University of Virginia Library

UNCLASSIFIED MASTERPIECES

THE LEES OF HAPPINESS

If you should look through the files of old magazines
for the first years of the present century you would find,
sandwiched in between the stories of Richard Harding
Davis and Frank Norris and others long since dead,
the work of one Jeffrey Curtain: a novel or two, and perhaps
three or four dozen short stories. You could, if
you were interested, follow them along until, say, 1908,
when they suddenly disappeared.

When you had read them all you would have been
quite sure that here were no masterpieces—here were
passably amusing stories, a bit out of date now, but
doubtless the sort that would then have whiled away a
dreary half hour in a dental office. The man who did
them was of good intelligence, talented, glib, probably
young. In the samples of his work you found there
would have been nothing to stir you to more than a faint
interest in the whims of life—no deep interior laughs,
no sense of futility or hint of tragedy.

After reading them you would yawn and put the number
back in the files, and perhaps, if you were in some
library reading-room, you would decide that by way of
variety you would look at a newspaper of the period
and see whether the Japs had taken Port Arthur. But
if by any chance the newspaper you had chosen was the
right one and had crackled open at the theatrical page,
your eyes would have been arrested and held, and for at
least a minute you would have forgotten Port Arthur
as quickly as you forgot Château Thierry. For you
would, by this fortunate chance, be looking at the portrait
of an exquisite woman.

Those were the days of "Florodora" and of sextets, of
pinched-in waists and blown-out sleeves, of almost
bustles and absolute ballet skirts, but here, without
doubt, disguised as she might be by the unaccustomed
stiffness and old fashion of her costume, was a butterfly
of butterflies. Here was the gayety of the period—the
soft wine of eyes, the songs that flurried hearts, the toasts
and the bouquets, the dances and the dinners. Here
was a Venus of the hansom cab, the Gibson girl in her
glorious prime. Here was . . .

. . . here was, you find by looking at the name beneath,
one Roxanne Milbank, who had been chorus girl
and understudy in "The Daisy Chain," but who, by
reason of an excellent performance when the star was
indisposed, had gained a leading part.

You would look again—and wonder. Why you had
never heard of her. Why did her name not linger in
popular songs and vaudeville jokes and cigar bands, and
the memory of that gay old uncle of yours along with
Lillian Russell and Stella Mayhew and Anna Held?
Roxanne Milbank—whither had she gone? What dark
trap-door had opened suddenly and swallowed her up?
Her name was certainly not in last Sunday's supplement
on that list of actresses married to English noblemen.
No doubt she was dead—poor beautiful young lady—
and quite forgotten.

I am hoping too much. I am having you stumble on
Jeffrey Curtain's stories and Roxanne Milbank's picture.
It would be incredible that you should find a
newspaper item six months later, a single item two inches
by four, which informed the public of the marriage, very
quietly, of Miss Roxanne Milbank, who had been on tour
with "The Daisy Chain," to Mr. Jeffrey Curtain, the
popular author. "Mrs. Curtain," it added dispassionately,
"will retire from the stage."

It was a marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled
to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible.
Like two floating logs they met in a head-on
rush, caught, and sped along together. Yet had Jeffrey
Curtain kept at scrivening for twoscore years he could
not have put a quirk into one of his stories weirder than
the quirk that came into his own life. Had Roxanne
Milbank played three dozen parts and filled five thousand
houses she could never have had a rôle with more
happiness and more despair than were in the fate prepared
for Roxanne Curtain.

For a year they lived in hotels, travelled to California,
to Alaska, to Florida, to Mexico, loved and quarrelled
gently, and gloried in the golden triflings of his wit with
her beauty—they were young and gravely passionate;
they demanded everything and then yielded everything
again in ecstasies of unselfishness and pride. She loved
the swift tones of his voice and his frantic, unfounded
jealousy. He loved her dark radiance, the white irises
of her eyes, the warm, lustrous enthusiasm of her smile.

"Don't you like her?" he would demand rather excitedly
and shyly. "Isn't she wonderful? Did you ever
see—"

"Yes," they would answer, grinning. "She's a wonder.
You're lucky."

The year passed. They tired of hotels. They bought
an old house and twenty acres near the town of Marlowe,
half an hour from Chicago; bought a little car,
and moved out riotously with a pioneering hallucination
that would have confounded Balboa.

"Your room will be here!" they cried in turn.

—And then:

"And my room here!"

"And the nursery here when we have children."

"And we'll build a sleeping porch—oh, next year."

They moved out in April. In July Jeffrey's closest
friend, Harry Cromwell, came to spend a week—they
met him at the end of the long lawn and hurried him
proudly to the house.

Harry was married also. His wife had had a baby
some six months before and was still recuperating at her
mother's in New York. Roxanne had gathered from
Jeffrey that Harry's wife was not as attractive as Harry
—Jeffrey had met her once and considered her—"shallow."
But Harry had been married nearly two years
and was apparently happy, so Jeffrey guessed that she
was probably all right . . .

"I'm making biscuits," chattered Roxanne gravely.
"Can your wife make biscuits? The cook is showing
me how. I think every woman should know how to
make biscuits. It sounds so utterly disarming. A
woman who can make biscuits can surely do no—"

"You'll have to come out here and live," said Jeffrey.
"Get a place out in the country like us, for you and
Kitty."

"You don't know Kitty. She hates the country. She's
got to have her theatres and vaudevilles."

"Bring her out," repeated Jeffrey. "We'll have a
colony. There's an awfully nice crowd here already.
Bring her out!"

They were at the porch steps now and Roxanne made
a brisk gesture toward a dilapidated structure on the
right.

"The garage," she announced. "It will also be Jeffrey's
writing-room within the month. Meanwhile dinner
is at seven. Meanwhile to that I will mix a cocktail."

The two men ascended to the second floor—that is,
they ascended half-way, for at the first landing Jeffrey
dropped his guest's suitcase and in a cross between a
query and a cry exclaimed:

"For God's sake, Harry, how do you like her?"

"We will go up-stairs," answered his guest, "and we
will shut the door."

Half an hour later as they were sitting together in the
library Roxanne reissued from the kitchen, bearing before
her a pan of biscuits. Jeffrey and Harry rose.

"They're beautiful, dear," said the husband, intensely.

"Exquisite," murmured Harry.

Roxanne beamed.

"Taste one. I couldn't bear to touch them before
you'd seen them all and I can't bear to take them back
until I find what they taste like."

"Like manna, darling."

Simultaneously the two men raised the biscuits to
their lips, nibbled tentatively. Simultaneously they
tried to change the subject. But Roxanne, undeceived,
set down the pan and seized a biscuit. After a second
her comment rang out with lugubrious finality:

"Absolutely bum!"

"Really—"

"Why, I didn't notice—"

Roxanne roared.

"Oh, I'm useless," she cried laughing. "Turn me out,
Jeffrey—I'm a parasite; I'm no good—"

Jeffrey put his arm around her.

"Darling, I'll eat your biscuits."

"They're beautiful, anyway," insisted Roxanne.

"They're—they're decorative," suggested Harry.

Jeffrey took him up wildly.

"That's the word. They're decorative; they're masterpieces.
We'll use them."

He rushed to the kitchen and returned with a hammer
and a handful of nails.

"We'll use them, by golly, Roxanne! We'll make a
frieze out of them."

"Don't!" wailed Roxanne. "Our beautiful house."

"Never mind. We're going to have the library repapered
in October. Don't you remember?"

"Well—"

Bang! The first biscuit was impaled to the wall,
where it quivered for a moment like a live thing.

Bang! . . .

When Roxanne returned with a second round of cocktails
the biscuits were in a perpendicular row, twelve of
them, like a collection of primitive spear-heads.

"Roxanne," exclaimed Jeffrey, "you're an artist!
Cook?—nonsense! You shall illustrate my books!"

During dinner the twilight faltered into dusk, and later
it was a starry dark outside, filled and permeated with
the frail gorgeousness of Roxanne's white dress and her
tremulous, low laugh.

—Such a little girl she is, thought Harry. Not as old
as Kitty.

He compared the two. Kitty—nervous without being
sensitive, temperamental without temperament,
a woman who seemed to flit and never light—and Roxanne,
who was as young as spring night, and summed up
in her own adolescent laughter.

—A good match for Jeffrey, he thought again. Two
very young people, the sort who'll stay very young until
they suddenly find themselves old.

Harry thought these things between his constant
thoughts about Kitty. He was depressed about Kitty.
It seemed to him that she was well enough to come back
to Chicago and bring his little son. He was thinking
vaguely of Kitty when he said good-night to his friend's
wife and his friend at the foot of the stairs.

"You're our first real house guest," called Roxanne
after him. "Aren't you thrilled and proud?"

When he was out of sight around the stair corner she

turned to Jeffrey, who was standing beside her resting
his hand on the end of the banister.

"Are you tired, my dearest?"

Jeffrey rubbed the centre of his forehead with his fingers.

"A little. How did you know?"

"Oh, how could I help knowing about you?"

"It's a headache," he said moodily. "Splitting. I'll
take some aspirin."

She reached over and snapped out the light, and with
his arm tight about her waist they walked up the stairs
together.

II

Harry's week passed. They drove about the dreaming
lanes or idled in cheerful inanity upon lake or lawn.
In the evening Roxanne, sitting inside, played to them
while the ashes whitened on the glowing ends of their
cigars. Then came a telegram from Kitty saying that
she wanted Harry to come East and get her, so Roxanne
and Jeffrey were left alone in that privacy of which
they never seemed to tire.

"Alone" thrilled them again. They wandered about
the house, each feeling intimately the presence of the
other; they sat on the same side of the table like honeymooners;
they were intensely absorbed, intensely happy.

The town of Marlowe, though a comparatively old
settlement, had only recently acquired a "society."
Five or six years before, alarmed at the smoky swelling
of Chicago, two or three young married couples, "bungalow
people," had moved out; their friends had followed.
The Jeffrey Curtains found an already formed "set" prepared
to welcome them; a country club, ballroom, and
golf links yawned for them, and there were bridge parties,
and poker parties, and parties where they drank beer,
and parties where they drank nothing at all.

It was at a poker party that they found themselves a
week after Harry's departure. There were two tables,
and a good proportion of the young wives were smoking
and shouting their bets, and being very daringly mannish
for those days.

Roxanne had left the game early and taken to perambulation;
she wandered into the pantry and found
herself some grape juice—beer gave her a headache—
and then passed from table to table, looking over shoulders
at the hands, keeping an eye on Jeffrey and being
pleasantly unexcited and content. Jeffrey, with intense
concentration, was raising a pile of chips of all colors,
and Roxanne knew by the deepened wrinkle between his
eyes that he was interested. She liked to see him interested
in small things.

She crossed over quietly and sat down on the arm of
his chair.

She sat there five minutes, listening to the sharp intermittent
comments of the men and the chatter of the
women, which rose from the table like soft smoke—and
yet scarcely hearing either. Then quite innocently she
reached out her hand, intending to place it on Jeffrey's
shoulder—as it touched him he started of a sudden,
gave a short grunt, and, sweeping back his arm furiously,
caught her a glancing blow on her elbow.

There was a general gasp. Roxanne regained her
balance, gave a little cry, and rose quickly to her feet.
It had been the greatest shock of her life. This, from
Jeffrey, the heart of kindness, of consideration—this
instinctively brutal gesture.

The gasp became a silence. A dozen eyes were turned
on Jeffrey, who looked up as though seeing Roxanne for
the first time. An expression of bewilderment settled
on his face.

"Why—Roxanne—" he said haltingly.

Into a dozen minds entered a quick suspicion, a rumor
of scandal. Could it be that behind the scenes with
this couple, apparently so in love, lurked some curious
antipathy? Why else this streak of fire across such a
cloudless heaven?

"Jeffrey!"—Roxanne's voice was pleading—startled
and horrified, she yet knew that it was a mistake. Not
once did it occur to her to blame him or to resent it.
Her word was a trembling supplication—"Tell me,
Jeffrey," it said, "tell Roxanne, your own Roxanne."

"Why, Roxanne—" began Jeffrey again. The bewildered
look changed to pain. He was clearly as
startled as she. "I didn't intend that," he went on;
"you startled me. You—I felt as if some one were attacking
me. I—how—why, how idiotic!"

"Jeffrey!" Again the word was a prayer, incense
offered up to a high God through this new and unfathomable
darkness.

They were both on their feet, they were saying good-by,
faltering, apologizing, explaining. There was no
attempt to pass it off easily. That way lay sacrilege.
Jeffrey had not been feeling well, they said. He had
become nervous. Back of both their minds was the
unexplained horror of that blow—the marvel that there
had been for an instant something between them—his
anger and her fear—and now to both a sorrow, momentary,
no doubt, but to be bridged at once, at once,
while there was yet time. Was that swift water lashing
under their feet—the fierce glint of some uncharted
chasm?

Out in their car under the harvest moon he talked
brokenly. It was just—incomprehensible to him, he
said. He had been thinking of the poker game—absorbed—and
the touch on his shoulder had seemed like
an attack. An attack! He clung to that word, flung

it up as a shield. He had hated what touched him.
With the impact of his hand it had gone, that—nervousness.
That was all he knew.

Both their eyes filled with tears and they whispered
love there under the broad night as the serene streets of
Marlowe sped by. Later, when they went to bed, they
were quite calm. Jeffrey was to take a week off all
work—was simply to loll, and sleep, and go on long
walks until this nervousness left him. When they had
decided this safety settled down upon Roxanne. The
pillows underhead became soft and friendly; the bed on
which they lay seemed wide, and white, and sturdy beneath
the radiance that streamed in at the window.

Five days later, in the first cool of late afternoon,
Jeffrey picked up an oak chair and sent it crashing
through his own front window. Then he lay down on
the couch like a child, weeping piteously and begging
to die. A blood clot the size of a marble had broken
in his brain.

III

There is a sort of waking nightmare that sets in sometimes
when one has missed a sleep or two, a feeling that
comes with extreme fatigue and a new sun, that the
quality of the life around has changed. It is a fully
articulate conviction that somehow the existence one
is then leading is a branch shoot of life and is related
to life only as a moving picture or a mirror—that the
people, and streets, and houses are only projections
from a very dim and chaotic past. It was in such a
state that Roxanne found herself during the first months
of Jeffrey's illness. She slept only when she was utterly
exhausted; she awoke under a cloud. The long,
sober-voiced consultations, the faint aura of medicine

in the halls, the sudden tiptoeing in a house that had
echoed to many cheerful footsteps, and, most of all,
Jeffrey's white face amid the pillows of the bed they
had shared—these things subdued her and made her indelibly
older. The doctors held out hope, but that was
all. A long rest, they said, and quiet. So responsibility
came to Roxanne. It was she who paid the bills,
pored over his bank-book, corresponded with his publishers.
She was in the kitchen constantly. She learned
from the nurse how to prepare his meals and after the
first month took complete charge of the sick-room.
She had had to let the nurse go for reasons of economy.
One of the two colored girls left at the same time.
Roxanne was realizing that they had been living from
short story to short story.

The most frequent visitor was Harry Cormwell. He
had been shocked and depressed by the news, and though
his wife was now living with him in Chicago he found
time to come out several times a month. Roxanne found
his sympathy welcome—there was some quality of suffering
in the man, some inherent pitifulness that made
her comfortable when he was near. Roxanne's nature
had suddenly deepened. She felt sometimes that with
Jeffrey she was losing her children also, those children
that now most of all she needed and should have had.

It was six months after Jeffrey's collapse and when the
nightmare had faded, leaving not the old world but a
new one, grayer and colder, that she went to see Harry's
wife. Finding herself in Chicago with an extra hour
before train time, she decided out of courtesy to call.

As she stepped inside the door she had an immediate
impression that the apartment was very like some
place she had seen before—and almost instantly she
remembered a round-the-corner bakery of her childhood,
a bakery full of rows and rows of pink frosted

cakes—a stuffy pink, pink as a food, pink triumphant,
vulgar, and odious.

And this apartment was like that. It was pink. It
smelled pink!

Mrs. Cromwell, attired in a wrapper of pink and black,
opened the door. Her hair was yellow, heightened,
Roxanne imagined, by a dash of peroxide in the rinsing
water every week. Her eyes were a thin waxen blue
—she was pretty and too consciously graceful. Her
cordiality was strident and intimate, hostility melted
so quickly to hospitality that it seemed they were both
merely in the face and voice—never touching nor
touched by the deep core of egotism beneath.

But to Roxanne these things were secondary; her
eyes were caught and held in uncanny fascination by
the wrapper. It was vilely unclean. From its lowest
hem up four inches it was sheerly dirty with the blue
dust of the floor; for the next three inches it was gray—
then it shaded off into its natural color, which was—
pink. It was dirty at the sleeves, too, and at the collar—and
when the woman turned to lead the way into
the parlor, Roxanne was sure that her neck was dirty.

A one-sided rattle of conversation began. Mrs.
Cromwell became explicit about her likes and dislikes,
her head, her stomach, her teeth, her apartment—avoiding
with a sort of insolent meticulousness any inclusion
of Roxanne with life, as if presuming that Roxanne,
having been dealt a blow, wished life to be carefully
skirted.

Roxanne smiled. That kimono! That neck!

After five minutes a little boy toddled into the parlor—a
dirty little boy clad in dirty pink rompers. His
face was smudgy—Roxanne wanted to take him into
her lap and wipe his nose; other parts in the vicinity of
his head needed attention, his tiny shoes were kicked
out at the toes. Unspeakable!

"What a darling little boy!" exclaimed Roxanne,
smiling radiantly. "Come here to me."

Mrs. Cromwell looked coldly at her son.

"He will get dirty. Look at that face!" She held her
head on one side and regarded it critically.

"Isn't he a darling?" repeated Roxanne.

"Look at his rompers," frowned Mrs. Cromwell.

"He needs a change, don't you, George?"

George stared at her curiously. To his mind the word
rompers connotated a garment extraneously smeared,
as this one.

"I tried to make him look respectable this morning,"
complained Mrs. Cromwell as one whose patience had
been sorely tried, "and I found he didn't have any
more rompers—so rather than have him go round without
any I put him back in those—and his face—"

"How many pairs has he?" Roxanne's voice was
pleasantly curious. "How many feather fans have
you?" she might have asked.

"Oh,—" Mrs. Cromwell considered, wrinkling her
pretty brow. "Five, I think. Plenty, I know."

"You can get them for fifty cents a pair."

Mrs. Cromwell's eyes showed surprise—and the faintest
superiority. The price of rompers!

"Can you really? I had no idea. He ought to have
plenty, but I haven't had a minute all week to send the
laundry out." Then, dismissing the subject as irrelevant—"I
must show you some things—"

They rose and Roxanne followed her past an open
bathroom door whose garment-littered floor showed indeed
that the laundry hadn't been sent out for some
time, into another room that was, so to speak, the
quintessence of pinkness. This was Mrs. Cromwell's
room.

Here the hostess opened a closet door and displayed
before Roxanne's eyes an amazing collection of lingerie.

There were dozens of filmy marvels of lace and silk, all
clean, unruffled, seemingly not yet touched. On hangers
beside them were three new evening dresses.

"I have some beautiful things," said Mrs. Cromwell,
"but not much of a chance to wear them. Harry doesn't
care about going out." Spite crept into her voice.
"He's perfectly content to let me play nursemaid and
housekeeper all day and loving wife in the evening."

Roxanne smiled again.

"You've got some beautiful clothes here."

"Yes, I have. Let me show you—"

"Beautiful," repeated Roxanne, interrupting, "but
I'll have to run if I'm going to catch my train."

She felt that her hands were trembling. She wanted
to put them on this woman and shake her—shake her.
She wanted her locked up somewhere and set to scrubbing
floors.

"Beautiful," she repeated, "and I just came in for a
moment."

"Well, I'm sorry Harry isn't here."

They moved toward the door.

"—and, oh," said Roxanne with an effort—yet her
voice was still gentle and her lips were smiling—"I
think it's Argile's where you can get those rompers.
Good-by."

It was not until she had reached the station and bought
her ticket to Marlowe that Roxanne realized it was the
first five minutes in six months that her mind had been
off Jeffrey.

IV

A week later Harry appeared at Marlowe, arrived
unexpectedly at five o'clock, and coming up the walk
sank into a porch chair in a state of exhaustion. Roxanne
herself had had a busy day and was worn out. The

doctors were coming at five-thirty, bringing a celebrated
nerve specialist from New York. She was excited and
thoroughly depressed, but Harry's eyes made her sit
down beside him.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, Roxanne," he denied. "I came to see
how Jeff was doing. Don't you bother about me."

"Harry," insisted Roxanne, "there's something the
matter."

"Nothing," he repeated. "How's Jeff?"

Anxiety darkened her face.

"He's a little worse, Harry. Doctor Jewett has
come on from New York. They thought he could tell
me something definite. He's going to try and find
whether this paralysis has anything to do with the original
blood clot."

Harry rose.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said jerkily. "I didn't know
you expected a consultation. I wouldn't have come. I
thought I'd just rock on your porch for an hour—"

"Sit down," she commanded.

Harry hesitated.

"Sit down, Harry, dear boy." Her kindness flooded
out now—enveloped him. "I know there's something
the matter. You're white as a sheet. I'm going to
get you a cool bottle of beer."

All at once he collapsed into his chair and covered his
face with his hands.

"I can't make her happy," he said slowly. "I've tried
and I've tried. This morning we had some words about
breakfast—I'd been getting my breakfast down town—
and—well, just after I went to the office she left the
house, went East to her mother's with George and a
suitcase full of lace underwear."

"Harry!"

"And I don't know—"

There was a crunch on the gravel, a car turning into
the drive. Roxanne uttered a little cry.

"It's Doctor Jewett."

"Oh, I'll—"

"You'll wait, won't you?" she interrupted abstractedly.
He saw that his problem had already died on the
troubled surface of her mind.

There was an embarrassing minute of vague, elided
introductions and then Harry followed the party inside
and watched them disappear up the stairs. He went
into the library and sat down on the big sofa.

For an hour he watched the sun creep up the patterned
folds of the chintz curtains. In the deep quiet
a trapped wasp buzzing on the inside of the window
pane assumed the proportions of a clamor. From time
to time another buzzing drifted down from up-stairs,
resembling several more larger wasps caught on larger
window-panes. He heard low footfalls, the clink of
bottles, the clamor of pouring water.

What had he and Roxanne done that life should deal
these crashing blows to them? Up-stairs there was
taking place a living inquest on the soul of his friend;
he was sitting here in a quiet room listening to the plaint
of a wasp, just as when he was a boy he had been compelled
by a strict aunt to sit hour-long on a chair and
atone for some misbehavior. But who had put him
here? What ferocious aunt had leaned out of the sky
to make him atone for—what?

About Kitty he felt a great hopelessness. She was
too expensive—that was the irremediable difficulty.
Suddenly he hated her. He wanted to throw her down
and kick at her—to tell her she was a cheat and a leech
—that she was dirty. Moreover, she must give him his
boy.

He rose and began pacing up and down the room.
Simultaneously he heard some one begin walking along
the hallway up-stairs in exact time with him. He found
himself wondering if they would walk in time until the
person reached the end of the hall.

Kitty had gone to her mother. God help her, what
a mother to go to! He tried to imagine the meeting:
the abused wife collapsing upon the mother's breast.
He could not. That Kitty was capable of any deep
grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to
think of her as something unapproachable and callous.
She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she
would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom
would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a
picture flashed before him—of Kitty's arms around
some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty's lips
pressed close to other lips in what was surely passion.

"God!" he cried aloud. "God! God! God!"

Then the pictures came thick and fast. The Kitty
of this morning faded; the soiled kimono rolled up and
disappeared; the pouts, and rages, and tears all were
washed away. Again she was Kitty Carr—Kitty Carr
with yellow hair and great baby eyes. Ah, she had
loved him, she had loved him.

After a while he perceived that something was amiss
with him, something that had nothing to do with Kitty
or Jeff, something of a different genre. Amazingly it
burst on him at last; he was hungry. Simple enough!
He would go into the kitchen in a moment and ask the
colored cook for a sandwich. After that he must go
back to the city.

He paused at the wall, jerked at something round,
and, fingering it absently, put it to his mouth and tasted
it as a baby tastes a bright toy. His teeth closed on it
—Ah!

She'd left that damn kimono, that dirty pink kimono.
She might have had the decency to take it with her, he
thought. It would hang in the house like the corpse
of their sick alliance. He would try to throw it away,
but he would never be able to bring himself to move it.
It would be like Kitty, soft and pliable, withal impervious.
You couldn't move Kitty; you couldn't reach
Kitty. There was nothing there to reach. He understood
that perfectly—he had understood it all along.

He reached to the wall for another biscuit and with an
effort pulled it out, nail and all. He carefully removed
the nail from the centre, wondering idly if he had eaten
the nail with the first biscuit. Preposterous! He would
have remembered—it was a huge nail. He felt his
stomach. He must be very hungry. He considered—
remembered—yesterday he had had no dinner. It was
the girl's day out and Kitty had lain in her room eating
chocolate drops. She had said she felt "smothery" and
couldn't bear having him near her. He had given George
a bath and put him to bed, and then lain down on the
couch intending to rest a minute before getting his own
dinner. There he had fallen asleep and awakened about
eleven, to find that there was nothing in the ice-box
except a spoonful of potato salad. This he had eaten,
together with some chocolate drops that he found on
Kitty's bureau. This morning he had breakfasted hurriedly
down town before going to the office. But at
noon, beginning to worry about Kitty, he had decided
to go home and take her out to lunch. After that there
had been the note on his pillow. The pile of lingerie
in the closet was gone—and she had left instructions for
sending her trunk.

He had never been so hungry, he thought.

At five o'clock, when the visiting nurse tiptoed downstairs,
he was sitting on the sofa staring at the carpet.

"Mr. Cromwell?"

"Yes?"

"Oh, Mrs. Curtain won't be able to see you at dinner.
She's not well. She told me to tell you that the cook
will fix you something and that there's a spare bedroom."

"She's sick, you say?"

"She's lying down in her room. The consultation
is just over."

"Did they—did they decide anything?"

"Yes," said the nurse softly. "Doctor Jewett says
there's no hope. Mr. Curtain may live indefinitely,
but he'll never see again or move again or think. He'll
just breathe."

"Just breathe?"

"Yes."

For the first time the nurse noted that beside the writing-desk
where she remembered that she had seen a line
of a dozen curious round objects she had vaguely imagined
to be some exotic form of decoration, there was now
only one. Where the others had been, there was now
a series of little nail-holes.

Harry followed her glance dazedly and then rose to
his feet.

"I don't believe I'll stay. I believe there's a train."

She nodded. Harry picked up his hat.

"Good-by," she said pleasantly.

"Good-by," he answered, as though talking to himself
and, evidently moved by some involuntary necessity,
he paused on his way to the door and she saw him pluck
the last object from the wall and drop it into his pocket.

Then he opened the screen door and, descending the
porch steps, passed out of her sight.

V

After a while the coat of clean white paint on the
Jeffrey Curtain house made a definite compromise with

the suns of many Julys and showed its good faith by
turning gray. It scaled—huge peelings of very brittle
old paint leaned over backward like aged men practising
grotesque gymnastics and finally dropped to a moldy
death in the overgrown grass beneath. The paint on
the front pillars became streaky; the white ball was
knocked off the left-hand door-post; the green blinds
darkened, then lost all pretense of color.

It began to be a house that was avoided by the tenderminded—some
church bought a lot diagonally opposite
for a graveyard, and this, combined with "the place
where Mrs Curtain stays with that living corpse," was
enough to throw a ghostly aura over that quarter of the
road. Not that she was left alone. Men and women
came to see her, met her down town, where she went to
do her marketing, brought her home in their cars—and
came in for a moment to talk and to rest, in the glamour
that still played in her smile. But men who did not
know her no longer followed her with admiring glances
in the street; a diaphanous veil had come down over her
beauty, destroying its vividness, yet bringing neither
wrinkles nor fat.

She acquired a character in the village—a group of
little stories were told of her: how when the country was
frozen over one winter so that no wagons nor automobiles
could travel, she taught herself to skate so that she
could make quick time to the grocer and druggist, and
not leave Jeffrey alone for long. It was said that every
night since his paralysis she slept in a small bed beside
his bed, holding his hand.

Jeffrey Curtain was spoken of as though he were
already dead. As the years dropped by those who had
known him died or moved away—there were but half
a dozen of the old crowd who had drunk cocktails together,
called each other's wives by their first names,

and thought that Jeff was about the wittiest and most
talented fellow that Marlowe had ever known. Now, to
the casual visitor, he was merely the reason that Mrs.
Curtain excused herself sometimes and hurried up-stairs;
he was a groan or a sharp cry borne to the silent parlor
on the heavy air of a Sunday afternoon.

He could not move; he was stone blind, dumb, and
totally unconscious. All day he lay in his bed, except
for a shift to his wheel-chair every morning while she
straightened the room. His paralysis was creeping
slowly toward his heart. At first—for the first year
—Roxanne had received the faintest answering pressure
sometimes when she held his hand—then it had
gone, ceased one evening and never come back, and
through two nights Roxanne lay wide-eyed, staring into
the dark and wondering what had gone, what fraction
of his soul had taken flight, what last grain of comprehension
those shattered broken nerves still carried to
the brain.

After that hope died. Had it not been for her unceasing
care the last spark would have gone long before.
Every morning she shaved and bathed him, shifted him
with her own hands from bed to chair and back to bed.
She was in his room constantly, bearing medicine,
straightening a pillow, talking to him almost as one talks
to a nearly human dog, without hope of response or
appreciation, but with the dim persuasion of habit, a
prayer when faith has gone.

Not a few people, one celebrated nerve specialist
among them, gave her a plain impression that it was
futile to exercise so much care, that if Jeffrey had been
conscious he would have wished to die, that if his spirit
were hovering in some wider air it would agree to no
such sacrifice from her, it would fret only for the prison
of its body to give it full release.

"But you see," she replied, shaking her head gently,
"when I married Jeffrey it was—until I ceased to love
him."

"But," was protested, in effect, "you can't love that."

"I can love what it once was. What else is there for
me to do?"

The specialist shrugged his shoulders and went away
to say that Mrs. Curtain was a remarkable woman and
just about as sweet as an angel—but, he added, it was
a terrible pity.

"There must be some man, or a dozen, just crazy
to take care of her. . . ."

Casually—there were. Here and there some one began
in hope—and ended in reverence. There was no
love in the woman except, strangely enough, for life,
for the people in the world, from the tramp to whom
she gave food she could ill afford to the butcher who sold
her a cheap cut of steak across the meaty board. The
other phase was sealed up somewhere in that expressionless
mummy who lay with his face turned ever toward
the light as mechanically as a compass needle and
waited dumbly for the last wave to wash over his
heart.

After eleven years he died in the middle of a May
night, when the scent of the syringa hung upon the window-sill
and a breeze wafted in the shrillings of the frogs
and cicadas outside. Roxanne awoke at two, and realized
with a start she was alone in the house at last.

VI

After that she sat on her weather-beaten porch through
many afternoons, gazing down across the fields that
undulated in a slow descent to the white and green town.
She was wondering what she would do with her life.

She was thirty-six—handsome, strong, and free. The
years had eaten up Jeffrey's insurance; she had reluctantly
parted with the acres to right and left of her,
and had even placed a small mortgage on the house.

With her husband's death had come a great physical
restlessness. She missed having to care for him in the
morning, she missed her rush to town, and the brief
and therefore accentuated neighborly meetings in the
butcher's and grocer's; she missed the cooking for two,
the preparation of delicate liquid food for him. One day,
consumed with energy, she went out and spaded up the
whole garden, a thing that had not been done for years.

And she was alone at night in the room that had seen
the glory of her marriage and then the pain. To meet
Jeff again she went back in spirit to that wonderful year,
that intense, passionate absorption and companionship,
rather than looked forward to a problematical meeting
hereafter; she awoke often to lie and wish for that presence
beside her—inanimate yet breathing—still Jeff.

One afternoon six months after his death she was
sitting on the porch, in a black dress which took away
the faintest suggestion of plumpness from her figure.
It was Indian summer—golden brown all about her;
a hush broken by the sighing of leaves; westward a
four o'clock sun dripping streaks of red and yellow over
a flaming sky. Most of the birds had gone—only a
sparrow that had built itself a nest on the cornice of a
pillar kept up an intermittent cheeping varied by occasional
fluttering sallies overhead. Roxanne moved
her chair to where she could watch him and her mind
idled drowsily on the bosom of the afternoon.

Harry Cromwell was coming out from Chicago to
dinner. Since his divorce over eight years before he
had been a frequent visitor. They had kept up what
amounted to a tradition between them: when he arrived

they would go to look at Jeff; Harry would sit
down on the edge of the bed and in a hearty voice ask:

"Well, Jeff, old man, how do you feel to-day?"

Roxanne, standing beside, would look intently at
Jeff, dreaming that some shadowy recognition of this
former friend had passed across that broken mind—but
the head, pale, carven, would only move slowly in its
sole gesture toward the light as if something behind the
blind eyes were groping for another light long since gone
out.

These visits stretched over eight years—at Easter,
Christmas, Thanksgiving, and on many a Sunday
Harry had arrived, paid his call on Jeff, and then talked
for a long while with Roxanne on the porch. He was
devoted to her. He made no pretense of hiding, no
attempt to deepen, this relation. She was his best
friend as the mass of flesh on the bed there had been his
best friend. She was peace, she was rest; she was the
past. Of his own tragedy she alone knew.

He had been at the funeral, but since then the company
for which he worked had shifted him to the East
and only a business trip had brought him to the vicinity
of Chicago. Roxanne had written him to come when he
could—after a night in the city he had caught a train
out.

They shook hands and he helped her move two rockers
together.

"How's George?"

"He's fine, Roxanne. Seems to like school."

"Of course it was the only thing to do, to send him."

"Of course—"

"You miss him horribly, Harry?"

"Yes—I do miss him. He's a funny boy—"

He talked a lot about George. Roxanne was interested.
Harry must bring him out on his next vacation.

She had only seen him once in her life—a child in dirty
rompers.

She left him with the newspaper while she prepared
dinner—she had four chops to-night and some late vegetables
from her own garden. She put it all on and then
called him, and sitting down together they continued
their talk about George.

"If I had a child—" she would say.

Afterward, Harry having given her what slender advice
he could about investments, they walked through
the garden, pausing here and there to recognize what
had once been a cement bench or where the tennis court
had lain . . .

"Do you remember—"

Then they were off on a flood of reminiscences: the
day they had taken all the snap-shots and Jeff had been
photographed astride the calf; and the sketch Harry
had made of Jeff and Roxanne, lying sprawled in the
grass, their heads almost touching. There was to have
been a covered lattice connecting the barn-studio with
the house, so that Jeff could get there on wet days—
the lattice had been started, but nothing remained except
a broken triangular piece that still adhered to the
house and resembled a battered chicken coop.

"And those mint juleps!"

"And Jeff's note-book! Do you remember how we'd
laugh, Harry, when we'd get it out of his pocket and
read aloud a page of material. And how frantic he
used to get?"

"Wild! He was such a kid about his writing."

They were both silent a moment, and then Harry
said:

"We were to have a place out here, too. Do you
remember? We were to buy the adjoining twenty
acres. And the parties we were going to have!"

Again there was a pause, broken this time by a low
question from Roxanne.

"Do you ever hear of her, Harry?"

"Why—yes," he admitted placidly. "She's in Seattle.
She's married again to a man named Horton, a
sort of lumber king. He's a great deal older than she
is, I believe."

"And she's behaving?"

"Yes—that is, I've heard so. She has everything,
you see. Nothing much to do except dress up for this
fellow at dinner-time."

"I see."

Without effort he changed the subject.

"Are you going to keep the house?"

"I think so," she said, nodding. "I've lived here so
long, Harry, it'd seem terrible to move. I thought of
trained nursing, but of course that'd mean leaving.
I've about decided to be a boarding-house lady."

"Live in one?"

"No. Keep one. Is there such an anomaly as a
boarding-house lady? Anyway I'd have a negress and
keep about eight people in the summer and two or three,
if I can get them, in the winter. Of course I'll have to
have the house repainted and gone over inside."

Harry considered.

"Roxanne, why—naturally you know best what you
can do, but it does seem a shock, Roxanne. You came
here as a bride."

"Perhaps," she said, "that's why I don't mind remaining
here as a boarding-house lady."

"I remember a certain batch of biscuits."

"Oh, those biscuits," she cried. "Still, from all I
heard about the way you devoured them, they couldn't
have been so bad. I was so low that day, yet somehow
I laughed when the nurse told me about those biscuits."

"I noticed that the twelve nail-holes are still in the
library wall where Jeff drove them."

"Yes."

It was getting very dark now, a crispness settled in
the air; a little gust of wind sent down a last spray of
leaves. Roxanne shivered slightly.

"We'd better go in."

He looked at his watch.

"It's late. I've got to be leaving. I go East tomorrow."

"Must you?"

They lingered for a moment just below the stoop,
watching a moon that seemed full of snow float out of the
distance where the lake lay. Summer was gone and now
Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no
mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and
light the gas and close the shutters, and he would go
down the path and on to the village. To these two
life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness,
but pity; not disillusion, but only pain. There was
already enough moonlight when they shook hands for
each to see the gathered kindness in the other's eyes.

MR. ICKY

THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUAINTNESS IN
ONE ACT

The Scene is the Exterior of a Cottage in West Issacshire
on a desperately Arcadian afternoon in August.
Mr. Icky, quaintly dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan
peasant, is pottering and doddering among the
pots and dods. He is an old man, well past the prime
of life, no longer young. From the fact that there is
a burr in his speech and that he has absent-mindedly
put on his coat wrongside out, we surmise that he is
either above or below the ordinary superficialities of
life.

Near him on the grass lies Peter, a little boy. Peter, of
course, has his chin on his palm like the pictures of
the young Sir Walter Raleigh. He has a complete
set of features, including serious, sombre, even funereal,
gray eyes—and radiates that alluring air of
never having eaten food. This air can best be radiated
during the afterglow of a beef dinner. He is looking at
Mr. Icky, fascinated.

Silence. . . . The song of birds.

Peter:

Often at night I sit at my window and regard
the stars. Sometimes I think they're my stars. . . .
(Gravely)
I think I shall be a star some day. . . .

Mr. Icky:

(Whimsically)
Yes, yes . . . yes. . . .

Peter:

I know them all: Venus, Mars, Neptune,
Gloria Swanson.

Mr. Icky:

I don't take no stock in astronomy. . . .
I've been thinking o' Lunnon, laddie. And calling to
mind my daughter, who has gone for to be a typewriter.
. . . (He sighs.)

Peter:

I liked Ulsa, Mr. Icky; she was so plump, so
round, so buxom.

Mr. Icky:

Not worth the paper she was padded with,
laddie. (He stumbles over a pile of pots and dods.)

Peter:

How is your asthma, Mr. Icky?

Mr. Icky:

Worse, thank God! . . . (Gloomily.)
I'm
a hundred years old. . . . I'm getting brittle.

Peter:

I suppose life has been pretty tame since you
gave up petty arson.

Mr. Icky:

Yes . . . yes. . . . You see, Peter, laddie,
when I was fifty I reformed once—in prison.

Peter:

You went wrong again?

Mr. Icky:

Worse than that. The week before my
term expired they insisted on transferring to me the
glands of a healthy young prisoner they were executing.

Peter:

And it renovated you?

Mr. Icky:

Renovated me! It put the Old Nick back
into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban
burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little
playful arson in comparison!

Peter:

(Awed)
How ghastly! Science is the bunk.

Mr. Icky:

(Sighing)
I got him pretty well subdued
now. 'Tisn't every one who has to tire out two sets
o' glands in his lifetime. I wouldn't take another set
for all the animal spirits in an orphan asylum.

Peter:

(Considering)
I shouldn't think you'd object
to a nice quiet old clergyman's set.

Mr. Icky:

Clergymen haven't got glands—they have
souls.

(There is a low, sonorous honking off stage to indicate
that a large motor-car has stopped in the
immediate vicinity. Then a young man handsomely
attired in a dress-suit and a patent-leather
silk hat comes onto the stage. He is
very mundane. His contrast to the spirituality
of the other two is observable as far back as the
first row of the balcony. This is Rodney
Divine.)

Divine:

I am looking for Ulsa Icky.

(Mr. Icky rises and stands tremulously between
two dods.)

Mr. Icky:

My daughter is in Lunnon.

Divine:

She has left London. She is coming here.
I have followed her.

(He reaches into the little mother-of-pearl satchel
that hangs at his side for cigarettes. He selects
one and scratching a match touches it to the cigarette.
The cigarette instantly lights.)

Divine:

I shall wait.

(He waits. Several hours pass. There is no sound
except an occasional cackle or hiss from the dods
as they quarrel among themselves. Several songs
can be introduced here or some card tricks by
Divine or a tumbling act, as desired.)

Divine:

It's very quiet here.

Mr. Icky:

Yes, very quiet. . . .

(Suddenly a loudly dressed girl appears; she is
very worldly. It is Ulsa Icky. On her is one
of those shapeless faces peculiar to early Italian
painting.)

Ulsa:

(In a coarse, worldly voice)
Feyther! Here I
am! Ulsa did what?

Mr. Icky:

(Tremulously)
Ulsa, little Ulsa.

(They embrace each other's torsos.)

Mr. Icky:

(Hopefully)
You've come back to help
with the ploughing.

Ulsa:

(Sullenly)
No, feyther; ploughing's such a
beyther. I'd reyther not.

(Though her accent is broad, the content of her
speech is sweet and clean.)

Divine:

(Conciliatingly)
See here, Ulsa. Let's come
to an understanding.

(He advances toward her with the graceful, even
stride that made him captain of the striding team
at Cambridge.)

Ulsa:

You still say it would be Jack?

Mr. Icky:

What does she mean?

Divine:

(Kindly)
My dear, of course, it would be
Jack. It couldn't be Frank.

Mr. Icky:

Frank who?

Ulsa:

It would be Frank!

(Some risqué joke can be introduced here.)

Mr. Icky:

(Whimsically)
No good fighting . . . no
good fighting. . . .

Divine:

(Reaching out to stroke her arm with the
powerful movement that made him stroke of the crew at
Oxford)
You'd better marry me.

Ulsa:

(Scornfully)
Why, they wouldn't let me in
through the servants' entrance of your house.

Divine:

(Angrily)
They wouldn't! Never fear—you
shall come in through the mistress' entrance.

Ulsa:

Sir!

Divine:

(In confusion)
I beg your pardon. You know
what I mean?

Mr. Icky:

(Aching with whimsey)
You want to marry
my little Ulsa? . . .

Divine:

I do.

Mr. Icky:

Your record is clean.

Divine:

Excellent. I have the best constitution in
the world—

Ulsa:

And the worst by-laws.

Divine:

At Eton I was a member at Pop; at Rugby
I belonged to Near-beer. As a younger son I was
destined for the police force—

Mr. Icky:

Skip that. . . . Have you money? . . .

Divine:

Wads of it. I should expect Ulsa to go
down town in sections every morning—in two Rolls-Royces.
I have also a kiddy-car and a converted tank.
I have seats at the opera—

Ulsa:

(Sullenly)
I can't sleep except in a box. And
I've heard that you were cashiered from your club.

Mr. Icky:

A cashier? . . .

Divine:

(Hanging his head)
I was cashiered.

Ulsa:

What for?

Divine:

(Almost inaudibly)
I hid the polo balls one
day for a joke.

Mr. Icky:

Is your mind in good shape?

Divine:

(Gloomily)
Fair. After all what is brilliance?
Merely the tact to sow when no one is looking and reap
when every one is.

Mr. Icky:

Be careful. . . . I will not marry my
daughter to an epigram. . . .

Divine:

(More gloomily)
I assure you I'm a mere
platitude. I often descend to the level of an innate
idea.

Ulsa:

(Dully)
None of what you're saying matters.
I can't marry a man who thinks it would be Jack. Why
Frank would—

Divine:

(Interrupting)
Nonsense!

Ulsa:

(Emphatically)
You're a fool!

Mr. Icky:

Tut—tut! . . . One should not judge . . .
Charity, my girl. What was it Nero said?—"With
malice toward none, with charity toward all—"

Peter:

That wasn't Nero. That was John Drinkwater.

Mr. Icky:

Come! Who is this Frank? Who is
this Jack?

Divine:

(Morosely)
Gotch.

Ulsa:

Dempsey.

Divine:

We were arguing that if they were deadly
enemies and locked in a room together which one would
come out alive. Now I claimed that Jack Dempsey
would take one—

Ulsa:

(Angrily)
Rot! He wouldn't have a—

Divine:

(Quickly)
You win.

Ulsa:

Then I love you again.

Mr. Icky:

So I'm going to lose my little daughter.
. . .

Ulsa:

You've still got a houseful of children.

(Charles, Ulsa's brother, coming out of the cottage.
He is dressed as if to go to sea; a coil of
rope is slung about his shoulder and an anchor is
hanging from his neck.)

Charles:

(Not seeing them)
I'm going to sea! I'm
going to sea!

(His voice is triumphant.)

Mr. Icky:

(Sadly)
You went to seed long ago.

Charles:

I've been reading "Conrad."

Peter:

(Dreamily)
"Conrad," ah! "Two Years
Before the Mast," by Henry James.

Charles:

What?

Peter:

Walter Pater's version of "Robinson Crusoe."

Charles:

(To his feyther)
I can't stay here and rot
with you. I want to live my life. I want to hunt eels.

Mr. Icky:

I will be here . . . when you come
back. . . .

Charles:

(Contemptuously)
Why, the worms are licking
their chops already when they hear your name.

(It will be noticed that some of the characters have
not spoken for some time. It will improve the
technique if they can be rendering a spirited
saxophone number.)

Mr. Icky:

(Mournfully)
These vales, these hills,

these McCormick harvesters—they mean nothing to
my children. I understand.

Charles:

(More gently)
Then you'll think of me
kindly, feyther. To understand is to forgive.

Mr. Icky:

No . . . no. . . . We never forgive those
we can understand. . . . We can only forgive those
who wound us for no reason at all. . . .

Charles:

(Impatiently)
I'm so beastly sick of your
human nature line. And, anyway, I hate the hours
around here.

(Several dozen more of Mr. Icky's children trip
out of the house, trip over the grass, and trip
over the pots and dods. They are muttering "We
are going away," and "We are leaving you.")

Mr. Icky:

(His heart breaking)
They're all deserting
me. I've been too kind. Spare the rod and spoil the
fun. Oh, for the glands of a Bismarck.

(There is a honking outside—probably Divine's
chauffeur growing impatient for his master.)

Mr. Icky:

(In misery)
They do not love the soil!
They have been faithless to the Great Potato Tradition!
(He picks up a handful of soil passionately and rubs it
on his bald head. Hair sprouts.)
Oh, Wordsworth,
Wordsworth, how true you spoke!

(They all groan and shouting "Life" and "Jazz"
move slowly toward the wings.)

Charles:

Back to the soil, yes! I've been trying to
turn my back to the soil for ten years!

Another Child:

The farmers may be the backbone
of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

Another Child:

I care not who hoes the lettuce of my
country if I can eat the salad!

All:

Life! Psychic Research! Jazz!

Mr. Icky:

(Struggling with himself)
I must be quaint.
That's all there is. It's not life that counts, it's the
quaintness you bring to it. . . .

All:

We're going to slide down the Riviera. We've
got tickets for Piccadilly Circus. Life! Jazz!

Mr. Icky:

Wait. Let me read to you from the Bible.
Let me open it at random. One always finds something
that bears on the situation.

(He finds a Bible lying in one of the dods and opening
it at random begins to read.)

"Anab and Istemo and Anim, Goson and Olon and
Gilo, eleven cities and their villages. Arab, and Ruma,
and Esaau—"

Charles:

(Cruelly)
Buy ten more rings and try
again.

Mr. Icky:

(Trying again)
"How beautiful art thou
my love, how beautiful art thou! Thy eyes are dove's
eyes, besides what is hid within. Thy hair is as flocks
of goats which come up from Mount Galaad—" Hm!
Rather a coarse passage. . . .

(His children laugh at him rudely, shouting "Jazz!"
and "All life is primarily suggestive!")

Mr. Icky:

(Despondently)
It won't work to-day.
(Hopefully)
Maybe it's damp. (He feels it)
Yes, it's
damp. . . . There was water in the dod. . . . It
won't work.

All:

It's damp! It won't work! Jazz!

One of the Children:

Come, we must catch the
six-thirty.

(Any other cue may be inserted here.)

Mr. Icky:

Good-by. . . .

(They all go out. Mr. Icky is left alone. He

sighs and walking over to the cottage steps, lies
down, and closes his eyes.

Twilight has come down and the stage is flooded
with such light as never was on land or sea.
There is no sound except a sheep-herder's wife
in the distance playing an aria from Beethoven's
Tenth Symphony, on a mouth-organ. The great
white and gray moths swoop down and light on
the old man until he is completely covered by them.
But he does not stir.

The curtain goes up and down several times to denote
the lapse of several minutes. A good comedy
effect can be obtained by having Mr. Icky cling
to the curtain and go up and down with it. Fireflies
or fairies on wires can also be introduced at
this point.

Then Peter appears, a look of almost imbecile
sweetness on his face. In his hand he clutches
something and from time to time glances at it in
a transport of ecstasy. After a struggle with
himself he lays it on the old man's body and then
quietly withdraws.

The moths chatter among themselves and then scurry
away in sudden fright. And as night deepens
there still sparkles there, small, white and round,
breathing a subtle perfume to the West Issacshire
breeze, Peter's gift of love—a moth-ball.

(The play can end at this point or can go on indefinitely.)

JEMINA, THE MOUNTAIN GIRL

This don't pretend to be "Literature." This is just a tale
for red-blooded folks who want a story and not just a lot of "psychological"
stuff or "analysis." Boy, you'll love it! Read it
here, see it in the movies, play it on the phonograph, run it
through the sewing-machine.

A Wild Thing

It was night in the mountains of Kentucky. Wild
hills rose on all sides. Swift mountain streams flowed
rapidly up and down the mountains.

Jemina Tantrum was down at the stream, brewing
whiskey at the family still.

She was a typical mountain girl.

Her feet were bare. Her hands, large and powerful,
hung down below her knees. Her face showed the
ravages of work. Although but sixteen, she had for
over a dozen years been supporting her aged pappy
and mappy by brewing mountain whiskey.

From time to time she would pause in her task, and,
filling a dipper full of the pure, invigorating liquid, would
drain it off—then pursue her work with renewed vigor.

She would place the rye in the vat, thresh it out with
her feet and, in twenty minutes, the completed product
would be turned out.

A sudden cry made her pause in the act of draining a
dipper and look up.

"Hello," said a voice. It came from a man clad in
hunting boots reaching to his neck, who had emerged
from the wood.

"Hi, thar," she answered sullenly.

"Can you tell me the way to the Tantrums' cabin?"

"Are you uns from the settlements down thar?"

She pointed her hand down to the bottom of the hill,
where Louisville lay. She had never been there; but
once, before she was born, her great-grandfather, old
Gore Tantrum, had gone into the settlements in the company
of two marshals, and had never come back. So
the Tantrums, from generation to generation, had'learned
to dread civilization.

The man was amused. He laughed a light tinkling
laugh, the laugh of a Philadelphian. Something in the
ring of it thrilled her. She drank off another dipper of
whiskey.

"Where is Mr. Tantrum, little girl?" he asked, not
without kindness.

She raised her foot and pointed her big toe toward
the woods.

"Thar in the cabing behind those thar pines. Old
Tantrum air my old man."

The man from the settlements thanked her and strode
off. He was fairly vibrant with youth and personality.
As he walked along he whistled and sang and turned
handsprings and flapjacks, breathing in the fresh, cool
air of the mountains.

The air around the still was like wine.

Jemina Tantrum watched him entranced. No one
like him had ever come into her life before.

She sat down on the grass and counted her toes. She
counted eleven. She had learned arithmetic in the
mountain school.

A Mountain Feud

Ten years before a lady from the settlements had
opened a school on the mountain. Jemina had no

money, but she had paid her way in whiskey, bringing a
pailful to school every morning and leaving it on Miss
Lafarge's desk. Miss Lafarge had died of delirium tremens
after a year's teaching, and so Jemina's education
had stopped.

Across the still stream still another still was standing.
It was that of the Doldrums. The Doldrums and the
Tantrums never exchanged calls.

They hated each other.

Fifty years before old Jem Doldrum and old Jem Tantrum
had quarrelled in the Tantrum cabin over a game
of slapjack. Jem Doldrum had thrown the king of
hearts in Jem Tantrum's face, and old Tantrum, enraged,
had felled the old Doldrum with the nine of diamonds.
Other Doldrums and Tantrums had joined in
and the little cabin was soon filled with flying cards.
Harstrum Doldrum, one of the younger Doldrums, lay
stretched on the floor writhing in agony, the ace of hearts
crammed down his throat. Jem Tantrum, standing in
the doorway, ran through suit after suit, his face alight
with fiendish hatred. Old Mappy Tantrum stood on
the table wetting down the Doldrums with hot whiskey.
Old Heck Doldrum, having finally run out of trumps,
was backed out of the cabin, striking left and right with
his tobacco pouch, and gathering around him the rest of
his clan. Then they mounted their steers and galloped
furiously home.

That night old man Doldrum and his sons, vowing
vengeance, had returned, put a ticktock on the Tantrum
window, stuck a pin in the doorbell, and beaten a
retreat.

A week later the Tantrums had put Cod Liver Oil
in the Doldrums' still, and so, from year to year, the
feud had continued, first one family being entirely
wiped out, then the other.

The Birth of Love

Every day little Jemina worked the still on her side of
the stream, and Boscoe Doldrum worked the still on his
side.

Sometimes, with automatic inherited hatred, the
feudists would throw whiskey at each other, and Jemina
would come home smelling like a French table d'hôte.

But now Jemina was too thoughtful to look across
the stream.

How wonderful the stranger had been and how oddly
he was dressed! In her innocent way she had never
believed that there were any civilized settlements at
all, and she had put the belief in them down to the
credulity of the mountain people.

She turned to go up to the cabin, and, as she turned
something struck her in the neck. It was a sponge,
thrown by Boscoe Doldrum—a sponge soaked in whiskey
from his still on the other side of the stream.

"Hi, thar, Boscoe Doldrum," she shouted in her deep
bass voice.

"Yo! Jemina Tantrum. Gosh ding yo'!" he returned.

She continued her way to the cabin.

The stranger was talking to her father. Gold had
been discovered on the Tantrum land, and the stranger,
Edgar Edison, was trying to buy the land for a song.
He was considering what song to offer.

She sat upon her hands and watched him.

He was wonderful. When he talked his lips moved.

She sat upon the stove and watched him.

Suddenly there came a blood-curdling scream. The
Tantrums rushed to the windows.

It was the Doldrums.

They had hitched their steers to trees and concealed

themselves behind the bushes and flowers, and soon a
perfect rattle of stones and bricks beat against the windows,
bending them inward.

"Father! father!" shrieked Jemina.

Her father took down his slingshot from his slingshot
rack on the wall and ran his hand lovingly over the elastic
band. He stepped to a loophole. Old Mappy Tantrum
stepped to the coalhole.

A Mountain Battle

The stranger was aroused at last. Furious to get at
the Doldrums, he tried to escape from the house by crawling
up the chimney. Then he thought there might be
a door under the bed, but Jemina told him there was not.
He hunted for doors under the beds and sofas, but each
time Jemina pulled him out and told him there were no
doors there. Furious with anger, he beat upon the
door and hollered at the Doldrums. They did not
answer him, but kept up their fusillade of bricks and
stones against the window. Old Pappy Tantrum knew
that as soon as they were able to effect an aperture they
would pour in and the fight would be over.

Then old Heck Doldrum, foaming at the mouth and
expectorating on the ground, left and right, led the
attack.

The terrific slingshots of Pappy Tantrum had not
been without their effect. A master shot had disabled
one Doldrum, and another Doldrum, shot almost incessantly
through the abdomen, fought feebly on.

Nearer and nearer they approached the house.

"We must fly," shouted the stranger to Jemina. "I
will sacrifice myself and bear you away."

"No," shouted Pappy Tantrum, his face begrimed.
"You stay here and fit on. I will bar Jemina away. I
will bar Mappy away. I will bar myself away."

The man from the settlements, pale and trembling
with anger, turned to Ham Tantrum, who stood at the
door throwing loophole after loophole at the advancing
Doldrums.

"Will you cover the retreat?"

But Ham said that he too had Tantrums to bear
away, but that he would leave himself here to help the
stranger cover the retreat, if he could think of a way of
doing it.

Soon smoke began to filter through the floor and ceiling.
Shem Doldrum had come up and touched a match
to old Japhet Tantrum's breath as he leaned from a
loophole, and the alcoholic flames shot up on all sides.

The whiskey in the bathtub caught fire. The walls
began to fall in.

Jemina and the man from the settlements looked at
each other.

"Jemina," he whispered.

"Stranger," she answered.

"We will die together," he said. "If we had lived I
would have taken you to the city and married you.
With your ability to hold liquor, your social success
would have been assured."

She caressed him idly for a moment, counting her toes
softly to herself. The smoke grew thicker. Her left
leg was on fire.

She was a human alcohol lamp.

Their lips met in one long kiss and then a wall fell on
them and blotted them out.

"As One."

When the Doldrums burst through the ring of flame,
they found them dead where they had fallen, their
arms about each other.

Old Jem Doldrum was moved.

He took off his hat.

He filled it with whiskey and drank it off.

"They air dead," he said slowly, "they hankered
after each other. The fit is over now. We must not
part them."

So they threw together into the stream and the
two splashes they made were as one.