally, when her convulsive tremors quieted a little, he reached down into his great overcoat pocket and took out poor, battered, mutilated Hickory Dock.
"I found him down in the Janitor's office just now," he explained, and his mouth twitched just the merest trifle at the corners.
"Don't smile," said the Girl, sitting up suddenly very straight and stiff. "Don't smile till you know the whole truth.Ibroke Hickory Dock. I threw himpurposelyfour stories down into the brick alley!"
The Man began to examine Hickory Dock very carefully.
"I should judge that it was abrickalley," he remarked with an odd twist of his lips, as he tossed the shattered little clock over to the burlap-covered armchair.
Then he took the Girl very quietly and tenderly in his arms again, and gazed down into her eyes with a look that was new to him.
"Rosalie," he whispered, "I will mend HickoryDock for you if it takes a thousand years,"—his voice choked,—"but I wish to God I could mend my broken promise as easily!"
And Rosalie smiled through her tears and said,—
"Sweetheart-Man, you do love me?"
"With all my heart and soul and body and breath, and past and present and future Ilove you!" said the Man.
Then Rosalie kissed a little path to his ear, and whispered, oh, so softly,—
"Sweetheart-Man, I loveyoujust that same way."
And Hickory Dock, the Angel, never ticked the passing of a single second, but lay on his back looking straight up to Heaven with his two little battered hands clasped eternally at Love'shigh noon.
O
N one of those wet, warm, slushy February nights when the vapid air sags like sodden wool in your lungs, and your cheek-bones bore through your flesh, and your leaden feet seem strung directly from the roots of your eyes, three girls stampeded their way through the jostling, peevish street crowds with no other object in Heaven or Earth except just to get—HOME.
It was supper time, too, somewhere between six and seven, the caved-in hour of the day when the ruddy ghost of Other People's dinners flaunts itself rather grossly in the pallid nostrils of Her Who Lives by the Chafing-Dish.
One of the girls was a Medical Masseuse, trained brain and brawn in the German Hospitals. One was a Public School Teacher with a tickle of chalk dust in her lungs. One was a Cartoon Artist with a heart like chiffon and a wit as accidentally malicious as the jab of a pin in a flirt's belt.
All three of them were silly with fatigue. Thewrithing city cavorted before them like a sick clown. A lame cab horse went strutting like a mechanical toy. Crape on a door would have plunged them into hysterics. Were you ever as tired as that?
With no other object, except to get homeWith no other object, except to get home
It was, in short, the kind of night that rips out every one according to his stitch. Rhoda Hanlan the Masseuse was ostentatiously sewed with double thread and backstitched at that. Even the little Teacher, Ruth MacLaurin, had a physique that was embroidered if not darned across its raveled places. But Noreen Gaudette, the Cartoon Drawer, with her spangled brain and her tissue-paper body, was merely basted together with a single silken thread. It was the knowledge of being only basted that gave Noreen the droll, puckered terror in her eyes whenever Life tugged at her with any specially inordinate strain.
Yet it was Noreen who was popularly supposed to be built with an electric battery instead of a heart.
The boarding-house that welcomed the three was rather tall for beauty, narrow-shouldered, flat-chested, hunched together in the block like a prudish, dour old spinster overcrowded in a street car. To call such a house "Home" was like calling such a spinster "Mother." But the three girls called it "Home" and rather liked the saucy taste of the word in their mouths.
Across the threshold in a final spurt of energy the jaded girls pushed with the joyous realization that there were now only five flights of stairs between themselves and their own attic studio.
On the first floor the usual dreary vision greeted them of a hall table strewn with stale letters—most evidently bills, which no one seemed in a hurry to appropriate.
It was twenty-two stumbling, bundle-dropping steps to the next floor, where the strictly Bachelor Quarters with half-swung doors emitted a pleasant gritty sound of masculine voices, and a sumptuous cloud of cigarette smoke which led the way frowardly up twenty-two more toiling steps to the Old Maid's Floor, buffeted itself naughtily against the sternly shut doors, and then mounted triumphantly like sweet incense to the Romance Floor, where with door alluringly open the Much-Loved Girl and her Mother were frankly and ingenuously preparing for the Monday-Night-Lover's visit.
The vision of the Much-Loved Girl smote like a brutal flashlight upon the three girls in the hall.
Out of curl, out of breath, jaded of face, bedraggled of clothes, they stopped abruptly and stared into the vista.
Before their fretted eyes the room stretched fresh and clean as a newly returned laundry package. The green rugs lay like velvet grass across the floor.The chintz-covered furniture crisped like the crust of a cake. Facing the gilt-bound mirror, the Much-Loved Girl sat joyously in all her lingerie-waisted, lace-paper freshness, while her Mother hovered over her to give one last maternal touch to a particularly rampageous blond curl.
The Much-Loved Girl was a cordial person. Her liquid, mirrored reflection nodded gaily out into the hall. There was no fatigue in the sparkling face. There was no rain or fog. There was no street-corner insult. There was no harried stress of wherewithal. There was just Youth, and Girl, and Cherishing.
She made the Masseuse and the little School Teacher think of a pale-pink rose in a cut-glass vase. But she made Noreen Gaudettefeellike a vegetable in a boiled dinner.
With one despairing gasp—half-chuckle and half-sob—the three girls pulled themselves together and dashed up the last flight of stairs to the Trunk-Room Floor, and their own attic studio, where bumping through the darkness they turned a sulky stream of light upon a room more tired-looking than themselves, and then, with almost fierce abandon, collapsed into the nearest resting-places that they could reach.
It was a long time before any one spoke.
Between the treacherous breeze of the open windowand a withering blast of furnace heat the wilted muslin curtain swayed back and forth with languid rhythm. Across the damp night air came faintly the yearning, lovery smell of violets, and the far-off, mournful whine of a sick hand-organ.
On the black fur hearth-rug Rhoda, the red-haired, lay prostrated like a broken tiger lily with her long, lithe hands clutched desperately at her temples.
"I am so tired," she said. "I am so tired that I can actually feel my hair fade."
Ruth, the little Public School Teacher, laughed derisively from her pillowed couch where she struggled intermittently with her suffocating collar and the pinchy buckles on her overshoes.
"That's nothing," she asserted wanly. "I am so tired that I would like to build me a pink-wadded silk house, just the shape of a slipper, where I could snuggle down in the toe and go to sleep for a—million years. It isn't to-morrow's early morning that racks me, it's the thought of all the early mornings between now and the Judgment Day. Oh, any sentimental person can cry at night, but when you begin to cry in the morning—to lie awake and cry in the morning—" Her face sickened suddenly. "Did you see that Mother downstairs?" she gasped, "fixing that curl? Think of having a Mother!"
Then Noreen Gaudette opened her great gray eyes and grinned diabolically. She had a funny little manner of cartooning her emotions.
"Think of having a Mother?" she scoffed. "What nonsense!—Think of having a c-u-r-l!
"You talk like Sunday-Paper débutantes," she drawled. "You don't know anything about being tired. Why, I am so tired—I am so tired—that I wish—I wish that the first man who ever proposed to me would come back and ask me—again!"
It was then that the Landlady, knocking at the door, presented a card, "Mr. Ernest T. Dextwood," for Miss Gaudette, and the innocent-looking conversation exploded suddenly like a short-fused firecracker.
Rhoda in an instant was sitting bolt upright with her arms around her knees rocking to and fro in convulsive delight. Ruth much more thoughtfully jumped for Noreen's bureau drawer. But Noreen herself, after one long, hyphenated "Oh, myH-e-a-v-e-n-s!" threw off her damp, wrinkled coat, stalked over to the open window, and knelt down quiveringly where she could smother her blazing face in the inconsequent darkness.
For miles and miles the teasing lights of Other Women's homes stretched out before her. From the window-sill below her rose the persistent purplesmell of violets, and the cooing, gauzy laughter of the Much-Loved Girl. Fatigue was in the damp air, surely, but Spring was also there, and Lonesomeness, and worst of all, that desolating sense of patient, dying snow wasting away before one's eyes like Life itself.
When Noreen turned again to her friends her eyelids drooped defiantly across her eyes. Her lips were like a scarlet petal under the bite of her teeth. There in the jetty black and scathing white of her dress she loomed up suddenly like one of her own best drawings—pulseless ink and stale white paper vitalized all in an instant by some miraculous emotional power. A living Cartoon of "Fatigue" she stood there—"Fatigue," as she herself would have drawn it—no flaccid failure of wilted bone and sagging flesh, butVerve—the taut Brain's pitiless rally of the Body that can not afford to rest—the verve of Factory Lights blazing overtime, the verve of the Runner who drops at his goal.
"All the time I am gone," she grinned, "pray over and over, 'Lead Noreen not into temptation.'" Her voice broke suddenly into wistful laughter: "Why to meet again a man who used to love you—it's like offering store-credit to a pauper."
Then she slammed the door behind her and started downstairs for the bleak, plush parlor, with a chaotic sense of absurdity and bravado.
But when she reached the middle of the bachelor stairway and looked down casually and spied her clumsy arctics butting out from her wet-edged skirt all her nervousness focused instantly in her shaking knees, and she collapsed abruptly on the friendly dark stair and clutching hold of the banister, began to whimper.
In the midst of her stifled tears a door banged hard above her, the floor creaked under a sturdy step, and the tall, narrow form of the Political Economist silhouetted itself against the feeble light of the upper landing.
One step down he came into the darkness—two steps, three steps, four, until at last in choking miserable embarrassment, Noreen cried out hysterically:
"Don't step on me—I'mcrying!"
With a gasp of astonishment the young man struck a sputtering match and bent down waving it before him.
"Why, it'syou, Miss Gaudette," he exclaimed with relief. "What's the matter? Are you ill? What are you crying about?" and he dropped down beside her and commenced to fan her frantically with his hat.
"Whatareyou crying about?" he persisted helplessly, drugged man-like, by the same embarrassment that mounted like wine to the woman's brain.
Noreen began to laugh snuffingly.
"I'm not crying about anything special," she acknowledged. "I'm just crying. I'm crying partly because I'm tired—and partly because I've got my overshoes on—butmostly"—her voice began to catch again—"but mostly—because there's amanwaiting to see me in the parlor."
The Political Economist shifted uneasily in his rain coat and stared into Noreen's eyes.
"Great Heavens!" he stammered. "Do you always cry when men come to see you? Is that why you never invitedmeto call?"
Noreen shook her head. "I never have men come to see me," she answered quite simply. "I go to seethem. I study in their studios. I work on their newspapers. I caricature their enemies. Oh, it isn'tmenthat I'm afraid of," she added blithely, "butthisis something particular.Thisis something really very funny. Did you ever make a wish that something perfectly preposterous would happen?"
"Oh, yes," said the Political Economist reassuringly. "This very day I said that I wished my Stenographer would swallow the telephone."
"But she didn't swallow it, did she?" persisted Noreen triumphantly. "Now I said that I wished some one would swallow the telephone and shedidswallow it!"
Then her face in the dusky light flared piteously with harlequined emotions. Her eyes blazed bright with toy excitement. Her lips curved impishly with exaggerated drollery. But when for a second her head drooped back against the banister her jaded small face looked for all the world like a death-mask of a Jester.
The Political Economist's heart crinkled uncomfortably within him.
"Why, you poor little girl," he said. "I didn't know that women got as tired as that. Let me take off your overshoes."
Noreen stood up like a well-trained pony and shed her clumsy footgear.
The Man's voice grew peremptory. "Your skirt is sopping wet. Are you crazy? Didn't have time to get into dry things? Nonsense! Have you had any supper? What?N-o?Wait a minute."
In an instant he was flying up the stairs, and when he came back there was a big glass of cool milk in his hand.
Noreen drank it ravenously, and then started downstairs with abrupt, quick courage.
When she reached the ground floor the Political Economist leaned over the banisters and shouted in a piercing whisper:
"I'll leave your overshoes outside my door where you can get them on your way up later."
Then he laughed teasingly and added: "I—hope—you'll—have—a—good—time."
And Noreen, cleaving for one last second to the outer edge of the banisters, smiled up at him, so straininglyup, that her face, to the man above her, looked like a little flat white plate with a crimson-lipped rose wilting on it.
Then she disappeared into the parlor.
With equal abruptness the Political Economist changed his mind about going out, and went back instead to his own room and plunged himself down in his chair, and smoked and thought, until his friend, the Poet at the big writing-desk, slapped down his manuscript and stared at him inquisitively.
"Lord Almighty! I wish I could draw!" said the Political Economist. It was not so much an exclamation as a reverent entreaty. His eyes narrowed sketchily across the vision that haunted him. "If I could draw," he persisted, "I'd make a picture that would hit the world like a knuckled fist straight between its selfish old eyes. And I'd call that picture 'Talent.' I'd make an ocean chopping white and squally, withblackclouds scudding like fury across the sky, and no land in sight except rocks. And I'd fill that ocean full of sharks and things—not showing too much, you know, but just an occasional shimmer of fins through the foam.And I'd make a sailboat scooting along, tipped 'way over on her side toward you, with just a slip of an eager-faced girl in it. And I'd wedge her in there, wind-blown, spray-dashed, foot and back braced to the death, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other, and weather-almighty roaring all around her. And I'd make the riskiest little leak in the bottom of that boat rammed desperately with a box of chocolates, and a bunch of violets, and a large paper compliment in a man's handwriting reading: 'Oh, howcleveryou are.' And I'd have that girl's face haggard with hunger, starved for sleep, tense with fear, ravished with excitement. But I'd have her chinup, and her eyesopen, and the tiniest tilt of a quizzical smile hounding you like mad across the snug, gilt frame. Maybe, too, I'd have a woman's magazine blowing around telling in chaste language how to keep the hair 'smooth' and the hands 'velvety,' and admonishing girls above all things not to be eaten by sharks! Good Heavens, Man!" he finished disjointedly, "a girl doesn't know how to sail a boat anyway!"
"W-h-a-tare you talking about?" moaned the Poet.
The Political Economist began to knock the ashes furiously out of his pipe.
"What am I talking about?" he cried; "I'm talking aboutgirls. I've always said that I'dgladly fall in love if I only could decide what kind of a girl I wanted to fall in love with. Well, I've decided!"
The Poet's face furrowed. "Is it the Much-Loved Girl?" he stammered.
The Political Economist's smoldering temper began to blaze.
"No, it isn't," ejaculated the Political Economist. "The Much-Loved Girl is a sweet enough, airy, fairy sort of girl, but I'm not going to fall in love with just a pretty valentine."
"Going to try a 'Comic'?" the Poet suggested pleasantly.
The Political Economist ignored the impertinence. "I am reasonably well off," he continued meditatively, "and I'm reasonably good-looking, and I've contributed eleven articles on 'Men and Women' to modern economic literature, but it's dawned on me all of a sudden that in spite of all my beauteous theories regarding life in general, I am just one big shirk when it comes to life in particular."
The Poet put down his pen and pushed aside his bottle of rhyming fluid, and began to take notice.
"Whom are you going to fall in love with?" he demanded.
The Political Economist sank back into his chair.
"I don't quite know," he added simply, "butshe's going to be some tired girl. Whatever else she may or may not be, she's got to be a tired girl."
"A tired girl?" scoffed the Poet. "That's no kind of a girl to marry. Choose somebody who's all pink and white freshness. That's the kind of a girl to make a man happy."
The Political Economist smiled a bit viciously behind his cigar.
"Half an hour ago," he affirmed, "I was a beast just like you. Good Heavens! Man," he cried out suddenly, "did you ever see a girl cry? Really cry, I mean. Not because her manicure scissors jabbed her thumb, but because her great, strong, tyrant, sexless brain had goaded her poor little woman-body to the very cruelest, last vestige of its strength and spirit. Did you ever see a girl like that Miss Gaudette upstairs—she's the Artist, you know, who did those cartoons last year that played the devil itself with 'Congress Assembled'—did you ever see a girl likethatjust plain thrown down, tripped in her tracks, sobbing like a hurt, tired child? Your pink and white prettiness can cry like a rampant tragedy-queen all she wants to over a misfitted collar, but my hand is going here and now to the big-brained girl who cries like a child!"
"In short," interrupted the Poet, "you are going to help—Miss Gaudette sail her boat?"
"Y-e-s," said the Political Economist.
"And so," mocked the Poet, "you are going to jump aboard and steer the young lady adroitly to some port of your own choosing?"
The older man's jaws tightened ominously. "No, by the Lord Almighty, that's just what I am not going to do!" he promised. "I'm going to help her sail to the port of her own choosing!"
The Poet began to rummage in his mind for adequate arguments. "Oh, allegorically," he conceded, "your scheme is utterly charming, but from any material, matrimonial point of view I should want to remind myself pretty hard that overwrought brains do not focus very easily on domestic interests, nor do arms which have tugged as you say at 'sheets' and 'tillers' curve very dimplingly around youngsters' shoulders."
The Political Economist blew seven mighty smoke-puffs from his pipe.
"That would be the economic price I deserve to pay for not having arrived earlier on the scene," he said quietly.
The Poet began to chuckle. "You certainly are hard hit," he scoffed.